Opt Out Parents Will Not Be Fooled By Rhetoric Shifts On Testing

The Obama administration issues some meaningless rhetoric yesterday about there being too much emphasis on testing in schools, an announcement that was hailed in some quarters (e.g., the professional shill class - the unions) and met with skepticism in others (e.g., many parents and teachers in the blogosphere and twitterverse.)

Here at Perdido Street School the announcement was met with a shrug.

The testing cap the Obama administration talked about yesterday (limiting testing to 2% of school time) is meaningless so long as teachers and schools are rated and either fired or closed based upon test scores.

Educrats can put some arbitrary cap in place all they want - the insane emphasis on testing and test prep will remain so long as the tests are used as bludgeons against teachers and schools.

And in fact, the Obama administration has ensured that teachers will be rated via test scores because they threatened to take NCLB waivers away from any state that didn't follow that Obama administration dictate on test score-based teacher evaluations - and did take away Washington State's waiver for not following it.

So the Obama educrats can talk about seeing the light on testing all they want - their actions speak much differently than their words and show that the emphasis on testing is not changing at all.

Same goes with Governor Andrew "I will break the public school monopoly" Cuomo in New York State.

Cuomo hailed the announcement on testing yesterday even as has moved to increase the weight of test scores in teacher evaluations to 50% and put into place a receivership program that hands schools that are "struggling" on their test scores to charter school operators.

In addition, Cuomo refused to let his test-centric teacher evaluation system be part of his Common Core review, ensuring that no changes would come to the system (even though it's currently being challenged in court because of irrational swings in the test score component.)

Like Obama, Cuomo says one thing about testing but contradicts those words with his actions.

The Endless Testing regime lives on despite the rhetoric shifts from the Obama and Cuomo administrations.

Politicians think voters are stupid and easily misled but as Chris Cerrone pointed out yesterday, this is not so with opt out parents:

#optout parents are VIGILANT. We know what changes must occur to our children's education. pic.twitter.com/yNisLOngmI

— Chris Cerrone (@Stoptesting15) October 24, 2015

The politicians and educrats are trying to knock off the number of test opt outs by issuing some meaningless rhetoric around testing, but we will NOT be fooled by their words.

The proof will be in what happens in schools - and currently, the insane emphasis on testing remains because tests continue to be used as bludgeons against both teachers and schools.

Don't Believe The Obama Administration Jive On Capping Testing Time (UPDATED - 3:35 PM)

From the "We caused it - now we're trying to walk it back without really walking it back" file:

Faced with mounting and bipartisan opposition to increased and often high-stakes testing in the nation’s public schools, the Obama administration declared Saturday that the push had gone too far, acknowledged its own role in the proliferation of tests, and urged schools to step back and make exams less onerous and more purposeful.

... 

“I still have no question that we need to check at least once a year to make sure our kids are on track or identify areas where they need support,” said Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, who has said he will leave office in December. “But I can’t tell you how many conversations I’m in with educators who are understandably stressed and concerned about an overemphasis on testing in some places and how much time testing and test prep are taking from instruction.

“It’s important that we’re all honest with ourselves,” he continued. “At the federal, state and local level, we have all supported policies that have contributed to the problem in implementation. We can and will work with states, districts and educators to help solve it.”

So long as teachers and schools are rated based upon test scores, the "cap" on testing time the Obama administration educrats talk about is meaningless.

In New York State, teachers currently have 20% of their ratings based upon state test scores (even if they don't teach classes that end with state tests) and 20% based upon so-called "local assessment" measures that may be state test data crunched a different way.

Last spring Governor "I want to break the public school monopoly" Cuomo shoved through a reiteration of the evaluation system tied to school funding that increases the weight of state test scores to 50% because not enough teachers were being rated ineffective and fired under the old system.

In addition, he shoved through a school receivership plan that forces "persistently struggling schools" to increase their test scores in one year and "struggling schools" to increase their test scores in two years or be taken over by the state.

With such a test-centric environment (one that was absolutely encouraged by the Obama administration's Race to the Top program and their NCLB waiver system), the Obama educrats can call for a cap on testing time all they want - nothing about the system will change so long as the scores are used to fire teachers and close schools.

In any case, the administration isn't going to put out "guidelines" until January on the testing changes, so for now all we have is some meaningless rhetoric that may excite Randi Weingarten but will have little practical effect on what happens to all the overtesting that is currently going on in schools.

In short, the Endless Testing regime continues no matter the Obama administration public relations statements.

UPDATED - 3:35 PM: Peter Greene points out in comments that the Obama administration has hawked this testing cap gambit before. 

He's got a new post analyzing today's announcement and finds they're

offering pointless PR nuggets and avoiding the real discussion, which is why, exactly, we need the BS Tests at all, and what possible justification there is for using the BS Tests to measure, rank and rate students, teachers or schools.

But the tests are a "civil right," don'tcha know?

How Did Mary Ellen Elia Get Hired At NYSED Given the Mess She Left In Hillsborough?

The Tampa Times has another piece about the mess former Hillsborough Superintendent MaryEllen Elia left in the school district as a result of the "innovative" evaluation teacher evaluation system she pushed in partnership with the Gates Foundation.

Here's a summary of their findings:

• The Gates-funded program — which required Hillsborough to raise its own $100 million — ballooned beyond the district's ability to afford it, creating a new bureaucracy of mentors and "peer evaluators" who don't work with students.

• Nearly 3,000 employees got one-year raises of more than $8,000. Some were as high as $15,000, or 25 percent.

• Raises went to a wider group than envisioned, including close to 500 people who don't work in the classroom full time, if at all.

• The greatest share of large raises went to veteran teachers in stable suburban schools, despite the program's stated goal of channeling better and better-paid teachers into high-needs schools.

• More than $23 million of the Gates money went to consultants.

• The program's total cost has risen from $202 million to $271 million when related projects are factored in, with some of the money coming from private foundations in addition to Gates. The district's share now comes to $124 million.

• Millions of dollars were pledged to parts of the program that educators now doubt. After investing in an elaborate system of peer evaluations to improve teaching, district leaders are considering a retreat from that model. And Gates is withholding $20 million after deciding it does not, after all, favor the idea of teacher performance bonuses — a major change in philosophy.

• The end product — results in the classroom — is a mixed bag.

Hillsborough's graduation rate still lags behind other large school districts. Racial and economic achievement gaps remain pronounced, especially in middle school.

And poor schools still wind up with the newest, greenest teachers.

Financial instability and debt were not Elia's only track missteps - there were also the multiple instances of children dying under her watch without the district taking responsibility (and action) to make sure these tragedies didn't happen again.

Here's a post from May 28 that covers that:

Complicity And Cover-Up: MaryEllen Elia's Failure Of Leadership In The Deaths Of Hillsborough Students

The tragic stories of Isabella Herrera, a 7 year old who died in 2012 while on a Hillsborough school bus, and Keith Logan Coty, a 6 year old who died of a brain hemorrhage in 2014 after getting sick at his school, suggest the kind of leadership we'll get from new NYSED commissioner MaryEllen Elia.

Then Hillsborough superintendent, Elia never took responsibility for the failure of district personnel to call 911 in a timely manner when Isabellea Herrera was found unresponsive on a Hillsborough school bus.

In fact, Elia did all she could to deflect responsibility from herself and the district and cover-up district complicity in the child's death because of an outdated policy that had school bus drivers call dispatchers instead of 911 in an emergency.

As Joe Henderson of the Tampa Tribune wrote, if not for a lawsuit from the Herrera family, the circumstances of the girl's death - a direct consequence of school district policy continued under Elia - would not have come to light:

For all the community outrage over circumstances that contributed to the death of 7-year-old special-needs student Isabella Herrera, consider this: If her parents hadn't filed a federal lawsuit over the way her case was handled, the public still wouldn't know there was ever a problem.

There wouldn't be a task force to study ongoing problems with how issues with special-needs students are addressed.

School bus drivers would continue to follow the 21-year-old policy of calling dispatchers instead of 911 in an emergency such as the one that led to Isabella's death.

