Students in 58 schools being given new surveys for teacher evaluation; check out if your child is due to get one, as you have the right to opt out!

Since last spring, I have served on a CPAC committee consulting with DOE on their Tripod student survey, which was given on a trial basis in 134 schools in grades 3-12 last year, after Commissioner King had assigned it to the city to be used for the Advance teacher evaluation system.

 I had and continue to have grave doubts as to the quality and utility of the Tripod survey for the purpose of teacher evaluation, as well as its $5.5 million cost -- not to mention the appropriateness of giving such surveys to children as young as eight years old.  The DOE officials whom we were working with last year had assured us that we would meet again over the summer, and have input  as to whether the Tripod survey would be used again this year.

Yet when we finally met again right before Thanksgiving, after much prodding from the parents on the committee, the officials who had previously been in charge of Tripod had now left the Department and there are now new ones in charge of this initiative.  These new officials told us that  it was too late to put out an RFP for an alternative survey, and that the Tripod would be given to all ALL students in grades 3-12 in ALL NYC public schools this spring, except for 58 schools in which students are going to be asked to take one of three alternative surveys this December and January.

The DOE officials also said they are negotiating to bring the egregious price of the Tripod down.  (The Tripod survey was developed by Dr. Ron Ferguson of Harvard, before being sold to Cambridge Education LLC, and is the favorite survey of the Gates Foundation, used in their controversial MET teacher evaluation studies.)  When we asked if there was any evaluation of the utility of the Tripod survey last year, DOE officials responded that teachers said it took too long to complete, and DOE has asked Cambridge to pare it down; but that no other analysis had yet been completed.  Private funds are being used for the three alternative surveys being given in December and January.

Parents are going to be allowed to see these new surveys in advance, and opt out of their children taking them, as is their right under the federal law called the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment.  A list of the 58 schools in which these three alternative surveys are being given this winter is below.

Here is the form letter schools are supposed to send to parents about the surveys, letting them know the survey is voluntary and how they can check it out in advance, and here is the opt out form, which all parents should be sure to sign and hand in to their children's teachers if they want to opt out of the survey. 

In the actual letter there is supposed to be an online link parents can go to to see the survey in advance, as well as letting them know they can check out a copy at the school office. If you are a parent at one of the 58 schools listed below, and are not given this link, please let us know at info@classsizematters.org or if you have any other questions, concerns or observations after taking  a look at these surveys.

 Here is more information from Eric Ashton, Executive Director for School Performance of the DOE:

Thanks for writing and thanks for attending our session and providing feedback about the Advance student survey. I’ve attached the list of schools that volunteered for our fall pilot. The list indicates which school was assigned which survey. As I mentioned at our meeting, due to the limited budget of private funds we have to use for this we assigned the surveys in order of price where vendors with lower prices were assigned more schools.

More information about the surveys we are trying in this round can be found here:

http://www.panoramaed.com/

http://www.youthtruthsurvey.org/

http://mystudentsurvey.com/

I’ve also attached the informational letter that the pilot schools were asked to distribute. In addition to the opt-out methods we discussed at our meeting, we also decided to ask the pilot schools to distribute a paper opt-out form which is also attached.

If there is anything else, please let me know. Thanks! -Eric

Eric Ashton

New York City Department of Education

eashton@schools.nyc.gov

(347) 601-4525

Advance Student Survey Fall Pilot
2014-15 School List

NYC Parents: the Tripod survey is being given in 134 schools and you have the right to opt out

UPDATE:  A list of  the 133 NYC schools in which the Tripod survey is being given this spring is here.  One school apparently dropped out.  The UFT and the DOE are still in negotiations about whether this $5M survey will be used next year, or another one will be chosen to replace it.  In the meantime, check to see if your school is on the list, and if so, make sure you as a parent has been notified by your principal and received an opt out form.

