NY Times: Cuomo Reportedly Set To Reduce Role Of Testing In His Vaunted APPR Teacher Evaluation System

It's amazing what 220,000+ opt outs and poll numbers mired in the very low 40's will do to a politician's take on a particular issue:

Less than a year ago, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York proclaimed that the key to transforming the state’s education system was tougher evaluations for teachers, and he pushed through changes that increased the weight of student test scores in teachers’ ratings.

Now, facing a parents’ revolt against testing, the state is poised to change course and reduce the role of test scores in evaluations. And according to two people involved in making state education policy, Mr. Cuomo has been quietly pushing for a reduction, even to zero. That would represent an about-face from January, when the governor called for test scores to determine 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation.

There's some conjecture on just what this "reduction" will be:

The idea that Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, is pushing for the changes comes from several different avenues. According to one of the education policy makers, Mr. Malatras said in a conversation that the administration wanted to decouple test scores and evaluations. The other person reported having spoken with people who had similar conversations with the administration.

Two members of the Board of Regents, the body that sets state education policy, said they had heard that Mr. Cuomo was pushing for a moratorium on the use of test scores in evaluations. The two board members, Kathleen M. Cashin and Betty A. Rosa, both said they would heartily support such a change.

There's a big difference between "decoupling" tests scores from evaluations and having a "moratorium" on test scores being used in evaluations, so as always with this stuff, the devil is in the details.

Cuomo, through shill Malatras, is claiming nothing has been determined yet, that they're waiting for findings from the vaunted Common Core Review task force that Cuomo announced in September - but that's jive of course.

Cuomo has controlled every commission, panel and task force he's put together, from the two Moreland Commissions (one after Sandy on utilities, one on corruption that has him under federal investigation for witness tampering and possible obstruction) to the other two education commissions he put together (just ask Todd Hathaway who disagreed with the findings of the task force he sat on but had his name signed to the pre-determined report nonetheless!)

So what Cuomo wants, Cuomo's Common Core Review task force will find.

And it looks as if the governor, reeling from the bad press and bad polling on education, has perhaps decided the suitcases full of cash he gets from ed deformers aren't enough to keep him pushing ed deform policies in toto:

In New York, Mr. Cuomo’s push to give test scores more weight in evaluations helped propel a widespread test refusal movement this year, centered on Long Island. More than 200,000 of the nearly 1.2 million students expected to take the annual reading and math tests did not sit for them in 2015. At some schools, as many as 75 percent of students opted out.

Long Islanders tend to be swing voters, and education is a top concern of theirs, given the high percentage of school-age children and the role that local schools’ reputations have on real estate values, said Lawrence Levy, the executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University.

“Considering how his numbers fell off in suburban communities in the last election, I thought that the governor had to pay close attention to the desires and the demands of these suburban swing constituencies,” Mr. Levy said.

One final point to make on this - there's a likelihood that all they're going to do is call for a "moratorium" on test score use in APPR or a "moratorium" on the "penalties" teachers would suffer for low scores:

“A moratorium is under consideration,” said State Senator Carl L. Marcellino, a Long Island Republican, chairman of the Education Committee and a member of the task force.

The Board of Regents would quite likely approve a moratorium or any other step to reduce the role of test scores in evaluations. Until recently, a majority of the board supported tying test scores to evaluations, but the Legislature elected several new members this year who are critical of that policy.

This "moratorium" could come based upon the 50% test score criteria Cuomo imposed in the budget or it could be lowered to something like 20% (which is apparently what NYSED MaryEllen Elia thinks it ought to be.)

In any case, the "big changes" to education policy Cuomo promised look to be coming.

Whether they're substantive changes or more jive made to look like substantive changes remains to be seen.

Having watched Cuomo closely now for a few years, I remain skeptical.

But the low approval numbers in the polling, the especially low education numbers in those polls, the high opt out rates (with the numbers set to go even higher this year if the status quo continues) and the even higher "hardship waivers" districts got on Cuomo's vaunted new APPR teacher evaluation system with the 50% test score component seem to have weakened some of Cuomo's resolve to continue to scapegoat teachers for all the ills in the education system.

NYSED Uses Rigged Survey To Claim 71.5% Back Common Core

No wonder NYSED made the Common Core survey so long and complicated - they were going to use it to claim they have wide support for their reforms:

A state-backed survey soliciting detailed critiques of the Common Core has drawn responses that are largely supportive of the standards, according to the state Education Department.

The state Board of Regents heard an update Monday on the department’s “AimHighNY” survey, which was launched in October as the state began a review of its first five years with the oft-debated, more-stringent education standards.

So far, about 71.5 percent of the feedback elicited through the survey has been “supportive of the standards,” according to the department’s presentation. The remaining 28.5 percent was not supportive.

The survey is geared toward teachers, administrators and others who deal with the standards every day. Indeed, the majority of the 5,500 survey takers — 62.2 percent — have been teachers. Parents have made up 21.6 percent of the survey pool, with administrators coming in at 6.9 percent.

The way they rigged this is to make the survey an arduous process:

Survey takers can’t just leave general critiques of the standards; Instead, they have to be about specific aspects of the Common Core, down to the grade level, subject matter and detail.

Here's how some would-be survey-takers described the process:

“I started and stopped after 5 minutes. A person would need to be totally familiar with every standard and the curriculum used in a school to be able to complete this survey. This is another slap in the face to the parents, because they will not be able to answer the questions.” -Lorri G.

“This survey is set up horribly and only asks questions about each SPECIFIC standard, and takes over half hour to complete. The important thing to point out to the media is that the standards are copywritten and cannot be changed. Just another false move on NYSED’s part to make it seem like they are listening. Smoke and mirrors.” -anonymous New York parent.

“It’s horrible!!! It is so drawn out and confusing. Just like Common Core. It would take hours to literally answer each question for each grade level for each course and section of each module. They set this up to fail just like common core. They figure no one will take the time to fill it out so it will look like every thing is fine and dandy.” – Monique Armann

“Yet this is open to all, but “all” are having a difficult time navigating the specific and individual standards within the survey. Heck, teachers have a difficult time with them and we have to deal with them on a daily basis in the classroom. Elia, is more or less laying down the gauntlet. “Here’s your chance, teachers. You said the Common Core State Standards are narrow, inappropriate, misguided, ineffective, imposed, relentless, demoralizing, overly complex, nontransparent, inadequate, and unreliable (I may have left out one or two). You may address the standards, individually, in your free time, but beware, if you stray from addressing the standard in any way, we’ll reject it out of hand. Also, did we mention your cookies must be in order on your device? I know we said you can come back to your information, but…well, no. Oh, and you can’t change your mind once you’ve submitted anything. No, why would we let you do that? Really, teachers, we don’t expect you to do this. We’ve made it very difficult for everyone. But, in the end, we will be able to shrug our shoulders and say, we gave NY a chance to respond. Argue that.” -Kristin S.

Here's how Anna Shah of the  Hudson Valley Alliance for Public Education described the survey:

“I wish I had good news, but I’m skeptical about the survey. The survey seems to have been developed, in my opinion, to be cumbersome and burdensome… I don’t believe you can go back and I believe that if you do not complete the survey in one sitting then you are out of luck, and have to start over from scratch.

