Category: General

A Few Links on State of the State Day

Governor Cuomo, who yesterday said that public education, “Probably has been the single greatest failure in the state,” gives his state of the state address today at 1:30 pm.  I am sure there will be plenty of reaction afterward as Cuomo launches his plan to eviscerate public education.  While we wait for that a few links from the past few days…

  • Shoreham-Wading River Superintendent Steven Cohen writes about Cuomo and Tisch’s plan to remove local control from districts and replace it with “state control.”  Via the Riverhead News-Review…

So, what does “state,” as opposed to “local,” control mean? First, as a result of previous legislative action, namely the 2 percent cap on tax levy increases, democracy is out the window because a minority of residents has more power than the majority when it comes to deciding how much money will be spent in a given district.

Now comes the chancellor’s suggestions that locally elected school boards should no longer have control over determining whether teachers and principals do a good job and that all teachers and principals who do not meet the state’s standard of successful teaching or supervising two years in a row must lose their jobs.

Chancellor Tisch suggests that the content all children must learn and the methods teachers must use to teach that content will be determined by the state, not local residents in accord with professional educators, acting through democratically elected school board members. She suggests that charter schools, over which local residents have little if any control, would be completely free to flourish (or not!) and to replace democratically run local schools.

These charters, it should be emphasized, do not have to serve all children the way local, democratic and free schools must. And, as we all know by now, the education department will use tests purchased from private companies as the principal tool to determine whether kids are thriving, and thus whether their teachers ought to remain in the classroom.

So the non-elected chancellor and the current governor believe local control of education has failed. The great experiment is dead. What will take its place is a technocratic process so complex that it is almost impossible for parents, residents and educators to understand — much less embrace.

This opaque and exceedingly cumbersome and expensive process will be orchestrated from Albany. Education department bureaucrats in charge of this new system have little useful knowledge of the institution they will operate.

Local school boards, residents and parents and the staffs hired by the school boards will no longer play a central role in educating the young. This radical change, sadly, rests more on the arrogant self-regard of the chancellor, the governor and their allies than it does on any realistic assessment of the problems facing children around the state.

Poor children, regardless of race, suffer the ill effects of an education system that fails them, and has failed them for generations. But replacing democratic, local control of education with state technocratic education being pushed by a group of wealthy, non-elected reformers whose plans to improve education make sense to few people other than themselves and their paid acolytes, and whose concrete proposals come largely from for-profit companies hungry to profit off public funds, is deeply anti-democratic, not to mention foolhardy. Ms. Tisch and Gov. Cuomo have lost faith in democracy.

They would rather rely on people whom they regard as smart and well-connected — whether or not they know anything about schooling — rather than on parents, residents, experienced educators, scholars and students. To them, education must be taken out of the hands of teachers, principals and superintendents chosen by parents and residents, and instead be entrusted to companies that know one thing very well: how to make profits.

Dimino Refuses to Administer State Tests

PJSTA President Beth Dimino has notified the Comsewogue School District that she is refusing to administer state tests this spring.

Via the Long Island Press…

“I find myself at a point in the progress of education reform in which clear acts of conscience will be necessary to preserve the integrity of public education,” she writes. “I can no longer implement policies that seek to transform the broad promises of public education into a narrow obsession with the ranking and sorting of children.

“I will not distort curriculum in order to encourage students to comply with bubble test thinking,” continues her letter. “I can no longer, in good conscience, push aside months of instruction to compete in a state-wide ritual of meaningless and academically bankrupt test preparation. I have seen clearly how these reforms undermine teachers’ love for their profession and undermine students’ intrinsic love of learning.”

Dimino hopes other local educators will follow her lead and oppose subjecting their students to the tests by refusing to administer them.

“The next logical step has to be the movement of conscientious objectors,” she tells the Press. “I believe, and I said this to [New York State Education Commissioner John] King and [state Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl] Tisch and [state] Senator [John] Flanagan at the Three Village Rally [in November 2013], that this is child abuse. I believe that it is child abuse. I believe that giving these tests to my students makes me culpable in the abuse of children and I can no longer do that.”

Dr. Rella supports and respects her decision.

“I have known Beth for over 20 years,” he says. “This was not something she has done lightly. There was a lot of soul searching that went on and she said to me, as a matter of conscience, she cannot participate. She cannot proctor this test. And I support that.”

