I found an earlier article by Dr. Burris on Strauss's blog

While growth models do minimize the effects of poverty on outcomes, those effects remain substantial. Accordingly, one of the many unintended consequences of the new evaluation system will be even less incentive for good teachers and principals to work with the students that need them the most.

On the same day that the new New York teacher evaluation regulations were passed, the state's new education commissioner, John King, was appointed. His biography in The New York Times notes how he fondly remembers a dynamic teacher who inspired him with Shakespeare and another teacher who engaged him in a creative project. There was no mention of test scores attained. How ironic that test-driven accountability measures will kill the time for such activities, especially in our poorest schools.

Let's hope that New York's new education leader will help the Regents rethink this misguided policy and recommend an evaluation system not based on test scores but on the encouragement of approaches to teaching that are associated with increased learning. Let's hope that they will develop state policies that work to reduce racial isolation in schools and in classrooms and that schools will be challenged to include all students in excellent curriculum, regardless of test scores.

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Posted at 05:00 AM ET, 05/20/2011