No deal on teacher evaluations between New York City, union

New York City and its teachers union failed to reach a deal on a teacher evaluation system, making it all but certain the city will miss a midnight deadline and forsake more than $250 million in state money, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Thursday, Reuters reports. The question of how best to evaluate teachers – and how cities can remove failing teachers – has sparked clashes across the country between cities and teachers unions. Just such a disagreement over evaluations was behind last year’s seven-day strike in Chicago. In New York, talks between schools’ Chancellor Dennis Walcott and United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew broke down at about 3 a.m., but officials from both sides delayed any announcement until the afternoon. In dueling press conferences, each side rushed to blame the other: the union accused the mayor of taking a “my way or the highway” approach, while Bloomberg and Walcott said the union had sabotaged the deal…

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NYC schools will use third-party observers in evaluating teachers

New York City Schools recently agreed to begin using third-party observers, known as independent validators, to monitor teachers who received an ineffective rating under the new evaluation system during the previous school year, Yahoo! News reports. The observers, who will be contracted through a company, are to be licensed teachers, former administrators and principals. They will spend three days a year monitoring each teacher, and they will be responsible for approximately 50 to 80 teachers total. If the validator agrees with the administrator’s findings, and a teacher is deemed ineffective for a second year in a row, an expedited termination process of the teacher can begin…

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