On Thursday, May 12, a contingent of 26 staff, parents, and students from the Children’s School joined 20,000 New Yorkers on Wall Street to say NO! to Mayor Bloomberg’s agenda of tax breaks for millionaires and big banks at the expense of our city’s public services. The outcry against the mayor’s proposal to lay off…
PS372 LETTER WRITING CAMPAIGN AGAINST LAYOFFS
by Steve Quester •
Dear Children’s School families, It’s time to launch a massive Children’s School letter-writing campaign against the mayor’s terrible teacher layoff plan. Layoffs will hurt the students in every school in New York; we need to let our elected officials know the specifics of what our own school is facing. The staff are writing letters too.…
Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers
by Steve Quester •
Valued-Added Measures (VAMs) are the newest craze in economists’ and politicians’ attempts to create a “scientific” way to measure teacher effectiveness. VAM takes a student’s achievement level upon entering a teacher’s class–as measured by standardized tests–and compares it to the student’s achievement level after a year with that teacher. The difference purports to be that…