Ken-Ton School Board needs to give up outrageous threat to boycott standardized testing
Bob Dana, president of the Kenmore-Town of
Tonawanda School Board, and other board members likely will be removed
if they vote to boycott state tests. (John Hickey/Buffalo New file
photo)
on March 27, 2015 - 12:01 AM
The Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda School Board is teaching students the
wrong lesson in openly defying state rules and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s
education reform agenda.
Good for state education officials for pushing back against such irresponsible threats.
As News staff reporter Joseph Popiolkowski wrote, the Ken-Ton School Board voted unanimously Tuesday to “seriously consider” boycotting teacher evaluations and standardized testing in the district in grades three through eight until the governor releases projections of school financial aid.
The consequences of such actions are stark, with the possibility that the state could withhold about $50 million in state aid from the district, and, according to an email from a state education official, remove the School Board. Moreover, a teacher who refuses to administer tests could lose her certification.
How would losing millions of dollars in state aid for a useless cause help students? And how many residents are likely to sign on to pay much more in property taxes in order to make up for the lost state funding?
Some stretch of the imagination has allowed School Board President Bob Dana to think he and the board are justified in their impossible quest.
But their message of defiance to Albany is also sending a strong – and wrong – message to the children that they do not need to be tested on what they have learned. The message parallels the vehement protests of teachers who feel that their work should not be subject to evaluation by the state. It is astonishing to think that some parents and administrators don’t want to know whether students have mastered their course work. The assumption appears to be that everyone is above average. If only life were truly that easy.
The teachers unions have lined up against testing because it is one of the many measures used in their hated evaluations. That opposition has stoked an anti-testing fire under some parents. Although the state standardized tests are not new, some parents say their children are being overtested.
The problem with that logic is that in most jobs – that is, the real world – people are evaluated all the time, and often their jobs depend upon the results. So, what happens when children who have learned from adults that they do not have to be evaluated grow up?
As for standardized testing, it will be an integral part of their education careers.
No one likes taking tests, but students might as well use the standardized tests as practice for truly high-stakes exams like the SATs.
The deputy commissioner in the state Office of P-12 Education in an email to the superintendent made the state’s position perfectly clear: “Please inform them that we have a letter of removal drafted and that we will begin removal proceedings if they choose to pass such a resolution. Feel free to forward this email to your board.”
We hope the message has been received.
Instead of simply demanding more money, protesters should demand changes that will improve education. Mark Mulville/Buffalo News
Good for state education officials for pushing back against such irresponsible threats.
As News staff reporter Joseph Popiolkowski wrote, the Ken-Ton School Board voted unanimously Tuesday to “seriously consider” boycotting teacher evaluations and standardized testing in the district in grades three through eight until the governor releases projections of school financial aid.
The consequences of such actions are stark, with the possibility that the state could withhold about $50 million in state aid from the district, and, according to an email from a state education official, remove the School Board. Moreover, a teacher who refuses to administer tests could lose her certification.
How would losing millions of dollars in state aid for a useless cause help students? And how many residents are likely to sign on to pay much more in property taxes in order to make up for the lost state funding?
Some stretch of the imagination has allowed School Board President Bob Dana to think he and the board are justified in their impossible quest.
But their message of defiance to Albany is also sending a strong – and wrong – message to the children that they do not need to be tested on what they have learned. The message parallels the vehement protests of teachers who feel that their work should not be subject to evaluation by the state. It is astonishing to think that some parents and administrators don’t want to know whether students have mastered their course work. The assumption appears to be that everyone is above average. If only life were truly that easy.
The teachers unions have lined up against testing because it is one of the many measures used in their hated evaluations. That opposition has stoked an anti-testing fire under some parents. Although the state standardized tests are not new, some parents say their children are being overtested.
The problem with that logic is that in most jobs – that is, the real world – people are evaluated all the time, and often their jobs depend upon the results. So, what happens when children who have learned from adults that they do not have to be evaluated grow up?
As for standardized testing, it will be an integral part of their education careers.
No one likes taking tests, but students might as well use the standardized tests as practice for truly high-stakes exams like the SATs.
The deputy commissioner in the state Office of P-12 Education in an email to the superintendent made the state’s position perfectly clear: “Please inform them that we have a letter of removal drafted and that we will begin removal proceedings if they choose to pass such a resolution. Feel free to forward this email to your board.”
We hope the message has been received.
Attack on Cuomo is an attempt to shift attention from the desperate need for reforms
Instead of simply demanding more money, protesters should demand changes that will improve education. Mark Mulville/Buffalo News
on March 13, 2015 - 12:01 AM
One of the jobs of a teacher is to help children learn how to write
an accurate sentence and to comprehend the meaning of sentences they
read. So, if those are teachers carrying the misleading signs that
instruct Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to “Stop attacking public schools,” they
are making the case for accurately evaluating teachers.
