“We’re working on a bill that would make adjustments to teacher evaluations,” Cuomo said at a news conference. “We’re literally working on them as we speak.”
Cuomo added it’s the state Education Department’s roll out of Common Core, however, that has created the effect of needing to change the evaluation law, which is tied to Common Core-based testing.
The state budget agreement slowed the roll out of Common Core implementation for students, and Cuomo earlier this year said he wanted to make adjustments to the 2013 teacher evaluation law accordingly.
“In truth, the reason we’re in this situation is because the Board of Regents and Mr. King didn’t handle it,” Cuomo said, referring to Education Commissioner John King. “That’s how we got here. These are problems that have developed because of the improper roll out of Common Core in my opinion. We addressed the issues with the students and now we’re trying to address the issues with the teachers.”
If King is at fault for the "improper roll out" of the Common Core and the current mess with the CCSS tests and APPR, then why hasn't he been fired?
Cuomo doesn't run the SED.
He doesn't run the Regents.
But you can damn well bet that if a governor wants the SED Commissioner gone and puts enough pressure on the Legislature and the Regents, it will happen.
All Cuomo is doing here is passing the buck onto the Regents and King in particular while ignoring (and trying to get the public to forget) his own actions in this mess.
He backed CCSS.
He pushed APPR.
He pushed his CCSS panel to try and save his reform agenda.
Now he's passing the blame onto the Regents and King.
I think they both deserve tons of blame for the mess the state's in.
And both King and Tisch should lose their jobs.
But Cuomo deserves blame here too.
This is his education reform agenda and implementation too.
So if King is at fault for the roll out, governor, why does he still have his job?
There is no end of just and well documented criticism of management of Common Core and the APPR. I can give you a good example from a recent evaluation by my AP. In regards to a low rating on academic rigor of the lesson (after I said my Science Research class did not lack rigor a rating on Common Core guidelines). My evaluator looked at me and said, "We are not using the Common Core here we are using the Danielson rubric." Every year my students win state and national competitions for writing and performing science experiments at journal level. In short the Danielson Rubric is NOT aligned with performance courses. what do you do when practicing scales, doing warm ups, throwing a pot? All of these lack rigor of the final productions they are meant to prepare for. Yet the Danielson rubric with its canned ideas rigidly enforced is being used to malign teachers who speak out.
ReplyDeleteKing is appointed by Tisch who is appointed by the Assembly. As long as they both have the full support of the Democratic majority in the Assembly nothing much will change with regard to education policy. That's why since stepping down from the Panel for Educational Policy, I've focused on getting people who will champion public school parents and teachers elected. In Queens, my PEP colleague Dmytro Fedkowsky, is challenging one of the very people Tisch and King rely on for support. In Manhattan, Robert Jackson, hero of the CFE litigation is running for State Senate. If people don't like state ed policy, we need to put new people in Albany to change the Regents.
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