Striking bus drivers are making it hard for kids to get to school, even resorting to thuggery to stop them — but why even go, when they’re bound to find lousy teachers waiting for them when they get there?
Too often, that’s the case in this city; ineffective teachers can’t easily be fired. Yesterday, the United Federation of Teachers froze that sorry status quo by nixing any reasonable system for rating teachers and firing those who can’t cut it.
Not even the lure of $450 million in state and federal funds, which Gov. Cuomo assured folks would seal the deal, could buy the union’s cooperation.
We refer the governor to our words from one year ago: “As long as Cuomo leaves the union with a veto over reforms,” we said, “there’ll never be any — even if districts lose state aid.”
Alas, he ignored our warning and left the unions veto power. Sure enough, yesterday our prediction bore out, sad as it is to note. New York’s kids will pay the price.
At the time, recall, Cuomo was trying to fix a 2010 teacher-evaluation law that he rightly called “unworkable by design.”
The law, he said, “protected the teachers union at the expense of the students.”
Yet then he pushed a new law that is just as unworkable.The failure of the city and the UFT to come to terms by yesterday — Cuomo’s deadline — shows just how flawed it is.
Of course, the UFT was ready to accept a sham evaluation system. For example, it wanted any plan to be scrapped after two years. The catch: It takes at least that long to get rid of poor teachers, so no teacher could’ve been removed in time. Great.
Kudos to Mayor Bloomberg for rejecting the charade, even if it cost nearly half a billion in state and local funds.
It’s futile to blame the UFT. After all, the union isn’t in business to serve students; its job is to protect teachers, even the bad ones. The real culprit here is the law.
We have two questions. First: Will Cuomo heed our warning now, and push legislation that holds teachers accountable, even over union objections?
Second: Will Bloomberg’s successor stand as firmly he has? (UFT boss Michael Mulgrew says, ominously, that he’s only too happy to wait for the next administration to take office “in 11 months.”)
Meanwhile, 1.1 million city schoolkids will be counting on Cuomo & Co. — that is, if the kids can manage to make it to school.