Voters also sided with unions on teacher pay and tenure, with 69 percent saying pay should not be based on how well the students perform on state tests and 26 percent saying it should.
Similarly, 67 percent say teacher tenure should not be based on test scores, with only 28 percent believing it should. This goes against the new teacher evaluation system pushed by Cuomo, which bases half of teachers’ scores on students’ performance on the exams.
...
The majority of voters - 65 percent - said state tests are not an accurate way to measure how well students are learning, compared to 31 percent who said they are.
69% opposed to merit pay based upon test scores, 67% opposed to tenure based upon test scores, 65% say standardized tests are no the best measurement of student learning.
The question wasn't asked, but you'd have to htink based upon these numbers that voters would not support Cuomo's APPR teacher evaluation system that bases 50% of a teacher's rating upon test scores.
The poll numbers against testing are about two to one against using them for merit pay, tenure or measurement of student learning.
Isn't it time NYSUT and the UFT ran ads touting these numbers and calling for the end of APPR as we know it and instead of helping Cuomo try and save it with some minor tweaks?
There's this myth perpetuated by education reformers, politicians and the media that "bad teachers" can't be fired, that once you become a tenured teacher, all you have to do to remain in the job is breathe and not get convicted of a felony.
Who'd want to become a teacher anywhere? I don't teach in a struggling
school (though its close) and the decision to come in to teaching ranks
as the biggest mistake of my life. Financially, psychologically, etc.
A toll is taken on the psyche when your profession is labeled as the
reason for almost all the negative issues going on in our society,
relentlessly, no matter how ridiculous. The volume of it and the
incessant nature makes one a bit twitchy. It was a stupid call. At
least working at Amazon, you are probably paid well for the few years
you survive....and then you can go get another job.
The thing
that isn't talked about so much, and should be, is that when a teacher
is drummed out, for any reason really, they will never teach again in
public school. It's an established, formalized, institutionalized,
fully-legal blacklisting. So a public school teacher falling under the
hatchet of reform faces a much steeper slope out of unemployment than
does, say, a corporate person who gets fired. As always, the
"accountability" and "disruption" on the corporate side is always
somehow lighter than they want to impose on the public side.
A fired
teacher is DONE....the one thing they have prepared and trained for is
no longer something they can tap on in their job search. (Unless they go
to work at a desperate private school that will pay them like $19k a
year.) Even admin....they leave or get booted somewhere, they get to
become admin somewhere else (see Elia). No deep institutional, legal
blacklisting for them! Even principals, AP's, Directors, etc in my
district who have been let go for deep incompetence always get another
job in Admin by the next school year in another district.
So
that's a thing and it matters. For teachers, our options become way way
way limited after being fired. We are the ultimate tightrope
walkers...no safety nets.
That's right - as I posted this morning, get the "I" rating smeared on your head and you're pretty much done - administrators will look to drum you out (especially if you're a senior teacher higher up on the salary step ladder), the system will look to drum you out (and with two "ineffective" ratings in a row, that can be done in an expedited manner), and no one will look to hire you.
I am in my fifteenth year as a public school teacher, before that I was in grad school and working as both a per diem substitute teacher and an SAT tutor.
I haven't had a job outside education since 1999.
Let's say I get dinged two years running under the new iteration of Andrew Cuomo's APPR teacher evaluation system and get an expedited trip out of my NYCDOE teaching job by 2017.
What would I do for work then?
As the commenter above noted, my experience and my resume is stuffed to the gills with education-related credentials and work.
Good luck to me trying to get a job doing something outside education with that kind of resume, but good luck to me trying to get a job inside education with the "ineffective" scarlet letter.
Walmart greeter here I come.
Welcome to Walmart, welcome to Walmart, welcome to Walmart...
It's time to dispense with the media myth that tenure is a lifetime appointment to a teaching gig.
The truth is, tenure no longer exists and it doesn't take a whole hell of a lot to have your career taken from you in an expedited (and rigged) process.
