Governor Andrew Cuomo has called for an investigation of teacher ratings on Long Island.
This follows a “Newsday” report that the portion of ratings under local control were “skewed” towards effective ratings.
Cuomo wants evaluations to count student scores as 50%, instead of the present 40% (only 20% is based on state tests, the other 20% on local measures
For some reason, Cuomo is determined to find some teachers he can fire. He is certain–despite evidence to the contrary–that low scores are caused by teachers.
He must have had terrible law school professors. There have been numerous reports that he failed the bar exam four times. If this is true, I hope he sued his law school for hiring ineffective professors.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
LI has many of the finest schools in the nation, and a highly educated, veteran teaching staff. It is ironic that using HIS legislature approved APPR (VAM) process, he is trashing our school districts for following his rules. He has a pattern of this outrageous behavior. He will keep changing the goalposts until every NY teacher is fired and replaced by a non-union, inexperienced charter school teacher.
And this is why a friend recently referred to corruption as “our state sport”.
It is not surprising that many teachers on Long Island were rated as effective. These districts have been hiring carefully and providing excellent professional development and supervision, which would explain the large percentage of teachers earning the effective rating.
“He must have had terrible law school professors. There have been numerous reports that he failed the bar exam four times. If this is true, I hope he sued his law school for hiring ineffective professors.”
Is it possible that these guys want to take revenge on the education system that failed them? Gates was not a very good student, either, was he?
It really is extraordinary, though, if it’s true he failed 4 times.
“According to the statistics released by the New York Board of Law Examiners, the overall pass rates were 78% for first-time takers and 88% for graduates of New York’s 15 law schools. Compare this to the July 2012 administration of the exam, where the overall pass rates were 76% for first-time takers and 85% for graduates of New York’s 15 law schools.”
http://abovethelaw.com/2013/11/new-york-bar-exam-results-by-law-school-open-thread-2013/
Razor sharp data, Chiara.
Perverse trifecta-failed governor, failed son, and failed man.
At Mario’s funeral, people lined up around the block. At Andrew’s funeral, cronies won’t even nod at the casket, from their double parked limos. Andrew’s epithet, “a man paid for services rendered.”
Gates was singularly obsessed with computer programming and was probably an okay student, however no classroom was big enough to contain his massive ego.
Funny that we’ll never see the same outrage when it is reported (yet again) that the cut scores for Common Core-based high stakes exams are “skewed” toward failing students and their teachers.
Using Governor Cuomo’s logic, 100% of geriatrics specialists must be ineffective healthcare practitioners. But seriously, one has to consider the Governor’s behavior is over the top. What gives?
Its his political style and strategy to overwhelm us with proposals. We can only fight so many fights as our political energy is finite. His goal is not to win them all, just the ones that are left standing.
“Demands” an investigation by whom? Come on Cuomo, just create another commission under the Moreland Act.
Ouch.
Excellent, LMAO!
Politicians should be careful what they wish for in putting teachers out of work.
More of them might start running for office …
Let’s hope so!
As three did in Chicago. All of them won in yesterday’s election. And Rahm Emanuel, who closed 50 neighborhood schools last year, has been forced into a run-off election. Teachers can effect change!
Cuomo has no conscience. He’s willing to destroy the education of a generation of children to destroy the teacher’s union. Then his Wall Street contributors can suck all the money they can out of the educational system. If you’re a non-teacher and think your taxes are going to go down if he destroys the teacher’s union, guess again. It’s education for profit for the deformers. It’s never been about the education of kids. I don’t know how these people sleep at night.
Jon, Great Point! It is so sad what they have done to my beloved profession. I cannot recognize it anymore. Young people are staying away from the profession of teaching like the plague. None of us can blame them. When you can get a two year degree and begin making 30,000 dollars more per year from Day 1, it is a no-brainer! No one can stand this abuse for 35 years.
Cuomo ‘s intent is to use a bogus statistical formula as a weapon against the teachers of New York. He will tinker and tweak until his testing and formula can justify mass firings and destruction of NYSUT. Cuomo and other compromised governors are acting like fascist dictators.
