I'm hearing that it's highly unlikely the Cuomo/ Heavy Hearts plan could be in effect 2015/ 2016, for a number of reasons. One is that the deadline for agreements, even without a delay, is late November. There will have to be systems in place before that, and they will likely be whatever districts have now. So prepare for another year of MOSL and MOTP.If there are "hardship" delays, and both Tisch and Cuomo now appear on board, said delays could possibly put off this nonsense for yet another year. Of course all this is contingent upon whatever NYSED and the Regents do, but Carmen Fariña does not appear to be in favor of all this nonsense, and supports the delay. Will the state allow hardships all over? That's a more difficult question.
But a crap system will indeed be a hardship on any and all systems that enact it.
It appears likely that the new system in NYC, with its unfunded mandates, would entail having supervisors wander the city observing teachers in other schools. They would be the outside observers, working under the assumption they would be objective and everyone else was crooked. Would outside supervisors contact the supervisors in the schools they were visiting? Would they be influenced by what said supervisors say?
Of course they wouldn't, because the new system assumes them to be corrupt only within their own schools. They would never call another school to hear that teacher A is wonderful and teacher B sucks, and they would never act on such info. After all, who wants to please people in other schools so those same people deliver desired results in their own schools? And how would supervisors ever conceive of such a thing?
My students and I have lost four days of instruction due to cumbersome and poorly written state tests, and next week we will lose three more. In our case these tests serve not only to decide how quickly your humble correspondent is fired, but also the levels at which students are placed next year. The fabulous system for doing that entails teachers in my school scoring the actual test, because of course we have nothing else to do. However, though the tests are scored, we cannot actually use them for placement, because then follows the rigging of the scores by NY State.
Although we have little time to grade, the geniuses in Albany will need months to actually get back to us on what the scores mean. Therefore, my school, like all the schools in NY, will program kids for next year and need to alter said programs based on whatever NYS tells us the scores mean.
We're lucky to have a visionary like Andrew Cuomo to let us know that however badly the system sucks now, he has a way to make it worse.
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