NORTH BERGEN -- A former North Bergen high school teacher claims in a political video that she was forced to campaign for longtime Mayor Nick Sacco, and was asked to give two politically connected officials' students top grades.
The video was posted on YouTube April 21 by Sacco's May 12 election opponent Larry Wainstein. On April 22, Mayor Nick Sacco and his supporters denied all the claims in a response video.
"I was being forced to go knock on doors and say 'Mayor Sacco is great, he's wonderful, and how everything was great,' and I was just very upset," said Sarah Guillen, a North Bergen resident, in Wainstein's video.
Sacco, who is also a top school administrator, posted his response on Facebook, calling Guillen's testimony "outright lies and slander."
There must be a new domain on the Danielson rubric - "Doing The Politically Expedient Thing To Ensure Incumbent Mayor/School Administrator Gets Re-elected."
“For months Andrew Cuomo attacked teachers and public schools. Now, with his support at record lows, so-called education reformers and their billionaire backers are running TV ads trying to rewrite history. But we know the truth.
“Cuomo wants to pile on high stakes testing, privatize classrooms, and divert money away from public schools by giving huge tax breaks to the wealthy.”
“Governor, New Yorkers agree: Put politics aside and put our kids first.”
The United Federation of Teachers on Sunday night declared victory in
an email to its members, writing that most of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s
“Draconian agenda” had been turned back by state lawmakers.
“Now all of our hard work is paying dividends,” the
teachers union that represents mostly New York City teachers wrote in
the email to members. “The governor’s Draconian agenda has, in large
part, been turned back. We want to thank the Assembly and the Senate for
standing up for our schools and school communities.”
It turned out that the governor's draconian agenda had not been turned back, that he had, in fact, gotten almost everything he wanted in the budget (including higher weight of test scores in evaluations, merit pay, school receivership for the state, tenure changes and certification changes), but that didn't stop Mulgrew and the UFT leadership from doing what they always do and declaring everything a victory.
ALBANY — State lawmakers raced to finish work on New York’s budget
Tuesday amid simmering resentment over Gov. Cuomo’s education reforms -
which opened up an unusual rift between the city and state teachers’
unions.
...
City teacher union president Michael Mulgrew angered NYSUT President
Karen Magee and her team after he put out a statement Sunday night -
before the education bill was even in print- claiming victory in beating
back some of Cuomo's more strident proposals, sources said.
While Magee urged lawmakers to reject the education measures, city
lawmakers said they were told by Mulgrew's team that voting for the
package would not be held against them.
"They just weren't on the same page," said one legislator of the two
unions. "The issue between them was whether to strike the best deal they
could or whether to oppose it outright."
This is not to mention that when the time to really fight Cuomo was at hand - during the election - Mulgrew and the UFT did all it could to help him out without looking like they were helping him.
Now, after all the help Weingarten, Mulgrew, and the UFT have given to Cuomo, both before his re-election and since by barely fighting against his agenda, they send out an ad that's hard-hitting and calls Cuomo on his attacks.
It's too little, too late and useless for anything other PR for people not paying close attention - which is emblematic of nearly everything the UFT and AFT do.
Looking at how this re-election season and budget process unfolded, I think you can make a very good argument that is the case.
First the AFT and UFT ensured Cuomo would not have to face a third party challenger in November by threatening WFP with financial ruin if Teachout were given the nod, then helped ensure Cuomo would have his running mate, the bank lobbyist, instead of Teachout's running mate, the law professor, win in the primary.
When it came time to fight Cuomo's education reform agenda, they did just enough to make it look like they were fighting it without effectively fighting it.
Then they gave the okay to Assembly Dems to vote for it even as NYSUT leaders were saying not to.
The time for the tough ads attacking Cuomo, the really tough ones, was before the budget was passed, not after.
Alas, now that the battle is over and Cuomo won big time, the UFT trots out the attack ad.
Maybe that will fool a few rank-and-file that the UFT is fighting Cuomo.
But it doesn't fool those of us who have paid attention to this fight and have seen with our own eyes how they helped Cuomo out at critical junctures to ensure he got everything he wanted.
ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo is telling his political backers he believes that
indicted ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is still calling the shots
in the chamber, the Daily News has learned.
Cuomo made the comments at a closed-door breakfast with members of his
campaign finance committee, according to a source with direct knowledge
of the statements.
Cuomo was bemoaning the fact that nothing has changed since Silver was
forced to resign his leadership post in early February after being hit
with federal corruption charges, the source said.
Cuomo, the source said, described new Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie as Silver's "instrumentality" in keeping power.
The governor claimed that Silver, who remains in the Assembly, is still
ruling through his team that Heastie has left in place, notably counsel
James Yates and Program and Policy Secretary Lou Ann Ciccone.
The source said that Cuomo added that Silver also has his imprint at
City Hall through de Blasio's budget director Dean Fuleihan, a former
longtime Silver aide.
"Shelly and the teachers union run everything through Fuleihan, Yates and Lou Ann," the source quoted Cuomo as saying.
And just in case you think the anonymous report might be b.s., here was Cuomo's reaction to the report:
A Cuomo spokeswoman didn't confirm or deny that the governor made the comments. Instead, she declined comment.
The Assembly looks like they won't give Cuomo everything he wants on education reform - it appears the power he wants to take over "failing" schools and districts won't be part of the budget, though changes to the evaluation system, a lift to the charter cap, more money for charters and tenure changes do seem like they are on tap.
So dunno why Cuomo is grousing - given how low he's fallen in polls (below water in the Siena poll, at the waterline in the Quinnipiac poll) and given how much protest his ed agenda has engendered around the state, that he's going to get as much of his agenda as he is is a major freaking victory.
As always, hope to be wrong believing that the Assembly, backed by the unions, will cave to him on evals, tenure, and charters.
Assembly Dems sent a letter to Heastie saying they should fight Cuomo on state takeover of failing schools and districts but they made no mention of any of the rest of his agenda - including teacher evaluation reform, tenure reform and raising the charter cap.
Today's Quinnipiac poll gives Dems plenty of cover to fight Cuomo on his education reform agenda.
But it's awfully hard to fight Cuomo when you're embracing him.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo's job-approval rating has dropped as he battles
with the state teachers union over education policy, according to a new
poll Wednesday.
The Quinnipiac University poll
showed 50 percent of New York voters approve of the job Cuomo is doing
as governor, compared to 39 percent who disapprove. That's Cuomo's
lowest job-approval rating since taking office and a drop from 58 percent in December, according to Quinnipiac.
Cuomo
got low marks from voters when it comes to schools. Just 28 percent of
those surveyed said they approve of Cuomo's handling of education
issues, with 63 percent disapproving.
...
“Gov. Andrew Cuomo gets his lowest grade on education, which is the top
priority for voters, a grade so bad it pulls down his whole job approval
score," Quinnipiac pollster Maurice Carroll said in a statement.
...
The poll showed education is on the mind of New York voters. A total
of 24 percent listed an education issue as the top priority for Cuomo
and lawmakers in 2015, topping the 15 percent who pointed to the economy
or jobs.
Cuomo's in a bubble, listening to his charter school donors and ed deform pals who have been telling him he can win with his deform agenda.
But he doesn't seem to realize that post-Comon Core, the politics around education have changed.
Slamming teachers unions and bashing teachers was a fairly effective strategy before the Common Core Era, but as the public has gotten a glimpse of the Common Core math, the insane testing schedules for children, the drill-and-kill days in public schools, they're less likely to blame teachers for problems in education and more likely to blame the people making the policy or the politicians who appoint those people.
That's clearly evident here in the Q polling data.
Cuomo's fighting this deform battle like it's 2011 but it's 2015 and the public has seen the Pineapple and the Hare, Common Core math, the Endless Testing regime for students (including five year old's!), Dr Ted J Morris Jr. and some of the other charter scandals and they're less fooled by the ed deform PR.
This doesn't mean some of the ed deform narrative doesn't still resonate with the public - it sometimes does (as Eva and her charter school ralliers know.)
