Meet the ‘worst’ 8th grade math teacher in NYC

[proud2BlibKansan]

For 10 months, Carolyn Abbott waited for the other shoe to drop. In April 2011, Abbott, who teaches mathematics to seventh- and eighth-graders at the Anderson School, a citywide gifted-and-talented school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, received some startling news. Her score on the Teacher Data Report, the New York City Department of Education’s effort to isolate a teacher’s contribution to her students’
(bigstock) performance on New York State’s math and English Language Arts (ELA) tests in grades four through eight, said that 32 percent of seventh-grade math teachers and 0 percent of eighth-grade math teachers scored below her.

She was, according to this report, the worst eighth-grade math teacher in New York City, where she has taught since 2007.

“I was angry, upset, offended,” she said. Abbott sought out her principal, who reassured her that she was an excellent teacher and that the Teacher Data Reports bore no relation to her performance. But, the principal confided, she was worried; although she would enthusiastically recommend Abbott for tenure, the Teacher Data Report could count against her in the tenure process. With a new district superintendent reviewing the tenure recommendation, anything could happen.

Using a statistical technique called value-added modeling, the Teacher Data Reports compare how students are predicted to perform on the state ELA and math tests, based on their prior year’s performance, with their actual performance. Teachers whose students do better than predicted are said to have “added value”; those whose students do worse than predicted are “subtracting value.” By definition, about half of all teachers will add value, and the other half will not.

more . . . http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/meet-the-worst-8th-grade-math-teacher-in-nyc/2012/05/15/gIQArmlbSU_blog.html

[XemaSab]

1. That is deeply unfair

[RC]

2. Too many people running the show don't any clues as to how education actually works.

Never mind they may even have Masters and Doctorate educational degrees.
Just because you need to grade the kid's learning progress, does not mean you can grade the teacher the same way. Teachers are not students, they are Educators doing a job most people would suck at. Teaching is an art. Let those with the gift, teach. Oh, and pay them decently for it too.

[WingDinger]

3. Economic growth, and constant improvement, are impossible tasks. To demand constant improvement, ign

ignores point of diminishing returns, and saturation point.

[DontTreadOnMe]

4. Who is the "worst" Congressman

C'mon.. make a list of stats, like unemployment and budget spending... and pro rate their pay based on their standings. We NEED to see what "value-adding" our Congressman are REALLY contributing.

And then at the end of every MONTH, we get rid of the worst Congressman.. gets fired live on national TV. OK let's make it the "worst" 5 each month, there are a lot of Congressman.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. Works for me

LOL

[eek MD]

6. Statistics....

I've noticed the shift toward "quantifying" everything in my job too. I might not be in education, but it's quite sleazy and does nothing but teach people how to "game the system" to make their statistics look better. In the education field, I would imagine that means avoiding challenging situations (special needs students) and teaching toward the test. In my job, it means avoiding giving assistance to coworkers (travel outside of my area and time spent training hurts my productivity), rewarding people who cut corners (as they are able to accomplish more in a shorter amount of time for less expense), and encouraging people to pawn their difficult jobs off onto other people. Just as in the situation above, my boss knows my true value despite the fact that my statistics "struggle" in some areas, but the higher-ups that control the layoffs (and never actually deal with us in any way except on paper) are a different story. Fortunately, I've never been in the position where I've been the "worst" in my company, but I know the people who are, and I know that the statistics don't always reflect reality.

[patrice]

7. When I went through my master's program at KU, there was great emphasis being created on

research that strove to establish the qualities of a subject (mine was a master's of science, btw, - research) as compared to just the relevant quantities. This was of particular interest to some professors in light of the dawning age of internet learning and its statistical master "click trails", which they reasoned needed to be made more human.

The school of ed there included Rousseau in its reading lists, was very busy reviving John Dewey, we read Foxfire and Somerset, and everyone was on fire about Paulo Freire: all discovery learning and authentic assessment proponents. Everyone was doing naturalistic research and lots of performance based projects and interviewing. That was 2000; I'm afraid with the political scene since then, most of that interest has been lost. I ought to follow-up sometime to see if their school of ed has turned into the quantifying beast that dominates everything now.

[IamK]

8. someone has to be last, use it as a motivator..

Sounds like the principle was taking out there ass, she is not getting tenure...

[NJCher]

9. she's quitting!

Forget tenure already; she's moving on for a Ph.D. in math.

Sad outcome, especially when you see that she not only does the job, she does an exceptional job. From the article:

How do her students perform on the content that she actually does teach? This year, the 64 eighth-graders at Anderson she teaches are divided into two groups, an honors section and a regular section. All but one of the students in the honors section took the Regents Integrated Algebra exam in January; the other student and most of the regular-section students will take the exam in June. All of the January test-takers passed with flying colors, and more than one-third achieved a perfect score of 100 on the exam.

“They did phenomenally,” Abbott said. “If they did so well, I don’t see how they can say I added no value whatsoever.”

I don't blame her for moving on. The deck is stacked against her.


Cher

[hfojvt]

10. that's what I said many months ago

that "by definition, half of all teachers will add value, and the other half will not."

[ProgressiveEconomist]

11. Hmm.... 'teaches math to ... gifted and talented'. If her students scored very high

last year as well as this year, wouldn't they pretty much already have maxed out on math performance? Doesn't the measurment method pretty much assume that students have been doing poorly and reward teachers for getting them to do a little less poorly (say, by suspending the worst students just before the test)?

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. Exactly

They measure growth. Top students don't grow academically like lesser achieving kids do.