New York State should put a moratorium on its use of Common Core test results until the state and city have made high-quality curricula available and teachers have been fully trained in how to use it, UFT President Michael Mulgrew testified to state lawmakers on Jan. 28.

Addressing the state Legislature on the education budget for next year, Mulgrew said the state must support teachers as they work to implement a new curriculum. He proposed a statewide project to provide every district with a menu of well-developed Common Core-aligned curricula. He argued that a hold should be put on the use of state test results to evaluate teachers or students until curriculum is in place. The Teacher Centers, whose budget has been repeatedly cut in recent years, are a pivotal piece of such an effort, he said, because they will be training teachers as new curriculum comes on line.

Last year’s state tests resulted in a 70 percent failure rate as teachers did not have any curriculum that matched the new Common Core standards. “Teachers are upset,” Mulgrew told the legislators. “They had to administer a test that did not follow what they taught their students, and we are sitting here a year later and we still have the same problems.”

Under Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s budget plan, school aid would go up by $682 million, with New York City receiving a $231 million increase. The governor also proposed spending $1.5 billion over five years to expand universal prekindergarten statewide, and asked for a $2 billion bond issue to pay for technology upgrades to classrooms. But after losing 7,000 teachers and introducing new standards, city schools need even more financial help, Mulgrew said. The state is now $5.5 billion behind in its Campaign for Fiscal Equity funding commitments, he noted.

“We are encouraged by Governor Cuomo’s proposal to increase direct school aid this year by 3.1 percent, though with our schools still rebuilding and restoring their programs after years of budget cuts, we believe that figure should only be considered a starting point,” Mulgrew said.

His testimony came a day after Mayor Bill de Blasio had come to Albany to seek legislative approval to tax the city’s high earners to pay for universal full-day prekindergarten and after-school programs for all middle school students. Mulgrew backed the mayor’s request for a tax hike, saying New York City needs its own dedicated revenue stream for pre-K. Gov. Cuomo’s proposal of $100 million statewide for pre-K next year is a generous start, Mulgrew said, but the city needs to raise more and it should be a dedicated revenue source to ensure that the funds will continue to be available.

New York City needs a so-called “home rule” approval from the Legislature to impose de Blasio’s proposed half-point increase in income taxes for residents earning more than $500,000. “New York City is saying we will take care of our own costs, just give us a home rule,” Mulgrew told the legislators.

He welcomed Gov. Cuomo’s call for a ban on kindergarten through 2nd-grade testing and asked legislators to extend that ban to prekindergarten as well, moving to head off a kindergarten “readiness assessment” that the state wants to give in pre-K.

The UFT president also welcomed the governor’s proposal to reward teaching “excellence” with $20,000 bonuses as a promising starting point for creating a true teacher career ladder. He also described for legislators the many positive impacts of community schools that were funded by the state starting last year.

But he told lawmakers that the state should conduct a review of the State Education Department’s contracts, especially with InBloom, a data management firm that is handling sensitive student information, and Pearson, the test developer that created last year’s state tests. “We should be auditing all of it,” he said.

Read the full testimony >>