Dive Brief:
- New York Governor Andrew Cuomo focused on education at his fifth State of the State address Wednesday, detailing an 11-point education reform plan.
- Cuomo explained that he wants to tie $800 million in school funding to the reforms, and that he will work to triple the state's education aid allocation if all 11 of the points are passed.
- Among the 11 points: $20,000 rewards for effective teachers, an easier removal process for ineffective teachers, the expansion of the state's charter school cap, the expansion of mayoral control, the transformation of ineffective schools, the modification of the state's current teacher evaluation process, and the tying of teacher tenure to classroom performance.
Dive Insight:
Not everyone was pleased with Cuomo's plan. Karen Magee, president of New York State United Teachers, followed the speech with her own statement, bringing up how Massachusetts is currently employing the merit scheme Cuomo seems to be pursuing and arguing that it has proven to be ineffective. "It inhibits collaboration; it stops the work," McGee said. "The truth is, there's no epidemic of failing schools or bad teachers. There is an epidemic of poverty and under-funding that Albany has failed to adequately address for decades."
Cuomo's desire to focus teacher evaluations more heavily on test scores is not surprising. In December, he shot down the continuation of a bill postponing the use of test scores in teacher evaluations as the state adjusts to Common Core-aligned testing. While Cuomo had initially introduced the bill, he has now changed his tune, arguing that the plan is unnecessary given 2013-14 evaluations that rated less than 1% of educators as "ineffective."
That said, as New York state considers more rigorous measures for teacher evaluations, it's important to remember additional issues at hand, like the fact that the American Statistical Association (ASA) says the widely popular “value-added method” (VAM) for conducting teacher evaluations is unreliable.