ALBANY -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed making it harder for teachers to get the job protection of tenure and easier to remove educators who are incompetent or engaged in misconduct.

He also proposed revising teacher evaluations with half their scores based on their students' scores on state tests, up from 20 percent, and half based on classroom observations.

Every school in the state now has teacher evaluation systems in place, he said, adding that "they are baloney."

He noted great discrepancies between the low percentages of students passing state exams, and the high percentages of teachers who are deemed effective.

Kevin Ahern, president of the Syracuse Teacher's Association, said the governor's proposals "are not based on objective reality," and called linking teacher evaluations to student test scores "junk science."

"Charter schools don't perform any better than public schools," Ahern said. "Districts that are struggling share poverty and chronic underfunding as common denominators. It's sad that the Governor doesn't want to confront the real issues of fair funding, equity, opportunity and access that plague our struggling schools and the children they serve."

The president of the New York State United Teachers, Karen Magee said Cuomo's education proposals were off-base.

" New York has one of the strongest public education systems in the nation," Magee said. "Governor Cuomo should be celebrating that excellence. Instead, today we get intellectually hollow rhetoric that misrepresents the state of teaching and learning. Students, parents and teachers, who know better, aren't buying this agenda, which everyone knows is driven by the governor's billionaire hedge-fund friends. The truth is, there's no epidemic of failing schools or bad teachers."

The Statewide Schools Finance Consortium also criticized Cuomo's proposals, saying that Cuomo gave "little or no attention" to fiscal inequity among school districts in general funding formulas. The consortium represents 420 of the state's nearly 700 public school districts.

Cuomo did note that student spending in Buffalo, at $16,000 per student, is the highest in the state, and that Buffalo schools are among the state's lowest performing schools. He would make substantial increases in school aid conditional on implementing his suggested reforms.

For tenure, Cuomo wants a requirement of five straight annual ratings of effective or highly effective. Tenure now can be granted after three years.

He would simplify the removal process, eliminating the requirement that administrators first attempt to rehabilitate teachers.

He also wants to raise the limit on charter schools from 460 to 560, and establish a tax credit for contributions to schools, education funds and scholarship groups. To insure that charter schools don't accept only top students, Cuomo proposed what he called "anti-creaming legislation" to insure that charter schools accept a certain percentage of students with high needs from low income homes and those whose first language is not English.

As incentives to recruit the "best and the brightest" teaching candidates, he proposed paying full tuition to SUNY's top graduates who commit to teaching in New York state schools for five years.

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