Mayor Bloomberg is convinced the quality of a classroom teacher is the most important factor in educating students, so boosting teacher pay and making instructors more accountable are among the school reforms he’s focused on.
Since taking over the schools, Bloomberg and his handpicked chancellor, Joel Klein, have launched a range of initiatives to improve the quality of teachers in the city’s classrooms.
Those include:
* Hiking teacher salaries by 43 percent. The higher salaries have helped stabilize the work force and curbed the desperate practice of recruiting teachers from overseas.
* Tightening job evaluations to identify struggling teachers and weed out bad ones. The number of teachers and other school staffers receiving unsatisfactory ratings jumped 144 percent — to 1,524 last year from 624 in 2003, new data obtained by The Post reveals.
For the first time, the city is measuring the performance of 55,000 teachers based on how their students do on state math and reading tests — although the teacher assessments can’t be used to circumvent tenure.
* Rewarding good performance by offering school-based merit bonuses to staffers whose students show improvement on standardized English and math tests.
As incentives, the city also offers housing allowances of $15,000 to recruit teachers in difficult areas to staff, like science and math in high-needs schools. And $10,000 bonuses go to more than 200 “lead teachers” who coach other teachers.
* Providing more instructional time for kids. In return for pay hikes, the mayor and teachers union agreed to extend the school day by 37.5 minutes.
* Eliminating the “bumping” or “pass the lemon” provision in the union contract that enabled veteran teachers — including those considered incompetent — to transfer to another school over principals’ objections.
Still, educators worry that the improvements to the teaching force could be imperiled if the state Legislature refuses to extend the law that gives the mayor control of the schools. The law expires June 30.
“The teacher in the classroom matters most,” said Anthony Lombardi, principal of PS 49 in Queens, a proponent of mayoral control.
Bloomberg agrees.
“Teachers in New York City are now paid, for the first time, roughly comparable with what they can get in the suburbs. That’s never been done before,” the mayor has said.
There’s still a pay disparity, but the gap with the suburbs is smaller. Starting pay is $45,000 and tops out at $100,049. The average teacher salary is $70,000. Even United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten — who is trying to loosen mayoral control of the schools — praised Bloomberg for rais ing pay.
“Teacher salaries have in creased, thus improving re cruitment and retention ef forts, and forward- thinking measures such as ‘lead teachers’ and the school wide bonus program have become realities,” Weingar ten said during testimony on school governance.
“These breakthroughs all came under mayoral control,” she added, “and they all have been great for our kids.”
The city has attracted higher-quality teachers, and they are being assigned to high-poverty, low-performing schools. A 2007 study by the Urban Institute and the US Department of Education found that improved teacher qualifications, especially at the poorest schools, appear to have raised student achievement.
Bloomberg and Klein can thank state education officials and former Schools Chancellor Harold Levy for helping pave the way. The state Board of Regents eliminated the practice of providing waivers to thousands of teachers who couldn’t even pass their license exams, forcing many out.
Levy initiated the Teacher Fellows program, which provides alternative teaching certification for career-changers with strong academic backgrounds.