A group of education leaders in New York have drafted an appeal to suspend implementation of the “Education Transformation Act of 2015” and to convene a panel of educators and educational experts to design a research-based teacher evaluation system.
They hope to get 10,000 signatures. They have gathered nearly half that number. If you are a New Yorker, please sign so the Legislature and the Regents will begin the process of revising a truly terrible program that is guaranteed to demoralize teachers, discourage students, and produce more teaching to the test.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is nothing but a money grab for Cuomo’s private investors and another effort to privatize public education
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Teachers should be evaluated by those they serve.
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Do you mean a teacher’s career should rest on the opinions of K-12 students? Seriously?
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Let’s assume he means keep it local.
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Jon Presutti says “Teachers should be evaluated by those they serve.”
LOL
They did this at the high school where I taught and it was a popularity contest and had nothing to do with the quality of teaching.
The students who didn’t do the work turned in the negative critiques of the teachers they earned poor grades from because those children didn’t do the work, and those students often claimed the reason they didn’t work because the teacher was boring.
Yet, in those same classes, the students who cooperated and did the work earned A’s, B’s and C’s and their standardized state test scores improved compared to the students who refused to cooperate and work who did not. Claiming a teacher was boring was nothing but an excuse not to learn.
There was also an annual vote among the students to select the best teacher of the year. One history teacher, who was also a football coach, won that award repeatedly and the rest of the teachers called him Mr. Hollywood because of the number of films he showed his students on an almost daily basis in addition to the fact that he started class each day with jokes. He seldom if ever taught anything. Instead of lectures, he used films—movies and documentaries—that covered the same era of history. The textbook was never used, the only work in the class was short quizzes after each film about the film, and no student ever failed his class. The most popular teachers were the few who never failed a student. One of the other popular teachers who often came in 2nd and won a few times let his students grade their own assignments—no one ever failed his class either.
These very popular teachers also never received any complaints from parents, but teachers who demanded students cooperate and work to earn a grade were always under attack by a few parents every year and also under pressure from administrators to reduce the poor grades because of the parent complaints.
The schools that I taught in had a childhood poverty rate above 70%, had a heavy street gang presence among the students and was mostly minority children—less than 8% were white.
The interesting thing is that I don’t remember any immigrant children complaining. Over the years, I found that the immigrant children were the hardest workers in my classes and seldom complained about anything and most of them came from homes where the parents didn’t speak any English. Most of the immigrant children were my politest, hardest workign students. But too many of those children born in the U.S. with parents also born in the U.S. were in the category that refused to cooperate and often accused teachers of being boring. These students arrived the first day with an attitude that they had a mandate to say what they want and do what they want and the teacher was, at best, only an irritation that got in their way.
I blame this on the fraudulent claims of 1983’s “A Nation At Risk” and the decades of propaganda that followed from the likes of the infamous Walton family, that paid for media ads that demonized and stereotyped public school teachers as lazy, overpaid and incompetent.
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Thank you for taking this action! Long over do. When any “STATE” starts imposing against the will, rights, and best interests of the populace, may we all never allow the knowledge, belief, and understanding of “life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, equality, value, and integrity of every human being” to be taken away from us by “the state,” and an unjust, “state” at that!
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Interesting education reform coming from a man who took five tries to pass the Bar exam. Does he blame his lack of success on “The Bar” on his law professors? Why do students and teachers only get one chance. Students and teachers are not widgets and learning is not data!
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“. . . coming from a man who took five tries to pass the Bar exam.”
http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2015/05/its-good-to-hear-andrew-cuomo-passed.html
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He did pass the bar exam on the first try–http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Casey-Seiler-A-low-bar-for-gossip-on-exam-6238373.php
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Done and thanks for the link to my district! It helps me to “do something” to repeal CCLS! Hopefully parents will galvanize and continue the movement until all politicians are listening to US, the taxpayers!
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Please suspend the implementation of the Education Transformation Act of 2015.
