For Immediate Release

UFT members to evaluate Schools Chancellor Joel Klein

Jun 10, 2008 12:00 PM

Using the New York City Department of Education’s Learning Environment survey as a model, the UFT is asking its 100,000 public school educators to evaluate the performance of the chancellor and the Department of Education. The survey will be the culmination of a concerted effort by the UFT this year to address the issue of accountability in the city public school system, including a new school accountability method proposed by UFT President Randi Weingarten earlier this year.

“When the DOE issued the school progress reports based on the Learning Environment Surveys it conducted in 2007, we in the union noted that a major component was lacking in them, namely a system for evaluating the chancellor and Tweed and holding them accountable just as schools, principals and teachers were being held accountable,” Weingarten said.

“Accountability flows in two directions – from the school up to the Department of Education and from the department back down to the school. All parties involved in the education process – teachers, support staff, parents and school administrators – are responsible for the achievement of New York City’s public school students,” she continued. “For all of us to fulfill our responsibilities to ensure that students have the opportunity to learn, it is both logical and essential that just as we are evaluated, the performance of the Department of Education and our schools chancellor be evaluated as well. This is how one creates a system that embraces the concept of 360 degrees of accountability.

“Our hope is that the department will integrate this survey into its progress reports and evaluation program and provide the same opportunity to parents in future years. This would provide an essential missing instrument to ensure that everyone responsible for the success of our students is evaluated.

“The UFT is taking great pains to be objective and unbiased in this evaluation,” she said, adding, “We are not giving the membership any suggestions or pointers on how to respond to the survey. We want this to be a completely honest and candid evaluation of the work of the Chancellor and the Department of Education for schools, students and educators.”

Weingarten said the member survey does not evaluate school-level administrators such as principals.

The evaluation will take place over the next two weeks, and it is comprised of 15 questions.

The surveys are being distributed to every school in the system. Each educator’s survey will be placed in a sealed envelope with no identification markers in order to maintain confidentiality. The surveys will be delivered to the American Arbitration Association for tabulation of the results.

Once the results are in, they will be published in the New York Teacher and will be available on the UFT Web site.