The Rochester school board is laying the groundwork for its superintendent search. Adding to the inherent difficulty of the task is the fact that confidence in the board is low and that the hiring process may be viewed as more of a test of the board’s abilities than the skills of the candidates. Some board […]
Rochester Teachers Association
Posted inNews & Opinion
Forcing Urbanski out won’t help city students
An attack on Rochester teachers union president Adam Urbanski is an attack on teachers, and that distracts us from the enormous challenge ahead of us.
Posted inNews & Opinion
Urbanski: school receivership is flawed
The state education law that gives superintendents of the lowest-performing public schools the power to make significant policy and staff changes, sometimes without the approval of their school boards, is flawed, says Adam Urbanski, longtime president of the Rochester Teachers Association. Receivership won’t help superintendents, including Rochester schools Superintendent Bolgen Vargas, confront the challenges they […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Regents grant delay in teacher evals
The Board of Regents has agreed to changes to the teacher evaluation system that will likely take a year to implement. Under the changes, teacher evaluations will be less reliant on student test scores than Governor Andrew Cuomo has proposed, according to a report by Albany’s Times Union. State legislators approved a new and much […]
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Dissension on the Board of Regents
Public dissension is rare among the New York State Board of Regents. But as further proof that concerns about the new teacher-evaluation law go well beyond the state’s teachers unions, a group of Regents have come out against the law. Seven members of the prestigious 17-member group issued what they described as “Position Paper Amendments” […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
The prison-to-pension pipeline
The correlation between low student achievement, failing schools, and youth incarceration is clear, especially for black and Latino males in urban public schools. “The school-to-prison pipeline is not some abstraction,” says education activist Howard Eagle. “It’s not something people are making up. The link is direct.” Eagle, a retired teacher for the Rochester City School […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Cuomo and teachers: it’s war
Governor Andrew Cuomo outlined a set of education reforms in his State of the State address last week that should remove any doubt that he sees teachers and their unions as the root cause of the state’s education problems. And that he’s ready to go to war to fix them. “Our education system needs dramatic […]
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Vote may be this week on UR’s plan for East
If all goes well, the Rochester school board will vote on Thursday, December 18, on the University of Rochester’s sweeping proposal to transform East High School. That would let the district meet the State Education Department’s December 31 deadline for submitting a turn-around plan. If the SED approves the plan, the UR will assume full […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Weingarten: Stop blaming teachers
Rochester’s teachers are not to blame for the city’s current economic problems, said Randi Weingarten this morning during a stop at the Children’s School of Rochester. Weingarten is president of the American Federation of Teachers, which at 1.5 million members, is one of the largest organized labor groups in the country. Weingarten arrived in Rochester […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
No map for opening a city school
If someone wants to open a charter school in Rochester, the path is pretty clear. But if you want to open a new school inside the city school system, good luck.
Posted inNews & Opinion
Conservatives find opportunities in Common Core
It’s hard to find many areas in the current political climate where conservatives and progressives agree. But they seem to have found one in education. Many progressives reject the tougher standardized curriculum referred to as Common Core because they’re suspicious of how it was developed — largely absent of input from everyday teachers. They’ve also […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Senator Flanagan’s early Christmas gift to testing critics
Many parents, teachers, and education advocates may be sighing with relief today. The reason? At least some of their concerns about high-stakes testing, implementation of the more rigorous Common Core curriculum, and teacher evaluations have been heard by New York State Senator John Flanagan. After five hearings, Flanagan issued a report yesterday that might cause […]
