Dear Teachers, there are no pensions in hurricanes. Divest retirement funds invested in fossil fuels | Opinion Susan Van Dolsen and Shayok Mukhopadhyay, Special to the USA TODAY Network
We are climate activists and long-time residents of Westchester County. We fight investment funds that destabilize the Earth’s climate. We fear the impact of climate change not only on our lives, but on the lives of our children and all young people who will bear the consequences of today’s investments. The year of the pandemic has made our fears real and immediate to an extent we had not imagined possible. We have been reminded with utmost cruelty that we live in a fragile world, where lives and livelihoods can be lost with shocking speed.
The state Education Department is taking steps to cancel third- through eighth-grade testing this spring.
The department has drafted requests for waivers to the U.S. Department of Education. The first waiver request seeks to waive state testing requirements at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. The waiver would also allow the state Education Department to administer the state English as a Second Language Achievement Test (NYSELSAT) only to those English Language Learners who are able to attend school in person at least some days of the week.
The second waiver request seeks to eliminate the requirement to assign a Level 1 to 4 to each accountability subgroup for each indicator for which a school or district is accountable or identify schools for improvement in fall 2021 based on 2020-21 school year results. Separate from the waiver, the state Education Department will seek an amendment to New York’s approved ESSA plan that would allow certain schools that are current
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New York State United Teachers sent the request to the State Education Department for the same waiver that was granted last year citing the continued challenges students and educators are facing during the pandemic that disrupt the normal education process.
The Union says “without standardized instructional modes, there should not be a standardized test at the end of the year.” NYSUT adds teachers are trying to also address social emotional needs of students caused by not only the pandemic but last year’s social unrest. The Union says it doesn’t expect those factors to change in the near future, especially given the recent surge in cases and the emergence of new variants of the coronavirus.