GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

The city will exploit every letter of a new law that sets out exactly who can see the results of teachers’ annual evaluations, Mayor Bloomberg announced today.

The announcement came less than 24 hours after legislators in Albany signed off on a compromise bill meant to shield the results of new teacher evaluations from public scrutiny. The legislation, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo introduced, blocks the results of new teacher evaluations from being subject to Freedom of Information Law requests, preventing news organizations from obtaining them. But it created a process for parents to request the evaluation results of their children’s current teachers.

Bloomberg opposed the bill, arguing that the public has a right to know how individual teachers perform and that the request process was so onerous that few parents would be able to use it.

So during his weekly radio address this morning, Bloomberg announced that city schools will bring the process to the parents.

“We are going to have our schools call every single parent,” he said. “We will tell [them],’You are entitled to this information and if you want it say yes right now and we will send it to you.’” (more…)