The Governor made a lot of news on education over the long weekend, however, revealing plans to use School Aid to force action on teacher evaluation.

Initially, it was reported that the Governor would propose holding up School Aid increases for districts which failed to implement new teacher and principal evaluation procedures by December 31, 2012.

By itself such a proposal would only increase pressure on school districts to compromise with their local unions under a law which the Governor has said, “protected the teachers union at the expense of the students and instituted a system that was destined to fail.”

There had to be more to the plan.  Today’s New York Post and New York Times provide more details.

The Post reports,

Gov. Cuomo will give New York’s teachers one month to agree to a statewide performance evaluation plan — or he’ll write his own educator-rating scheme into the budget for legislative approval, The Post has learned.

In the ultimatum — which Cuomo will level at the United Federation of Teachers and New York State United Teachers as he presents his budget today — the governor will also insist the state union drop its lawsuit challenging certain provisions of the evaluation system, a source close to the administration said.

The governor would have up to 30 days to present a budget amendment that spells out the details of a teacher-rating system, something he promises to do if the unions don’t sign on.

Districts would then have until early next January to get the new system up and running or else the state would withhold a 4 percent increase in school aid, sources said.

 

Governor Andrew Cuomo has reacted to the news with a statement harshly critical of school districts, local unions, and what he refers to as “the Assembly-led legislation” creating the evaluation system.

The USDE cited two concerns – delays in implementing new student data systems and new teacher and principal evaluation systems.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said,

“New York made significant progress through Race to the Top over the last year but has recently hit a roadblock that not only impedes Race to the Top but could threaten other key reform initiatives as well.  New York has a chance to be a national leader or a laggard, and we are only interested in supporting real courage and bold leadership.”

The State Education Department issued a statement saying of the report,

“It’s disappointing but not discouraging.  We have to get this done, and we will.  The RTTT report is a reminder that the federal government will hold us to the commitments we made in our RTTT application, just as we will hold districts and educators to the commitments they made.

This afternoon, Governor Cuomo issued a statement.  He said

Secretary Duncan’s report saying New York is on the watch-list for failure is yet another warning that the inability of school districts across the state and their unions to come together has jeopardized the quality of our kids’ education. New York State’s students are now in danger of losing hundreds of millions of dollars because of the failure to devise a teacher evaluation system that works.

The Governor added,

We need to achieve both short term and long term reform of this failed system. I will pursue such reform aggressively.

In the short term, I call on the State Department of Education, local school districts and the union leadership to expedite their negotiations on a teacher evaluation system to prevent the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.

Over the long term, we need to overhaul the system and change the law on the books. The Assembly-led legislation in 2010 protected the teachers union at the expense of the students and instituted a system that was destined to fail.

Here is a link to the USDE’s progress report on New York.

Additional text:

Governor Cuomo’s statement built upon comments he made during a radio interview the day before.  At the conclusion of the interview with Fred Dicker of the New York Post and 1300 AM Albany talk radio, the Governor made it a point to bring up the evaluation issue.

The Governor said,

The law has been a failure. It has not been implemented. It is unworkable. Some would say it was unworkable by design, ab initio [from the initiation], but time has shown that it’s unworkable.

The Governor also reiterated his refusal to get involved in resolving the New York City impasse over teacher evaluations, noting,

There are roughly 700 school districts in this state. The answer isn’t “The Governor should intervene between the local political official – the school board – and the union. I can’t negotiate 700 union contracts.

The Governor concluded by expressing respect for teachers and the union, adding, “my mother was a school teacher,” but concluded, “I represent the students.”

A podcast of the interview is available here.  The evaluation discussion comes at the 52 minute mark, near the very end.

Late yesterday, State Education Commissioner John King announced that he is suspending federal School Improvement Grants to 10 districts which the State Education Department judges do not have teacher/principal evaluation plans which satisfy new state requirements.

The Commissioner said,

“The deadline is real; the funding is suspended,” King said.  “The good news is that six districts (Roosevelt, Poughkeepsie, Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany and Rochester) showed real progress toward meeting the requirements for a teacher and principal evaluation system agreed to in their SIG applications. All 10 districts can request a hearing. If these six districts get back to the table immediately to address the shortcomings in their plans, the hearings should go well for them.”

New York State United Teachers responded to the Commissioner announcement with a statement accusing the Commissioner and SED of taking a “dictatorial approach to reform” and asserting that they have “…demonstrated that they have totally lost their way in shepherding real, meaningful reform.”

