Moving education forward

Michael Mulgrew, UFT President The UFT has been working for two years to create a new evaluation system because we know that a new system, done right, can support teachers and make them better classroom instructors. On Feb. 16 we took another significant step in this long journey when we reached an agreement in Albany on an appeals process for teacher ratings that includes third-party, independent validation.

We do not have a systemwide evaluation agreement in place for the city, but the negotiation of the appeals process is a crucial piece that will ensure fairness for UFT members, which is one of the things we have insisted on throughout this process.

We would not have the appeals process agreement without the intervention of the governor, whose help we sought out and who stepped in with the same determination to move education forward that the UFT has had throughout this process.

With the governor’s help, we have won from the Department of Education what it swore it would never do when it broke off negotiations with us at the end of December: a third-party appeals process and an independent validator with the discretion to agree or disagree on principals’ decisions. [See “Deal reached on independent teacher ratings appeals” for details on how the process will work.]

This appeals process meets one of the three criteria for an evaluation system that we have been fighting for. A new system must: 1. help teachers continually develop throughout their careers so that we can improve classroom education; 2. identify teachers who are struggling, provide them tools to address their weakness, and if they do not improve, they leave the profession; and 3. do this in a way that is fair.

But the appeals process will not go into effect — and the hope for the educational gains of a new system cannot be realized — unless and until Mayor Bloomberg negotiates agreements with the UFT for an overall teacher evaluation system or for schools eligible for School Improvement Grants.

And it is here that we are encountering our biggest road block. I do not know if we will get a systemwide agreement. It is not clear that Bloomberg has the motivation to help create a system that will not be fully implemented until after he leaves office. All indications are that he would just rather close more schools.

In January, the mayor abruptly halted the work the DOE and the UFT were doing together with the 33 restart and transformation schools and announced that instead, he would close these schools and remove half their staffs. He cited as the reason for this destructive about-face the inability to come to an agreement with the union about the appeals process. Yet now his excuse has been taken away.

These schools — thousands of students and hundreds of teachers and staff — are victims of the only strategy that the mayor and the DOE have for education, which is closing schools. They include schools that according to the DOE’s own cherished data are doing well. They are not “failing” schools by anyone’s measures. It seems as though closing schools has become an end in itself for the mayor. And under the law, the mayor has the right to close every single school in New York City, and that might be the only thing that could ever make him happy.

He cannot envision a positive agenda for improving education: providing resources that schools need, especially schools educating big populations of high-needs learners; focusing on curriculum and instruction; helping teachers develop and retaining good teachers; working with parents and communities to address the many needs that children come to school with every day. Instead, he is fixated on getting rid of teachers and closing schools. It is an agenda of destruction, not instruction.

Little wonder that, according to a Quinnipiac poll this month, public school parents overwhelmingly do not trust the mayor to do right by their children. More than three times as many parents said they trust the UFT to do what’s best for children as compared to those who trust the mayor.

That’s because parents see what we do. They see UFT members working hard every day to provide the best education possible to their students — whether that’s in the classroom, after school, in the community, in Albany or at City Hall. They see us fighting for the kids the DOE is willing to just abandon when they close schools, or see us fighting for a new evaluation system. They see us rallying or testifying at the City Council. We do whatever it takes, no matter what the obstacles, to keep moving education forward.