Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Teachers With Lifetime Certification Will Have To "Register" For Certification Every Five Years Now (UPDATED)

The more you see in this Cuomo deform budget, the more you find to hate:

TEACHER CERTIFICATION:
Teachers and administrators with lifetime certification must register with the state every five years.

Applicants for registration must complete 100 hours of continuing education or professional development every five years. “The department shall issue rigorous standards for courses, programs and activities that shall qualify as continuing teacher and leader education,” according to the bill.

Principals or teachers who perform observations for the purpose of the state’s teacher evaluation system may count those hours toward the total.

If educators don’t complete the state-approved professional development, they will not be able to maintain certification.

Will the hours of PD we have to do as part of the UFT contract count toward this new mandate?

I'm betting not.

UPDATE: A commenter writes that the actual budget langauge says teachers with lifetime certification do have to "register" their license every five years but are not part of the PD requirement - that is for holders of professional certification.

I checked the language in the budget (for this post, I was using Jessica Bakeman's Capital NY article) and the commenter appears to be right about that.

I posted about that here.

However, the governor released this today:

The State currently requires teachers to pass a teacher “bar” exam – and will now also require teachers to complete 100 hours of continuing education and recertify every five years or lose their licenses.

So you can understand the confusion around all of this.

That's been true of the entire budget process - non-transparent, full of confusion and characterized by he said/she said depending upon whether we were hearing from the governor, the Assembly or the Senate.

38 comments:

  1. Is this for real? So essentially, my permanent certification has now been grandfathered OUT and become the professional certificate that new teachers receive?

    Honestly- every time I think it can't get worse- it gets worse. I want to cry.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's right - looks like no more permanent certification. Has been lost in this budget.

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    2. I have the professional certification with the 175 hr requirement. That breaks down to 35 hrs per school year. For a 7 hr work day, that's 5 days I have to spend either at a BOCES workshop or some other type of training. With the continual curriculum changes and everything, you're probably already hitting that 20 hr requirement now without thinking about it, so it's most likely not a huge change in reality. It just forces permanently certified people not currently working in a school to keep current with PD or lose their certification.

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    3. The change comes in having to document and register for something that we haven't had to do previous to this. Since a loss of certification is a possible outcome and since the hostile teacher-haters at NYSED are in charge of deciding what constitutes "rigorous" PD and whether mine fits their criteria or not, it becomes one more thing to worry about as a teacher on a long list of things to worry about.

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    4. I've been teaching for 33 years and I am HORRIFIED!!
      I would NEVER encourage a student to become a teacher in NYS!!! I plan to retire next year... IF I still have a pension!! That will be Cuomo's next attack!!
      COME ON COLLEAGUES... Let's stand up and REVOLT!!!

      Delete
  2. NYSUT should immediately challenge this. I paid for a permanent certificate. How can I now be required to re-register the certificate and meet the state PD requirement to keep it valid? This is outrageous.

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    Replies
    1. Your permanent certification is no longer permanent. Not if you have to "register" it every five years.

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    2. Yes, that's right, but I question how this can be done to those of us who already possess such a certificate. NYSUT needs to start challenging stuff like this, not just issue press releases. This is an outrage.

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    3. Challenge it? They never even mentioned this in their pushback. Hell, I only noticed it today myself.

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    4. File a legal action against it. Start suing over everything. Make a stand. DO SOMETHING!!

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    5. Hate to be a downer - courts are stacked against us. thousands of teachers need to rise up and fight back, not wait for someone else to do it.

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    6. Yeah. I didn't read it this way. I read that teachers who are under the current process have to re-up with 100 hours of what NYSED picks instead of just a re-up. If they could do something like what you're describing, they could hve just changed our lifetime cert. back in '03 when they had the chance (they didn't).

      I'm going to stay tuned on this topic before I reach the same conclusion.

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    7. How do you read the "have to register every five years" part?

      Delete
  3. NYSUT will no longer be the vector for addressing or changing anything. Really. It cant be described how hard NYSUT lost. EVERYTHING. They are politically dead. In fact, maybe that is best. They've F'd up literally everything.....why would you want them trying to fix things now.....chances are they'd make things worse! There is only one thing left....civil disobedience. Not counting on that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As long as I am paying dues, I want them to do something; ANYTHING. I agree, NYSUT is essentially finished. The leaders should admit failure and resign. The organization should disband and be replaced by an association that is legitimately concern with the rights of teachers.

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  4. Yeah. Really though...the best thing they could do right now, with whatever $$ they have, is to rebrand themselves as a career-change service provider. Help me find a new job. That should be their focus. There are going to be alot of teacher's trying to find other work very soon. Speaking for myself, 13 years deep, I can't handle this chronic stress and worry. Its killing me. Constantly worrying about this stuff is too much. I'd walk now if there were anything else I were qualified to do that would pay anything even reasonably close to what I get paid now. What a mistake this career.

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    Replies
    1. A ton of people feel this way trust me. It's not pleasant. I think I can be a good landscaper, but honestly this is a mess WE ARE ALL IN. The whole state and I do believe that it will eventually fall in the near future. How many teachers get hurt? I hate to think about it but am hoping very few. Hang in there, it won't be easy but ironically the biggest plus is that this sham involves the whole state of New York. Hang in there.

