BUFFALO, N.Y. — There is a proposal in Albany to change the way teachers and principals are evaluated. It means districts could be moving away from standardized testing as a way to do these evaluations.
Back in 2015, 2 On Your Side did a lot of stories about the thousands of parents across Western New York opting out of these tests and keeping their kids home.
If this bill becomes law, it would be up to individual school districts to decide whether to keep testing kids to evaluate teachers.
"The notion of looking at a test that's given at a point of the year where that one measure is the determination as to whether or not you're successful as a teacher, or successful as a student as far as you having learned something is, it's such a flawed system," says Rich Nigro, the Buffalo Teachers Federation President.
Soon that system could be going away.
The New York State Educational Conference Board and New York State Education Department announced Wednesday that they came to an agreement to get rid of testing as a way to evaluate teachers and principals if a school district chooses to do that.
Nigro says the Annual Professional Performance Review, or APPR, model used since 2010 was flawed because often the tests were measuring things that hadn't been taught yet.
"I don't think real learning happens when you teach to a test, and it's not a matter of a teacher, well then don't teach to the test, again, a lot of times a test may test something that hasn't even been covered yet. You're bound by the curriculum, you still have to get through that. And I think that this APPR and standardized tests are in conflict with that," Nigro said.
Nigro says the push by many teachers and administrators across the state has been to return evaluations to local control of each individual school district.
"I think this is good for everyone. If a teacher is free to teach, and again, they still have a curriculum, they're still evaluated, but if they don't have to worry about this APPR and they can just focus on the thing that they went to school for six years for, and have continued, you know, professional development for the duration of their career, I think that everybody wins," Nigro said.
Nigro told 2 On Your Side on Wednesday afternoon that he's hopeful this bill will become law and districts will be able to move away from testing kids to evaluate teachers.