Mayor Bloomberg’s directive that principals should use student test scores to determine whether teachers get tenure this year rests on sketchy legal ground, lawyer and Brooklyn College professor David Bloomfield argues in the community section.
What’s more, Bloomberg’s directive could have undesirable unintended consequences, Bloomfield writes:
Rather than hastening their exit, the mayor has created a legal loophole for ineffective teachers to remain in classrooms. What the mayor has actually done is to hand every failing teacher, already on the chopping block based on principals’ prior determinations, a ready argument that his or her tenure was denied on illegal grounds.