Frankly, I have serious concerns about the survey because beyond the substance of the questions and its format, the survey appears to require parents to comment on each specific standard. Given the fact that many parents are not educators, I’m not sure that this is a fair question to ask of the “public” at large. How many parents are incredibly familiar with common core standards and the impact they are having on our students? I’m sure parents are probably not as familiar or knowledgeable about each and every standard and corresponding sequence that follows, so the set up of the survey seems to expressly disqualify the average parent from participating at the outset.

More troubling, it explains that information or comments that do not directly relate to a standard will be disregarded. So, for example, generalizations about how the cc curriculum is developmentally inappropriate and is adversely affecting students and children, which the average parent absolutely and positively has legitimate experience with, is likely to be summarily dismissed.

Also of importance, the fact that the survey privacy disclaimer explains that if you choose to complete the survey and submit a response to be considered by the committee, then you are consenting to allowing nysed to data mine your Info and collect information beyond normal procedure- for example nysed specifically explains that they will be tracking your IP AND web use both before and after you take the survey, and collecting information about the sites that you have visited before, after, and during the survey. I have some ideas about why they’re doing this.

Regardless, this is definitely more incentive to urge families to refuse the test, and gives me great concern SED is being less than genuine in putting the survey forward to the public.”

Get the word out there that the 71.5% support NYSED is claiming for Common Core based upon the survey is disingenuous at best, dishonest at worst.

Cuomo's having his Common Core "review" hearings held during school hours (or right after school) in an attempt to limit criticism and NYSED has created a Common Core survey that is long and complicated in order to rig the results.

But polls in New York show how deeply unpopular Common Core is (see here and here) - those NYSED couldn't rig.

Cuomo's School Receivership Program Is "Stack Ranking" For Schools, Designed To Break Up The System

Fred LeBrun in the Times-Union dissects Cuomo's vaunted school receivership program:

In the Capital Region, only Albany's William S. Hackett Middle School is on the persistent list, but if a handful of schools in Albany, Troy, Schenectady and Amsterdam, including Albany High School, don't show appropriate progress, they will join Hackett next year.

What happens now for schools like Hackett is as complicated as directions to Atlantis, and about as reliable.

Albany school Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard becomes the acting school receiver, with broad powers, for the next year. A required community engagement team composed of the principal, staff, teachers, parents and even students from Hackett will forward recommendations for improvements to the superintendent, who will use them to help create her intervention plan to turn the school around. The plan is due at State Ed for approval by the end of this month. Over the next year, the community team will look over her shoulder as the intervention plan unfolds.

In the meantime, the school receiver can do pretty much what she wants (with approval from State Ed): change the curriculum, replace teachers and administrators, increase salaries, reallocate the budget, expand the school day or year, turn Hackett into a community school, even convert to a charter school. Although there's enormous rigmarole attached to much of it, including going charter. Remember, the receiver in this case remains the superintendent for the rest of the district, so she is answerable for any wild and crazy ideas to the voters through the school board.

Anyway, to help start the process, Vanden Wyngaard can apply for a grant from a $75 million pot set up by the state, although she'll have plenty of competition from other "persistently struggling" school receivers in Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Yonkers, New York City and elsewhere. She has a year to do her turnaround. Or the hammer falls and we are off to Neverland.

Then the state would appoint an independent receiver who is answerable only to State Ed. At which time the process of community involvement, an intervention plan, and the rest are repeated, only now change is apt to be far more radical, with wholesale staff firings. An independent receiver can be a person from an approved list that doesn't yet exist, or an institution or charter school. Although charter schools upstate have been mostly a bust, as Albany well knows. Middle school charters in Albany could not save themselves, let alone others.

So. If you're getting the idea that this receivership idea seems like a plan designed to fail and thus prepare the way for school privatizers to make a bundle, move over.

For one thing, the state has yet to give school receivers a clear idea of what would constitute appropriate progress to avoid an independent receiver. Presumably, we'll know by the end of the month when intervention plans have to be approved. What is expected and how reasonable it is will answer a great deal.

Because just a year to show any marked improvement on any front for a school like Hackett, no matter how thoughtfully considered, broadly accepted by the community, or earnestly pursued, is absurd. Real change needs time for all stakeholders to become invested. Teachers at Hackett today are still complaining that attendance and discipline as major problems, just as it was when I substituted there, oh, a half century ago. These are, after all, manifestations of the poverty and despair underlying most of Hackett's problems; they don't go away. They are the community's problems, not just Hackett's.

The school can be taken over in a year if it doesn't "improve," but the state still hasn't explained what that "improvement" will look like.

Yeah, that's a plan designed to "fail" schools and hand them over to the privatizers, profiteers and/or charter operators.

LeBrun's writing about a school in Albany, but Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Farina have a lot riding on this too, since the city has 62 schools in the receivership program, with six deemed "persistently struggling" and having only one year to improve (the seventh is already closing.)

As with Hackett, these schools don't know yet what will constitute "improvement," which is a problem since the deadline for that "improvement" is fast approaching.

The cynic in me wonders if a side benefit to declaring all these schools "failing" and handing them over to the privatizers, profiteers and/or charter operators isn't another opportunity for Governor Cuomo to declare his "friend" bill de Blasio a loser too.

Governor Cuomo promised the Daily News and a Forbes forum he would "break" the public school "monopoly" before his re-election in 2014 and it certainly looks like the receivership program is part of that plan.

After the state gets through privatizing these 144 schools, the next slate of so-called "struggling" schools will be added to the receivership list - this will be an ongoing program:

The program was one of several education reforms hammered out during budget negotiations this spring. Under the deal, schools are placed into two categories, “struggling schools,” those in the bottom 5 percent of schools in the state for three years, based on measures like test scores and graduation rates, and “persistently struggling schools,” which have been in that bracket since 2006.

What we have here is "stacking ranking" for schools, with the state playing rank and yank every year, adding schools to the privatization, er, receivership list, setting them up to "fail" and then handing them over to the privatizers, profiteers and/or charter operators.

Just as with stack ranking for employees, the program will disempower, demoralize and ultimately destroy the system (this is also the same rationale behind Cuomo's APPR teacher evaluation system, btw - ranking teachers every year and declaring 7% "ineffective" no matter what.)

Just ask Microsoft, which used stack ranking as its evaluation system for employees, how well that worked for them as Apple was kicking them to the wayside in competition.

But of course if you're Andrew Cuomo, you want to destroy the system - that's exactly what he promised to do in 2014 and that's the plan he's been carrying out since.

Many Students Return To School Without Their Common Core Test Results

You know how educrats, education reformers and civil rights activists living off the Gates/Broad Foundation dole like to say we must have standardized testing or otherwise we'll never know how the kids are doing in school?

This past spring saw the rollout of new tests based on the Common Core standards. The reading and math tests replace traditional spring standardized tests. About 12 million students in 29 states and the District of Columbia took the tests developed by two groups — the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).

According to Smarter Balanced, only a few states have released scores from the spring — Connecticut, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Missouri, West Virginia, and Vermont. Most states have not been able to put out test scores before the start of classes. The delay was expected in the exam's first year, but it's still frustrating for some teachers and parents.

