By LISA FLEISHER And MICHAEL HOWARD SAUL
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday he wanted all parts of public schoolteachers' evaluations to be open for all to see—not restricted to parents, as some in Albany are suggesting.
Mr. Bloomberg, whose schools policies are grounded in competition, said making teacher rankings public as the city did earlier this year will "provide pressure to constantly upgrade."
"We should have all of the data available to everyone," Mr. Bloomberg said.
The mayor's comments come as Albany lawmakers move toward restricting public access to new teacher evaluations, which are much more complex than current evaluations and based partially on measurements of student learning, such as standardized test scores.
As teachers unions insist on keeping the measures private, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said last month that lawmakers could take up the issue as early as this month. Gov. Andrew Cuomo last month said he supports keeping evaluations available to parents but would be open to discussing some shield.
The evaluations, which New York City aims to have in place by September, will play a much bigger role in teachers' careers. Two poor evaluations lower the bar for getting a teacher fired.
Earlier this year, New York City released the data from a pilot program that ranked some teachers based on an analysis of their students' test scores after the city teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers, lost a fight to keep them private. That type of test-based data could form as much as 40% of a teacher's overall evaluation under the new system. Teachers unions have argued the publication of teachers' grades serves nothing but to humiliate the low-ranked teachers and undermines the use of the system for professional development.
The job-performance evaluations of some public workers, such as police officers and firefighters, are shielded under state law. Mr. Bloomberg said Monday the difference is people can't choose which firefighter or police officer to call when they're in distress.
Mr. Bloomberg also dismissed concern about the accuracy of the information in the evaluations. In the city's pilot, about half of teachers didn't check whether the data were based on the right class rosters, and many found errors in the final data that were made public.
"You do have to make a decision based on the quality of the teacher, and the ratings are the best you have," he said. "It would be nice if they were more accurate, it would be nice if there were more of them, it would be nice if lots of different things."
The specter of shielding the evaluations from some portion of the public has brought up a number of philosophical and legal questions. For example, should parents have access to the evaluation of their child's primary teacher, or all teachers in the school? How should parents be given the information—in a closed-door setting inside the school? What's to stop the distribution of the information once it's given to parents?
"Everybody is still trying to figure it out," said Dick Iannuzzi, president of the New York State United Teachers.
