Cuomo Issues Threat On Imposed Evaluation System On NYC Teachers

From the Daily News:

In a letter to Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, Cuomo wrote that the city and union have until May 8 to reach a deal or submit paperwork to state Education Commissioner John King telling why they blew the deadline. 

King would then serve as a binding arbitrator in the matter in an “expedited” process starting May 29 if no deal is reached by then, with a final plan decided by June 1.

The deadlines were set in the new state budget.

“While the commissioner is ready to act as an impartial arbiter,  you have had ample time to reach an agreement,” Cuomo wrote. “I therefore urge you to finalize your (evaluation) plan prior to these statutory deadlines, as virtually every school district in the state has done,” Cuomo wrote.

“Our students deserve nothing less than the very best teachers, and it is critical that we provide our teachers with the opportunity to be the very best,” he added.

If "our" students, as the governor terms them, deserve the best, why did he cut $250 million from the NYC school budget and refuse to put it back in when the UFT and the NYCDOE failed to come to an agreement on evaluations?

Also, how is this APPR system that ties teacher evaluations to test scores giving students "the very best teachers"?

This system, with its inherent flaws, biases, wide swings in stability and large margins of error, will give students teachers who have to teach to the test and hope that's enough to save their jobs from the GREAT APPR BELL CURVE that insists 7% of teachers be ranked "ineffective" every year and fired.

And of course this new teacher evaluation system is based on the new Common Core tests with the ratcheted up difficulty levels, so the fix really is in on how many teachers get fired with this system.

Carol Burris told NYC Educator that we shouldn't worry, no one will be fired because the system is so badly designed that it will never stand up to court challenges.

I hope she is right.

But until those challenges are heard in the law courts, there is going to be a lot of churn and burn in schools all over the state.

Which is what Cuomo and King and Tisch and the all the education reform cheerleaders want.

There is a political agenda at work here to break up the school systems, fire as many teachers as possible and bring about the Friedmanesque fantasyland of choice that so many reformers talk abotu with glee.