Scores for the almost 5 million students who took the PARCC tests still have yet to be released. PAARC is still setting benchmarks for each performance level. The partnership says they're due for release this fall, and that the goal in future years of the tests is to release the results as close to the end of the school year as possible.

Just as with the New York Common Core tests, the benchmarks aren't set until long after the students  take their tests.

With the old New York State Regents exams, the benchmark scores were set before students took their tests and were posted right after the test ended.

That seems like a fair and honest way to do things - set the passing mark before students take the test.

But in the Era of Common Core, when educrats and reformers wanted to rig the tests for 70% failure rates, all of these Common Core tests, including the high school tests, are benchmarked long after students take their tests and the results are in.

Rigged?

You betcha!

If not, why not set the benchmarks before, the way they used to with the Regents exams?

Simple - they're playing with the numbers, manipulating them for their own political ends.

But as we've seen with the opposition to testing growing over the past few years, the more games the educrats and reformers play with the Endless Testing regime, the more the opposition to testing grows.

So keep playing games, folks.

You are fooling fewer and fewer with the manipulation and lies.

SUNY Professors: Cuomo, NYSED Setting Up Teachers To Fail

 From the Capital New York Education update:

UNION: CUOMO SABOTAGING PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS—Capital’s Jessica Bakeman: “A union representing SUNY professors, along with a member of the Board of Regents, accused Governor Andrew Cuomo and the State Education Department on Thursday of intentionally sabotaging prospective teachers in order to justify shutting down colleges’ teacher preparation programs.

“Fred Kowal, president of the United University Professions, which represents professors and other employees at SUNY’s 29 state-operated campuses, 17 of which have teacher preparation programs, [said,] ‘S.E.D.’s certification exams are invalid and deeply flawed ... There is a reason why: it was done on purpose. This is failure by design. Simply put, New York’s student teachers have been set up to fail by S.E.D. and Governor Cuomo. The governor has made no secret of the fact that he wants to close teacher preparation programs. Now he wants to justify that decision.’” [PRO] http://bit.ly/1AMjEOG

This is of course the strategy of the reform movement - to undercut what is "public" in order to eventually "privatize."  

To that end, they've created the public school crisis by cutting funding, increasing mandates, rolling out new standards before there was any curricula for them, tying those new standards to tests that nobody was prepared for, then setting the failure rates for those tests at 70% in order to be able to declare the public education system in "crisis" and in need of "dramatic reform."

Now they're aiming at teacher preparation programs too in order to prove those "failures" and impose "dramatic reform" on that sector of education.

It's a classic neoliberal blueprint being carried out here in New York State, one of the so-called "bluest" states in the nation, but really, just a playground for the Milton Friedman acolytes at this point.

John Flanagan Signals There'll Be No More Local Negotiation Of NY's Teacher Evaluation System

From Capital NY's morning email on education:

Senate education chair John Flanagan said lawmakers should consider limiting school districts’ control over their evaluation plans. “Maybe we should be having a discussion about a statewide protocol,” he said on "The Capitol Pressroom," a public radio program. “Instead of having 700 disparate agreements, let’s have a menu where you have 10 or 12 options for school districts to get involved in, because all of these things have to be negotiated, and one of the things that the unions jealously guard, which I understand and respect, is the concept of local control. They want to be able to negotiate everything. And yet, I don’t really see anyone out there who is ... jumping up and down and saying everything is working really well.” Capital’s Jessica Bakeman: http://bit.ly/13u8zss; listen to the full interview, with host Susan Arbetter: http://bit.ly/1e0QTZP

No one should be surprised that Cuomo and his GOP and IDC allies in the State Senate will go at "local control" of the APPR system.

Their complaint is that not enough teachers were declared "ineffective" by the APPR evaluation system.

One way to rectify that is to minimize the differences between districts and standardize the whole thing (which really means rig it to increase the "ineffective" ratings.)

Yeah, they'll say there's a "menu of options" for districts to choose from, 10 to 12 options, but they'll all be rigged by the state to accomplish their main goal - increasing the number of "ineffective" ratings across the state and shedding the payroll of teachers.

Flanagan's on the take from StudentsFirst and other ed deform groups, just the way Cuomo is.

You can see that he's planning on doing the bidding of his owners in the coming legislative session.

Cuomo Employs Shock Doctrine To Blow Up New York's Public Education System

You claim the following:

The fact that only about one third of students are proficient on state tests in math and language arts was “simply unacceptable,” the letter said.

In fact, the test scores were rigged by NYSED Commissioner King and Regents Chancellor Tisch so that only one third would be "proficient."

Here is Diane Ravitch from 2013 on that rigging:

New York City’s chief academic officer–a testing zealot–here announces that scores will plummet on the new Common Core tests administered last spring for the first time. They will plummet because the state decided to align its standards to NAEP, which are far more demanding than those of any state.

Over the years, many researchers have maintained that the NAEP achievement levels are “fundamentally flawed” and “unreasonably high.” If you google the terms NAEP and “fundamentally flawed,” you will find many articles criticizing the NAEP benchmarks. Here is a good summary.

What you need to know about NAEP achievement levels is that they are not benchmarked to international standards. They are based on the judgment calls of panels made up of people from different walks of life who decide what students in fourth grade and eighth grade should know and be able to do. It is called “the modified Angoff method” and is very controversial among scholars and psychometricians.

Setting the bar so high is one thing when assessing samples at a state and national level, but quite another when it becomes the basis for judging individual students. It is scientism run amok. It is unethical. It sets the bar where only 30-35% can clear it. Why would we do this to the nation’s children?

Nonetheless, these “unreasonably high” standards are now the guidelines for judging the students of Néw York.

Consequently, teachers and parents can expect to be stunned when the scores are released.

The good news is that teachers and schools will not be punished this year. The punishments start next year.

This is Shock Doctrine in action from Andrew Cuomo and the so-called education leaders in this state.

They artificially lowered the scores by increasing the "rigor" of the tests (done before any of the new curriculum for the new tests was developed, btw), now they claim the lowered scores are reason for why they must blow up the school system and radically "reform" it.

They created the problem, now they use it to push through the policies they want anyway (i.e., school privatization.)

Open Thread: Does Any State Have A Quota For How Many Teachers Must Be Rated "Ineffective" Every Year?

The last 24 hours we've gotten an indication that Governor Andrew Cuomo and Regents Chancellor Tisch will look to impose some kind of "quota" on the percentage of teachers that a district must rate "ineffective" every year (see here and here)

This news comes after education reformers have complained that there weren't enough teachers rated "ineffective" either statewide or in New York City.

So here's a question I have for you out there:

Are there any states that have a quota for how many teachers have to be rated "ineffective" every year and, if so, how does that system work? 

