"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Tuesday, July 08, 2014

The Meaningless Moratorium Has Ended Before Anyone Knew It Began

The union misleadership stooges of the NYSUT have signed on to a Gates-approved moratorium that just ended.  Under a plan that Cuomo will sign into law, teachers, as the headline goes, get a "break" from teacher evaluations based on test scores.  Or, rather, they got a break in 2012-2013 and 2013-2014. 

The moratorium is over before anyone could celebrate the big victory that Weingarten, surely, will shout about from the rooftops, along with her dwindling list of wishful thinkers. This represents the kind of dissembling and manipulation that only the stooges of the NYSUT could call a "reset." 

Nothing has been reset, and nothing has changed, except that teachers and parents who don't read beyond the headlines may believe for moment that Gates and Cuomo and the union bosses are reasonable humans with good intentions.  A clip from the Herald-Record:
The bills sailed through both houses as the legislative session wound to an end last month.

The state's largest teachers union, New York United Teachers called the measure a "pause button" or "reset" of the high-stakes consequences for teachers.

State Education Commissioner John King, Jr. called it a "proposed safety net for the teacher evaluations."

Regardless of what you want to call it, Cuomo is expected to sign the plan into law. According to Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver's staff, the bill hasn't been sent to Cuomo yet.

When it becomes law, school districts will be required to go back into their records and remove the state test scores from the teacher evaluations for the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 school years and adjust the outcomes, said NYSUT spokesman Carl Korn.

No comments:

Post a Comment