Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Teacher Evals

The courts have knocked down Cuomo's plan for teacher evaluations by deciding that some of the tests that evaluations are based on may be chosen by districts.

Since NYS belongs to a consortium that is phasing in Next Generation Assessments aligned with the Common Core Standards in 2014, and since those tests will happen four times a year instead of just one, it's hard to imagine how additional local tests will be squeezed in.

Assume one day per test for ELA/Math, and you already will spend over 4 percent of the school year just testing students. (That doesn't count the time spent away from teachers as they grade the tests and students sit and watch movies with substitutes.) And now you're going to add local assessments to that mix? Or is everyone assuming that this plan is just for three years, and then the Regents will come up with something brand new?

Well, at least Pearson is getting rich off the deal.

1 comment:

Diane said...

And here I was thinking that national standards might be a good thing. Oh well. Maybe Pearson will have enough $ to pay us our royalties this year - now that we can see on Author Central that TYCL is selling 2-3 copies a week!