NYSED: Teacher Evaluators Must Rate At Least 5% Of Teachers "Ineffective" For System To Be Valid

This story is behind a paywall at Capital NY (previewed in the Capital NY's morning education email), but if you're looking for an indication of where Governor Cuomo and Merryl Tisch plan to go to "strengthen" teacher evaluations and make them more "competitive," here's a hint:

“There’s a real contrast between how our students are performing and how their teachers and principals are evaluated,” Tisch said in a statement. “The ratings from districts aren’t differentiating performance. We look forward to working with the Governor, Legislature, NYSUT, and other education stakeholders to strengthen the evaluation law in the coming legislative session.”

The education department report includes recommendations for how to improve the system. For example, if more than 75 percent of teachers or principals are rated “highly effective” or fewer than 5 percent are rated “ineffective” on the component of the evaluation system that is based on observations, the lead evaluators in that district should be retrained and an independent audit might be appropriate, the department recommended. [PRO] http://bit.ly/1sByLgW

If they will "strengthen" evaluations next year by ensuring that school leaders rate at least 5% of teachers in every district "ineffective," that translates to ensuring that school administrators rate at least 5% of teachers "ineffective" in every building.

In short, they've come up with an arbitrary number - 5% - and are saying this is the benchmark we want to see for "ineffective" ratings handed out.

Just as NYSED and the Regents rigged the Common Core tests for 70% failing, they're now going to rig the APPR teacher evaluation system so that at least 5% of teachers are deemed "ineffective" every year and slated for firing.

Teacher Survivor: Cuomo & Tisch Edition - coming soon to a school near you.

Can you survive the next round?

NYSED Commissioner King: We'll Rig Common Core Tests To Show Continued Gains Over Time

Jessica Bakeman at Capital NY:

ALBANY—State education commissioner John King expects student performance on Common Core-aligned exams to improve over time, as it has in Kentucky, the only state that has moved faster than New York in implementing the more rigorous test standards.

Kentucky reported significant gains during the third year of Common Core-aligned state exams, the results of which were released last Friday. Students across grade levels improved in most subjects. Graduation and college-readiness rates improved as well and typically underperforming groups of students, such as those living in poverty or with disabilities, also showed improvements.

“We are optimistic that we will see continued growth as we head into the third year of Common Core assessments,” King said. “Like Kentucky, we can expect that the progress over time will confirm the strength of the work of teachers and principals on implementing the Common Core.”

As I've pointed out over and over here at Perdido Street School blog, the educrats decide what is "passing" or not when it comes to these tests.

That renders this kind of thing meaningless:

The results of Kentucky’s third year of testing provides more encouraging data for Common Core advocates.

For example, Kentucky's college-readiness rate is now 62 percent, up from 54 percent last year and 47 percent in 2012. The four-year graduation rate is also up slightly, to 87 percent.

Gee, who set's the college-readiness rate?

Educrats in Kentucky.

Who decides that rate has jumped from 47% in 2012 to 65% now?

Educrats in Kentucky.

Want to make a bet those stats wouldn't hold up to scrutiny if an independent audit of the scoring methodology were done?

The same thing happened here in New York last year when educrats lowered the number of correct answers students needed to score "proficient" on the Common Core exams.

The NY Post reported back in August the following:

State officials touted increases in scores on tough Common Core exams this year but failed to reveal that they had lowered the number of right answers needed to pass half the exams.

The state Education Department dropped the number of raw points needed to hit proficiency levels in six of the 12 English and math exams given to students in grades 3 to 8, officials acknowledged.
...

Student scores plunged on last year’s statewide 3-8 tests — the first based on the new Common Core standards. Before the 2013 exams, a panel of 95 educators decided how many points, or correct answers, students had to get to demonstrate proficiency.

But the point cutoffs were tweaked after this year’s tests. The state and its testing vendor, Pearson, found six tests were harder and four easier this year than in 2013, Wagner said.

They did so by comparing how students performed on “anchor” test questions — identical items used in both 2013 and 2014. A report on the scoring process will be released in December or January, Wagner said.

The changes raise questions about the validity of the results.

“The information given out about the test questions does not provide a complete picture, making it hard to judge how much progress students made last year,” said Fred Smith, a former testing analyst for city schools.

"Progress" as practiced by educrats in power pushing an agenda always needs to be carefully parsed and studied.

So when King says he is sure that NY students will show continued progress on the Common Core tests over time, what he means is he and his fellow merry men and women in reform in Albany will rig the scores to ensure that's exactly what happens.

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.

Cuomo/Hochul Spent $5.9 Million On Primary

This says everything you need to know about the corrupt nature of our politics:

ALBANY – They were never worried about their Democratic Party primary challengers earlier this month, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and his running mate, Erie County’s Kathy Hochul, insisted over and over again.

Worries aside, Cuomo and Hochul spent about $5.9 million in the final couple of weeks and days immediately following their recent closer-than-expected Democratic primary contests.

New campaign finance filings with the state Board of Elections show that the governor spent $5.6 million, much of it on television ads, during the primary campaign in which he faced political newcomer Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham law professor who captured 34 percent of the Democratic vote against Cuomo.

Hochul's opponent Tim Wu spent under $300,000 on the campaign, Teachout's filings aren't available yet but it will be around the same numbers as Wu's.

$5.9 million to about $700,000

American democracy at its finest.

So Much For Randi Weingarten And The AFT Fighting The Common Core

Norm Scott is at the AFT convention in L.A. - he reports Randi Weingarten and her Unity/UFT minions had the votes to secure their own pro-Common Core resolution but rigged the committee process in order to ensure the Chicago Teachers Union resolution condemning Common Core didn't pass anyway:

Since we were not allowed in, we were watching the Education Issues Committee debate from outside the glass doors. With long lines at the mic, it was clear that Chicago TU people did not have the muscle to win the room over to its anti- common core resolution to counter the Weingarten pro common core - with conditions.

...

But just like at home where winning a majority is not enough, the Unity Caucus block voting machine (they model the Hassidic community) which controls the AFT did not leave any stones unturned.

Having experienced Unity tactics in the last 2 conventions, the CTU crew tried to get a step ahead. One of them asked me how much earlier they should get there to gain seats near the mics. "You should have left yesterday," I said.

Well, they got there early enough to get seats at the mics. Seeing the situation, never underestimate the slugs. They just cleared the room to force the CTU people out of their seats and had everyone re-enter, thus allowing Unity and allies to capture the seats around the mics. One CTUer left a bag on the seat. But when she got back, the bag had been moved and Mulgrew was sitting in the seat.

The CTU should have brought chains and locked themselves to their chairs - make Unity use a fork lift to get them out. Actually, I need to share some of my "I refuse to move, call the cops" stories with Chicago. Just don't move when they tell you to and invite them to call the cops. I once lay down on a table in the lobby at the DA when they told me to remove our lit. Think that is why they think I'm crazy or is it just my imagination?

I think mid-westerners are just too nice.

That's Weingarten's "vibrant AFT democracy" in action.

Remember this morning when I asked "Is Randi Weingarten REALLY Getting The Message" about how much opposition there is in the rank-and-file to Common Core and the ancillary corporate education reforms that come with it?

Remember how I said to watch what they do rather than listen to what they say over this stuff?

Well, if you were watching this farce, you saw happen exactly what I thought would happen - Weingarten and her shills talked a good game about opposition to Common Core and leaving it up to the membership whether the condemnatory CCSS resolution passed or not, then rigged the game to make sure that didn't happen.

