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Citing poll, NYSUT pushes for limited role of test scores in evals

Across the state, school districts are inching toward teacher evaluation deals one week before a deadline Gov. Andrew Cuomo set last month.

According to NYSUT, the state teachers union, 100 school districts have agreed on how to put new evaluations in place and 400 districts “report making progress.” That leaves just over 200 districts that, like New York City, are nowhere near agreeing with their local unions on new evaluation systems.

Cuomo said last month that if districts do not settle on new evaluations by next week, he would use the budget amendment process to change the state evaluation law. Last year, in a hint of what the changes might entail, the governor pushed state policy-makers to double test scores’ weight, from 20 to 40 percent, in an action that drew a successful legal challenge from the union.

But even as districts fall in line with Cuomo’s ultimatum, NYSUT is redoubling its commitment to limiting the weight of student test scores in new evaluations. Today, NYSUT released the results of a poll, conducted for it by Hart Research Associates, that found that most parents statewide did not want to see test scores count for more than 20 percent of teacher evaluations, the minimum amount allowed under state law.

The poll, of 773 parents from across the state, found that three-quarters of New York parents think highly of the general quality of teachers in their local schools and that 64 percent think there is already too much emphasis on test scores.

In New York City, where little progress has been reported in recently reopened talks over teacher evaluations, the dispute has not been over the role of test scores. Instead, the local impasse has focused on appeals procedures for teachers who receive low ratings.

  • Guest

    Does anyone think that Cuomo cares what parents think?

    I don’t.

  • bee

    He will care at some point what voters think.

  • Nycdoenuts

    Na, they have lobbyists.

  • REALLY?????

    How will PE, Art, Computer, Science, Social Studies, etc. teachers be evaluated under this system in Elementary Schools since there is no test in those subjects most or all years?  How will first and second grade and kindergarten teachers be judged?  How will all of the vocational and untested subject teachers in high school be judged?  And what about untested grades/subjects, like Science and Social Studies in junior high, teachers of freshmen (except in Living Environment and Algebra), teachers of foreign languages, teachers of government and economics and teachers of all electives?  Are they to be judged on some brand new, quickly thrown together set of criteria so that this new evaluation system can be put into place?

  • Ellen

    why didn’t you mention the extremely large number of police who were present and the fact that, if a person left his or her seat, they were not allowed to return to the auditorium …there were a very large number of folks in the front lobby trying to return to seats but were refused admissions.  The crowd dwindled I admit, but the refusal to allow folks to return to their seats or enter a public meeting was scary.  The public was shut out by the police force that the public pay for.  Its a violation of everyone’s civil rights and  especially the right to free public assembly

  • Jay1

    The elephant in the room which teachers are wisely silent about and the ‘reformers’ refuse to acknowledge is that it does not matter how much of a ‘superman’ and individual teacher is: there are some populations who will make even the best teachers look like incompetents at best or totally ineffective at worst. 

    The test score linkage to a teacher’s job security will do more to drive smart teachers out of inner-city classrooms and needy districts than anything an enemy of education could propose.  A smart teacher would quickly recognize that teaching in a classroom full of stable, middle class kids from supportive families would be far more beneficial to their long term job security than attempting to be a teacher/surrogate parent/advisor/counselor to a class of students from mostly broken homes, many of whom don’t speak English, and whose ability ranges look like a seismograph on steroids.

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