Commissioner King appeared on Time-Warner’s Capitol Tonight to discuss his decision.

Reporting on the Governor’s plans to announce an education reform commission in today’s State of the State address, the New York Times noted that Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, “said she would urge Mr. Cuomo and his commission to help advance a statewide teacher evaluation system…”

Commissioner King made similar comments in his television appearance.

A collection of education reform groups wrote to the Governor urging that he propose legislation ensure that all districts adopt new evaluation procedures consistent with Race to the Top timelines.

Specifically, the groups recommend,

To ensure that the City and the state’s other districts fulfill New York’s promises to its schoolchildren, we request that you introduce a back-stop measure that requires districts to develop teacher evaluation plans by August 31, 2012.  Any district that has not successfully negotiated its own plan by that date will have to automatically carry out a “default” plan, to be created by the State Education Department.  Those districts would have one year (until August 31, 2013) to install and fully implement their default plan systems.

1. Governor to appoint education commission
2. Teacher evaluation conflicts
3. School finance news

1.       Governor to appoint education commission

The 2012 session of the State Legislature begins on Wednesday when Governor Andrew Cuomo delivers his second, “State of the State” address.

Monday’s New York Daily News reported that the Governor will announce a commission to recommend reforms to the state’s education system.

The Daily News explains,

 Cuomo’s announcement will come just days after he was critical of the city and other districts that failed to reach agreement with their unions on a new teacher evaluation system by an end-of-year deadline.

“The failure to pass the teacher evaluation system is an example that not only is the system broken, but the ability to monitor the system and come up with a method to ensure kids are educated properly is broken,” said a source close to Cuomo.

The education commission he will announce will be designed to look at education from a “student perspective,” the source said.

“What are the performance indicators? How do you judge performance in the education system? How are the services being provided?” the source said. “No one has really looked at it without a particular perspective on what’s going on in education.”

Last Friday, Newsday reported that Governor Andrew Cuomo “wants to take a hard look at school governance.”

Asked in a year-end interview, what surprises he encountered upon taking office, the paper reported,

Cuomo didn’t hesitate before saying, “The need for reform in education is much more striking to me,” adding that he’s troubled by “the lack of performance evaluation-management strategies on the school system.

“The greatest challenge is going to be reforming the education system in this state,” Cuomo said. “It’s probably the most complicated, intractable issue I’ve come across.”

The Governor did not disclose any specific proposals during the interview.

2.       Teacher evaluation conflicts

In the preceding item, the New York Daily News cited the failure of New York City, some other districts, and their teacher unions to reach agreement on new evaluation procedures as an instigation for the Governor’s decision to appoint a commission on education.

Here’s more on that aspect of the story…

At the beginning of last week, State Education Commissioner John King announced that he would suspend federal School Improvement Grants to New York City and nine other districts if they and their local unions were unable to come to agreement on procedures for evaluating teachers and principals consistent with new state requirements.

At that time, Commissioner King said that only Syracuse and Rochester had submitted materials for review of their evaluation procedures.

Subsequently, Buffalo, Albany, and Schenectady submitted materials, although a State Education Department spokesman cast doubt on Schenectady’s chances for approval.

New York State United Teachers issued a statement accusing the Commissioner of “an arbitrary exercise of brinksmanship.”  The union noted that 14 states had received waivers from the U.S. Education Department allowing more time to work out evaluation procedures.

Last Friday, New York City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced he was breaking off negotiations on new evaluation procedures with the City’s teacher union, the United Federation of Teachers.

The Wall Street Journal reported,

The sticking point for a deal was whether teachers should be able to appeal a low rating to an outside arbitrator. Union officials said an appeal process would prevent principals from abusing their authority, but the city dismissed it as an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.

Commissioner King issued a statement calling the breakdown in talks, “beyond disappointing,” adding

Sadly, the adults in charge of the City’s schools have let the students down.  SIG schools need to be fixed, and the best way to make that happen is to make sure there’s a quality teacher in front of every classroom and a quality principal at the head of every school.

On New Year’s Eve, Governor Cuomo issued this statement,

Teacher evaluations are critical to ensure our kids have high quality teachers in the classroom because performance counts.

I am disappointed that agreements could not be reached to impose teacher performance evaluations at some of our troubled school districts across the state.

Students lose twice because of this failure. First, the failure to reach agreements on teacher evaluations forces these schools to continue to operate without true accountability, which would ensure students receive a high quality education from high quality teachers. Second, these schools will also lose out on millions of dollars in much needed federal aid.