Bizzarely, Cuomo is going after areas such as LI that constitute his base. I guess he fears the opt-out movement which is so strong there.
He went to Syracuse a few weeks ago and told its Democratic mayor that he wouldn’t give the city aid to fix its crumbling sewer system, at least not until it got its economic act together enough to suit him. And Onondaga County is one of the few upstate counties he won last November!
“The Best and Brightest”
It’s good the Best and Brightest
Are running school reform
The ones who took the law test
Five times the NY norm
The crazy thing about this article is that Cuomo is shooting himself in the foot. New York’s State Education Department identified three options for use as apart of a school district APPR teacher evaluation regimes. Two out of three of the regimes required costly out of state training for administrators. Every district was pushing to meet the Cuomo imposed deadline for having their new APPR plan approved. Andy owns this mess–he created it–and the media needs to turn around Andy’s hysterical effort to change the subject/blame others. This mess is entirely Cuomo’s making.
Anyone on Long Island knows Newsday is no friend of teachers. The fact that they ignorantly claim our teachers aren’t effective or highly effective is of no surprise. I just wonder where the writers and management of Newsday send their kids, or better yet where they themselves went to high school. I have been a teacher on Long Island for over 19 years. If I had kids, I would happily send them to my school, just as many of my collegues do.
I grew up in Nassau County and went to excellent public schools. I am a product of the public schools.
Andrew Cuomo is a vile, disgusting monster whose bubble needs some bursting.
I HOPE Shelly Silver, to protect his own hide, tells all about Andrew over the years and his ploys to keep corruption hush-hush under Mooreland. He is likely to do this as a plea bargain to reduce his 60 year sentence.
Andrew Cuomo should be very nervous about this. . . . .
I hope Cuomo goes to jail and rots . . . . .
Put that in a Hallmark card. . . . . Send the very best to those you despise . . . . .
Poke the bear Andrew, you did. Now what are you going to do?
Schools are connected to property values. does he think parents will allow their children to be denigrated and homes devalued?
Maybe it’s because Long Island is where the money is and that’s where his supporters want to be.
We are witnessing Cuomo’s political brushfire strategy in action.
He starts multiple *fires, knowing that we can’t possibly expend enough political energy to snuff them all. In the end he gets the fires we couldn’t extinguish.
The *fires:
Test scores valued @ 50%
Independent/outside evaluator @ 35%
Principal evaluation reduced from 60% to 15%
Statewide APPR
5 years @ effective+ for tenure
Pension fund threatened
Charter cap lifted
Voucher plan
SUNY and CUNY internship requirement
Don’t forget threatening SUNY Teacher Prep programs, Firing Ineffective teachers, Merit Pay, and State takeovers of “failing” districts
So many fires I lost track. Thanks M!
The big question is, which proposals will be left standing?
Or will Preet come to the rescue?
I forgot the SUNY/CUNY TFA program to forgive tuition for “top” students who teach for 5 years…I’ll admit it’s better than 2 for TFA but it’s unclear if they must major in education and also seems to lack any training component for future educators if they aren’t required to major in education….but if it IS for education students, there is already the Federal loan forgiveness program for serving for 5 years in a high needs school and how this would then be any different….
So many fires he’s lighting – I’m hoping it has the effect of burning itself out – if he asks for too much he could end up with nothing. My feeling is that he’s overasking so that the compromised position will be “his” way and not compromised from a reasonable position which would then force him to lose any part of what he really wanted in the first place.
What there is hope for is that much of the legislature is furious about what they perceive as overreach and legislative nullification of their power.
The downside, is that even if they disagree, the courts did grant the governor executive action powers if no agreement is reached…I don’t know though if those powers and orders can have the effect of becoming permanent law without the legislature or if they only remain in effect until they come to an agreement…then again if they never agree to his terms then he wins by his executive powers.
It’s really hard to see a path to beat him realistically though since no governor has EVER both tried to flex this executive muscle this much AND become combative publicly before discussions began.
We are really in untested waters – and if any law the legislature passes requires the governor’s signature, clearly he is not going to sign away his own power.