But it's not a slam dunk the way it was just a few years ago and this is an epochal shift in the politics around education.
Governor Cuomo is discovering that lesson this morning with the release of the Quinnipiac poll showing him trounced by teachers.
Let's hope Assembly Dems - who have already indicated in two different ways that they plan to cave to Cuomo in budget negotiations (here and here) - have learned that lesson too.
“It’s obviously a complex issue,” Silver said. “It’s being presented to us and we’ll have to look at it.”
That equivocation on the evaluation and tenure proposals doesn't sound good to me.
That sounds to me like Silver's going to give on those.
Perhaps not the 50% Cuomo wants tied to test scores, but in the end, it sounds like much of what Cuomo wants on tenure and evals, Cuomo will get.
That's how I read Silver saying "We'll look at it" this early in the process.
Hope I'm wrong about that.
But unless the NYSUT and UFT tell Silver he's got to go to the mattresses on the "reforms" Cuomo proposed for APPR and tenure, Silver's going to agree to them.
You can see that in the rhetoric around the various education issues.
I think the charter cap increase will happen too - but the stronger rhetoric around that means Silver wants something in return for it.
Head-spinning data sets are the fluttering fans of both sides in the
school-reform debate, concealing ideological motivation of the game’s
players and the overwhelming complexity of measuring student
performance, but plenty of experts disagree about how important teacher
tenure really is. “Most people agree that Campbell Brown has identified
an important problem: Poor kids are stuck with the worst teachers. But
her approach of attacking tenure is barking up the wrong tree,” says
Richard Kahlenberg, an author and senior fellow at the progressive
Century Foundation, adding that polling shows tenure is so important to
teachers you’d have to increase their salaries by half to make up for
taking it away. (Weingarten, sworn enemy of Brown, points out that the
states that have the best protections for teachers also have the best
academic performance.) Low-income minority students have the weakest
teachers because of economic segregation, Kahlenberg says, which
suggests the solution is mixing and matching low- and middle-income
kids in individual schools (something, one imagines, that would cause an
uproar in nice neighborhoods already endowed with good schools). “On
the tactics, I have to give Campbell enormous credit,” Kahlenberg
continues. “She’s taken what most educators believe is a peripheral
issue and elevated it to the cover of Time magazine.
So even if she loses her lawsuits, she’s changed the public
conversation—in my view, in a negative way. But I think she’s highly
effective.”
Take away tenure or make it "renewable" based on student test scores and other quantifiable measures as Campbell Brown and a host of other reformers want to do (which is just a roundabout way of getting rid of tenure) and you'll end up keeping good people out of teaching.
That's the part of the argument in teacher quality that never gets publicly stated much in the mainstream media.
The more the teaching profession gets beaten up in the media and by politicians, the more insane compliance they throw on teachers in the form of ever-more "rigorous" evaluations, the more they strip teachers of protections like due process, the less likely it is quality people are going to want to teach.
Why spend money and effort to get trained and licensed as a teacher if you're going to spend your workday doing insane compliance that takes away from your ability to do your job well, get beaten up in the media seven days a week and hear the politicians in your state denigrate you as garbage as they annually impose more mandates on you?
I am in my fourteenth year teaching, but if I were doing this all over again, there is NO WAY I would go into teaching.
Seriously, who needs to be told what a piece of shit you are, how you're responsible for poverty and the achievement gap and income inequality and a danger to national security to boot (which Joel Klein and Condi Rice actually said)?
I teach seniors and when we talk about college majors and career options and some tell me they are thinking about teaching, I tell them to think long and hard about that before they embark on the journey.
Teachers and the teaching profession are under constant assault, a barrage that never seems to end but just gets heavier and heavier as the years go by.
I tell students they must be aware of the political battles going on around schools and teachers before they decide to teach, because these battles will effect them greatly, make their jobs much harder than they have to be, and perhaps even make it such that their career choice will be turned into nothing more than an at-will position that they can be fired from for any reason.
I'm not trying to dissuade students from going into teaching, but I do want them going in with their eyes open and their minds aware.
