The teacher rating system is a farce

Starting in the fall, for the third year in a row, New York City teachers will be judged by a new evaluation system. Gov. Cuomo suggests we don’t want to be evaluated like professionals, but that’s wrong. What we want is to be evaluated using a reasonable system that will help us improve.

There is no evidence that evaluating teachers based on gains in student test scores will improve teacher quality. The American Statistical Association estimates teachers affect test scores by a factor of 1% to 14% , and that evaluating teachers by scores may actually reduce quality.

Another problem is the way New York’s tests are scored. When John King announced 70% of students would fail new Common Core-based tests before they were given, the state Education Department took the graded tests and set the cut scores so they did.

These tests are rigged to produce whatever results the pols want — and right now they want public schools and teachers to look bad. It is absurd that the governor finds these tests unsuitable to rate children but acceptable to rate teachers.

I teach English as a Second Language, and at every level, these kids need to be taught grammar and usage. Colleges ask for writing samples, and students who make non-native errors are bounced to costly non-credit remedial classes. Mastery of usage, unlike the arbitrarily-set standards used by the state, is a concrete measure of college readiness.

The new NYSESLAT test (that mouthful stands for New York State English as a Second Language Achievement Test), the one by which I and thousands of my fellow ESL teachers will be rated, is largely a mystery. We know it is supposed to be aligned with the Common Core standards and measure things like close reading. The value of this is questionable at best. Anyone who studies language acquisition will tell you that reading skills transfer from one language to another.

But learning a second language takes time, and that time varies wildly with individual learners. Students who love being here acquire language rapidly. The opposite is the case for kids dragged kicking and screaming.

The state Education Department can rate me poorly if they like. I certainly can’t promise my approach will result in stellar scores on a new test I’ve never seen, and in which neither I nor anyone I know had input.

If my kids don’t do well enough on these tests, I can’t be rated higher than “developing,” though I haven’t gotten a negative observation since I was a beginning teacher, and I’ve never received a negative end-of-year rating.

As for outside observers — another supposed advance in the new system — will they know that I’m not calling on Jenny in the back because she just arrived from El Salvador in the last week, has missed six months of instruction and I don’t wish to humiliate her? How will they know that, though I’m incredibly busy, I’ve offered to teach an additional class to help newcomers catch up?

They won’t. They will take everything out of context, which is the worst possible way to judge an educator’s work.

It’s a disgrace that members of the Assembly and Senate, who have no idea who my kids are or what they need, are charged with not only telling me what to teach, but also judging me on factors having nothing to do with whether or not I’m doing my job well.

I will not let a test tied to untested Common Core standards determine the future of my students. I will continue to teach them what they need. I will continue to do everything I deem necessary to make them share my love of the English language.

If Cuomo wants to fire me for that, he can go ahead. There are plenty of people who need to learn English rather than testprep, and if teachers like me can’t help the city’s public schoolchildren, we’ll help someone else. But when that happens, who will help city kids learn what they really need?

If Cuomo wants to fire me, so be it