We Need Fair Teacher Evaluations by Alan Lubin, Co–chair of BALCONY

Blaming teachers for everything that’s wrong with education has become a blood sport in Albany and even many city halls across New York State.

It’s wrong – it’s cruel and it’s pulling the wool over the eyes of students, parents and everyone else who depends on state services for basic services like police and fire protection, quality health care, efficient mass transit systems, secure prisons and top-flight colleges and universities.

While there are many fine ideas in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new budget proposal, as far as teacher evaluations, he is stirring needless division and undermining his administration’s admirable first year record of building political and policy consensus.

A centerpiece of Cuomo’s budget address dealt with teacher evaluations. No one in education or the business community would argue that teachers should be evaluated fairly, denied tenure if they don’t perform well in their first three years on the job and terminated if they prove unsatisfactory year after year.

But the governor’s tactical plan in achieving these objectives is not the right way to go.

He essentially told the state and local teachers’ unions and the State Education Department they must agree to an evaluation plan within 30 days or he will impose one on them. The local districts then have a year to implement it or lose annual increases in state aid every year until they do so – as much as $800 million in state aid and possibly another $700 million in federal money.

The reality is that his decree will be challenged in the courts, just as the New York State United Teachers successfully halted the State Education Department’s plan to double the weight of student performance on teacher evaluations. Another court fight will delay any reform and create uncertainty in every local school budget. This is no way to plan for education needs. This Cuomo Administration already knows that the best way to achieve good policy goals is by building consensus. On the question of teacher evaluations, the Governor should revert to that smart and effective strategy.

All New Yorkers and all business leaders value good teachers, but we cannot blame poor performances or inappropriate behavior by the few to tarnish the hundreds of thousands of good teachers across the state.

Yes, evaluations are necessary and appropriate management tools to drive better performances in our schools. But it is a mistake to impose by fiat the type of evaluation each school district must use. Instead, they must be worked out in a fair and honest way at the bargaining table. Negotiations were underway in New York City between the city’s Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers, but then the city abruptly walked away from the talks. Throwing fuel on the fire, Mayor Michael Bloomberg told one city newspaper the UFT doesn’t “give a s-t” about losing state money.

Come on, Mr. Bloomberg.

The Governor should put the saber-rattling aside and develop a plan that does not drive good teachers out of their chosen profession and rob children of the learning they would get from such well-performing instructors.

Alan Lubin is Co – Chair of the Business and Labor Coalition of New York (www.Balconynewyork.com) and formerly Executive Vice President of the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT)

UFT Ad Slams Bloomberg’s Record on Education

UFT Blasts Bloomberg On Teacher Evaluations

BY Celeste Katz

The city teachers union is blasting Mayor Bloomberg’s education record in a television attack ad that’s airing amid the tense standoff over teacher evaluations.

(Click HERE for the Ad)

Our Ben Chapman reports:

More than eight million viewers are expected to see the union’s 30-second spot, which pulls no punches in its critique of the mayor’s education reforms.

“Ten years as Mayor, and Mike Bloomberg still doesn’t get it,” begins the narrator’s criticism of Bloomberg’s record on schools, starting with his appointment of Cathie Black as schools chancellor.

“Fudged education test scores, closing schools, parents shut out of the process,” the somber voice continues, over a montage of photos of city students.

The ad — which doesn’t specifically mention the evaluation controversy — finishes with a harsh message to the mayor, who hasn’t been on speaking terms with the teachers union since Dec. 30, when city officials walked away from talks on instructor evaluations.

“If you really want to do right by our kids, you’ll work with teachers and parents and stop playing politics with our schools,” the voice says.

City officials hit back at the union’s $1 million ad, calling it a “political stunt” that distracts the public from the real issue of teacher evaluations.

“The Mayor, Governor, and State Education Department are working collaboratively to implement a rigorous teacher evaluation system,” said Bloomberg spokeswoman Lauren Passalacqua, adding: “It’s a shame that the UFT continues to block accountability measures that will help students.”

The city stands to lose nearly $60 million in federal aid for 33 failing schools because city officials and the union were unable to reach a deal on instructor evaluations.

At the state level, the lack of a comprehensive evaluation system for teachers and principals threatens nearly $1 billion in federal education money.

Despite signs of a thaw at Monday’s legislative hearing on Gov. Cuomo’s education budget, on Tuesday city union and education officials said they still had not met to discuss the issue.

Mulgrew responds to Mayor Bloomberg’s State of the City address

Mayor Bloomberg in his State of the City address on Jan. 12 proposed merit pay for teachers, vowed to step up effects to remove ineffective teachers, blamed the union for the breakdown of negotiations over a teacher evaluation system in 33 restart and transformation schools and announced that he would open 50 new charter schools in the next two years.

