EdVANTAGE Blog

This past Thursday, Governor Cuomo proposed legislation to enact an agreement between the State Education Department and New York State United Teachers to end the union’s legal challenge to the Department’s regulations governing teacher and principal evaluations.

The Council is consulting with members to identify questions regarding the proposed changes to the evaluation law and continues to apprise the Department and the Governor’s office of outstanding concerns.

The legislation would definitely remove one obstacle to development of district evaluation plans, simply by ending the litigation that created uncertainties that put local negotiations on hold in many districts.

According to SED’s news release, it would also preserve the authority of districts to “terminate probationary teachers/principals or grant or deny tenure while an appeal is pending.”

It would not reduce the volume of items required to collectively bargained under the original 2010 evaluation law, but would impose limits on the range of options which might be adopted.

Resolving procedures for appealing evaluations has been a major hold-up in local negotiations in districts of all sizes.

The proposal would add a requirement that appeals must be “timely and expeditious” but would not limit which evaluations may be appealed, nor to whom as superintendents and school boards have sought.

The legislation would add a penalty for districts which do not have plans in place by January 17, 2013 – they would lose eligibility for state aid increases.

The consensus among school district leaders is that this aid penalty will exert more pressure on districts to compromise than unions, since employees will retain their compensation and benefits, even if their district loses aid.

Another new element would be a requirement that the State Education Commissioner approve local agreements for new evaluation procedures.  With this authority, the Commissioner could set benchmarks for what constitutes adequately rigorous evaluations.

The Governor’s proposal has been praised in editorials across the state:

• Cuomo gets an A (NYDailyNews)
• N.Y. deal raises bar for education (NYJournalNews)
• It’s a deal! (NYPost)
• A Sound Deal on Teacher Evaluations
• Cuomo continues push for a new New York with landmark teacher evaluation agreement (RochesterD&C)
• Teacher eval plan gets teeth (Newsday)
• The Schools Win (Albany Times Union)

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan also issued a statement praising the agreement.  Earlier, he had warned that lack of progress in implementing new evaluation procedures jeopardized New York’s $700 million Race to the Top grant and $300 million in other federal aid.

On the other hand, Rockviille Centre principal Carol Corbett Burris points out practical concerns with the scoring bands the legislation would prescribe for placing teachers into the so-called “HEDI” categories – Highly Effective, Effective, Developing and Ineffective.

The Buffalo News has published concise question and answer pieces explaining the new requirements for teacher and principal evaluations.

Papers in the Gannett chain carried an article noting the administrative demands the new law would impose on districts.

The article cites our fall survey report findings on cuts to administration in school district budgets.  When superintendents were asked to appraise the impact of their district’s 2011-12 budget on various operations, the area cited more than any other as experiencing a “very severe” negative impact was administration.

Last week, there was other news which could affect how the new evaluation requirements are perceived by teachers throughout the state.

The state’s highest court for a second time rejected the New York City teacher union’s appeal of a lower court ruling finding that the state’s Freedom of Information Law requires the City to release evaluation scores for individual teachers by name.

The City expects to release the ratings within a few weeks.  The decision applies only to New York City.  But a newspaper or other party could use it to gain release of ratings in any other district in the state.

I can see both pluses and minuses to allowing parents to know the ratings of their child’s teachers.  But as far as release to the public at large, I share the concerns of Rick Hess, a scholar generally on the opposite side of issues from teacher unions.

The goal of the new evaluation structure is to raise the quality of teaching and leadership in our schools.  Would publicly releasing individual evaluations advance that goal?

Here is a link to the Governor’s proposed evaluation legislation.