Mayor Of New York State? New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has had it. Speaking to a joint legislative panel in Albany, Bloomberg said the school districts that submitted teacher evaluation plans that expire in a year have committed "fraud," reports the Buffalo News. Bloomberg also said that the holdup over NYC's evaluations -- the so-called "sunset" provisions -- surprised him. Ernest Logan, who heads the Council of School Supervisors & Administrators, is miffed, to say the least. "The mayor turned the truth upside-down," he wrote in a Monday letter to his membership that was forwarded to HuffPost. "We can't comprehend how he can claim surprise when the issue was on the table throughout both unions' negotiations and was approved ... for virtually every other district statewide."
Cheating Uncovered In New York City? GothamSchools FOIA'ed the Department of Education and found previously unreported issues that put the integrity of some test results in question. Test security violations outlined in 97 reports written between 2006 and 2012 include inflated scores and inappropriate coaching. While 59 of the reports were "minor violations of administrative protocol," GS writes, 59 "substantiated allegations about cheating, some of them serious."
Is Los Angeles Misusing Data? The Los Angeles Times is out with a smart story in collaboration with the Hechinger Report that shows that the San Jose information underlying the nation's second largest school district's big focus on college preparation in high school is actually flawed.
"San Jose Unified has quietly acknowledged that the district overstated its accomplishments. And a Times analysis of the district's record shows that its progress has not, in fact, far outpaced many other school systems' and, more important, that most San Jose students have never qualified to apply to a state college," the Times reports. What does this mean for L.A.? "The risk is that L.A. Unified's version of a college-prep policy could drive students to drop out or delay graduation," writes the Times.
Common Core Exams Roll Into South Dakota Like many other states, South Dakota is preparing for a sudden switch to standardized tests aligned to the Common Core. As the schools transition to online testing, one administrator worries that schools' networks will be strained.
Connecticut Tests A-Changing? According to the CT Mirror, the state's education agency is pushing a legislative package that would switch up the timing of standardized exams. High school students, the state recommends, would take the tests in junior year instead of sophomore year. Schools chief Stefan Pryor says this switch would make it easier to implement -- you guessed it -- Common Core exams down the line.