Six of seven members of the Hillsborough County School Board would still be in the dark about what happened that January day on the bus taking Isabella home from classes.

Life would go on just always. Except, of course, for Isabella and her family.

She had a neuromuscular disease that made her neck muscles weak. She was supposed to have her head back as she sat in her wheelchair, but she tilted forward and it blocked her airway. When it was discovered, the driver called dispatch and the aide on board called Isabella's mother.

By the time Lisa Herrera arrived and dialed 911 herself, her daughter was blue and unresponsive. She was pronounced dead the next day.

But Superintendent MaryEllen Elia didn't make the news public. She relied on a sheriff's office investigation that she said found no criminal wrongdoing, and appeared to let it go at that. During an interview last week, I asked why she didn't release the news. She fell back on the sheriff's report.

If you're the parent of a special-needs student, though, you would have liked to know there was a problem. I should say, is a problem. There have been three other issues with special-needs kids just this year, including the recent death of a student with Down syndrome who wandered away unnoticed and drowned.

The Herrera family filed its lawsuit a few days after that — about nine months after Isabella died. Now we have a task force, and a policy change allowing bus drivers to call 911 if the situation warrants. As school board Vice Chairwoman April Griffin told The Tampa Tribune though, "It goes way, way deeper than that. But I think it's a start."

This would be a better start: Expand the task force to probe the circumstances of why it took a lawsuit to bring this to a head. This isn't a witch hunt, but there has to be accountability.

What happened in the aftermath of this tragedy was at best a case of bureaucratic bungling.

When a child dies, a leader doesn't fall back on official reports and policy excuses. A leader gets to the bottom of things and then lets everyone know what went wrong so it doesn't happen again. A leader asks uncomfortable questions about the culture in a school system that values policy and procedure over good judgment and common sense.

That didn't happen here. And if not for a lawsuit, no one would have known.

Two years later, another child died after Hillsborough school staff failed to call 911 in a timely manner:

TAMPA — Keith Logan Coty played baseball, soccer and football. He was a principal's honor roll student in the first grade at Seminole Heights Elementary School, his mother said.

He'd had a heart murmur, but the doctor had cleared him, his mother said.

He died a year ago at age 6 of a brain hemorrhage, and a lawsuit filed Friday blames staff at his school for failing to call for help quickly enough. The lapse is especially unfathomable, lawyers say, as the issue of timely 911 calls was cited in another high-profile student death in a Hillsborough public school.

"How many kids under the care of this school district must die before the district gets it right?" lawyer Steven Maher asked, announcing the federal suit in a news conference Friday.

Exactly a year ago — Jan. 17, 2014 — Keith began feeling sick after lunch, the suit says. He went back to his classroom about 12:24 p.m., complaining to his teacher about a severe headache. She told him to lie down. He did. Then he started vomiting.

About 12:51, the teacher called Keith's mother, Kaycee Teets. There was no sense of urgency in the voice mail message she left, which Maher played at the news conference. It simply asked Teets to pick up her son because he was throwing up.

Before Teets could arrive, another school employee entered the room and found Keith lying on his side, making a gurgling sound with foam streaming from his nose. "His lips were blue," the suit said. The school nurse was summoned. Although Keith was unresponsive, the suit alleges the nurse did not perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation; nor did she use the defibrillator at the school.

About 12:58 p.m., a worker in the front office called 911. The information given to the 911 operator was confusing, the suit alleges. At one point the caller said Keith was breathing. His mother insists he was not.

When an emergency vehicle arrived at 1:03 p.m., Keith was "in the corner, visibly blue, not breathing, and unresponsive." Paramedics were able to resuscitate the child, and they took him to St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa.

A scan revealed he had a brain hemorrhage. But, according to the suit, no one told the doctors about his headache, information Teets learned hours later when she spoke with Keith's teacher. Not suspecting a neurological problem, doctors focused on possible cardiac issues instead.

Keith "went without oxygen for at least 10 minutes as a result of the delay in commencing CPR," the suit alleges. He stayed on life support long enough for his organs to be taken for donation, and he was pronounced dead later in the day.

The suit, filed days before Superintendent MaryEllen Elia could face a School Board vote on terminating her contract, is reminiscent of a suit the same firm filed in 2012, also involving a child alleged to have died after emergency treatment was delayed.

Isabella Herrera suffered a neuromuscular disability and was on a school bus when she stopped breathing. No one called 911 until Isabella's mother arrived. The school district ultimately settled that lawsuit for $800,000.

The Herrera suit was filed in federal court, alleging a civil rights violation; rather than a negligence suit in state court, where the award would have been limited under sovereign immunity. Maher was trying to prove a districtwide lack of training and care so severe, it amounted to a level of indifference toward disabled students that qualified as discrimination.

This time, Maher said, the 911 policy and procedures amount to discrimination toward all of Hillsborough's 200,000 students.

The district argued in the 2012 suit that there was no pattern of indifference. And, after the drowning death of a second special-needs child that same year, Hillsborough revamped its training of staff, particularly those who care for disabled children.

But 911 calls have remained a source of confusion. While Elia quickly stated there is no prohibition against calling 911, administrators sometimes advise staff to let the front office make the calls. Phone service is not always reliable in the classrooms, they say, and it's easier for emergency workers to find the office than a particular classroom.

Maher and Teets said that makes no sense to them.

"I would call 911. There would be no question," Teets said. "Any person would do that. I walked into a classroom and found my child, blue on the ground."

Stephen Hegarty, the district's spokesman, said, "I cannot comment on pending litigation."

Maher said his firm is asking for monetary damages, but did not specify the amount.

Where are the great leadership qualities Elia supposedly has in the aftermath of these tragedies involving Hillsborough students?

If one student dies as a result of the failure of staff to call 911 in a timely manner, wouldn't you think a "great leader" would put together an effective protocol so that such a tragedy wouldn't happen a second time?

Elia instead did her best to cover up the circumstances surrounding Isabella Herrera's death - something that was noted when Elia was feted with a commendation by the Tampa Bay City Council after she was fired as Hillsborough superintendent.

Mary Mulhern, a council member who voted against the commendation for Elia, told the Tampa Tribune:

"MaryEllen Elia was fired by her employers — by her boss, the School Board," she said. "I can't think of another case where someone gets lauded and celebrated after they've been fired from a job that is a public responsibility. … When you are responsible for the lives of children, I think one strike is too many."

Elaborating, Mulhern cited the deaths of three students:

• 7-year-old disabled student Isabella Herrera, who died in January 2012 after suffering respiratory failure aboard a school bus. A bus video show that the driver and an aide did not call 911, but used a radio to try to reach their supervisor, as was protocol, then called Herrera's mother, who arrived and called 911. The School Board, most of whose members were unaware of the death until the girl's parents sued, agreed to pay $800,000 last year to settle a federal lawsuit.

• 11-year-old Jennifer Caballero, who had Down syndrome and drowned in a pond behind Rodgers Middle School after wandering away from a crowded gym class in October 2012. The school district agreed to pay a negotiated settlement estimated at more than $500,000. Investigations led to three firings and several resignations at the school. The district also took steps after the deaths to improve safety for special-needs students on buses and in school.

• 6-year-old Keith Logan Coty, who died a day after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage in January 2014 at Seminole Heights Elementary School. In a lawsuit, his parents accuse the school district of being indifferent to student safety and of discouraging staffers from calling 911 in emergencies. The district denies the allegations.

"If somebody dies, it goes to the top," Mulhern said. In the Herrera case, she said, "her employers didn't know this happened for nine months. … For me, that's enough. That's three strikes."

Mulhern said she didn't "disagree that (Elia has) done very good work over 10 years," but the concerns about student safety were overriding for her.

"The powers that be in Tampa and Hillsborough County just circled the wagons around this powerful person," who, Mulhern noted, had the authority to give out contract. 

Say what you will about former NYSED commissioner John King's flaws as a leader - covering up district complicity in the death of a student and a failure to fix emergency protocol for 911 calls involving students weren't on the list.

