It’s no surprise the City Council is considering a school whistleblower bill this week. The only surprise is that it has not been universally embraced. The bill protects educators from being harassed, punished, or fired for having the courage to speak up when they see conduct that hurts children.

Anyone interested in accountability, transparency, and integrity should support its passage and urge the mayor to sign it into law.

This bill is especially important now that the school system is embarking on a reorganization that will rely heavily on a computer statistic-like data system to grade schools and principals. That means many principals, as they have more responsibility for student outcomes, will be confronted with making a fundamental choice between the right way and wrong way to make the grade.

Undoubtedly most principals will try to do it the right way, which is to earn it. They will do this by motivating students, encouraging parental involvement, recruiting, retaining, and collaborating with the best available teaching staff and using resources to reduce class size and create a safe, nurturing environment.

The flipside is to make the statistics look good by cooking the books on test scores, cutting corners on providing mandated special education services, or fudging the numbers of safety incidents. Therefore, we need a strong whistleblower law to guard against deeds that may protect the statistics but hurt children.

Here are some prime examples:

Test Scores: Last year, a group of teachers from Susan Wagner High School on Staten Island told us that untenured teachers had been intimidated by school administrators to boost scores on Regents exams, subject tests for all high school students. A reporter got wind of the story and the Department of Education is investigating this case, but even so, teachers there are still being intimidated. A few years ago, a union representative at Kennedy High School was reassigned to one of the temporary reassignment centers, also known as Rubber Rooms, after she told a newspaper about a cheating scandal. She spent months in the reassignment center before being exonerated. Who knows how many teachers at other schools were afraid to come forward?

Special Education: Some of our most vulnerable students don’t get special ed services because it is too expensive and because the grading system puts a premium on having fewer kids in special ed classes. It will only get worse if principals are allowed to divert special ed money for pet projects. Take the recent case at the High School of Arts and Technology. Educators, parents, and students complained privately that many kids were not getting mandated services and administrators were improperly changing students’ Individualized Educational Plan without the required meeting with parents. The educators were reluctant to come forward for fear of retribution, so the United Federation of Teachers blew the whistle and the State Education Department conducted a probe. The department sustained the UFT’s findings and said more than three out of four of the school’s 108 IEPs were not administered correctly. The SED said the IEPs of 10 out of 33 students were changed from more intense, individualized services to a more general, less individualized setting; 32 out of 38 children who were recommended for a full time Collaborative Team Teaching program where there are two teachers in a classroom were receiving only parttime CTT and 37 IEPs were missing or outdated. We can’t allow educators to be afraid in such situations; when they are, children get hurt.

Safety: Everyone wants safe schools, but principals and their higher-ups sometimes harass people for raising the issue. Take the case of a veteran special education teacher, Robyn Harland, at P.S. 233 in Queens who discovered that children and educators were being put in harm’s way because the Department of Education failed to provide equipment, training, and vaccinations to educators at risk of exposure to life-threatening blood-borne pathogens. When a special ed paraprofessional contracted Hepatitis C, Ms. Harland complained to the state. These are the most severely ill and mentally challenged children. Some bite and scratch. Staffers change diapers and wipe noses, often without a chance to wash their hands before turning to another child. The state has since issued numerous citations against the DOE and levied fines totaling more than $1.5 million. What did DOE officials do? They yanked Ms. Harland from the classroom and stuck her in a special ed office.

The list goes on: The former principal at Brooklyn Tech High School handed out “unsatisfactory” ratings to teachers who complained about conditions, including charging corporal punishment against a 4-foot-11-inch female teacher for allegedly manhandling a 6-foot-tall male student and reprimanding a teacher for assigning an “obscene” book — one that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. An assistant principal at the Cobble Hill School of American Studies gave a teacher a “U,” or unsatisfactory, rating after the teacher accused the assistant principal of ordering teachers to change Regents test scores. State investigators concluded the assistant principal tampered with test scores — and the principal covered it up.

This has to stop — and this school whistleblower bill goes a long way toward doing that. Teachers are often students’ eyes and ears. They need to know that if they see something bad happening, they can blow the whistle without having to worry about retribution. They have always needed these protections — but they need them more than ever now.

Ms. Weingarten is president of the United Federation of Teachers.