Sincerely, A Teacher
By: NY BAT Eric Olson
Hello, Everyone,
I'm writing this email to inform and update folks about what is happening to public education in New York State and across the country as a whole. Let there be no mistake about it, there are a few very wealthy people who are trying to destroy public education for their own gain and teachers must educate and inform themselves, stay on top of what is happening, and begin to act before it is too late.
The attack on public education has been going on now for over a decade (some would say it goes back to the 1983 "A Nation at Risk" Report), gained steam with the 2009 Race to the Top initiative, and has now gone to an entirely new level in the past few weeks.
Since the New Year alone, Andrew Cuomo has threatened teacher pensions (he tweeted, "Albany has been too concerned with protecting the pension rights of teachers and not enough with the future of students"). He has attacked teacher tenure by stating, “I understand the union’s issue; they don’t want anyone fired, but we have teachers that have been found guilty of sexually abusing students who we can’t get out of the classroom. We have a process where literally it takes years and years to get a bad teacher out of the classroom.“ Obviously, this is a lie - there are no convicted sex offenders teaching in classrooms. He has initiated a new call to change the new APPR system that we have all worked so hard to put in place and carry out. Many believe his comment about pensions is an empty threat - who knows with this guy - but the APPR threats are very real, I'm sorry to say.
Cuomo believes the current APPR system is too lenient. He points to the low percentage of teachers that received an ineffective rating last year. He sees a problem with the fact that most teachers are effective or highly effective while just over 30% of New York's students are not meeting the new Common Core Standards as measured by 3-8 tests in ELA and Math tests. He doesn't mention, of course, that the cut scores are actually set AFTER the tests have been scored and calculated. In other words, the state decides, after the fact, what percentage of students will be deemed as performing at grade level making these tests and their results invalid. He also doesn't mention that testing, in general, is a poor measure of a teacher's effectiveness.
More alarming is what Regent Chancellor Merryl Tisch is proposing in response to a letter sent by Jim Malatras, Cuomo's state director of operations, that expressed Cuomo's disappointment with the APPR system. Tisch's response suggested that, instead of the current 20/20/60 breakdown, the state tests should count for 40% of the evaluation, thus eliminating the local 20%. Even worse, she is proposing that if a teacher is rated ineffective in the 40% test score component, the 60% based on observations and "other measures" doesn't matter. The 40% state test score trumps all and the Badass Teachers Association:
