Opinion

The next Mayor: what teachers want

The city’s schoolteachers are a coveted constituency in this year’s mayor’s race — and rightly so. They are the shoulders upon which the success of a mayor’s education agenda rises or falls.

But recent calls by many candidates to re-litigate the current mayor’s tenure on education are misguided. Yes, we should ask what works and what doesn’t, but the majority of current classroom teachers aren’t as interested in the policies the new mayor will tear down as in the policies he or she will create to meet coming challenges.

Regrettably, we’ve heard little from the candidates on how they’ll support current teachers and recruit new talent to our schools.

This is troubling, since the new mayor will quickly facethree major challenges, each with profound impact on student achievement and the city’s budget — and on classroom teachers, whose input is critical to ensuring that we do right by our city’s students.

Teacher Evaluation: This fall, city schools will begin implementing a new teacher-evaluation system. Done well, it will fundamentally improve how we support and develop more than 75,000 educators. But doing it well requires bold leadership to transform the culture in our schools and to focus all decisions around students’ best interests — plus a well-coordinated training and communication strategy so that the results are used to support teachers.

Teachers know their schools and have a personal stake in making this system work. The next mayor must lead by letting teachers’ voices be heard. If not, expect a massive failure.

Common Core: As the state introduces the more rigorous Common Core standards, the next mayor must pursue policies that help students and teachers succeed.

The standards have already begun phasing in and many teachers have expressed frustration at the lack of clarity around how and what they need to teach.

The good news: In a recent survey, 68 percent of Educators 4 Excellence members said they felt the Common Core will significantly improve existing curricula and their practice.The bad: Only 23 percent said they’d been adequately trained to use and implement the Common Core curricula.

Training has varied from school to school and principal to principal; the next mayor and his or her chosen chancellor must improve consistency across the system. They’ll be most effective at supporting Common Core implementation — and thus dramatically improving classroom instruction — if they embrace teachers’ calls for improved guidance.

Common Core can help New York become the national leader for excellence and equality — if the new mayor trains and empowers teachers to deliver.

Teachers Contract: The next mayor will be responsible for negotiating the first new teachers contract in five years. He or she can choose to reinforce the (clearly broken) status quo, or use the negotiations as a chance to transform the teaching profession into one that recognizes excellence and supports teachers.

In Newark, New Haven and Washington, DC, superintendents and unions have worked together to forge contracts that are catalysts for change and professional growth. New York City needs to embrace the opportunity to broker a contract that prioritizes both our classroom teachers and our students.

This will require the teachers union and mayor to forgo the current top-down, closed-door approach to negotiations. Instead, the new administration should solicit ideas from teachers at the ground level, building the new contract around their concerns.

Over the past few years, the voices of teachers have started to break through, forcing decision-makers to rethink how they approach issues including evaluation, seniority, career pathways and teacher pay. A recent study showed that more New York City educators are staying longer in their jobs — a positive trend that benefits our kids and will continue as long as teachers feel supported and recognized for their successes.

Teachers must play a central role in the next mayor’s education plans to ensure higher achievement.

Securing an endorsement from the union’s leadership, which each of the candidates clearly desires, will win an audience. But putting forth a thoughtful plan to improve teaching is what will win votes and win the future for New York City’s 1.1 million students.

Jonathan Schleifer is executive director of Educators 4 Excellence New York, a teacher-led group with more than 7,000 members in New York.