…

To help clarify this, she’s also putting forth a proposal before the New York State United Teachers Federation (NYSUT) asking that all teachers who have school age children refuse to let them take the exams.

This resolution, which Dimino co-authored, passed her union unanimously, she says, and will be brought to the NYSUT general assembly meeting in April, and aims to coordinate local teachers unions across the state in opting their children out of the tests in solidarity.

Be sure to read the full article at the Long Island Press.  More to come on this.

Stronger Together Letter to NYSUT

The Stronger Together Caucus has authored a letter to the NYSUT officers, Board of Directors, and members.  The letter addresses NYSUT’s seeming reluctance to push back against Governor Cuomo and Merryl Tisch regarding their APPR agenda.

Click here to view the letter.

 

Click here to contact the Stronger Together Caucus.

Let’s Try Something New

I’d like to take a bit of a break from our typical posts on here, consisting of news related to unions and public education in general to focus on something new.  Across the school district we are employed in, PJSTA members can be found doing extraordinary work of all different varieties.  Much of this work tends to go unrecognized as it is fairly ordinary for teachers to do extraordinary things all under the umbrella of “doing our jobs.”

I am on Twitter and tend to follow any PJSTA members who I discover to be on there.  Early this fall I followed one of our members, Matt Drucker, and quickly discovered something very cool that he was working on.  At the time Matt had very recently started blogging and was starting off by taking on a challenge titled, “Reflective Teaching: A 30-Day Blogging Challenge.”  The challenge asked teachers to write a reflective blog post each day for thirty days in regards to our profession.  Matt decided to give it a try because he was new to blogging and thought that it’d be a helpful way to get started.

” I feel that this blogging experience has opened my eyes to a whole new way to make connections with other teachers from all over the world.  It’s great to see that we have so many things in common and it has provided an additional support system.  It has also helped open my eyes to new ways to integrate and use technology in and out of the classroom.” Matt said.

Following that initial challenge Matt has gone on to continue blogging about his teaching experiences while at the same time taking on additional blogging challenges.  I highly recommend that you check out his blog Sig. Drucker’s travels through education…

Over the course of my career, as a teacher at Clinton, Norwood, and Terryville, I have had the chance to work with the overwhelming majority of our elementary teachers.  I have gotten to know many of the others through meetings, professional development, and other district related activities.  However one of my regrets is that I haven’t had the opportunity to get to know many of the secondary teachers outside of my union work.  As is the case with our elementary teachers, it is clear that there is some really outstanding work going on at both JFK and Comsewogue High School.  Social media has given me a bit of a window into some of the exceptional work that our members are doing at the secondary level.  As an elementary teacher it is both comforting and exciting to see my students heading into such capable hands.

If you have examples of PJSTA members doing great work in your buildings (and I know there are many examples in every building!) feel free to pass it along to me.  Additionally if you want to share some of your own best practices I would be happy to publish them here on the blog as well.  You can contact me via email at wogteacher@gmail.com

NYSUT, School Funding, and the Coming APPR Sellout

Yesterday NYSUT held a Moral Monday rally on the Million Dollar Staircase in the state Capitol.  Kudos to them for protesting funding inequities that rob our students of the education they deserve.

One thing I noticed in the coverage of yesterday’s events was that, deservedly so, there was lots of tough talk aimed at Governor Cuomo.  From Andy Pallotta to Mike Mulgrew to Randi Weingarten, Cuomo was being called to task for his record as an ed deformer.  What was unfortunate, however, is that none of this tough talk came last year when it mattered most.  When there was a viable alternative to Cuomo in the race for governor the three aforementioned “unionists” weren’t talking tough about Cuomo.  Instead Mulgrew was threatening the Working Families Party with dissolution if they didn’t endorse Cuomo and marching with the governor in the Labor Day Parade.  NYSUT was hiding under a rock and throwing their money at reformy John Flanagan and Randi Weingarten was making robo calls on behalf of Cuomo’s running mate.  So pardon me if their tough talk now rings a bit hollow to me.

Our friend Reality Based Educator had a good observation yesterday as well.  Lost in all of this talk about funding inequities has been the fact that there has been little if any talk about the Cuomo and Tisch APPR agenda.  As RBE points out on his Perdido Street School blog, it’s likely due to the fact that a big APPR sellout is on the way.

