Teacher Evaluation Muddle 

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is at it again. The man who has been frustrated at the bargaining table when Mayor Bloomberg has signed off on deals with the United Federation of Teachers that did not produce as many work-rule changes as he wanted has attempted to bypass the union by using student test-data to determine whether Teachers are granted tenure.

The Chancellor's fingerprints were all over the leak of the story to the New York Times last week, in which Department of Education officials said they wouldn't use that data in the current school year but were considering implementing it for evaluations in 2009.

UFT President Randi Weingarten criticized the move as violating DOE's obligation to negotiate the change in policy, while also calling it "educationally unsound" and "statistically flawed."

Our guess is that the matter may be decided based on whether DOE's unilateral implementation of the new criteria amounts to an improper labor practice because of the failure to negotiate. But there also are enough questions about the methodology to be used in the evaluations to bear out Ms. Weingarten's philosophical objections.

The most obvious one revolves around the fact that the standardized tests that would be used are given midway through the school year - January in the case of the English test, March for the math exam. This means that in measuring student progress, school officials would have to consider the impact of two Teachers: the one who taught the student from either February or April through June the previous year, and the one who took over from September to either January or March in the current one.

DOE officials have come up with a split formula to try to gauge which Teacher is responsible for what, based on how much time the student spent with each. They claim they are making allowances for the impact of summer school, Teacher experience, class-size and poverty.

But the UFT counters that the system is not accounting for whether students are receiving tutoring or taking advantage of after-school programs. Union Vice President Leo Casey said of the evaluation data, "This stuff is so seriously flawed that we can't conceive of a productive use that it can be put to."

Just as importantly, making student performance on those tests a key criterion in deciding whether Teachers are given tenure could further skew an education process that already places too much emphasis on those test scores to the detriment of real learning. The UFT questions whether Teachers in fourth and fifth grade won't neglect subjects like science and social studies in order to focus more heavily on the two areas on which Teachers' job security would hinge.

The program has been under discussion for a while - Ms. Weingarten said union officials were told of the data collection last summer, and that when she objected, she was assured that the findings would not be used for making evaluations tied to tenure. DOE appears to have decided to temporarily mollify her and then plow ahead with the program in a pilot form, hoping to gain editorial board approval that would give it too much momentum for the UFT to halt it without seeming obstructionist.

But whatever political points Mr. Klein may be able to rack up with this maneuvering, it's tough to see how the planned system would offer educational benefits.