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In one of his most dramatic moves since taking office, Gov. Cuomo will use the budget he makes public tomorrow to impose union-hated teacher evaluation systems on 700 school districts throughout the state, The Post has learned. The popular governor will do so by including language in the budget that ties receipt of 4 percent state aid increases promised to the districts in last year's budget - some $800 million - to adoption of the teacher-evaluation system developed by the state Education Department, which has been blocked from city schools by a teachers-union lawsuit, a source close to the situation said. All the systems, including the New York City schools, will have until Dec. 31 of this year to adopt the teacher-evaluation systems or lose the money, the source said.

One of the things I've discovered in recent years is that when it comes to education policy, the last people asked for input are America's teachers. We have a President who holds an" education summit" that includes the nation's top business leaders and foundation heads, but no teachers; we have billionaires lobbying to privatize education and break teachers unions; we have an organization that purports to work for educational equity that encourages it's recruits to leave teaching after two years because they can influence policy more by moving into other, more prestigious careers, rather than spending a lifetime as a "mere teacher."

We examine earnings records for more than 130,000 classroom teachers employed by Florida public schools between the 2001-02 and 2006-07 school years, roughly 35,000 of whom left the classroom during that time.  A majority of those leaving the classroom remained employed by public school districts.  Among teachers in grades 4-8 leaving for other industries, a 1 standard deviation increase in estimated value-added to student math and reading achievement is associated with 6-8 percent higher earnings outside of teaching.  The relationship between effectiveness and earnings is stronger in other industries than it is for the same groups of teachers while in the classroom, suggesting that current compensation systems do not fully account for the higher opportunity wages of effective teachers. 

As state after state rewrites their education laws in line with the mandates from Race to the Top and the NCLB waiver process, the teaching profession is being redefined. Teachers will now pay the price - be declared successes or failures, depending on the rise or fall of their students' test scores. Under NCLB it was schools that were declared failures. In states being granted waivers to NCLB, it is Teachers who will be subjected to this ignominy. Of course we will still be required to label the bottom 5% of our schools as failures, but if the Department of Education has its way, soon every single Teacher in the profession will be at risk for the label. This revelation came to me as I read the Score Card on Education prepared by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), authored by Dr. Matthew Ladner and Dan Lips. This is a remarkable document. It provides their report on where each of the states stands on the education "reform" that has become the hallmark of corporate philanthropies, the Obama administration and governors across the nation.

Last night in President Obama's State of the Union address, he repeated a familiar refrain about the importance of teachers. A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance. But it seems that it is those in power who are actually using teachers to escape from the realities of poverty these days.

What counts as a "fact"? New York State Supreme Court Justice Cynthia Kern's ruling on the release of the New York City Teacher Data Reports reflects a view very much at odds with the social science research community. In ruling that the Department of Education's intent to release these reports, which purport to label elementary and middle school Teachers as more or less effective based on their students' performance on state tests of English Language Arts and mathematics, was neither arbitrary nor capricious, Kern held that there is no requirement that data be reliable for them to be disclosed. Rather, the standard she invoked was that the data simply need to be "factual," quoting a Court of Appeals case that "factual data … simply means objective information, in contrast to opinions, ideas or advice." But it is entirely a matter of opinion as to whether the particular statistical analyses involved in the production of the Teacher Data Reports warrant the inference that Teachers are more or less effective. All statistical models involve assumptions that lie outside of the data themselves. Whether these assumptions are appropriate is a matter of opinion.

Most teachers have long known that they affect the life chances of children. But it took the work of economists to convince the world of public policy to take seriously what is now known as "teacher effectiveness." Now one of those very same economists has turned to another subject that, to most teachers and principals, is similarly self-evident: Principals, like teachers, affect the life chances of children, too. Last week, Stanford's Eric Hanushek -- who conducted many of the early economic analyses on teacher impact -- presented a new research paper at a conference in Washington, D.C., hosted by the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Educational Research. The findings show, in his words, that "principals matter."