The union leadership puts together a rally with a message focused on the inequities between rich and poor districts.

Speaker Silver says education funding will be a “top priority” in this legislative session.

But there’s little-to-no pushback on the damages of test-based evaluations or redoing the evaluation system to make tests 40% of the entire rating (and really 100%, since if you come up “ineffective” on 40%, you’re ineffective overall.)

You can see how this will play out in negotiations, can’t you?

If you’ve been a teacher and have watched these kinds of fights for a while, I bet you can.

The unions and Assembly Dems will trade Cuomo’s evaluation, tenure, and 3020a “reforms” for more “education funding.”

And of course Cuomo will get his increase of the cap and funding for charter schools – that goes without saying.

…

It’s a lot of noise meant to fool the rank and file into thinking the union leaders plan on trying to protect them in upcoming negotiations.

Make no mistake – they don’t.

They plan on selling you out, giving Cuomo and the charter school entrepreneurs most (if not all) of what they want on the charter cap and charter funding, giving Cuomo and Tisch most (if not all) of what they want on the evaluation system “reforms” and 3020a changes in return for a few extra dollars in “education funding.”

We’ll hit on the coming sellout more in the coming weeks.  For now one other thing to note…

Why is NYSUT giving VOTE-COPE money to John Flanagan?  The Republican senator, who chairs the senate’s K-12 education committee, is a noted ed deformer and member of ALEC.  He is on the take from reform group StudentsFirst and has been in the news for backing changes to the APPR that would take local control away from school districts.  Flanagan has supported the idea of eroding tenure rights.  He was also the senator who complained to Comsewogue’s administration that Beth Dimino needed to speak to him in a more deferential tone.  He was not endorsed by NYSUT as there was literally no reason to endorse him.  So one certainly wonders why NYSUT contributed $7,750 to him in this past election.  That made them one of Flanagan’s top donors.  Not issuing an endorsement is sort of pointless if you are going to then fill the coffers of that candidate anyway.

Pallotta and Flanagan

Resolution to Support the “I Refuse” Movement

New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE), NY BATs, Lace to the Top (LttT), STCaucus, Long Island Opt-Out (LIOO), and the Port Jefferson Station Teacher’s Association (PJSTA) have collaborated to write the following Test Refusal/APPR Resolution. The above organizations are in full support of this resolution and encourage its use as a working template for your local chapters. It will be presented at the 2015 NYSUT RA.

PLEASE bring this to the attention of the members in your local and make sure it is discussed in your Rep Council meetings. The more districts who sign-on, the better! There is strength in our numbers and in building MASSIVE test refusals for state assessments this Spring. Please encourage ALL your teachers to refuse testing for their own kids as this action will send a powerful message to other parents, that we support their right to opt their child out of developmentally inappropriate, non-diagnostic, high-stakes testing. We have provided a link at the bottom of the resolution for the purchase of Test Refusal car magnets and stickers to help build recognition and support within our communities. We encourage teachers to send in their child’s “I REFUSE” letter and display the magnet or sticker on their car to show support for students, teachers and public education!

Resolution to Support the “The I Refuse Movement” to oppose High Stakes Testing

WHEREAS, the purpose of education is to educate a populace of critical thinkers who are capable of shaping a just and equitable society in order to lead good and purpose-filled lives, not solely prepare that populace for college and career; and

WHEREAS, instructional and curricular decisions should be in the hands of classroom professionals who understand the context and interests of their students; and

WHEREAS, the education of children should be grounded in developmentally appropriate practice; and

WHEREAS, high quality education requires adequate resources to provide a rich and varied course of instruction, individual and small group attention, and wrap-around services for students; and

WHEREAS, the state assessments are not transparent in that–teachers and parents are not allowed to view the tests and item analysis will likely not be made available; and

WHEREAS, the assessment practices that accompany Common Core State Standards – including the political manipulation of test scores – are used as justification to label and close schools, fail students, and evaluate educators; therefore be it

RESOLVED that the PJSTA opposes standardized high stakes testing that is currently pushed by the Federal and State governments, because this testing is not being used to further instruction for children, to help children, or to support the educational needs of children; and be it further

RESOLVED, the PJSTA advocates for an engaged and socially relevant curriculum that is student-based and supported by research; and be it further

