An effort to reform the lax state teacher-tenure rules that allow bad-apple educators to stay on the job for years was effectively killed by a low-key politician from Queens.
Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, the chair of the Education Committee, refused to allow the rest of the legislative body to vote on a bill that would have empowered a commission to study how students’ standardized test scores can be used.
The relatively modest commission was a compromise reached last year to settle a bitter feud between school boards, including the New York City Department of Education, and the United Federation of Teachers over how test scores can be factored into tenure evaluations.
“It never existed because the Assembly didn’t do it,” said one Albany insider. “In the budget, they agreed to do it, and afterwards, they don’t necessarily need to live up to their side of the bargain. They just reneged on the other half.”
Nolan is an ally of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and owes her committee appointments to him.
The commission would have three representatives each from both houses of the Legislature and the governor, with a mission to study the use of test scores and report back by Dec. 31, 2009.
Commission findings are often used to set state policy.
“I wanted the commission to be done and was disappointed they didn’t do the commission,” UFT President Randi Weingarten told The Post.
“You can have people who are objective look to see what kind of student learning should be part and parcel of tenure determinations,” she added.
Weingarten, whose lobbying effort last year utterly demolished a provision that would have included the use of test scores in tenure evaluations, said her onslaught stopped when it came to creating the commission.
Likewise, the UFT’s sister organization, New York State United Teachers, which battled to keep test scores and tenure separate, says it backed the commission as a compromise to end Albany’s most divisive education battle in years.
The state Senate last year, then under the control of former Republican Majority Leader Joe Bruno, voted unanimously to empanel a nine-member commission in June of last year.
After it passed the Assembly, the bill was then sent to Nolan’s desk, where it languished.
Although the commission was mandated in the 2008 budget, there is no enforcement mechanism forcing the Legislature to act.
“It really boggles the mind to think that this would be permitted to languish,” said Sen. Stephen Saland (R-Poughkeepsie), who sponsored the bill and was head of the Education Committee.
“This was a compromise that everyone agreed to. The fact that we are still talking about this today and it hasn’t been accomplished doesn’t speak too highly of agreements made and then broken,” he said.
Neither Nolan nor Silver returned repeated requests for comment.
The new Senate majority leader, Malcolm Smith, who voted for the commission last year, is undecided on whether he will introduce a new commission bill.
“We hoped we wouldn’t have to get to the point for the bill to be reintroduced, particularly because it passed unanimously last year,” said Smith spokesman Austin Shafran.
The New York City Department of Education, which was thoroughly beaten by the UFT last year on the entire tenure issue, declined to say if it supports efforts to finally convene a panel to study test-score usage.
“We don’t want to interfere with the Legislature’s prerogative,” said spokesman David Cantor.