Each year, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) publishes the State Teacher Policy Yearbook, a comprehensive examination of the state laws, rules and regulations that govern the teaching profession, measured against a realistic set of reform goals. For five years running, the full Yearbook compendium (www.nctq.org/stpy) presents the most detailed, thorough analysis of Teacher effectiveness policy in the United States. In advance of the next Yearbook, to be released in January 2012, we offer a closer look at trends on Teacher evaluation and effectiveness policies.

New York City's release Friday of ratings for 18,000 public-school teachers may set the stage for the eventual release of ratings for all teachers in the state, a scenario that would surely heighten parental interest in suburban class assignments. Under a new statewide system for evaluating teachers, some districts will award grades on a 100-point scale to teachers as soon as the end of this school year. It is increasingly looking like school districts will have to release the grades if faced with a public request under the state Freedom of Information law.

First, let me offer where I believe the discussion of education as political (or not) often becomes distorted. We must begin this discussion with a clarification of terms, specifically between "political" and "partisan." I will concede and even argue that classrooms, teachers, and education in general should avoid being partisan-in that teachers and their classrooms should not be reduced to mere campaigning for a specific political party or candidate. And this, in fact, is what I believe most people mean (especially teachers) when they argue for education not to be political. But, especially now, we must stop conflating partisan and political, and come to terms with both the inherent political and oppressive call for teachers not to be political and the inevitable fact that being human and being a teacher are by their nature political.

Despite all the heated talk about how to identify and dismiss low-performing teachers, there's relatively little research on how administrators choose whom to dismiss, whether various dismissal options might actually serve to improve performance, and other aspects in this area. A paper by economist Brian Jacob, released as working paper in 2010 and published late last year in the journal Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, helps address at least one of these voids, by providing one of the few recent glimpses into administrators' actual (rather than simulated) dismissal decisions. Jacob exploits a change in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) personnel policy that took effect for the 2004-05 school year, one which strengthened principals' ability to dismiss probationary teachers, allowing non-renewal for any reason, with minimal documentation. He was able to link these personnel records to student test scores, teacher and school characteristics and other variables, in order to examine the characteristics that principals might be considering, directly or indirectly, in deciding who would and would not be dismissed. Jacob's findings are intriguing, suggesting a more complicated situation than is sometimes acknowledged in the ongoing debate over teacher dismissal policy.

New York City voters trust the teachers union more than Mayor Michael Bloomberg to protect the interests of public-school students, according to a new poll that gives the union a jolt of credibility as it negotiates over a new teacher-evaluation system. The poll, released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University, found that 56% of city voters said they trust United Federation of teachers while 31% trust the mayor. Parents of public-school students preferred the union by an even wider margin, with 69% telling pollsters that the UFT can be better trusted to do what's best for their children. By a margin of 47% to 39%, voters said they believe the teachers union is playing a positive role in improving the city's education system.

New York City voters strongly disapprove of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's handling of the public schools, and are much more likely to trust the teachers' union than the mayor to advocate for students, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday morning. But voters also support many of Mr. Bloomberg's most recent education proposals, even though they have been opposed or questioned by the United Federation of teachers. The poll found, for example, that voters support the mayor's desire to use teacher performance, not seniority, as the key factor when layoffs are required. They also favor his proposals to increase salaries for the highest-performing teachers and to make it easier to remove teachers who are chronically underperforming.

Okay! Okay! I know teachers do not have tenure in the pure definition of guaranteed lifetime employment that was available in some higher education institutions long ago. Instead, teachers have fair employment and dismissal procedures that protect them from dismissal for arbitrary, capricious, and discriminatory reasons after completing a probationary period. I have been following with interest the legislative battle in Virginia over the "tenure" issue. It has been a very partisan battle with only a few Republican senators--those with firsthand information from relatives who are teachers--refusing to go down a road that appears punitive and unnecessary in this non-collective bargaining state. These senators' instincts are right, and let me provide some points to support them. First, the reason that the original laws were passed was to protect good teachers.

