Dear Commons Community,

In response to new legislation limiting the public’s access to teacher evaluation data passed last week by Governor Mario Cuomo and the NYS Assembly and Senate, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has ordered all principals to telephone very student’s parent or guardian (over I million people) to advise them of their rights to  see teacher evaluations.

The New York Daily News reported:

“Blasting the restrictions in a new state law as “very badly flawed,” Mayor Bloomberg on Friday announced an aggressive campaign to alert parents to new teacher ratings. City schools will be required to call every single parent with the ratings for their child’s teacher, Bloomberg announced in his weekly radio show.

“We’ll make sure that every parent gets the information, whether they would have called or not,” he said…The new law will require the state to publicly release the evaluation scores for each teacher but without names attached.”

Bloomberg’s new policy will result in a ton of time and paperwork for already overburden school administrators that will only take them away from other more meaningful educational activities.  It is indicative of how out of touch the Mayor is with running a school system and how bitter he is that he cannot control New York State legislative leaders.

Tony