She writes the following in the NY Post:
In February, Gov. Cuomo stood with state Education Commissioner John B. King Jr. and the heads of city and state teachers unions to announce agreement on a new evaluation system for teachers and principals. The new law was a groundbreaking accord that laid the foundation for a fair, responsible process to provide educators with constructive evaluations that can strengthen teaching and learning.
Nine months later, more than 600 school districts around the state have submitted evaluation plans, and Commissioner King has approved more than 250 of those plans. Unfortunately, New York City isn’t one of those districts.
This isn’t just about money, although the city stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars if it doesn’t have an approved plan in place by Jan. 17. And it’s not about a “gotcha” system to get rid of teachers. This is about giving teachers and principals the tools they need to strengthen their skills and improve their instruction.
Research and common sense tell us the best way to improve student performance is to make sure that every child is in a class headed by a great teacher and every school is run by a great principal.
Common sense tells us something else: Just like the rest of us, teachers and principals need objective feedback to get better at their jobs. An effective evaluation plan lets educators receive professional development tailored to their needs, and gives top practitioners the opportunity to serve as mentors for their colleagues.
That’s why the state Board of Regents included implementation of strong evaluation programs as a key pillar of its education-reform agenda.
Now if she were being honest about this system being about giving feedback to teachers and helping them to improve, that would be all fine and good.
But she isn't.
The system is rigged against teachers - as Carol Burris has noted here and Sean Feeney has noted here.
Merryl Tisch says test scores are an "essential component" of teacher evaluations.
John Kuhn explains here why putting such high stakes on standardized tests is damaging to students here.
Merryl Tisch isn't interested in giving feedback to teachers, improving schools or giving students a better education.
She's interested in giving the education reformers the tools they need to shed expensive teacher salaries at will.
That's what the unworkable teacher observations are about, that's what the endless standardized testing is about, that's what the algorithm developed by the state to measure so-called student growth is about.
This is a "gotcha" system set up to clear the rolls of as many teachers as possible and make the profession into a right-to-work job.
Unfortunately because the sell-outs at the NYSUT and the UFT agreed to this stuff, that's exactly what is going to happen.
Merryl Tisch can make believe this system is "for the kids" all she wants (and notice the usual "WE HAVE NO TIME!" urgency in her propaganda piece in the Post that is a blueprint from the Shock Doctrinaires.)
This system is for the education reform criminals, the hedge fund managers, the for-profit and quasi-non profit charter operators and the privatizers.
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