State of Education: Talking to the State Education Commissioner
YNN’s Vince Gallagher recently ran into State Education Commissioner John King at the Albany School of Humanities. In today’s State of Education, they tackle a few different topics.
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Upon visiting the school and students, the commissioner discussed a few topics with the school principal. One subject was literacy, the importance of reading with an emphasis on writing.
“We also want them to get into the habit of writing about what they’ve read and writing using evidence. So whenever I visit a school I’m always looking for evidence of students writing, spending time making arguments with evidence in their writing,” said NYS Education Commissioner Dr. John King.
And next subject to tackle was SIG funding.
“We’re very pleased to see the districts making progress, we’ve got three more that are working their way through agreements and we hope eventually all the school improvement grant districts will reach positive resolutions with their bargaining units and that’s a good sign of where we’re headed for evaluations statewide,” said Dr. King.
But with new common core standards, superintendents will be asked to take on a more instructional leader role
“And that’s going to require superintendents to take on real instructional leadership in their districts and I think there’s a range, there are some superintendents who are doing that today and doing a great job and there are others who are focusing more on operational issues,” said Dr. King.
They were also able to touch upon the principal teacher evaluation law.
“We talked a little about the new evaluation system and how that will be a source of support on trying to prove the quality of instruction by helping teachers have a clear vision of what it looks like to be highly effective and then giving them clear advice on how to get there,” said Dr. King.
And there was also a look at the future.
“This summer, districts will submit their evaluation plans, we’ll review them and by next year we should see statewide implementation which is what we promised in the Race to the Top application,” said Dr. King.