Watch out parents!  Whether you know it or not, the DOE is giving a controversial survey to NYC students in 134 schools called the Tripod Survey.  DOE officials say they are allowing parents to opt out of having their children take the survey, but they won't disclose to us in which schools they are being given. Some background:

Last year when the UFT and the DOE could not come to an agreement about their teacher evaluation system, Commissioner King stepped in and mandated that the Tripod Survey would have to be  part of the evaluation system.  The Tripod is a student survey that the Gates Foundation used in its Measures of Effective Teacher studies.  With the apparent consent of the DOE, King determined that the survey would be given to students in grades 3-12, and the responses would count for 5 percent of a teacher's rating.

The survey was devised by Ron Ferguson of Harvard and is now owned by Cambridge Education LLC, a for-profit firm that the DOE has also used in the past for quality reviews.   Over the summer, the DOE agreed to pay a whopping $5.9 million to use this survey for one year, slightly negotiated down to $5.5 million when the Panel for Educational Policy approved it in September.  (At the same time, the PEP also approved a contract with Danielson Associates for half a million dollars, also for the teacher evaluation system, with their consultants being paid $4600 per day.  Too bad that we couldn't get John King to cover the cost of both contracts.)

Apparently because of UFT resistance, King said the survey would only be piloted for the first year, and then given to all students the second year.  After this announcement was made, Valerie Strauss wrote in the Washington Post: "There are several questionable elements to the new teacher evaluation system just imposed on New York City schools by state education Commissioner John King, but the one that jumps out for sheer nitwittedness is this: Students starting in third grade will now have a say in the official assessment of their teachers."

In February, I volunteered to serve on a committee formed by the Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council to work with DOE officials on how this survey would be administered. We had our first meeting March 20.  During the meeting, DOE officials from their Research division promised that no personal student information would be provided via the survey,  and that in fact, no personally identifiable information would be included anywhere on the survey sheet or the envelope containing each survey, provided to the company for its calculations.

I asked if parents would be allowed to see the survey in advance, and opt their kids out.  The DOE officials were reluctant to agree to this until I pointed out that according to Joel Reidenberg, privacy expert at Fordham, the federal law called the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) requires this. We also pressed them to make the survey available to parents online, but they subsequently decided to make it only available at the school site, so a parent has to actually go to the school to check the survey in advance.  Finally, when they said that the survey would be voluntary on the part of schools as well,  we urged them to allow the School Leadership Team to make the decision as to whether to administer it.

On March 31, we met again with DOE officials as well as Ron Ferguson and the team from Cambridge Education LLC.  They took us through a power point and explained that the survey questions are built around the "7 C's": Care, Control, Clarify, Challenge, Captivate, Confer, and Consolidate.  They explained that the survey was originally designed for teacher feedback and NOT teacher evaluation, and that a different version is used in grades 3-5 and in grades 6-12.  

Many of the questions relate to a student's emotional state,  like "Being in the class makes me angry" or "I get nervous in this class"  or "My behavior is a problem for the teacher in this class"  or "I feel out of place in this class, like I don't really fit in."  Other questions relate to classroom control and how able students are to have their questions answered; these seem to me as though the responses would likely be affected by conditions outside a teacher's control, such as class size.  Ferguson admitted that class size was somewhat correlated with the responses that students provide.

The survey also includes a Part II, with questions relating to the student's economic and family background, including what ethnic group they belong to,  how many adults they live with at home, whether they own a computer, and how many books are in their bedroom.

There are several sample versions of the Tripod survey online, though the DOE told us that they were using a new version, so the ones assigned to NYC schools will not match up exactly. First, see Appendix A of this Advocates for Children report, with sample Tripod survey questions for the Elementary (grades 3-5) and Secondary students (Grades 6-12.)  See also this version for Secondary students that was on the Rochester Teachers website, though DOE says they will not be using part III,  which includes some very personal questions.

We were led to believe that there would be another meeting of the CPAC committee before the survey was given, but repeated emails got no response, until a parent sent a message that she had heard the survey administration had already begun in her district.  Then the DOE admitted that they had already begun giving the survey on May 3 and this would run through June 26. In the 134 schools in which it is being piloted, according to the DOE, "school leaders and UFT Chapter leaders agreed to participate and were encouraged to collaborate with their School Leadership Teams on their administration plan."

Anyway, be sure to ask if your school is participating in this survey, remember that as a parent, you have the right to see it in advance, and can opt your child out if you prefer.