Sorry to bombard you with emails about the budget deal but this is a big deal. Cuomo didn’t get everything he wanted–such as more charters (he may get that later) and tax credits for private and religious schools (aka vouchers), but he seems to have won some victories in his battle to grind teachers’ faces into the ground. Anyone who knows the research on teacher evaluation knows that Cuomo’s plan for “independent evaluators” (people from outside the school who spend a few minutes observing the teachers) and tying teacher evaluations to test scores has no basis in research or experience. It is not clear what the teacher evaluation plan will look like, because the budget deal is leaving it to the bureaucrats at the State Education Department to iron out the details.
This is what was just reported:
Assembly Democrats balked at a number of the education reform measures Cuomo had pushed.
But as the details emerge of the agreement from a senior administration official, Cuomo does appear to have won the inclusion of some of the education proposals, albeit with changes.
The agreement includes a new teacher evaluation criteria that will include both state-based tests as well as principal and independent observation. School districts can opt for a second test for teacher evaluations developed by the state Department of Education, according to an administration official.
However, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie on Sunday night said the deal would vest more power in the Department of Education to set the evaluation criteria.
Fully fleshed out details on the evaluation criteria are expected to be included in budget bills.
Teacher evaluation criteria would be tied to tenure: Three out of four years a teacher must be given a rating of at least “effective” in order to receive tenure.
On the inverse, teachers that are deemed to be “ineffective” for two years in a row could be removed within 90 days. Teachers rated ineffective for three years in a row could be removed within 30 days.
School districts must implement the new evaluation criteria by November and doing so is linked to state education aid, the administration official said.
An administration official insisted on Sunday evening said the new evaluation criteria would need to be included in new contracts between teachers and districts, but would not be subject to collective bargaining with local units.
“It’s in the law,” the official said.
The budget includes a plan for school receivership. Schools deemed to be struggling or “failing” have a school district put forward a turn around plan to the state Department of Education, which could either approve the plan or have the school taken over by an independent monitor.
A city official briefed on the plan pointed some local control components for the city education chancellor.
The first batch of schools up for review would have to be deemed “failing” over the last 10 years, with the second batch deemed “failing” for the last three years.
The fight over education policy in the budget was one of the more pitched in recent years, as Cuomo tangled with the highly organized teachers unions both in the city and statewide.
Both the New York State United Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers accused Cuomo of strengthening charters at the expense of public education and as way of rewarding the deep-pocketed campaign contributors who also support charter networks.
Governor Cuomo, who did not attend public schools and whose children did not attend public schools, who has never been a teacher and who knows nothing about how to evaluate teachers, is wreaking his vengeance on the state teachers’ union for failing to endorse his re-election. It does not reflect well our society when elected officials make decisions about how to run schools, how to reform schools, how to evaluate teachers and principals, and when to close schools. There are not qualified to do so.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Tenure in New York will effectively be ended. The rush will be on to target veteran teachers with ineffective ratings.
Perhaps teachers should use their planning periods to begin planning for a new career.
Any suggestions? My mind is a blank.
Nice positive comment that you posted at 2:41am on a workday………
Is somebody looking for work? Come to NYC…We’ll help you to become a Real Teacher.
I don’t know what occurs in “Jersey”, but we Fight here in NYC for our rights.
Our newly hired team of 10 lawyers that OUR UFT have put together with the pro bono help of numerous prominent NYC lawyers who specialize in contract law been working 15 hour days picking apart the new NYS teacher evaluation law.
I’ve been told directly from the three person lawyer “Reporting Team”
that there are numerous errors in the wording of the actual law that will be contested in courts of law.
Yes, it’s expensive to pay so many lawyers, but each of them believe in our cause and have reduced their billing rates by 65%.
This fight is a LONG WAY from being over.
NY State’s Gov. Mr. Sandra Lee will be in for surprises that he never
expected.
From A Veteren Tenured NYC Teacher who works in the UFT.
