In a rebuke to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s plan to withhold $260 million in school aid from New York City because it missed a deadline to finalize a system to evaluate teachers, the Legislature’s top Democrat said on Sunday that he would push to restore the money.The effort by the lawmaker, Sheldon Silver of Manhattan, the Assembly speaker, came days after a judge ruled that the state could not withhold any money from the city until a lawsuit challenging the legality of the penalty was decided in court.“No one wants to see our children’s education suffer because teachers and the city could not come to an agreement,” Mr. Silver said in a statement.The Assembly’s Democratic majority — which includes many lawmakers from New York City — plans to make restoring the school aid a top priority in the negotiations over the next state budget, which is supposed to be adopted by April 1. Mr. Silver’s proposal would put him at odds with Mr. Cuomo, a fellow Democrat....It is not clear whether the State Senate, controlled by a coalition of Republicans and a small number of breakaway Democrats, will join the push to restore the aid.The evaluation debate escalated after the Obama administration began pushing for new methods to better identify good teachers and to rid schools of bad ones.
Couple of things to say here.
First, Shelly's standing up to Cuomo is a good sign that Little Andy won't get his way 100% in the future on policy the way he has so far.
This comes on the heels of a State Supreme Court judge also telling Cuomo he can't have his way on the lost school aid.
Unfortunately, there is this second point:
The evaluation system will now be imposed by the NYSED onto NYC by a man with little teaching experience who thinks the APPR system based upon test scores is so good, the whole country should use it.
Bruce Baker has pointed out already, as has Carol Burris (here and here), how badly designed the new APPR teacher evaluation system is.
I hope that Shelly Silver and the legislature will stand up to the governor when it becomes apparent in practice that this Cuomo APPR system is a travesty and it is making the education system in NY State worse, not better, in the future.
Too bad Silver won't vote down the budget amendment that Cuomo is pushing with the new evaluation deal.
ReplyDeleteI called and was told the evaluation tied to the budget will pass but they are aware APPR has some inherent problems and if and when those become apparent, there may be some revision done to the system.
DeleteI think the strategy is to let the odious system play out and let people see how odious it is before trying to change it.
I have heard from one other state pol who told me a similar thing last May.
We'll just have to see if that's the case.
I'd prefer that junk science never be imposed in the first place, but unfortunately since the UFT and NYSUT aren't fighting that, Silver and the Assembly aren't going to either.
The problem with that logic is that there will be plenty of teachers who will loose their jobs based on the new evaluation until a revision is done in Albany.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. Unfortunately the UFT and the NYSUT do not seem to. And Silver is not going to get ahead of what the UFT and the NYSUT on this.
DeleteThe problem, IMO, is the UFT and the NYSUT have been on board with this all along.