No one is attacking schools. It’s a disinformation campaign intended to pressure state legislators to deliver more money to schools without requiring the schools to do a better job. It’s a phony crisis, drummed up by unions and others who want nothing to do with the more accurate teacher evaluations that Cuomo is demanding.
Let’s review: Cuomo has promised an increase in state funding – an additional $377 million – and to get that money schools need to do nothing at all different. Just keep doing the same things and, boom, the money shows up.
But he has also promised to triple that amount, delivering $1.1 billion to the schools, if lawmakers enact changes that would serve the cause of education. Not the cause of unions or of teachers or of administrators or of school boards – the cause of educating New York’s students, especially those in cities such as Buffalo, where children are too often cheated out of the productive lives that a good education holds.
Why should this be so difficult? Cuomo isn’t asking for the moon. He is seeking changes that will benefit students but that will require loosening the chokehold that teachers unions have on education. Specifically, his reforms include:
• Reducing – not eliminating – the power of unions and school districts in determining how teachers and principals are evaluated.
• Raising the standards for new teachers to receive tenure.
• Providing $20,000 bonuses for teachers who are rated “highly effective” under a tougher evaluation system and making it easier to remove those who aren’t performing well and who don’t improve.
• Creating higher standards for new teachers and paying tuition for top candidates at State University of New York teacher education programs who commit to teaching in New York for five years.
• Allowing more charter schools across the state and handing over failing public schools to turnaround experts.
• Expanding prekindergarten to 3-year-olds and creating a new tax credit for donations to education groups, including scholarship programs for public and private schools.
None of these requirements is out of line. Indeed, they represent a fair exchange for $700 million-plus in additional funding.
The unions don’t want that. In a state that already has the nation’s highest per-student spending, while producing unremarkable results, they want to keep doing the same things in the same ways, but with a huge infusion of cash that will do virtually nothing to improve education. In any other context, that would be called greed.
Or consider the issue from the reverse perspective. Speaking to The Buffalo News editorial board last month, Cuomo minced no words. “Think about where you are,” he said. “I mean, it’s amazing that anybody still lives in the City of Buffalo and would send their kid to a public school and expect a different outcome, because there’s no evidence that there’s going to be any different outcome.”
It’s indisputable, but changing the outcome has to begin with accurately measuring performance. You can’t improve what you can’t measure. Yet teachers, administrators and others are willfully blind about the issue, insisting that Cuomo provide them a blank check, and to do so while they blackmail him with spurious accusations of “attacking public schools.”
There is a solution. Negotiate the changes Cuomo wants, take the money and start doing a better job. Instead of manufacturing a crisis, hammer out a solution that serves New York taxpayers and especially the students. It’s a more grown-up solution than carrying signs meant to deceive.
TRYING TO PROVIDE ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No one is attacking schools. It’s a disinformation campaign intended to pressure state legislators to deliver more money to schools without requiring the schools to do a better job. It’s a phony crisis, drummed up by unions and others who want nothing to do with the more accurate teacher evaluations that Cuomo is demanding.
Let’s review: Cuomo has promised an increase in state funding – an additional $377 million – and to get that money schools need to do nothing at all different. Just keep doing the same things and, boom, the money shows up.
But he has also promised to triple that amount, delivering $1.1 billion to the schools, if lawmakers enact changes that would serve the cause of education. Not the cause of unions or of teachers or of administrators or of school boards – the cause of educating New York’s students, especially those in cities such as Buffalo, where children are too often cheated out of the productive lives that a good education holds.
Why should this be so difficult? Cuomo isn’t asking for the moon. He is seeking changes that will benefit students but that will require loosening the chokehold that teachers unions have on education. Specifically, his reforms include:
• Reducing – not eliminating – the power of unions and school districts in determining how teachers and principals are evaluated.
• Raising the standards for new teachers to receive tenure.
• Providing $20,000 bonuses for teachers who are rated “highly effective” under a tougher evaluation system and making it easier to remove those who aren’t performing well and who don’t improve.
• Creating higher standards for new teachers and paying tuition for top candidates at State University of New York teacher education programs who commit to teaching in New York for five years.
• Allowing more charter schools across the state and handing over failing public schools to turnaround experts.
• Expanding prekindergarten to 3-year-olds and creating a new tax credit for donations to education groups, including scholarship programs for public and private schools.
None of these requirements is out of line. Indeed, they represent a fair exchange for $700 million-plus in additional funding.
The unions don’t want that. In a state that already has the nation’s highest per-student spending, while producing unremarkable results, they want to keep doing the same things in the same ways, but with a huge infusion of cash that will do virtually nothing to improve education. In any other context, that would be called greed.
Or consider the issue from the reverse perspective. Speaking to The Buffalo News editorial board last month, Cuomo minced no words. “Think about where you are,” he said. “I mean, it’s amazing that anybody still lives in the City of Buffalo and would send their kid to a public school and expect a different outcome, because there’s no evidence that there’s going to be any different outcome.”