What I think we will see happen, is lawsuits across the board attacking each of his positions, and many of them will end up in courts for years, hopefully with injunctions, and voters choose a governor who then withdraws the executive orders/laws tied to the budget process.
Superb analysis of a very messy and daunting situation. Cuomo is a true megalomaniac. I especially agree with your last paragraph.
“Send lawyers, guns, and money, the shit has hit the fan!”
NY Teacher,
Preet is not coming to the rescue. He is a reformer himself. Anyone out of the Obama administration is a clone of grotesque and trickster Obama and his gruesome, Medusa wife. The same applies for all of that couple’s DC cronies. Silicone Joe Biden and his plastic wife are pure raw sewage mixed with rotting road kill . . . . Ditto for Joe Biden’s charter chain brother.
Shelly Silver stood for leftism in most ways; Andy stands for neo-liberalism and Obama-style school reform. He will remain untouched. Maybe he will be made to look bad, but there will no arrests or even questioning before any panels.
It will be the people who will have to fight this one out. Almost no politician or official is going to be a super hero. That does not mean we should not be vocal, be vigilant, and vote. it just means we have mainly ourselves to get out of this mess.
We are all each other’s super heros.
“Not the brightest flame in the fire”
He started fires all around
And Andrew stands in center
He’ll have to leap to safer ground
And White House bid may end here
I am one of these Nassau County teachers. While there are a *variety* of issues that typically get intertwined (Common Core, PARCC, APPR, Regents cut scores, etc.), I can flatly attest that I have been rated “Highly Effective” each year that this rating has been around (and nearly all of my colleagues have, as well).
AND, we ALL secretly discuss what a joke the ratings are. We cannot believe how *everyone* in LI Teaching is an “honors student”.
Cuomo is an idiot in a variety of ways, but this rating system is ridiculous.
Why do I care, you may ask? Because this system a) does not provide me with feedback to improve, since I’m tops; and, b) it protects the bottom of the bell curve teachers, who we all secretly ridicule. Ask your kids — they can tell you which 5-10% are the awful teachers.
nb – Diane, I hope you do not censor my thoughts the way Carol Burris does.
Let’s not disillusion ourselves. The goal of the evaluation system as it stands is superficially to support teachers. What it’s designed for is a system to fire teachers and not necessarily just the “bad” ones because of the subjective nature of the evaluation with the biases that can be built into the test questions, cut scores, and pressures on administration.
An administrator can still evaluate and support a teacher – but if they did so honestly using this tool they risk losing a teacher they believe is valuable to the numbers game. For making Principals the CEOs of their schools, they’re doing an awful lot to try to strip them of the power to regulate their staffs.
What’s odd, is the premise of this was originally “it’s too hard to fire bad teachers for administrators” – when it turns out the administrators weren’t interested in firing a lot of teachers, their power was attacked.
I must disagree with the assumption that this (or any previous) evaluation model is a sham out of the gate. According to that logic, anything I dislike can be a “sham.” (My — and other Nassau — evaluation model prior to the Cuomo model was also called a “sham” in our district. Everyone earned the highest mark. No one was put on supervision.)
If the goal – as you say — is to “fire teachers,” then the system by definition is designed to evaluate them. And unless you are truly paranoid and concede that Cuomo wants to fire 40-50-60-% of teachers, then we are talking about the bottom of the bell curve — the weakest 3-10% —
And remember, you can be fired after *2 years* of poor ratings, AFTER supervisory intervention. So a teacher who truly does not want to improve is the target here. A sliver of the bottom 3-10%.
Instead of quibbling with the observation model, teachers should be targeting the real devil: the “Growth” model — which is the picture of chaos and counterproduction.
—
FYI- My credibility: a friends/ colleagues network and family full of lifetime Long Island teachers, reaching into at least 25 different LI districts (as well as numerous NYC schools)
All work environments have approximately 10% ineffective employees.
On Wall Street, ineffectiveness is 100%. The financial sector drags down U.S. gross domestic product.
Measurement based on the number of politicians bought, significantly increases the hedge funds’ effectiveness ratio.
