Governor Cuomo Proposes Tightening State Control over Local Schools

In 2001 Scarsdale drew national attention when 8th grade parents organized a boycott against a wave of new high-stakes State tests, imposed now on even high-performing districts that used to get waivers before federal enactment of No Child Left Behind.

Since 2010 Albany has now riled many in Scarsdale again by meddling in traditionally local school personnel decisions and by raising the test stakes even higher. The Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) law, rushed through by the State Legislature in order to win New York $700M in federal Race to the Top dollars, requires that all teacher and principal "effectiveness" ratings be tied to student test scores.

The Scarsdale School Board, faculty, Parent-Teacher Council, and the Scarsdale Forum, a longstanding civic organization, have all objected to the State's costly testing and teacher evaluation policies in the name of local control and evidence-based policy. (See the Board's Statement on Education, Resolution on High-Stakes Testing, and The Scarsdale Declaration of Intellectual Independence, also endorsed by the Scarsdale faculty; PT Council's Statement on State-Mandated Teacher Evaluations and Student Testing; and the Forum's Report on the New State-Mandated Teacher Evaluation System.)

But it looks like their efforts were in vain. Rather than backing off, Governor Cuomo launched his 2015-16 State budget talks by tying more State Aid for schools to compliance with his plan to further tighten State control over local teacher evaluations. He wants to increase the weight of student performance on teacher assessments and mandate that schools bring in independent evaluators from outside the district to judge teachers' effectiveness. Faced with lawmaker resistance, Cuomo now seeks to create a six-member commission to decide the future of New York's teacher evaluation policy.

We asked Scarsdale's Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum Lynne Shain to explain the current evaluation system and how Cuomo's proposed new plan would work. Here is what she shared:

"The current Scarsdale teacher evaluation plan has three components as required by NY State: 20% for state test scores, 20% for local assessments, which could be replaced by doubling the state test scores, and 60 % for "Other" which refers to classroom observations. All non-tenured teachers have four observations each year; tenured teachers have two each year. Scarsdale uses the Charlotte Danielson rubric for assessing teacher's proficiency in the classroom in four domains: Planning and Preparation, Classroom Management, Instruction, and Professional Responsibilities. Scarsdale administrators and supervisors conduct the class visitations and provide timely feedback to teachers that reflect individual, building and district goals

Governor Cuomo's Opportunity Agenda 2015 calls for state test results to count for 50% of a teacher's evaluation. Class visitations would count for a total of 50%, with 35 of the 50 points determined by outside evaluators, who do not know our district or school goals, our curriculum, or our culture. In addition, it is unclear who foots the bill for the outside evaluators, which could result in another unfunded mandate.

Further, to base 50 % of a teacher's evaluation on state tests that have yet to be deemed valid measures for such a purpose, is most problematic and troublesome."

The State's method for using growth on student test scores to rate teacher "effectiveness" is apparently more complicated -- and controversial -- than Governor Cuomo lets on. The State uses a sophisticated "value added" statistical model to attempt to isolate and statistically adjust for other variables that might influence student test scores in order to identify the remaining numerical value from which a causal inference is then made about a teacher or principal's relative effectiveness at improving student test performance.

But the nation's foremost experts on testing and assessment do not agree with the politicians when it comes to using "value added" models to make high-stakes decisions about teachers. As noted on the Scarsdale PT Council's website:

• In 2009 National Research Council experts on testing warned the U.S. Department of Education that Race to the Top put "excessive emphasis on value-added approaches" to tie student test scores to individual teachers and was prematurely promoting them to states for high-stakes decisions about teachers when too little is known about their validity;

• In 2010, ten of the nation's leading experts on testing presented evidence on the instability and errors associated with "value added" models and urged New York's Board of Regents not to risk "distorting the entire instructional program" of districts "by imposing a flawed system of standardized quantification of teacher quality."

• A 2010 report for the U.S. Department of Education found error rates in teacher value-added ratings based on student test scores of 35% with one year of data and 26% with three years of data. Wide margins of error were also found in recent Los Angeles and New York City teachers' VA ratings that were nonetheless publicized by the local media; and

• Leading U.S. mathematician John Ewing calls the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers a "modern, mathematical version of the Emperor's New Clothes."

Under New York's current system, many area districts are rating teachers effective or highly effective by skewing the locally controlled portion of the assessment high in order to decrease the effect of the State's "value added" calculation of their ratings based on growth in student test scores. An October 2014 Journal News article reported on the results of an independent study showing a flaw in the State's rating system. If districts gave lower scores in the 60% observation portion, many teachers would get unfair overall ratings due to the State's skewed scoring system. In a related article, the Journal News reported that Scarsdale was the only district in the Lower Hudson Valley that did not inflate its teachers' classroom observation scores.

A recent article in the New York Times also reported on the discrepancy between districts' teacher ratings based solely on the growth in student test scores, which were low, and districts' overall teacher ratings, which were high; however, the article did not discuss the related discrepancies in the State's scoring system. Nor did it mention the expert consensus on the lack of reliability and validity of the State's methods.

Parents and teachers in high-performing school districts like Scarsdale question why they need to measure students with state tests, when local assessments have proven to be good measures of student achievement. Furthermore, with high-achieving students who year after year are accepted at top colleges and universities, parents and administrators question why Cuomo is trying to force a one-size fits all solution to address problems that don't exist in the high-performing districts.

The issue is one of State vs. local control. But it is also a matter of politics vs. evidence-based education policy, with the fate of not only of Scarsdale, but also of over 2.5 million New York school children at stake.