The teachers union called for an independent audit of the Department of Education’s teacher-performance ratings yesterday — the latest salvo in its battle to keep the information secret.
“The Department of Education has been incompetently managing this project,” said United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew, who compared the teacher-ranking system to the city’s scandal-plagued CityTime digital-payroll project.
He said the teacher assessments — which cost $5.5 million and are based on a formula that takes into consideration dozens of factors, from students’ test scores to their families’ incomes — are error-ridden.
Mulgrew charged that the formula, created by private consultants, is flawed and city officials did not monitor its development.
“Like so many other of these contracts put out there, they do not watch it,” he said. “After what I found out about it, I’m going to call for an investigation . . . Somebody’s not watching the store.”
The UFT sued the DOE last month after it agreed to release the scores of 12,000 elementary-school teachers to news organizations, including The Post, which requested the data under the state’s Freedom of Information Law.
Teachers say the rankings are unreliable and will unfairly subject them to criticism.
“I am especially worried that it might be released to the public, because this is complete misinformation,” said Pamela Flanagan, a math and science teacher at Tompkins Square Middle School, who said her own assessment included students and subjects she never taught.
“Giving [parents] a report that has me teaching the wrong subject, the wrong students and the wrong kind of classroom is not going to help them to understand anything about how effective I am as a teacher,” she said.
The DOE declined to comment.
Last week, federal prosecutors charged six people with defrauding the city’s digital-timesheet program of at least $80 million right under the noses of clueless officials.