True, and true.
Which is why a rigorous evaluation system is required. (In all industries that have a societal impact.)
Ethical schools, do you propose a similar outcome-based measure of police, firefighters, legislators, and other public workers? Or just teachers?
ethical schools
You have an unwarranted belief in the capacity of evaluation systems to achieve outcomes. At best, fair systems that measure the right parameters, highlight issues to address.
Develop the intellectual curiosity to question your dogma.
“All work environments have approximately 10% ineffective employees.”
Jack Welch would be so pleased to hear you say that.
G.E.’s Jack Welsh? The CEO who milked every dime he could get out of the company, in his retirement package? Hand picked his successor, who heads one of the very few companies that hasn’t rebounded to pre-2008 levels? The GE that has $110 bil. offshore avoiding taxes? (Mother Jones)
Are the ears of a colossal self-serving failure worthy of note, for some reason?
Right, Jack Welch is the guy who popularized the notion that about 10% of the employees at every workplace are ineffective.
Linda, I don’t think the “dogma” barb was really necessary.
There’s no “kool-aid” to drink here — on Long Island, it would be easier for me to shut up and just accept the parents/students/teachers/unions position. But my “intellectual curiosity” has led me to consider a very unpopular position.
Yes, an evaluation method — the current one, the previous one — identifies strengths and weaknesses. Then it is up to the school leaders to develop them. That’s the idea.
The salient question is whether LI teachers are having this method applied fairly, or is it being “gamed.” I can tell you honestly, one LI ass’t superintendent has told me plainly that it IS gamed. Make the district look good and the voters pass budgets, the state leaves you alone, and Cuomo gets to say he instituted “change.”
All Cuomo did is institute “same.”
Diane (Sorry, I skimmed past your post),
I would lovelovelove an outcome-based model for lawmakers!
But in reality, your point is a red herring: Cuomo’s point about Li schools is not about outcome-based evaluation. The “outcome-based” part has IS low for many area teachers. Growth scores have been brutal to some (fairly or not is a different question).
What is keeping LI artificially high is the 60 points — observation and supervisor evaluation. This is not outcome-based.
To be clear, I believe a fully outcome-based system is a mistake in education. (AND, I believe the outcome-based components we currently have are very flawed.)
Flerp,
Did Welsh cite attribution for the research, when he “popularized the notion”, in one of his self-promotion visits to the media?
Is there contradictory research, that shows, in the majority of work environments, the number of effective employees approaches 100%?
In settings of high situational variability, dominated by human interaction, my experience suggests otherwise and the studies I’ve read, confirm the experience.
In your experience, are most lawyers 100% effective, 100% of the time? Or, is it about 90%?
I don’t know what if any research supports or contradicts Welch’s claim or whether he ever cited any. I know he said it a lot, and I know that many people repeat it as conventional wisdom, as you did in this comment thread.
I don’t know how many lawyers are effective. I don’t know whether I’m effective.
FLERP,
I hope Governor Cuomo creates a mandatory system to rate lawyers. Maybe based on how many cases they won. It must be outcome-based. Lawyers who don’t litigate can get attributed scores from those who do. After all, the public needs to know which lawyers are effective and which are not.
The overwhelming majority of cases are settled privately, and many of the ones that aren’t settled result in judgments that none of the parties like. So we may have to stick with the current system, in which clients decide whether their lawyers are effective based on whatever criteria they like, and lawyers can be and are fired for any reason at any time.
FLERP,
Most teachers don’t teach tested subjects. Students are not randomly assigned. There are more reasons not to evaluate teachers by test scores than there are reasons not to evaluate lawyers by cases won and lost. Both are invalid. Let Cuomo develop a metric for evaluating lawyers, cops, and firefighters so teachers are not singled out for abuse.
I don’t know that there are “more reasons not to evaluate teachers by test scores than there are reasons not to evaluate lawyers by cases won and lost,” and frankly arguing about whether or not that’s true seems pointless to me. I agree that teachers shouldn’t be evaluated based on students’ test scores.
Ethical schools,
Continued dogma to question, “Up to the school leaders….”
