By Steve Gunn
EAGnews.org
ALBANY, N.Y. – Most New York teachers are doing a great job, according to a new report from the state.
But a huge percentage of their students are lagging behind in the core subjects of English and math.
The New York Daily News is wondering if the gap betweeen the teacher and student scores means the teacher evaluation system is a little too forgiving. We’re wondering the same thing.
The teacher ratings were based on test scores in English and math for fourth- through eighth-grade students throughout the state, according to the newspaper. Seven percent of all graded teachers were rated as “highly effective,” while a whopping 77 percent were rated “effective.” Sixteen percent were rated as “developing” or “ineffective.”
But on the tests, only 55 percent of students scored proficient in English and only 66 percent in math. So 84 percent of the teachers are considered highly effective or effective, while a much smaller percentage of their students are actually learning fundamental skills.
As the Daily News points out, teachers of students who show average test score gains are defined as being effective. But New York’s new school accountability system was designed to produce stronger performances from teachers and students. Clearly that’s not happening.
“(State education officials) have set the goal of fully preparing New York’s high school graduates to do college work,” the newpaper editorial said. “They have identified exactly what students need to know from first grade on up to achieve college readiness.
“But none of that means a fig in the rating system because a teacher who gets average progress, no matter how limited, is defined as effective. Still more distressing, New York is about to introduce a tougher curriculum. It will go to waste if, on average, teachers produce poor performance and are told they are doing just fine.”
Comments
Tags: #students, #teachers, college readiness, Daily News, English, fundamental skills, high school graduates, math, New York, test scores
As a parent, I have come to the conclusion that its the lack of appropriate curricula that is harming our children and our teachers. When you have reading programs like Whole Word (Balanced Literacy) that does not teach the reading process and does not encorporate true explicit systematic phonics, not all children learn to read, they are taught to guess at words! Is that reading in anyones eyes? Is pushing hundreds of sight words on our children every year actually teaching them to sound out words? Or is it just hiding the fact that our children are not being taught to read. Sight based reading is a sham, it is fake reading and it is in every school across our nation and then we sit around wondering why these children are not reading. All one has to do is look at the reading method being used. Scattering alittle phonics in with sight based programs doesnt work either, if it did, the issue would of been solved!!