Bloomberg to Blame in Teacher Evaluation Mess

Mayor Bloomberg is the cause of the $250 million loss and the ongoing teacher evaluation mess that Governor Cuomo is attempting to clean up.

Cuomo's Proposal

Last week, Governor Cuomo proposed a solution to the hundreds of millions of dollars of lost educational funding created by the lack of a teacher evaluation program in NYC. Cuomo has proposed that New York State be empowered to impose a teacher evaluation system on NYC if NYC cannot adopt such a program by June 1.

In New York State, every community must have a teacher evaluation system or forfeit its New York State education funding. Our city has already lost $250 million in state education funding, and there is another nearly $500 million that our city will lose if there is no teacher evaluation system by September of this year.

What Went Wrong

Why is our education budget being undermined by lost funds? The answer is that we elected the wrong mayor.

Mayor Bloomberg did not want to reach agreement with the teachers' union on the evaluation system.

In a statement that the union president said was “painful to make,” Mulgrew said UFT and Department of Education negotiators had reached a deal overnight on how to structure and execute new teacher evaluations. But when they presented their agreement to Mayor Bloomberg this morning, Mulgrew said, the mayor rejected it.

 Bloomberg, of course, has a different story, but he has admitted that he rejected the deal that the DOE and the teachers' union initially found acceptable.

Now, we are speeding toward a billion dollars of losses from the Mayor's unwillingness to compromise for the benefit of our city's children. Let us hope that the Governor is successful in fixing the problem by gaining control of it and balanced in the teacher evaluation system he imposes.