When you and your spouse become aware of area in which your work performance could be improved and, you control the required variables for improvement, do you need someone using a mallet or dangling money, to make you do better? (Research shows, the latter works only with a very narrow job category-sales)…..Or, as a professional, do you do your best in the circumstance?
If, on occasion, your colleagues or you, deliberatively or accidently do the wrong thing, will a yearly structured system of ratings, that may be perceived as unfair, guarantee a reduced number of slip-ups in the future? If the answer is yes, lack of self discipline or self-awareness, is the root problem, unlikely to be permanently changed by an overlay of monitoring.
There is a whole body of research about motivation, rewards and punishments that explain the statement of the ass’t principal. Is your point, in citing the example, that evaluation systems using punishment, lead people to actions that preserve the institutions that they value?
Welsh found the perfect placement after retirement, MIT, the alma mater of the Kochs.
Linda, no one is talking about motivation. Evaluation. If the only reason you give students a grade is to motivate them, then maybe YOU need to review the literature.
“Ethical” schools
Re: Evaluation, as a synonym for sorting.
A person’s rejection of, either the desire to give a hand up to students or attempts to assist, those students in helping themselves, while using the descriptive term, “ethical” ….
The ratings are a joke, yes. How funny the joke is, though, depends on where you work. You should not ridicule the “Bottom of the bell teachers” until you know the whole story. NYC teachers have to work harder than any other teacher in the state to gain an effective. A teacher in East Islip and the rest of the state, for example, can be effective with a score anywhere from 9 to 17. A New York City teacher can only be effective within this range: 15 to 17. Developing is: 13 to 14. Ineffective is: 0-12. It looks to me like you and your colleagues were being protected at the expense of NYC teachers.
To add insult to injury, NYC superintendents watch how many teachers are getting effective or highly effective. They call principals to let them know if they have too many effectives or highly effectives. Principals must lower some teachers scores to fulfill some kind of quota.
Yes, there are a few bad teachers. However, most teachers, as Cuomo insinuates, are not bad. The teachers are not your enemies. Cuomo is and now he going after you in Long Island. Despite your remarks, I hope teachers fare better than we did in NYC. I would not wish the kind of working conditions these factors have wrought on anyone else.
I am married to a NYC teacher. I have deep sympathies for the Kafkaesque manner with with nearly every aspect of the system is run.
NYC teachers do work hard. (As do most teachers elsewhere.) A rigorous evaluation system will only *help them*. (Whereas their scores or growth measure may very likely hurt them.)
I don’t think Cuomo is insinuating “most teachers” are bad. But he is explicitly saying that a greater percentage than **1** had a *bad year*. (Remember, this eval system is about your year — not even about your entire career.)
—
FYI- My credibility: a friends/ colleagues network and family full of lifetime Long Island teachers, reaching into at least 25 different LI districts (as well as numerous NYC schools)
My son had one of those horrible teachers who treated the students like they were in prison, especially the boys. After multiple complaints by a few parents to the principal, superintendent, network, and Chancellor nothing was done about her punitive treatment to students. A child was crying in her class every two weeks for two years. As another year goes by the parents are still complaining about her but the admin does nothing and even states “It is the first time I have a complaint about her” year after year.
As long as the g&t teacher pushes test prep 24/7 and scores go up a tad nothing is done to the insufferable teacher who have no emotional intelligence.
As long as the teachers’ students’ scores are high, she doesn’t need emotional intelligence
And this is the point! While the pass rates and the growth measures show part of the story, the evaluation should complete the picture. UWS Mom, one of the most common teacher evaluation models rates a teacher according the the way she treats students and the respect and rapport they build, according to a number of measures. But in most districts, this aspect of the rating pads the score, with almost everyone I know getting a perfect 4/4 on all of these measures. A teacher who is abusive should be held to the standard adopted by the APPR of the district and approved by NYSED.