I urge all involved to get back to the table immediately, put their differences aside and put the kids first. They should agree on an evaluation system that improves performance and prevents the loss of more than one hundred million dollars this year for these schools across the state.

City Schools Chancellor Walcott elaborated his perspective in a Daily News columnon Monday, calling the UFT’s insistence on outside arbitrators to hear appeals “a radical departure” and a “a burdensome procedural layer designed to keep ineffective teachers in the classroom.”

UFT President Michael Mulgrew gave his side of the story on Time-Warner’s Capitol Night.

3.       School finance news

In blog posts last month I summed up the Regents State Aid proposal and offered reflections on the complexities of school district consolidation.

Here are some other items on school finance…

The attorney who led the Campaign for Fiscal Equity’s successful challenge to New York’s system of school finance is contemplating a new effort.

Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, Michael Rebell said he isn’t necessarily headed back to court, but he is leading a research project which will evaluate whether a sample of schools in New York City and around the state are able to provide a sound basic education, as promised under the state constitution.

Mr. Rebell told the Journal, “I don’t rule out litigation.  I’ve been there. I’m prepared to do it if necessary. But we’re in this for the long run, and we’re not looking to just score some quick points and free up a few bucks if we can get it.”

Mr. Rebell also appeared on Capitol Tonight last evening.

On December 15, Governor Cuomo appeared on the Capitol Pressroom radio program to discuss the Regents state aid proposal.

The Gannet News Service Politics on the Hudson Blog observed,

Cuomo, asked several times about the Regents’ proposal by WCNY’s Susan Arbetter, didn’t commit to a specific formula for distributing school aid—always one of Albany’s most scrutinized decisions during the budget process—but said he wants to make sure school performance is part of the conversation.

As the blog reported, the Governor added,

“We want to incentivize performance by the school districts. This system, in my opinion, is sorely lacking in terms of performance,” Cuomo said. “We just fund process. We give school districts a block grant … where they get the same amount whether they are doing great or doing poorly.”

…But Cuomo repeatedly said he wants to focus on performance, without committing to any specific aid-distribution system. Cuomo’s budget proposal will be revealed in January.

“I want to add another component to the conversation, which is let’s talk about the students and whether or not you are educating students,” Cuomo said. “This whole conversation has become about the school district and the teacher and the superintendent, and I want to talk about the student.”

Also in the middle of last month, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle contrasted the learning opportunities available in poor rural districts and elsewhere.  Phelps-Clifton Springs superintendent Mike Ford warned that his district faces the prospect of eliminating kindergarten and all high school electives next year.

Another potential source of tension in school finance is the disparity between where state revenues come from versus where they go.

The State University’s Rockefeller Institute of Government reported that New York City residents and businesses paid about $4.1 billion more in taxes and fees than the City received in state funding and services in 2009-10.

The suburban counties (Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and Rockland) paid $7.9 billion more into the state treasury than they received in state aid.

In contrast, upstate regions contributed 28 percent of the state’s revenues and received 42 percent of state outlays.

Writing in the New York Post, the Institute’s Deputy Director, Robert Ward, notes

Regional disputes, often bitter, have haunted New York since colonial days. City and suburban taxpayers might take some comfort simply in knowing that their basic sense of the state’s budgetary balance — we’re paying more than our share! — is, by the numbers, absolutely correct.

Upstaters also have a point when they say that Downstate political sensibilities drive up local taxpayer costs everywhere in New York. Thus, the state sets the rules for programs such as Medicaid and special education — helping to make them far more costly here than in most states — but requires localities to pick up much of the cost, which helps explain the Empire State’s extraordinarily high property taxes.

Nor does the apparent imbalance among regions necessarily mean the current division of dollars is unfair.

For a century or more — certainly since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt — Americans, and especially New Yorkers, have believed that redistribution of wealth is a central purpose of government. FDR defined the measure of progress itself as “whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

Thus, Albany will distribute some $20 billion in education aid this year based partly on how many children in each school are poor enough to qualify for free lunch. Individuals’ age and need will help drive more than $50 billion in Medicaid and welfare spending.

On the other side of the ledger, the state’s major source of revenue, the personal-income tax, is designed to take more from individuals who have more….

Finally, in the past I have noted the powerful impact of two costs — pensions and health insurance — on school spending and taxes.

For four successive years in the last decade, increased costs for those two items roughly matched or exceeded increases in state funding, contributing to a run of higher than historically typical local tax increases.  More recently, districts have cut other spending on balance to absorb pension and health costs while holding down overall spending and taxes.

