Tuesday, January 13, 2009

More cuts to the classroom , despite Tweed's claims

PowerPoint Presentation

In today's Daily News, it is revealed that schools will be forced to pull teachers out of their classrooms for up to three days next month to score the state exams.

This will even affect students in grades, like Kindergarten, who do not have to take these tests. Why?

"[Some principals] said they were reluctant to pull teachers in older grades out of the classrooms so close to the state math exams, which are given in March."

In the past, DOE hired teachers to score these standardized tests during the February break. Now, schools will have to pay substitutes to take their place.

Yet in a budget presentation to the PEP, DOE officials falsely described the revision in the “scoring of state assessments in Math and ELA” as a major part of its “$40 million cut to Central and Field.”

In another budget document circulated by Tweed, this change was listed as having “No Impact to Schools.”

Instead, this represents yet another major budget cut to our schools. Not to mention its damaging effects on the classroom.

More testing, less learning. And more evidence of how the DOE’s claims to be making major cuts to administration cannot be trusted.

2 comments:

Shino said...

This is yet another example of DoE making false claims. It is merely shifting the budget line from the DoE central to individual schools. This was done in the past when DoE central cut its IT budget and put the responsibilities on individual schools (items such as copier repair services).

I also heard schools are required to send two teachers for 14 days for scoring the tests (that's almost three weeks of school). That is highly disruptive to our children's learning.

Shino

Anonymous said...

One of my best friends in my school was notified by a note in his mailbox that he was one of the lucky 2. The note was unclear and provided no real information or explanation. He or I new nothing about it, so he went to talk to our Principal to ask about it. Oh what a pleasant surprise for him!

Unitymustgo!