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  5. I am fortunate to be 55 with 32+ years in. I can go in June, but had planned for stay three more years. It appears they will be dog years at this point. My local president had no idea what was under consideration. I am sending him information right now and he is stunned. NYSUT is terribly mismanaged. It did an awful job mobilizing its members and calling in its chits with legislators.

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  6. And the biggest losers are the kids!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Assembly approved this nonsense by a 92-54 vote Senate approved by a vote of 36-26. How many millions has NYSUT wasted on these politicians? Andy Pallotta should go down as one of the worst labor leaders in the last 50 years.

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  8. No. The biggest losers are us. The kids lost years ago when corporations and their political yes-men began aggressively offshoring once-middle-class jobs away. The kids have rough odds getting into the middle class. Thats what they lost. We are losing our careers now. Thats all. This is us now. This pain is all ours. The kids will probably never know what was taken from them....wont have good teachers to tell em! And maybe thats actually merciful.

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  9. Maybe this is the turning point. Is this exactly what we need to go back to our schools and tell our colleagues to vote out UNITY slugs? To bring to mind all the failures of UNITY's policies over the last ten years?

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  10. ” If you were fortunate enough right now to be standing over George Orwell’s grave in the sweet garden of the churchyard at Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire, you would hear, piercing the roar of his revolving corpse, a plaintive, despairing voice crying out: “Bury me deeper. Now. Please.”

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  11. The PDs in school count automatically.

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  12. I have had my permanent certificate proudly framed on my wall at my home for over 10 years. I see it every day. I am now depresseed that I will have to now take it down as it is no longer "permanent". I worked my butt off and paid big money to get that permanent certificate. How dare Cuomo strip me and thousands of other teachers of the pride that we have accomplished? Permanent certificates were replaced many years ago. To go after those of us who already EARNED them is simply heartless and curel.

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  13. Prediction: if you have permanent certification and you're rated developing, they'll find a way to increase your PD hours to more than 100 over the 5 years. And while we all think that the PD hours in NYC will count, I'm betting not as well. Catch the word "rigorous"- I can promise you that our Monday PD's are far from that, and I'll be shocked if they count.

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  14. If the NYC hours don't count, every single teacher in NYC with permanent certification should sue NYS to make them pay for the hours we have to take. Even if we don't win, it would bungle up the NYDED by having them have to send lawyers to court.

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  15. I'm as angry as the next person, but I disagree with your interpretation.

    There are two separate sections in the law, Subpart C Section 1 which applies to "Valid for Life" certifications and Subpart C Section 2 for "Professional" certificate holders.

    The permanent certificate holders need to register every five years to continue teaching.

    Professional certificate holders have to do 100 hours every five years instead of 175. The hours we can submit are subject to the Commissioner's approval now.

    So it still sucks, but not quite as much as you've described here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was working off the Cap NY article by Jessica Bakeman that is here:
      http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2015/03/8565264/outline-education-reform-proposals-budget

      I will clarify what she wrote later w/ the actual subsections you point to.

      I suspect Bakeman is right, however.

      Here is Cuomo's press release relating to this:


      Teacher “Bar” Exam / CTE: The State currently requires teachers to pass a teacher “bar” exam – and will now also require teachers to complete 100 hours of continuing education and recertify every five years or lose their licenses."

      LINK: https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-announces-highlights-passage-2015-16-state-budget

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    2. Second Comment: You appear to be right, Andy. I updated this post and wrote a new one here:

      http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2015/04/why-are-permanent-certification-holders.html

      Delete
  16. No, I believe you are wrong. I have a Permanent Certificate that I recieved over ten years ago. I have been working udner it ever since it was mailed to me. (It is hanging right here in my office) I do NOT have to register it every five years. Only those with professional certificates have to register. So, I am pretty sure you are wrong.

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  17. I just looked at the back of my Permanent Certificate. On the back it says, "Forms Of Certificate: Permanent-Valid for the life of the holder unless annulled for cause". This is EXACTLY why so many of us with permanent certificates are so angry. It say for life. NYS in effect has made a promise to us and lied to us right to our faces. Our certificates are no longer "for life". They are for five years. Simply disgusting.

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  18. It specifically references "lifetime certification" which can only mean those of us with permanent certification. Professional certificates required the PD hours every 5 years, and permanent did not. It is difficult to interpret this any other way OTHER than we now need to what professional certificate holders need to do.

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  19. Professional holders do 175. Any PD iin school counts toward the100.

    ReplyDelete
  20. My question is how and where do I have to register to keep my certification. I can't find that information anywhere. I just found out about this. What on earth is going on. Like everyone else said, the certification says good for the life of the holder. I'm not dead yet, even though I am treated like that. So stressed. Please help.

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  21. All NYC teachers who don't recertify properly will loose their license and their retro active money. I don't believe that we will see all our money by 2020. The city will find some way to extend the payments past 2030

    ReplyDelete
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