Victory isn’t enough for New York State United Teachers, which is continuing its war on state tests with ads reminding parents they can have kids “opt out.”
Apparently, it doesn’t matter that the union already got Gov. Andrew Cuomo to blink, persuading him to drop his years-long push to have test results be part of a teacher evaluation process.
No, it seems NYSUT won’t rest until the tests can’t embarrass anyone — that is, until they don’t deliver the unwelcome news that countless New York kids aren’t learning remotely enough in school.
In years past, NYSUT ads (and less-public persuasion) helped convince hundreds of thousands of parents to opt their kids out. To do so, the union exploited (baseless) fears about the Common Core curriculum, the supposed perils of “high-stakes testing” and so on.
It saw a threat in Cuomo’s drive to make student exams (more precisely, kids’ year-to-year improvement on them) part of evaluations that would single out incompetent teachers — and get the worst ones fired.
If enough kids opt out, the results for all students become far less meaningful. Funding’s at risk, too.
All that, plus rising numbers of fearful, angry parents moved Cuomo to wave the white flag, pushing off any chance for a serious teacher evaluation system (i.e., one that exposes bad teachers) until at least 2020.
State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia and the Board of Regents did their part — making the exams easier (and less meaningful) by, for example, cutting the number of questions and ending time limits. The Regents even chose Betty Rosa as their chief. She’s a determined critic of “high stakes” exams, never mind that these tests have no bearing on students’ academic records.
None of it matters: NYSUT’s back this exam week with billboards and bus ads pushing parents to opt their children out.
Keep all this in mind the next time NYSUT or any of its branches (such as the city United Federation of Teachers) pretends to care about New York’s kids.



