By Keith J. Ferrante
The Legislative Gazette
“Thousands of students, parents and teachers participated in a rally in Albany Wednesday in support of charter schools.
An estimated 10,000 people descended on the state Capitol to rally in support of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposal for additional charter schools in New York state. Cuomo has proposed adding another 100 charter schools statewide to the cap which was agreed to years ago by the Legislature and the governor.”
SurveyUSA interviewed 600 Minnesota adults between Feb. 20 through Feb. 24. They answered questions about Gov. Dayton’s performance, transportation, commissioner pay raises and sports.
There is a proposal in the legislature to change “teacher tenure” rules by ending the so-called “last in, first out” method of laying off teachers who have the least seniority. Should layoff decisions be based on seniority? On the quality of the teacher? Or on something else? Asked of 525 registered voters. Margin of sampling error for this question = ± 3.5%
11%
Seniority
80%
Quality
4%
Something Else
6%
Not Sure
Campbell Brown and Kasie Hunt join Morning Joe to discuss Brown’s new column on Common Core and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s CPAC remarks on Common Core.
Washington Post
By Campbell Brown
Campbell Brown is founder of the Partnership for Educational Justice and a former CNN and NBC News anchor.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference this week, the supposed evils of the Common Core educational standards were front and center. So, too, was an unmistakable case of pandering.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) declared, “We need to remove Common Core from every classroom in America.” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) blamed his predecessor for forcing his state to adopt the standards and said that he is now deeply concerned about “”
Both now preach this opposition message with the zealous conviction of converts — because they are converts, having carried until recently a very different message. And their explanations for their flip-flops border on the absurd.
In April 2013, I interviewed Jindal at an education conference in Baton Rouge. Back then, Jindal was a passionate proponent of Common Core, whose development was driven by the nation’s governors and which had been adopted by most every state, including Louisiana. Jindal made a strong case that day for how vital the standards were to improving education in his state.
His big reversal came when he began openly exploring a presidential run. Now he calls the standards a top-down, meddlesome approach that is terrible for public education. His beef, like that of many Republicans opposed to Common Core, is that the Obama administration ruined a good idea when it tied federal dollars to the voluntary standards. Jindal has gone so far as to sue the federal government for offering financial incentives to states that sign up.
A basic lesson in recent history shows why Jindal’s conversion appears so disingenuous. The Obama administration announced in the summer of 2009 that federal dollars would be available to states that embraced Common Core, yet Jindal remained a champion until late 2013. Did it really take him more than four years to discover that the federal government was involved? Maybe that alone should disqualify him from being a serious presidential candidate.
Christie’s inartful attempts to disguise his flip-flop have been no better. In 2013, he was also a big Common Core proponent, saying, “This is one of those areas where I’ve agreed more with the president than not.” Last year he blasted other Republicans for opposing the standards, saying they “care more about their primaries than they care about anything else.” Yet, lo and behold, Christie has developed “grave concerns,” as he told Iowa voters last month, because the federal government is tying federal funds to the initiative. He has even asked a commission to reexamine New Jersey’s implementation “in light of these new developments from the Obama administration” — developments that were announced five years earlier.
All this, of course, is not about education. Or facts.
Jindal and Christie are running from Common Core with an eye on the presidential primary, where attacking any intrusion into local affairs is an applause line for conservatives. And they are not the only Republicans backtracking all over themselves.
How about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker? He was an early supporter of implementing Common Core in his state but, during a tough reelection campaign in 2014, he abruptly called for its repeal. Now his position is mush; he says he supports high standards but wants school districts to know they can opt out if they want.
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has also flip-flopped. In 2013, he was still willing to admit that high standards across the states were a good thing but suggested a name change to solve the standards’ branding problem. Now he, too, is withdrawing his support and blaming the feds.
Indeed, some states such as Arizona have dealt with the backlash against Common Core by keeping the standards but changing the name. We are reduced to sleight of hand. Meanwhile, former Florida governor Jeb Bush has become a target for standing by Common Core as a voluntary minimum level of rigor for all states. His message to governors: Go ahead and set your own standards if you want; just make them at least as rigorous.
Let’s be clear about what Common Core is. It spells out what students should know at the end of each grade. The goal is to ensure that our students are sound in math and literacy and that our schools have some basic consistency nationwide. But the standards do not dictate a national curriculum, and teachers are not told how or what to teach.
The unpopularity of the initiative with segments of the public has been caused by rough implementation in some states and the tests linked to the standards. That frustration is legitimate and can be addressed. But abandonment of the initiative for political reasons is craven.
Those running from Common Core may find that the political risks have been overstated. A recent NBC/Marist poll of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina Republicans found that the number of people willing to back a pro-Common Core candidate was greater than the number who said support for Common Core was a deal-breaker.
Education never quite gets the attention it deserves in presidential campaigns, but monster flip-flops surely do. So here’s some advice for people running for office: If you want to campaign against core standards, perhaps you should try having core standards of your own first.
Read the full story here.
By Ben Chapman, Larry McShane
New York Daily News
“A scathing state report flunked 91 city schools Thursday for eye-poppingly low graduation rates and test scores — and cited 40 of them for a decade of teaching futility.
The damning new evaluation said more than 50,000 New York City schoolkids are stuck in schools where less than half the students graduated and fewer than 1 in 10 were proficient in either English or math.”
