Monday, March 30, 2015

NYSUT Pushes Back Against Cuomo's Education Reforms In The Budget

From Nick Reisman at State of Politics:

A memorandum of opposition from the New York Stated United Teachers union being circulated with state lawmakers urges them to reject major provisions of the education reform proposals that are in the spending plan’s framework.

The memo comes after state lawmakers and Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a framework deal, but specifics on the agreement through budget bill language remain elusive.

Still, some of the details of the education reform proposals in the budget, according to the administration, include proposals opposed by the union — namely changes to teacher evaluation criteria, tenure and the 3020A proceedings which make it easier for districts to fire poorly performing teachers.

“These proposals will likely eliminate tenure, collective bargaining rights and due process for educators,” the memo states. “Further, this will strongly discourage educators with high-needs populations, children living in poverty, English Language learns, or children with disabilities.
NYSUT states the organization opposes the use of outside evaluations as well as what it sees as the “loss” of collective bargaining in the evaluation system.

“The building principal or superintendent is the appropriate person to conduct observations, not someone with no or limited experience or someone with limited knowledge of the teacher being evaluated,” the memo states.

Similarly, the effort to have tenure reformed to four years, with three years of good performance ratings of “effective” — a proposal that NYSUT states is “impossible for a new teacher to attain.”

Kudos to NYSUT for working the legislature and trying to push back on what Cuomo claims is in the agreement framework.

But quite frankly, we don't know what's in the budget education bills because nobody's actually seen them.

Cuomo claims he made government functional again but I don't know what's functional about passing a budget with all kinds of policy in it that nobody gets to read beforehand.

Sounds more like functional totalitarianism to me, not functional democracy.

I hope NYSUT continues to sound the bell and call for mass opt outs across the state.

The only way to deal with a government run by political whores like Andrew Cuomo who are funded by a shadowy cadre of billionaires and Wall Street criminals and who push through policies opposed by the majority but supported by their wealthy backers is to expose that government and its functionaries as bereft of legitimacy.

3 comments:

  1. Excellent post RBE. This is the go-to blog for any teacher interested in their career. If NYSUT folds on this then the union will begin dying a slow, but inevitable death.

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  2. RBE,
    I'm telling you right now, no teacher will ever, ever look for a job in poor neighborhoods with terrible rates on tests. Why would you go work at a crappy school? Those schools will never, ever obtain talented teachers!!!! You are basically segregating the system with this proposal of 50% on evaluations. I work in a pretty good school now but I hate my administrators. Open market is coming out and I could easily move to another school with my Chemistry license, however why would I? I can stay at my school which produces high regents pass rates and just stay stuck here (dealing with the incompetent leadership). In the past, changing to another school would be a no BRAINER. Now you actually have to find a good school and remain there. You cannot work in a shit school, you'll actually be terminated based off the scores.

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  3. With all due respect to the NYSUT, but there is no way that the legislature is gonna change anything. This is pretty much a done deal. None of the legislative members wants to touch this crap with a ten foot pole so they are gonna toss it to the regents to hash out all the details. However, what you see is what you get. All of the nightmare stuff is gonna get rammed through and we all are gonna have to take a bite. The only "good" out of all of this is two things: 1) The insane logistics of having outside evaluators is gonna be hilarious to watch unfold as it going to be very, very hard to implement. 2) Vindictive principals will no longer have as big a sword to yield any longer.

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