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Addressing the collapse of teacher evaluation talks for the first time since state education officials criticized his role, Mayor Bloomberg today blamed the teachers union again.

Last week, Bloomberg said he could not accept a teacher evaluation deal because the union wanted only a temporary evaluation system — an objection that State Education Commissioner John King said city officials had not raised earlier in negotiations.

“That comment from the mayor was, from my perspective, a new issue that was raised after they walked away from the table,” King said on Friday.

Speaking this morning at an announcement about an affordable housing project, Bloomberg dialed back his emphasis on the “sunset” issue. The union “was just deliberately trying to throw as many procedural roadblocks up that it would be so impossible to remove a teacher, even if the deal didn’t expire,” he said. (more…)

Mayor Bloomberg blamed new and unacceptable demands by the UFT for ending the possibility of an agreement on teacher evaluations.

During a hastily convened press conference about the collapse of teacher evaluation talks, Mayor Mike Bloomberg rejected the teachers union’s account that he had “torpedoed” a deal.

It was the union’s insertion of new demands at the last moment, including that the evaluation system would expire in 2015, that made an agreement impossible, Bloomberg said.

“If the agreement sunset in two years the whole thing would be a joke,” he said. “Nobody would ever be able to be removed. The law would be gone before the process could finish. It would essentially sabotage the entire agreement.”

The vast majority of evaluation plans — about 90 percent —  that districts across the state have adopted are in effect only for this school year.

“Those deals are shams,” Bloomberg said when asked about them.

Flanked by Chancellor Dennis Walcott and two deputy chancellors who had headed negotiations, Bloomberg said the union also demanded additional arbitration for teachers who want to appeal their ratings and a change to the way evaluations are scored “in a way that would have ensured that fewer teachers were rated ineffective.” (more…)