RESOLVED, the PJSTA will embark on internal discussions to educate and seek feedback from members regarding standardized high stakes testing and its impact on students; and be it further

RESOLVED, the PJSTA will lobby the NYS Board of Regents to eliminate the use of high stakes testing; and be it further

RESOLVED, the PJSTA will ask that all of its members have their own children refuse to take the Grade 3-8 assessments: and be it further

RESOLVED, the PJSTA will organize other members and affiliates to increase opposition to high stakes testing; and be it further

RESOLVED, that a copy of this resolution will be sent to the NY State Board of Regents, the Governor of NYS, and all members of the NYS legislative branch; and be it finally

RESOLVED, that after this resolution is passed by the PJSTA Representative Council, an appropriate version will be submitted to the American Federation of Teachers for consideration at the AFT July 2016 Convention and to NYSUT for consideration at the 2015 RA.

Please encourage your members to purchase/replicate these bumper stickers/magnets to support test refusal as a way to stop corporate education reform. http://www.cafepress.com/nysalliesforpubliceducation

If You Can’t Trust Your Union…

Several years back, when discussing the work of our local union I had a colleague say to me, “If you can’t trust your union, who can you trust?”  I, of course, agreed wholeheartedly.  Years later I can still agree with this statement in regards to my local union.  Over the course of my career the PJSTA has provided me with wonderful working conditions, a good living wage, and excellent benefits.  On top of that they have represented my voice well in matters regarding public education and legislative issues that impact our profession.  They have advocated for the students we teach and the community that we serve.  The PJSTA, over the course of my 13 years as a member has undoubtedly earned my trust.  Where things change, however, is with my other unions.  My parent unions.

There was a time when I would go to the polls with a list of NYSUT endorsed candidates in my pocket and vote accordingly, believing that they had made endorsements only to those who would be fighting for quality public education.  Additionally I would give generously from each pay check towards VOTE-COPE, with the belief that this money was going towards those candidates who would fight for the sort of public education system that I could be proud of.  The type that benefited our students and communities.  After all, if you can’t trust your union, who can you trust?

Unfortunately I have learned over the past couple of years that I can’t trust NYSUT and I can’t trust the AFT.  I say them separately, though the elements that make them untrustworthy tend to be one and the same (The UFT leadership’s Unity Caucus, which controls both NYSUT and the AFT).

As we sit here, a week into 2015, the public education landscape looks bleaker than ever.  We have clear adversaries regarding the attacks on our profession and what is perhaps most disturbing is the way in which our parent unions have, in many ways, been complicit in working with those adversaries.

For example, let’s look at Governor Cuomo.  Cuomo was a clear enemy of public education throughout his first term in office, even going so far as to say that schools whose test scores weren’t good enough should receive the “death penalty.”  By now we all know the litany of other offenses on Cuomo’s part.  It goes without saying that Cuomo should have been public enemy #1 for NYSUT.  If they were representing the voice of their membership he certainly would be.  Let’s take a look at the NYSUT timeline of events regarding Cuomo over the past year…

There was certainly more than one local president at the endorsement conference who asked for an endorsement of Teachout in the primary.  Our own Beth Dimino was one of them.  That brings me to another option for NYSUT.  Dimino suggested that if Teachout were to lose to Cuomo in the primary, NYSUT should support the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins and Brian Jones for governor and lieutenant governor.  We covered their education platform back in May.  So NYSUT had two separate options to oppose Cuomo and they chose none.  Despite pleas from their membership and presidents from locals around the state, Magee, Pallotta, and the rest of NYSUT’s board of directors decided in their private meeting yesterday that they would not oppose Cuomo.

