Bloomberg Says Individual Teacher Evaluations Must Be Released To The Public Or He's Cutting $250 Million From The School Budget

Here's a new wrinkle to the teacher evaluation/APPRstory - Bloomberg wants the UFT to agree that individual teacher evaluations will be released to the public or he will cut $250 million from the school budget:

Mayor Bloomberg would rather slash the budgets of city schools than let bad teachers off the hook, he said.

City officials have been locked in a standoff with the teachers union for months over how teachers will be evaluated by their principals.

They’ll lose $250 million in state funds if they can’t reach a deal by Jan. 17.

But Mayor Bloomberg said he’d rather lose the money — and make “painful cuts” to public schools or other agencies — than cut a deal that doesn’t “hold their feet to the fire.”

“If we can’t come to an agreement, it’s going to be very painful,” Bloomberg told host John Gambling on his weekly Friday radio show. “But the city’s certainly not going to sign on to any agreement that isn’t a real evaluation agreement, and one that can be monitored by the public.”

In his most strident language yet on the standoff, he said he wants all teacher evaluations released to the public, even though the state passed a law in June that would prohibit publishing teachers’ names with the ratings.

So which is it?  

 

The Tweedies say making teacher evaluations public isn't part of the negotiations, Bloomberg says it is part of them.

State law says all the evaluations of teachers in a particular school have to be made public, but not the individual evaluations of teachers with names attached.

It's hard to see how Bloomberg and the NYCDOE can force the UFT to agree to make individual evaluations public as part of this negotiation.

Mulgrew responded to the mayor's statements with the following:

Although Bloomberg said he’s still optimistic a deal can be reached in time to avoid the cuts, teachers union president Michael Mulgrew said he’s “not hopeful” it will happen.

“It seems like the mayor is more interested in using the evaluations to hold teachers’ feet to the fire, than he is in helping them do their jobs better,” Mulgrew said.

Well, no kidding, Mike.

The UFT does NOT have to make this deal.

$250 million is chump change in Bloomberg's world.

That's the cost of ARIS and some outside consultant overruns.

But the UFT has NOT done the job of educating the public of what this new evaluation entails and how it will harm not just teachers but students by forcing a narrowed curriculum, both city and state tests in every subject in every grade all throughout the year simply to grade teachers and an atmosphere of fear and stress throughout the system.

So ultimately I am not confident that the UFT isn't going to cave to almost anything the Tweedies and Bloomberg wants.

In fact, this "Individual Teacher Evaluations Must Be Releases To The Public" demand by Bloomberg may be a coordinated effort between the union and the city to make the eventual sell-out look a little less worse than it is.

Remember when Klein and Bloomberg wanted to take away 5 sick days as part of contract negotiations, along with a host of other odious demands, and when the UFT eventual came back with the garbage contract signed they said "Hey, it could have been worse...we saved your sick days!"?

I do.

I wouldn't be surprised if this Bloomberg demand isn't another shuck and jive move to make the eventual sell-out more palatable to the membership.

Either way, you know a very bad evaluation agreement is coming down the pike because Mulgrew said one piece of truth - the mayor isn't interested in helping teachers with their craft, he's interested in "holding their feet to the fire."

That's all this APPR system is about.

We'll show you lazy, entitled teachers.

So what if the new evaluation system adds tests in every subject in every grade, both city and state, simply to grade teachers?

So what if the new evaluation system adds a value-added measurement using those scores that is error-riddled and unstable?

So what if the new evaluation system utilizes a classroom observation rubric with a checklist the size of War and Peace?

So what if the new evaluation system puts the test makers and data crunchers first, the children last?

So what if the new evaluation system strips money and resources from the classroom and gives them over to testing? 

 

So what if the new evaluation system adds a Student Learning Objective process so complex and convoluted that no one can explain it (even though it will amount to 20% of a teacher's evaluation score)?

So what?

This is about showing you lazy, entitled teachers that you no longer have work protections or a reasonable expectation of keeping your job in case your administrator doesn't like the color shirt you're wearing on Tuesday.

This is about being vindictive and punitive.

This is about showing you they mean business.

Oh, and it's about giving the districts the tools they need to turn teaching into a right-to-work profession in which a teacher can be fired at any time for any reason, just like in charter schools.

That's all this is about.

You would think our union would be worried about such a move by the city and the state.

But oh, no - there was Mikey and Dickey and the rest of the state union leadership holding hands with Cuomo, Tisch and King last February when the first nail on this APPR coffin was driven in.

The problem here is not that Bloomberg and Cuomo and the corporate ed deformers are pushing for this stuff.

The problem is that our unions are agreeing to it rather than educating the public about the damages this system will cause to students and public education.