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(Updated 2:30 p.m.) New Haven teachers want to see truly bad teachers fired, not protected, their union president said — pointing to a new survey that may open the door to dramatic school reform.
Officials Friday afternoon released results of the survey of New Haven’s 1,800 public school teachers and administrators.
They did so at a press conference at Edgewood School, as Jessica Walsh’s sixth-grade class (pictured above) looked on.
The survey produced candid assessments of whether their schools are succeeding — and, in the view of teachers union president David Cicarella, signals that his members are ready to support a new evaluation process that will make it easier to fire the worst teachers, help others improve, and offer fair benchmarks.
Retaining and developing the best teachers, and weeding out the lowest performers, is one of several goals of New Haven’s nascent school reform campaign aimed at making the city’s system the country’s best.
“All the good teachers know that … a small handful” of teachers shouldn’t remain in the classroom, Cicarella said in an interview Thursday, sentiments he echoed at Friday’s press conference. “But that small handful annoys all of us. We all ask the same question: ‘Would I want my kid in that classroom?’
“Sometimes people that should be let go, don’t go,” because of a “glacial” process for removing tenured teachers, Cicarella said. In other cases, a poor evaluation system pushes the “wrong people out.” He’s pictured above during a Thursday interview with Assistant Superintendent Garth Harries, who was brought into town to oversee the school reform drive.
The stereotype of teachers and teachers unions is that they protect the worst teachers, and make excuses for them; and present the greatest barrier to improving public education.
The survey — filled out anonymously — offers a different view.
In the survey, 63 percent of teachers opined that at least 6 percent of the fellow teachers at their school are “ineffective.”
Only 38 percent agreed with the statement, “Overall, I am satisfied with the current teacher evaluation process.”
Only 33 percent stated that “in order to attain tenure in New Haven, teachers are evaluated rigorously.”
Asked if student learning should be part of the evaluation process, 87 percent of teachers and 99 percent of administrators said yes.
Perhaps most strikingly, 47 percent of teachers and administrators disagreed with this statement about the results of their labors: “My students / students in my school are learning at an appropriate rate — at least a year’s worth of learning for a year’s worth of schooling.”
And most importantly for moving forward, teachers and administrators alike agreed that the current evaluation system is broken. A majority said the system fails to “recognize exemplary performance,” “identify and offer concrete steps to remedy poor performance,” or “promote student achievement.
“I was struck by the honesty and the professional way” in which teachers and administrators responded, schools Superintendent Reggie Mayo said. He said teachers sent a “clear message” that they want a broken evaluation system fixed.
“We’re going to take it to heart,” Mayo said.
Assistant Superintendent Harries also cited the candor and the openness to change expressed in the survey. He said it offers another example that New Haven teachers are open to helping bring about real change in the schools. That spirit could help open the door to dramatic school reform.
The openness is also exemplified by the fact that teachers ratified a new contract that received national attention for its flexibility on work rules, Harries said.
High Turnout
The survey, paid for by the Regional Leadership Council, was administered by the New York-based New Teacher Project, an outfit the city hired to help recruit and retain good teachers and help them develop. (Read about that here.)
The group conducted the survey online; 94 percent of administrators (90 in all) and 74 percent of teachers (1,350 total) responded.
The teachers’ overall message wasn’t as much focused on bad teachers as on a bad evaluation system, Cicarella remarked. He’s on a committee working now, under the new contract, to devise a better system. (He’s also on a committee doing the same for administrator evaluations.) A weak evaluation system sometimes ends up unfairly targeting a good teacher working at badly-run school, he argued. “The crap rolls down the hill,” he said.
At the same time, Cicarella said the public is right to be frustrated with the length of time it takes to get rid of a bad teacher.
Under state law, it’s relatively simple to fire an underperforming teacher in the first four years on the job, he said. But then the teacher gets tenure. Merely scheduling three-panel arbitration sessions can take months, Cicarella said. And poorly done evaluations — part of a system in which administrators don’t have enough time to evaluate teachers well, or fair, consistent benchmarks — makes the process murkier.
Over the last year the school system removed 40 underperforming non-tenured teachers, according to Cicarella. It fired one tenured teacher. Others “left voluntarily” rather than enter the arbitration process.
Looking ahead, Cicarella and Mayo said the survey results will inform the work of committees working on the nitty-gritty of designing new evaluations. Their report of recommendations is due April 15.
Meanwhile, Jessica Walsh’s students offered their own teacher evaluation Friday — of Jessica Walsh.
Walsh was upstairs, so they could speak freely.
The students’ evaluation was unanimous: They think she’s great.
“She always writes the assignment on the board. She always tells us what to do” in clear terms, said Emily Kane (at center in photo).
“She doesn’t yell at us too much,” added classmate Julianne Frechette (pictured to her right).
“… Unless we do something bad,” Emily added. “She’ll explain what to do if we don’t understand something.”
Sounds like the message the teachers themselves sent in the survey — about what makes for a good evaluation.
Are teacher subject to drug/alcohol testing?