Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times is reporting that Gov. Andrew Cuomo vetoed a bill last night that would have protected teachers and principals from receiving a low rating because of their students’ performance on state tests. As reported in the Times article:

“The veto was unusual because Mr. Cuomo’s own administration had drafted the bill in response to lobbying from the New York State teachers’ union. In recent days, however, Mr. Cuomo indicated that he no longer supported the bill and wanted to make the teacher evaluation system more rigorous.

The bill would have offered a two-year “safety net” to teachers and principals who were given one of the two lowest ratings, developing or ineffective, on the state’s new evaluation system. For this school year and next, teachers and principals who received one of those low ratings would have had their ratings recalculated with the portion that is based on students’ growth on state test removed. If that had resulted in a higher rating, the higher rating would have been used.

Teachers who receive ineffective ratings two years in a row can be terminated.

“This is just disrespectful to teachers,” Karen E. Magee, president of the teachers’ union, New York State United Teachers, said Monday night.

“He’s already acknowledged that the Common Core tests were invalid or not reliable indicators of student progress,” Ms. Magee said. “He hit the stall button for the students already, so to not do this, it makes no sense…”

The article also made the point that “After last year’s Democratic primary, in which the union did not endorse the governor, he began to talk about making the teacher evaluation system tougher.”

Indeed it makes no sense that tests considered problematic if not in fact invalid for students should be used to evaluate teachers

Tony