A bill backed by Republican Sen. Jack Martins would exempt the state’s top performing school districts from the newly approved teacher evaluation criteria.
Under the bill, introduced late last week, the top 20 percent of the state’s highest performing school districts would be allowed to submit their current evaluation plans along with a request for a waiver to the Department of Education.
The top 10 percent of the districts would be granted a waiver from the evaluation law. For school districts in the highest 11 percent to 20 percent category that do not receive waiver, the state education commissioner must release a statement in writing explaining the rationale for the rejection within 30 days.
This is a clear attempt to divide and conquer the growing opposition to the state's Endless Testing regime by making a two-tiered evaluation system.
It's also an attempt to short circuit the opt-out movement by dangling an evaluation exemption to "top-performing districts" who no doubt are "top-performing" based, in part, on Common Core state tests scores.
A similar bill passed the State Senate in 2012.
I would imagine it can pass again in the State Senate this year.
Can it pass the Assembly?
Would Cuomo sign it?
Cuomo's been telling us how bad the entire state education system is, which is why he needs to "break" the monopoly.
Can he go back on that vow now by only breaking 90% of it?
Who cares if Cuomo is willing at this time to sign this into law right now? Even if he eventually signs it and exempts the "rich" districts, most teachers in NYS will still be screwed as they do not work in "rich" districts. However, if push comes to shove and Cuomo does sign this law it WILL MEAN that teachers in "poorer" districts will have a very legal manner to fight the evaluation system in a court of law due to the fact that the statistics of the evaluations are biased outright. The bummer is that this could take years and cost many jobs while this goes through the courts.
ReplyDeleteThose were rhetorical questions. I don't think it will pass the Assembly and I don't think Cuomo wants this kind of exemption. It puts his tough guy act in jeopardy.
DeleteThis is unbelievable. So if you teach at Brooklyn Te h or Stuyvesant, you get a free pass because you just happen to teach there? So if you're a gym teacher at Bronx Science, no evaluation for you? Oh my goodness. Divide and split the union up. This is disgusting! If you teach at a crappy school or decent school that's just not a specialized school that's SCREENED, you get screwed?
ReplyDelete