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Michael Mulgrew is to NYC parents what Gerald Ford was to Big Apple politicians.

You can’t say you want to improve the quality of education for all children — especially our poorest children — and then deny families and taxpayers the information they need to help make this a reality. You can’t say that parent power and parental engagement is critical to student achievement and then argue that school districts shouldn’t provide critical information for such engagement (and decision-making). And you can’t call your organization a union of professionals and yet be unwilling to submit your members to the kind of performance management to which other professions are subjected.

Let’s be clear: The opposition of the American Federation of Teachers’ New York City to (and lawsuit against) the release of Value-Added-based teacher ratings by the New York City Department of Education makes clear that it believes that parents (and taxpayers) don’t really have the right to know which teachers are highly-effective or not — and therefore, no right to demand that their children receive a high-quality education. It doesn’t support assuring that families are kings (and lead decision-makers) in education. It really doesn’t want to take all the steps needed — and use all the tools available — to improve the teaching profession and the quality of education for our kids.  And it (along with his fellow AFT and NEA locals) cannot make an effective case against using Value-Added in teacher evaluations. It’s really that simple.

Now, don’t think for a moment the release of this information will, in itself, spur the revolutionary reform we need in American public education. The problems are to systemic for just one solution to work. But, as New York  City schools Chancellor Joel Klein argues, why wouldn’t we want to elevate high-quality teachers as models of good-to-great teachers and get poor-performing teachers out the classroom?

By the Way: As for folks such as Alexander Russo who insist that the papers who requested this information, let’s make this clear: It is no more unethical than the release of government employee salary data which, for most of us, is a lot more uncomfortable and personal. The ratings don’t reveal any disciplinary data or other information that actually would be sensitive. It is the rating of teacher effectiveness and performance, which, like salary data, should be available to the public so they can make informed decisions. More importantly, as reporters and editorialists, our job is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted — and last I checked, teachers receive benefits and compensation that make them quite comfortable.

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