Dive Brief:

• New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo shot down the continuation of a bill postponing the tying of teacher evaluations to test scores as the state adjusts to Common Core-aligned testing.
• While Cuomo had initially introduced the bill, he has now changed his tune arguing that the plan is unnecessary given 2013-14 evaluations that rated less than 1% of educators as "ineffective."
• "These temporary provisions do not fix the foundational issues with the teacher evaluation system," Cuomo wrote in a message on the decision to veto the bill. Instead, he hopes to create a new plan that will strengthen the current statewide teacher evaluation system. 

Dive Insight:

In December, it was revealed that nine out of 10 New York City teachers earned the top ratings on the city's new teacher evaluation system. While teachers and principles received scores based on an aggregation of information that included classroom observations, school-specific factors like student surveys, and test scores, the latter was weighed less than it usually would be given the newness of the Common Core. Of the city's teachers, only 1.2% were ranked the worst score ("ineffective"), making some question the legitimacy of the evaluation. Which is clearly what Cuomo is reacting to.

As New York state considers more rigorous measures for teacher evaluations, it's important to remember additional issues at hand, like the fact that the American Statistical Association (ASA) says the widely popular “value-added method” (VAM) for conducting teacher evaluations is unreliable.