Richard Mills Resigns

After hearing from an authoritative source, Ed Notes was out of the box 10 days ago with our report that NY State Ed Dept. head Richard Mills was going to resign. The story went public today that he will be leaving this June. Don't believe much of the newspaper crap about his achievements. He was awful. The contrast to his predecessor Thomas Sobol was striking.

Hot Rumor: Stick a Fork in Richard Mills?

Richard Mills, a contender for the most awful state ed commissioner one can find and certainly a horror for NY State which has one of the worst testing policies in the nation, may be on the way out. His is noted for such things as giving Joel Klein a waiver to be chancellor since he has no qualifications and for looking the other way as BloomKlein ran rampant over just about every state ed regulation and over the entire law giving the mayor power but not dictatorial power.

Erin Einhorn Explodes the Myth of High Math Scores

Updated

Ed watchers in NYC consider Erin Einhorn of the Daily News one of the best of the breed of ed reporters. Today's stories on the high math scores being due to an easier test in 2005 (remember the election for mayor?) and the possibility that NY State Ed commish Richard Mills just might be complicit in political machinations is the highlight of the day. As usual, some great chit-chat on Leonie Haimson's NYC Education listserv (if you are not there, you are square.) We'll get some of their great stuff up later in an update to this post.

Hmmm, NY Times, where are you on any of these types of stories? Maybe they can't make nice charts like these.

Ed Notes has long called for Mills' resignation and for some total revamping of the NY state ed dept, including getting rid of the politically tainted Board of regents. Let's look as other states to see what they do, including elections for these positions.

The UFT will never explode any testing myths because they want to play both sides against the middle, claiming high scores are due to teachers, not the other machinations that rank and file teachers know are going on.

When tests were being marked a few years ago during mid-winter break, calls and emails started coming in to our Ed Notes call-in center (based in my kitchen) that the rubric being passed down from the state ed dept was a total joke and supervisors were telling teachers to jump levels when they could. I sent around an email to my press list and immediately started getting responses from reporters.

Even the NY Times called, the reporter wanting me to give names. I suggested a visit to a testing center to interview people and the reporter was shocked. To his credit, former NY Post reporter Dave Andreatta was ready to come out to Rockaway but teachers involved seemed to be getting cold feet over possible repercussions.

Calls started coming into UFT HQ to such an extent, Randi Weingarten went over to the Region 8 marking center to check it out. Naturally, she found nothing wrong and the UFT PR machine's response killed the activity.


The UFT covering up for BloomKlein and the state ed dept? How shocking!

Update:
Posted on NYCEducation News listserv by mathman180:

Late or not, thanks to Erin Einhorn for getting into mass media print a practice and pattern that those of us with strong mathematical background have long suspected. The ridiculous demands of NCLB and the relentless Bloomberg/Klein emphasis on metrics and measurement for every conceivable aspect of education have made this sort of testing puffery inevitable. Can anyone possibly think that the success of 38 US states in meeting NCLB criteria for increasing test scores while staying level or declining on NAEP exams (our only truly standardized, national, non-politicized metric) is not related to the exact same behaviors? Can anyone possibly think that testing companies like McGraw-Hill don't want high pass rates and increasing scores in order to protect their contracts with NYS SED and NYC DOE?

If the p-values of each year's exams (or all the questions on those exams) are indeed publicly available or obtainable through FOIA, it would be a logical next step for the Daily News to get them and publish them all. This is as good a proxy as we will have for interyear comparability of NYS or NYC exams, and these statistics will shed important (and likely disturbing) light on the Bloomberg/Klein claims of score increases due to their policies. Perhaps the p-value scores will even reveal that there has been a modest "real" increase in test scores, given the amount of time teachers are diverting away from other subject areas and activities.

If NYS SED and NYC DOE were truly interested in fair and open reporting, these p-values would be reported every year for every standardized test. Isn't there some way we could get the Education Committee of the NYC Council to demand that they be publicly reported? After all, it's the only fair way for the parents and citizens of NYC to gauge whether Mayoral control is actually raising student achievement.

By the way, anyone interested in learning more about p-values and how they affect standardized testing should find themselves a copy of THE TRUTH ABOUT TESTING by W. James Popham.

Chart above Now online at http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/education/2007/09/04/2007-09-04_daily_news_exam_finds_math_scores_up_whe.html

What's Richard Mills Smoking?

For many years we have called for the resignation of NY State Commissioner Richard Mills to resign for so many reasons there's no room on the entire web to list them. Aside from his rigid testing schedule and the fact that he was the culprit show issued the waiver for Joel Klein to become Chancellor, the total mismanagement of the Roosevelt LI schools under his stewardship (NY State took over only one school district and totally screwed that up) should be sufficient reason alone.

But we never realized that Mills is also a comedian, as witness the following, with my comments in bold italics:

Due to shortages of certified teachers in NYC State Education Commissioner Richard Mills is pushing for a bill to allow retired teachers to go back into the classroom for up to five years without endangering their retirement pay and would not cost taxpayers anything The Journal News in Rockland County reported on May 28th.

"We have teaching shortages in many parts of the state, in New York City," Mills said. "Between 11 and 20 percent of the teaching assignments in English (in New York City) are held by people without certification in English."

Federal law requires that students be taught by highly qualified teachers - in New York, that means, among other things, teachers with certifications in the subjects they are teaching. The reason is that children learn better if their teachers know what they are teaching, and children who learn do well on the tests that each public school child in the country now takes from third through eighth grade. Schools, school districts and educators are judged by how well their children do on the tests, so getting children the best teachers is good all around.

Usually, experience counts when it comes to teachers. [Has Mills spoken to BloomKlein lately?] Veteran teachers know all the tricks, have seen and worked with the different educational fads, have hours of extra training and a wealth of ideas that have worked in the past to get their subject across to each new class of children. [But unfortunately often insist that the contract be followed and know immediately when a principal is a bullshitter in over his/her head.]

Veteran teachers also cost a district more than newer teachers, and districts often try to balance experience against cost when planning each year's budget. [Ahh! Someone neglected to tell UFT leaders who have allowed seniority rules protecting teachers to be decimated.]

A district with budget worries can offer veteran teachers a retirement package, clearing the way for younger, cheaper labor. And in the past decade, hundreds of teachers locally and thousands statewide have taken the packages. [They haven't been clued in to how to avoid these packages - Get a compliant union to agree to changes in work rules that allow administrators to force out the highest paid teachers.]

Retired teachers are paid slightly more than 60 percent of their last three years' salary, and cannot earn more than $30,000 a year teaching in a public school in New York or risk permanent cuts to their retirement payments.

Teachers interested in supplementing their retirement can teach in neighboring states without jeopardizing their pensions. Many in this area retire in New York and start a career in New Jersey.

Mills wants to change that, to allow veteran teachers to come back to districts in need educationally and allow them to be in the classroom up to five years at the going salary, without putting their pensions at risk.

"There is a serious shortage," he said. "This is a good time to do it. It should be easier for a certified teacher who's retired to come back without penalty to their pension in shortage fields and hard-to-staff schools."

[Mills should go on the road with his act. and take the hordes of teachers who counted the seconds 'till they got out of the system since BloomKlein took over.]