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By WNYC's Brain Zumhagen

Courtesy of the Governor's office

Governor Andrew Cuomo continues to defend his plan to deny school districts additional state funding unless they put in place a method for evaluating teachers.

Speaking to reporters in Yonkers, the governor pointed out that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has already threatened to withhold $1 billion in combined Race to the Top and other federal dollars from New York unless the evaluations are established. Cuomo said he can understand that teachers' unions have concerns about the evaluation system.

"I also understand that the students deserve it," the governor added. "The state said they were going to do it two years ago. The unions said they were going to do it two years ago. They haven't done it."

"The state can't afford to lose $1 billion in federal funds," Cuomo said.

The governor was in Yonkers Wednesday to present his budget plan to an audience of city officials and local high school students.

Meanwhile in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters that he remains optimistic that his administration can reach a deal on evaluations with the United Federation of Teachers.

A spokesman for the UTF said the union's president, Michael Mulgrew, hopes the governor's comments will spur Mayor Bloomberg to return to the bargaining table.

edward reed / nyc.gov

Mayor Bloomberg’s office released another salvo in its teacher performance battle yesterday, when it announced more than a third of eligible teachers this year had not receive tenure thanks to its stricter policy. The tougher standards were announced by the mayor back in 2010, as a move away from the near-universal tenure approval teachers have received in the past, according to the mayor’s office. During the 2006-7 school year 95 percent of teachers eligible for tenure received. This year the number of teachers receiving tenure was down to 58 percent.

“Our schools really embraced the idea that lifetime tenure should be an honor reserved for our most effective teachers, not granted by default,” schools chancellor Dennis Walcott said in a statement. “I am confident this system will benefit both our teachers, through regular feedback and opportunities to improve, and our kids, who all deserve a high-quality teacher in the classroom.”

The Manhattan Institute’s education expert Marcus Winters called the announcement a “very large step forward” for education reform in New York City. “Tenure’s been given as a rubber stamp,” he said. “This shows a real movement in the right direction.”

Teachers are eligible for tenure after three years on the job. A large number of those eligible this year—39 percent—had the decision on tenure tabled. Winters saw this as an encouraging sign. “Just because a teacher hasn’t shown themselves worthy in the first three years doesn’t mean they’re not going to eventually. Drawing out that process over a long period of time makes a lot of sense.”

David Bloomfield, an education professor with CUNY, insisted the announcement was little more than smoke and mirrors. He pointed to the fact that only a fraction of teacher’s were actually flat-out denied tenure, which to him indicated the overall action to be an essentially low-stakes political maneuver.

“All that is not to say that denials or extensions are a bad thing, it's just that the Mayor's announcement is more sizzle than steak,” Bloomfield said in an email. He said the tenure argument doesn’t get to the heart of the matter, which is retaining high-quality teachers. He pointed to the teachers passed up for tenure and noted that no reason is given as to why they were passed up.

The United Federation of Teachers secretary Michael Mendel referenced the letter from UFT to DOE below, calling into question the methodology of applied by the Department of Education. "We have serious questions about how the DOE reached these conclusions and concerns that they failed to base these decisions on pedagogy or job performance,” Mendel said in a statement.

Walcott Letter

A state judge has given the city the green light to close 22 failing schools, and let 15 charter schools share space with regular schools when he declined to grant an injunction requested by the teachers union and the NAACP.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said as many as 70,000 students could be in limbo about what schools they'll attend this fall because of a lawsuit filed by the NAACP and the teachers union.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, discusses the messages to educators in both the State of the Union address and Mayor Bloomberg's State of the City.

Three of eleven teachers who were fired from a public charter school in Queens this summer will be allowed to return to their jobs in the fall.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew with delegates endorsing John Liu in the Democratic primary for city comptroller.

Today's Daily News called for a time limit on how long teachers can stay in the excess pool.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew says it's unfair to blame the teachers for an agreement negotiated by the union and by the city. He claims most of the teachers wound up in the pool because their schools were phased out or closed for poor performance, just as their scores started to rise.

'And now because a school closed or was phased down, we're stuck in this position and we're being disparaged in the public by the person we did a good job for. And that gets them quite angry and I understand that anger and I feel it myself,' he told WNYC after endorsing John Liu in the Democratic Primary for City Comptroller.

But the Department of Education says that's not the full story. Spokeswoman Ann Forte says only a few hundred teachers wound up in the Absent Teacher Reserve, or ATR, because their schools were shut. Forte says 1250 of the 2000 teachers in the pool were excessed this summer. And between 850-900 of those were cut for budget reasons. For example, principals who have to reduce the number of English or Social Studies teachers because of declining enrollment, or budget cuts, must let go of the least senior teachers first.