UFT President Michael Mulgrew responds to court ruling on Teacher Data Reports

The state court’s Appellate Division on Nov. 15 denied the UFT’s motion for leave to appeal the court’s prior ruling on the public release of Teacher Data Reports. The Appellate Division — ignoring arguments that the data reports have unacceptably huge margins of error and that they are fundamentally inaccurate measures of educational effectiveness — upheld on Aug. 25 a lower-court ruling that would have allowed the Department of Education to release individual Teacher Data Reports to city newspapers.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew issued the following statement in response:

“Given the harm that could be done by the release of these misleading and inaccurate reports, we will be filing a motion directly with the New York State Court of Appeals seeking leave to appeal the Appellate Division’s decision in this case.

“A stay remains in effect for the moment, meaning that the reports will not be released pending the UFT’s filing of a motion for leave to appeal.”