In other words, they ensured that their lame "The Common Core Standards are wonderful if only the implementation was better" resolution passed.

Dunno what the usually astute Stephanie Simon was drinking last night when she wrote up her Politico piece about how the AFT leadership was escalating opposition to the CCSS, but whatever it was, she should stop drinking it so we can get back the astute reporting she always does.

Because the AFT leadership had NO intention of letting the condemnatory CTU resolution on the Core pass committee and go to the convention floor.

Randi Weingarten and the AFT/UFT leadership remain as pro-Common Core as ever - the proof was in the committee vote.

Working Families Party Rank-And-File Call "Bullshit!" On Governor Cuomo

As in literally:

For four hours on Saturday, the W.F.P.’s convention was a collective group therapy session, where dozens of members of the left-wing of New York’s Democratic party aired their long-building displeasure with Cuomo.

...

It was a bizarro version of the Democratic convention earlier in May, where Cuomo was the unquestioned star and lawmakers carefully avoided criticizing him.

At the Desmond, Cuomo was target practice.

He won the line, but not before many W.F.P. members took the podium at the hotel to flog him publicly, repeatedly calling him a “liar” who’d abandoned his own party.

Among the dissidents was former ACORN head Bertha Lewis. She took the podium and said of Cuomo’s nomination, “Well, I beg to differ.”

“We gave him four years and we said then, never again,” she said.

She brought the crowd to its feet.

In a brutal speech in support of Teachout, Capital Region delegate Susan Weber decried Cuomo’s support for charter schools run by “rich bastards” and urged the party not to accept the deal with Cuomo.

“What's the problem with that deal? He’s a liar,” she said referring to Cuomo. “He won’t keep his promise. He’ll figure out a way to squirm out of it.”

“I was under the impression we were never going to do the same thing we’ve done before and expect a different result,” she said.

“There's a word for that and it’s called psychosis. We are not psychotic!”

...

Pro-Cuomo speeches were frequently interrupted by cries of “coward!” and “bullshit!” from the audience.

None of the rank-and-file party members spoke on Cuomo’s behalf.

In the end, Cuomo got what he wanted - the WFP ballot line and no WFP candidate running from his left in the general election.

And Cuomo made no bones about that today:

On Sunday, Cuomo was in New York City to march in a parade in honor of Israel. He told reporters that the fight on Saturday night didn’t matter.

“It’s very simple at these political conventions: you either win or you lose,” he said.

“You know, the Democratic Party, we have a big tent, we have a lot of people with a lot of opinions and everybody has a voice and everybody wants to use it. So, part of being a Democrat is the lively debate among the people in the party.”

“But at the end of the day I won the endorsement and that’s what really relevant.”

And he has a point about that.

But the anger that was displayed at the WFP convention last night, as so ably covered by Laura Nahmias in her Capital NY article, as demonstrated in last night's tweets from reporters and other observers at the convention, is not going to go away just because Cuomo won the WFP endorsement.

In fact, if anything, it's going to simmer and bubble to a boil, particularly as the arrogant Cuomo continues to treat liberals and progressives around the state with disdain and scorn.

What happens with that anger after that, well, it's anybody's guess.

But if Cuomo thinks he put to rest his problems from the left with last night's rigged WFP convention vote, he's got another thing coming.

Some Reaction To Cuomo's Common Core Panel

Here are some comments left at the Capital Confidential reporting Cuomo's Common Core panel announcement:

Once again the Bully of New York fails to include the real experts in the field. Educators have been saying all along what is best for student achievement but it has fallen upont deaf ears. Sorry knuckle dragger but educators are not the blame here. Education policy has been and is set by the Regents and the Education Commisioners. These are ALL political appointees and donors. Educators are rule followers, The only reason there could be an person in the classroom that should not be there, is poor management ( the Administrator who is in charge of evaluations).

...

Another PANEL to STUDY the issue!!!! The make up of the panel is a joke. I’m surprised it doesn’t include a rep from Pearson. Our kids have taken enough. GOVERNOR CUOMO – what don’t you understand?? Enough is enough. DELAY, or better yet, ELIMINATE the Common Core now. For once our senate and assembly leaders have displayed some common sense on the common core. Can’t our governor follow their lead?????

...

So much for separation of powers. If NYS is so broke, why does Governor Andrew Cuomo appoint so many panels and hire so many consultants.

...

Another panel that will examine the facts and report out exactly what they are told to report. King Kuomo owns this – he pushed hard to roll out Common Core and then backed away – now it’s yet another panel that will…surprisingly recommend whatever King Kuomo tells it to.

...

Wow–the Governor put three people with backgrounds in public education on this Commission. It must be an election year. His last Commission on education reported back to him the recommendations he wanted so he could propose them as his ideas–but they kicked the can down the road on the most important issue (the equitable funding of schools). It is obscene that NY state schools with virtually no students from impoverished families spend almost $3,000 more per pupil than districts that have very high poverty rates–but that is how the Governor and the Long Island Republicans want things. What does that equate to–visualize walking through two buildings one with high rates of poverty–and one with kids from prosperous families–then remind yourself that the kids in each classroom you pass in the wealthy school have $60,000 more support than the kids in buildings with high concentrations of poverty. Cuomo fights to maintain this inequity. NY citizens should be outraged!

...

Stop fighting it, people. Corporations know what’s best for our children.

...

Who is the Governor kidding ? Yet another “Panel” of experts. What we need is local control over local schools, NYSED has been and continues to be a huge waste of taxpayer money. When will people stand up for their children and let the Governor know that they are sick of his double triple blah blah blah. The Governor like to hear himself bloviate on the issue du jour and not make any decisions. Fracking was less than a month away three years ago.  Vote the rascal out.

There was one comment in support:

The alternative to Common Core is to persist in the past…continue to produce high school graduates who are *not* ready for college. Over half of college students drop out. Even the SUNY Chancellor has weighed in that Common Core needs to persist. Growth without some pain is unrealistic. Improve or continue to further lag behind other countries. The USA is ranked in the 14th through 36th in the world in terms of high school education. It would be crazy to think that is acceptable. What is your alternative to Common Core? None!

As I wrote last night, the panel is almost completely stacked with Common Core State Standards proponents, so the chances of any meaningful reform of the state's education reform agenda coming out of this panel is nil.

Many of the commenters made the same point at Capital Confidential - the panel was rigged to recommend exactly what Cuomo wants it to recommend - continued implementation of the Common Core State Standards.

They may suggest a slower timeline in that implementation, they may propose a slight delay in the use of high stakes with the CCSS tests.

But in the end, they will reaffirm the wonders of the Common Core and tell us that the only way New York State children will grow up to be "competitive" in a "global marketplace" is under the "rigor" of the Common Core State Standards and the attendant testing that comes with it. 

