Zephyr Teachout

171 Washington Park

Brooklyn, NY 11205

March 31, 2015

Speaker Carl E. Heastie

LOB 932

Albany, NY 12248

Majority Leader Dean Skelos

LOB 909

Albany, NY 12247

Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins

LOB 907

Albany, NY 12247

Independent Conference Leader Jeffrey Klein

LOB 913

Albany, NY 12247

Minority Leader Brian Kolb

LOB 933

Albany, NY 12248

Dear Speaker Heastie, Majority Leader Skelos, Leaders Stewart-Cousins, Klein and Kolb,

I was so heartened to hear that school aid and test-based teacher evaluations would not be linked in this

budget. When I read media reports that school aid and teacher evaluations are once again linked, I was

dumbfounded. It isn't the right way to legislate.

I am writing to urge you to stand firm and keep negotiating instead of agreeing to the proposed budget,

where school funding is tied to a testing-based teacher evaluation system.

It is a disastrous plan, unfair to our kids, to our future, to all New Yorkers.

As our legislative leaders in Albany, it is important that you ensure that the Assembly Members and

Senators you represent fully understand all the details of an evaluation regime before being asked to vote

on it for all New Yorkers.

The plan as proposed has not been printed. It is mysterious, complicated, and hastily created.

Legislators have seen no copy of the bill, and if it gets plopped on their desks a few minutes before a vote,

they'll have no time to do the thorough work needed to understand what the evaluation system is going to

do to every classroom in New York.

You have not had the time to consider the costs of principals moving around buildings to be "outside

observers," leaving their own buildings unattended in a crisis. Every legislator deserves the chance to

carefully review it, and to truly understand its impacts on their constituents.

New Yorkers will stand with you if you say no. They care more about their kids than an on-time budget.

Students have a constitutional right to adequate funding and a “sound basic education” per the Campaign

for Fiscal Equity. This right cannot be bargained away based upon high stakes testing and teacher

evaluations.

The proposal starts from the premise that teachers are suspects. Parents, teachers, kids, community

members--are opposed to more high stakes testing in their schools, and to the stress it brings into the

classroom.

In the latest polls they have made it clear that they do not want teachers' fate to hang on test scores. Yet

the proposal has the potential to do exactly that because testing has the strongest weight in determining

teacher evaluations. An "ineffective" rating on testing ensures teachers cannot be rated as effective.

This proposal will lead to more opt-outs, more protests, more anger, and worse, more kids living in

classrooms where their teachers are treated like suspects.

Prior evaluation regimes have not worked and brought stress and fear into classrooms, undermining

teaching. These evaluations were the result of the same linkage between school aid and evaluations.

This system would make it even worse.

Sincerely,

Zephyr Teachout