NYSED Claims There's Been Years Of Preparation For Common Core Tests

For anybody out there still thinking the NYSED is not going to use the Common Core tests to HAMMER teachers - especially teachers in NYC where the UFT has happily given the okay for John King and the NYSED to develop the evaluation system - read this:

The state Education Department on Thursday refuted claims by a statewide teachers’ union that teachers and students have not had enough time to prepare for this month’s state tests on new, more difficult curriculum.

 New York State United Teachers last week launched a $250,000 advertising campaign denouncing new state exams on Common Core learning standards for math and English. The union argued that teachers and students are not prepared for the tests.

Education department spokesman Dennis Tompkins said in a statement Thursday that teachers have been preparing for the new tests for years.

 In December 2010, the Board of Regents announced that the State would begin testing students on the rigorous Common Core standards beginning this year. We are now three years into a statewide effort to provide teachers with the professional development and other supports they need to make the transition to the Common Core,” Tompkins said.
 
“It’s hard to understand how some can claim that they are being caught unprepared for the change. It’s equally difficult to understand why anyone would suggest that the change is happening too quickly for teachers and students, when the exact opposite is true. 


“If we want our children to be ready for college and meaningful careers, we need higher standards—and a way to measure whether those standards are being met—and we need them now.”

It's one thing to know that the education corporatists up in Albany were going to change the tests to the Common Core back in 2010.

It's another to know what those tests are going to look like, to get materials that students can use to be ready for those tests and to get the support for teachers to teach the new material.

The NYSED and the NYCDOE have BOTH failed on that score.

But do not think that will stop the education corporatists from using APPR like a bludgeon on 4th-8th grade ELA and math teachers.

They will do that this year as soon as the Common Core test scores - which both the Regents and the NYCDOE have warned are going to plummet because of the increase in difficulty - are tabulated.

That the NYSUT and the UFT leaderships stood on stage with the Tisch, King and Cuomo last February and sold teachers out on this APPR/Common Core nightmare is dismaying enough.

That the NYSUT leadership now thinks that they can get some campaign going saying the state is not implementing these Common Core tests right, we have to fight this is, is just a joke.

As I wrote earlier about the NYSUT/UFT sell-out on APPR:

 Gee, Dick, if you were so concerned about the "implementation" of the new Common Core tests and the new evaluation system, maybe that's something you could have thought about before you dropped the lawsuit against the NYSED and the Regents over the testing (a lawsuit which you won in a lower court, btw, though it was being appealed by the state) or before you signed off on the Cuomo/Tisch/King/Mulgrew/Iannuzi APPR agreement last February?

Did you think John King, Merryl Tisch or Andrew Cuomo actually cared about whether the new tests and the new evaluation system was going to be implemented in a fair and prudent way?

If you did, then you're a fool.

But I don't think you're a fool.

I think you knew that the NYSED and the Regents were going to use both the new tests and the new evaluation system as a bludgeon against schools and teachers, that they were going to add the new Common Core tests without giving schools or teachers the materials needed to get students ready for the tests, then look to fire tens of thousands when the test scores plummet and the VAM's used on the teachers come up "ineffective."

I think you signed off as a matter of political expediency and figured you handle whatever came later.

It wasn't difficult to see that the education corporatists in Albany were going to use Common Core and APPR to slash and burn through tens of thousands of teachers via the VAM.

If the NYSUT and the UFT leaderships didn't forsee that happening, then shame on them.

But I don't believe they didn't forsee that happening.

Instead I think they sold us out because it was the politically expedient thing to do.

They figured they could fool the rank-and-file later with sham actions like the NYSUT petition against the Common Core implementation and the $250,000 ad campaign against it.

Cynical?

Sure.

But these are cynical people running our unions.

You have to be cynical to sell the membership out on a monthly basis and take six figures a year to do it.