With thousands of teacher layoffs coming this sum mer, we’d expect the state’s two top education officials to make sure the losses have the least impact possible on the classroom.
After all, Education Commissioner David Steiner and Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch are the same two people who just last year courageously championed higher learning standards and improved teacher accountability to help New York win $700 million in Race to the Top dollars.
What a difference a year seems to have made.
In the last week, both have been asked to weigh in on proposed changes to the “Last in, first out” seniority law — a law that will require New York City to lay off thousands of new teachers this year, with no regard to their effectiveness in the classroom.
Their answer: A new teacher-evaluation system they’re developing will obviate the need for LIFO reform, they claim. Before state lawmakers, Steiner went as far as to call the issue “moot.”
Tisch and Steiner are either misinformed or they’re trying to punt on an issue that the powerful teachers union wants to go away. Either way, they’re doing New York’s schoolkids and talented teaching corps a terrible disservice.
The impending layoffs could decimate schools across the city and affect all new teachers hired over the last five years. Neighborhoods like the South Bronx that are traditionally hard to staff and the Upper East Side, where schools have hired more teachers recently to meet rising enrollment, would be hit the hardest.
Simply put, this evaluation system is useless in the face of such massive downsizing.
First of all, it won’t be ready for another two years. So it can play absolutely no role in determining who gets laid off this year, when the mayor is predicted to call for thousands of layoffs in today’s budget address
Even if it were ready, it still wouldn’t make a bit of difference — if we had a perfect system for evaluating good teachers and bad teachers, it would be meaningless in a layoff situation unless lawmakers change the LIFO law, which now requires pink slips be issued on the basis of seniority alone. We’d still be left with a lot of below-average teachers; we’d just know for sure how many exceptional educators we’d lost.
More important, Tisch and Steiner are overselling the potential of this system to put a great teacher in every classroom.
What they’re actually developing are guidelines within which local districts and unions must collectively bargain teacher-evaluation measures. In New York City, this means little. The United Federation of Teachers won’t consider implementing a teacher-evaluation system until it gets a new contract.
Which brings us back to why Steiner and Tisch are avoiding an issue that has more potential to affect student achievement today than anything else they’re working on.
We know lawmakers are wary of taking on the sacred cow of teacher-seniority rights — and Steiner and Tisch’s position could certainly provide them the cover they need to avoid the issue this year.
Let’s hope that’s not the case. Too many futures are at risk for them to put the wishes of adults over the needs of kids.
Joe Williams is president of Education Re form Now.
