New York State Teachers Union Sues Over Teacher Evaluation Scheme

[busenbust]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/29/new-york-state-teachers-u_n_887039.html

NEW YORK -- The fight over how to measure the state's teachers made its way to court this week, with New York's largest teachers' union suing the Board of Regents and the state education commissioner over new teacher evaluation regulations.



"For us to do other than this -- we have 600,000 members -- would give me very little credibility with my own members," New York State United Teachers President Richard Iannuzzi told The Huffington Post.

On Monday, NYSUT filed a complaint, alleging that the Board of Regents overstepped its bounds in adapting a new teacher evaluation plan. The plan, according to the complaint, is "illegal and void, because the Board of Regents acted in excess of its authority, inconsistently with the law and arbitrarily, in enacting them."

The complaint seeks an injunction to halt the implementation of the board's new regulations that would allow state test scores to count for up to 40 percent of teacher evaluations. It also seeks a declaration that the regulations are unconstitutional.

"We accept the concept that 40 percent of a teacher's evaluation can reflect student growth. We're saying 20 percent of that can be standardized state test," Iannuzzi said. "The other part has to be locally developed, multiple measures of student growth. You shouldn’t just use one measure."
...
Eric Nadelstern, a former deputy chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, said the union is using antiquated tactics.

"Teachers are fighting change. They've convinced themselves that America is engaged in class warfare, that the union troubles in states like Wisconsin are indicative of that class warfare, that teachers are being blamed for the failings of education, that they're on the front lines of the battles of their lives," he said. "They're using strategies effective over the past 100 years instead of projecting forward."

^^:yesyes: absolutely agree with him (Eric N )!

 

[busenbust]

Tucker argues that the United States has benefitted from an invisible wage subsidy that has now disappeared--the limited professions available to women until just a few decades ago. He argues that America "greatly benefitted for the better part of a century from having a teaching force largely made up of college-educated women whose choice of career was largely limited to nursing, secretarial work and teaching, and some minorities whose career choices were similarly constrained." Schools benefited from a capable workforce willing to work at "below-market wages under poor working conditions," he says. But that's now changed:

Those who accepted that deal are now leaving the workforce in droves. There are now more women than men in the professional schools preparing young people for many of the most prestigious professions and they are taking advantage of those opportunities. The United States is now about to get the least capable candidates applying to our education schools when we need the best.

^^absolutely ...this goes from bad to worse !

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/feminism-reducing-quality-america-teaching-force-200818802.html

 

[busenbust]

America's biggest teacher and principal cheating scandal unfolds in Atlanta

At least 178 teachers and principals in Atlanta Public Schools cheated to raise student scores on high-stakes standardized tests, according to a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

^^
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Educat...principal-cheating-scandal-unfolds-in-Atlanta