Cuomo Will Lead A Witch Hunt Of "Failing" Teachers In His Second Term

Here's a preview of the second term shenanigans we can expect from Governor Andrew Cuomo with his vaunted APPR teacher evaluation system:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Tuesday the state’s new teacher evaluation system will need to be refined, but he said he would like to see more data before pushing for any changes to the state law.

Cuomo said he sees value in the teacher rankings, but said critics who question how 94 percent of the state’s teachers can be “highly effective” or “effective” have a valid point.

“I’m excited that we started,” Cuomo said of the teacher evaluation system put into effect during the 2012-13 school year. “And I think once we start to study it and learn it and refine it – because there’s no doubt it needs refinement, not everybody can get an ‘A,’ it can’t be – I think it’s going to be a very valuable tool.”

His solution?

Study the "data" and push for statewide changes, taking away local control:
 

“The way we’ve done it the first few years is they’re negotiated locally. There is no statewide negotiation,” Cuomo said during a meeting with editors and reporters at The Buffalo News. “Each district negotiates it’s own criteria within certain mandates. So the suggestion was the way they negotiated it may be too loose because everyone’s doing well, and I think that’s a valid question.”

Cuomo stopped short of saying he would recommend specific changes to the evaluations.

“I think we have to understand what’s happening,” Cuomo said. “We don’t really have solid data back because we just started.”

A commenter on the Buffalo News story writes the following:

60% of the teacher evaluation system is based on "Other measures of Effectiveness score" in which a teacher has a formal observation, an informal observation, and provides various artifacts (which are rated by the principal) that prove that a teacher is doing what he or she is supposed to be doing in class. So if a teacher is doing their job, yet the students are "failing" the state assessments, then whose fault is it. There's no possible way the students or parents should share any responsibility in this, right? In my opinion it is very possible for teachers to be effective yet have students who are failing. Especially in impoverished districts. This sounds like just another witch hunt. More of the same. I guess they don't think they'll be able to get enough teachers fired.

APPR is supposed to be based on "multiple measures" of so-called performance, something we have heard trumpeted from the leaders of NYSUT and the UFT, that teachers are not being evaluated solely by test scores.

But Cuomo's framing this system just as the deformers are framing the system - test scores are the only valid measure and if many students are failing the new Common Core tests (despite the tests being rigged by NYSED and the Board of Regents to have just that outcome), then the teachers of those students must be failing as well.

Beware the second term, folks - as the commenter at the Buffalo News story notes, this is a teacher witch hunt that we have coming and Cuomo's going to be the head hunter.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I have written over and over again that APPR was always devised to fire as many teachers as possible.

It wasn't a mistake that they rolled APPR out at the same time they rolled out the new Common Core tests that they rigged for 70% failure rates.

The one thing the deformers didn't count on was a revolt in the suburbs over the Common Core tests and the Common Core Standards themselves.

After a year of furor over the CCSS, they had to de-link the Common Core test scores from APPR for teachers of 3rd-8th grade students.

But make no mistake, the link is coming back and it will turn into a bludgeon they will use on you.

Calls from deformers and editorial boards to "tighten" up APPR will eventually lead to "refinements" of the system, as Cuomo called them - in short, rigging APPR the way the Common Core tests were rigged to come out with a pre-determined outcome of "failure."

Another commenter at the Buffalo News story wrote:

It does beg the question, how many "ineffective" or "developing" individuals are there in other professions? How many "ineffective" or "developing" teachers would be enough? Like you said, witch hunt.

Indeed.