Mayor Bloomberg in his State of the City address on Jan. 12 proposed merit pay for teachers, vowed to step up effects to remove ineffective teachers, blamed the union for the breakdown of negotiations over a teacher evaluation system in 33 restart and transformation schools and announced that he would open 50 new charter schools in the next two years. UFT President Michael Mulgrew said, “The mayor seems to be lost in his own fantasy world of education, the one where reality doesn’t apply.”

UFT Open Letter to Parents

An open letter to New York City parents

The following open letter from UFT President Michael Mulgrew to New York City parents ran as a full-page ad in the New York Daily News on Jan. 9.

New York City is losing its teachers.

More than 66,000 have either resigned or retired since Mayor Bloomberg took control of the schools.

Teachers leave one of the toughest jobs in New York City for a variety of personal and professional reasons, but the most common single reason is a lack of support from supervisors and the Department of Education.

Teaching is a craft that is acquired over time, and teachers desperately want to improve their skills. That is why the United Federation of Teachers led the campaign to create a better teacher evaluation system, one that put a priority on helping all teachers do their job better. The UFT’s role was critical in creating the new system, and in going to Washington, D.C. to help get federal funds for it through the Race to the Top program. Starting last spring, many of our members with expertise in evaluation worked for months on the state subcommittees designing the new system.

We have been trying to work with the Bloomberg administration to iron out the final details of the new system, but the administration has refused to engage in meaningful talks about teacher and principal improvement. Instead it has focused on ensuring that administrators have unlimited power over their employees. If we agree, it will mean that supervisors’ decisions can never be properly reviewed, much less overturned. This would be true even if their negative rating of a teacher or a principal can be proven to be the result of their refusal to inappropriately change a student’s grade or to give students credit for courses they have not properly completed.

Make no mistake about it. The administration has put tremendous pressure on principals to make their schools appear to be successful. But any claims of success ring hollow in the light of national tests that show very limited student progress for the system as a whole, and state measures that show that while the high school graduation rate is increasing, the number of graduates ready for college is only about one in five.

The sad truth is that Mayor Bloomberg’s “reform” agenda — raising class size across the system; closing schools and “warehousing” the neediest students; pushing art and music out of the schools to make room for more test prep; turning a deaf ear to parents’ concerns; and appointing a completely unqualified publishing executive to be Chancellor — hasn’t made our schools better.

A real teacher evaluation system that helps all teachers improve while providing checks and balances is a critical step toward stopping the hemorrhaging of our teaching force and making our schools more effective. At the same time it would help ensure that teachers who cannot succeed in the classroom leave the profession.

We have an open offer to the administration to continue our negotiations on this issue, or even to take it to binding arbitration. It’s time the administration sat down with teachers and principals to come up with an agenda that will actually help our children learn.

Sincerely,
Michael Mulgrew
President
United Federation of Teachers

Education Leaders Spar Over Bloomberg’s Educational Record

By Jon Lentz

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s leadership of the city’s education system has been flawed in many ways, but mayoral control of the public school system has helped the city overall, a number of education advocates said at a panel discussion yesterday.

The change during Bloomberg’s first term did away with a bureaucratic quagmire and brought more attention and funding to education, said Joseph Viteritti, a public policy professor at Hunter College. But the change has been marred by a lack of a voice for parents, he added.

“There needs to be more input from other people,” Viteritti said. “Part of it is style, not structure. You have to respect the spirit of the law, and that hasn’t been there.”

Viteritti was one of eight panelists at the “On Education” panel sponsored by City Hall, Gotham Schools and Con Edison on the successes and failures of the city’s school system.

For every passionate assertion, there seemed to be an equally passionate counter-assertion.

Shael Polakow-Suransky, the chief academic officer for the city’s Education Department, said mayoral control had met its goal of creating a strong, accountable leadership with groundbreaking results. He touted rising graduation rates and city surveys showing that more than nine in 10 parents are satisfied with the schools.

“We had a graduation rate that hovered for decades right around 50 percent,” Polakow-Suransky said. “It’s now two-thirds of the kids that are now graduating, which is thousands and thousands more kids who are graduating each year.”

Merryl Tisch, the chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, countered that the state looks at the data differently.

“When you have 75 percent of the youngsters graduating high schools who are going to two-year colleges needing to be remediated … or two years in community college, only 21 percent of them complete, and after six years it’s 24 percent – are you kidding me?” she asked.