First, I can see this evaluation system being used to eliminate teachers who “make too much money.” Imagine a veteran teacher who is at the top of the pay scale suddenly being assigned to most of the weaker students and students with disabilities. Most teachers do not have control over the students they get. Second, in response to Ethical Schools I don’t think we really want students to decide (in a formal way) who is a good teacher and who is not. Third, why is it that teachers are seldom asked what would benefit them in improving their teaching? We are professionals with a great deal of education yet we’re treated like children. Lastly, perhaps teachers, like students & parents, will have to “opt out” of their evaluation system to finally be heard. So many principals and superintendents feel the evaluation rubrics, etc. are unfair. Perhaps we need to unite on this front as well.
Hi. We are a few years into this particular model (during a financial crisis, and in the middle of a Tax Revolt) and it hasn’t been used to weed more experienced staff.
Also, remember that prior evaluation models created solely by the districts also had the ability to fire “incompetent” staff. (It would take a few years and some lawyers’ $, but it would definitely be worth it – IF you wanted to solely save money.) And that almost never happened.
Second, this is a point that is puzzling. Students do not make these decisions. The evaluation is a trained, licensed administrator observing a teacher’s work in the room as well as work throughout the year. Not based on student opinions. Not based on scores.
Third, teachers are sometimes asked. (Between NYSED, my district, NYSUT, UFT, NCTE, ASCD, etc., I am surveyed out. Do a search – the results are all published online.) The problem is that admins frequently do not (or cannot) accommodate. For example, my colleagues have often asked for more PD with Special Ed students. We got it yesterday; it was some of the worst PD you have ever seen.
4th, according to my Association president, “opting out” would constitute a “job action” and be considered a breach of Triborough.
I think this depends on how you think they are forcing teachers out. Many experienced teachers in my school and in others in the inner city are retiring earlier than they might have because of this system. This system is a source of big stress because it feels like a “I’m-gonna-get-you” environment. Even coaches and art teachers are retiring if they can. They no longer stay like they used to.
I am not in school where the teachers are guaranteed a highly effective or even an effective because you are valued and are wanted. I am in schools where ratings are looked closely by a data cruncher who reports his findings to a superintendent and administrators better hope they do not have too many good things to say about their teachers. In fact, our supervisors went out their way to warn us that there would be lots of developings and, perhaps, ineffectives before they even observed us. Kind of like Walcott telling parents there was going to be a big drop in state scores. Who, in their right mind, would stay beyond their retirement age? I am not anywhere near retiring age and I cannot see myself staying in education long enough to retire. I am looking at other options.
So I think, the system is not forcing people in the sense of firing them (yet). However, I do think the system is creating enough stress on teachers in certain schools so that they reitre if they can or leave to go into other occupations.
Please don’t take this the wrong way: While I am glad your teaching experience is better than mine under this system, it also makes me upset. If teachers’ experiences/perceptions can be so different, one can only imagine how different our students’ experiences/perceptions are even under the same system. Perhaps, we are not so equal after all…
I understand — and have seen firsthand — your point about veteran teachers feeling dejected. Two responses to that: 1) while they complain about the new APPR models, the money is too good for LI veterans to quit — they wouldn’t, and they don’t; 2) their feelings are illusory: they are being rated HIGHER than ever before; if anything, veteran teachers should feel impunity with the current system. They have “psyched themselves out” for no good reason.
Now the Governor has taken to attacking my school leaders for following HIS teacher evaluation system. And, he will continue to change his own rules until he has an “evaluation system” which supports his “failing schools” narrative.
LOL! The worst news that he ever received was that WE’RE NOT FAILING!
But he’s working to change that.
mvotter, it’s NOT “his” system — each school submits a plan of its own devising. I know of districts that have *explicitly* told its teachers that their plan is “State-Proof,” and will allow for high ratings.
The new teacher evaluation system is so subjective, and like many others have said, each teacher’s caseload is different. Like many have shared, teachers who have children with learning problems, children who suffer from poverty, children with behavior problems, and children who do not care about the test at hand will be the first to be fired. Is it fair that these teachers with catastrophic caseloads receive lower ratings than teachers with good caseloads? Of course it isn’t. Older teachers are at terrible risk also, since one can easily become a “bad” teacher overnight on a rubric.
