Bethany Bump is reporting for the Times Union state education leaders hope to have a new system in place for evaluating New York's nearly 220,000 classroom teachers by the fall of 2019, according a plan unveiled by the state Education Department, February 12. The department invited public school teachers, leaders and administrators, in a survey last week, to provide feedback on changes they would like to see to the state's current evaluation system. New York State United Teachers, the statewide union that represents those teachers, is encouraging its members to opt out of the surveys, saying it rejects the idea of any kind of statewide evaluation system and wants the process returned to local control. The department will convene workgroups representing teachers and other stakeholders to gather and collect feedback, and come up with recommended revisions to the evaluation system by this fall. The recommendations would then go out to the public for feedback, and a final set would be presented to the Board of Regents in spring 2019. Read the full story in the Times Union.