The more you learn about MaryEllen Elia and her "leadership," the more you see the big mistake the Board of Regents made by hiring her as NYSED commissioner.

Also, the more you learn about Elia as a person, the more you see how appropriate her nickname - MaryEllen EVILia - is.

Did the members of the Board of Regents talked to anybody other than reformer cheerleaders when deciding to hire Elia to replace John King King at NYSED?

Here's a "great leader" who left behind her a financial disaster in the district, three dead students (two of whom might not have died had she not covered up the district's responsibility in the first death), a lot of enemies and a "mixed" academic record at best (as the Tampa Bay Times piece on the Gates Foundation/Elia evaluation mess noted.)

Why was someone this awful hired to run the New York State Education Department?

Is John King A Double Agent?

What John King will bring to the nation as Arne Duncan's replacement:

ALBANY — Almost exactly two years ago, John King stood on stage in an auditorium in Poughkeepsie, NY, trying to quiet angry parents while they booed, screamed and hurled personal insults at him.

Today, on a national stage, President Barack Obama tapped King to lead the U.S. Department of Education.

The fall of 2013 was arguably the most difficult period of King’s three-and-a-half year tenure as education commissioner in New York, where, as the state’s first black and first Latino schools chief, he led the implementation of the Common Core standards, controversial state exams aligned to the more difficult material, and teacher performance evaluations based partially on the tests.

After the Oct. 10, 2013, assembly devolved into chaos, King canceled (and subsequently rescheduled under pressure) the rest of his planned statewide tour, accusing “special interests” of co-opting the raucous crowd.

Teachers’ unions, parent groups and some state lawmakers called for King’s resignation. The state’s powerful teachers’ union later held a no-confidence vote to make official their feelings about him. A parent-led and union-boosted testing boycott movement began under his leadership, and subsequently exploded.

You would almost think, from his track record, that he's double agent against ed reform.

Seriously, few have done so much to damage reform as purported education reformer John King.

Would the opt out movement be as big as it is in New York if King hadn't fanned the flames?

Would the polling on Common Core, testing and the like be as negative as it is for reformers in New York without John King's aid (see here and here)?

Heckuva job this King does.

Poughkeepsie Goes National: John King Replacing Arne Duncan Is A Fabulous Idea

Norm at Ed Notes nails this:

Happy Days for Opponents of Ed Deform: John King Replaces Arne Duncan

Call the King appointment "Building the national opt-out movement one education secretary at a time."

While some of our troops in the battle against ed deform, particularly those in NY State where King served as state ed commissioner, have been tearing a their hair and rending their clothing at Duncan's replacement - ACTING, I offer cheers for the man who had such an impact in fostering NY State in having the largest opt out movement in the entire nation with 20% opting out (Let's pray for a doubling - or more - this year.)

King threw much kindling on the opt out fire while he was here in New York, there's no reason to think he won't succeed similarly on a national stage.

Would also note, just another example of the hubris of the education reformers that they keep recycling the same faces and shuffling them around (Cerf, King, Elia, et al.)

John King To Become Acting Secretary Of Education

Continuing the theme that there is no failure an education reformer cannot fail upward from:

President Obama will tap former New York Education Commissioner John King to become the acting secretary of education, replacing Arne Duncan, who is stepping down at the end of the year. 

King, a Brooklyn native, was the youngest education commissioner in New York history, having been appointed to the post at the age of 36 in 2011 by the Board of Regents.

King’s background is in leading charter school organizations and was the co-founder and co-director of Roxbury Preparatory Charter School.

His tenure at the Department of Education was a rocky one: The roll out of the controversial Common Core education standards was criticized by both parents and the state’s teachers unions. Gov. Andrew Cuomo also was critical of the Department of Education’s handling of the implementation of the standards.

King left for the Obama administration at the end of 2014 to serve as a special advisor to Duncan.

A rocky tenure at NYSED?

That's an understatement.

Cuomo has blamed NYSED for the half-assed Common Core implementation - that was fully King's purview at SED.

Nice thing is, now he can take all that expertise at failing and bring it to the nation at large.

APPR Ratings Released

Check your NYCDOE email if you're so inclined to see what your APPR rating is.

These numbers were pulled fresh out of MaryEllen Elia's wig, so they're still steaming hot.

Last year, the numbers came from John King's goatee.

Or his ass - I can't remember.

In any case, I can tell you that looking at the state and local measures and talking to some other folks about the scores they got for those components, the state/local numbers appear to have come straight out of someone's ass again this year too.

Wheeeeee!!!!!!

Can't wait to play the Cuomo Matrix APPR Game this coming school year.

We'll be having even more fun than the past two years - unless the judge in the Lederman case throws this garbage on the trash heap where it belong.

NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia Threatens Legal Action Against Educators Who Support Opt Out

Just as some commenters on Perdido Street School blog pointed out would happen, NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia is going to target educators who support the Opt Out movement with legal action:

ALBANY — Education commissioner MaryEllen Elia already has begun a battle to stop the rapidly growing opt-out movement before next year’s state tests, reaching out to department attorneys and meeting with superintendents, she told POLITICO New York.

“We’re trying to pull together a tool kit, if you will, to support superintendents in how we can communicate in a much more effective way to people across the state,” Elia said.

That kit will include legal information, which is why she has reached out to lawyers, Elia said.

“I want the superintendents to understand the reflections and law that they can use as an information piece when they talk to people in their community … It’s important for them to be able to say, ‘Listen, it’s the law.’”

Ooh, it's the law!

I am so impressed by that statement.

Segregation and slavery were the law too, but that didn't make those laws right or just.

Many states continue to have sodomy laws on the books too, but that doesn't make those laws right or just either.

Same goes with the "law" regarding standardized testing in New York State.

Giving standardized tests that have been rigged to fail 70% of the children in the state may be the law, but that doesn't make that law right or just.

Implicit in her statement that giving the tests is "the law" is that legal action can be used against people who flout that law.

She has already said any educator who supports or encourages opt outs is "unethical," so you know when she dangles legal threats around over opt out, that's who she's aiming at.

If Elia wants to threaten legal action against teachers who support the Opt Out movement - go for it.

With opt out rates going from 5% in 2014 to 20% in 2015, I can understand why Elia feels threatened over the Opt Out movement.

But threatening legal action against teachers who support opt out, I don't think that's going to be a winning proposition for her.

When push comes to shove, will she get back-up from the Legislature or the governor in a battle over the tests?

Governor Cuomo is a huge fan of bashing and scapegoating teachers, but even he has tread lightly around the testing and opt out issue, knowing that there is a growing opt out movement in the state that can hurt him politically.

It remains to be seen what Elia can do to teachers other than threaten them for supporting opt out - unless she wants NYSED to engage in thousands of 3020a disciplinary cases over opt out, that is.

Is that the plan?

If so, it will be interesting to see how that goes.

Another thing that's not a winning proposition for Elia - equating support for opt out with ignorance on the part of parents.

Elia keeps saying (echoing Regents Chancellor Tisch) that NYSED has to get the message out to parents why testing is swell and kids should shut up and take their tests.

Elia even said last week that support for opt out is "not reasonable" - a statement that equates parent support for opt out with insanity.

This isn't sitting well with some parents:

When asked if she thinks opt out will continue to grow, Elia replied: “It’s incumbent upon us to get information and support out to those educators and leaders across New York … I think we have a lot of work to do in terms of communication and we have to do it a multiple levels.”

Some parents, like Jessica McNair, say they already are informed about Common Core and the opt-out movement should not be dismissed as a lack of information.

“I think she has a lot to learn about the parents in New York State,” McNair said. “We’re not going to back down until we see tests that are developmentally appropriate, and tests that are decoupled from the teacher evaluations.”

Opt Out CNY, which has 4,120 members, already has a 2015-16 refusal letter available to parents on its website — and some already have it signed and in their child’s book bags for the first day of school, McNair said.

Elia was supposedly hired because she is a "listener" and "consensus-builder."