The panelists also quarreled over a court decision this week that threw out a state teacher evaluation system.

“With the decision that was rendered yesterday, the judge said that you can be an effective teacher in New York State and get zero points out of a 100-point scale on student performance,” said Tisch, adding that the state plans to appeal. “We believe that that hurts students, that hurts teachers, and that hurts the future of our youngsters.”

But Leo Casey, a vice president with the United Federation of Teachers, said the disagreement was over whether or not state exams are a truly robust and meaningful measure of students’ academic growth, and whether those results should be used to evaluate teachers.

“As a teacher, I know that for my students to be successful in college and beyond, what’s important is not their ability to fill in bubbles on one test, one day a year,” Casey said.

Earlier this summer the teachers union and the city came to an agreement to avert teacher layoffs, but the panelists doubted whether the two parties would sign a new collective bargaining agreement before Bloomberg left office.

“I would certainly hope we could go through a year in which we took up Shael’s call to focus on teacher evaluation, and we didn’t have another year of this contrived political issue of seniority layoffs,” said Casey, referring to Bloomberg’s push to get rid of the state’s “last in, first out” rules. “We’ve lost 8,000 teachers through attrition over the last three years. This system cannot afford to lose more teachers.”

Bill Thompson, the former city comptroller and mayoral candidate, echoed Casey’s concerns.

“It has to be a larger educational vision that’s put forward by a mayor, by a chancellor, working along with the union,” Thompson said. “I think that on both sides there’s an attitude, and I think you’re seeing it with other city and municipal unions also, that we’ll wait for the next person.”

When asked if he thought a new contract could be reached in the next two years, Polakow-Suransky instead asked Thompson, who is again running to succeed Bloomberg, what the next mayor could do differently. Thompson responded that the change would be attitudinal.

“I don’t know if it changes dramatically on finances and the economics,” Thompson said. “I think attitude is a huge difference. I think the ability to sit down and work with the union would change, because I don’t think that’s the prevailing attitude out there right now. I think that teachers, in a number of ways, feel as if they’re being scapegoated.”

Polakow-Suransky also dismissed recent press reports about cheating scandals, saying the number of allegations actually proven had not gone up. He said the city’s schools had a number of protections in place, from conducting citywide standardized tests only on a single day to stronger legal protections for whistleblowers to a system-wide audit.

“I can’t say that in a system of 75,000 teachers, that there aren’t a couple cases where people make mistakes or behave inappropriately, but I also don’t think we’ve seen any evidence that there’s a system-wide problem,” he said.

Still, Tisch said it was critically important for the city to prove that its results were rock solid.

“I believe that so much of what the mayor has done in this city is really carved out around educational reform,” said Tisch, who noted that the state is going to come out with specific proposals on testing for cheating in coming weeks. “Therefore, the numbers we post of what’s transpired in the city need to in essence be shown to be bulletproof.”

Tisch added that Bloomberg’s hard work and prioritization of public education had led to a “revolution” in New York City.

“He took it on,” Tisch said. “He took it on in forceful ways. He committed resources to it as never before. But it’s not perfect, and why do we have to go from failure to perfect? Is that the only barometer by which we judge ourselves?”

Union Challenges State on Use of Tests in Teacher Evaluations

By ANNA M. PHILLIPS

The usually friendly relationship between the state teachers union and the State Department of Education fissured on Tuesday with the union’s announcement that it was taking the state to court over new teacher evaluation rules.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the State Supreme Court in Albany on Monday, accuses the Board of Regents — the state’s policy making body on education — of giving districts more power to use test scores in teacher evaluations than the law allows.

The law in question was passed last year, with the union’s support, as part of New York’s successful effort to win a $700 million federal Race to the Top grant.
Using a 100-point scale, the law dictated that 20 points of a teacher’s evaluation come from students’ progress on the state exams and that another 20 points come from local assessments that would be negotiated with the unions. The remaining 60 percent would come from subjective measures like principals’ evaluations.

In May, responding to criticism from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the Board of Regents voted to give school districts the option of weighing the state tests more heavily so they would count for 40 points. Proponents of this plan said that asking financially struggling districts to create their own local tests was unrealistic.

But Richard C. Iannuzzi, president of the New York State United Teachers union, said that the state’s guidelines were more about evaluating teachers “quickly and cheaply, instead of doing it right.”

He said the guidelines would encourage poorer districts to save money by using the state tests, effectively diminishing the quality of their teacher evaluations.

“For a school district to opt to count a state test twice, the cost to it is close to zero,” he said. “But for a school district to provide professional development, it’s going to cost more. The wealthy school districts can provide that, but the poorer school districts will find that they have no choice.”

Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the Board of Regents, said that the state teachers union had made no secret of its plans to sue once the regulations were passed. The union’s suit has little basis, she said, because districts still have to reach a deal with their unions on whether to create local assessments or use the state exams.

“I am hoping the court will make a quick decision to allow the implementation of the teacher evaluation system to move forward,” she said.

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SUNY 2020 passes in Senate

by Rick Karlin

Here are the details, according to Senate Republicans:

The New York State Senate today passed legislation to establish the NY-SUNY 2020 Challenge Grant program that includes capital funds for investments in economic expansion and job creation at the four SUNY University Centers, as well as a predictable and rational plan for SUNY tuition that will allow students and families to plan for tuition costs.

The bill (S.5855) represents a three-way agreement among the Governor, Senate and Assembly.

“This program will create new investments by the state, by students and by SUNY campuses so they will continue to be economic and job creation engines within their respective regions of the state,” Senator Kenneth LaValle (R-C-I, Port Jefferson), Chairman of the Senate Higher Education Committee, said. “This bill will also ensure a continued level of state funding and will maintain access to SUNY for students pursuing their higher education at SUNY schools.”

“SUNY’s University Centers are at the heart of economic development efforts in Western New York, the Southern Tier, the Capital Region and Long Island,” Senate Majority Leader Dean G. Skelos said. “This plan will help provide much-needed economic and capital investments in the SUNY centers to help them expand and create new jobs. It also has the additional benefit of providing a stable and predictable tuition so students won’t see unpredictable spikes in SUNY tuition and can plan appropriately for their education.”

CHALLENGE GRANT PROGRAM FOR EXPANSION AND
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The four University Centers (Buffalo, Stony Brook, Binghamton & Albany) are eligible to apply to the Governor and the SUNY Chancellor for access to $140 million in capital funds. Of that total, $60 million comes from the current SUNY capital appropriation authority and $80 million comes from bonding through ESDC. The Centers will submit their NY-SUNY 2020 plan for approval to the Governor and Chancellor. The plan shall include an economic and academic component. Each University Center shall receive an equal amount of $35 million.

RATIONAL TUITION POLICY

The bill authorizes SUNY trustees to increase tuition by up to $300 per year for five years. The five year plan expires at the end of the 2015-16 academic year. In addition, SUNY trustees could also increase out of state undergraduate tuition up to 10 percent as well as additional fees at the four University Centers after the approval of their NY-SUNY 2020 Challenge grant plan. CUNY is also authorized to increase tuition by up to $300 per year for five years.

The bill provides a tuition credit in an amount equal to a percentage of their TAP award multiplied by any increase in tuition over $5,000. In addition, the four University Centers are required to use a portion of their tuition revenue for financial aid to receive NY-SUNY 2020 Challenge Grant plan approval. Those students, whose net taxable income is $80,000 or more will also be eligible for financial aid at the Centers pursuant to each Centers’ plan.

The bill also requires the State to maintain financial support to SUNY from year to year.

The bill was sent to the Assembly.

Cuomo Likely to Veto Bill on School Borrowing

by Danny Hakim

ALBANY — State lawmakers on Friday approved a bill that would allow school districts to borrow as much as $1 billion without voter approval, but a spokesman for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said the measure would most likely be vetoed.

Without advance notice and with little debate, the bill won Senate approval late Thursday night, several days after the legislative session had been scheduled to end. The Assembly passed the measure Friday afternoon, and the governor’s office then took the unusual step of publicly opposing the legislation moments after its passage, effectively dooming it.

Elizabeth Lynam, deputy research director at the Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed group that generally favors lower spending, described the bill as one of the worst things the Legislature had done this session.

But supporters said it would give school districts breathing room as pension costs soar. The measure would allow school districts to borrow as much as $1 billion to pay pension and operating costs over the next two years, in the process circumventing existing requirements for public approval of new debt.

The bill would weaken one of the governor’s central proposals, to cap property tax increases at 2 percent, by allowing schools to raise money through a debt offering.

The money school districts borrowed would not count against the tax cap, but would have to be paid back by taxpayers in up to 15 years.

The legislation would also change the rules for taking on new debt. Currently, school districts outside of New York City vote on their budgets, including any planned borrowing. The legislation would allow that requirement to be circumvented.

Assemblyman Peter J. Abbate Jr., a Brooklyn Democrat, said in an interview that he sponsored the bill on behalf of urban school districts. The measure was also strongly backed by the New York State United Teachers union.

“Some of the localities, and the schools boards, are looking for a way, for some help,” Mr. Abbate said. “I see nothing wrong.”

