Local educators express concern over state education bill

What do they think?

Nancy Gassert, former Riverhead BOE president
‘The thing that gets me is that the people putting Common Core together — there is not one educator on the board. How do you do that without getting at least administrators and teachers to sit on a board like this?’

Dr. Steven Cohen, Shoreham-Wading River superintendent
“It’s so obvious that this evaluation system has been put together by people who know nothing about what goes on in schools. To evaluate a teacher, you need much more than the results of students on one test. From an educator’s point of view, that’s just ridiculous.

David Gamberg, Greenport and Southold superintendent
“Bar none, the [teacher evaluation system] has received more pages of legal guidance than virtually any other. The reams of paper that try to figure out how this makes sense — that in itself should tell you it’s wrong.”

Dr. Anne Smith, Mattituck-Cutchogue superintendent:
“There are serious concerns related to what we understand to be the coupling of mandates for changes to [teacher evaluations] tied to a district’s ability to access increases for our aid. In addition, the [calls] from superintendents and other stakeholders to create an independent task force to develop an improved [teacher evaluation] seem to have been ignored.”

Nancy Carney, Riverhead superintendent:
“Our teachers and administrators need to work together on improving student achievement without the fear that one state test will determine their effectiveness. I am concerned about the short the timeline that was imposed on the State Education Department and on districts.”