From what I see so far, we've got John King Part Deaux, another a tone deaf corporate education reform water carrier for an NYSED Commissioner who reflexively attacks parents and teachers when they don't agree with her.

Let's see how that show plays over the next school year.

Why NYSED Never Wanted The Sheri Lederman VAM Case To Go Forward

Oral arguments begin in the Sheri Lederman VAM case today.

Diane Ravitch posted information from Lederman's lawyer, her husband Bruce, on how they are approaching the case.

One important thing to note about this case:

NYSED never wanted it to go forward.

They tried twice to have the case dismissed on the "No Harm, No Foul" rule (see here and here), arguing that since Lederman was rated "effective" overall despite the inexplicable "ineffective" rating on her test component, she wasn't adversely affected by the rating.

But under the current law, two "ineffective" ratings overall and a teacher can be fired and the test component part of APPR has been increased to 50% of the overall rating.

Going forward, if a teacher gets an "ineffective" rating on the VAM test component, it ensures an overall "ineffective" rating or, at best, "developing" rating - that means the test component score can and will have an adverse effect on teachers.

NYSED never provided the data for why Lederman went from 14 out of 20 points in 2012-2013 to 1 out of 20 points in 2013-2014 when the test score data was almost identical in both years.

I suspect the reason NYSED never provided the data is because they know the data won't stand up to scrutiny, that it was pulled out of John King's goatee rather than based on some objective, scientific reasoning.

We'll see as the case goes forward whether they've got some rational explanation for why Lederman went from 14 out of 20 points to 1 out of 20 points in VAM when the test data was almost identical.

But I would bet my own VAM they don't.

How MaryEllen Elia Fools Some Critics (But Not All)

I've been writing for a few weeks now that new NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia is engaging in a "rebrand" effort for New York's education reform agenda, but underneath the "repainting" we see the same old same old reforms - the Endless Testing regime, a pro-Common Core push, and a Blame Teachers attitude toward educators.

Jessica Bakeman writes that Elia comes at this agenda with a more deft touch than her predecessor, John King, and has managed to fool many critics so far that her agenda is different - even though it isn't:

ALBANY—New York’s new education commissioner, MaryEllen Elia, and her predecessor, John King, both support the state’s controversial reform agenda, including implementing the Common Core standards, testing students on the more difficult material and evaluating teachers using students’ exam scores.

But it’s what makes her different from the former chief that state education officials have highlighted.

Elia is seasoned at 66, compared to King, who at 36 became the youngest education commissioner in the state’s history. Elia spent more than four decades working in traditional public schools, as a teacher, an administrator and a superintendent, while King had relatively limited experience in schools before founding a prominent charter school network. She has been described as a skilled listener, communicator and collaborator, while he was often criticized as being out of touch and tone deaf.

In hopes of turning King’s critics into Elia’s supporters without reversing course on the reform agenda they’ve pursued for five years, the new commissioner, her communications staff and the State Board of Regents, which appointed her in May, have pitched her as his opposite.

 So far—and granted, it’s still early—the strategy seems to be working.

...

Elia’s record, like King's, is that of an aggressive reformer. In her last position as superintendent of a large, diverse school district in central Florida, she implemented teacher evaluations before the rest of the state with a $100 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and negotiated with teachers a merit-pay system. Since coming to New York, she has repeatedly described herself as a believer in “accountability.” She supports Governor Andrew Cuomo's receivership model to turn around struggling schools, a plan that could lead to the firing of principals and teachers, and she stressed just giving schools more money isn't the answer.

Bakeman has two pretty good examples of how Elia isn't doing anything different than what came before at SED, but is getting credit for "change" from her critics.

The first is when she said she was instituting a review of the Common Core standards.

That review is in state law as passed this year but Elia broached it as if it were her idea.

The second was in the new testing contract with Questar that "Elia emphasized that the new contract specifically requires teachers’ input in the tests’ content."

Her PR on this:

“New York State teachers will be involved in every step of the test development process,” Elia said in a statement. “Teacher input is critical to building a successful state test.”

But a former NYSED functionary points out that stipulation was in the Pearson contract too:

What’s not in her statement: The contract with Pearson, which ultimately totaled $38 million over five years, also required input from educators. Education officials for years stressed to critics that every question on the exams had been vetted by New York teachers.

Ken Slentz, former deputy education commissioner who now leads a small district in the Finger Lakes, said the department’s messaging suggested the new contract offered something the old one didn’t, which he called “disingenuous.”

“The Questar contract calls for the role of teachers; the Pearson contract had that as well,” he said. “Instead of going out and having these fact-based conversations, we’re being a little bit disingenuous about how we do business. That doesn’t help us in terms of overcoming these misinformed conversations.”

There has been no change to the state's education reform agenda under MaryEllen Elia, but that hasn't stopped critics of NYSED and John King from falling all over themselves to praise Elia.

Take NYSUT, for example.

NYSUT President Karen Magee declared Elia's appointment a victory for NYSUT.

Then there are the nice things NYSUT said about the Questar contract.

Bakeman reports how Assembly Dems like Patrica Fahy are saying nice things about Elia too.

But make no mistake, there are no changes to the state's reform agenda under Elia, as members of the Board of Regents acknowledge:

Board of Regents member Roger Tilles, who represents Long Island on the board, said he believes Elia will be better suited to convince Cuomo and lawmakers to increase state aid to the department.

“The new commissioner is in a much better position to ask for that than the previous commissioner,” he said. “She’s not tainted. There’s not the baggage. And maybe she’ll make exactly the same pitch that John King made. I’ve already seen it when she’s talked to the public in general. She could [talk about] the same issues, and the public will buy it, as opposed to John, when there was immediate antagonism.”

Board of Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch said Elia's long career in public education has helped her gain the respect of skeptics.

“She has been very well received by all constituent groups,” Tisch said, referring to Elia. “She’s got 40 years of experience, so when she says something, people can’t just say to her, ‘No, I don’t think so.’ She speaks with authority. She speaks from experience. She speaks with conviction, and she speaks with deep knowledge. And that is important.”

Bakeman reports that NYSAPE are not fooled by MaryEllen Elia and see the Endless Testing regime continuing under her despite the new PR efforts.

If you're a reader of Perdido Street School blog, NYC Educator's blog, ICEUFT blog or Ed Notes Online, you know we're not fooled by the PR either.

MaryEllen Elia's reform agenda is the same as John King' reform agenda was and Andrew Cuomo's reform agenda is.

At the core is a "Blame Teachers" mentality, an attitude that accountability is for individual schools and teachers, perhaps for districts, but never for the geniuses in Albany who make the policy or put it into action, and a love of the Endless Testing regime and the Common Core.

Elia is pursuing that agenda right now in the receivership push, talking tough to officials and administrators in districts with "struggling" schools while dismissing funding inequity or any other issues other than mismanagement.

I'm not exactly sure what John King's critics who've become MaryEllen Elia's fans are watching with Elia - it's pretty obvious that her game is the same as John King's game (and the same as Andrew Cuomo's game.)

Nonetheless, I will continue to point out over and over that the state's reform agenda has no changed under MaryEllen Elia, I will continue to illuminate Elia's track record in Hillsborough which was abysmal bordering on the criminal, and do my best, in my little corner of the Internet, to get people to see MaryEllen Elia for the corporate reformer and jive artist she is.

NYSED Threatens To Close School That's Already Being Phased Out (UPDATED)

Classic NYSED:

SED puts Bronx's PS 64 on its list of "persistently struggling" schools. But DOE says the school is already being phased out. #coordination

— Eliza Shapiro (@elizashapiro) July 16, 2015

Ben Chapman nails it with this response:

not the kinda thing that inspires confidence in the state's plans for troubled NYC schools https://t.co/AVk1LbiIqz

— Ben Chapman (@NYDNBenChapman) July 16, 2015

Indeed it doesn't.

And yet, NYSED has been given an awful lot of power for a state entity that doesn't seem to know which way is up:

The state Education Department has just put out its list of failing, or what they call struggling and persistently struggling schools under a new program, thanks to legislation passed with the budget in the spring.

