Gov. Cuomo was quick to take credit last winter for finding a way — finally — to hold bad teachers accountable.
Maybe too quick.
And now he seems to be hoping no one will remember.
In February, recall, Cuomo came up with a new system to grade teachers, and he was roundly lauded for getting all the parties, the teachers unions included, to sign on.
Trouble is, his system left the details to be worked out by local school and union officials in some 700 districts statewide.
Which many of the unions have no intention of doing.
Indeed, according to the latest report from the State Education Department, only 214 of the districts have submitted plans that have been OK’d by their unions; nearly 500 (and, notably, New York City, as well) are still haggling over fine print — though the deadline was July 1.
Who knows if they’ll ever come to terms?
Meanwhile, a recent court ruling against the city’s plan to close 24 failing schools no doubt only hardened union resistance to a deal. (The city sought to close the schools after union intransigence on a teacher-grading plan left it no other choice.)
Uh, we hate to say we told you so, but . . .
February’s agreement “puts in place a ground-breaking” teacher-evaluation system “that will put students first and make New York a national leader in holding teachers accountable,” the gov boasted at the time.
He said the plan would “transform” the state’s schools — and he applauded the parties for “working together and putting the needs of students ahead of politics.”
Cuomo even had an ace up his sleeve to ensure that districts put his plan into effect fast: If they didn’t, they’d lose possibly hundreds of millions of dollars in state aid.
But there was a flaw: Cuomo’s reform, which was meant to fix a 2010 teacher-evaluation law he called “unworkable by design,” was left, well . . . potentially “unworkable.” (By . . . design?)
As Cuomo himself had said, the old law “protected the teachers union at the expense of the students.”
How? By letting the unions veto any plan, no matter how reasonable, that they feared had teeth.
And veto they did.
But the new law did the same thing.
You can’t blame the unions, of course: After all, they’re not in business to permit their members to be “held accountable.”
But that’s why we said last winter that “as long as Cuomo leaves the union with a veto over reforms, there’ll never be any — even if districts lose state aid.”
Today, Cuomo doesn’t seem fazed by the paltry progress.
Fine. There’s still time to prove his plan will work.
But if it doesn’t, the job title he gave himself in January — “student lobbyist” — will turn out to have been just another sham.