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I love that there are a number of signatures from the Byram Hills district, where Cuomo’s youngest daughter attends school.
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Repeal the Cuomo Education Bill. For the sake of all our children, do the right thing.
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Can anyone on the internet sign or just New Yorkers?
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Lloyd, I assume they are looking just for New Yorkers.
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I support a research based teacher evaluation system designed by a panel of educators and educational experts.
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I am a New Yorker but will not sign. I’m tired of hearing about teacher accountability. Where is accountability for administration, parents, and the children themselves? Where is the accountability for lack of funding, poverty, homelessness, drugs, and a host of other problem which affect learning. I’m tired of being held responsible for all of societies ills. We don’t need more “teacher accountability”. We need more political accountability.
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To RL:
You have an opportunity to voice, but you prefer: “”I am a New Yorker but will not sign.””
As a result, you admit that :””We need more political accountability.””
You have a conflict within. Your demand/wish needs your signature.
Hopefully, you take an action by signing due to your NY voter status’ qualification, and then you will see the result of your request as””We need more political accountability.”” will come true. Back2basic
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I suggest signing and using the comment section to express this view. I agree with your premise. Something is deeply wrong with a system that places teacher accountability for student learning at 100%. This is sending a terribly twisted message to young, immature, yet impressionable minds.
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fair evaluations now!
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This is called fighting back! Good luck with this!! You can win!!
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Isn’t this something that the close to 200,00 parents who opted their children out testing would be interested in signing?
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Support my child. Support the children of NY – the current education plan is NOT good for children
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Signed!
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How could anyone with a conscience think it’s okay to give the wealthiest New Yorkers a tax break while poverty stricken districts are struggling to get the supplies they need?! Thanks for sharing the link! JM
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Suspend the transform education act
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Please suspend the implementation of the Education Transformation Act of 2015.
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Repeal the Education Bill.
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Teaching is not just a job, not a profession, It is a vocation, a calling. I love my students and am grateful daily for the opportunity to serve them, their families, and community If this is to be the attitude supported and cultivated in public schools, it needs to not only be allowed, but supported and embedded deeply in the roots of education law in New York State. If a teacher is to be a paragon of virtue, knowledge, compassion, and skill then let’s focus on ways to bring that about: support teacher development through researched – based reforms and formative evaluations.
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“Teaching is not just a job, not a profession, It is a vocation, a calling.”
Agree and disagree. Yes, teaching is a job, one is contracted to teach and it is a profession-requiring specialized skills that require a fairly long, minimum 10 years including the undergraduate training, learning trajectory while at the same time it can be a vocation or calling. Teaching does not have to be considered as an either/or situation as in the dichotomous situation in which you describe it. Nor are job and profession pejoratives and vocation/calling superlatives.
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It took the governor 4 times to pass the bar exam yet he wants teacher evaluations and student progress to be based on a test students have one shot on. The statistical formulas being used to calculate progress have been proven invalid and unrealistic yet they are still used to “measure” student growth and teacher effectiveness. Enough already! Let teachers get back to teaching and students get back to learning.
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Cathleen, I love your perspective!
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“It took the governor 4 times to pass the bar exam. . .”
http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2015/05/its-good-to-hear-andrew-cuomo-passed.html
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Thank you Duane Swacker for clearing that up – interesting to hear about 2 of the 3 Amigos as well! LMAO; how’d I miss that article.
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Please suspend the implementation of the Education Transformation Act.
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It is so obvious that in this 21st century, the GLOBAL paper mills, the corruption within intellectual leadership, the foxy business corporations have interconnected and quietly shake hand from one to another party in order to REPLACE the conscientious, intelligent, compassionate, BUT naive and trusting OLD LEADERS with SUBMISSIVE YOUNG LEADERS who have:
LACK OF talent, experiences, courage, success in post secondary studies (=drop-out, barely to pass professional examination…),
and FULL OF past MISTAKES which were intentionally set up by puppet masters. (= control these young leaders as soon as master pumps lots of cash to buy out seats in government)
For example:
According to NYT , J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, who was once a high school teacher and wrestling coach in a small Illinois town, paid $1.7 million to the person from 2010 to 2014.(as to “compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct” against that person who had been sexually abused DECADES ago).
