Assemblymember Harry Bronson (D-Rochester/Chili/Henrietta) announced that the Assembly has passed legislation, which he sponsored, that will promote better educational opportunities for students and create a fairer and flexible accountability system for teachers and administrators. The bill, A.7303-A amends the education law as it currently relates to performance reviews of both teachers and principals, de-couples APPR approval from state aid, allows for the release of significantly more test questions and answers, requires student characteristics when calculating student growth scores, ends the unfunded mandate of unnecessary outside evaluation of education performance and ends the practice of punishing children by withholding educational funding.

“I am pleased to join my colleagues in sponsoring this common sense approach that addresses many of the concerns raised by parents, teachers and other educational professionals,” said Assemblymember Harry Bronson. “This legislation will move our educational system forward to protect our students by offering ample time for schools and educators to develop a valid and fair evaluation system that focusses on our children and supports the professional development of our educators. Our ultimate goal must be one of creating an educational environment that provides opportunities for children.”

The bill would also extend the deadline for the adoption of annual teacher and principal evaluations until November 17, 2015, allowing sufficient consideration and input from boards, educators, administrators and other stakeholders and extend their implementation by one year. Additionally it would improve the instructional value of the “common core” pupil assessments by requiring the State Education Department to provide growth scores that more accurately reflects students in a classroom. The legislation calls for a content review committee that would include teachers and educational experts to review future assessment questions ensuring that the content is grade level appropriate. And finally, the bill would provide for locally selected measures of student achievement are included in the design of supplemental assessments if school districts so choose.

“This bill will take a giant step in correcting the “one size fits all” approach to educating our children,” continued Bronson. “I share the goal of our parents to allow our children to realize their individual potential of growing into strong, bright lifelong learners.”