http://www.nydailynews.com/news/a-dozen-teachers-earned-lowest-scores-controversial-rankings-article-1.1028113
More than a dozen teachers earned lowest scores on controversial rankings
News analysis: 50 earned highest marks for several years in ratings, which union blasts as flawed
BRYAN SMITH FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
New York City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott says it would be “irresponsible” to draw conclusions about teachers only from their rankings.
More than a dozen city teachers got the lowest possible score on the Education Department’s controversial instructor rankings, a Daily News analysis has found.
Seventeen teachers received zeros in either math or English on evaluations of how well they raised student achievement over more than one year, according to city data released Friday.
Meanwhile, 47 teachers aced the evaluations, each scoring a 99 out of 100 in math or English. Of those instructors, three recorded highest scores in both subjects.
CHECK THE RATING FOR YOUR CHILD'S TEACHER: FULL LIST AND SORTABLE DATABASE
The lowest-ranked instructors taught at both high- and low-performing elementary and middle schools around the city. All had at least three years of teaching experience, making their scores more reliable.
The Education Department rated teachers using a complicated “value-added” method, which measures how well students improved on state exams compared to a projection of how they should have performed based on demographic factors like poverty and ethnicity.
In all, 20,000 fourth- through eighth-grade math and reading teachers received at least one yearly evaluation between 2007 and 2010.
The News’ analysis only includes about 8,000 teachers who taught in 2010 and have more than one annual evaluation. These were viewed as the most reliable of the numbers.
Still, those with zeros challenged the accuracy.
“I'm absolutely being scapegoated,” said Mirta Serrano, 53, a sixth-grade teacher at Brooklyn’s Intermediate School 318 who got a zero after two years of evaluations.
“I don't agree with the scores. The tests are not fair. It's not one size fits all.”
The rankings, requested by the Daily News and other media outlets under the Freedom of Information Law, were made public after a year-and-a-half legal battle by the United Federation of Teachers.
They divides teachers into five categories depending on their scores.
About 1,384 teachers received a score of 24 or lower — the bottom of the scale. In math, about 1,347 instructors got a 24 or below.
About 1,435 teachers recorded a 75 or above in English, making them top performers, while about 1,630 math teachers received a 75 or above.
Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said he hoped the data will create a dialogue among parents, teachers and principals.
"I think thoughtful discussions taking place at the schools between parents and principals and teachers is something that's extremely healthy that benefits our students," he said Friday.
“To me that allows that parent to be an involved stakeholder in far as what's happening in their child or children's classroom.”
The teachers union and education advocates have ripped city officials over the release, calling the data deeply flawed with the potential to demonize instructors.
"This was a complete calamity and it is the clearest example of the mismanagement that the Department of Ed has put upon the teachers of New York City," United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew said.
Even Walcott warned that the data is old and cautioned against drawing conclusions.
"I definitely believe in transparency and people having information,” he said. “On the other hand, I'm very conscious ... the data with the names attached could be used in ways that could be harmful to the process of what we're trying to achieve."
One measure of caution is the wide margins of error on the rankings
. The average margin of error on multi-year scores is 35 points for math and 53 for English.
On some individual teacher rankings, the margins of error become even more troubling, going as high as 75 for math and 87 for English.
"The fact that one teacher in a school might be at the 60th percentile and another one's at the 45th percentile doesn't mean that the first teacher is more effective than the second because they come with very large margins of error," said NYU Professor Sean Corcoran, who has studied a similar ranking system in Houston.
The UFT said the rankings are also riddled with straight-forward errors like assigning the wrong students to instructors.
Pamela Flanagan, a teacher at Tompkins Square Middle School in the East Village for the past six years, initially received a zero in a 2009 report.
There was one glaring problem: she was evaluated as an English instructor when she only taught math and science.
“It’s absurd. The margin of error is so wide that you can’t tell anything from it,” Flanagan said. “How is this going to help with my teaching at all?”
The city has asked teachers to come forward to report any flaws, but so far only 37% have verified the last two year’s of their reports. Of those, 3% were connected to the wrong courses.
Another problem, critics say, is how small achievement changes among high- and low-performing students dramatically skewed the evaluations.
For example, teachers of top-performing students could see their ranks plummet if their kids get just a couple more questions wrong than expected on state tests.
That didn’t stop three teachers at A-rated Public School 122 Mamie Fay in Queens from each scoring a 99 on their evaluations.
One of them — Rebecca Victoros, who teaches fifth-grade in the Astoria school’s gifted and talented program — even earned the top honor in both English and math.
“I know that we have wonderful teachers. I didn’t need the teacher value reports to verify that,” the school’s principal, Pamela Sabel, said. “Good teaching is good teaching.”
While the department no longer uses the rating system, the state will use similar calculations in judging the performance of teachers under the program recently established by Gov. Cuomo.
Those calculations will be supplemented by other measures, including classroom observations that many education experts say are necessary to fairly evaluate a teacher. Instructors who fall into the lowest band will be subject to firing.
with Rachel Monahan and Tina Moore
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