General News
Casey: Use federal funds for ‘comprehensive’ evaluation model
Oct 29, 2009 3:54 PM
UFT Vice President Leo Casey makes a point while fellow panelists Eric Nadelstern (left) of the New York City Department of Education and Dan Weisberg from the New Teacher Project look on.
Leo Casey, the UFT vice president of academic high schools, proposed using federal Race to the Top funds for “a comprehensive model of teacher evaluation” in a discussion among education reformers about how to use money that may come from the new, competitive federal education improvement grant program.
Casey, part of an Oct. 9 panel at the Columbia University School of Business Social Enterprise Conference, agreed that the teaching profession needed a better way to evaluate its practitioners.
“Teachers don’t want to work with ineffective teachers,” he noted, and cautioned about limiting teacher evaluation to students’ scores on standardized tests.
“We need broader evidence … We need peer review and professional judgment. Any reform has to be done with teachers, not to them. We must base educational reform on educational policies, not political or ideological mindsets,” he said.
Undeterred by the setting — the university that houses one of the country’s foremost schools of education — Casey also criticized the disconnect between theory and practice that characterizes many teacher preparation programs.
“New teachers are learning their craft at the same time they are learning the theory of teaching,” he said. “We need models of teacher apprenticeship” that will allow new teachers to get the support they need and deserve. (The UFT has advocated such a career continuum since 1998.)
In response to a question about the challenges that educational reform faces, Casey zeroed in on teacher retention. “We have to fashion compensation and pension systems to encourage teachers to stay,” he said.
Besides Casey, other panelists were Eric Nadelstern, chief schools officer of the New York City Department of Education; Dan Weisberg from the New Teacher Project; and Eva Moskowitz, founder and head of the Success Charter Network.
Nadelstern proposed using the federal funds to expand the number of small schools and decentralize the system. He pointed to structural challenges such as the isolation of teachers and the difficulty of providing time for professionals to learn from each other.
Weisberg, formerly a labor lawyer for the DOE, also spoke of teacher effectiveness and the need for “a rigorous, fair, transparent system based on the impact on student achievement” to assist school leadership in their “human capital decisions.” He cited the challenge of creating a “culture of excellence” that will attract the best candidates to the teaching profession.
Moskowitz, repeatedly pointing to her own success with charter schools in Harlem, cited teacher unions and union contracts as the main obstacle to reform. However, both Nadelstern and Weisberg agreed with Casey that many city schools, including charters, function effectively with UFT contracts.
Casey also pointed out that some school districts around the country without collective bargaining are some of the lowest-performing.
“Ceding all power to management,” he stated, “is an ideological mindset” based on markets and competition, not a real desire for educational reform.
