If a man is known by his enemies, John King must be doing something right. The New York state education commissioner finds himself under fire for pushing the tougher Common Core standards for students and the new plans for rating teachers.
This week, for instance, King and Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch endured angry criticism and boos at two rowdy forums in Long Island. At a hearing Wednesday, state senators blasted King. Last month, vulgar heckling at a Poughkeepsie meeting forced him to cancel four forums.
In the meantime, 23 teachers-union locals are demanding his resignation. And top labor bosses, such as the United Federation of Teachers’ Mike Mulgrew and New York State United Teachers’ Richard Iannuzzi, have blasted his reforms.
Lost amid the noise is an inconvenient fact for the critics: new evidence, based on just-released nationwide test scores, that higher student and teacher standards are paying off for places that implement them.
Take Tennessee. The Volunteer State adopted a fairly reasonable teacher-rating system in 2009. Like New York, it also raised its student-performance standards to match the Common Core.
Guess what: The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress reports — long considered the gold standard in testing — show the scores of Tennessee kids shooting up four to seven points over 2011 on fourth- and eighth-grade math and reading tests. Tennessee achieved these gains, moreover, at a time when scores nation-wide showed little or no improvement.
Or take Washington, DC. The school system there also adopted the tougher Common Core and a teacher-evaluation plan that allows those deemed “ineffective” to be fired immediately, while those who perform can get hefty bonuses. Sure enough, scores there climbed five to seven points.
We have our own worries about King’s reforms. But in contrast to the teachers unions, our fear is that the new evaluations may not be tough enough.
The bottom line is results. If John King hopes to rebut his critics, he will need to deliver gains like those we’ve seen in Tennessee and DC.