It’s indisputable, but changing the outcome has to begin with accurately measuring performance. You can’t improve what you can’t measure. Yet teachers, administrators and others are willfully blind about the issue, insisting that Cuomo provide them a blank check, and to do so while they blackmail him with spurious accusations of “attacking public schools.”
There is a solution. Negotiate the changes Cuomo wants, take the money and start doing a better job. Instead of manufacturing a crisis, hammer out a solution that serves New York taxpayers and especially the students. It’s a more grown-up solution than carrying signs meant to deceive.
TRYING TO PROVIDE ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Another Voice: Cuomo’s focus on standardized tests undermines the cause of education
on March 18, 2015 - 12:01 AM
By Joel Weiss
The recent Buffalo News editorial “Manufactured crisis” misses the target. The issue isn’t the revamping of teacher evaluations; rather, it’s looking at what teachers are doing in the classrooms preparing their students to live productively in the 21st century.
That includes not only the typical elementary, middle and high school subjects, but also areas that are immeasurable by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s vision – the love of learning, an appreciation for the arts and the responsibility that we have to develop every child into becoming a caring, contributing member of our society.
Evaluating test scores alone doesn’t help. Instead, the fear and concern teachers and administrators have that they will be negatively judged takes away from their creativity and needed relationship with their students.
Before retirement, I was a principal in two very different districts – Buffalo and Clarence. If I were judged solely on the basis of my students’ test scores in Buffalo, I likely would have been fired. But wait, there’s more: As a principal, my school’s attendance rate rose dramatically and suspension rates dropped to near zero. Do these “scores” count? Isn’t it important for students to feel and to be safe, especially in a district where student attendance and violence is such an issue?
When I was a principal in Clarence, my school’s test scores were close to the top. Ah, I finally must have become a good principal; after all, the standardized test scores were great, and isn’t that Cuomo’s measuring stick?
The fact is, I probably was a better principal in Buffalo than I was in Clarence. It’s a shame that test scores on standardized tests that are used and supported by our governor are the major criteria for evaluation.
It seems clear to me that quality instruction is being compromised by pressure in the form of accountability and tougher standards. It’s even a bigger shame that Cuomo is dangling educational funding in front of school boards, requiring them to comply and take away opportunities for real learning in classrooms in the state.
More than once I’ve told colleagues that if I were to rank the 50 top factors in evaluating teachers and schools, test scores would probably be number 49 on the list. Diane Ravitch, former U.S. assistant secretary of education, writing in “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education,” says it best: “Accountability makes no sense when it undermines the larger goals of education.”
Joel Weiss is a former principal and a past president of the Western New York Middle School Principals Association, and is a part-time consultant for New York State Department of Education.
---{-=@
Hickok
The recent Buffalo News editorial “Manufactured crisis” misses the target. The issue isn’t the revamping of teacher evaluations; rather, it’s looking at what teachers are doing in the classrooms preparing their students to live productively in the 21st century.
That includes not only the typical elementary, middle and high school subjects, but also areas that are immeasurable by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s vision – the love of learning, an appreciation for the arts and the responsibility that we have to develop every child into becoming a caring, contributing member of our society.
Evaluating test scores alone doesn’t help. Instead, the fear and concern teachers and administrators have that they will be negatively judged takes away from their creativity and needed relationship with their students.
Before retirement, I was a principal in two very different districts – Buffalo and Clarence. If I were judged solely on the basis of my students’ test scores in Buffalo, I likely would have been fired. But wait, there’s more: As a principal, my school’s attendance rate rose dramatically and suspension rates dropped to near zero. Do these “scores” count? Isn’t it important for students to feel and to be safe, especially in a district where student attendance and violence is such an issue?
When I was a principal in Clarence, my school’s test scores were close to the top. Ah, I finally must have become a good principal; after all, the standardized test scores were great, and isn’t that Cuomo’s measuring stick?
The fact is, I probably was a better principal in Buffalo than I was in Clarence. It’s a shame that test scores on standardized tests that are used and supported by our governor are the major criteria for evaluation.
It seems clear to me that quality instruction is being compromised by pressure in the form of accountability and tougher standards. It’s even a bigger shame that Cuomo is dangling educational funding in front of school boards, requiring them to comply and take away opportunities for real learning in classrooms in the state.
More than once I’ve told colleagues that if I were to rank the 50 top factors in evaluating teachers and schools, test scores would probably be number 49 on the list. Diane Ravitch, former U.S. assistant secretary of education, writing in “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education,” says it best: “Accountability makes no sense when it undermines the larger goals of education.”
Joel Weiss is a former principal and a past president of the Western New York Middle School Principals Association, and is a part-time consultant for New York State Department of Education.
---{-=@
Hickok
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