ALBANY—Seven members of the State Board of Regents have endorsed delaying implementation of the new teacher evaluation system that was included in the state budget, Capital has learned.
In a position paper obtained by Capital, the regents, including all four of the new board members elected in March, call for a slower rollout of the new system, which they argue should be less reliant on students’ standardized test scores. The group is also pushing for a review of the Common Core standards, which the board adopted in 2010, as well as the oft-maligned state assessments that are aligned to the more difficult curriculum guidelines.
The 17-member board, members of which are elected by the state Legislature, is constitutionally vested with the power to set education policy. The board oversees the Education Department, which is not controlled by Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has made education reform, chiefly teacher evaluations, a primary priority of his tenure.
“After extensive deliberation that included a review of research and information gained from listening tours, we have determined that the current proposed amendments to the [teacher evaluation] system are based on an incomplete and inadequate understanding of how to address the task of continuously improving our educational system,” the regents wrote in the paper.
The regents want to push back the deadline for districts to implement the evaluation system from November 15 to September 1, 2016. Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch has said she would allow this delay for districts who demonstrate they’ve faced “hardships” in implementing by the statutory November deadline.
Instead, districts would be asked to submit “a letter of intent regarding how they will utilize the time to review/revise their current [teacher evaluation] plan” by the fall deadline.
The current evaluation system is based 60 percent on observations, 20 percent on state exams and 20 percent on local tests. The new system, which Cuomo designed and lawmakers accepted in the state budget, is based on a “matrix” system rather than percentages, but tests play a more prominent role; in some cases, tests count for as much as 50 percent.
The group said standardized test scores should count for no more than 20 percent of an educator’s rating, arguing “there is insufficient evidence to support using test measures that were never meant to be used to evaluate teacher performance.”
The group is also pushing for the student performance category of evaluations to be based on more than just standardized tests, including instead portfolios, science experiments and research projects.
The group also called for the development of “weighting algorithms” for teachers whose ratings are based on performance of students with disabilities and those with limited English proficiency.
“The current system should not be simply repeated with a greater emphasis on a single test score,” the regents wrote in the paper. “We do not understand and do not support the elimination of the instructional evidence that defines the teaching, learning, achievement process as an element of the observation process.”
For the observation category, no more than 10 percent of a teacher’s score should be based on an external evaluator’s assessment of his or her classroom performance, the group argued. The new law requires an “independent” evaluator to observe teachers in addition to their principals.
Additionally, the group pushed for a review of the Common Core standards and related tests “to determine levels of validity, reliability, rigor and appropriateness of the developmental aspiration levels embedded in the assessment items.”
The following regents signed on to the letter: Kathleen Cashin of Brooklyn, Judith Chin of Queens, Catherine Collins of Buffalo, Judith Johnson of the Hudson Valley, Beverly Ouderkirk of the North Country, and Betty Rosa of the Bronx.
Josephine Finn, who was elected in 2014 to represent the Capital Region, also signed the paper, but included an asterisk with the note: “I support the intent of the position paper.”
Cashin and Rosa have often criticized the regents' reform agenda. The other regents who signed the letter were elected in unusually controversial contests, which occurred largely as a result of lawmakers' dissatisfaction with the Common Core rollout.
The regents must adopt regulations finalizing implementing of the new evaluation system by the end of this month. They plan to meet in Albany on June 15 and 16.
Read it here: http://bit.ly/1KmIjm0
Comments