There are many more cases in which these government officials/ journalists/scientists/ researchers… can be either killed by car accidents, or by assassination, or by poison if they do not comply with puppet master’s CONTROL later on.
Yes, these young, ambitious, and talent-less, BUT charismatic leaders ARE YUMMY PREYS to all GLOBAL puppet masters. I will confirm that ERR is human, BUT intentional ERR is evil.
Compassion and forgiveness is always CIVILITY and HUMANITY.
HOW can INTELLIGENT EDUCATORS in higher education (GURUS= teacher of teacher in legal education) propose CERTAIN LEGAL PROCEDURE to ELIMINATE completely all loop-holes or intentional TRAPS that global puppet masters successfully use to harm people and countries? Back2basic
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” I will confirm that ERR is human, BUT intentional ERR is evil.”
Going to have to use that one, May! TAGO!
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Sadly, our Governor has done more to hurt the children of NYS than to help them. His education policies are flawed and incredibly misguided.
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Let’s do this NY! Let common sense beat back special interests and corporate privatization of our great schools. In addition, let’s save the security of teachers. They have dedicated their lives to our children….let them teach!
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Let’s hope that all parties involved can work collaboratively to develop a Teacher Evaluation that makes sense.
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I am with all my heart, asking for a revision to a truly concerning program that is setting up to demoralize teachers, discourage students, and produce more teaching to the test. I am already seeing the terrible affects of this! Stressed kids, less instruction time, stressed teachers. We have awesome teachers in our district (Shoreham-Wading River, Long Island, NY), who are professional, skilled, passionate; who pull out the best in each child. Standardized tests are not seeing our teachers for the unique individuals and teachers that they really are! It’s unfair and inadequate testing. Something has to change!
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Signed and posted link at NYC Educator.
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Teacher evaluation should be based on observation.
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If I may add to your thought:
“Teacher evaluation should be based on observation by an observer competent/qualified in the subject area/grade level of the teacher.”
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Please end this madness before we lose our teachers!!
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Education has to be more about learning and less about number crunching. Neil Degrass Tyson for head of Education!!
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Repeal!
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We have over 7000 signatures but need more support. This legislation will hurt our most precious assets…our children. Please sign at http://bit.ly/GetItRightNY
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This plan is good for corporations and bad for families. Get Pearson out of NY
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Stop CC$$ in NY
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Change is good, especially for children and all those that come in contact with them.
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For once, I will put aside my sarcasm and speak from a vulnerable heart. I signed this petition and proudly found many of my colleagues to have signed it as well.
The list of signers is difficult to navigate to find out who has signed and who has not, as the software or survey program used seems primitive. Still, this is an excellent effort to let Cuomo know how We the People feel and why.
For those who live in the lower Hudson Valley of New York State, I would like to remind them that Assembly Woman Sandra Galef and State Senator Daniel Carlucci both voted
“Yes” to Cuomo’s horrific legislation. Their vote resulted, for my district, a measly $900,000 something dollars in a budget that exceeds $101 million. It was not worth it. No amount of money can compensate for the injustices foisted upon children and teachers under Cuomo’s plan.
Of course, what can one expect from a governor who uses his girlfriend’s health crisis as a public relationship tool to soften and freshen up his otherwise hateful and stale image. I cannot imagine how his political career is not adding stress to Lee’s life. She deserves to be with a real man, and not some little angry boy trapped in a 50 something year old body that has daddy issues.
Hopefully, more federal investigation of the corruption up at Albany will lead to an indictment of an ever more despicable NY governor and inhuman being as Andrew Cuomo.