Monday’s New York Daily News carried a column by the Speaker of the Massachusetts State House of Representatives on that state’s successes in managing pension and health care costs of its workforce.

Here is a piece from the Boston Globe providing more details on the health insurance initiative.

• Commissioner on Twitter
• Three BOCES leaders on school finance issues
• Should ratings of teachers be made public?
• More on bullying
• Silver, Skelos, and DiNapoli on taxes

Commissioner on Twitter
State Education Commissioner John King is now on Twitter.  Follow him here, if you wish:  http://twitter.com/#!/JohnKingNYSED

Three BOCES leaders on school finance issues
Over the past week and a half, leaders of three BOCES have published columns on school finance issues in regional newspapers.

In Long Island’s Newsday, Gary Bixhorn, Chief Operating Officer of Eastern Suffolk BOCES, writes, “More state aid is crucial to schools.”

In the Buffalo News, District Superintendent Michael Glover of the Genesee Valley Educational Partnership, writes “State funding system endangers rural school districts.”

In the Albany Times Union, Questar BOCES District Superintendent James Baldwin writes, “NY’s next task is to reduce school costs.”

Mr. Bixhorn observes that strong schools are a regional asset that sets Long Island apart.  He argues that new state and federal initiatives, including Race to the Top initiatives and the property tax cap, are eroding the local control that built those schools.  He calls on Long Islanders to “…work together to assure that the formulas used to allocate funds between the state’s schools recognize the needs of Long Island.”

Dr. Glover warns that many low wealth districts are in structural deficit and at risk of being unable to deliver the state constitution’s promise of a sound basic education.  He cites a national report calling New York’s system of school finance “highly regressive,… providing fewer resources to their high-poverty districts even though those districts serve many disadvantaged children with high levels of need.”

Dr. Baldwin says Governor Cuomo’s efforts have led the state a long way toward fiscal stability, and adds,   “School leaders are anxious to work with him and the Legislature to take on the expenses that, according to the Statewide School Finance Consortium, threaten to bankrupt hundreds of school districts over the next five years.”  He suggests a series of steps state leaders should take.

The tax cap compounds pressure on school budgets and that pressure will expose and and expand cracks within the public school community, between districts, regions and stakeholders.  Beyond their well-argued substantive points, the three columns also help illuminate some of those fault-lines.

Should ratings of teachers be made public
Sunday’s Syracuse Post-Standard carried a column asking, Should ratings of public school teachers be made public?

Ratings were published in Los Angeles last summer, and in New York State, courts at the first two levels have ruled in favor of releasing ratings in a New York City case. The City teacher union intends to challenge those rulings in the state’s highest court.

Robert Freeman, Executive Director of the Committee on Open Government says that the state’s Freedom of Information Law requires release, and adds, “What could be more important to the parent of a child than learning how well or poorly the child’s teacher is performing in the classroom?”

A spokesman for New York State United Teachers objects to releasing individual teacher ratings, including citing the prospect of “teacher shopping” — parents insisting that their child be assigned to the highest rated teacher.  Another concern is that ratings coming out of newly required evaluation procedures may not be reliable, at least at first.

A couple superintendents are quoted raising issues.  Jessica Cohen, District Superintendent of the Onondaga-Cortland-Madison BOCES, brings up what might be the biggest concern — that publicizing individual ratings could dissuade people interested in becoming teachers.

Dr. Cohen warns, “It would cause people to question whether or not they wanted to go into a profession where ratings which were not necessarily accurate were shared publicly.”

Rick Hess, an education scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, generally finds himself on the opposite side in policy debates with teacher union leaders.  But he has expressed reservations about publishing individual teacher evaluations,arguing,

…there’s a profound failure to recognize the difference between responsible management and public transparency. Transparency for public agencies entails knowing how their money is spent, how they’re faring, and expecting organizational leaders to report on organizational performance. It typically doesn’t entail reporting on how many traffic citations individual LAPD officers issued or what kind of performance review a National Guardsman was given by his commanding officer. Why? Because we recognize that these data are inevitably imperfect, limited measures and that using them sensibly requires judgment. Sensible judgment becomes much more difficult when decisions are made in the glare of the public eye.

I might agree with Mr. Freeman, the open government czar, on what the law requires now, but that is different than debating what the law should be.  I can be persuaded either way on whether ratings should be provided to parents — the details matter.

But I am uneasy with the idea of making all individual evaluations widely available. Is there a purpose, other than satisfying nosiness, served by allowing neighbors to look up the evaluation of a teacher down the street, when they have no children taught by that teacher, or perhaps no children at all?