Jersey will Always Be NYC’s Stepchild
Zephyr Teachout for Governor 2018
(Dear UFT, NYSUT, and AFT – don’t screw it up this time)
This is a mess. The state Ed department will now impose the same evaluation tool on every school in the state. No bargaining. No local control. Of anything. Does this include curriculum? NYSED is looking for an army of current teachers to take sabbaticals to work on PD and refining the modules. Will these be the “outside evaluators”? How will evaluation be more tightly tied to state testing? Most teachers do not have a state test. How will growth be measured from year to year in classes as diverse as biology, chemistry, and physics? Will teachers flee advanced placement and IB classes because it will be hard to show growth? I am flabbergasted that our politicians believe this will improve education. The only thing it will improve is the likelihood of the privatization of public schools. Oh, right; that’s exactly their intent.
“How will growth be measured from year to year. . . ”
The concept of “measuring growth” in the teaching and learning process is COMPLETELY ILLOGICAL, ERROR FILLED AND RESULTS IN FALSE SUPPOSED INDICATORS for that supposed growth.
Exactly. but your reasoned assertion will not stop them from doing it.
Duane, from what I can see people latch onto the growth piece because it is less unsettling than admitting that the whole darn thing has been taken over by the wrong thinkers. But I think you are right, it feels like calmly talking about what dance steps to use as the ship sinks.
Calmly, not clammy. 🙂
You are quite correct Nimbus. I have no authority to stop them.
But until these educational malpractices are exposed for what they are we have no starting point. One must first identify the correct problem/error before one can address it. I’m only attempting to correctly identify the root/conceptual problems in these malpractices. Then we can talk about “solutions”.
I think of a few things:
1. Poor new teachers who usually get the weakest and most disruptive students – good luck to you! Have a backup career! Tenured teachers who teach weaker students or students with disabilities, and ELL learners – good luck to you, too!
2. No local collective bargaining for evaluations. Our unions get weaker & weaker and are moving towards totally feckless.
3.” School districts can opt for a second test for teacher evaluations developed by the state Department of Education, according to an administration official.”
What does this mean???? And we still don’t know the percentage of student testing in evaluations. It is an absolute mess.
So, prior to Cuomo being mad at unions for not electing him, was the original momentum against public schos (even before the strike) mostly a result of the incentive for investing in charters (due to Tax Relief 2000 and New Market Tax Credit) and the pressure interested parties began putting on politicians? Or is that too simple an explanation?
Also, isn’t the proliferation of charters at the expense of public schools, when incentivized by investors, kind of like trafficking children? ( at face value; even if they are treated well etc).
In Newark in September, they are placing less severe Special Education students in regular inclusion classes. They are in the process of altering IEPs.
I don’t think he’s doing this out of spite or as an act of revenge. I think he’s out to destroy public education and that’s been his mindset from the start.
The biggest losers in this deal will be the special education students. Who will want to be a special education teacher? If their job depends on test scores, on tests tied to the students’ chronological age rather than their developmental age, tests that are totally inappropriate and abusive, tests that are one size fits all, with no ability to adapt or differentiate based on disability, no one in their right mind will choose to be a special education teacher. The days of special education in public schools in NY are coming to an end. All the hard work of parents and advocates will be undone. And, I fear, the days of institutions for those vulnerable children that cannot be integrated into a mainstream classroom are returning. It is a Giant step backwards for the most vulnerable students. We will have a generation of people with disabilities with no skills, being warehoused for life. I am distraught over the fact that NY legislators gave in to this bully!
ELLs might lose out as well. . . .
We all lose. We are all in this together. While special education students will continue to struggle, many others will too. Teachers will also not want to have a class full of high performing students. It is very hard to show growth when you are already at the top of the scale.
This is Bloomberg in Albany.
At least Stalin had FIVE year plans. LOL.
We’ve dealt with this APPR madness for THREE years now and already the sand is shifting beneath our feet….again.
Would any sane person run a business this way? A hospital? If a pilot kept changing directions like this you’d be looking for a parachute!
