Once Nearly 100%, Teacher Tenure Rate Drops to 58% as Rules Tighten

The era of automatic tenure for teachers in New York City is over, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Wednesday.

Under tougher evaluation guidelines that the city put into effect this year, 58 percent of teachers eligible for tenure received it, the mayor said at a news conference at the Department of Education. A decision on tenure was deferred for 39 percent of eligible teachers, up from 8 percent a year ago. Three percent of eligible teachers were denied tenure outright in both years.

Five years ago, roughly 99 percent of eligible teachers — those who had completed their third year on the job — received tenure, mirroring statistics in school districts around the nation.

While state law outlines the general procedures for awarding tenure to teachers, the details are left to individual districts. “We’ve turned what had been a joke interpretation of the state law,” Mr. Bloomberg said, “to make it something that you have to work hard, earn, and show that you are better than the average bear” to get.

Under the city’s new standards, teachers are rated on a four-point scale as highly effective, effective, developing or ineffective, based on students’ tests scores, classroom observations, feedback from parents, and other factors. (Previously, they were simply rated satisfactory or not.) Principals, who make recommendations on tenure, and supervisors, who make the decisions, were allowed to give tenure only to teachers who were rated effective or better for two consecutive years.

But as city officials predicted that the new policy would improve the quality of the teaching force, the results raised questions about its current state since so many teachers up for tenure were not rated effective.

The teachers’ union, defending the performance of its workers, objected to the way some of the evaluations by administrators were performed, and said it did not find the results, in terms of tenure, credible.

Many teachers, said Michael Mendel, the secretary of the union, the United Federation of Teachers, believed that their principals recommended against tenure for reasons not directly tied to performance.

Mr. Mandel said principals were told by supervisors that if they did not do enough teacher observations, they “didn’t see them enough times to be able to judge.” Principals new to their schools, Mr. Mandel said, were told that because they had been there a year or less, they “didn’t have enough time to make a decision.”

The city said that it had given no such guidance, and defended its system as accurate.

Some teachers complained that the evaluation standards were unclear. At one middle school in Manhattan, for example, teachers were given two weeks to prepare portfolios of students’ work, with little guidance.

One math teacher who has a business background said she had rushed to put together a three-inch binder of student work to submit along with other data, including a number of satisfactory evaluations. But she may have been penalized, she said, because her students’ standardized test scores dropped in her second year. Speaking anonymously because she feared retribution, she said that a decision on tenure for her had been deferred. Only about 15 percent of those who qualified for tenure at her school got it.

“We all decided that if it looks this way again in January,” she said, “we will just all quit and the principal will be left holding the bag.”

The percentage of teachers not granted tenure in the city has been steadily rising. In 2005, less than 1 percent of the roughly 6,250 teachers up for tenure failed to get it. By 2009, 11 percent of teachers up for tenure were passed over. That shift is being driven mostly by teachers who are given an extra year of probation. Outright tenure denials — the equivalent of being dismissed — remain rare. Even as the number of teachers given an extra year of probation leapt to 2,024 this year from 465 in the 2009-10 school year, the number of teachers denied tenure dropped to 151 from 234 in the 2009-10 school year.

Mr. Bloomberg said that the city would help train the teachers who now will work a fourth year without tenure, and that he hoped they would all earn tenure eventually. There is no limit to the number of years a teacher can remain on probation, although last year, one-third of those whose probation had been extended were dismissed.

The mayor rejected the idea that the teachers who were given an extra year to improve were unfit for the classroom. “It’s not that they are bad,” Mr. Bloomberg said of those teachers. “It’s that they are not up to our standards yet.”

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Judge Rules Against Union on City Plan to Close Schools

In a defeat for the city’s teachers’ union, a judge ruled on Thursday that the Education Department could proceed with plans to close 22 schools because of poor performance and place 15 charter schools in the buildings of traditional schools in September.

In his ruling in a lawsuit brought by the union, the United Federation of Teachers, Justice Paul G. Feinman of State Supreme Court wrote that the suit had not met the standard that would be required for the court to immediately stop the city from moving forward. The union failed to clearly prove that the city had acted improperly in its treatment of the closing schools, the judge said, and the city’s plans to locate the charter schools had enough detail to challenge claims that the planning was deficient.

“Because plaintiffs have failed to show a likelihood of success on the merits of their claims,” the judge ruled, “their motion must be denied.”

But Justice Feinman did not dismiss the case entirely, and the union said on Thursday that it planned to move forward with other aspects of the lawsuit. Practically speaking, that means that all the schools will open and close as scheduled in September, even as the court battle continues.

“While Judge Feinman has declined our request for an injunction, his decision does not affect the underlying issues of fairness and due process” that are part of the lawsuit, said Dick Riley, a spokesman for the teachers’ union.

The lawsuit, filed in May, had threatened to alter arrangements for thousands of students at the opening of the school year and to set the stage for a logistical nightmare.

The N.A.A.C.P. had joined with the union in the suit, which among its other claims, said that the city had discriminated against traditional district schools by giving charter schools more time in common spaces like auditoriums and gymnasiums than the traditional schools whose buildings they will share.