I think one purpose of the new teacher evaluation system was for politicians to try and show that years of experience and a master’s degree is no longer needed since younger teachers with little or no experience and no master’s might score higher than an older teacher. I am so thankful I am near the end of my career. The present stress I experience on a daily basis makes me ache all over, and I take way too many aspirin. As I’ve said so many times, it has been hard to observe my profession be “gutted” and de-professionalized. I think the saddest thing is that fewer and fewer young people, who would have been wonderful teachers, will no longer go into this battered profession. My husband and I would never allow our 2 children to suffer through this career that the politicians are trying to make into a low paying service job. Scott Walker thinks that a bachelor’s degree is no longer needed to teach. I’m speechless.
“Sad Teacher” I’m sorry you feel stress at work – that sucks… but come on, are you seeing teachers receiving low evaluations due to the students they have? We know that’s not happening.
Actually, in many districts, teachers are clamoring for the weaker classes because it seems to be easier to show growth with them. Some advanced kids don’t grow nearly as much because they are already advanced.
Again, the growth measure is the real devil in the situation you describe. THERE, a teacher with weak students could conceivably get hit with bad scores.
If teachers continue to conflate the myriad changes and issues (like the news does, and like parents do), then we will have a hard time fixing the legitimate problems (such as the Growth Measure).
And by the way, this isn’t some diabolical plan to bring in cheaper labor. If it were, we would’ve seen districts jumping at the opportunity, especially with Cuomo strangling us of funding. But it hasn’t happened.
According to your description, ethicalshools, NY sounds like a great place. In Memphis, all the things you claim not happening are happening: Teachers get fired without due process as the result of hostile takeovers by the Achievement School District of low performing schools, then they get replaced by cheap TFA teachers.
The issue at hand deals with Long Island schools. They have rigged the evaluation component such that nearly all teachers are “above average”.
I find it interesting to hear about what is going on in other states. Many of their issues could come to a state near you.
The Cuomo bar exam is an interesting possibility. It was recently changed on a politico website. The article didn’t say it was wrong, only that it was changed. I assume the Cuomo team called and said, do you have any proof of that?, if not, then remove it.
Politico: Correction: This story has been updated to remove a reference that Andrew Cuomo originally failed the bar exam.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/quarantine-this-book-112234_Page2.html#ixzz3SlmlD9NN
This is factoid is so prevalent on the web, I am surprised that I can not find any definitive source where it has been denied or confirmed. Why doesn’t someone clean this detail up? Can someone just ask Cuomo outright?
Well, I hope that I’m the first person on the Internet to try to verify this factoid.
Cuomo graduated from law school in 1982. Presumably around May 1982, on the usual schedule, but I suppose we’d have to verify that. But I think it’s a pretty safe assumption.
These days, the NY bar exam is offered twice a year: once in the summer and once around February or so. Most people take it in the summer, shortly after graduating law school. The results come out several months later.
Cuomo appears to have passed the bar in late 1983 (see http://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/27/nyregion/new-york-day-by-day-andrew-cuomo-s-job-hunt.html), which would mean that he took the bar exam that he passed in the summer of 1983.
If the NY bar exam was administered on the same bi-annual schedule that it’s on now, that means that it’s possible that Cuomo took and failed the bar two times — once in the summer of 1982, and once in early 1983 — before passing it.
It’s also possible that he didn’t take the bar until the summer of 1983 and passed it on his first try.
But it seems that at most, he could have failed it twice.
To be clear, I was focusing on the maximum number of times Cuomo could have failed the bar exam because the prevalent factoid on the Internet is not simply that Cuomo “originally failed the bar exam,” but that he failed it four times. I don’t see how it’s possible that he failed it four times.
Only Cuomo can clarify the question of how many times he failed the bar exam: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 times. Anything more than 0 means he had ineffective teachers by his logic.
Well, I think I did just “clarify” the question of whether he failed it 3 or 4 times. The answer is almost certainly no. But Cuomo can certainly give a definitive answer about how many times he failed it.
What is Hillary Clinton’s position on exams and teaching performance? Her failing rate is definitely > 0 according to her autobiography.