Albanese, a former teacher, says evaluation plan a good start
Democratic mayoral candidate Sal Albanese, a former public school teacher, said he agreed with the new teacher evaluation system unveiled by New York State Education Commissioner John King on June 1, but he also stated that the Bloomberg Administration and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) should have come up with an agreement on teacher evaluations so that it would not have been necessary for the the state to step in.
“Had the UFT and the mayor put down their swords and talked like adults, we would be discussing a plan crafted by teachers, parents, and administrators, rather than by Albany,” said Albanese, who taught health at John Jay High School in Park Slope more than 30 years ago. “Instead, they bickered and put our school system at the mercy of the state,” he said. Albanese left teaching to go into politics and served as Bay Ridge’s councilman for 16 years.
The failure of the mayor and the UFT to come to an agreement on how the performances of teachers in classrooms would be evaluated forced the state to step in and set up a system, Albanese said. The lack of an agreement also cost the state’s education system an estimated $250 million in federal money, officials said.
Under the evaluation system King announced on Friday, 20 percent of a teacher’s evaluation grade would be determined by how well students perform on standardized tests. Another 20 percent will come from an assessment by a local panel. Sixty percent would come from classroom observations by the teacher’s supervisors. If a teacher receives the lowest grade two years in a row, that teacher would be fired, even if he or she has tenure. Starting in 2014, five percent of the score will come from students surveys.