Regents Cuts State Test Program One Day After They Approve New Teacher Evaluation System Tied To That Test Program

After all the hullaboola about using new state standardized tests in every grade in every subject to evaluate teachers, the Regents cried poverty and canceled a whole bunch of them today:

Faced with continued shortfalls for Regents exams, the state Board of Regents voted today to make a total of $8 million in reductions to the program for the 2011-12 fiscal year. The state Education Department asked the state to provide $15 million from the general fund, but it only received $7 million.

The cuts will eliminate the January administration of Regents exams, which will save $1.4 million and eliminate the Italian, French and Spanish exams, which will save $700,000. Postponing the development of English/language arts tests for grades 9 and 10 will save $1.2 million, and continuing the elimination of grades 5 and 8 social studies exams will reduce costs by $800,000. (They were also eliminated this school year.)

In recent years, the state Education Department has been able to use federal funds to fill the funding gap, but they are no longer available, according to the agency. But this is not the first time the Board of Regents has had to slash Regents exams.

Regents voted in June 2010 to cut costs by more than $6 million by eliminating grades 5 and 8 social studies exams; grade 8 second-language proficiency exams; component retesting in math and English/language arts; high school foreign-language exams in German, Hebrew and Latin; and Algebra2/Trigonometry and chemistry exams given in August. They continued cost-savings measures that had been put in place in 2009 to save $4 million.

Okay, so let me get this straight - John King and David Steiner and Merryl Tisch were bragging during yesterday's Regents meeting about the "sophistication" of the new state assessments they are supposed to be using for the new teacher evaluation system and the value-added measurements they will be using to grade teachers on these tests, then today they canceled a whole bunch of them for lack of funds.

Seriously?

Isn't it difficult to use these "sophisticated" value-added measurements from the state test scores for 40% of teacher evaluations when you don't have the money to, you know, administer the tests?

What was this weekend all about, with the Cuomo letter and Tisch and King pushing through the 40% standard in a secretive Regents Teacher Evaluation Putsch, when they knew they didn't actually have the money to carry the plans out - certainly not for the next school year, and perhaps not even after that.

Can't say I'm sad to see the 9th and 10th grade ELA exams canceled for next year, but I have to question the competency of the Regents to administer a fair battery of state tests that will be used to evaluate teachers when they can't even afford to administer component retests or foreign language Regents exams.

I'm sure when they finally get around to creating tests for all the subject areas they have to create them for in order to administer the new teacher evaluation system, they'll be doing it on the cheap, trying to scrape together enough cash to get the whole thing off the ground.

This of course will be so very fair to the teachers who will have their jobs on the line over these tests scores as well as their reputations once the DOE beats the UFT in court and gets the right to publish the teacher evals in the media.

King called the state tests and the value-added system very "sophisticated" yesterday, but it seems tonight that the only thing "sophisticated" about the Regents test plan is the deception they used to get the evaluation system passed.