The program creates carrots and sticks and sets out the possibility that the poorest performers could in a year’s time end up under outside receivership, that is, they could be taken over by an independent entity, such as a college or even a charter school operator.

There are 144 struggling schools statewide including 20 that are ”persistently struggling.”

...

The stick includes some potentially harsh measures, although it’s unclear how they will play out. In persistently struggling schools, for example, a superintendent acting as the local or in district receiver could conceivably fire teachers and administrators regardless of tenure. The superintendent also can change curriculum and institute a longer school day and school year.

As for the carrot, a superintendent can increase pay for teachers and administrators. The law includes a $75 million pot of money to be divided up over the next two years to help with the improvement programs.

Most of these schools will get sticks, of course, that goes without saying.

The goal of education reform is to slowly but surely privatize the school system, fire the unionized teachers, and replace schools with non-union charters.

That's what Cuomo devised here with the budget legislation that allows for state receivership of so-called "failing" schools, but as is usual with the incompetents at NYSED, they screw stuff up and threaten to close a school that's already closing.

Nice work, MaryEllen.

Just a couple of days under your tenure at NYSED and you've already picked up from the previous incompetent in Albany.

UPDATE - 5:25 PM: Looks like the stick use is starting:

D.O.E. confirms they will NOT be able to re-hire staffs at all 62 struggling schools designated by state.

— Eliza Shapiro (@elizashapiro) July 16, 2015

SECOND UPDATE - JULY 17: 10:55 AM :

From the Capital NY Morning Education Email:

The announcement—some version of which was expected after a deal in the state budget to create a receivership program—means that the de Blasio administration has an extra layer of pressure to turn around the city's struggling schools quickly. Of the 55 schools identified by the state as ‘struggling,’ 44 are Renewal Schools, part of de Blasio's initiative to improve low-performing schools. All the ‘persistently struggling schools’ are Renewal Schools, except for one, P.S. 64 in the Bronx, which is already being phased out and will close by next year.” A spokesperson for the D.O.E. said Thursday that the department has the option of re-hiring staff at all 62 schools, but is still in talks about how that would work. Capital’s Eliza Shapiro [PRO]: http://capi.tl/1gE8sSm

Lots of uncertainty with this receivership plan - which is of course the point.

As I've written over and over, reformers want to destroy public education for fun and profit and the easiest way to get to that goal is to destabilize as much as possible.

Complicity And Cover-Up: MaryEllen Elia's Failure Of Leadership In The Deaths Of Hillsborough Students

The tragic stories of Isabella Herrera, a 7 year old who died in 2012 while on a Hillsborough school bus, and Keith Logan Coty, a 6 year old who died of a brain hemorrhage in 2014 after getting sick at his school, suggest the kind of leadership we'll get from new NYSED commissioner MaryEllen Elia.

Then Hillsborough superintendent, Elia never took responsibility for the failure of district personnel to call 911 in a timely manner when Isabellea Herrera was found unresponsive on a Hillsborough school bus.

In fact, Elia did all she could to deflect responsibility from herself and the district and cover-up district complicity in the child's death because of an outdated policy that had school bus drivers call dispatchers instead of 911 in an emergency.

As Joe Henderson of the Tampa Tribune wrote, if not for a lawsuit from the Herrera family, the circumstances of the girl's death - a direct consequence of school district policy continued under Elia - would not have come to light:

For all the community outrage over circumstances that contributed to the death of 7-year-old special-needs student Isabella Herrera, consider this: If her parents hadn't filed a federal lawsuit over the way her case was handled, the public still wouldn't know there was ever a problem.

There wouldn't be a task force to study ongoing problems with how issues with special-needs students are addressed.

School bus drivers would continue to follow the 21-year-old policy of calling dispatchers instead of 911 in an emergency such as the one that led to Isabella's death.

Six of seven members of the Hillsborough County School Board would still be in the dark about what happened that January day on the bus taking Isabella home from classes.

Life would go on just always. Except, of course, for Isabella and her family.

She had a neuromuscular disease that made her neck muscles weak. She was supposed to have her head back as she sat in her wheelchair, but she tilted forward and it blocked her airway. When it was discovered, the driver called dispatch and the aide on board called Isabella's mother.

By the time Lisa Herrera arrived and dialed 911 herself, her daughter was blue and unresponsive. She was pronounced dead the next day.

But Superintendent MaryEllen Elia didn't make the news public. She relied on a sheriff's office investigation that she said found no criminal wrongdoing, and appeared to let it go at that. During an interview last week, I asked why she didn't release the news. She fell back on the sheriff's report.

If you're the parent of a special-needs student, though, you would have liked to know there was a problem. I should say, is a problem. There have been three other issues with special-needs kids just this year, including the recent death of a student with Down syndrome who wandered away unnoticed and drowned.

The Herrera family filed its lawsuit a few days after that — about nine months after Isabella died. Now we have a task force, and a policy change allowing bus drivers to call 911 if the situation warrants. As school board Vice Chairwoman April Griffin told The Tampa Tribune though, "It goes way, way deeper than that. But I think it's a start."

This would be a better start: Expand the task force to probe the circumstances of why it took a lawsuit to bring this to a head. This isn't a witch hunt, but there has to be accountability.

What happened in the aftermath of this tragedy was at best a case of bureaucratic bungling.

When a child dies, a leader doesn't fall back on official reports and policy excuses. A leader gets to the bottom of things and then lets everyone know what went wrong so it doesn't happen again. A leader asks uncomfortable questions about the culture in a school system that values policy and procedure over good judgment and common sense.

That didn't happen here. And if not for a lawsuit, no one would have known.

Two years later, another child died after Hillsborough school staff failed to call 911 in a timely manner:

TAMPA — Keith Logan Coty played baseball, soccer and football. He was a principal's honor roll student in the first grade at Seminole Heights Elementary School, his mother said.

He'd had a heart murmur, but the doctor had cleared him, his mother said.

He died a year ago at age 6 of a brain hemorrhage, and a lawsuit filed Friday blames staff at his school for failing to call for help quickly enough. The lapse is especially unfathomable, lawyers say, as the issue of timely 911 calls was cited in another high-profile student death in a Hillsborough public school.

"How many kids under the care of this school district must die before the district gets it right?" lawyer Steven Maher asked, announcing the federal suit in a news conference Friday.

Exactly a year ago — Jan. 17, 2014 — Keith began feeling sick after lunch, the suit says. He went back to his classroom about 12:24 p.m., complaining to his teacher about a severe headache. She told him to lie down. He did. Then he started vomiting.

About 12:51, the teacher called Keith's mother, Kaycee Teets. There was no sense of urgency in the voice mail message she left, which Maher played at the news conference. It simply asked Teets to pick up her son because he was throwing up.

Before Teets could arrive, another school employee entered the room and found Keith lying on his side, making a gurgling sound with foam streaming from his nose. "His lips were blue," the suit said. The school nurse was summoned. Although Keith was unresponsive, the suit alleges the nurse did not perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation; nor did she use the defibrillator at the school.

About 12:58 p.m., a worker in the front office called 911. The information given to the 911 operator was confusing, the suit alleges. At one point the caller said Keith was breathing. His mother insists he was not.

When an emergency vehicle arrived at 1:03 p.m., Keith was "in the corner, visibly blue, not breathing, and unresponsive." Paramedics were able to resuscitate the child, and they took him to St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa.

A scan revealed he had a brain hemorrhage. But, according to the suit, no one told the doctors about his headache, information Teets learned hours later when she spoke with Keith's teacher. Not suspecting a neurological problem, doctors focused on possible cardiac issues instead.

Keith "went without oxygen for at least 10 minutes as a result of the delay in commencing CPR," the suit alleges. He stayed on life support long enough for his organs to be taken for donation, and he was pronounced dead later in the day.

The suit, filed days before Superintendent MaryEllen Elia could face a School Board vote on terminating her contract, is reminiscent of a suit the same firm filed in 2012, also involving a child alleged to have died after emergency treatment was delayed.