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?

More on bullying
Last week I reported on how a tragedy in Western New York has reignited debates about how to combat bullying, and especially cyber-bullying.

Since then,

• Senator Jeff Klein, leader of the Senate’s Independent Democratic Conference appeared on cable TV’s Capital Tonight to discuss his proposals to increase penalties for bullying and to define “cyber-bullying” as a crime.
• Gannett News summed up the various legislative proposals advanced so far.
• The Buffalo News ran an editorial subtitled, “Schools are the epicenter of bullying, and must lead the search for a solution.”

Silver, Skelos, and DiNapoli on state revenues
Appearing on Capital Tonight, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver reiterated his support for extending the so-called “millionaire’s tax,” continuing higher personal income tax rates on taxpayers’ with incomes over $1 million.  He specifically cited increasing School Aid has one of the targets for the revenue that step would generate,

I would like to see an increase in education aid in this state…   I think school districts are hurting and students are suffering as a result in the terms of their educational opportunities.,

But appearing on an Albany-based radio program, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos re-stated his opposition to extending the tax:

“The Governor’s made himself very clear on that position. No new taxes, no new fees and I support the governor on that.”

Later, the host of that show New York Post Editor Fredric Dicker, declared,

Gov. Cuomo scored a major victory in his battle against a “millionaire’s tax’’ yesterday when Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, the tax’s leading advocate, pledged not to hold up next year’s budget in order to get the measure approved.

Finally, today State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli warned of continuing job losses on Wall Street.  He noted securities related activities accounted for 14 percent of the state’s revenues last year, down from 20 percent before the financial crisis.

The Comptroller estimates that the securities industry lost 4,100 jobs between April and August 2011, and projects 10,000 additional jobs could be lost by the end of 2012.  He foresees profits for 2011 at New York Stock Exchange firms declining by 35 percent from a year ago.

Comptroller DiNapoli warns,

The industry’s current weakness has led OSC [Office of the State Comptroller] to estimate that Wall Street-related tax collections will fall short of City and State targets in their current fiscal years and that the shortfalls could be even greater next year. As Wall Street’s slowdown affects business and personal spending in the rest of the economy, overall tax collections will also weaken, widening the State and City budget gaps.

• Why NYSUT sued the Regents
• State’s second largest union rejects proposed contract
• Health insurance premiums surging nationwide

Why NYSUT sued the Regents
Richard Casagrande, General Counsel of New York State United Teachers, has a column in the union’s newspaper explaining, “Why we sued the Regents” over the new teacher/principal evaluation regulations.

Mr. Casagrande contends,

the regulations undermined the three main pillars of the law: the guarantee of limits on the use of standardized testing in measuring a teacher’s effectiveness; the guarantee that a teacher’s effectiveness rating would be based on multiple measures; and the guarantee that teachers would have a voice in this process through collective bargaining.

He gives NYSUT’s view on the State Supreme Court ruling invalidating portions of the regulations.

The State Education Department plans to appeal that decision.

State’s second largest union rejects proposed contract
Yesterday, the second largest state employees union, the Public Employees Federation, announced that its members had voted to reject a proposed contract its leaders had reached with the Cuomo Administration.

Earlier, members of the largest state employees’ union, the Civil Service Employees Association, approved a nearly identical contract.

The agreements had been cited as enabling the state to avoid layoffs of CSEA and PEF members.  With the rejection, the Cuomo Administration moved swiftly to begin PEF layoffs.

E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center argues that PEF members felt they could afford to “slap the Governor” because of the Triborough Law which maintains in effect provisions of a public employee collective bargaining agreement when it has expired with no successor agreement in place.

Mr. McMahon notes,

…up to 3,500 PEF members will now be laid off. But more than 90 percent of the union membership will keep their jobs while avoiding payless furloughs and higher insurance premiums. What’s more, thanks to Triborough, many workers will also continue pocketing the annual longevity “step” increments mandated by the civil-service-salary schedule — just as they would have done if the squishy “freeze” in base salaries had been ratified.

Writing about the agreements back in July, I noted

…it might be expected that the Governor will trumpet his achievement at some point in the next year, challenging school or local government officials to do as he has done, when they cite the challenges of operating under the new property tax cap.

