NY Parents Retain Right to View Teacher Evaluations

Teacher evaluations can continue to be seen by parents who file requests under the Freedom of Information laws after Albany rejects union bid to limit access.

Parents in New York will continue to be able to access teacher evaluation under state Freedom of Information laws. There were fears that a teacher privacy measure would be attached to the budget bill to placate unions already angry over reforms to their pension schemes. However those committed to public accountability for teachers can relax again now:

“There were discussions in terms of seeing if there was a way you could balance the parents’ right to know and some sort of (teacher) privacy rights, but there’s no resolution of that, so it will stay as it is,” state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau) said.

It was unclear if Governor Cuomo would have agreed to any such restrictions of what should be public data, however. A spokesman for the Governor had already indicated that he considered reducing public accountability to be counterproductive to the purpose of teacher evaluations.

Among those who will be relieved that no concessions were made is New York City Mayor Bloomberg:

Earlier in the day, Bloomberg said restricting the information made no sense.

He said there is no reason to have a teacher grading system if parents don’t have access to the information so they can make informed decisions on where to send their kids.

“It would be the height of arrogance on the state . . . to say the parents don’t have a right to the data,” Bloomberg said.

This result is another major failure for the teacher unions, who had been pushing hard for restricted access to the evaluations. However the battle for education reforms that involve making teachers accountable for poor performance is far from won, and more lawsuits and high pressure negotiations are to be expected as unions continue to battle any measure they see as detrimental to their influence or power.

Comments

Joe

March 30, 2012 at 12:25 pm

This is excellent news! Parents should have a full picture of what kind of teachers are teaching their kids. I don’t understand what justifications teachers are using to prevent parents from having this information. They are completely entitled to it.

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- Pierce Buncombe
  
  March 30, 2012 at 1:07 pm
  
  Just curious, Joe. What do you do for a living? Is your performance evaluation publicly available?
  
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- tired teacher
  
  March 30, 2012 at 2:13 pm
  
  no they aren’t. they are not qualified to judge data without knowing or understanding how it is collected, how it is manipulated and how it is flawed.
  
  all this does is throw more incomplete and incorrect information in their hands to create fear and paranoia
  
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Linda Brees

March 30, 2012 at 12:54 pm

Yeah, damn the right to privacy. It is surely outweighed by the rights of parents to peer into their teachers; underwear drawers.

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Jay

March 30, 2012 at 3:25 pm

It makes no real difference….administrators are in on it and what we will end up with is great performance reviews that do not really reflect teacher performance.

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MattW

March 30, 2012 at 5:39 pm

Teachers object to this because the evaluation tools (standardized proficiency tests) are a) inaccurate in measuring students b) irrelevant to the job a teacher does. There are so many factors involved in how a particular student does on a particular testing day. ALMOST ALL of those factors are beyond a teacher’s control. How is that “accountability?” That’s like evaluating a doctor when her patient doesn’t exercise, eats nothing but junk food and smokes three packs a day despite that doctor’s warnings.
Evaluate me on what I do. Am I using the best methods? Do I have classroom management? These are the factors within the teacher’s control and what they should be evaluated on, not whether or not their students had a good night sleep, breakfast, a good kindergarten teacher, a stable homelife and a comfortable seat.

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Kathy

April 5, 2012 at 11:54 am

Yes! The public has a right to see a public schools teacher’s evaluation but it needs to be on the teachers over all performance evaluate on what they do not the students. We should see the teacher’s background like where she/he taught prior to the current school, what grades taught, on- going education class, where they graduated from a bio for the parents. They should use the teachers websites, if provide by there schools I do not what to see data on a teacher that is not what I want to know as a parent. I want to know do they have passion, do they care, and are they improving on new education tools. I feel as a parent we need to build our relationships more with the teachers. We need to break the wall between parents and teachers and work together for one cause the children. I have seen in the schools in my area good teachers leave due to administration, too much BS put on there shoulders that shouldn’t be and most of all the teachers that have passion and teach to teach are treated horrible by their fellow professional. They get pushed out and go to other professions. So we are left with the bottom of the barrel losers that just show up and nothing! We know this to be true just by the statistics, charts and graph and of course the staff development days! I think these reforms are focused on the wrong area it should be on the education system not the teachers and the classroom. Thank you!

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