I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. - Chris Christie, "An Open Letter to the Teachers of NJ" October, 2009

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

More Pilot Error

I'm going to start calling the NJ teacher evaluation "pilot" Code Name: Amelia Earhart. Because this is a program that's totally lost and bound to crash:
Q:  How much weight do standardized test scores get in the evaluations?
A:  Standardized test scores are not available for every subject or grade. For those that exist (Math and English Language Arts teachers of grades 4-8), Student Growth Percentages (SGPs), which require pre- and post-assessments, will be used. The SGPs should account for 35%-45% of evaluations.  The NJDOE will work with pilot districts to determine how student achievement will be measured in non-tested subjects and grades. [emphasis mine]
So you need both a pre- and a post-test , huh? OK, we know the NJASK will be the standard post-test, which will be given AFTER the teachers' evaluations are due, so that's a disaster. When are you gojng to give the pre-test?

Well, it would only be fair to give that AFTER everyone has been trained, right? When is the training?

Beginning evaluator training by Sep. 30, 2011, and teacher training by Nov. 1, 2011. 
Let me get this straight: you won't have teacher training until AFTER 11/1/11. And the NJASK is in late April to May. So if you give teachers time to prep their kids for a month, say, after training for the pre-test, that will be at best in late December. But the evaluations have to be done by April 30. Say it takes a month to do that; you'd better be done by March 31.

At best, this pilot will evaluate a little more than three months of teaching, assuming it can administer the NJASK early (which, I guarantee you, it won't).

Again: do these people have ANY IDEA what they are doing?


The NJ Teacher Evaluation "Pilot"

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been retired for 8 years and asking if the NJDOE has any idea of what they are doing is nothing new. Thank goodness for the NJEA for helping us with answers for the 33 years that I taught . . .

Duke said...

Thank you for serving NJ's kids. You deserve a retirement with dignity, and we'll fight to make sure you get one.

Anonymous said...

This scheme sounds a lot like DC with its IMPACT. We had 6 hours of training on a Friday(in late September) before the new evaluation system was launched that Monday. In addition there were some 25+ evaluation models depending on your subject and educational role. Suffice to say, a lot of people were torked unfairly by a system that they were still refining in late April and May of 2010. I hope Jersey doesn't do this.