COMMON CORE TESTS ALONE FOR GRADES 3-8 WON'T KILL TEACHERS FOR TWO YEARS

Teachers in New York won a delay for two years out of the State Legislature and Governor on counting student results on Common Core tests for teacher ratings.  Here are some of the details from Capitol Confidential:

A bill to temporarily hold teachers harmless for poor student scores on Common Core-based tests is headed to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s desk, after the state Senate approved it unanimously early Friday. The Senate voted 60-0 to OK the bill around 12:45 a.m., not long after the Assembly also voted overwhelmingly in favor of the legislation.

The bill will receive Cuomo’s approval; he officially introduced it early Thursday.

When signed, the bill would apply to teachers who receive a “developing” or “ineffective” rating on their annual evaluations through the 2014-15 school year. Those teachers would have their ratings recalculated without any Common Core-based test scores counted; if their rating remained poor, they would be subject to potential disciplinary action.

Local measures I guess will count double.  This law will only impact teachers in grades 3-8 who are judged in part based on Common Core English or math tests.  As NYC Educator points out, they will still be judged partially on test scores but it will be different unreliable junk science.

Most high school Regents tests are not yet aligned yet with Common Core so we are still on the hook for all of the student test score portion of our evaluation for this year and next.

Perdido Street School provides us with a reason for a little optimism on evaluations this morning when he states: "Still, the more changes they have to make in Albany to this mess of a system, the more likely the whole system collapses under the weight of its own absurdity."

I couldn't agree more.