UFT President Michael Mulgrew convened a live webcast Q-and-A on Feb. 10 to paint a clearer picture for members of the governor’s harmful education proposals and the looming state budget negotiations in which the governor wields inordinate power.

Thousands of concerned members watched the webcast from desktop computers and mobile devices.

Mulgrew said Cuomo’s agenda — basing teacher evaluations more heavily on student test scores; increasing the time for teachers to attain due-process rights; offering individual merit pay based on test scores; and putting struggling schools into receivership — amounted to an attempt to resuscitate failed approaches while ignoring the teaching and learning conditions that teachers need to be successful.

What will make a difference, Mulgrew said, are programs and support for at-risk students; smaller class sizes; and the appropriate professional development and curriculum for educators.

“They never want to talk about these things,” he said.

Mulgrew said that teachers will be reluctant to teach high-needs students if their ratings are based on student test scores and great teachers will flee struggling schools, which not coincidentally have the highest concentrations of high-needs students, if a receiver is able to ignore the contract.

“The greatest danger of all is who is going to teach the neediest kids?” he said. “That is the part that makes me so angry.”

Beating back Cuomo “is not going to be easy,” Mulgrew said, because the governor wields great power in the budget process, and if a state budget is not approved by April 1, Cuomo has the prerogative to act through executive order. Tightening the screws further, he said, the governor pledged to withhold school funding if the Legislature doesn’t pass his corporate education reforms.

“Where I come from, that’s called extortion,” Mulgrew said.

Matt Greenawalt of MS 260 in Manhattan, said that some of the newer teachers at his school asked him about the governor’s proposal to extend the probationary period from three to five years and make tenure contingent on receiving five consecutive Effective ratings. “I’m concerned that this will have a detrimental effect on our younger teachers,” Greenawalt said. “How will it not trap teachers but help them to develop?”

Nodding his agreement, Mulgrew said that the governor should instead focus on supporting new teachers, given that 40 percent quit in their first five years.

“They walk out of school and don’t come back,” Mulgrew said. “To me, that’s the bigger problem.”

Watch the webcast »