Currently, S.8301 is stuck in the New York State Senate. The bill would decouple student test scores from teacher evaluations. Below is a message from NYSUT President Andy Pallotta about the bill. It is imperative that all WITA members take action today to ensure that this bill gets passed.
NYSUT: They Think You're Stupid
Sen. Flanagan must think we were born yesterday. The Republican State Senate majority leader showed again last night how little he and his GOP colleagues respect public school teachers.
Instead of passing S.8301, a clean bill with 55 sponsors in the Senate to reduce testing and fix the evaluation system, Sen. Flanagan introduced a bill that ties APPR to millions of dollars for the charter industry and his political donors and to loopholes for private schools. This is just another distraction and a stall tactic.
Our message has not changed. The Senate must pass S.8301, with NO STRINGS attached.
The vast majority of Senate Republicans joined all the Democrats to co-sponsor S.8301, our bill to fix New York's flawed and unfair teacher performance review law, weeks ago. Yet for all their talk about supporting it, Senate Republicans failed to even allow an up or down vote. They could have done it, but they didn't.
We have been working for years to return control over teacher evaluations to local school districts and teachers. Thanks to you, we are closer than ever to fixing New York's flawed and unfair teacher performance review law. Our bill passed the Assembly 133-1. Now the Senate needs to honor teachers by voting on S.8301 now, with no strings attached.
Let's get this done now!
