But his initiative met with immediate resistance from teachers unions and parents, especially those in New York’s wealthy suburbs and progressive urban pockets.
They protested on the basis it would place undue stress on teachers and children, whose test scores are used for high-stakes admissions decisions and academic tracking.
As a result, with Cuomo’s assent, the evaluation system was suspended only months after it had been adopted. Now, in a final capitulation to a yearslong backlash, Cuomo is set to sign a bill the Legislature just passed that essentially guts the testing component.
The new measure will add New York to the growing rebellion against using testing to assess teachers that has also spread to Colorado and California.
Local school districts and teachers unions in New York will now officially be allowed to decide together how educators should be evaluated, with some oversight from the state Education Department, and no requirement that standardized tests must play a role.
The turnabout reflects in part the rising power of the state’s teachers unions in Albany now that their allies in the Democratic Party have taken control of both chambers of the Legislature for the first time in years.
“Do student test scores actually indicate teacher performance? I’m not convinced,” said state Sen. John Liu, a newly elected Democrat from Queens who co-sponsored the bill. “An overreliance on testing can result in perverse incentives. The best evidence is teaching to the test.”
“We want to get away from that,” he said.
Other states where Democrats and teachers unions are ascendant are similarly retreating from such testing systems.
As part of a deal to end a weeklong strike led by the Los Angeles teachers union, the city’s school district agreed to create a plan that would significantly reduce the use of standardized tests in schools.
On the same day the Los Angeles walkout ended, Denver’s teachers voted to authorize a strike, in part over grievances about a bonus system that rewards teachers who work at schools with high test scores.
The retreat on testing represents a sea change from just a few years ago, when President Barack Obama championed rigorous evaluation systems based in part on student test scores. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in conjunction with local school districts, spent $575 million to help support new evaluation systems. Last year, a report found that the Gates’ effort fell short of expectations.
Still, the back-and-forth about whether to measure teachers according to tests has left some education experts worried.
“There’s been some overreach on testing and accountability. But I think most people agree that we should measure academic progress, and that somebody should be held accountable for the results,” said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research organization that is broadly supportive of education reform. “It’s just a question of how.”
Cuomo’s about-face on evaluations based on tests began soon after he announced his original plan. Though advocates held rallies and news conferences, the most effective protest came that spring, when parents coordinated so that one-fifth of New York’s students refused to sit for standardized exams in English and math. That represented the peak of the so-called opt out movement, led by parents and strongly encouraged by unions.
“Most parents believe their local school and teachers are good. To have evaluations that contradict that creates some dissonance,” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “The state tests seem so far removed from day-to-day classroom practice.”
A few months after a version of his original plan passed, Cuomo helped push the Board of Regents to undermine the law by placing a moratorium on the use of standardized exams in teacher reviews. The new evaluation bill will effectively codify that ban into state law.
Politicians, teachers unions and parents in New York have long differed over how to interpret data on the evaluations of teachers.
In 2016, the most recent year for which information is available, about 96 percent of the state’s teachers were found to be “effective” or “highly effective,” and only 1 percent was rated ineffective. That same year, fewer than 40 percent of students statewide passed standardized exams in English and math.
Cuomo once linked those facts as evidence that teacher evaluations were, as he said, “baloney.” Now, instead of using low exam scores as a way to fire ineffective teachers, the state is protecting educators from being penalized over test results.
The passage of the law in Albany is a major victory for teachers unions, which had appeared under significant pressure with the election of President Donald Trump.
Trump’s pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, has long crusaded against unions. Just last week, she said they were “the only thing standing in the way” of a school choice system that relies on charter schools and vouchers.
Michael Mulgrew, president of the city-based United Federation of Teachers, said Cuomo, “now understands what standardized tests are, and their limitations, and I give him credit for that.”
Advocates for evaluations that rely on test scores are, in turn, frustrated.
“People overplayed their hands,” said Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, of New York’s politicians. “Instead of adjusting, they threw the cards in and went home sulking.”
The governor’s office referred questions about his evolution on teacher evaluations to Jim Malatras, a former top aide who helped oversee the 2015 education agenda. Cuomo recognized that teachers and parents wanted something different and changed course, Malatras said.
“We said, ‘Time out, let’s go look at this thing,'” he recalled. The new bill, he added, represents “a continuation of that process.”
New York City has also undergone a transformation on testing. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s education agenda was defined by a ratcheting up of the stakes associated with tests for students and schools, and a strong focus on judging teachers using data gleaned from exam results.
But over the last five years, Mayor Bill de Blasio has gradually reversed many of Bloomberg’s initiatives.
De Blasio eliminated a requirement that scores be used to determine whether students should advance into the next grade.
Though Bloomberg closed more than 100 schools based on low test results, de Blasio has kept open many that have dismal state test results under a school-improvement program that has produced lackluster academic results.
The mayor has not relied on test scores to force out ineffective teachers in those schools. De Blasio also did away with Bloomberg’s system of assigning schools letter grades, which were largely based on students’ test results.
The pendulum swing on testing has left some wondering if there is a compromise to be made between an overreliance on exams in teacher evaluations and mostly eliminating the use of those tests.
“What we’ve heard from teachers is that there’s a sweet spot where assessments are useful for informing the teaching and learning process,” said Paula White, executive director of Educators for Excellence in New York, a teacher organization.
After all, she added, “teachers invented tests.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.