The following post is a winning submission for the 2015 Jason Libou Online Writing Competition. Competitors were prompted to write a blog post on a topic of their choice relating to urban law and policy.
By Herbie RosenOn Saturday, March 28, hundreds of teachers, students, and parents braved the cold to protest New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposed education policies. Announced in January, Cuomo’s educational reforms make the teacher evaluation system rely more heavily on the results of state tests. Cuomo proposes that 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation would come from their students’ state test results.
New York State requires all teachers to be evaluated each year. Prior to the current model, teachers used to be rated as either “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory” based on their supervisors’ observations. However in 2010, New York legislators revised the entire evaluation process. Teachers would now get one of four ratings, with an increased focus on test scores.
Under the current system, 20 percent of a teacher’s evaluation score comes from state test results (or alternate measures of student growth). A majority of the ratings are still based on observations, community member surveys, and the principal’s evaluation.
This current model took several years to take shape in New York City, much less New York State. It only just took off in 2013, providing results in the fall of 2014.
Contrary to what many officials predicted, only 6 percent of teachers in the city or state were rated “ineffective,” compared to about 2 percent of teachers in the city or state who rated “unsatisfactory” under the old system. Given the little change in student test scores, many thought the current system would weed out more ineffective teachers. However, due to current reports of the illiteracy rate in New York, Governor Cuomo is proposing his new method.
As the crowd on Saturday demonstrated, there is widespread criticism and concern about Cuomo’s proposals. New York City Major Bill de Blasio has stated, “Standardized tests should not be the largest part of a full evaluation of a student or a teacher.” He has been advocating for redirecting funding to improving public school conditions, and incentivizing weaker teachers to leave for better school severance packages. New York City Schools Chancellor, Carmen Farina, has also protested Cuomo’s ideas, claiming, “50 percent weight for these exams are too much.”
Not only government officials are rallying against Cuomo. United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew has threatened legal action should the Governor’s policy become law. There is concern about whether the new state tests demonstrate mastery of a student, much less the instruction of teachers. Both the National Academy of Education and the American Educational Research Association have expressed concern about the inaccuracy, instability, and invalidity of ratings derived from test scores. Students may be nervous on test day, and a variety of emotional and social factors could cause their performance to not fully demonstrate the work put in throughout the year by their teachers.
Furthermore, there is concern that the state and city have not given enough time for the current model of evaluation to settle into normal procedure. Perhaps if the state were to think instead about improving the current model instead of placing more emphasis on state scores, a middle ground could be reached. Due to the half-hazarded implementation of common core standards across the state, test scores may not be fully representative of teachers and their work.
For an educational system as vast as New York, a consistent reform must take place. Constantly revising the teacher evaluation system may lead to a sub-standard implementation of policy, doing little to weed out ineffective teachers. Instead, the State could be better served by providing incentives to principals and administrators for leading effective teacher evaluations in their schools. Perhaps principals and administrators could receive better training from the state as to how the evaluations should be conducted. Governor Cuomo may want to slow down his push for drastic educational reform and instead focus on strengthening the current teacher evaluation template. By doing this, the Governor can help ensure that the teacher evaluation system is consistent across the state, and he can avoid putting more emphasis on the still-developing subject matter and implementation of standardized tests.
For now, however, protests may continue as the New York State Legislature considers funding the Governor’s plan. The Legislature must make their one billion dollar decision by April 1.
Photo Credit: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/education/seeking-aid-more-districts-change-teacher-evaluations.html
Sources:
http://ny.chalkbeat.org/topics/teacher-evaluation/
https://data.nysed.gov/evaluation.php?year=2013&state=yes&report=appr
http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/advance/Background/default.htm