Teachers are scapegoats for so many of the problems this country faces and no one should go into the profession without knowing that there's going to be a lot of excessive blame they'll carry along with their other job duties and responsibilities.
StudentsFirstNY, a statewide education reform group, and TNTP, a
national education reform group, has released a new report outlining
their recommendations for changes to the Buffalo Teachers Federation
contract. The report is endorsed by the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, but
many of the proposals are unlikely to be readily agreed to by the
teachers union.
Their seven-page report recommends higher starting salaries for
teachers -- an increase from $32,897 to at least $45,000 -- but it also
recommends that many changes that would require givebacks from the BTF,
including teacher contributions to health insurance, a devaluation of
teacher seniority, merit-based pay, longer school days, a more rigorous
tenure process, and fewer sick days.
The report overview states, "In many ways, the current agreement
actually makes it harder for teachers to get the pay and respect they
deserve, and harder for Buffalo’s schools to ensure that students are
afforded effective teachers who can provide a high-quality education."
Do they even read the garbage they write?
They write: "In many ways, the current agreement
actually makes it harder for teachers to get the pay and respect they
deserve."
Their remedy?
"An increase from $32,897 to at least $45,000 -- but it also
recommends that many changes that would require givebacks from the BTF,
including teacher contributions to health insurance, a devaluation of
teacher seniority, merit-based pay, longer school days, a more rigorous
tenure process, and fewer sick days."
Yeah, that'll get quality people to sign on to teach in Buffalo (or anywhere else they push this garbage.)
This is the second "report" out this week from an ed reform hack group calling for higher teacher pay to be offset with other "reforms."
NCTE also touted one.
You can see the framework for teachers contract going forward here - massive givebacks in every area for a little chunk of change in the beginning.
This one goes for the moon - seniority devaluation, merit pay, longer school days, tenure "reform," fewer sick days and cuts to health benefits for a little over $12,000.
No thanks.
Good luck selling that to prospective and current teachers as a sign of "respect."
A political candidate’s firing in Florida offers a reminder of a little-understood fact of American life: Companies have sweeping discretion to effectively regulate what their workers do outside of work, including running for elected office.
That startling reality resurfaced after Marriott Vacations Worldwide came under fire for terminating Viviana Janer, a senior manager who is also the Democratic nominee for a seat on the Osceola County Commission. “I think it’s a stinking maneuver to rob her of her job and rob the voters of their votes,” Democratic Representative Alan Grayson charged this week. Janer says her candidacy is consistent with the company’s support for civic participation; her employer, a time-share company spun off from Marriott International in 2011, says her candidacy threatened a conflict of interest.
In a Sept. 19 termination letter, Marriott Vacations wrote that Janer had been given the choice to either resign from her campaign or resign from her job. “She was given those two options,” confirms Edward Kinney, a vice president for the company, “and she chose not to do either one.”
The company’s move may be controversial, but there’s nothing obviously illegal about it. In fact, as I’ve noted before, U.S. workers can be fired for all kinds of activities outside of work: volunteering for the AIDS Foundation, using medical marijuana, even just driving around with a John Kerry bumper sticker. There are some clear exceptions. Firing someone for practicing a religion or organizing a union during his or her time off is illegal. But aside from Montana, neither state nor federal laws require that private sector companies have a good reason for firing people.
Few states require that terminations have anything to do with work performance. According to a 2010 review (PDF) by the National Conference of State Legislatures, only four states have statutes broadly protecting workers from being fired for (noncriminal) things they do outside for work. Seventeen states offer specific protections for after-hours tobacco users, and another eight protect using lawful products.
The First Amendment protects free speech and the right to petition the government, but it only restricts the government from trampling those rights—it doesn’t ban your boss from punishing you for exercising them.
As you can see, most Americans can be fired from their jobs for any reason at any time.
When the corporatists and ed deformers talk about the need to reform teacher tenure and due process protections, what they really mean is that they want to make teaching as "at-will" a job as most others - then districts can fire teachers whenever they want for any reason they want.
You know, like you're running for office.
