Glen Cove Teachers Association president speaks at Coalition meeting

Glen Cove School Board member Joel Sunshine; Glen Cove United Teachers president, Karen Ferguson; and Coalition president, Helen Kotzky;

Karen Ferguson, a special education teacher in Glen Cove and president of the Glen Cove Teachers Association, was the guest speaker at the February 2010 meeting of the Coalition for Glen Cove.

Ms. Ferguson, who graduated from Glen Cove High School, has a B.S degree from Niagara University and a Master’s Degree from the College of Staten Island. She has been a teacher of special education in the Glen Cove School District since 1990, and has been president of the Glen Cove Teachers’ Association since 2002. She is a member of the New York State United Teachers Special Education Committee at the State level, the Glen Cove School District’s Professional Development Committee, and the district-wide Steering Committee, and has been the Glen Cove Teachers’ Association delegate to the New York State United Teachers’ Representative Assembly for twelve years. She is a member of the Council for Exceptional Children and its Division of Learning Disabilities, the International Dyslexia Association, and the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

The 280 member Glen Cove United Teachers Association is part of the 600,000 member New York State United Teachers Association and the 1.4 million member American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association.

Ms. Ferguson stated that New York State regulations require shared decision making in public schools. The regulations require each district to have a District Plan outlining its shared decision making process. These plans must be reviewed and adopted every two years. Our plan calls for a District Steering Committee, Building Site Committees and a District Curriculum Committee  The make-up of each committee and how they function is described in the District Plan. These committees are composed of administrators, teachers, and parents, each selected by their units.  The committees work in a collaborative manner to improve our District. These committees reach decisions through the process of consensus. A Coalition member whose student graduated last year mentioned that suggestions made by her site committee were adopted and are now in use.

The topic of teacher evaluation was brought up. At present, teachers are evaluated each year by observation of their teaching by their subject coordinator, their building principal, and/or sometimes central administration. Each observation is preceded by a conference between the observers and the teacher to discuss the lesson that will be observed. Each observation is followed by a conference to discuss the teaching and the student response that was observed in the classroom. New teachers are observed and counseled often during their first three years.

Professionals in education both state and nation-wide have been discussing other evaluation methods, including the suggestion that they be observed and evaluated by other teachers in their discipline. The recent Race to the Top grant being offered by the Federal Government has slated $4.35 million to be split amongst the states. This competitive grant specifies that districts will negotiate for certain items, one of which is that student achievement, measured by test grades, be used to evaluate teachers. Unfortunately, student achievement is influenced by many things outside the classroom, including home and community life, parent involvement, intellectual potential, motivation, responsibilities outside of school, and whether the student is new to our country. Students can make significant progress in social adjustment, critical thinking, music, arts, technology, and athletics, none of which are measured by test grades. Special Education teachers, in particular, improve their students’ lives in ways that may be obvious to the student and the student’s parents and teachers, but may not be shown on a state exam .Standardized tests, which are already used to compare school districts, threaten our funding and have adversely influenced what classes districts now offer. Using them to evaluate teachers would put teachers’ jobs in the hands of their own students’ scores. One coalition member stated that this might even lead to corruption, and that our students are taught by other teachers before they come into our classroom. Ms. Ferguson explained that if student scores were used to evaluate our teaching, no one would want to work with our neediest students. Knowing how students vary in their abilities and that teachers don’t choose the students they teach, student scores are not a credible method of evaluating teaching.

The topic of consolidating school districts was touched upon. Ms. Ferguson expressed her concern that consolidating goods appears to be plausible and could offer some significant savings to Long Island districts, but there is concern that the consolidation of school districts that are now independent would be extremely complex. We should be cautioned that we do not want to level the playing field so that all districts have minimal resources. We do not want to see our public schools turn into a place for the have-nots while those who can, send their children to private school, resulting in an increase of the segregation we have long fought to correct in our system and communities.