The big "reform" trucks have been rollin' down the education highway for nearly a decade now. Public school educators are used to faux reform's inconvenience and injustice by now--and some even accept endless testing, lockstep standards and curriculum, and systematic destruction of public schools as necessary for positive change. Parents and grandparents may like their children's schools and teachers, but have absorbed the incessant media drumbeat: public education has failed. Out with the old! Something Must Be Done! If--like me--you still believe that public education is a civic good, an idea perfectly resonant with democratic equality, you're probably wondering if there's anything that can stop the big "reform" trucks. Those massive, exceptionally well-funded "reform" trucks with their professional media budgets, paid commentary and slick political arms. I can tell you this: it won't be teachers alone who turn back the tide of "reform." teachers have been backed into a corner, painted as unionists bent on their own security (whether they pay dues or not), unwilling to be "accountable." They have been replaced, willy-nilly, by untrained temps--without retaliatory strike-back from their national union leaders. They have been publicly humiliated by their own cities and media outlets, not to mention the Secretary of Education.

Gov. Jindal has submitted a legislative proposal that would offer vouchers to more than half the students in the state; vastly expand the number of privately managed charter schools by giving the state board of education the power to create up to 40 new charter authorizing agencies; introduce academic standards and letter grades for pre-schoolers; and end seniority and tenure for teachers. Under his plan, the local superintendent could immediately fire any teacher-tenured or not-who was rated "ineffective" by the state evaluation program. If the teacher re-applied to teach, she would have to be rated "highly effective" for five years in a row to regain tenure. Tenure, needless to say, becomes a meaningless term, since due process no longer is required for termination. The bill is as punitive as possible with respect to public education and teachers. It says nothing about helping to improve or support them. It's all about enabling students to leave public schools and creating the tools to intimidate and fire teachers. This "reform" is not conservative. I would say it is radical and reactionary. But it is in no way unique to Louisiana.

"Teacher turnover - the rates at which Teachers leave the profession and switch schools - is obviously a very important outcome in education. Although not all turnover is necessarily a "bad thing" - some Teachers simply aren't cut out for the job and leave voluntarily (or are fired) - unusually high turnover means that schools must replace large proportions of their workforces on an annual basis. This can have serious implications not only for the characteristics (e.g., experience) of schools' Teachers, but also for schools' costs, cohesion and professional cultures."

"Mr. Bergner DID speak with teachers who work in co-locations with Success Academy schools.  In fact, he spoke at length and clearly decided to disregard their input almost entirely. I am fortunate to know one of those teachers through local teacher advocacy groups, and she agreed to inform me about her discussions with Mr. Bergner and to share what it is like to be a teacher at a school where Ms. Moskowitz has claimed classroom space for her students.  Her name is "

"The Montgomery County Public Schools system here has a highly regarded program for evaluating teachers, providing them extra support if they are performing poorly and getting rid of those who do not improve. The program, Peer Assistance and Review - known as PAR - uses several hundred senior teachers to mentor both newcomers and struggling veterans. If the mentoring does not work, the PAR panel - made up of eight teachers and eight principals - can vote to fire the teacher. "

"Once again, a conservative politician has perpetuated the mis-truth about the ratio of administrators to teachers and the "huge" number of non-teachers we have hired over the last decades (see http://edtechsandyk.blogspot.com/2011/05/governor-perry-is-wrong-about-texas.html). Conservative groups have consistently perpetuated these incorrect data as a way to garner public support for cutting education-especially cutting central office positions. In fact, Republican Senators and the Governor have implied that no teachers should lose their jobs as a result of budget cuts since the "huge" increase in non-teachers-especially administrators-leaves plenty of non-teaching positions available to cut in order to solve the budget deficit perpetrated on districts by bad decision-making by the Governor and legislature back in 2006."