Last year, the union and the N.A.A.C.P. prevailed in a similar lawsuit that focused only on school closings, and those schools remained open. The city was then ordered to take steps to improve the process by which it closed schools, and the union argued that those steps had not been taken.

The lawsuit rose to national attention over the last two months, largely because of the N.A.A.C.P.’s involvement. Critics charged that the civil rights organization was on the wrong side of the charter school issue because in New York City, many high-performing charter schools serve mostly black students.

But Hazel N. Dukes, the leader of the New York branch of the N.A.A.C.P., stood her ground, even after she was criticized for accusing a charter school mother of “doing the business of slave masters” by defending the school her daughter attended.

While the lawsuit will continue, the charter school operators and the schools chancellor, Dennis M. Walcott, hailed the decision as a victory. The judge’s reasoning, they said, largely favored the city.

“I am incredibly heartened by the court’s decision tonight,” Mr. Walcott said. “I know this decision will come as great comfort and relief to the thousands of children who have been in limbo, wondering what the outcome of this case would be.”

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Judge Rules Against Union on City Plan to Close Schools

In a defeat for the city’s teachers’ union, a judge ruled on Thursday that the Education Department could proceed with plans to close 22 schools because of poor performance and place 15 charter schools in the buildings of traditional schools in September.

In his ruling in a lawsuit brought by the union, the United Federation of Teachers, Justice Paul G. Feinman of State Supreme Court wrote that the suit had not met the standard that would be required for the court to immediately stop the city from moving forward. The union failed to clearly prove that the city had acted improperly in its treatment of the closing schools, the judge said, and the city’s plans to locate the charter schools had enough detail to challenge claims that the planning was deficient.

“Because plaintiffs have failed to show a likelihood of success on the merits of their claims,” the judge ruled, “their motion must be denied.”

But Justice Feinman did not dismiss the case entirely, and the union said on Thursday that it planned to move forward with other aspects of the lawsuit. Practically speaking, that means that all the schools will open and close as scheduled in September, even as the court battle continues.

“While Judge Feinman has declined our request for an injunction, his decision does not affect the underlying issues of fairness and due process” that are part of the lawsuit, said Dick Riley, a spokesman for the teachers’ union.

The lawsuit, filed in May, had threatened to alter arrangements for thousands of students at the opening of the school year and to set the stage for a logistical nightmare.

The N.A.A.C.P. had joined with the union in the suit, which among its other claims, said that the city had discriminated against traditional district schools by giving charter schools more time in common spaces like auditoriums and gymnasiums than the traditional schools whose buildings they will share.

Last year, the union and the N.A.A.C.P. prevailed in a similar lawsuit that focused only on school closings, and those schools remained open. The city was then ordered to take steps to improve the process by which it closed schools, and the union argued that those steps had not been taken.

The lawsuit rose to national attention over the last two months, largely because of the N.A.A.C.P.’s involvement. Critics charged that the civil rights organization was on the wrong side of the charter school issue because in New York City, many high-performing charter schools serve mostly black students.

But Hazel N. Dukes, the leader of the New York branch of the N.A.A.C.P., stood her ground, even after she was criticized for accusing a charter school mother of “doing the business of slave masters” by defending the school her daughter attended.

While the lawsuit will continue, the charter school operators and the schools chancellor, Dennis M. Walcott, hailed the decision as a victory. The judge’s reasoning, they said, largely favored the city.

“I am incredibly heartened by the court’s decision tonight,” Mr. Walcott said. “I know this decision will come as great comfort and relief to the thousands of children who have been in limbo, wondering what the outcome of this case would be.”

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Christie Seeks to Relax Rules on Who Can Lead Schools

Mr. Christie is proposing that requirements for superintendents be eased in low-performing districts, where at least half the children are failing state tests, saying he wants to open the door to more candidates with strong management and leadership skills.

“It’s important that New Jersey public schools recruit and hire the most experienced, talented managers possible,” Mr. Christie, a Republican, said in a statement. “In large, state-run districts, or in schools that have failed our children for generations, we especially need leaders who know how to manage thousands of employees in districts that spend hundreds of millions in tax dollars.”

His proposals would lower the minimum academic standard for a superintendent from a master’s to a bachelor’s degree, and waive additional requirements, including a 150-hour graduate internship in educational leadership and passing a superintendent’s assessment.

Instead, the state education commissioner would be charged with determining whether a candidate had sufficient work experience to lead a district.

Ms. Black, who ultimately was given a state waiver to serve as chancellor, was a magazine publisher.

Mr. Christie’s proposals are to be presented on Wednesday to the State Board of Education, and, if approved, could take effect as early as June. Newark, the state’s largest school system, is searching for a superintendent.

Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for Mr. Christie, said the proposals were part of the governor’s overall education agenda and were not specifically prompted by New York’s hiring of Ms. Black, or the current search in Newark.

Richard G. Bozza, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, said changes in the rules could lead to the hiring of unprepared administrators and result in greater turnover and less continuity in student progress.

“The irony,” Dr. Bozza said, “is that these are districts where a significant percentage of students do not meet the state standards, and research tells us that it’s important to have a principal or a superintendent who is an instructional leader.”

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