Yet, we’re subjecting our children and their teachers to this whipsaw madness.
What’s next another THREE years from now when this latest “plan” (call it Disaster 2.0) fails?
But maybe that’s the big idea after all….to run public education into the ground. This is truly a sad day for our democracy.
I would like to ask the lawmakers one question. How is it that charters schools and private schools are exempt from all the reforms that will be imposed on public schools. Does that make any sense? I guess charter and private schools can be trusted and that is why the Governor and a majority of lawmakers either sent or send their children to them. It’s funny how a majority of these lawmakers exempt their own children’s schools from the reforms imposed on public schools. Maybe they are qualified to do what is in the best interest of their own children, but why would that be something different from ours? It seems like educational malpractice.
Charters? I thought they sent their spawn to privates.
YES !
How is it possible that a major (if not several) class action lawsuit(s) isn’t filed on behalf of those who are evaluated (by test scores) of students whom they do not teach? For the life of me, I do understand how one hasn’t been filed.
The unions are complicit in the reforms.
The unions are part of the cause of the reform.
When I read the line “have the school taken over by an independent monitor,” I wondered if Cuomo or his advisors had bothered to check what results have been for NJ DoEd monitoring then taking over Jersey City, Paterson. Newark for 20+ years.
Prior failures of edudeformer policies do not mean anything negative about either the policies or the people that implement them. The emperor is not naked.
It is often noted that these “reforms” undermine local control. That’s true, but it’s even worse–they destroy community, both inside and outside schools, and community is what makes good schools good. Here’s how: the focus on external tests, and now external evaluators, essentially removes observation and evaluation from within the school. Thus disappears any real opportunity for school-based conversations centering on the development of teaching practice, the possibility for which allowed for the only value of the previous system. If rubric-based observation is used to discuss and develop practice amongst a community of peer-educators, a great deal of good practice, even reform, could occur. Peers understand education and pedagogy, and the understandings of all (observer and observed alike) can grow, develop, and move into new areas and make new connections. Potentially related areas (like that of engaging curriculum and teaching to behavior and classroom management) can be usefully explored, and they can be connected to ultimate goals of education, like lifelong learning for critically-thinking, independent-minded citizens. It’s hard to imagine any system being developed along the Cuomo lines that will do anything other than undermine such goals. We need to move toward developing more dense, local, and interrelated communities in schools and between schools and surrounding neighborhoods. Thinning out community and replacing it with more bureaucracy destroys the most crucial relationship in education–that between students and teachers.
I’ve nevet seen a rubric I liked.
The rubrics are a joke. Where is the research base on these teacher evaluation rubrics?
Rubrics are the devil’s tool.
I agree.
Conversation about practice seems to me what is important, the particular rubric less so. In fact, when conversation is the mode, rather than evaluation-based sorting, the rubric can itself become the object of critique. Clearly, as Foucault or Chomsky might argue, the rubric can set the terms of discussion, which participants find it very difficult to get outside of. A possible alternative would be to switch rubrics periodically, perhaps every year. Again, if examination and discussion of practice are the point(s), and not rating teachers, then using differing lenses (for example, rubrics based on perspectives of students, or of business leaders, or of master teachers, or teacher-educators, or based on race, culture, gender or other factors) could really help to deepen engagement and understanding of teaching practice. I, too, know of no fully satisfying teaching rubric and don’t hope to find one. But, if we wish to focus on our aims, namely to engage educators and others around reflection and critique of practice for the purpose of developing practice in effective ways (this is vague, but intentionally so), then we need to experiment, at low stakes, with various methods for stimulating such reflection and critique. Ultimately, it seems to me that, like Finland, we should work to push the grappling with standards, curriculum, practice, etc. down to the lowest possible levels, namely, schools, teachers, students. What those folks may organize their efforts around will vary, but in ways that can generate engagement, ownership, passion, and real education. The extent to which non-educator policy-makers can be part of such a process would be limited to trying to stimulate it, if they are capable of such restraint.