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Loved your comment
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Thank you, Susan.
I am a teacher, Nationally Board Certified, an administrative intern, and have taught low income English language learners for 22 years, eight of which were in NY City. Although English is my first language, my second ones are Spanish and French, so my focus has always been in language acquisition and literacy. I have been very fortunate to have been surrounded in robust professional development by excellent teachers and administrators in both NY City and Westchester County.
Our governor’s focus has been mired in stupidity, vanity, avarice, ignorance, and greed, and I am an angry person when it comes to him. His father, no angel either, was an incredibly effective person relative to his son.
No one is perfect, but Andrew Cuomo personifies vice and immorality, and it will only catch up with him in one form or another . . . . . Bad karma is as bad karma does as bad karma results in . . . .
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“. . . an administrative intern. . . ”
Oh god, Robert, you’re not going over to the dark side are you???
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Duane, I appreciate the humor, but that’s not true. And you know how much I enjoy some good biting sarcastic humor. I, perhaps, indulge too much in that regard, if anyone ready my comments on this blog. In fact, one of those most hysterical commentators on this blog is Raj, and I thank my lucky stars he is here because Harlan is gone, and where else can one get their kicks from? Every court needs its jesters, and the gestures from Raj are delightful, in my mind.
Most administrators oppose this reform movement, and they fall victim to it as much as you and me. In my naiveté, I am thinking I can protect children, administrators, families, and LEAs by assuming such a position one day somewhere, and I don’t know where that will be or when.
But one has to have drive and hope, at the very least. If we lose our mindset, we have given away our power to those who least deserve it.
I will say that a whole crew of administrators (and parents and educators on all levels) signed a petition recently in my immediate region protesting the Cuomo agenda explicitly. They are not the dark side, but have illuminated a path for teachers, far too many of whom – not all – have still not signed because, alas, they choose not to keep abreast of these events or are too “overwhelmed” by politics.
Still I think even the most apathetic of cohorts in the population are getting roused, waking up, and acting more than ever, no?
Let’s keep that momentum going. . . . .
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Proudly signed. If you type in a school district in their search box, names will appear of those that signed in that district.
As a side note, your comments are always spot on. Thank you for all your efforts.
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Can anyone tell me how many signatures this has yet? Is it the 7K number? Thanks!
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Cuomo must go
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Everything is under the sun and the moon. Yes, the truth will be shone in the long run. Nothing can be hidden to all people at certain time/specific period.
Time has come. It is the internet era. Global people can interconnect and inter-exchange culture and belief. All want to have GOOD health (=organic and chemical-free foods), GOOD working environment (= decent wages, benefits and political-free policy), EXCELLENT community (= the best healthcare center, best public schools , and violent-free neighborhood)
For these simple reasons, intellectual elitism PARTY needs to control financial elitism party by IMPOSE the LOGICAL RULES, REGULATION, and RESTRICTION in the legal system in order to completely ELIMINATE CORRUPTION
1) by awarding/dignifying with a national status of RECOGNITION and BENEFITS to authority and their descendants in one hand;
[based on civility and humanity, we agree to forgive people who commit crime under thread or enforcement. Because err is human, and mostly that err is caused from the control party’s intention and set-up; with an exception that if people in authority live in a luxury lifestyle that they intentionally enjoy, then they will face the same penalty as those puppet masters.]
2) and on the other hand, by severely penalizing to all behind the scene puppet masters with hall of shame in exile along with all of their loved ones. There is an exception for any of their loved ones who declares that they leave and no longer associate with the puppet master;
[based on compassion, we agree to teach puppet master a lesson of consequences on intentional err which abuses of the spirit of LIBERTY. In the end, puppet master shall be isolated in exile in order to appreciate and to respect people’s lives and their joy in preserving humanity and civility in society]
3) isolation/to be exiled is the ONLY WAY to deal with evils without waste of expense in jailed house’s service.
