New York science teachers: State holds us responsible for students who don't do their work

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Students work in a Regents chemistry class at Syracuse's Institute of Technology in January. The state says the "zero" scores of students who do not qualify to take Regents exams because they haven't completed their lab requirements will be factored into teacher evaluations.

(Dick Blume | dblume@syracuse.com)

Science teachers across New York are reacting with anger and frustration to a state policy under which their job evaluations could suffer if students refuse to do their required lab work.

The policy was made clear recently by state Deputy Education Commissioner Ken Slentz in a response to a question by New York State United Teachers. Slentz said that if students are ineligible to take a Regents exam because they did not earn enough lab credits during the school year, their "zero" on the exam would be factored into the teacher's performance evaluation.

Brian Vorwald, president of the Science Teachers Association of New York State, sent a letter to Education Commissioner John King Thursday saying the policy is "unconscionable."

"Students who are deficient in satisfactory written laboratory reports have reached this situation despite the best efforts of their teachers," he wrote. "... This will unfairly penalize teachers and create significant equity issues throughout NY State."

The state has long had a policy that students who do not complete lab reports reflecting at least 1,200 minutes of hands-on lab work are ineligible for the end-of-the-year Regents exam. The teachers don't have an issue with that. But Vorwald said the state changed its policy in recent weeks by mandating that the "zero" the student is assigned for not taking the test will be factored into the teacher's evaluation.

Under state law, at least 20 percent of a teacher's performance evaluation must be based on student test scores.

NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi said it is not the teacher's fault if a student, for whatever reason, fails to complete his or her lab work. He said teachers "do a thousand different things to get students to finish their labs."

"There's no one who could look at this and say there's any common sense to it," he said of the state policy.

In a letter to NYSUT last week, King said the department's policy is nothing new. He said teachers have the responsibility to ensure that all students meet lab requirements so they can take the exams.

King said it won't necessarily hurt a teacher's evaluation if a few students get zeros on the exam because those zeros are averaged into all the other students' scores.

Jeff Peneston, an earth science teacher at Liverpool High School and the 2011 state teacher of the year, acknowledged that the policy would probably not hurt his performance evaluation. He said about three of his 90 or so students each year fail to complete their lab work -- not enough to hurt his rating.

But he said the state policy is insulting to teachers and shows that the Education Department doesn't understand what happens in classrooms. To hold the teacher responsible for a student who refuses to do his work is "naive," he said.

"The only students I've had who were ineligible were students who flatly refused to do their homework," he said. "I don't have the ability to make a student do homework."

He said it can also be difficult for students who become ill or transfer from another state late in the year to get all the necessary lab work done.

He said he finds the policy "embarrassing for the state."

"The very highest level of decision-making is people who should be humbled by what they don't really know about the classroom," he said. "Instead, they're not listening to the people in the classroom."

Officials at the state Education Department were unavailable for comment Friday afternoon.

Contact Paul Riede at priede@syracuse.com or 470-3260. Follow him on Twitter at @PaulRiede.

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