Noting that the Governor also has to work with the complications of Triborough, I stressed differences in state and school district circumstances that would make it unwise for a school district to make a multi-year no layoff pledge to try to gain union concessions:

• First, employee costs are a much smaller part of the state budget (about 20 percent) than a typical school district budget (70-80 percent), making it easier for the state to spare personnel costs when cuts are necessary; and
• Second, the state has greater ability to increase its revenues if necessary to honor a no layoff pledge; schools have no control over one of their two major revenue streams (state aid) and diminished control over the other, due to the property tax cap.

Health insurance premiums surging nationwide
It’s not strictly a labor news item, but it does concern one of the fastest growing costs for school districts, labor or otherwise.

The New York Times reports that premiums for family health insurance coverage nationwide rose by an average of 9 percent in 2011.

The Times warns bigger increases could be on the way in New York, especially for individual and small group plans.

Our estimates are that, in each of the past two years, increases in health insurance costs alone exceeded the overall increase in school spending, suggesting that districts cut all other costs on balance.

The most widely mentioned legislative solution for helping schools achieve some savings in health insurance costs has been to mandate minimum employee contributions or prescribe maximum employer contributions.

Those proposals would adjust the share of who pays how much.  I am not aware of serious proposals that would more directly address the larger fiscal problems with health insurance:  the cost is too great and is growing too fast, no matter who pays what share.

Some schools have been directly affected and forced to postpone the beginning of classes.  From past weather disasters, we know schools also serve their communities in different ways in such times, providing space for emergency shelter.

In smaller but significant ways it has been a difficult stretch for the New York State Education Department as well.

First, last week a State Supreme Court Judge sided with New York State United Teachers in invalidating several aspects of its challenge to the Department’s regulations implementing the new teacher and principal evaluation regulations.

Here are editorial reactions to the court’s ruling from the New York Times, Buffalo News, New York Daily News and Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.  the first two support SED’s posture; the third does as well but also faults the law itself.  The Rochester paper calls for a resolution through negotiation, rather than litigation.

The Department promises to appeal.

Second, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli rejected the Department’s $27 million contract with Wireless Generation to build an “Education Data Portal” that would enable schools and teachers to track and use student performance data.

The Comptroller rejected the contract, citing controversies engulfing Wireless Generation’s parent company, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.  News Corp. has been accused of illegal phone “hacking” in Britain.

Another controversial aspect of the contract was that it was awarded through sole-source procurement.

Like the teacher/principal evaluation regulations, the data system is part of the state’s Race to the Top reform agenda funded by Washington.

GothamSchools.org explains,

The rejection marks yet another setback in the state’s school reform plans. Last week, a judge ruled that the state should not be allowed to use student test scores to count for 40 percent of teachers’ evaluations, bringing to a standstill a centerpiece of New York’s Race to the Top plans. Now the data clearinghouse that would make the evaluations possible is also at risk.

New York’s Race To The Top application said that a pilot data program would be in place by this September to begin collecting information in some of the state’s school districts, and the system was scheduled for wide release in October 2012. By 2013-2014, the portal was to serve 90 percent of the state’s intended audience, according to the Race To The Top application.

An SED spokesperson said, “The Comptroller has allowed political pressure to get in the way of vital technology that would help our students.  Our office will review all options to implement the kind of system our schools need to move forward.”

NYSUT and its New York City affiliate, the United Federation of Teachers, wrote to state officials urging the contract be rejected.

Finally, last week, the Department issued a schedule for state elementary and intermediate grade assessments, then pulled it back, then on Friday issued a revised schedule which still provoked consternation – several districts, mostly in Central and Northern New York, will need to reschedule an April break to accommodate the new schedule.

Below is the summary of the decision we sent to superintendents.

Here is a link to the decision.

The State Education Department has announced its intent to appeal the decision.

The suit was brought by New York State United Teachers; here is the union’s press release on the decision.

As I explained to a reporter, the decision compounds the complexity of what was already a complicated and sensitive undertaking.

Dear Superintendents:

A decision from State Supreme Court, Albany County, was issued yesterday, August 24, 2011 by Judge Michael C. Lynch regarding New York State United Teachers’ challenge to regulations adopted by the Board of Regents to implement the new Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) requirements for teachers and principals pursuant to Education Law §3012-c.

The decision held that certain provisions of the APPR regulations are invalid.