By Ben Chapman, Lisa L. Colangelo
New York Daily News
“Poorly rated teachers are concentrated in public schools in poorer neighborhoods in the Bronx and Brooklyn, a Daily News analysis of state Education Department data released Thursday shows.
Of the top 10 school districts with the worst-rated teachers, seven are in those neighborhoods.”
ALBANY—Even though about two thirds of the state’s students failed Common Core-aligned state exams last year, the majority of educators in New York’s five largest school districts got high ratings on the portions of their performance evaluations that were based on students’ test scores, according to new data released Thursday by the State Education Department.
Governor Andrew Cuomo is pushing for an overhaul of the state-mandated evaluation system, arguing that teachers’ high scores in the first two years of implementation don’t “reflect reality,” citing elementary and middle school students’ low scores on state English and math exams.
The proposal the governor included in the state budget would increase the percentage of the evaluations that is based on state test scores from 20 percent to 50 percent and diminish the impact of subjective observations, which he argues skew overall ratings, from 60 percent to 50 percent.
Evaluations are now based 60 percent on observations, 20 percent on state tests and 20 percent on local tests. Cuomo’s proposal removes the local component.
But if educators’ evaluations were based entirely on state test scores last school year, the majority of teachers and principals in the “Big Five” districts—New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers—would have still earned high marks.
In New York City and Buffalo, the state’s two largest districts, 91 percent of educators were rated “effective” or “highly effective” overall. If only the component that measures student performance on state exams is considered, 89 percent in New York City and 90 percent in Buffalo were rated in the top two categories.
New York City had the highest scores on third-through-eighth-grade state exams last year of the “Big Five;” 28 percent of students were proficient in English language arts, and 34 percent were proficient in math. In Buffalo, 12 percent passed English, and 13 percent passed math.
Ninety-eight percent of educators in Yonkers were rated “effective” or “highly effective” overall, and 87 percent got those ratings on the state-test category. In the Westchester County city, 19 percent of students passed English exams, and 22 percent passed math.
The gaps were bigger in Rochester and Syracuse, but nonetheless, most educators in those districts scored in the top two categories overall and on the state-test portion. Eighty-nine percent in Rochester were rated “effective” or “highly effective” overall, compared to 78 percent on the component based on state tests; in Syracuse, 98 percent got the high ratings overall, compared to 69 percent on the state-test component.
Student test scores were lowest in these two cities. In Rochester, only 5 percent of students passed English, and 7 percent passed math; in Syracuse, 8 percent of students passed both exams.
While it doesn’t appear that increasing the evaluations’ reliance on state test scores would result in a majority of teachers being rated “ineffective,” there would likely be an increase in some districts.
In Syracuse, for example, 16 percent of educators were “ineffective” on the state-test portion, but 0 percent were “ineffective” overall. Similarly, in Rochester, 10 percent were “ineffective” when rated based on the state exams, compared to 1 percent overall.
Under Cuomo’s legislation, a teacher could not be rated “ineffective” based on state exams and end up with an overall rating of “effective” or higher.
“The ratings show there’s much more work to do to strengthen the evaluation system,” Board of Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch said in a statement. “There’s a real contrast between how our students are performing and how their teachers and principals are evaluated.”
The evaluation system does not rate teachers and principals on students’ absolute performance, which explains why teachers whose students fail the exams don’t automatically earn low ratings. The evaluations measure student growth on state exams from year to year, and they also take into consideration factors like poverty and students’ disabilities.
Only about 20 percent of teachers—those who teach English and math in the third through eighth grades—teach classes that are directly tied to state exams. Districts have different ways of evaluating the remainder of teachers, some of which use school-level or district-level aggregate test-score data to rate all teachers, even those who specialize in other subjects like art or physical education.
Cuomo spokeswoman Dani Lever emailed the following statement: “Clearly the current system, where 99 percent of teachers are rated effective, does not match student achievement. The Governor’s proposed reforms will ensure that we have a teacher evaluation system that accurately measures effectiveness and guarantees that New York’s children receive the best possible education.”
The results, broken down by district, are available on the Education Department’s data website: http://bit.ly/1vCW3UZ
By Jennifer Fermino
New York Daily News
“Gov. Cuomo took his war on the education establishment to Brooklyn Friday, where he said a staggering 9,200 kids are stuck in failing schools because the system makes change nearly impossible.
“We are talking about a fundamental breach of the social contract,” he said.
His appearance at the Brooklyn Information and Culture center was an extension of his State of the State speech, in which he unveiled plans to revamp the education system.”
By Aisling Brennan
Observer
“Hundreds of parents gathered Wednesday at Medgar Evers College, Crown Heights in support of Governor Cuomo’s Opportunity Agenda for the New York education sector.
In his State of the State address last month, Cuomo shook things up by calling for a massive education reform to include a greater teacher evaluation system and a boost to the education budget, should Albany pass the agenda.”
New York Post
By George Roberts and Shawn Cohen
“A Queens teacher arrested for allegedly beating a special-needs student whom he accused of cheating on a test was caught on a disturbing audio recording tormenting the boy before the assault, the student’s lawyers said Tuesday.
“So you were trying to get over on me. You must think I’m stupid, cause your ass was sitting right there, cheating,” someone on the recording, allegedly 36-year-old special-ed teacher Alexander Perry, said to the 10-year-old boy, identified in court papers as M.B.”