Taking A Closer Look At Andrew Cuomo's Rigged Common Core Panel

Via State of Politics, here is the Common Core panel list:

The panel’s members are:

• Stanley S. Litow, Vice President, IBM Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs & President, IBM International Foundation (Chair)
• Senator John Flanagan, Senate Education Committee Chair (Senate appointee)
• Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, Assembly Education Committee Chair (Assembly appointee)
• Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Stanford University Graduate School of Education
• Todd Hathaway, Teacher, East Aurora High School (Erie County)
• Alice Jackson-Jolley, Parent (Westchester County)
• Anne Kress, President, Monroe Community College
• Nick Lawrence, Teacher, East Bronx Academy for the Future (NYC)
• Delia Pompa, Senior Vice President of Programs, National Council of La Raza
• Charles Russo, Superintendent, East Moriches UFSD (Long Island)
• Dan Weisberg, EVP & General Counsel, The New Teacher Project

As Leonie Haimson pointed out, Litow is a proponent of CCSS (he wrote an opinion piece stating New York must not abandon the Common Core.)

So we have a CCSS proponent chairing the panel.

John Flanagan, head of the Senate Education Committee, was endorsing Common Core as late as last August, though he has recently stepped back a bit from that as the political pressure has mounted and has called for a delay in their use for high stakes.

Cathy Nolan is also a supporter of the Common Core standards, though like Flanagan, she has called for a delay in their use for high stakes.

Linda Darling-Hammond has given some support to CCSS, though she has criticized the process by which the standards were developed as well as expressed concerns around the CCSS testing and the way CCSS has been implemented.

Todd Hathaway is a teacher from Erie County who has publicly testified against the testing as imposed by SED and the Regents.

Alice Jackson-Jolley is the daughter of a Pataki "pal" who said this about CCSS:

Jackson-Jolley said she has an open mind about the Common Core, in particular how it has been introduced in New York. But she said that she wants her two daughters, 10 and 7, who attend North Salem schools, to receive a more challenging public-school education than what she received.“I hope they get an education that is rigorous, challenges them, and inspires them, so they never feel they are skating through,” she said. “When they get to college and beyond, I want them to feel prepared and competitive.”

Don't want to say she sounds definitively like a CCSS supporter, but she's throwing around the kind of CCSS buzzwords ("rigorous" and "competitive") you hear from pro-CCSS supporters.

Nick Lawrence is a member of Educators4Excellence who testified he supports the Common Core.

Delia Pompa is senior VP for programs at La Raza, an organization that has supported CCSS even as it has expressed concern over how CCSS implementation will affect Latino students.

Anne Kress, President of Monroe Community College says there are no problems with the Common Core standards as standards - she thinks they're just swell.

Charles Russo is a district superintendent who testified he loves Common Core and the EngageNY modules.

Dan Weisberg is an education reformer who runs an education reform outfit that is pro-CCSS and just recently wrote this:

Back in the fall, we noted that teachers unions in New York appeared to be resorting to Tea Party tactics in an attempt to bully Governor Andrew Cuomo and Education Commissioner John King into backtracking on two of their signature achievements: Implementing a state law that requires better teacher evaluation systems, and adopting the Common Core State Standards, a set of more ambitious and coherent learning standards for students.

What has happened in the months since? Despite all the maneuvering, Cuomo and King haven’t backed down. In fact, Cuomo reiterated his focus on these achievements in his State of the State address last week, pointing to the evaluation law as a success story and proposing to use the results from evaluations to award bonuses of up to $20,000 to the state’s highest-rated teachers.

...

What’s happening in New York is an important lesson for leaders across the country: If you’re serious about education reform, be prepared to fend off a steady stream of political attacks from both sides of the aisle, even after your policies have been adopted.

Fortunately, Governor Cuomo and Commissioner King don’t scare easily, and they finish what they start. They’re setting a commendable example by sticking to their principles in the face of all these attacks. Here’s hoping they keep it up, for the sake of the millions of students in New York who will benefit from higher standards.

Does this sound like the kind of panel that is going to give us anything but a pre-determined conclusion that the Common Core State (sic) Standards are wonderful and if the implementation has been slightly screwy, well, that's the kind of thing you have to deal with when you're doing large-scale reform?

You can bet that whatever conclusions they reach on the CCSS, they will reiterate how swell CCSS are and how we must keep going forward (although they may suggest a slightly slower timeline than the one King and Tisch have us on now.)

In short, the panel is rigged for the pro-Common Core outcome Sheriff Andy Cuomo wants.

What "Vibrant" Democracy In The AFT/NYSUT/UFT Looks Like

Randi Weingarten said somewhere on the Twitter last night that the inter-union fight in the NYSUT is just an example of "vibrant democracy" in action and anybody who sees anything else in the battle between the Mulgrew/Weingarten-backed "grassroots" challengers and the Iannuzzi slate is plain wrong.

Brian from Port Jefferson Station Teachers Association has an interesting perspective on the "vibrant democracy" that is the AFT/NYSUT/UFT and left this comment on a post I wrote about Phil Rumore, the Buffalo teachers head, telling Capital NY that he was thinking about supporting the Mulgrew/Weingarten-backed "challengers" because the current NYSUT leadership hasn't been "aggressive" in pushing back against the SED/Regents reforms:

Rumore is now just doing what you are going to see a lot of NYSUT locals due- back Pallotta's slate because they are going to win. It's pretty simple, with 800 NYSUT delegates, the UFT has 40% of the voters in the election. With all of those delegates being "invite only" Unity Caucus members, Mikey Mulgrew won't allow any dissent, so all 800 will vote for their endorsed Pallotta slate. That essentially seals the election. Pallotta fills out the rest of the slate with a few others from around the state who are intoxicated by the lure of power, going from small locals to statewide "leaders", to make it seem as though it is a "grassroots movement from across the state" yet it really consists of a few more hacks beholden to Mikey Mulgrew and Unity Caucus. So who ever is backed by Mulgrew automatically wins. Therefore locals fall in line behind him so as not to get on the bad side of the "new" administration. But of course in the UFT/NYSUT/AFT world "new" and "change" mean business as usual. Ironically once Iannuzzi no longer felt beholden to Mulgrew, due to the challenge from Pallotta's slate, he got aggressive, as Rumore's BFT wished he had been earlier. Rumore's BFT responds by backing the same powers who ruled the passive Iannuzzi. But we live in a world where many "leaders" would rather be in the good graces of those in power than to truly stand up for their members.

Nothing will change until there is no longer a one party system at the state level. The unorganized 60% of the state needs to become organized. They need to bond together to oppose the Mulgrew run Unity Caucus. The good thing about this year's election is that some of the smarter people from around the state are beginning to become aware of the rigged nature of these elections. Hopefully the awareness leads to necessary changes.

There is nothing "vibrant" or "democratic" about the way the AFT/NYSUT/UFT currently works. 

The bosses make the decisions, the party hacks vote the way the bosses want, the smaller unions join suit so as to be on the right side - and the patronage is handed out and punishment doled out for any who do not comply.

Some might call that kind of operation a "vibrant democracy".

But it that doesn't sound like a "vibrant democracy" to me.

It sounds like "rigged" democracy.

And, in point of fact, that's what it is.

I'm not an Iannuzzi guy, like Rumore I think he failed to be as aggressive as he should have been against the SED/Regents/Cuomo reforms.