The Judge’s ruling concluded the following:

1. Student growth data on state assessments may only comprise 20% for the first category (i.e. Measure of Student Growth) and the same data may not be utilized to measure the second 20% category (i.e. Local Measures of Student Achievement).  However, if collectively bargained, the data from the same state assessment may be utilized for the second 20% category provided that it is a “distinctly different measure of student achievement”.
2. The measure of classroom observations and professional growth in the 60 point category (i.e. Other 60 Points) must be determined through collective bargaining as opposed to being prescribed in regulations (§30-2.4(d)(1)(iii) and 30-2.4[d][1][iv][c]), which provided that 40 of the 60 points shall be based on classroom observations and that no more than 5 of the 60 points may be assigned to professional growth goals.
3. When SED monitors and orders a corrective action plan including a requirement to utilize an independent evaluator, such independent evaluator must be the subject of collective bargaining as opposed to regulation §30-2.12[b], which provided for the appointment of the independent evaluator by SED.
4. The statute provides that “… annual professional performance review shall be a significant factor for … promotion, retention, tenure determination, termination…”(§3012-c[1]). Thus, both granting of tenure and denial of tenure must be performed in compliance with the statute. Accordingly, the regulation is invalid to the extent that it applies the statute only to the granting of tenure and not to termination of a probationary teacher or denial of tenure.
5. The scoring ranges set forth in regulation §30-2.6(a)(1) may not allow for the 60 point category (i.e. Other 60 Points) to “have a meaningful impact” in the composite score, thus, the prescribed scoring ranges are invalid.

These specific provisions of the regulations were ruled invalid:

• Regulation §30-2.4 [c](3)[d]
• Regulation §30-2.4 [d](1)[iii]
• Regulation §30-2.4 [d](1)[iv]
• Regulation §30-2.12 [b]
• Regulation §30-2.1 [d]
• Regulation §30-2.11 [c]
• Regulation §30-2.6 [a][1]

It is important to note that the court upheld the expedited appeal process detailed in regulation §30-2.11 [b].

SED has announced its intention to appeal this decision.

Also important to recognize is that the bulk of regulation is still effective.  Accordingly, it is necessary to continue to plan for APPR in your districts, and attempt to continue to work on your APPR plan for September adoption. Only the specified sections of regulation are invalid.

Importantly, according to provisions found in the state’s Civil Practice Law and Rules, once SED appeals the decision to the Appellate Division, the trial court order would be stayed.  However, a possible stay continues to create uncertainty over the future validity of those provisions, while any appeals unfold.

Please consult with your district’s counsel on how to proceed.

We will continue to monitor the situation and provide updated information and analysis in the near future. As always, please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns.

• NYC tenure approval rate down to 58 percent
• Impact of federal debt ceiling debacle on New York State
• State revenue outlook
• Cheating

NYC tenure approval rate down to 58 percent
Following the adoption of new procedures for tenure decisions, New York City’s teacher tenure approval rate dropped from the high 90 percent range to 58 percent various media sources report.  Here is the New York Times article.

Only 3 percent of the eligible teachers were rejected outright, about the same share as in the prior year; 39 percent had their probationary period extended, allowing them another year to gain approval.

Here is more on the City’s new procedures.

The City rates teachers into one of four categories, mirroring those prescribed in the new statewide teacher and principal evaluation procedures – highly effective, effective, developing and ineffective.  Only teachers receiving the first or second rating can be recommended for tenure.

Student performance data is one factor in the City’s tenure evaluations, but does not appear to comprise a specific, fixed percentage.

In 2008, legislation to address disputes over the use of student performance data in New York City tenure decisions sparked the most bitter conflict in memory between the teacher unions and and school district management groups.  

Impact of federal debt ceiling debacle on New York State
Yesterday, State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli shared some warnings about the impact on New York State if Congress and the president fail to raise the federal debt ceiling in time to avert a default by the federal government.

The Comptroller told Rochester’s WXXI radio that the state’s pension fund would be hurt by a sudden drop in the stock market. 

“This could throw the markets in a tail spin that will hurt New York’s pension funds ,” said DiNapoli. “At a time when we are still digging out from the great loses of 08 and 09.”

The station also reported,

The New York State budget could be in the red by $7 billion dollars in the next two months alone. The federal government is due to make billions of dollars in payments to New York in August and September, the bulk for the federal and state shared Medicaid program. DiNapoli says there’s a chance, though remote right now, that the legislature would have to return to deal with another budget deficit, though he says that’s a “worst case scenario”.

and

A drop in nation’s credit rating caused by a debt default, could also affect states’ credit ratings. That would make it more expensive for state and local governments to borrow money for capital projects, like road and bridge repair- because interest rates would be higher, says DiNapoli.

The Comptroller says school districts and local governments would likely be even more deeply impacted, because they are also operating on tight budgets and some are even borrowing just to meet operating expenses.

