The Madness of New York’s Teacher Evaluation Program
A version of this article was originally published in CityLimits.org
At the swearing-in for NY State Senator Jessica Ramos in Queens, I spoke to a few NY State Senators about a recently passed bill that allows school districts to uncouple state test scores from teacher evaluations. Senator Ramos voted for the bill but entered into the record a statement that it didn’t go far enough.
Manhattan Senator Robert Jackson agreed the revision bill, nicknamed the “APPR bill”, was a step in the right direction but said he was already preparing further legislation. One concern Sen. Jackson raised in Senate Education Committee discussion was the “group measures” provision where teachers actually share evaluation scores from test results in another subject.
FLAWED TESTS: Dubbed “Common Core” exams until a name change last year, the state tests have been criticized widely by experts, principals, teachers and parents, resulting in about one in five students annually refusing to take the exams, except on Long Island where it is one in two. This led to a moratorium on the use of state test scores in teacher evaluations, which were also ruled “arbitrary and capricious” in a 2016 State Supreme Court decision. Yet the largely pointless tests are still administered.
MORE TESTS REQUIRED: Because the law required a test score for evaluations, the controversial state test scores were replaced by scores from locally-chosen tests (which are administered at the beginning and the end of the year, doubling the testing). But it gets even more insane.
Serving over 40% of the students in the whole state, New York City schools currently choose “local” tests from an approved list provided by the state, which includes a variety of third party, corporate tests. Testing in math and English is compulsory, which means four test days added to the four for state testing. But what about all the other subjects?
Originally, other teachers had to pick either math or English for a score, but teachers can now choose their own subjects, thereby adding yet another two days of testing (depending on target group, this could affect a few classes or a whole grade).
This means schools who administer local exams for science and social studies will have at least 12 days of testing (not including separate tests for English learners). To reduce testing, teachers must agree to “piggyback” scores, a choice between subjecting kids to more testing versus wasting tax dollars in a sham compliance scheme.
OR USE A “SHARED” SCORE: Meanwhile, outside NYC, hundreds of school districts negotiate agreements that use a reliably “safe” test, such as the Biology Regents, to assign scores for every teacher’s evaluation. It’s understandable why districts agree to this, so they can test less, and just get back to teaching. But it’s unfortunate that state officials, the unions and the media also buy in to this sham.
It’s bad enough to rank teachers based on snapshots of student test results, but “group measures” are an affront to science as piggybacked scores cannot possibly tell anything about a teacher’s practice. So how did we get here?
Unions go along with this arrangement because it protects teachers. The state union NYSUT has challenged the validity of the state test scores and supports parents right to “opt out”, but the powerful NYC union has resisted calls to publicly question the testing as the invisible formulas yield dramatically low numbers of “ineffective” teachers, and just in case someone does get an ineffective rating, there is a newly negotiated appeals process.
The latest bill passed quickly after encouragement by NYSUT whose public explanation was convincing, but basically seems to better protect teachers within a harmful, wasteful and fraudulent system.
A NEW LANDSCAPE? The bill requires evaluation metrics to be collectively bargained, district-by-district, all over the state, but what will be allowed is already in question. NYSUT President Andy Pallotta promised “unit tests and portfolios” can be part of the mix, but because any alternative assessments must ultimately be approved by the state Education Department, observers are skeptical much will change.
Because the bill was recycled from last session when Republicans controlled the Senate (and ultimately blocked it from a clean vote), many question why a full repeal of the evaluation law wasn’t sought. When rank-and-file members were asked this at the 2017 NYSUT delegate convention, a resolution was unanimously passed that read, in part:
“NYSUT will oppose, through legislative lobbying efforts, any teacher evaluation regimen that mandates that student performance must be used as a measure of assessment”.
So this bill may reflect incrementalism, but union leadership did also worry that opening up the entire law for replacement could give the upper hand to State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia. For now, it seems, the union would rather fight 700 battles in local districts, relying on grassroots members to seek improvements. Thus, we continue to tinker around the edges, as we have for years, unable to declare aloud that whole standardized testing regime is a flaming bag of poo. Here’s why:
The testing is excessive. They could be half as long and given every three years instead of annually. They are intrusive, narrowing curriculum to what is likely to be on the test. I have observed curriculum meetings where this was explicit, and I have heard principals tell staff to focus on raising test scores or prepare to lose their positions. This results in intensive test prep leading up to the Spring exams, but in some schools affect every class period of every day. The testing and prep ends up displacing weeks of learning.
The testing is high stakes, meaning they have dire economic and career consequences which introduce perverse incentives. But they are also highly flawed — education experts from the start have questioned whether bubble-in tests are valid measures of student ability, let alone teacher quality.
The tests are also developmentally inappropriate, given to children knowing most will fail. Standardized tests will label ‘late bloomers’ and the vast majority of inner city children “not proficient” from third grade on. While students with disabilities or language deficits get their scores “adjusted”, they are nonetheless given tests they may not be able to read, forced to sit quiet for hours staring at the bubbles. Students who fall behind are prevented from going back to catch up based on need, they have to forge ahead to avoid a low test score.