Isabella Herrera suffered a neuromuscular disability and was on a school bus when she stopped breathing. No one called 911 until Isabella's mother arrived. The school district ultimately settled that lawsuit for $800,000.

The Herrera suit was filed in federal court, alleging a civil rights violation; rather than a negligence suit in state court, where the award would have been limited under sovereign immunity. Maher was trying to prove a districtwide lack of training and care so severe, it amounted to a level of indifference toward disabled students that qualified as discrimination.

This time, Maher said, the 911 policy and procedures amount to discrimination toward all of Hillsborough's 200,000 students.

The district argued in the 2012 suit that there was no pattern of indifference. And, after the drowning death of a second special-needs child that same year, Hillsborough revamped its training of staff, particularly those who care for disabled children.

But 911 calls have remained a source of confusion. While Elia quickly stated there is no prohibition against calling 911, administrators sometimes advise staff to let the front office make the calls. Phone service is not always reliable in the classrooms, they say, and it's easier for emergency workers to find the office than a particular classroom.

Maher and Teets said that makes no sense to them.

"I would call 911. There would be no question," Teets said. "Any person would do that. I walked into a classroom and found my child, blue on the ground."

Stephen Hegarty, the district's spokesman, said, "I cannot comment on pending litigation."

Maher said his firm is asking for monetary damages, but did not specify the amount.

Where are the great leadership qualities Elia supposedly has in the aftermath of these tragedies involving Hillsborough students?

If one student dies as a result of the failure of staff to call 911 in a timely manner, wouldn't you think a "great leader" would put together an effective protocol so that such a tragedy wouldn't happen a second time?

Elia instead did her best to cover up the circumstances surrounding Isabella Herrera's death - something that was noted when Elia was feted with a commendation by the Tampa Bay City Council after she was fired as Hillsborough superintendent.

Mary Mulhern, a council member who voted against the commendation for Elia, told the Tampa Tribune:

"MaryEllen Elia was fired by her employers — by her boss, the School Board," she said. "I can't think of another case where someone gets lauded and celebrated after they've been fired from a job that is a public responsibility. … When you are responsible for the lives of children, I think one strike is too many."

Elaborating, Mulhern cited the deaths of three students:

• 7-year-old disabled student Isabella Herrera, who died in January 2012 after suffering respiratory failure aboard a school bus. A bus video show that the driver and an aide did not call 911, but used a radio to try to reach their supervisor, as was protocol, then called Herrera's mother, who arrived and called 911. The School Board, most of whose members were unaware of the death until the girl's parents sued, agreed to pay $800,000 last year to settle a federal lawsuit.

• 11-year-old Jennifer Caballero, who had Down syndrome and drowned in a pond behind Rodgers Middle School after wandering away from a crowded gym class in October 2012. The school district agreed to pay a negotiated settlement estimated at more than $500,000. Investigations led to three firings and several resignations at the school. The district also took steps after the deaths to improve safety for special-needs students on buses and in school.

• 6-year-old Keith Logan Coty, who died a day after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage in January 2014 at Seminole Heights Elementary School. In a lawsuit, his parents accuse the school district of being indifferent to student safety and of discouraging staffers from calling 911 in emergencies. The district denies the allegations.

"If somebody dies, it goes to the top," Mulhern said. In the Herrera case, she said, "her employers didn't know this happened for nine months. … For me, that's enough. That's three strikes."

Mulhern said she didn't "disagree that (Elia has) done very good work over 10 years," but the concerns about student safety were overriding for her.

"The powers that be in Tampa and Hillsborough County just circled the wagons around this powerful person," who, Mulhern noted, had the authority to give out contract. 

Say what you will about former NYSED commissioner John King's flaws as a leader - covering up district complicity in the death of a student and a failure to fix emergency protocol for 911 calls involving students weren't on the list.

The more you learn about MaryEllen Elia and her "leadership," the more you see the big mistake the Board of Regents made by hiring her as NYSED commissioner.

Also, the more you learn about Elia as a person, the more you see how appropriate her nickname - MaryEllen EVILia - is.

NY Board Of Regents To Parents And Teachers: Screw You!

In naming MaryEllen Elia, a former superintendent of Hillsborough, Florida schools to be NYSED commissioner today, the New York State Board of Regents sent parents and teachers in a strong message:

Full speed ahead on reforminess.

Oh, and screw you if you don't like it.

Elia, who was nicknamed EVILia by some parents for her attitude toward special needs children, was divisive in her former gig in Hillsborough and was ultimately shown the door by the school board  in a 4-3 vote.

Besides earning the ire of some parents, Elia has the reputation of creating a fear-based workplace, and retaliating against employees she considered enemies.

She also won $100K for her school district from the Gates Foundation by promising to fire the "bottom" 5% of teachers every year.

In short, she's John King on steroids.

Even today, she doubled down on reforminess, using the dog whistle language reformers so love to hear:

“Everything that happens for students happens in a classroom because of great teachers,” Elia said after her selection. “And I think the biggest thing we can all do is work to improve and support teachers to get better every day.”

Everything that happens for students in a classroom is because of great teachers?

Really?

What about great resources, a great curriculum, small class sizes, great district and school leadership?

Nope - only teachers matter.

That's reformy speak for "I'll be firing as many teachers as I can" - which is why StudentsFirstNY praised her today.

Elia also doubled down in support of the Common Core and testing:

At a press conference following her appointment Elia said she supports CommonCore and believes that with better communication, people will support testing and what it offers.

The Board of Regents voted unanimously to appoint Elia as NYSED commissioner.

That the regents chose so divisive a personage, somebody with the reputation of bullying subordinates and dismissing criticism from parents and employees in her time at Hillsborough, sends a very clear message to parents and teachers in New York State.

Your input on education policy is not wanted - it's full speed ahead on reforminess whether you like it or not.

The only response is here is a barrage of emails, calls and visits to legislators to let them know you ultimately hold them responsible for this appointment and you will make sure they pay a political price next election for supporting the Board of Regents in this decision.

Regents To Name New NYSED Commissioner With Reputation For Cultivating Culture Of Fear/Retaliation In Her Former District, Ignoring Special Needs Children

From the Buffalo News:

ALBANY – The State Board of Regents is preparing to appoint a well-regarded Florida schools leader with Lewiston roots to become New York’s next education commissioner.

MaryEllen Elia, 66, would become the first woman and first with Buffalo Niagara roots to ever take the post.

Elia is being recommended by the board’s search committee, but the full body must approve the appointment. The 17 Regents were given notice over the holiday weekend to report to Albany on Tuesday for a special meeting to interview Elia and then vote on her appointment.

They will go into an executive session at noon to discuss her appointment.

She's a reformer, of course - she pushed for and successfully implementated a merit pay system in her district, for example.

Also she got a hundred million from the Gates Foundation to put in place a system to fire 5% of teachers.

But there's more:

Toward the end of her tenure, however, she faced criticism from school board members and some segments of the community, who said she cultivated a workplace of fear and did not pay enough attention to issues that affect minority children, including the disproportionate number of black students receiving suspensions.

Parents of special needs students launched a social media campaign against her, dubbing her “EVILia.” 

One school board member criticized the accidental deaths of three students, saying that alone was grounds for her dismissal. In two of those cases, the students died after school staffers did not immediately call 911 when the children experienced medical problems. The third drowned in a nearby pond after walking away from gym class. 

The board voted to terminate her contract, giving her a buyout package that amounted to about $1 million.

Here's more on how some parents of children with special needs felt about her:

Parents of children with special needs overwhelmingly spoke about how the school district was not serving their children. Many talked about how ESE, or the Exceptional Student Education program for children with special needs had failed. Several of those parents looked Elia directly in the eye and went so far as to point and yell into the microphone as they let their emotions about the schools be heard (LINK)

The one percenters loved her down in Florida but many parents and employees?

Not so much.

We'll learn more as the day goes on, but a preliminary look at MaryEllen Elia and her track record as Hillsborough superintendent suggests the Board of Regents will be making a huge mistake if they hire her.

