March 20, 2015
By LaborPress
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s plan to have teachers judged by their pupils’ test scores and outside observers amounts to "a drive-by" evaluation system, New York State United Teachers President Karen Magee said March 16. Standardized tests can be useful, Magee told the Westchester Journal-News editorial board, but as diagnostic tools that show teachers what their current students know, or don't.
She said the governor’s proposal, in which test scores would count as 50% of a teacher’s evaluation, “doesn’t make sense,” because the tests measure the performance of “students who will no longer be that teacher's students.” New York schools rank high on Advanced Placement test scores, she added, so, “if a school is truly failing, we need to look at what we need to do to fix it." Read more
