Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Cuomo Tells Observer-Dispatch: I Want Teachers Fired

From the Utica Observer-Dispatch:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo slammed opponents of his plan to overhaul the state’s teacher evaluation system at a recent meeting with the Observer-Dispatch Editorial Board.

 Right now we have a 99 percent effective rate for teachers,” he said. “That can’t be when 30 percent of the students are effective.”

...

 “You would fire a teacher?” Cuomo asked rhetorically. “Yes I would, because education is about the student, and if you have data that shows the teacher is not effective and you can’t help the teacher become effective, yes I would.

The 30% "failure" rate for students comes from the Common Core tests the state rolled out before they rolled out a curriculum or teaching materials to go with it.

But that's not stopping Cuomo from using this jive point to try and drive his agenda home.

It's not working so far, however.

As the Siena polled showed yesterday, only 10% of New Yorkers blame teachers for the problems in public schools and the public backs teachers unions over Cuomo 48%-36% in the "war of words" between the two.

There are still some things NYSUT and the UFT ought to be doing to further drive down Cuomo's numbers on this.

One thing they should be doing is running ads explaining how incompetent and inept the Common Core roll-out from the Regents and NYSED was, use Cuomo's own words about that roll-out against him (he called it "flawed and mismanaged from the start" in a statement), then explain to the public that the 30% failure" number Cuomo's using to bash teachers is as a result of the Common Core tests the state rigged for high failure rates.

Cuomo's numbers are already pretty dismal around many education issues.

With a coordinated effort from NYSUT and the UFT, they could drive them down even more and make Cuomo regret he took on this battle.

4 comments:

  1. "Ju wanna go to war? Ju wanna go to war? Okay, we'll take you to war!" -Tony Montana, SCARFACE

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  2. I cannot believe that NYSUT is still letting the claim that only 38% of our students are college and career ready go unchallenged. The reality is that NYS has defined college and career ready as the performing at a level equal to a 1630 on the SAT, which happens to be the 66th percentile. The SAT is not a test that all students take, unlike the 3-8 assessments. The SAT is only taken by students that identify as college bound. NYSUT should be fact checking this claim and inundating any media outlet that picks up the claim with the more accurate statement that; 38% of all NYS students perform better than 66% of college bound students nationwide. Thank you New York State educators.

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  3. Even if the claimed percentage of students were not college ready, it is still silly to blame teachers. Let's think about poverty, culture, parents, etc before just blaming all of the world's ills on teachers.

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  4. Here is a summary of the career readiness study the state performed.http://www.p12.nysed.gov/assessment/reports/summary38externalbenchmarkstudies.pdf

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