She elicited strong feelings of either support or disdain from people in the Hillsborough district, but I think anybody who was tagged EVILia in a social media campaign by parents of special needs children is going to be a disaster as NYSED commissioner.

What message is the Board of Regents sending to New York parents and teachers by looking to hire somebody as divisive as MaryEllen Elia?

StudentsFirstNY Sad That Assembly Watered Down Some Cuomo Education Reforms

From Capitol Confidential:

The Assembly passed Wednesday an omnibus education reform package that addresses both the updated teacher evaluation system and the Common Core standards.

The bill, which was introduced earlier this month, is a wide-ranging one-house proposal that grants an extension to when schools must fully implement the new evaluation system, delinks funding from the full implementation of the standards and requires the state Education commissioner to review the Common Core standards, among other things.

It would provide $8.4 million worth of funding to the state Education Department.
The bill passed 135-1.

There's not much positive to the bill in actuality - a kangaroo panel at SED to review Common Core, a slight delay in evaluation implementation, more money provided to SED for testing - but still this bill passage made education reformers StudentsFirstNY sad:

StudentsFirstNY, a group that has supported Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s teacher evaluation and education policies, didn’t view passage in the same light Wednesday.

“It’s disheartening to learn that certain lawmakers who approved teacher assessment reforms during the budget process have flip-flopped after a special interest group complained about the agreement,” StudentsFirstNY Executive Director Jenny Sedlis said in a statement. ”If New York State is serious about improving education, it must move forward with a better teacher evaluation system.”

A special interest group complained?

The heavy hearts in the Assembly were reacting to the opt out surge by parents all across the state, not to complaints by NYSUT.

Some commenters at Capitol Confidential pounced on StudentsFirstNY:

“It’s disheartening to learn that certain lawmakers who approved teacher assessment reforms during the budget process have flip-flopped after a special interest group complained about the agreement,” StudentsFirstNY Executive Director Jenny Sedlis said in a statement.

And:

“It’s disheartening to learn that certain lawmakers who approved teacher assessment reforms during the budget process have flip-flopped after a special interest group complained about the agreement,”Earth to Jenny Sedlis: Lawmakers are responding to the special interest group called “Taxpaying Parents of Abused Students” or TPAS for short….

Your organization is the Special Interest group, (The Executive Director title gives you away.) But, that’s what Republicans do best, renaming a hurtful policy with an Orwellian reverse speak… Student Advocate instead of test company-financed politicians, PeaceKeeper missiles instead of Weapons of Mass Destruction.. etc..

Also:

StudentsFirstNY Board of Directors: Mikael Andren, President, Jones Family Office ; Douglas J. Band , Counselor to President Clinton : David Boies , Chairman, Boies, Schiller, and Flexner LLP ; Tiffany Dufu , Chief Leadership Officer, Levo League ; Carl C. Icahn , Foundation for a Greater Opportunity ; Gail Golden Icahn , Foundation for a Greater Opportunity ; Paul Tudor Jones , Co-Chairman & Chief Investment Officer, Tudor Investment Corp. ; Peter Kiernan , Kiernan Ventures ; Joel I. Klein , CEO, Education Division, News Corporation ; Kenneth G. Langone , Chairman and CEO, Invemed Associates, LLC ; Daniel S. Loeb , CEO, Third Point, LLC ; Eva Moskowitz , Founder and CEO, Success Academy Charter Schools; Michelle Rhee , CEO and Founder, StudentsFirst ; Jabali Sawicki , Instructional Designer, Zearn ; Dan Senor , Author, Start-Up Nation; Senior Advisor, Elliott Management ; Michael Sullivan , Managing Director, SAC Capital. Special interest group, indeed!

Finally:

To clarify, not just special interest groups complained. Many informed parents had their students (over 200,000) refuse / opt out of the test. In this bill the legislature is trying to represent their constituents, hopefully they will be able to come together on a bill and make it veto proof. This would allow parents and teachers to see the exam in their entirety (like regents exams) and review their students individual results. Hopefully the length of test will also begin to mirror the regents exams. An 11th grader spends 2-3 hours on the English regents, but those in grade 4-8 spend three days and multiple days of prep to evaluate the same subject.

Only in Education Reform World are over 200,000 parents a "special interest group" but a small coterie of education reformers funded by some of the wealthiest interests in the country a grassroots organization devoted to improving education.

Reminds me of when former NYSED Commissioner John King had his meltdown in Poughkeepsie and claimed parents complaining about Common Core and the state's Endless Testing regime were "special interests."

Cuomo Blames NYSED/Regents For The "Massive Chaos" And "Utter Failure" Of The CCSS Roll Out, But Is Okay With Them Developing Evals

A Perdido Street School blog reader comments on Governor Cuomo's "The state test scores are meaningless for students" statement:

Another question Cuomo needs to explain is why he would turn over the development of regulations regarding teacher evaluations to an education department that had not done a good job in implementing his beloved Common Core Standards. You cannot make this nonsense up--NY State public education has been turned into one huge fiasco by the deformers. Every time they open their mouth they spout more complete non-sense then go off and hide until after another legislator is indicted (taking the pressure off them to explain their nonsense). Usually, they only need to wait a week, or two before they can stick their head out again!

You really can't make this nonsense up, as the commenter says.

Here's what Cuomo said about NYSED and the Regents regarding the Common Core roll out in June 2014:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo insisted teacher evaluation adjustments remain a top priority in the final days of the legislative session, adding that the problems over the Common Core implementation lay at the feet of the state Department of Education.

“We’re working on a bill that would make adjustments to teacher evaluations,” Cuomo said at a news conference. “We’re literally working on them as we speak.”

Cuomo added it’s the state Education Department’s roll out of Common Core, however, that has created the effect of needing to change the evaluation law, which is tied to Common Core-based testing.

The state budget agreement slowed the roll out of Common Core implementation for students, and Cuomo earlier this year said he wanted to make adjustments to the 2013 teacher evaluation law accordingly.

“In truth, the reason we’re in this situation is because the Board of Regents and Mr. King didn’t handle it,” Cuomo said, referring to Education Commissioner John King. “That’s how we got here. These are problems that have developed because of the improper roll out of Common Core in my opinion. We addressed the issues with the students and now we’re trying to address the issues with the teachers.”

This wasn't the first time Cuomo went both barrels at NYSED and the Regents over Common Core. Here was Cuomo's comments in February 2014:

ALBANY—Governor Andrew Cuomo took another shot at the State Board of Regents Thursday, blaming the education policy makers for “massive chaos” that he said has resulted from their implementation of the Common Core standards in New York.

Cuomo said he agreed with a protester's sign that proclaimed there was no proof the Common Core would help students.

“Yeah, I'm with them,” Cuomo said, referring to the protester. “The Common Core is being implemented by something called the Board of Regents. I have nothing to do with it.

“The Board of Regents supervises the State Education Department, and I don't appoint anyone to the Board of Regents, either,” Cuomo continued. “So I'm sort of where the parent is, standing outside with a sign. And by the way, I would hold the same basic sign that the parent is holding. I think the way they have implemented Common Core has failed utterly. There is massive confusion, massive anxiety and massive chaos all across the state. It may have been a good idea, but you need a good idea, and then it has to be done properly."

The Regents and SED brought "massive chaos" to the state education system via their "utter failure" in rolling the standards out, but he's swell with them developing a new evaluation system on an intractable deadline.

You really can't make this nonsense up.

Can The Incompetents At NYSED Pull Off The New Evaluation System?

As Rich Karlin at the Times-Union points out, it's not like they have a great track record:

The State Education Department is getting a second chance to implement a complex and controversial piece of public policy.

SED has faced a tidal wave of complaints from parents, teachers, local school officials and politicians — including Gov. Andrew Cuomo — about its four-year rollout of the new educational standards and the tests that come with them. The firestorm was one of the major controversies in last year's state budget negotiation.

