Read about UUP’s advocacy efforts and its call for an investigation into SED’s botched, deeply flawed teacher education certification process in the March/April 2015 issue of The Voice—now online (in PDF and Flip book)!
http://uupinfo.org/voice/mar/1415/MarchApril2015Voice4Web.pdf
http://uupinfo.org/ImageFlow/voice.php
in solidarity,
karen mattison
uup associate director of communications
Dear Colleagues:
Our NYSUT Sisters and Brothers are asking for our support in opposing the Governor’s anti-public education agenda!
Join us tomorrow (Thursday, March 26) at 4:00 p.m. at the Million Dollar Staircase in the State Capitol. Please encourage your colleagues, students, friends and family to attend.
NYSUT will have signs and t-shirts.
The flyer with particulars is attached.
I hope you can join with NYSUT to protest the Governor’s agenda.
In Solidarity,
Fred
Dear Colleagues:
Please go to the blue “Take Action” box at www.uupinfo.org
We need your help. The future of the State University of New York is on the line. College teacher preparation programs; funding for the State University of New York; and the mission and vital services provided by SUNY’s public hospitals and health sciences centers are in jeopardy!
Our colleagues and students NEED YOU NOW. Time is running out.
In Solidarity,
Fred
Human Resources has asked for our assistance to get the word out about the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Great Colleges to Work For Survey. Only 11% of SUNY Cobleskill faculty and staff completed the survey last week, and we still have 89% to go in order to have full participation. HR would like to see strong participation to yield quality empirical data on what the College does well and where it might improve.
You should have received an email from ModernThink, the survey provider, last Monday. SUNY Cobleskill would like to be recognized as a great college, either this year or at some point in time in the future. In order to become a great college, we need to understand what we do well and where we can improve. The survey is a great way to let administration know your opinion in a confidential, anonymous fashion. The data is tabulated by the survey provider, ModernThink, so results cannot be tracked back to any one individual
Thanks for your consideration!
Bill Tusang
UUP has taken its battle to defend SUNY to the airwaves and the hallways of the state Capitol, and the union’s effort hasn’t gone unnoticed by legislators.
“Lawmakers are seeing us fighting for SUNY,” UUP President Fred Kowal said. “We need to make sure lawmakers know they are not alone in rejecting the governor’s ill-conceived proposals that undermine public employees. The political winds are changing.”
Kowal’s statements were part of his March 20 opening address at the union’s annual Chapter Presidents and Vice Presidents Retreat and New Union/Labor Activists Workshops, held March 20-22 in Cooperstown. More than 75 new and veteran leaders attended the weekend conference.
The union’s ad campaign—including a television ad featuring SUNY students—has been very effective, Kowal said. The hard-hitting ad—which claims Gov. Cuomo’s Executive Budget is wrong for students, SUNY and New York—aired in March across the state and in New York City.
A companion print ad ran in The Daily News, the Albany Times Union, Newsday and the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, as well as weekly papers statewide.
Kowal and several of the union’s statewide officers and leaders briefed the attendees on UUP’s recent activities and activism at the opening session. That set the tone for the seminar and helped prepare new leaders for their weekend’s worth of work.
New leaders learned the ins and outs of union activism at the conference. They attended workshops that ranged from strategic planning and member mobilization to the Taylor Law and social media. The sessions were conducted by UUP staff and NYSUT labor relations specialists assigned to UUP.
“I have dealt with the issue of civility in the workplace,” said new leader Theresa Dember-Neal of SUNY Farmingdale. “I wanted to see what I could do to improve situations for others where I work.”
“I want to be proactive on my campus, so I came to find out about how things work,” said Chris Sweeney of SUNY Canton.
The workshops focused on problem solving, member mobilization, strategic planning, workplace civility, the Taylor Law, digital photography and social media. An seminar for academics touched on copyright guidelines, leave accrual and tenure; professionals discussed appointment letters, performance programs, evaluations, promotions and permanent appointment at their meeting.
“This union knows the importance of training our members to be future leaders in UUP, and that we must do everything we can to help them help us activate members at the chapters,” Kowal said.
UUP’s call for a legislative investigation into the state’s deeply flawed teacher certification process is heading to the Board of Regents, as support grows for the union’s protest against the disastrous rollout of high-stakes exams for student teachers.
“Today, UUP calls for an investigation of the State Education Department requirements that have been established for teacher education students,” UUP President Fred Kowal said during a March 5 news conference in the Legislative Office Building in Albany. “We must protect the programs that will teach, mentor and guide the next generation of learners.
“This is failure by design,” he continued. “Frankly put, New York State teacher preparation students have been set up to fail by the State Education Department and Governor Cuomo.”
Kowal was joined by a broad-based and large group of supporters – including a member of the New York State Board of Regents, Kathleen Cashin; NYSUT Executive Vice President Catalina Fortino; public and private college faculty, college students and recent graduates and parents.
Cashin, above, said that she intends to carry concerns to the full Board of Regents at its next meeting, to reinforce longstanding public criticisms of the new certification exams.
