Monday, May 17, 2010

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A dubious teacher deal

Speaking of NY, this NY Post editorial quotes Joel Klein and Joe Williams expressing concern about the recent teacher evaluation deal.  The bill hasn't been passed and the devil will be in the details:

Moreover, scarcely had rookie Education Commissioner David Steiner and Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch made their announcement when knowledgeable insiders began to fret that the deal's real purpose was to apply a patina of "reform" to the ongoing effort to kill charter-school expansion in the state.

No wonder city Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is so concerned.

"If you don't get the charter cap [lifted]," Klein said, this new deal "is at best incomplete -- and could be harmful." Klein said he'd be "adamantly opposed" if "people think this is a way not to raise the cap."

Klein is also right to call the specifics of the deal "problematical" -- because, frankly, there just aren't enough of 'em.

"The more you get inside and look" at the agreement, Klein said, "the more unanswered questions" you find.

Too much, he said, is left to be negotiated with the unions -- and with no Plan B if the parties don't come to terms.

Ostensibly, the evaluation plan is meant to convince Washington that Albany is serious about school reform -- and to give the state a leg up against other states in the so-called Race to the Top effort to bring New York as much as $700 million in federal funds.

Yet the best way to do that is to lift the charter-school cap, now set at 200.

"The cap lift is especially important, because the [teacher-] evaluation proposal, while a sign of progress, is not as ambitious as what we're seeing in other states," says Joe Williams, the director of Democrats for Education Reform.

But while state officials say they're "optimistic" about a deal to raise the cap, a United Federation of Teachers spokesman told The Post that "to speculate . . . is a little dangerous."
 

posted by Whitney Tilson at 12:51 PM

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