Talk about trimming the turkey.
Mayor Bloomberg announced a host of aggressive education-policy initiatives yesterday that seek to boot ineffective teachers from the system and close more failing schools than ever before.
Speaking in Washington, DC, alongside US Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Bloomberg framed the moves as a way to both bolster the state’s application for a pot of $4.35 billion in federal education aid and improve the academic outlook for kids.
Among the controversial proposals he’s pushing, the city will, for the first time, evaluate teachers who are up for tenure this year using student-performance data, despite a state law ratified last year that had appeared to prohibit the practice.
Bloomberg said a new reading of the provision made it clear that it applied only to teachers who started in 2008 or later, while most of the roughly 6,000 teachers up for tenure this year started in 2007.
The law is set to expire in June.
Education officials said that they were similarly moving to use student data in the evaluation of all teachers — not just those up for tenure — but that it might take clearing contractual or legislative hurdles in order to do so.
“We should use all means that we have to evaluate who the better teachers are, promote them, pay them more if we can — and, at the same time, those who aren’t up to standards, give them the remedial work that will make them into great teachers,” said Bloomberg. “And if, after all of that, they can’t cut the mustard, then, I’m sorry, they just can’t work in our school system.”
This past school year, just 130 of the 5,730 teachers up for tenure, or 2.2 percent, were denied, according to city Department of Education data.
The decision on whether an additional 259 teachers, or 4.5 percent of those eligible, deserved tenure was postponed for a year.
Amid a concerted push by the administration to root out sub-par teachers, those numbers were approximately double what they had been back in 2006-07 — when just 66 teachers were denied tenure and 115 had the decision delayed.
But United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew referred to a growing chorus of criticism about the rigor of the state math and reading exams to challenge using them in teacher ratings.
“The new state commissioner of education says the state tests are a broken measurement,” he said. “Are these the tests the mayor wants to use as a tool to evaluate teachers?”
The mayor also said the city would move to change the leadership at or close about 10 percent of its failing schools over the next four years, which would effectively double the rate of “turnarounds” to as many as 40 schools per year.
The city has closed 91 schools for poor performance since 2003, and this year gave 29 schools D or F grades, putting them in jeopardy.
Bloomberg also urged Albany lawmakers and state education officials to approve a list of reforms — including eliminating teacher seniority rights, streamlining teacher removal hearings, and setting a one-year limit on how long educators without classroom assignments can stay on the city’s payroll.
City will roll ahead solo on:
* Using student data to determine whether teachers deserve tenure
* Closing up to 10 percent of the lowest-performing schools in four years
City is asking Albany for help with:
* Eliminating teachers’ seniority rights
* Streamlining removal of bad teachers
* Lifting the charter-school cap
* Cutting teachers without classroom assignments after one year