Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott warned of deep cuts for teaching staff, music, art and sports programs and larger class sizes if an agreement isn’t reached with the union on a new teacher-evaluation system.
Gov. Cuomo has said the city’s new guidelines must be in place by Jan. 17, but Walcott says he is moving up the deadline to Dec. 21.
If talks fail, the city school system and its 1.1 million students would lose out on 4 percent of state aid, or more than $250 million.
Walcott lambasted the current evaluation system as “inadequate and outdated” at a forum between the Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research yesterday.
“The current system makes it impossible to distinguish great teaching from good, good from fair, and fair from poor,” Walcott said.
State law stipulate that 40 per cent of teachers’ evaluations will be based on student test scores and 60 per cent on principals’ observations.
“We need a new system that accurately aligns teacher practice with student outcomes.”
Union head Michael Mulgrew blamed Mayor Bloomberg and Walcott for “playing politics with our schools.
“Rather than establishing bogus deadlines and threatening parents with the loss of teachers and services, they should be focusing on reaching an agreement that will actually help make the schools better.”
“Making schools better also means the administration needs to provide the things that teachers and students need but which the DOE has largely ignored — curriculum, smaller classes, and an acknowledgment that their job is to actually assist schools and students, rather than just preaching accountability.”
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