  • Summer- At around the same time NYSUT was failing to endorse and contribute to Teachout’s campaign, it was revealed that the NYSUT officers quickly and quietly worked out a double pension deal that Cuomo curiously signed off on very quickly.  (Norm Scott, who broke the story, wondered if the trade off for Cuomo’s support for their double pensions was remaining neutral in the campaign.)
  • September- Only days before the primary, AFT President Randi Weingarten (former UFT President and Unity Caucus member), made robo calls in support of Cuomo’s running mate Kathy Hochul, a back door endorsement for Cuomo if there ever was one.
  • September- At the Labor Day parade in Manhattan, UFT President, NYSUT Board of Director member, and the Unity Caucus’ Mulgrew marches with Cuomo.
  • September 9th- Cuomo and Hochul beat Teachout and her running mate Tim Wu in the primary.  Teachout garnered 34% of the vote, Wu 40% despite the fact that Cuomo spent 40 times (!) as much as Teachout.  NYSUT was busy throwing their VOTE-COPE money at ed deformers like John Flanagan, who is well funded by StudentsFirst, the pro-charter, pro-voucher Jeff Klein, and the indicted Thomas Libous.  They chose not to give a dime to Teachout who could have desperately used the funding to help combat Cuomo’s Wall Street funded campaign.  Teachout, of course, could have also benefited from an endorsement that would have gone out to NYUST’s 600,000 members (you’ll recall that Cuomo’s margin of victory was less than 150,000).
  • November- Cuomo wins re-election with only 53% of the vote.  Of particular note is the fact that he had the Working Families line on the ballot.  If Teachout had gotten that endorsement back in May and ran to the left of Cuomo she likely would have pulled a considerable number of Democratic voters with her and severely harmed Cuomo’s chances of winning the election.

The names of the organizations may have changed in the above scenarios, but the faces behind them are essentially the same.  Randi Weingarten and Michael Mulgrew pull the strings more than any other.  In NYSUT, Executive Vice-President Andy Pallotta mostly does their bidding while the other officers fall in line.  Pallotta, Mulgrew, and Weingarten have all taken the Unity Caucus oath and have all benefited from it tremendously.  That’s why they won’t act in opposition to Cuomo.  They won’t act in opposition to the Common Core.  They will do very little to benefit the members (though Martin Messner may save you money on your car insurance!).  It’s only a matter of time before the statewide APPR sellout comes.  Unfortunately not many of our statewide members benefit from the work of Unity Caucus.  Most of us are actually hurt by it.  That’s why I can say that I don’t trust my union.

The only way for things to ever change within NYSUT is to defeat the statewide Unity Caucus and their “seat at the table” brand of unionism.  We need leadership who is driven by principle, by the desire to see our schools strengthened, and by the collective conscience of our rank and file membership.  Not by an oath that they took to vote along party lines.

We are getting pretty late into this game now.  Things are becoming more dire by the day.  Maybe the coming APPR sellout will be what finally galvanizes our members to stand up and take back their union.

A Message From Carol Burris

Via principal and public education advocate Carol Burris…

The Governor and Chancellor Tisch are proposing an overhaul of the already flawed APPR system. They propose that the system be designed to find MORE teachers and principals ineffective and developing, in order to be in better alignment with the high percentages of students who are below proficient on the Common Core exams.
 
Their plan would also strip away local school board, superintendent and principal input into evaluation systems, putting more power in Albany’s hands to determine the fate of our teachers and principals.
Please read and share Carol Burris’ Washington Post blog which describes Chancellor Tisch’s proposed changes.
There are other strategies that the Governor and Mrs. Tisch propose that would severely undermine public education, including the expansion of charter schools.  The New York State Allies for Public Education has now published sound, research-based and pro-public school responses.  You can read their letter here:
Please share this widely as well.
Now is the time to contact the Board of Regents, and your legislators, including your assembly member and senator to make it clear that you do not want 1) a state-wide APPR plan  imposed from Albany  2) that the doubling of test scores in APPR will cause this system to be even more unreliable and have terrible effects on your  students and your schools  3)that you oppose the lifting of the cap on charter schools and 4) you support the evidence based responses of NYSAPE to the governor’s questions – rather than those of the chancellor. Here is a link to a very easy way to do just that.  It allows you to easily personalize the beginning and end if you wish. 
 
We must all work together to help the members of the Board of Regents and the legislature understand that the Cuomo/Tisch agenda of more privatization and high stakes testing will harm kids and our public schools.
Thanks!

Looming Battles for 2015

Happy New Year to our PJSTA members along with any other readers of our blog.  Hopefully you had an enjoyable vacation and return to school well rested.  You’ll need it.  We have a number of developing  battles on our hands.

For those of you who may have missed it, New York State’s Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch sent a New Years Eve letter to Governor Cuomo’s aide Jim Malatras detailing what she sees as the necessary changes to the New York State APPR.  Carol Burris did a great job breaking it all down on Valerie Strauss’ blog.

