Leo Casey, a leader of the NY teachers’ union, says that the use of test score data to evaluate NY city public school teachers is

… a line in the sand for the UFT.

This echoes the statement of UFT president Randi Weingarten when she was quoted in the NY Times yesterday, saying,

If one permitted this, it would be one of the worst decisions of my professional life.

Some members of the UFT raised criticisms of the leadership, particularly because the Times reported that the union leadership had been aware of the secret use of test score data to evaluate teachers.

But Casey, writing in Edwize, denied that report, stating,

The DoE told us that they wanted to do an “academic study” on value added models over the summer. Randi made it clear from the very first time this was raised in a meeting that we would be in total opposition to the use of data from that study to evaluate teachers. When they told us how they wanted to do the study, we raised the sort of objections I discussed above, to no avail. The spectre of using this study for teacher evaluations and tenure was raised by the DoE first last week, in a speech the deputy Chancellor gave in Washington DC.

One can’t exaggerate the importance of this fight in NY for teachers all across the country. This is not about what one union local negotiates for it’s members. If Chancellor Klein gets away with this in NY, no teacher is safe.

Says Casey,

The DoE has no contractual or legal authority to use test score data in the evaluation of teachers, and the UFT will oppose it with all the means at our disposal.

I’m right behind you, brother.