Posts Tagged 'NYSUT'

Blue Senate

It is urgent that we take advantage of this moment of financial improvement in New York State and the change in the political landscape in Albany. We should not wait for the next contract period in to see changes that are crying out for improvement.

Teacher Evaluation – The current teacher evaluation system was dictated by state law – a law that we should repeal and replace. Student test scores should be entirely removed from the teacher rating process.

Pension Reform – It’s an opportune time to press our elected friends that we’ve helped put in office to: CALL FOR IMPROVEMENTS IN THE PENSION TIERS. We’ve done it before. We can’t have this multi-tiered system which makes for tremendous inequity between members and costs such financial disparity.

Single Payer Health Care – The United Federation of Teachers is on record supporting a single payer system, but our leadership and Michael Mulgrew have claimed that this just means “Federal Single Payer” and they are opposing single payer in Albany. New Action supports single payer at the federal level AND at the state level.

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UFT High School Executive Board asked for endorsement of the anti-IDC Challengers

Primary Endorsements; Primary Elections

There was no meeting to decide who the UFT would support at the NYSUT endorsement conference in August. And there were hot races for the NY State Senate – in the wake of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s victory, progressive challengers, including Robert Jackson who the UFT awarded the John Dewey Award for his work for education, were organizing strong primary challenges.

So we wrote to UFT President Mulgrew, all seven of us: KJ Ahluwalia, Arthur Goldstein, Ashraya Gupta,
Jonathan Halabi, Marcus McArthur, Kate Martin-Bridge, and Mike Schirtzer. By the way, we are the only UFTers elected directly by the High School Division. We urged support for challengers in the races against the IDC (the group that ran as Democrats but caucused as Republicans, enriching themselves while blocking legislation we needed). The challengers we wanted to support were: Alessandra Biaggi, Robert Jackson, John Liu, Zellnor Myrie, Jessica Ramos, and Jasmine Robinson.

And then, since we didn’t really get an answer, we wrote to ask who the UFT leadership were supporting. The response was that there was “a neutral start” to each discussion.

NYSUT’s Endorsements were Embarrassing

At NYSUT, only one challenger, Zellnor Myrie got the endorsement. The UFT blocked the endorsement of Biaggi. Worse, two IDC members were endorsed (with UFT concurrence): Jose Peralta and Marisol Alcantara. Endorsing Alcantara meant working against Robert Jackson, a true champion for public education. What a shame.

But the Challengers Still Won

Despite the NYSUT mistakes, five of the six challengers in NYC won, including Jackson and Biaggi, who defeated IDC kingpin Jeff Klein. UFT members, despite the NYSUT mistakes, worked on the challengers’ campaigns, and were part of the successful grassroots mobilizations. These members are showing the way forward, away from backroom deals, towards progressive, participatory activism. Our union’s political action needs to follow suit.

(from the September 2018 New Action Chapter Leaders Meeting flyer )

Resolution on delinking testing from evaluation

New Action urges: delink teacher evaluation from test scores. Unity responds by not letting members vote.

The following resolution was presented by Jonathan Halabi (New Action) at the Monday, January 11 UFT Executive Board meeting. A representative from Unity moved to table (could be for future consideration, but usually this parliamentary procedure is used to kill a motion, but spares members their caucus on the board from voting No), and it was in fact tabled, on a caucus-line vote.

The speaker did not present a clear case (which we would otherwise report). In fact, the difference is that we asked to take a stand against using tests to rate teachers, but Unity only wants to delay using the tests, claiming against all evidence that it will be possible, four years down the road, to fairly rate teachers based on test scores. They want a pause (they have it), but they still favor rating teachers based on tests.

New Action continues to oppose rating teachers based on tests.

Resolution on delinking testing from evaluation

Whereas the US Department of Education’s Race to the Top forced states to adopt teacher evaluation schemes that included the use of student test scores, and

Whereas New York State adopted a new teacher evaluation scheme that incorporates student test scores, and

Whereas the test score component of a teacher’s evaluation is arbitrary, and varies more school to school than teacher to teacher, and New York State has refused to reveal how the test score component of evaluations are calculated, and in a decade of using such scores (including previous schemes) such schemes have shown no evidence that they can work, and

Whereas President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act into law, replacing No Child Left Behind and dropping the requirement that test scores be used in teacher evaluation, and

Whereas the New York State Board of Regents voted for a four year moratorium on using Common Core tests as part of teacher evaluation,

Therefore be it resolved that NYSUT opposes the use of test scores to evaluate teachers, and be it further

Resolved that NYSUT and its locals will use traditional media and social media to publicize this stance, and be it further

Resolved that NYSUT will communicate this opposition to all its locals across New York State, and to the AFT, and be it further

Resolved that NYSUT will use the period of the four year moratorium to lobby for a change in New York State Education law to remove student test scores from teacher evaluation in New York State.


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Content of signed articles and comments represents the opinions of their authors. The views expressed in signed articles are not necessarily the views of New Action/UFT.
June 2023
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