That said, the "grassroots challengers" come from the even-less aggressive UFT-wing, the group that continues to support Andrew Cuomo, likes the APPR teacher evaluation system, was happy SED Commissioner King got to impose it on NYC and blames every problem in the system on Bloomberg even though many of the problems the rank-and-file are most concerned with have been brought to us not by Bloomberg but by Cuomo, Tisch and King.

Even as other unions like CSEA and PEF get more aggressive against Governor Cuomo, Michael Mulgrew and the UFT "remain on good terms" with Cuomo, as State of the Politics put it today.

Does anybody really expect them to get more "aggressive" against the reforms when they're taking out Iannuzzi for getting more aggressive against Cuomo, Tisch and King, raising money for Cuomo as we speak and thinking about endorsing Sheriff Andy for re-election?

As Brian writes, it will be "business as usual" when the "change" slate takes over.

How NYC Teachers Are Going To Be Rated "Ineffective" Based On Test Scores Alone

A piece from Carol Burris in the Washington Post about how one excellent teacher got dinged as "developing" after receiving 58 out of 60 points from her principal's evaluation is a must read for NYC teachers.

This is a cautionary tale that needs to be sent to all your colleagues.

This teacher Burris writes about works in a "small city district."

She received 5 points and 10 points respectively on her state and local test score components.

That's 15 out of 40 points on the test score components.

She received 58 out of 60 points from her principal.

Were she a teacher in NYC, she would have been rated "ineffective" on both the state and local measures, because John King made the cut scores higher in both of those components for NYC teachers when he imposed his evaluation plan back in June (see here.)

This teacher was rated "developing" overall in her district because she received 73 out of 100 points on APPR.

But were she a city teacher, she would have been rated "ineffective" overall despite the 58 out of 60 points she received from her principal because both her state and local test component numbers are in the "ineffective" range and per the Cuomo/Tisch/King decree in Feruary 2012 that both the NYSUT and the UFT agreed to, any teacher who comes up "ineffective" on BOTH the state and local test components HAS to be rated "ineffective" overall.

So, this teacher is rated "developing" in one district, but would be rated "ineffective" in NYC.

That's how King rigged the NYC system to ding many teachers here "ineffective" no matter how they score on the rest of the evaluation.

And the UFT leadership and Michael Mulgrew in particular hailed this rigged system as adding extra layers of protections for teachers.

The reality is, it is rigged to give the district the power to fire many teachers after two years of "ineffective" ratings.

This is what the system was developed and designed to do.

And our union leaders in the both the UFT and the NYSUT signed off on this thing.

They know it's rigged, but either because of political expediency or backroom deals or whatever, they have signed off on this new evaluation system that has been designed and developed to rate many teachers in NYC "ineffective" no matter how well they do on the 60% principal observations.

Don't think that a new mayor can change any of this either.

I dunno how much de Blasio would be willing to change in any case, but even if he wanted to scrap the system and start fresh, he cannot.

The NYSED has this system in place until 2016, it can be redone through collective bargaining, but only if NYSED Commissioner King - the man who imposed this system in the first place - agrees to the changes.

What is the likelihood that John King is going to allow any evaluation system in NYC that isn't rigged to replace the rigged one he imposed this June before the sun sets on the current system in 2016?

Not very bloody likely, in my opinion.

Get ready for a lot of bloodletting and chaos the next four years in NYC schools.

The system Cuomo allowed King to impose that the UFT hailed ensures that many of the teachers here in the system today will be gone by 2017 - either through quitting in disgust from all the insanity of the new evaluation system or through "ineffective" ratings.

And I do not think the word "bloodletting" is hyperbole for what is going to happen in NYC schools.

Remember, Cuomo has called for the "death penalty" for "failing" schools and "failing" districts.

"Bloodletting" is the perfect description for what APPR ADVANCE is going to bring to schools and the teaching profession.

What Happens After Parents Get Their Children's Common Core Test Scores?

Two weeks ago, NYSED Commissioner John King And Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch gleefully released the scores on their vaunted new Common Core tests.

They had been bragging for months that the scores would plummet and, sure enough, they did.

That's what happens when you rig the cut results to show a 30% fall in test scores, which is what the Merry Men and Women in Reform at NYSED and the Regents did.

They set an unreachable benchmark of where they wanted the scores first, then when the tests came back in April, they ensured those tests would hit that benchmark.

The goal was to say that public schools all across the state, in cities and suburbs and rural areas, were failing.

As Rick Hess explained at his Education Week blog, erstwhile education reformers have this dream that they can do to the nation's school districts what they've done to many urban school districts - get the public to believe they are "failing" and call for "reforms" to disrupt the status quo and bring about radical change, the privatization of the school system.

Hess revealed the reformer blueprint in his Education Week post:

When I ask how exactly the Common Core is going to change teaching and learning, I'm mostly told that it's going to finally shine a harsh light on the quality of suburban schools, shocking those families and voters into action.

This will apparently entail three steps: First, politicians will actually embrace the Common Core assessments and then will use them to set cut scores that suggest huge numbers of suburban schools are failing. Then, parents and community members who previously liked their schools are going to believe the assessment results rather than their own lying eyes. (In the case of NCLB, these same folks believed their eyes rather than the state tests, and questioned the validity of the latter--but the presumption is that things will be different this time.) Finally, newly convinced that their schools stink, parents and voters will embrace "reform."

And so King and Tisch set about working on step one of the reformer blueprint.

After the RttT legislation gave them their Common Core implementation, they gave tests with cut scores so "rigorous" that they knew what the failing rates were going to be months before they actually gave the tests.

Now they're on to step two - trying to convince the public and especially the parents of children in the school system that schools all over the state are failing and need radical disruptions to solve the myriad problems facing them.

They've brought in the US Secretary of Education to sell their snake oil and gotten some "business leaders" to start a public relations movement to continue the Common Core implementation (not surprisingly, some of those "business leaders" in that p.r. movement stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars off Common Core.)

They're working hard to get to step three, the radical dismantling of one of the last parts of the commons that hasn't yet been privatized - the public school system.

But after years of pushing through their reforms with little opposition other than a few lonely voices protesting that these radical changes to curriculum and teacher evaluations are untested, untried and unpiloted and may do more damage than harm, the reform movement in New York State is starting to get pushback - and not just from the usual progressive educator groups.

As NYC Educator posted yesterday, 25 Republican Assembly members have introduced a bill to withdraw New York State from both the Common Core curriculum movement and Race to the Top mandates.

In addition, the education committee in the State Senate will be holding five hearings around New York to hear the public's response to the radical education reform agenda pushed by John King and NYSED and Merryl Tisch and the Regents.

John Flanagan (R), the chair of that committee, is holding these hearings because he says as a parent he is concerned about some of these reforms, including data collection of student information, the consequences of tying teacher evaluations to test scores, and how the Common Core test scores came about among other things.

Just as opposition to the Common Core movement is rising all around the country on the right, opposition to the Common Core movement here in NY State is rising on the right as well.

Kati Haycock of the Education Trust told the NY Times that education reformers are "terrified" that those on the right and and those on the left will join together to destroy their Common Core curriculum and assessment movement.

That very thing is starting to happen here in NY.