“If it’s going to cost more to borrow money, that’s an unanticipated expense, and means there will probably have to be a cut somewhere else,” the Comptroller said.

State revenue outlook
Last week, the Comptroller issued his monthly “cash report” for June 2011.  The conclusions were hopeful, with tax receipts up $800 million from what the enacted state budget projected for the April-June quarter, and expenditures down by $1 billion.

The Comptroller urged some caution, noting that timing of expenditures and large tax payments contributed to part of the positive results.

E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center for New York State Policy identified one cause for concern in the Comptroller’s report:  first-quarter withholding for the personal income tax (PIT) was below what the enacted budget assumes, with growth of 1 percent over last year so far, compared to projected growth of 1.8 percent.

Payroll withholding comprises the largest share of PIT receipts.

As noted above, a federal default could have huge negative consequences for the state’s finances.

Also, economic news today is disappointing.

Any day, the Governor’s Budget Division will release its first quarter update on the state’s financial plan.  Yesterday, Governor Cuomo said he still expect the state to face a $2.5 billion structural deficit in developing a budget for the 2012-13 fiscal year.

Cheating
This year, the State Education Department instituted some new procedures aimed at preventing “doctoring” of standardized tests, in order to help students pass or perhaps to make schools look better.

For example, schools are now barred from “re-scoring” open-ended questions (such as essay questions) on Regents exams after their initial rating.

I will confess to questioning  the calibration of the state’s moves — whether the magnitude of problems reported up to the time they were adopted warranted all the new impositions on schools.

Also, I sympathized with school officials who reported that they applied review procedures with integrity, so that student scores were sometimes adjusted down, as well as up.

But in the months since the changes were announced there have been widely-publicized “cheating” scandals in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and elsewhere.

This past Sunday, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle ran an editorial calling on state and local officials as well as parents and community members to be vigilant in looking for evidence of test cheating.

This week there was  a report of a New York school district referring a possible cheating incident to the local district attorney.

The scandals have provoked a nationwide debate a on the role of standardized testing.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote, “…existence of cheating says nothing about the merits of testing.”  But he does acknowledge, “poorly designed laws are also part of the problem” and “NCLB has created the wrong incentives for boosting student achievement.”

No one defends cheating.  But another commentator observes, “we’re living in an age of brutal optimism about testing [emphasis added].”  In New York, we have been moving to correct weaknesses in the state’s tests, while at the same time attaching more consequences to them.

The writer adds,

Low test scores tell us nothing about a child, we’d like to think, but nearly everything about his school and teachers. … If any individual child fails, it won’t be because he is disabled, poor, hungry, homeless, can’t understand English, or maybe just isn’t that smart, but because he’s been failed by “the system”—those same bad-apple teachers and principals who cheat, or who are just too damn incompetent or lazy to teach their students.

She contends that bad behavior has been “incentivized” by state and federal policies,  and when that happens, “…it’s a good time to reconsider public policy, not to double down on it.”

On the other hand, the Washington Post’s Jay Mathews argues, “Easing test pressure won’t save kids.” He favors trying additional forms of accountability, other than reliance on standardized testing, but concludes, “teachers and students, like all of us, must learn how to deal with some forms of pressure.”

Compellingly, Mathews argues, “School administrators and teachers who changed answers did something worse than cheating. They lost faith in the ability of their students to learn.”

Another writer (Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Institute), hardly mention cheating scandals at all, but offers his conclusion that “consequential accountability” tied to standardized tests is probably the key factor behind one of American education’s under-recognized success stories.

Mr. Petrilli notes,

In both the “basic skills” of reading and math, and in the social studies subjects of history, civics, and now geography, African-American, Latino, and low-income fourth- and eighth-graders have posted huge gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) since the early 1990s.

He explains that the progress means, “today’s poor and minority students are achieving one, two, and sometimes three grade levels higher than their counterparts in the early 1990s were.”

Mr. Petrilli, concludes by noting the downsides to our current approaches to testing and accountability, (such as narrowing of curriculum and instruction) and asks whether the gains are worth it.

An article last weekend in the lower Hudson Valley’s Journal News reported that teachers, administrators and even one member of the State Board of Regents are raising concerns about the ability to effectively implement new evaluation procedures in the year ahead.

Yesterday, the Syracuse Post Standard editorialized that the new process is, “convoluted, too reliant on tests.”

This coming week, a state judge will hear arguments on whether implementation of the regulations adopted by the Board of Regents should be suspended, pending resolution of the teacher union’s lawsuit asserting the regulations do not match the requirements of the law enacted a year ago.