When New York State won Race to the Top funding, the explicit agreement among the city, state, and teachers’ union was that test scores would be 20% of teachers’ evaluation. When the deal was done, Governor Andrew Cuomo insisted that testing count for 40%.When the unions did not support his re-election in 2014, he raised the weight of testing to 50% and inserted that requirement into the budget.

 

So without any review of research, the teachers of New York were saddled with an onerous and phony evaluation system, based on the governor’s whim.

 

Now legislators are are uncertain what to do. The opt out movement is not going away, and it has caught their attention.

 

This article appeared in Politico Pro; it is behind a paywall. It was written by Keshia Clukey.

 

 
By KESHIA CLUKEY

 
“ALBANY — State lawmakers are divided over how to handle the law linking teacher and principal evaluations with school funding, with a deadline approaching for school districts to put an evaluation system in place.

 

“Some legislators are calling for the law to be re-written, while others think it should be repealed entirely.

 

“The original evaluation system was the governor’s ill-conceived plan that was passed last year and now is wreaking all kinds of chaos in state education,” said Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi, a Utica Democrat. “Everyone is scrambling right now trying to correct what was an ill-complete plan to begin with. Many of us knew that it was unworkable then, and it’s unworkable now.”

 

“Brindisi said he would like to see the law — which was put in place to weed out low-performing teachers at a time when the state was implementing new, higher standards for students — repealed.
“Teachers are not the problem with education in New York State right now,” he said. “It’s the inadequate funding…that is impacting students’ ability to achieve.”

 

“If the districts don’t put the new evaluation system in place, they risk losing any increase in state aid from the recently passed budget. That includes the funding allotted to restore the Gap Elimination Adjustment, a formula established during the 2008 recession that distributed cuts to school districts as the state grappled with deficits. The budget for the 2016-17 school year fully restored the $434 million left in the GEA.

 

“A spokeswoman for Gov. Andrew Cuomo Thursday backed the evaluation system saying it created a more accurate and fair measure of a teacher’s performance.

 

“While certain Common Core-aligned tests will not be counted for several years to address the botched Common Core implementation, the evaluation law remains intact,” Cuomo spokeswoman Dani Lever told POLITICO New York in an emailed statement. The state education department, she said, should work “with the districts to implement evaluation systems that can improve educational opportunity for our students instead of protecting the bureaucracy that has failed them for so long.”

 

“The evaluation system, which Cuomo pushed through in last year’s budget, relies heavily on the use of student scores on the state’s standardized, Common Core-aligned exams. The law also requires districts put new evaluation plans in place or risk losing state aid increases.

 

“The new system only created more contention among parents and teachers, who were already angered by the rollout of the Common Core learning standards. Last spring, a state-wide test opt-out movement blossomed, with more than 200,000 students refusing to take the state third- through eighth-grade exams.

 

“The state Board of Regents, tied by the prescriptive nature of the law, put in place a waiver system allowing districts to delay implementation of the new evaluation system through September 2016….”

 

“The Regents Monday questioned why districts should still have to put time, effort and money into putting in place a new system when it will be changed again in 2019-20.

 

“Democratic Assemblywoman Amy Paulin of Scarsdale agreed.

 

“It seems a little ridiculous to require the districts to change their [Annual Professional Performance Reviews] just to change them again,” said Paulin.”