Metro

Calling all parents

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Mayor Bloomberg went on the warpath yesterday over a watered-down teacher-evaluation plan enacted by Albany that he said is “of no real use” to parents trying to figure out schooling choices for their kids.

But the mayor vowed to get as much of the teacher information out as permitted under the new law by requiring schools to call every parent of all 1.1 million students to tell them how to get the data.

The mayor’s anger over the significant victory achieved by the teachers union in blocking wider public release of the evaluations was evident.

“The union is not there to help our students,” he declared. “Don’t ever think that. The union is there for its members to protect them. When they’re sex offenders, they protect them. When they’re criminals, they protect them. They do anything to protect them. They don’t focus on the students. They just use the students as a ploy.”

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, shot back that the mayor was a sore loser.

“Sometimes, even billionaires don’t get their way,” he said. “The mayor’s statement is a transparent attempt to divert attention from the fact that his attempts to vilify teachers have been frustrated by the governor and the Legislature.”

Bloomberg has close ties to the Senate and has been its chief financial backer, so its acquiescence to the union was especially galling.

Under the plan that was adopted, parents would be able to get the ratings of only their kids’ current teachers — not those who might teach them the next year.

“That’s the biggest flaw here,” said the mayor. “It’s nice to know the ratings of your teacher. What do you do with it? The real answer is you’re already in the middle of the school year, and you can’t move your children then. It’s of no real use.”

Bloomberg had pushed to make the evaluations public to everyone, with a fallback position of at least giving parents an open door to the data. He promised on his weekly early-morning radio show to have schools “call every single parent” to ask if they want the scores sent to them instead of waiting for parents to contact the schools with requests.

Officials conceded afterwards that could take quite a while and, perhaps, extend beyond the mayor’s term. The city and the UFT have yet to agree on the criteria for evaluating teachers as required by Albany.

If there’s no agreement by this coming January, officials said the evaluations wouldn’t be available before the 2014-15 school year.

Bloomberg leaves office on Dec. 31, 2013.

Gov. Cuomo yesterday defended his bill on teacher evaluations, saying the evaluations themselves “are a work in progress — to stereotype someone on the basis of [these], I’d be nervous about that.”