OK, so the details now are trickling out, and this new NYC reorganization plan is getting more interesting. Teachers evaluating principals? I like that, especially part of a larger cultural swing in favor of top-to-bottom accountability.

Also worth noting that the plans for toughening teacher tenure are not the slap at the UFT that some have interpreted. If anything, it is a belated acknowledgment that management hasn't been doing its job in terms of evaluating the workforce. The contract doesn't need to be changed*, management just has to start doing what it is already allowed to do. But even though this is the case, "following the contract" will still be called union-busting. Just watch. Hopefully, they will do what they can do under the existing contract and the next mayor/chancellor can take up any necessary changes in the next contract. Bloomberg folded early in the UFT contract negotiations, so he's done.

Since the UFT's charter school is an experiment meant to show how schools can prosper under the contract, this would be a good time for the union to display how it conducts its own evaluations of teachers. I'm not being snide here. This is part of what their charter school is supposed to be about, and I have no doubt they can offer lessons on this. They don't want crappy teachers in their schools either!

** I'm speaking in general terms. Some feel the use of test scores in evaluations, for example, will have to be bargained.

Hysteria Alert I: Looks like star Regional Superintendent Kathy Cashin won't be fired after all, as some Chicken Littles feared after her recent glowing NY Times profile in which she showed her independence. In fact, she fares quite well under the new plans. Another good sign, methinks.

Hysteria Alert II: The Daily News this morning focuses on a trigonometry teacher who fears the new reforms mean he will no longer be able to teach his students by having them measure the distance across the East River using only a ruler and protractor, and riding the Staten Island ferry - knowing only the height of the Statue of Liberty - and calculating the distance between Staten Island and Manhattan. They will now only do test-prep, the teacher fears, because teachers will be judged on how well their students perform on tests.

Good grief.

Testing certainly can creep in on instruction, but I don't think it is a stretch to suggest that kids who can adequately solve the kind of trig problems this guy is talking about are going to do just fine when it comes time to fill in the bubbles. The trig teachers who should be worried are the ones who, themselves, don't understand how to solve these kinds of problems.

UPDATE: AFT Michele weighs in on the tenure issue here. Meanwhile, Ryan Boots at EdSpresso is surprised that The Chalkboard and the AFTies are in agreement that management has historically done a poor job of taking advantage of the opportunity to evaluate teachers under the existing language. I'm standing by that.

I gave a talk last spring before a group of decidedly non-union public school teachers and argued that some of the reasons I felt unions DID have an important role to play in the sector included (1) protecting teachers from massive bureaucracies that often screw up things like paychecks and health coverage, and (2) protecting them from awful managers who don't do their jobs. The message didn't go over entirely well, but I still think that running schools systems with heavy doses of competence and compassion has the potential to make life difficult for teachers unions. Generally speaking, if management was doing its job better, teachers wouldn't care as much about wanting protection.

(And don't forget, the reason we even gave control of the school system to Mayor Bloomberg was, uh, that management sucked. So asking at the end of the mayor's terms whether or not management is any less sucky seems like an "in bounds" question in terms of evaluating what has happened.)

But here is where I think changes to the contract language regarding evaluations would be exciting -- and it wouldn't have to be a slap at the union, by any means. Assuming you were able to get management to actually do all the evaluations they are allowed to do right now before a teacher has tenure, thinking big would allow you to conduct much more sophisticated forms of evaluation that actually raised the bar in terms of the types of performance we recognize. Right now in NYC, you're either "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory."

This is the greatest city in the free world, and yet the best we allow ourselves is "satisfactory" teachers. Why limit ourselves? Shouldn't we be striving to fill our city's classrooms with great teachers? Can't we someday expect principals to not only evaluate teachers, but help them work toward becoming even better at what they do?

But once again, Bloomberg can't do that because he already wasted his chances at the bargaining table.