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NY on Fed watch list on education

Jan 11, 2012 12:06 am
Fernanda Santos in The New York Times reports that New York is one of three states the federal government has added to a watch list because it has not complied with goals it set when applying for financial assistance through the federal "Race to the Top" funding program. U.S. Education secretary Arne Duncan said that despite “significant progress,” New York had “hit a roadblock” in recent months, failing to track student records across school districts and failing to adopt a new system to evaluate the work of teachers and principals. "In the short term, I call on the State Department of Education, local school districts and the union leadership to expedite their negotiations on a teacher evaluation system to prevent the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding," Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a press release. "Over the long term, we need to overhaul the system and change the law on the books. The Assembly-led legislation in 2010 protected the teachers union at the expense of the students and instituted a system that was destined to fail." Read the full story in The New York Times.