Or driving around with a John Kerry bumper sticker.
Justice
Philip Minardo
in Richmond County Supreme Court agreed Thursday to merge two lawsuits seeking to challenge state tenure laws.
The
state attorney general's office had filed a motion to consolidate the
two cases on grounds the issues were so similar, and the United
Federation of Teachers had asked to intervene as a defendant.
The
court granted both requests. The cases were filed by the New York City
Parents Union and Partnership for Educational Justice. Both groups
charge that current tenure laws keep ineffective teachers in classrooms.
The union argues that tenure
guarantees due process to keep teachers from unjust terminations, and
plans to file a motion to dismiss the case by Oct. 14, a spokeswoman
said.
A judge consolidated a pair of lawsuits challenging teacher tenure in
New York on Thursday — but the two people behind the cases couldn’t be
farther apart.
Mona Davids, president of the New York City Parents Union, who filed
the first legal action, made wild accusations Thursday against Campbell
Brown, who filed the second.
“This is our lawsuit. We will not be bullied by Campbell Brown,” said
Davids, who passed out fake dollars bearing Brown’s likeness at a
bizarre press conference outside Staten Island Supreme Court.
Davids insisted that Brown, a former CNN anchor turned education
advocate, had orchestrated a behind-the-scenes effort to undermine her
suit. But Davids, despite the fire with which she made her accusation,
did not produce evidence to back it up.
A would-be alliance in the battle over New York's teacher-tenure laws
fell apart Thursday, as parent-activist Mona Davids held a press
conference to attack CNN anchor-turned-education reformer Campbell
Brown.
The drama between Davids and Brown, who are each suing to
invalidate the state's tenure laws, threatens to delegitimize their
shared legal argument which has, at least on its face, a chance of
succeeding considering the positive result for anti-tenure reformers in the Vergara vs. California case earlier this summer.
State
Supreme Court Justice Philip Minardo on Thursday ordered Davids and
Brown to consolidate their lawsuits, meaning the two will be represented
by the same firm and will have to work together.
The number of
legal players involved in the case and Davids' dramatic pre-hearing
press conference outside Richmond County Court on Staten Island turned
what was supposed to be a mundane legal proceeding Thursday into an
unexpectedly dramatic bit of political theater.
Davids, head of a group called the New York City Parents Union,
accuses Brown of trying to steal the spotlight and divert resources away
from her case.
"Campbell Brown is is trying to reform her image
and make herself relevant on the backs of black and Hispanic children,
our children. This is our lawsuit," Davids said at a press conference
where members of her group held up fake $100 bills with Brown's
screaming face in the middle and signs that read "Campbell Brown does
not speak for NYC parents."
Davids claims Brown discouraged Gibson
Dunn, the prestigious law firm that helped secure victory for the
plaintiffs in Vergara vs. California, from helping Davids' case. Gibson
Dunn said in early August it would be providing legal support to Davids'
case, then abruptly dropped out several weeks ago, citing conflicts of
interest.
Davids claims Brown, whose own group is called the Partnership for
Educational Justice, asked lawyers at Gibson Dunn to drop their support
for Davids' group and cited unpublished emails between Brown and lawyers
at the firm.
Davids also claims Brown began "a bullying campaign" against her.
...
Charles Moerdler, a partner at the law firm Stroock & Stroock
& Lavan, who is representing the U.F.T., said the union will seek to
have the case dismissed.
Davids and Brown will be able to submit two separate complaints, Minardo said, but will have to act as a single plaintiff.
Minardo
also told Gibson Dunn to file a formal motion asking to leave the case;
Davids said she will most likely oppose the motion to show that she
wants to retain legal help from the firm.
Moerdler indicated that formal legal proceedings are unlikely to begin until December, at the earliest.
What are the chances this lawsuit, a mess from the beginning, is going to be successful?
UPDATED - 8:08:
Also, it's interesting that the WSJ ignored the circus clowns and other distractions at yesterday's event.
Think the WSJ would have ignored them if the clowns had "UFT" on their shirts instead of "NYCPU"?
