CSA Joins NYSUT in Evaluation Fight
by Anne Silverstein
CSA has filed an amicus brief supporting NYSUT in its legal battle against the state concerning the controversial teacher and Principal evaluations that have Principals around the state in an uproar. NYSUT won the first round in an August court ruling that NYS is appealing.
In a nutshell: In 2010, the state legislature passed a law requiring districts to use student performance data on state tests for 20 percent of teacher and Principal evaluations. The law stated that the remaining 80 percent of the evaluations were subject to collective bargaining by local districts and unions.
The regulations that SED Commissioner John King published were “an attempt to gut collective bargaining,” said CSA General Counsel Bryce Bryant, who is one of the union’s three attorneys working on the case: David Grandwetter and Charity Guerra are co-counsels.
“The Commissioner’s regulations are a serious attempt to nullify the statutory requirements that 80 percent of the evaluation must be negotiated,” he said.
The state evaluations require that 20 percent of the rating be based on state tests, another 20 percent should be based on other measures of student performance to be negotiated between unions and local school districts, and the remaining 60 percent to be based on other measures including classroom observations, superintendent visits and other items, also to be negotiated.
NYS United Teachers filed its lawsuit last June, and charged that the Board of Regents and the State Education Department Commissioner overstepped their authority, violating state law, with the release of the new evaluations. A judge ruled, for the most part, in NYSUT’s favor last August; the state has appealed and the state Appellate Division in Albany will hear the case this winter. CSA, Empire State and the School Administrators Association of New York have filed amicus briefs supporting NYSUT.
The three statewide organizations representing Principals have signed a “metoo” agreement with Commissioner King that says the court’s decision with regard to NYSUT’s lawsuit will apply to Principals as well.
The new evaluations, with their heavy dependence on using student data to rate educators, caused a grassroots uprising among Principals in Long Island. In late October, Principals in Suffolk and Nassau counties collected signatures on a letter that condemned the new evaluation system as “unproven” and a waste of “increasingly limited resources.
“More importantly,” the letter says,” it will prove to be deeply demoralizing to educators and harmful to the children in our care.” (The letter can be viewed online at www.newyorkprincipals.org/appr-paper.)
As of this writing, more than 1,000 Principals in NYS, including 47 NYC Principals, have signed the letter; that’s nearly 25 percent of the Principals in the state, according to The New York Times.
CSA Executive Vice President Peter McNally, responding to the groundswell around the state, sent a letter to The New York Times, criticizing the new evaluation system as “ill-conceived” and “punitive to teachers and damaging to students.”
“The training and impossible implementation of this state plan — which has already insulted educators around the state — are nightmares waiting to haunt New York City,” says Mr. McNally, who was on the state task force that submitted recommendations on new teacher and Principal evaluations to the state for consideration.
(The letter can be found at http://nyti.ms/tEcnSV.)
