Less than a quarter of schools in New York State met this week's deadline to submit teacher evaluations to the Department of Education. It's an act that's now required by law in New York. YNN’s Nick Reisman sat down with the State School Boards Association Executive Director to talk about why so many schools missed the mark.

  To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.

Then come back here and refresh the page.

NEW YORK -- The vast majority of school districts and local teachers unions in New York have failed to meet a July 1st deadline on agreeing to revised teacher evaluations. Of the more than 700 or so districts across the state, only 164 were able to meet the deadline this week -- news that education officials say reflects the complexity of the new evaluation standards.

“It tells us a lot. We knew all along anecdotally that it was unlikely that most districts were going to be able to hit this July 1 deadline for submitting some negotiated agreed upon annual professional performance review,” said Tim Kremer, State School Boards Association Executive Director.

Back in February, Governor Andrew Cuomo, the state's major teachers unions, and the state Education Department agreed to revised disclosure standards in order to resolve a lengthy legal entanglement over the issue. The new standards assign different weight to state exams and classroom observance. But it is up to the local districts and unions to agree to the new standards in order to receive a promised four percent boost in state aid. Hindering their efforts to resolve the matter may have been Albany's last-minute agreement on limiting the disclosure of evaluations to parents.

“What I think a lot of the collectively bargaining units were doing and management as well was waiting on this bill that was passed just recently that said that teacher and principal evaluation information was going to be released,” said Kremer.

The new benchmark comes this September, possibly a more realistic timeframe for local education officials still grappling with Albany's new rules. And for the school boards, they want the state Education Department to especially focus on overhauling standardized tests.

“We have to get that right and the state Education Department has unfortunately struggled in trying to get this testing piece right,” said Kremer.