The testing is pervasive, meaning we test more students than necessary. Testing defenders like to say granular data is needed to identify students who need the most help, but the test results come too late to help teachers, and after sixteen years, we all know that help never actually comes. The data needed to identify struggling schools or districts need only be a representative sampling, particularly if combined with income and other demographic data more reliably linked to educational outcomes than test scores.
The testing regime was built on corruption — both pay-for-play and the revolving door.
The testing is opaque. In New York the tests stand on shaky legal ground because the invisible formulas, already ruled invalid in court once, are supposed to be “transparent and available” according to the law that created them.
The testing has a long track record of failure. President Obama himself said standardized testing “…often fell short. It didn’t always consider the specific needs of each community. It led to too much testing during classroom time.”
SECRET SHIFTS: But most absurd and most misunderstood are the backroom manipulations that shift results after the tests are taken and scored. The State Ed Department routinely changes the “cut scores”, or proficiency thresholds that can change passing to failing and vice versa with the snap of a finger. They also “withdraw” test questions retroactively, with no public notice or published criteria.
Other hard truths we have to face are how many kids are not actually trying or bothering to read the test questions. Every year I see kids trying to nap, staring into space, or acting out, and just filling in bubbles at the very end, disillusioned and frustrated because the tests are simply not on their functional level.
GUESSWORK: Then we have the reality that multiple choice exams hinge on pure, dumb luck. The vast majority of students guess on some or all test questions and every year, millions of kids across the country fall on the borderline of passing/failing, meaning one lucky or unlucky guess made the difference. This is not a scientific metric of determining knowledge or ability, it’s a crapshoot.
In summary, standardized tests are excessive, pervasive, invasive, invalid, harmful, and counterproductive. Perhaps the annual parent, teacher and student surveys given annually in NYC can include questions about the testing and scoring regime.
A CHANGING LEGISLATURE: And perhaps the new crop of progressive lawmakers now up in Albany will start a new effort to curb the state’s obsession with testing. A young mother herself, Senator Ramos told me she can’t wait to opt her kids out of state testing. Senator Jackson has been fighting against the testing since his days in the NYC Council.
Newly elected Brooklyn Senator Zellnor Myrie, the son of a NYC teacher, also told me he strongly opposes the high stakes testing regime and Syracuse Senator Rachel May, also a former math teacher, has also said we need to move away from testing. Bronx Senator Alessandra Biaggi noted that the tests are a poor way to measure teaching, particularly in under-resourced schools with oversized classes. Newly seated Orange County Senator James Skoufis who voted against the original evaluations bill as a member of the NY state Assembly has a long history of opposing standardized testing.
With all these newly elected voices now in the State Senate, it’s possible we may see legislation to actually reduce testing, and open hearings where teachers, parents and experts can testify, instead of backroom deals negotiated as part of the “big ugly” annual budget bill.
If the state Education Department would make their invisible formulas public, release long-overdue technical reports and finally “show their work”, it taxpayers can see what they bought, but for now, we await the governor’s signature on the APPR bill. Once signed, we will start to see how district-based negotiations go, and what kind of new alternative assessments the state will allow local schools to use. Corporate tests, or even tests shared from other districts cost millions, but they also prevent districts from using better, proven and more transparent assessment programs.
BETTER WAYS: Many on-the-ground educators in New York City are aware of a program called the Performance Standards Consortium which for decades has modeled use of shared rubrics for assessing student work and portfolios. It allows teachers to teach more effectively and assess in more detail, according to international best practices, while waiving most of the state’s “exit” tests. These Consortium schools have a track record that improves outcomes for and provides more valuable data, such as complete student data portfolios, and they have had none of the state’s botch-ups such as privacy breaches or online tests that crash en masse.
I taught for four years in a school for overaged youth in the South Bronx, but it was not allowed the Consortium waivers. The school drew high need students from surrounding districts not only at the high school level, but to intervene earlier, included the middle school grades, which made them the only school of their kind. They were a perfect fit for the consortium because they also used authentic full-year portfolios, with students presenting to a panel of teachers, administrators, counselors, parents and peers. But without the consortium waiver they could only use this whole-child protocol in addition to all state testing.
Known as transfers schools in NYC, these alternative, trauma-informed schools answer the call to help high need students, but the state only grants the waivers to about 30 grandfathered-in high schools or international schools. There is pressing need to allow these proven methods in trauma-informed schools for overaged youth, students with disabilities or uncertain home lives.
Forced instead to administer multiple rounds of state-imposed tests, my school had to discontinue the portfolio panel model and predictably, it ended up on the “bottom 5%” list. I saw every year, the state testing greatly diminished the actual mission of the school, which was to fill in large learning gaps.
As local negotiations come to your neighborhood schools, discuss this with your local officials — will you have a voice in determining what your district counts towards teacher evaluations? Will it be the state test scores? The “local” scores that add testing? A “shared” test score which is convenient but bogus? Something new? Or something with a proven track record but not on the state’s list of approved assessments?
This is the full Text of the APPR Bill.
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Jake Jacobs is a NYC teacher and pro-public education blogger.