Andrew Cuomo is not considered an education reform governor, but the Democratic leader of the Empire State has taken some bold stands in reining in education spending (by a billion bucks) – even if it was courage born of necessity. After caving in on Last-in-First-Out (LIFO) in March (see here), the new governor came back on Friday with a letter to the state’s Board of Regents Chancellor, Merryl Tisch, asking for a tougher teacher evaluation system than the one the Regents had first proposed — and which the Regents (having just hired John King as Commissioner (see here), will take up this afternoon.
According to the letter, Cuomo wants the Regents, who answer, officially, to the State Legislature not the Governor, to make “comprehensive changes” to the evaluation plan, including:
• Increase the percentage of statewide objective data, like measuring student growth on statewide test scores, used to evaluate teacher performance;
• Impose rigorous classroom observation and other subjective measures standards on school districts when evaluating teacher performance;
• Require a positive teacher evaluation rating be given only when the teacher receives a combined positive rating on both subjective and objective measures, such as student growth on statewide tests; and,
• Accelerate the implementation of the evaluation system.
Though the devil is in the details, which Cuomo provides in his letter, there seems little doubt, as the Albany Times Union put it, that the letter puts him “on course for clash with teachers,” whose powerful union was able to water down implementation metrics on the much heralded evaluation settlement negotiated to help win a $700 million Race to the Top prize last year.
If interested, you can watch the Regents discussion this afternoon, beginning at 4:45, at http://usny.nysed.gov/webcasts.html*
–Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
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*At 6:30pm the Regents voted to pass the proposal as submitted by the Commissioner and his team — counting student achievement scores as 20% of a teacher’s evaluation — rejecting both Cuomo’s proposal** for making tests count more and Linda Darling Hammond and nine colleagues’ request to give them less weight. But see also Gotham School’s more complete report, here; Cuomo had more of an impact than I first thought.
**As the Times reports (May 17), the Regents passed the evaluation proposal 14 to 3 and did, in fact, increase the weight of student test results, from 20% to up to 40%, in the evaluation procedure.
Everyone is sick of plans being floated. What people want is action. Even the education junkies are tired of new plans that never lead anywhere.
Enough. If the regents were serious, they would just impose their plan and wait for the unions to sue them- then we would have something to talk about. As it is, another panel discussion just doesn’t cut it.
I watched most of the meeting — a fascinating lesson in democracy. Some interesting people on the board of regents, which one might view as a kind of model board of education. But the governance struggle here is similar to the one at the national level: action or no action, the question is how far removed from your local schools do you want your governing body?