Letters: Rating teachers is complex
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I am writing to express concern about New York City's decision to publish job-performance ratings of teachers, based on student test grades, a move that is also being considered by the New York State Education Department ["Teaching scores," News, Feb. 25].
As a special education teacher in the Central Islip school district, I teach students who often possess a variety of handicapping conditions, and are nonetheless expected to pass the rigorous and grueling Regents exams.
Those who teach our district's lower-functioning classes undertake a daunting challenge, because their students must often take their state assessments two or three times before they pass. It doesn't matter if they have cognitive or processing issues; they have to pass. This requires a great deal of effort and patience from students, teachers and families.
If the state changes its policy and allows publication of teacher ratings, what does that portend for these students and their teachers? The state is myopic to the fact that teachers may no longer willingly take on a group of low-scoring students.
I recall the groundbreaking Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, which sought to respect individual differences and to educate all students. Today's efforts to identify children on the autism spectrum are also admirable.
It seems that we are in the midst of creating an ill-advised, politically and educationally misguided policy that will allow some of our students with disabilities to slip quietly down the tubes.
Robert G. Bonfe, Patchogue
Leave it to the state Education Department and politicians to make a mess of things. They have named and ranked 18,000 New York City teachers, while adding that the data was flawed, in addition to being two years old. Don't they realize that they have maligned some of these teachers?
Once named, the label of "ineffective" will stick in the minds of many, in spite of any corrections made. Newsday's analysis found 86 teachers with a margin of error of 80 points or more. What has happened to due process? Or is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg going to change that, like he did to run for another term?
His political response that the school system is run for the kids shows a naive approach to a far more complex problem.
Burton Silverman, Plainview