But now, thanks to the 2015-16 state budget deal — specifically, language inserted by the governor — the department is being tasked with devising a new teacher evaluation system that will be crafted under the baleful gaze of many of the same critics.

The department will do it without any extra money, and is beginning its work without a permanent commissioner in place.

And of course the governor himself is on record calling both NYSED and the Board of Regents, essentially incompetent:

SED's Common Core critics have complained that the department and former Education Commissioner John King were too slow to provide backup or explanatory material about the new standards, even as it was putting out new exams based on the changes.

Cuomo himself even said last June: "The reason we're in this situation is because the Board of Regents and Mr. King didn't handle it."

King left in December to take a top job at the federal Department of Education. Cuomo offered similar criticisms of the Regents just last month.

Now the governor has managed to impose a new evaluation system and other reforms onto the education system that will be crafted by one appointed body and one bureaucratic department that he's on record saying couldn't handle the Common Core roll-out.

This should go swimmingly.

Back In The Day: Cuomo, Mulgrew, Iannuzzi, King Announce APPR Deal

As we await news of the latest teacher evaluation reform in New York State, let's revisit February 2012 for another big announcement on teacher evaluations by Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, former NYSED Commissioner John King, UFT President Michael Mulgrew and former NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi:

ALBANY — Student test scores and classroom observations will be used to assess New York educators under a new evaluation system announced Thursday that Gov. Andrew Cuomo heralded as a national model.

The agreement between state officials and union leaders ended two years of tense negotiations and put a court battle on hold.

With the clock ticking on a tight deadline, Cuomo and educational leaders on Thursday said they had broken through the major logjams standing in the way of the new teacher evaluation system — which would also bring in approximately $1 billion in federal funding over the next few years.

The move also strengthens the role of the state Education Department, which must approve the evaluation agreements developed by each of the state's 700 school districts.

"Today is a great day for the schools in the state of New York. Government works today," Cuomo said, as he was joined by Education Commissioner John King Jr. as well as Michael Mulgrew and Richard Iannuzzi, heads of the United Federation of Teachers and New York State United Teachers.

"Today's agreement is good for students and fair to teachers," Iannuzzi added.

To get the federal funding, the new evaluation system must be completed and implemented by year-end. Unions and management of local school districts, including the vast New York City system, had been at loggerheads over the weight to give student performance on standardized tests and the appeals process for teachers who receive the lowest rating.

With that in mind, Cuomo said he would impose his own system in his budget plan if unions and department officials couldn't agree by Thursday — which marks the deadline for the governor's 30-day amendments, or final touches, to his budget proposal for the 2012-13 fiscal year.

The announcement followed an all-night bargaining session in which the warring sides appeared to compromise on two key issues. The New York City-based UFT and State Education Department agreed on a plan for appealing evaluations in which teachers scored poorly and might face firing; and NYSUT and the state resolved differences over the so-called local test portion of the evaluation.

Under the plan, teachers are evaluated on a 100-point scale: 60 points are based on classroom observations and student portfolios; 20 points come from scores that students get on a standardized state test; and another 20 points come from tests developed by the district or a third party.

Much of the fighting between the labor leaders and state officials was sparked by Cuomo's last-minute push to allow student test scores to count for up to 40 percent of an evaluation. Districts have the option to use state tests for up to 40 percent of an evaluation, but it must be bargained with the union. NYSUT's Iannuzzi said the union would likely end the lawsuit it filed last spring over the increased weight given to state tests once the new evaluation system is finalized.

Additionally, the State Education Department will now have veto power over evaluations that are deemed insufficient. Unions and school districts will also develop a "curve" for the point system by which teachers and principals are rated. Educators will fall in one of four categories: ineffective, developing, effective and highly effective.

Those rated "ineffective" could be fired if they do not improve.

King down played the concerns of some school administrators that the evaluation system would add significant new work to the strained staffing at many schools. He said the new evaluation system will also "dramatically change" the jobs of many principals for the better, by putting them in the classrooms where they can offer constructive feedback to their staff.

"The role of the principal is to provide their teams with instructional leadership," he said. "Principals should be spending significant time in the classroom."

So far, about 100 school districts statewide have agreed on evaluation plans and another 250 are close.

Still, questions remain about how the State Education Department will regulate this new system and whether it has the capacity to review and approve them all by year's end.

"Whether they are going to be able to approve these new evaluations as efficiently as it was described here today, I'm a little bit suspicious," said Tim Kremer, executive director of the state School Boards Association.

And Iannuzzi stressed that the relationships between school districts and their unions will still be a key factor in whether the evaluation plans go smoothly.

"The ingredient you can't write in law is the ingredient of collaboration and trust" between unions and management, he said.

It's interesting to see how much has changed in three years.

Where three years ago they were touting principals as the drivers of observations and fonts of educational wisdom, in the latest iteration of New York State teacher evaluations as pushed by Governor Cuomo, the principal has been superseded by outside evaluators.

Back in February 2012, they said principals would be in classrooms "where they belong", offering "feedback" to their staffs.

In the latest iteration, outside observers will drive by on some unknown timetable to observe teachers they don't know in schools they've never been to in order to provide meaningful evaluations of teachers.

Yeah, that'll work great.

Want to bet we'll be re-doing APPR teacher evaluations in a year or two again when the plan they're working on now turns out to be a miserable failure.

The one constant you'll notice in all the iterations of evaluations in New York State is that the union leadership is always there on stage next to Cuomo for the sell-out announcement.

Bet whatever comes in the next day or so that some teacher union head will offer some variation on the Iannuzzi prouncement from back in the day:

"Today's agreement is good for students and fair to teachers," Iannuzzi added.

Because rhetoric about how good the sell-outs they negotiate never gets old or stale in the mouths of teachers union heads.

Merryl Tisch Wants To Increase Test Score Component In APPR Teacher Evaluation System To 40%

This news is not a surprise:

Ms. Tisch said in a phone interview Tuesday that she and Mr. King planned to propose several changes to the state’s teacher evaluation system, including creating a more efficient process for firing teachers who receive two consecutive ineffective ratings.

They will also propose doubling the weight of state or district tests in the ratings, to 40 percent of the overall score, which Ms. Tisch said would actually reduce the amount of testing in schools. Currently, 20 percent of the ratings are based on those tests. Another 20 percent are based on additional tests created as a result of negotiation between local districts and their unions, tests that could be eliminated with the change.

“Because of those 20 points, what happened was you got an increase in testing and an increase in focus on testing in these districts,” Ms. Tisch said.

Sixty percent of each rating is based on subjective measures, like principals’ evaluations, which in many districts were overwhelmingly favorable to teachers. Ms. Tisch said she and Mr. King would also propose changes to the scoring of principal evaluations.

I thought Tisch would look to do that - increase the test component to 40% and argue that doing so will actually "decrease" the amount of testing in the state's schools.

Here, of course, is the rub of all of that:

Any significant changes would have to be approved by the Legislature. The teachers’ unions, which have fought to limit the influence of testing, have support in the Democratic-controlled Assembly, and even some Republicans have been wary of the use of Common Core tests.

This is partly why there is now an attack on Assembly Speaker Silver, leaks to the NY Times about a federal probe into Silver by US Attorney Preet Bharara's office and such.

The monied interests have an enormous investment in destroying the public education system and breaking the teachers unions in New York State - they think that moment is now.

The only thing standing in the way of Andrew Cuomo getting to "break" the public education system as he promised to do before the election is Sheldon Silver and the Assembly Democrats.

John Flanagan has already signaled that Senate Republicans will go along with Cuomo's reform plans - including imposing a statewide APPR system.

The monied interests are looking to destroy Silver this legislative session and force through their school privatization and union busting plans.

Tisch's statements to the Times demonstrate just how far-reaching those plans will be.

In one piece of good news today, the Times-Union reports that Silver's expected demise may not come as planned.

I'll have more on that story later.

Suffice to say for now that Tisch, King and Cuomo are going to push a coordinated attack on public schools and teachers before King slinks off to his next gig and Silver and the Assembly Dems are all that stand between them and their goal.