Via The Washington Post (emphasis mine)…

New York Chancellor Merryl Tisch has announced her New Years resolution—revise the teacher evaluation system so that Common Core 3-8 test scores can trump all.

Yup.  Tisch’s response to the tremendous push back against the Common Core tests has been to add further weight to the test scores.

The short version of what she wants to do now is this—double down on test scores and strip away the power of local school boards to negotiate the majority of the evaluation plan. Tisch would get rid of the locally selected measures of achievement, which now comprise 20 percent of the evaluation, and double the state test score portion, to 40 percent. She also recommends that the score ranges for the observation process be taken out of the hands of local districts, and be determined by Albany instead. Dr. Lederman, start packing up. Merryl Tisch and Andrew Cuomo, whom you have never met, know your talents better than your local school board, your principal and the parents of the children you teach.

…

Although Tisch claims that this is about teacher improvement and mentoring, the letter discloses her true intent. She opines that if a teacher is ineffective in the growth score portion, as Sheri was, she should be rated ineffective overall.  In addition,if a teacher has two ineffective ratings they “should not return to the classroom.” Whether those ratings, which are based on a highly discredited model, are accurate or not is moot. They produce a bell curve.

You read that correctly.  Regardless of what 60% of your evaluation says, if the growth score says you are ineffective, your entire rating will be ineffective.  If you receive two ineffective ratings you will no longer be allowed to teach.

Meanwhile, the evidence has continued to accumulate that evaluating teachers by test scores simply does not work.

In April of 2014, the American Statistical Association, joined other research organizations, such as the American Education Research Association and the National Academy of Education, in cautioning against the use of student test scores, commonly referred to as VAM, in teacher evaluations. The ASA clearly outlined how unreliable this methodology is and noted that teachers’ impact on test scores is minimal–between 1 percent and 14 percent. Understand also that these VAM and “growth” ratings are all relative—pitting each teacher against all others. Even if every child scored in the mastery range on the test, there would still be a percentage of teachers rated Ineffective. It is a sorting mechanism based on an algorithm, which most researchers agree is flawed.

…

The Tisch plan is a power grab designed to snatch away the right of elected Boards of Education to determine what is quality teaching, by shifting it to a formula produced in Albany based on flawed tests. Ironically, these are the same tests which the Governor and legislature say, in law, should have no consequential effects on students. But there is no problem using those tests to boot Sheri Lederman and teachers like her out the door.

Be sure to read the entire article.  Burris is always a voice of reason and logic in a debate that all too often is filled with nonsensical attacks on us.

We know that Tisch’s APPR agenda is also Cuomo’s.  We know that Cuomo has the support of the Republican controlled, Wall Street funded senate.  That includes our local state senator John Flanagan, the chairman on K-12 education who is on the take from noted ed deformers Students First, his top campaign contributor.

Via Capital NY…

Senate education chair John Flanagan said lawmakers should consider limiting school districts’ control over their evaluation plans. “Maybe we should be having a discussion about a statewide protocol,” he said on “The Capitol Pressroom,” a public radio program. “Instead of having 700 disparate agreements, let’s have a menu where you have 10 or 12 options for school districts to get involved in, because all of these things have to be negotiated, and one of the things that the unions jealously guard, which I understand and respect, is the concept of local control. They want to be able to negotiate everything. And yet, I don’t really see anyone out there who is … jumping up and down and saying everything is working really well.”

Voters in the Comsewogue community should take note that their state senator, John Flanagan, supports stripping our district of local control over teacher evaluations and farming it out to Albany.

Our friend Reality Based Educator covered Flanagan on his Perdido Street School Blog on Christmas Eve.

Finally that brings us to this from Governor Cuomo…

 

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post followed up with this op-ed.  I am not sure that Cuomo has the juice to launch a pension attack, but it sure seems as though a warning shot’s been fired.

To say we didn’t see any of this coming would be wrong.  Much of this was entirely predictable, particularly the APPR stuff.  Unfortunately NYSUT leadership has not shown the willingness to fight any of this.  Nor will they in the coming weeks and months.  To be clear, the fight for public education will have to come from students, parents, and rank-and-file teachers.  We’ll have more on the role of NYSUT coming up.  In the meantime lace up your boots.  There’s a lot of work to be done in 2015.

