Thoughts on Gov. Cuomo's education "reform"

I am not looking forward to a return to school on Monday.  This is not the usual "wow, I've been on vacation and have to get used to my school schedule again" kind of not looking forward.  It is going back to an environment rocked by Gov. Cuomo's education "reforms" that are designed to completely destroy the urban public school system that I have worked in for 10 of the past 12 years.

The plan is for greater "accountability" for teachers, so he has developed an evaluation system that is based 50% on state test scores, 35% on "outside evaluation", and the remaining 15% is local measures.  There are four scores:  "Highly Effective", "Effective", "Developing", and "Ineffective".

There are some serious negatives attached to those deemed "Ineffective": Teachers who receive "Ineffective" two years in a row start termination proceedings, and a third year of "ineffective" means you are fired.

Tenure has been extended from three years to four, and if you receive anything less than "Effective" more than one year out of those four, you will be denied tenure.

This hits home especially for teachers in urban schools, where test scores have always been low, even before the new Common Core standard tests.  Study after study has shown a direct link between poverty and test scores, and Rochester has the 5th highest per capita child poverty rate in the country.  Ergo, our test scores suck.

So with 50% of your evaluation as "ineffective" due to test scores, the absolute highest evaluation you could receive overall would be "developing".  And if you happened to not impress the "outside evaluator" that day (there's still no word on who those people will be), you will be stuck with "ineffective", no matter how incredible your rest of the year is.

Veteran teachers will barely scrape by, but most of us will be gone in 3-5 years.  It's all a roll of the dice.

More worrisome, though, is the number of new teachers I expect to apply to the Rochester City School District for September if this isn't fixed:

0.  None.

If you need to maintain "Effective" for three out of the four years of your tenure track, why would you even bother applying to a school system that guarantees you will get nothing higher than "Developing" EVER?  You wouldn't.

So we are going to have a staff of veteran teachers terrified of losing their jobs, anyone retiring who is even remotely able to, stressed inner-city students completely burned out on test prep, and absolutely no new blood coming in.  Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse schools will implode within two years.

Though given Cuomo's push toward charter schools, I'm sure that's not a design flaw.

I left education after the first five years because of testing, among other reasons.  I had to proctor a first grade exam, and a very sweet kid who always asked the best questions during library time asked for my help on a tough question.  When I told her I couldn't help her, she gave me a look like a kicked puppy.  I, of all people, couldn't help her?

After calculating that the library had been closed for a full quarter of the year due to testing, I split librarianship for law school.  There were a multitude of other reasons, which I'll get into in another essay, but that was one of the major ones.

However, I came back after two years, mostly because I honestly couldn't imagine doing anything else.  But the new regulations are going to make working with students difficult to near impossible with teacher turnover and more slavish devotion to the test than in previous years.

So I'm watching all this with a "heavy heart", as all those legislators claimed they had when they voted for this.  I have hope for the "opt-out" movement that is growing.  I have hope that there is absolutely no way this attack on my profession will pass without pushback.  New York has one of the finest educational systems in the country, and I can't believe that people will stand by and watch Gov. Cuomo break it.

But almost 42 is young enough for me to consider a career change if I must.  I want to fight the good fight, but I am tired.  It will be interesting to see how the next few months pan out.