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UFT secretary blasts Klein on tenure

Apr 24, 2008 2:16 PM

MICHAEL MENDEL DOE’s claims “close to a lie.”

At the April 14 Panel for Educational Policy meeting, Chancellor Joel Klein also got an earful from UFT Secretary Michael Mendel about his misguided efforts to link tenure to test scores.

Mendel, who was the final speaker of the evening at the open mike, chastised Klein for misrepresenting the union’s position on tenure and teacher evaluation.

“It’s been stated by people in the DOE that we have claimed that principals cannot evaluate teachers” as a result of the now-explicit bar on test scores as a tenure criteria, said Mendel. “That is not a fact; that’s a fiction. It’s even close to a lie.”

Mendel noted that the present rating sheet to evaluate teachers has 23 categories, including whether students are growing academically. Principals are required to observe new teachers 18 times in three years, he also pointed out.

“What we object to is using test scores that were never designed to evaluate teachers for this purpose,” he said.

Mendel contrasted Klein’s zeal for testing with the union’s view of what constitutes a solid education.

“You want Test Prep, Inc., where everybody is teaching to the test because you want merit pay based on test scores and you want to grant tenure based on the tests,” he said. “We are interested in educating the whole child — that includes art, music, social studies, math, science, English, foreign languages and phys ed.”

More than 60 UFT members from Jamaica HS also turned out for the PEP meeting to protest the Department of Education’s plans to close the large Queens high school. A half dozen teachers, including Chapter Leader James Eterno, took the mike to rebuke the chancellor and the DOE for giving up on Jamaica HS, for not giving the school the resources it needs and for cutting programs that help students.