Letters to the Editor
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‘Right Way To Grade Teachers’
In “Right Way To Grade Teachers,” the president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, rewrites and mischaracterizes history in defending a bill that is intended to categorically preclude any consideration of increases or decreases in — or any use whatsoever of — student test scores in granting teacher tenure [Oped, “Right Way To Grade Teachers,” April 7, 2008].
Ms. Weingarten describes the tenure law that “the legislature and the governor agreed [to] last year” as “eminently reasonable.” Yet she is moving heaven and earth in Albany to fundamentally change the law. She contends that “the criteria for judging a teacher’s performance should be rigorous and multifaceted involving multiple measures of student learning.” But somehow evidence of student learning is not one of these measures.
Ms. Weingarten also argues that the shockingly low tenure denial rate (less than 2%) stems from masses of teachers who leave the system voluntarily because they “recognize that they are not suited for the job.” She apparently forgot her own testimony before the New York City Council just two months ago. At the time, Ms. Weingarten said teacher attrition in the first three years was due to myriad factors having nothing at all to do with competence. Indeed, her whole point was that such attrition denied students high quality teachers.
Such inconsistencies reveal the real disagreement between us. We believe we owe it to our children to make sure that we grant the privilege of lifetime job security only to educators who have proven track records of success with their students, as measured by how much students are actually learning. In the UFT’s view, holding teachers responsible for what their students learn is flatly out of bounds. That position, which sacrifices the interest of students to the interest of adults, should be soundly rejected in Albany.
JOEL KLEIN
Chancellor
Department of Education
New York City
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