The state of New York state’s public education system is one of the many topics covered in Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 548-paged “brief” of his agenda for 2015, and it’s disconcerting.
It’s January, halfway through the academic year, and school districts are already at work formulating budgets to address the financial needs for the coming year. Already on their wish lists is the request to eliminate the Gap Elimination legislation placed in effect in 2008, a time when the country was marred by a recession rivaled only by the Great Depression. The economy has since recovered, yet more than half of state schools receive less funding than they did nearly seven years ago. Despite a renewed economy, Gap Elimination coupled with property tax caps have forced relatively affluent districts to make cuts to teaching jobs.
Cuomo’s newest agenda addresses teachers in particular, tweaking the evaluation process by placing more emphasis on state examinations and in-class performance reviews. These results would further impact a teacher’s ability to reach tenure, if not his or her employment status entirely.
The latest news is, the State Capitol would choose to hinge tenure status on a teacher’s ability to score “effective” for five consecutive years. State exams would continue to play a role in this process. Frankly, the days leading up to these tests make our elementary schools resemble a dystopian scene out of the Hunger Games, thrusting our children into unnecessarily stressful environments only to help bureaucrats evaluate our educators. That needs to stop now.
The status quo is in need of change. The back and forth between both the state and teachers’ unions paint two extremes; neither one credible. It’s tiring to hear one side say teachers are treated unfairly, while the other claim teachers are altogether ineffective. The battle over tenure qualifications is the lynch pin tying together two extremes that fail to address accountability. Have your in-class evaluations and audit schools like industry regulators, but keep primary school kids out of the process.
The teacher’s unions and State need to come together to establish an alternative that evaluates educators effectively. In the end, tenure should not be the goal; keeping talented and motivated teachers should be. Of course, forcing our teachers to teach out of the Common Core mandated curriculum hinders this effort. It could be difficult to say whether or not the problem lies upon the teacher, or the teaching material. Parents reading the material coming home often share a common, negative opinion. If the current way is the best we can do as a society, maybe we should all go back to school.
