Less than a year ago, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York proclaimed that the key to transforming the state’s education system was tougher evaluations for teachers, and he pushed through changes that increased the weight of student test scores in teachers’ ratings.
Now, facing a parents’ revolt against testing, the state is poised to change course and reduce the role of test scores in evaluations. And according to two people involved in making state education policy, Mr. Cuomo has been quietly pushing for a reduction, even to zero. That would represent an about-face from January, when the governor called for test scores to determine 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. READ THE REST HERE
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Calling for more time and money for the New York's struggling schools, NYSUT and numerous other advocates strongly urged lawmakers to revisit the state's receivership law and replace the punitive provisions with support.
"NYSUT strongly opposes the enacted receivership law; it scapegoats educators who teach in these schools and overrides local control and collective bargaining," said NYSUT Legislative Director Steve Allinger. "It's not sound education policy." To read more click HERE If by now you don’t know what VAM is, you should. It’s shorthand for value-added modeling (or value-added measurement), developed by economists as a way to determine how much “value” a teacher brings to a student’s standardized test score. These formulas are said by supporters to be able to factor out things such as a student’s intelligence, whether the student is hungry, sick or is subject to violence at home, or any other factor that could affect performance on a test beyond the teacher’s input.
read the rest here New York’s 3-8 grade students took flawed state tests this spring, and on Friday, New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) demanded the state’s Board of Regents members personally review the State’s English language arts and math tests. The Common Core-aligned tests were developed by the for-profit company Pearson at a cost to the state of $32 million. Although a gag order prevents teachers from revealing test contents, reports leaked to the media claim the tests contain obscure vocabulary words and questions that are several grade levels above students’ actual grades.
Read the rest here Parents and school officials across Long Island and New York State were met with more than the typical back-to-school anxiety following spring break this year.
Tuesday marked the first test in the latest round of controversial Common Core examinations for grades three through eight, and parents who hadn’t yet made the decision to opt their children out were running out of time, while letters from parents who had were piling up across the desks of school administrators. More than 50,000 students across the state refused to take the Common Core standardized tests last year--more than 30,000 of those on Long Island—and local education activists tell the Press they expect even more opting out this time around. Though exact figures were still rolling in as of press time, preliminary numbers on related social media sites Tuesday afternoon, such as anti-Common Core Facebook group “Long Island Opt Out,” tallied several school districts as having a more-than 50-percent opt-out rate among test-eligible students. Yet where a good deal of opponents’ vitriol against the Obama administration’s education reform program last year was born of its botched roll-out, what parents deemed to be the detrimental effects on their children, and the testing’s accounting for a high percent of teacher evaluations, among other gripes, Common Core opponents now credit Gov. Andrew Cuomo with pouring more gasoline on the already scorching anti-Common Core inferno. Read More here............ Starting in the fall, for the third year in a row, New York City teachers will be judged by a new evaluation system. Gov. Cuomo suggests we don’t want to be evaluated like professionals, but that’s wrong. What we want is to be evaluated using a reasonable system that will help us improve.
Read more As the dust settles, a closer look at Gov. Cuomo's education budget proposals shows they are premised on the same principle that Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein used to promote—that individual teachers alone, without the necessary tools and resources, can ensure the success of every child, every year, as measured by that child's test score. And that if the teacher can't, she should be labeled a failure.
This ignores the importance of adequate funding, teacher voice and support, as well as the consequences of poverty. Even economists recognize that teachers are only responsible for about 10 percent of student Read More here |
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