New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo shared at a press conference that teachers' high scores under the state's mandatory rating system "[don't] reflect reality."

Cuomo "cited data from last school year’s teacher evaluations that the state Education Department released on Tuesday in calling for an overhaul of his signature rating system, the design of which he called an 'evolving process,'" according to an article on CapitalNewYork.com

The article said that "merely 96 percent of teachers statewide were earned the top two scores—'effective' or 'highly effective'—last school year, according to the state data."

“It affirms the premise that you have to do a better job on designing a teacher evaluation mechanism,” Cuomo said. “It is incredible to believe that is an accurate reflection of the state of education in New York. I think we have to go back to work on the teacher evaluation process.”

New York City teachers, the article said, were included in the data for the first time and "performed worse than their colleagues in the rest of the state, with only 9 percent earning the 'highly effective' rating, compared to 58 percent outside the city."

"State education leaders on Tuesday used the results to argue that most districts were reporting artificially high scores and that the city’s evaluation plan was more reliable," the article said. "But Cuomo denounced the city’s ratings along with those from the rest of the state, blaming outgoing education commissioner John King for what he described as inaccurate results in the five boroughs."

According to the article, "when New York City Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers missed a January 2013 deadline to reach agreement on an evaluation plan, which are locally negotiated in part, the state sent in King to impose one. New York City implemented the plan for the first time last school year; according to Tuesday’s data, about 92 percent of teachers were rated 'effective' or 'highly effective,' and just over 1 percent of teachers got the lowest rating, 'ineffective.'”

“The version now that was done for New York City was actually done by John King at S.E.D.,” Cuomo said. “This is S.E.D.’s designed evaluation, where something like less than 1 percent were actually being ineffective. … So I think everybody knows it doesn’t reflect reality, and we have to go back to the table and go back to a system that is fair to the teachers, … accurate, objective—but realistic. You can do both."

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Article by Kassondra Granata, EducationWorld Contributor