Governor Andrew Cuomo has signed the new changes to the teacher evaluation law. NYSUT President Andy Pallotta is ecstatic.
From NYSUT'S Weekly Update:
APPR reform is now law
"Finally!" said President Andy Pallotta upon enactment of the state's teacher evaluation reforms. The changes end the mandate that tied evaluations to state standardized tests and restore local control and collective bargaining to the process. "Educators across New York earned a huge victory after banding together to push for fixes to the broken teacher evaluation system that created undue stress for teachers, students and parents," he said.
I get we can't have state tests used to rate us unless our union agrees with it but basically nothing much changes in evaluations. Teachers are still rated half on student assessment results on some assessment that is not designed to evaluate teachers.
Here is a link to the NYSUT Fact Sheet on the new law.
Anyone who can explain it so that a non statistics major can understand it gets a prize.
FACT: NYSUT and the UFT dropped the ball on APPR. They should have pushed for a complete repeal of APPR so we could go back to to the much missed S/U system and have no linking of test scores whatsoever. There is no more Race to the Top. NYS could have easily repealed APPR and the general public would not have even given a shit. We got screwed in a big way over this. Why the UFT is calling this a "win" is beyond me.
ReplyDeleteMulgrew knee this was a sham, and he pretty much lied to Delagates. Oddly, Paul Egan was a lot more candid with Delgates. When pressed, he confessed that almost nothing would change with respect to “the Matrix” and test scores as a result of the new law. I wonder if his candor with members is what got him on the wrong side of Mulgrew? He was fired within a week. And, what is the name of his replacement? I’ve heard that the replacement used to work for Andrew Cuomo. We are never going to get out from under this APPR as long as our union sees their job as whitewashing Cuomo’s dumb mistakes.
ReplyDeleteObservation reports are one of the biggest frauds in education.
ReplyDeleteThey represent a gross waste of public funds in terms of the portion of supervisory salaries that go toward their preparation.
http://source.nysut.org/weblink7/DocView.aspx?id=709.
I am super concerned that principals are going to mess with the 2 observations for tenured teachers rated effective or higher next year. The new contract says that one informal must be done in the first five months of school and the second informal in the last 5 months of school. However, these are the MINIMUM. Are principals going to be doing more than 2? What say you all???
ReplyDeleteThey will harass whoever they want to target.
ReplyDelete