Stronger Together Letter to Chancellor Tisch

Via the Stronger Together Caucus website…

December 22, 2014

Merryl H. Tisch, Chancellor
Regents Office
State Education Building
89 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12234

Beth Dimino, ST Caucus Chair
290 Norwood Avenue
Port Jefferson Station NY 11776

Dear Merryl Tisch, Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents:

We are a group of education leaders from across the state that have shared concerns with the direction of education policy in this state and how it ultimately affects our students. On December 18th, 2014, the Governor’s office submitted an open letter to you that outlined questions to be discussed when developing the state’s educational policy in the coming year.

The questions the Governor’s office posed relied on the state’s testing data being valid and reliable. Since there have been many questions regarding the validity and reliability of the data, we believe it is important that SED make public responses to the following questions so any discussion that occurs will be transparent. Experience has shown that when policy is formed without the input of all stakeholders, chaos ensues; furthermore, we have seen how disastrous policy can be when predicated upon incomplete and erroneous data. We believe this disconnect has led to the turbulence between the practitioners and the policy-makers for the last several years.

We believe improvements need to be made for the state to move beyond the current problematic foundation: SED needs to make clear that its underlying assumptions parallel the actual experiences of all students of the state of New York. Could you answer the following questions in a timely manner?

No previous cohort of students (K-12) had ever received instruction so heavily tied to the Common Core or standardized tests. Could such experimentation on our children create significant and systemic unintended negative consequences?

These consequences could be more devastating as this is not a localized experiment where local professionals can modify it as they see fit. This is a statewide experiment where local control has been removed and subsequently, practitioners and parents feel powerless to adjust and adapt to meet the needs of their children. Given the consistent and pervasive anecdotal reports of students’ increased stress reactions, school phobias and medications being prescribed for anxiety (especially in our elementary population), has SED been monitoring the emotional and physical health effects of this curriculum/testing initiative on our students? What has SED found in its research? If SED has not been monitoring for unintended negative consequences, why not?

Much of the discussion about schools, teaching and student outcomes assumes that the results on the State’s ELA and Math assessments are both valid and reliable. In order for the label “College and Career Ready” to have any real meaning, the data that the state produces must parallel the experience of the actual students in the school districts upon entering the college educational system. For example, if a school sends 90% of its students to four-year schools and 80% of those students graduate in four years, yet the state assessments only put the percentages of college and career ready students at 40%, whose data is considered more valid? Has SED surveyed districts to examine this discrepancy? What has SED found in its research? If SED has not been monitoring for discrepancies, why not? Doing so would provide more accurate data about college and career readiness.

The initial study that established the State’s “College and Career Readiness” benchmarks was done on students from New York City schools who were attending two-year CUNY schools. This narrowed the pool by eliminating students that went on to four-year colleges. The smaller subgroup selected makes the data very specific. It also makes it harder to extrapolate generalizations regarding all the students of our state. What steps have been taken since then to make the “college and career readiness” benchmarks a more reliable and valid measure of all our students? What has SED found in its research?

In 2013, both you and Commissioner King stressed that the low test scores were “just a baseline” and should not be overemphasized, making the exams experimental. Has new information materialized in the last year to make SED more confident that the test scores are now a more accurate reflection of the deficits in student learning as a result of teacher ineffectiveness, and not just the continued fallout that exists with the Common Core roll out? What has SED found in its research?

Last year, you followed the feedback from the Commissioner’s Forums on Common Core. In fact, you attended some of the meetings. How would you try to synthesize the feedback from parents with the desires of the Governor? Would you be willing to take the questions from the Governor’s office to the people of the State in another listening tour? If not, why not?

Thank you for your time and consideration in these matters. We look forward to an open dialogue which will help us all ensure that our school children are in fact being prepared for the 21st century and beyond and ultimately to improve education in the state of New York.

Sincerely,

Beth Dimino, Port Jefferson Station TA, Suffolk County
Joseph Karb, Springville FA, Western NY
Michael Lillis, Lakeland Federation of Teachers, Hudson Valley
Michele Bushey, Saranac TA, North Country
Kevin Coyne, Brentwood TA, Suffolk County
Orlando Benzan, Brockport TA Rochester
Beth Chetney, Baldwinsville TA, Central NY
Megan DeLaRosa, Shenendehowa TA, Capital Region
Laura Finn- Spencer, Smithtown TA, Suffolk County
Lauren Cohen, UFT, New York City