“The evaluation methods need to be valid and reliable,” said Cashin, who added that it’s wrong to silence the voice of teacher preparation faculty who are being affected by new state policies they had no say in creating.
Last spring, the Regents—in response to an outcry by NYSUT, UUP, the Professional Staff Congress/CUNY, teacher preparation students, faculty and parents—passed an emergency resolution to provide partial relief to graduating seniors in teacher preparation programs in 2014 and again this year. Those students are allowed to substitute a previous exam for a new performance assessment, the educative Teacher Performance Assessment, or edTPA.
That emergency regulation failed to provide the protections that UUP, NYSUT and the PSC sought, and problems with the other two new exams also quickly became apparent. Since then, they have pressed SED and the Regents for a more far-reaching action on the entire teacher certification process. The unions contend that the new exams are based on unproven assumptions and that Pearson Inc. – the international educational testing corporation that administers all four teacher certification exams—has been unresponsive to constructive criticism.
Cashin will ask the Regents to consider at least temporarily removing the edTPA as a mandatory initial certification requirement and allowing teacher prep programs at public and private colleges statewide to lower the so-called “cut score” that determines a passing grade on the exams.
She will recommend that the edTPA be introduced through a pilot program—that would not require them for students already enrolled in teacher preparation programs before the tests were introduced—or that it be used as a “formative” exam for evaluating a student teacher’s skills without the high-stakes, make-or-break conditions imposed on graduating seniors in the last two years.
UUP will also reach out to the state Assembly and Senate standing committees on higher education to examine the new testing mandates, which SED botched in its rush to impose them in 2014 and this year, said UUP VP of Academics Jamie Dangler.
Joining Kowal and Cashin were NYSUT Vice President Catalina Fortino, above, who oversees higher education policy for the union. Fortino said the governor’s Executive Budget “clearly does not support public higher education” and that the governor and the State Education Department “are shattering the dreams of future teachers.”
Two students also spoke at the press conference: Bobby Fatone, a 2014 SUNY Brockport graduate who studied to become a physical education teacher but has been unable to pass one of the certification exams because many of the questions are based on the assumption that he teaches in a traditional classroom setting; and Katherine Knapp, a student teacher at SUNY New Paltz.
Knapp said she and her fellow student teachers have found that the edTPA process has taken over their entire student teaching experience and has left little time to plan lessons or review feedback from supervising teachers and professors.
UUP member Julie Gorlewski, who serves on the UUP Task Force on Teacher Education, cited a list of problems with the new certification exams, including the exclusion of experienced practitioners from the process and Pearson’s highly questionable test scoring practices. Gorlewski, an English teacher by training, said Pearson offered her a position as a scorer of student teachers specializing in teaching mathematics, even though Gorlewski is not certified to teach math.
Private college faculty have also struggled with the new certification exams. Alexandra Miletta, an education professor at Mercy College, which has campuses in Manhattan and the Hudson Valley, said that with the new certification exams, “the degree to which we are setting up our own institutions for failure is unprecedented … the testing industry is expanding exponentially.”
Westchester County parent Tom Pinto, whose son faced the edTPA at SUNY Brockport last year, said that SED has repeatedly delivered what he considers misleading or inaccurate statements about the certification exams. SED was so late in providing the first preparation materials for the exams that neither faculty nor students knew what they faced.
“Given the evidence, it’s inconceivable that SED could claim that everything is fine with the new tests,” Pinto said.
In addition to the call for an investigation and an expanded “safety net” or grace period for 2014 and 2015 graduates facing the new exams, UUP wants experienced education professionals to have a say in content changes to the assessments and an examination of the many reported problems with their computer-based format.
The union is also asking the Legislature to reject budget proposals by the governor which would bash teacher preparation programs—including deregistration and suspension of programs based on certification exam scores of students and changes to tenure for new teachers.
UUP will continue pressing for the investigation, in meetings with lawmakers during the budget session. Although the governor has threatened not to sign a budget that does not include his punitive proposals—including those affecting teacher preparation programs, UUP is urging lawmakers not to pass a budget that contains these proposals.
The new issue of The Echo is online!
Read about UUP’s new TV/print ad campaign, the union’s fight for more state funding for SUNY and its advocacy campaign to protect teacher prep programs and SUNY’s successful opportunity programs in the new issue of The Echo, UUP’s online membership magazine.
Read it here–
http://uupinfo.org/flipbook/EchoVol1Issue3/index.html#/0–or go to UUP’s website at http://www.uupinfo.org and click on The Echo icon on the left side of the page.
In solidarity,
Mike
Michael Lisi
Communications Director
United University Professions
Leadership – Education – Action – Development Institute was created for you!
The LEAD Institute has been a great success so far and the good news is we are just getting started. Please let all of your members know about this program so they can learn about the benefits of being in a union. You can learn about promotions, job protections, continuing and permanent appointment, the grievance process and much more.
To register visit the UUP website and click on Links on the top toolbar then click on LEAD Institute. The courses are free, are less than an hour long and you can decide when and where you want to access it.
If you have questions or comments please email jmarino@uupmail.org.
John J. Marino
NYSUT Regional Staff Director