And Richard C. Iannuzzi, president of New York State United Teachers, said, “Obviously, when you take into consideration the cuts in school aid and what seems likely to be a pretty onerous property tax cap, the ability for school districts to deal with expenses in some kind of rational way is important.”

“By smoothing out pension costs, you don’t have to deal with the tremendous spikes up and down in the rates that they have to pay,” he added.

But Assemblyman Michael J. Fitzpatrick, a Long Island Republican, said during the Assembly debate, “This bill is being passed because the teachers’ unions does not want to contribute to the economic well-being of this state.”

“This is an organization that wants unfettered access to every wallet and pocketbook of every taxpayer in this state,” he added.

Support for the bill was not purely partisan. It was sponsored in the Senate by Martin J. Golden, a Brooklyn Republican, and it was the Republican-led Senate that first approved the bill, demonstrating the influence on both parties that is wielded by the teachers’ union in Albany.

The bill had much in common with legislation signed last year by Gov. David A. Paterson that allowed the state and municipalities to borrow billions of dollars to help make required annual payments to the state pension fund.

Judge asked to rule on ‘gross inequality’

At a rally before the June 21 court hearing on the lawsuit filed by the UFT and other plaintiffs on closing schools and inequitable co-locations, community activist William Hargraves asked, “Why is the DOE elbowing its way into schools in all boroughs of this city?

by Maisie McAdoo

Scores of parents spoke out on behalf of the lawsuit filed by the UFT, the NAACP and other plaintiffs against closing schools and co-locating charters at a rally outside a Manhattan courthouse on June 21. The rally came minutes before a state judge agreed to extend an order in the case that forbids the DOE from destroying information necessary for keeping the schools open and from making certain physical changes to buildings with co-locations, while the court considers whether to grant the plaintiffs request for an injunction in the case.

Demanding educational equality for all children, the rally participants said the Department of Education should give schools the support they need rather than close them down; they also called for equal treatment of charter and district students in co-located schools.

“Why should other children gain from what my children lose?” said Miriam Holmes, whose three children attend PS 149 in Harlem, which is co-located with a Harlem Success Charter School.

”The DOE acted like we weren’t there,” said PS 149 PTA President Sonya Hampton. “Where could we go? We called the NAACP.”

After hearing arguments by lawyers for the plaintiffs, the Department of Education and the charter schools, State Supreme Court Justice Paul Feinman extended the temporary order until he decides on the injunction.

“The court has got a final decision before it,” said Charles Moerdler of Stroock and Stroock and Lavan, the Plaintiffs’ counsel. “The DOE has been doing stuff illegally for months. If we prevail, these schools will not be closed.”

Moerdler told Justice Feinman that no matter what the DOE’s co-location plan documents said, the reality is that district students have had to give up space to service students of charter schools.

“This is no way to set an example for schoolchildren,” he said. “This is no way to run a school system. There is gross inequality here. ”

CUNY Staff Congress: Thanks for the dough, please no tuition boosts

Here’s the statement from Dr. Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress/CUNY, on the framework agreement’s tuition provisions, which includes tuition increases that the group would like to see replaced by the continuation of the “millionaire’s tax”:

While all the details of Albany’s emerging “framework” for funding CUNY and SUNY are not yet available, we commend the legislative leaders and the governor for recognizing the need to stabilize funding for CUNY and SUNY. Such stability is long overdue. As the agreement is finalized, we call on Albany to ensure full protection of annual funding and necessary cost increases.

We object, however, to the annual tuition increases on which the framework is reportedly built. Five years of tuition increases is not the way to protect opportunity for CUNY students, nor is it the way to ensure long-term public investment in public higher education. Tuition increases are a tax in disguise—a tax that disproportionately hurts the poor.

The framework takes an important step toward protecting the lowest-income students from the sting of the proposed increases by providing credits for tuition in excess of the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) ceiling, and makes an important statement by ruling out differential tuition. Significant as these protections are, they do not go far enough. Thousands of students already fall through the cracks in TAP, and many others may be discouraged from entering college by the escalating cost. In addition, CUNY should not have to absorb the cost of offsetting tuition above the TAP ceiling.

There is another way—a better way—to fund CUNY. Instead of turning low- and middle-income students into cash machines, New York should continue the “millionaires’ tax.” It is unconscionable to ask the poorest people in the state to pay more for the chance of a college education when the wealthiest New Yorkers are not asked to contribute their fair share.

The Professional Staff Congress/CUNY, affiliated with NYSUT and the AFT, represents more than 22,000 faculty and professional staff at The City University of New York and the CUNY Research Foundation.