EdVANTAGE Blog

Yesterday’s New York Times ran an article on the Obama Administration’s efforts to use the federal “Race to the Top” fund to push states to change their laws governing charter schools and the use of student test data in teacher evaluation.

Our Board of Regents is understandably determined to ensure that New York receives a share of the $4.3 billion fund.  For the foreseeable future, it is the only plausible source of any significant funding to support education reform initiatives.

But there has been a determined – and mostly off-base – effort to portray New York as ineligible, because of a 2008 law governing the use of student test data in tenure decisions, and a cap on the number of charter schools which may be approved to operate in the state.

Last week, for example, the New York Daily News ran a guest column by Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform urging the Obama Administration to “teach New York a lesson” for supposedly banning the use of student data in teacher evaluation.  Then the paper followed up with an editorial calling on the state to repeal “this asinine law.”

As we have written before, the law says simply this, teachers “shall not be granted or denied tenure based on student performance data.”  There is no bar on using student data in other forms of teacher evaluation and districts may use the data in tenure evaluation so long as it is not a determining factor.  For example, a district might use student results to identify teachers for more careful review by other means.

Our law is entirely consistent with what the President’s Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, said to the National Education Association convention last month.  He told the nation’s largest teacher union, “Test scores alone should never drive evaluation, compensation or tenure decisions. That would never make sense. But to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible.”

If the state’s law – a temporary one as described below – is inconsistent with Race to the Top requirements, then those requirements are inconsistent with the Secretary’s own statements on the sensible use of student data.

But there is more.  The law is due to expire on June 30^th, 2010 and, as Regents’ Chancellor Merryl Tisch told the Times, “there is no appetite to renew that law.”  Also, the law applies only to teachers beginning their probationary periods on or after July 1, 2008.  Since the standard probationary period is three years, it is probable that the law will die without ever having affected a single final tenure decision.

New York’s charter school cap has also been cited as a possible obstacle to obtaining Race to the Top funds, although not as aggressively.  Here we can point to an independent source for ammunition.  The Center for Education Reform, a leading national charter school/voucher advocacy group, says New York has the 6^th strongest charter school law in the nation.