In conclusion, Public Education System shall promote and produce WELL-ROUNDED
body-mind-spirit citizens for the country.
BODY: simple activities like tracks and field, gymnastics, soccer, baseball, football…
MIND: UNIFIED goal in “”transparent, well-documented research/practice”” pedagogy/curriculum in all subjects liberal arts, history, and STEM in all appropriate levels from K-!2
SPIRIT: music program, painting program, and philosophical studies
All private + public schools are welcome to utilize different techniques in teaching BUT must follow through the UNIFIED GOAL, so that together teachers/ educators are:
1) creating the joy of learning for all learners,
2) motivating and inspiring learners to be proud citizens regarding humanity and civility in their communities, society, country wherever they choose to live. Back2basic
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Governor Cuomo’s reforms will lead to the destruction of the very fabric of American society. The so called standards are causing our best and brightest educators to abandon our education system; mission accomplished Mr. Governor. The students most severely impacted are the ones in economically challenged schools; weep for them.
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STOP THE MADNESS
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Someone has to fight for students and educators.
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Let’s focus on letting teachers, who are trained professionals, guide our educational decisions in cooperation with parents and community members.
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Our kids need to learn to love school, not hate it! A change must be made! Also, since when are students and/or parents the “customers”? We are NOT a business and schools should not be “run” this way.
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In order to educate our children in an environment that supports their learning needs schools need funds. Stop spending money on Tri Pod Surveys, MOSLs and a constantly changing curriculum. Put the money back into all schools, (not just Title 1) and then we will see a difference. The government has high expectations and does nothing to funds them!
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Orr gets the puck at the point, sideskates the defender, puts the puck on the net and. . .
Jesus saves. . .
But Esposito scores on the rebound!!!!
Sorry, couldn’t help myself, a seventies moment revisited.
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Repeal the bill!
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get rid of this b.s. and let me teach.
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Education must be about children!!
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Repeal!!!!
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Repeal this inane education bill!
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someome needs to help these teachers and students. Kids will be dropping out as some are just not test takers. The kids with learning disabilities are suffering the most as this is just more added stress for them and their teachers .
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we need to do everything in our power to stop the governors plans. It will be a death sentence for public education.
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Pearson is profiting from our tax money. They can’t even get it right. There are consistent errors on the CC modules and errors in testing questions, who is accountable for this? When people screw up their jobs, they usually get fired. Pearson continues to do nothing to fix its mistakes, but continues to make money hand over fist. Cuomo doesn’t make them accountable, but makes teachers accountable? Typical government….big business and politicians win while the average taxpayer loses. Not to mention how much CC garbage is being fed to our kids.
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Cuomo must go down for the destructive irresponsible choices made for education policy.
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This is the worst concept for public or private education in FORTY YEARS. Governor Cuomo abandon this plan of Common Core. My colleague in an East Islip elementary school witnessed twenty-one out of twenty-three fourth graders crying when they took the fourth grade common core test. (2013-2014 academic year) This is not education; it is torture for the children. Listen to your fellow governor across the river and opt out before it is to late.
Sincerely,
Anthony J. Colesanti
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Stop teaching to the test!
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Stop shortchanging our kids and their future! They are not commodities, nor are they robots you can just program to follow direction and ignore their natural learning abilities! NY should be ashamed of itself for falling in line with these Common Core standards that diminish learning and put hard-working teachers in a precarious position.
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Put children first! Stop the politicians from using our children as their means if income!
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How many times did you fail the bar? Where would you be if test scores determined your future?
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Repeal!
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If I new that you were going to hurt our children by messing up our Traditional Public Schools I never would have voted for Cuomo.
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Reblogged this on revgeary and commented:
After preaching on education last week, and immersing myself in the literature this week, it is clear that poverty and racial isolation – what Jonathan Kozal calls “caste and color” – are the real problems with education. I’m throwing in with this petition and invite you to do so as well if you live in New York.
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