Metro

Albany scrambles to keep teacher secrets

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The high-stakes political battle over public disclosure of newly required teacher evaluations goes down to the wire today with the possibility that no agreement will be reached, The Post has learned.

Gov. Cuomo is pushing for legislation that would require easy and quick disclosure of all teacher-evaluation information, except the name of the teacher involved. Teachers’ names, along with the evaluations, would be available to parents of students in a teacher’s class.

Legislative leaders, under pressure from the politically powerful teachers union to restrict access to the information further than would occur under Cuomo’s plan, have yet to come up with proposals of their own.

And they aren’t likely to do so before Cuomo’s expected call for a final “leaders meeting’’ on his plan this afternoon.

If an agreement isn’t reached in that meeting, then lawmakers will miss the deadline to introduce a bill before the end of the legislative session.

Time appears to be on the side of full public disclosure of the information or of Gov. Cuomo’s plan.

A New York appeals court ruled last year that a less comprehensive form of teacher evaluations used by New York City’s Department of Education — known as Teacher Data Reports — must be disclosed under the state’s Freedom of Information Law.

That same ruling will likely apply to the new teacher-evaluation system that was approved by law earlier this year for statewide use, experts at the Capitol agree.

That means that no action by the Legislature on Cuomo’s proposal will result in even broader disclosure of the teacher-evaluation information.

“This is a unique situation that reverses the traditional approach of a governor trying to get the Legislature to act,” said a source close to the Legislature.

“In this case, the Legislature, under pressure from the teachers, needs a law to prevent sweeping disclosure of the evaluations, so they have to take Cuomo’s plan, with small restrictions, or they’ll wind up with complete disclosure.”

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Cuomo finds himself between the proverbial rock and a hard place as he attempts to formulate regulations for controversial hydrofracking in the natural-gas-rich Southern Tier section of the state.

Administration insiders say he’s trying to satisfy both sides of the highly polarized debate by granting local communities the right to ban the practice, while authorizing those who want it to go forward.

While such an approach may sound fair and appear to be a smart political compromise, it’s actually based on the false premise that local communities have the technical expertise to know what they’re doing.

The state’s top environmental official, Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joseph Martens, along with President Obama’s US Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lisa Jackson, are both on record as saying that hydrofracking can be conducted safely.