By Monica Disare and Sarah Darville | Chalkbeat NY

“As state officials voted to change the way New York teachers are evaluated Monday, they released new data showing that more than 92 percent of city teachers earned an ‘effective’ rating or higher last year.

In New York City, 10.8 percent of teachers earned a top rating of ‘highly effective’ for the 2014-15 school year, up from about 9 percent last year. Most teachers, more than 81 percent, earned an ‘effective’ rating, while 6.5 percent were rated ‘developing’ and 1 percent earned the lowest rating, ‘ineffective.'”

Read More

New York Daily News

“Gov. Cuomo’s task force on the Common Core education standards has delivered plans for a four-year reboot of the learning benchmarks that sparked a parent — and teachers union — revolt.

Cuomo vows standards, to be crafted with teachers and parents, will prepare students for college and careers. Seeing will be believing.

He also asserts that, using existing law, districts will credibly evaluate teacher performance, in part using results of tests chosen by local districts. Harder to see, harder to believe.”

Read More

By Kate Taylor | The New York Times

“A task force Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo created is calling for changes in what New York State students learn and how they are assessed, in a set of recommendations released on Thursday.

ask force, which Mr. Cuomo convened in response to the concerns of parents and teachers, is also calling for the state not to use its test scores to evaluate teachers through the 2018-19 school year, to allow time to develop the new standards and tests.

The report is the latest step in the state’s retreat from the Common Core school standards, national benchmarks that New York adopted in 2010, and especially from using student test scores in teacher evaluations. It comes in the wake of a rebellion by parents against testing; one-fifth of students did not sit for the state exams this year, a fourfold increase from the previous year.”

Read More

By Jon Campbell | Democrat & Chronicle

“ALBANY – Common Core-based tests wouldn’t count for teachers and students in New York until the 2019-20 school year under a plan from an education panel advising Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The state Common Core Task Force issued its final report Thursday afternoon, laying out 21 recommendations for how the state can tailor the oft-debated education standards and improve the state’s standardized testing process.”

Read More

By Robert Pondiscio | New York Daily News

“Ten years ago students would come to my South Bronx fifth-grade classroom still adding and subtracting on their fingers, yet somehow these same students were deemed proficient on their state tests. It was a lie, and we knew it.

Gov. Cuomo seems determined to bring back those bad old days of low standards, dumbed-down tests and sending hundreds of thousands of New York children out into the world utterly unprepared for college, career or even running a cash register.”

Read More

By Monica Disare, Patrick Wall and Sarah Darville | Chalkbeat NY

“The governor’s Common Core task force has proposed overhauling the Common Core standards and pausing test-based teacher evaluations, paving the way for significant changes to policies that have dominated state education for years.

The recommendations were part of a report, released Thursday afternoon, that reflects parent and educator concerns about state tests, evaluations, and the rollout of the standards that have been brewing for years. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has pushed for tough academic standards and teacher ratings tied to test scores, has said he will pay close attention to the group’s recommendations — indicating that he is ready to back a broad shift in the state’s education policies.”

Read More

By Yoav Gonen and Carl Campanile | New York Post

“A Cuomo-appointed task force on Thursday called for a four-year moratorium on using Common Core exams to evaluate teachers and students, halting what had been a steady push toward tougher accountability.

If approved by Gov. Cuomo and the state Board of Regents, the change would mean the annual exams in English and math for students in Grades 3 to 8 won’t factor into teacher evaluations or student-promotion decisions until the 2019-2020 school year.”

Read More

By Bill Hammond | The 74

“These are whiplash-inducing times for public schools in New York, as state education leaders keep hitting the brakes on the very reforms they had aggressively pushed only a few years ago.

The Common Core standards that were supposed to assure that students were better prepared for college, careers and citizenship? Both the Board of Regents and a Gov. Cuomo-appointed task force are subjecting them to what Cuomo has called a ‘total reboot.’

The tougher standardized tests that students would have to pass to receive a diploma? The Regents have delayed that by five years, to 2022.”

Read More

By Gillian B. White | The Atlantic

“The benefits of a better education are most often discussed in terms of personal gain: higher wages, greater economic mobility, and generally, a better life. But not all the benefits are private: Local economies flourish when there are more skilled and productive workers.

That’s the conclusion of the economists Eric A. Hanushek of Stanford, and Ludger Woessmann and Jens Ruhose of the University of Munich, whose new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research takes a look at the financial return for states who invest in improving the quality of K-12 education. They find that the payoff can be significant.”

Read More