The week after next we will get a big boost to the movement to withdraw the state from Common Core and the Race to the Top mandates when schools release the individual tests scores of students to their parents.

While there has been much hand-wringing and hullabaloo over the plummeting test scores the last few weeks, much of this hand-wringing and hullabaloo has been in the abstract - parents do not know what their own children's scores are yet, they only know how their children's schools and school districts stacked up on the new tests.

Just wait until parents all across the state get the notice that their Little Susies fell from a "4" last time around on the ELA exam to a "2" this time around.

I bet some of those parents are going to remember how Little Susie came home after the tests back in April and said she didn't have enough time to finish the tests and how the questions were so confusing, and they made her feel sick in her stomach because there was a lot of stuff on that test she had never seen before.

Now maybe those parents will buy into the King/Tisch/reformer line that the problem is with schools and teachers and we need radical and disruptive change IMMEDIATELY to solve the education problems these tests scores are emblematic of.

Maybe.

But I'm going to bet that quite a few of those parents are going to instead wonder about the quality of those tests and just how the cut scores got cut the way they did and are going to call their legislators with those very questions.

Diane Ravitch called for NYSED Commissioner King's removal the other day and suggested parents and teachers contact the Regents to demand his removal.

I know of one person who contacted a Regent and heard some jive back about how he isn't ready to support such a radical move - even though this Regent is opposed to many of the reforms currently pushed by King.

The Regents are only subject to public pressure when it comes from legislators, and so it behooves us all to contact our legislators and let them know what we think of the Common Core and the Common Core tests and the APPR teacher evaluation system tied to those tests and all the other radical reforms being pushed out of Albany by John King and Merryl Tisch.

With 25 Republican Assembly members already co-sponsoring a bill to pull New York out of the RttT mandates and the Core, with John Flanagan feeling the need to hold hearings across the state about NYSED's reform agenda, you can bet your legislators are going to listen to what you have to say.

For a long while now, both elected officials and education functionaries have promoted their reform agendas wholly unconcerned with what the public thinks about those agendas.

But as opposition to the Common Core and other radical education reforms ratchets up from both the left and the right, they are more susceptible to public pressure than they have been in the past.

As Haycock said, they're "terrified" right and left will join together to give them a fight they cannot handle - something that is starting to happen in this state.

So what happens to King and Tisch and their reforms in Albany after the state test scores are released to parents in a week and a half?

Well, I doubt they will be removed or resign in disgrace or anything like that, but you can bet parents are going to be outraged over their kids' scores and some of those parents are going to contact their legislators to complain about the state's testing and legislators are going to let NYSED and the Regents know that political pressure from the public is increasing.

The reformers think the release of these test scores is their moment to finally convince the public the system is "failing" and radical changes are needed.

I think they're wrong about that.

I think when parents get the test scores of their own children in a few weeks and see how far the scores have fallen from the year before, they're going to question the education policy of the state and wonder how these tests got developed and scored and they're going to contact their legislators with those questions.

I think when those test scores get released and parents get really angry at their own children's scores, Tisch and King and the rest of the Merry Men and Women in Reform in Albany are going to face a counterattack to their reform movement like they've never seen before.

You can start the ball rolling by contacting your legislators and letting them know what you think about Merryl Tisch, John King, the Common Core curriculum, the test scores King and Tisch rigged and the teacher evaluations tied to those scores.

Here are some contacts:

http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/Sheldon-Silver/contact/

http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/

http://www.nysenate.gov/senators

The reformers think this is their time to finish off the public school system.

Let's disabuse them of that fantasy.

Joining together, parents and teachers, people on the right and people on the left, we can do just that.

NYC Passing Rates: 26% ELA, 30% Math

When you rig the exams to give you these kind of outcomes, well, these are the stats you get:

Large numbers of New York students failed reading and math exams last school year, education officials reported on Wednesday, unsettling parents, principals and teachers, and posing new challenges to a national effort to toughen academic standards. 

Across the city, 26 percent of students in third through eighth grade passed the state exams in English, and 30 percent passed in math, according to the New York State Education Department.

...

Under the old exams last year, the city fared better: 47 percent of students passed in English, and 60 percent passed in math. 

Statewide, 31 percent of students passed the exams in reading and math. Last year, 55 percent passed in reading, and 65 percent in math. 

Some educators were taken aback by the steep decline and said they worried the figures would rattle the confidence of students and teachers. 

Chrystina Russell, principal of Global Technology Preparatory in East Harlem, said she did not know what she would tell parents, who will receive scores for their children in late August. At her middle school, which serves a large population of students from poor families, 6.8 percent of students were rated proficient in English, and 9.5 percent in math. Last year, those numbers were 31 percent and 44 percent, respectively. 

“Now we’re going to come out and tell everybody that they’ve accomplished nothing this year and we’ve been peddling backward?” Ms. Russell said. “It’s depressing.”

The purveyors of the Common Core gospel say these tests required deeper analysis and more creative problem-solving skills than the old exams, but as was shown back in April, really what they did is add a whole lot more questions and cut the time given to students to complete the exams.

This is why I have called for the NYSED and the Regents to release the state's 3rd-8th grade ELA and math exams, in their entirety, with the grading rubrics and scoring charts and other methodology, so that parents and the public can see for themselves how the game was rigged.

The education reform establishment in this state, indeed in the nation, wants to blow up the public school system as it is currently constituted and usher in a new era of charterization and privatization.

Raising the standards beyond what is developmentally appropriate for children, then giving more difficult exams with shorter time allotments based upon those standards before teachers were even given the curriculum to try and prepare students, are two of the tools the reformers are using to bring about their Ayn Randian future.

This game was rigged from the start to get to this day - as Rick Hess noted at his blog on Ed Week:

When I ask how exactly the Common Core is going to change teaching and learning, I'm mostly told that it's going to finally shine a harsh light on the quality of suburban schools, shocking those families and voters into action.

This will apparently entail three steps:

First, politicians will actually embrace the Common Core assessments and then will use them to set cut scores that suggest huge numbers of suburban schools are failing.

Then, parents and community members who previously liked their schools are going to believe the assessment results rather than their own lying eyes. (In the case of NCLB, these same folks believed their eyes rather than the state tests, and questioned the validity of the latter--but the presumption is that things will be different this time.)

Finally, newly convinced that their schools stink, parents and voters will embrace "reform."

Getting parents and the public to embrace "reform" in the suburbs would give reformers the tools they crave to close schools, fire unionized teachers, open charter schools, hire non-unionized at-will employees, and bring all the free market education goodness Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and parts of New York City are enjoying.

But in order to get suburban parents to embrace "reform," they have to convince parents the current state of these schools is abysmal and the current crop of teachers are "failures."

Today is the day that they start that argument, hawking these Common Core tests scores as evidence that drastic and disruptive solutions are needed to fix the problems in the system.

But really, they engineered this crisis and the drop in scores themselves.

You won't see that story in the NY Times or the other corporate-owned media (except for Valerie Strauss's blog at the Washington Post, but that may soon end now that ed deformer Jeff Bezos owns the paper.)

But it is the truth.

Alas, in America, truth matters little.

Money, public relations, and power are what matter - and the deformers have all three on their side.