No body in my district is interested in my professional opinion.
“rubrics based on perspectives of students”
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Have you ever heard the nonsense answers that most students give about what makes a “good” teacher. Sure, I want a bunch of 6th graders who can’t sit still and carry their stuffed animals to grade my teaching on some rubric.
I’m trying to be very clear on this: I don’t suggest that anyone should be grading teachers, only that teachers should look at teaching practice through various lenses. Grading teachers is a bust. But it can make a great deal of sense to ask students things like: what does a teacher do that helps you learn x? Or what would you like your teacher to do when . . .? Or any number of other questions that might elicit useful insights, and maybe stimulate meta-cognition in students in the process. By the way, I always thought that anything a student said in response to a prompt from me was in some way responsive to the prompt–it was my job as a teacher to figure out how it was responsive, and to draw the student out further, if I could. It may be that part of the reason for a “nonsense” answer was that I may have asked questions poorly, and maybe I could find something better. And there are many other reasons, including that many students have a hard time taking school seriously. Students who are taught well often gain great insight into what is going on in teaching, and, if they can be given permission to speak (the need for low stakes again), they can give us feedback that can enrich our practice. Again, I don’t advocate that we should look at how various constituencies would grade our teaching, only that we try to grasp what they might think good teaching is, and then reflect on how such views might help guide our teaching. This is all just low-stakes conversation, but if works to develop teaching practice.
Thank you, Paul, for that explanation. I, too, ask students about my teaching style and their own learning styles, etc. I agree with you. I’m all for what you’re saying, but I don’t want it to to become part of a rubric or score that evaluates me as a teacher. Apparently, this is already happening in some places! Thanks for responding.
I’m just curious about what the plan is when a private entity takes over a failing school and fails to turn it around, what then
KaChing. Win-win all the way to the bank.
I have taught 4th grade for twenty years in New York State and am preparing myself to walk away. It is not my desire to do so, but if New York State deems I am ineffective, I will pack up and clear out. This year my students will take a test that few know what level of proficiency constitutes a passing grade (hopefully the test makers do, but that could very well be a false inference). How many points are needed to pass? What questions are worth? How tests questions are arrived at? There is no transparency, it’s all a guessing game based on what common core particulars the test makers deem as the flavor of the moment. I would love to give the 4th grade ELA assessment to 1000 random college educated adults in New York State, observe the results and take feedback and post it all in the New York Times. Unfortunately the test is not administered to college educated adults, but to a bunch of fourth graders who tend to love Legos, stick on tattoos, One Direction and Sponge Bob Square pants. I will work hard to educate all fourth graders in my classroom, keeping in mind that they are maturing and cognitively developing at different rates, but if New York State thinks I am not meeting the standard based on a test that most adults couldn’t or even want to ace, I guess my time is up and I will walk away and try my hand at something else.
Information regarding NY’s new teacher evaluation system for 2015, quoted from an email from Assemblyman Zebrowski:
“The Governor proposed changing the teacher evaluation system to include a state testing component of 50%. The Assembly negotiated this proposal to eliminate the 50% requirement and instead develop a matrix where local observations trump testing. Under the new rubric, if a teacher is found to be effective or highly effective in local observations, they cannot be found to be ineffective because of test scores.”
“Importantly, the Assembly was able to ensure that the Board of Regents, instead of the Governor, would be tasked to engage educational experts and the public to develop a more fair and accurate teacher evaluation system. The Board of Regents would be able to evaluate many issues I have been pushing to change. For example, better evaluating growth for students with disabilities and English language learners, recognizing the difficulty in evaluating growth in high performing districts and more fairly reviewing teachers in non-tested subjects.”
He goes on to to explain why he voted yes to Cuomo’s ed reforms siting it is better to have the budget in place to avoid an “extender bill [that] would not be the negotiated proposals listed above, but rather the Governor’s original budget with all of his original reforms intact.”
Pablo