By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org
    
NEW YORK – New York City’s teacher union president, Michael Mulgrew, likes to pose as a tough labor leader who is the de facto leader of the nation’s largest school system.
     
But that image is in tatters after state education officials took the unprecedented step of bypassing the teachers union and imposing a tough new evaluation system on New York City educators.
     
State Education Commissioner John King announced the new policy on Saturday.
    
Under the new system, each teacher’s classroom performance will be ranked on a four-tier scale: highly effective, effective, developing or ineffective, reports New York Daily News. 
     
Teachers who receive two “ineffective” ratings could be dismissed for incompetence, the Daily News reports.
    
Sixty percent of a teacher’s rating will be based on principal observations –  including at least one unannounced visit – and 40 percent will be linked to student test scores and other school-based measures – including student surveys, the news site reports.
     
The decision is a huge setback for Mulgrew’s union, the United Federation of Teachers, which had resisted efforts to link teacher job reviews to student test scores. Until Saturday’s announcement, the UFT had managed to block a new evaluation system from taking effect. That intransigence forced the district to miss out on $260 million in extra aid, the New York Post.
     
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has spent much of his final year in office sparring with the union, praised the decision.
    
“ … The UFT has fought a rigorous evaluation system nearly every step of the way, and they’ve done it for years, but yesterday Commissioner John King issued a decision that was a huge rebuff to the UFT’s obstructionism and a great victory for students,” Bloomberg said, according to the New York Post.
     
The new evaluation system will remain in place for four years, and will only change if a new plan is designed that meets state approval, the Post reports.