All of St. Lawrence County’s state Assembly representatives have voted in favor of a bill that extends the deadline for new, tougher teacher evaluations.

Assemblyman Marc Butler, R-Newport, says the proposition, which passed and will go to the Senate, also creates “more transparency related to Common Core testing.”

The bill changes the date by which teacher evaluation policies must be adopted from June 30 to Nov. 17. It also gives schools an additional year to adopt and negotiate their evaluation plans from Nov. 15, 2015 to November 2016. Additionally, the bill would not tie school aid increases to the adoption of these teacher evaluation regulations, according to Assemblymen Ken Blankenbush, R-Black River.

Furthermore, the bill incorporated elements from the APPLE plan requiring a review of the Common Core curriculum and testing content to ensure it is age and developmentally appropriate. The bill requires the commissioner of education to seek input from stakeholders and make recommendations before June 30, 2016, which the Board of Regents will review and vote upon, Butler said.

The bill requires annual release of the test questions and answers of the latest round of English language arts and math tests, creating more transparency in Common Core testing. It also strikes the governor’s requirement that schools have independent trained evaluators, which will save taxpayer money, according to Blankenbush.

“I’m happy to support legislation that acknowledges test scores alone cannot capture the worth of a student or an educator,” said Assemblywoman Janet Duprey, R-Peru. “Teacher evaluations should not be heavily weighted on high-stakes standardized tests, especially for those who teach special needs children. This legislation takes into account children with disabilities, impoverished students, and English Language Learners when weighting teacher evaluation scores. It also pushes back the deadline on evaluations, and calls for a Content Review Committee to ensure that tests are grade-appropriate.

It addition to all that, it would require creation of content review committee to ensure that grades 3-8 ELA and math tests are grade-level appropriate. It would also provide $8.4 million to print more test forms for grades 3-8 ELA and math assessments, eliminate stand-alone multiple choice field tests and release a significant amount of tests questions and answers by June 1 of each year, according to Assemblywoman Addie Russell, D-Theresa.

Of particular note was the requirement that students with different abilities and circumstances be considered during the teacher evaluation process, something that was not included under the governor’s guidelines, according to Butler.

“It’s important to remember teachers are not educating robots, they are working with children who have unique ways of learning, as well as differing skills and abilities. A system that does not recognize this should not be used to evaluate the effectiveness of our educators,” said Butler.

“I am pleased to see movement on this issue, but I encourage fewer games and less politicizing of our children’s education. We must fully adopt the reforms my Assembly Republican colleagues and I have been pushing for,” said Blankenbush.

These four Assembly members all represent parts of St. Lawrence County: Blankenbush represents the southwest of the county; Butler represents east- and south-central parts of the county; Russell represents St. Lawrence River shore townships plus Ogdensburg, Potsdam and Canton; and Duprey represents the county’s easternmost townships.