State ed head to north country teachers: Expect shakeup

State Education Commissioner David M. Steiner and his team visited the north country today to meet with local educators about the impending shake-up of their field, intended to raise student achievement and increase teacher effectiveness.

Mr. Steiner, who has held the commissioner post for a year, touched on new curriculum models and tests that are being developed at the state level. Rather than the “teaching to the test” that often goes on now, tests will assess the curriculum and not become the curriculum, Mr. Steiner said.

The new teacher and administrator evaluation system is one of the more contentious of the overarching state education reforms, which are being called the “Regents Reform Plan.” The new evaluations will require school officials to negotiate with unions for contracts that include a student achievement element. It could make it easier for districts to fire ineffective teachers.

“When there’s a crisis, we must emphasize the essential—and that’s the teacher and the student,” Mr. Steiner said. “I’ve seen some world class education in this state. But other teachers are under-teaching badly, and that’s when students are bored and become disengaged.”

The teacher effectiveness problem may reflect the average American teacher’s ideology and why they get into the field in the first place. When asked what makes a good teacher, Mr. Steiner’s first response was passion for the subject matter, but that isn’t always what he hears when he talks to American teachers, he said.

“When I talk to teachers abroad about why they are teachers, they say because they love literature. When I talk to American teachers, they say it’s because they love children,” Mr. Steiner said. “I don’t think you could be an effective teacher if you don’t have a passion for the subject.”

Senior Deputy Commissioner John King laid out some ideas state officials have about some mandates that could be coming down the line to better prepare students in the state for college and career, including requiring four years of mathematics rather than the current three years.

“We’re hearing it loud and clear from the higher education community,” Mr. King said. “Students get to freshman year of college and don’t do well on a math placement test because they haven’t had math in a year and they’re rusty.”

For more on the commissioner’s visit to the north country, see Thursday’s Watertown Daily Times.