Scarsdale 10583

Here is a letter that Scarsdale School Board Member Linda Hillman Chayes wrote to the NY Times last month concerning teacher evaluations: To the Editor: Why is it we can’t have a meaningful discussion about education without degenerating into sound bites, “false dichotomies” and calcified narratives? One discussion (among many) that has gone awry is the one on teacher evaluation.

Of course it makes sense to evaluate teachers on how well they educate our kids, and there are many school systems and students that have floundered without meaningful teacher evaluations. But New York State’s hasty and ill-considered point system for teacher evaluation based on year-to-year student performance on standardized tests is so wrong it is hard to know where to begin — and the Education Department has ignored feedback.

Our already financially starved schools will see more unfunded mandates imposed to carry out these reforms. Teachers will have even greater incentive to teach to standardized tests rather than focus on the kind of critical and analytic thinking our children need to succeed in our world. It is hard to imagine how you make this work given the differences in class baselines and how it would make any sense in some districts where differences on standardized tests are minuscule.

I have to believe that we can think more deeply about these complex problems, work more collaboratively with all constituents and spend our money more wisely as we address the inequities in educational opportunities as well as improve the overall quality of education in our country.

LINDA HILLMAN CHAYES
Scarsdale, N.Y., April 11, 2011

The writer is a member and past president of the Scarsdale Board of Education.

Comments (9)

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written by A Neighbor, May 24, 2011

Surely Scarsdale public schools have room for improvement? Surely they are not the best the they could be? Perhaps all kids could be National Merit Scholars, or admitted to an Ivy league school? Perhaps the high school could have Intel Science contest mentions every year? If the schools don't improve in an externally measureable way every year, why should employees of the school get 2+% real raises every year?

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written by Yet Another Neighbor, May 17, 2011

Is "A neighbor" a dissatisfied "customer" from actual personal experience here? Or is he just hypothetically disturbed by a system that doesn't work the same way he might be familiar with in his personal work life? I've had three very different kids go through the district k-12 and all received an incredibly rich education that more than prepared them for college. While not every teacher was equally inspiring for each child, and each had a different set of favorite teachers, with one child's favorite being another's not-so favorite teacher, the sum total of their experiences speaks to the system's success in providing an overall exceptionally high quality public education. "A neighbor" may think he can do better than the Scarsdale School District, but hopefully he will make sure he really knows firsthand what he's talking about before he sets about to dismantle it.

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written by A Neighbor, May 17, 2011

When a dishwasher starts to show its age, it can be replaced. With tenure, teachers who no longer do a good job are tolerated until they retire, and get paid more each year to do a bad job. After they retire, we still have to pay for them, until they die. If teachers are not leaving, ever, we can't possibly know we aren't paying them too much, since if we paid them 10 times what we are paying them now, they still wouldn't leave. I think there are a lot of good teachers, on the shelf, who would like to work in Scarsdale. I suspect we get more than 1 application for every open position we advertise, assuming we advertise.

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written by Yet Another Neighbor, May 16, 2011

Perhaps hiring a person is somewhat different than bargain shopping for a car or an appliance?! Maybe one difference "A neighbor" may be able to relate to is that an appliance depreciates in value the moment it is purchased. When a teacher is hired a community is making an investment in that person. The teacher's skill develops further into the job along with the investment. Why would we try to lose that investment? The fact that "A neighbor" equates hiring teachers with bargain shopping suggests that he assumes there is an "overstock" of automatically (like an appliance!) excellent teachers waiting on shelves somewhere. "A neighbor" believes that because our teachers are not leaving for better pay it means we are paying them "too much." However, it really indicates that we are paying them just right!

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written by A Neighbor, May 14, 2011

A teacher is surely not a deliverer of test information. A teacher is all those things Yet Another Neighbor mentions. The question which never seems to get answered is, are we as a community paying teachers too much for the services they provide? When you buy a car or consumer electronics you do research, find the best product, search for the lowest price, and then try to pay even less. If you don't, please come to me for all your shopping needs! If our teachers never leave for better pay, benefits, work conditions, or whatever in another district, we are paying our teachers too much...we are the fools in the education market who are overpaying. How many teachers leave permanently and voluntarily (not thru retirement) or are forced out in a given year? An evaluation system that has excessive collegiality in the peer review process is in danger of leading to everyone being above average.

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written by Yet Another Neighbor, May 12, 2011

In many industries, an evaluation by one's peers and superiors is meant to help people either move on or improve. An organization, whether it be for profit or not, that seeks to foster collegiality, skill development, idea sharing, problem solving and creativity would be unwise to emphasize a "judge and punish" model of employee evaluation. The idea that teacher performance ratings can be based on student state test gains/loses has already been proven statistically unreliable. Moreover, linking teacher performance (and compensation) to such creates perverse incentives to teach to the test and, in some known cases, even encourages cheating. Maybe "a neighbor" has a very narrow view of teachers' role as "deliverers of test information"? Sorry if that is the case. Luckily, though, an overwhelming majority of the people who choose to live here understand and appreciate the multiplicity of roles a teacher plays in students' intellectual and emotional lives and want to have a system of evaluation and compensation that encourages the broadly-defined best from all of our teachers. Not all "compensation" has to be financial, by the way. Believe it or not, humans also respond positively to honor, respect, or even simple recognition in the form of a thank you note.

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written by A Neighbor, May 09, 2011

Given Scarsdale evaluates tenured teachers every year, it sounds like Scarsdale has an opportunity to set the standard for teacher evaluations state wide. How do the results of the
evaluation process feed back into the compensation process?

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written by Another neighbor, May 09, 2011

Tenured teachers in Scarsdale are evaluated every year, with a more intense process of evaluation every third year. To suggest that teachers haven't been evaluated heretofore is wildly incorrect.

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written by A Neighbor, May 07, 2011

An unfunded mandate occurs when the desire for a governmental solution collides with the disinclination to pay higher taxes. Both halves of this rather pervasive situation are here to stay, which is why the efficiency solution sells. To get efficiency, one needs numbers, which teacher evaluations hope to generate. They will be imperfect, but so are so many things in life. I wonder why we are only now trying to evaluate teachers - the schools didn't open yesterday.

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