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NYSUT Tries to Stack the Deck

By Editorial Staff
Albany Times Union
November 21, 2011

A “model” teacher evaluation process proposed by New York State United Teachers, after collaborating with several school districts, seems more like a scheme for protecting teachers from being fired regardless of their performance. That’s the problem this process was supposed to change, not perpetuate.

We are pleased to see NYSUT making a proposal here. It is certainly better than having the union and the state fight over teacher evaluations in court, where they last went in a case that didn’t flatter either side. The state had sought to cut corners on the new evaluation process, violating the Legislature’s intent. The union tried to throw up roadblocks to the development of a better system of holding teachers accountable for their performance.

We’ll give NYSUT the benefit of the doubt and assume that, as with most negotiations, this pie-in-the-sky idea is an opening offer. It remains to be seen if NYSUT locals and individual school districts, which ultimately will negotiate these evaluation procedures, find more realistic common ground.

To be sure, NYSUT didn’t come up with this on its own, but developed it in labor-management collaborations with six school districts, including Albany. And the model Teacher Evaluation and Development plan doesn’t sound all bad. It allows for multiple assessments during the year, offering teachers feedback that they can use to work on performance issues. Together with the state’s plan to use students’ performance on several standardized tests, the process could offer a well-rounded evaluation of an educator’s ability and skill.

The NYSUT process, however, gets troubling in its details.

Teachers with poor evaluations would be placed on a one-year intervention plan. If they stay in that status for more than a year, they could be dismissed by their school superintendent.

Moreover, if NYSUT has its way, this evaluation process would be overseen by a panel dominated by teachers appointed by their union’s local president. The evaluations would require a two-thirds majority vote; if that doesn’t occur, the decision would go to the superintendent.

An evaluation process ruled by teachers’ union brothers and sisters? Two years to fire a bad teacher? Two years for the education of dozens of children to be stalled, even harmed, while a system bogs down in dealing with an incompetent teacher?

This evaluation process might work fine for the average teacher who does a good job and could, like most of us, use a tweak here and there. But the new teacher evaluation process in New York, remember, was supposed to fix a clearly broken system in which it is so difficult to fire poor-performing tenured teachers that districts sometimes find it more appealing to keep paying them and tuck them away where they could do no harm.

Protecting its members is, of course, the union’s job. But protecting the integrity of the teaching profession ought to be a big part of that. NYSUT could achieve both those goals by pushing for a fair system, not a stacked deck.

So this is a start, but it’s hardly a final product. NYSUT says it would serve as a model that districts can alter. We suggest that the union and the state work to come up with a better template.

Somewhere between summary judgment and tenured incompetence is a fair, professional, intelligent process, one that lets good teachers flourish, helps struggling ones along and ushers bad ones out the door — before they have time to do serious damage.

THE ISSUE:

A proposal for teacher evaluations would give teachers and their union the upper hand.

THE STAKES:

Isn’t that the problem with the current dysfunctional system?