In a letter to Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, Cuomo wrote that the city and union have until May 8 to reach a deal or submit paperwork to state Education Commissioner John King telling why they blew the deadline.King would then serve as a binding arbitrator in the matter in an “expedited” process starting May 29 if no deal is reached by then, with a final plan decided by June 1.The deadlines were set in the new state budget.“While the commissioner is ready to act as an impartial arbiter, you have had ample time to reach an agreement,” Cuomo wrote. “I therefore urge you to finalize your (evaluation) plan prior to these statutory deadlines, as virtually every school district in the state has done,” Cuomo wrote.“Our students deserve nothing less than the very best teachers, and it is critical that we provide our teachers with the opportunity to be the very best,” he added.
If "our" students, as the governor terms them, deserve the best, why did he cut $250 million from the NYC school budget and refuse to put it back in when the UFT and the NYCDOE failed to come to an agreement on evaluations?
Also, how is this APPR system that ties teacher evaluations to test scores giving students "the very best teachers"?
This system, with its inherent flaws, biases, wide swings in stability and large margins of error, will give students teachers who have to teach to the test and hope that's enough to save their jobs from the GREAT APPR BELL CURVE that insists 7% of teachers be ranked "ineffective" every year and fired.
And of course this new teacher evaluation system is based on the new Common Core tests with the ratcheted up difficulty levels, so the fix really is in on how many teachers get fired with this system.
Carol Burris told NYC Educator that we shouldn't worry, no one will be fired because the system is so badly designed that it will never stand up to court challenges.
I hope she is right.
But until those challenges are heard in the law courts, there is going to be a lot of churn and burn in schools all over the state.
Which is what Cuomo and King and Tisch and the all the education reform cheerleaders want.
There is a political agenda at work here to break up the school systems, fire as many teachers as possible and bring about the Friedmanesque fantasyland of choice that so many reformers talk abotu with glee.
The so-called education reformers are so intent on smashing and grabbing everything related to public education that they can't even make sound strategic decisions in their own interests: the Common Corporate Standards and the tests they are a vehicle for will quite likely collapse of their own unworkability and rising parent opposition. In that sense, think Carol Burris is probably right. However, in the meantime, thousands of teachers will be chewed to pieces, and millions of students will be abused and turned off to school by this malign nonsense. And then it will take years,perhaps decades to undo the damage caused by these social vandals.
ReplyDeleteBurris said on the latest Valerie Strauss piece about the NY State Common Core tests that the proponents of these tests who are gleefully licking their lips for the dramatically lowered scores, even though teachers were never given a curriculum to teach the kids that was connected to the test are "malevolent."
DeleteI have to agree with her.
Until the UFT/AFT and all teacher unions take a firm stand there isn't a shot in resisting. We know that other then the CTU, under current leadership that just can't happen. Thus our default position as teachers is to focus on changing that leadership. All other battles take 2nd place. But I am not talking about union elections every 3 years. I am talking about taking control at the school level, followed by district level -- bottom up, not top down. However, in order to coordinate a group like MORE is needed. So far MORE has been looking at things from top-down instead of organizing bottom up. That too has to change if progress is to be made.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Norm. At this point, we have to focus on taking over chapters and infusing the DA with MORE chapter leaders to put pressure on and call out the current leadership (I use the term loosely). MORE chapter leaders will then be in position to activate chapters, inform and activate parents, and become a force to be reckoned with.
ReplyDelete