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UUP\u2019s call for a legislative investigation into the state\u2019s deeply flawed teacher certification process is heading to the Board of Regents, as support grows for the union\u2019s protest against the disastrous rollout of high-stakes exams for student teachers.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, UUP calls for an investigation of the State Education Department requirements that have been established for teacher education students,\u201d UUP President Fred Kowal said during a March 5 news conference in the Legislative Office Building in Albany. \u201cWe must protect the programs that will teach, mentor and guide the next generation of learners.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is failure by design,\u201d he continued. \u201cFrankly put, New York State teacher preparation students have been set up to fail by the State Education Department and Governor Cuomo.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kowal was joined by a broad-based and large group of supporters \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe evaluation methods need to be valid and reliable,\u201d said Cashin, who added that it\u2019s wrong to silence the voice of teacher preparation faculty who are being affected by new state policies they had no say in creating.<\/p>\n
Last spring, the Regents\u2014in response to an outcry by NYSUT, UUP, the Professional Staff Congress\/CUNY, teacher preparation students, faculty and parents\u2014passed 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.<\/p>\n
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. \u2013 the international educational testing corporation that administers all four teacher certification exams\u2014has been unresponsive to constructive criticism.<\/p>\n
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 \u201ccut score\u201d that determines a passing grade on the exams.<\/p>\n
She will recommend that the edTPA be introduced through a pilot program\u2014that would not require them for students already enrolled in teacher preparation programs before the tests were introduced\u2014or that it be used as a \u201cformative\u201d exam for evaluating a student teacher\u2019s skills without the high-stakes, make-or-break conditions imposed on graduating seniors in the last two years.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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Joining Kowal and Cashin were NYSUT Vice President Catalina Fortino, above, who oversees higher education policy for the union. Fortino said the governor\u2019s Executive Budget \u201cclearly does not support public higher education\u201d and that the governor and the State Education Department \u201care shattering the dreams of future teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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, \u201cthe degree to which we are setting up our own institutions for failure is unprecedented \u2026 the testing industry is expanding exponentially.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the evidence, it\u2019s inconceivable that SED could claim that everything is fine with the new tests,\u201d Pinto said.<\/p>\n
In addition to the call for an investigation and an expanded \u201csafety net\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
The union is also asking the Legislature to reject budget proposals by the governor which would bash teacher preparation programs\u2014including deregistration and suspension of programs based on certification exam scores of students and changes to tenure for new teachers.<\/p>\n
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\u2014including those affecting teacher preparation programs, UUP is urging lawmakers not to pass a budget that contains these proposals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
http:\/\/uupinfo.org\/communications\/2015releases\/150305.php https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=WxDZCL6Ax1w&list=UU4f3vj05fNZOCaKhWkV1WAg&feature=player_detailpage UUP\u2019s call for a legislative investigation into the state\u2019s deeply flawed teacher certification process is heading to the Board of Regents, as support grows for the union\u2019s protest against the disastrous rollout of high-stakes exams for student teachers. \u201cToday, UUP calls for an investigation of the State Education Department requirements that have been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=874"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":880,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions\/880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}