Teachers' union, Regents in court battle

ALBANY -- The state Board of Regents bowed to political pressure from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo when it tried to impose tougher criteria to evaluate teachers, including a greater reliance on student test scores, a lawyer for the state's largest teachers' union charged Tuesday.

The New York State United Teachers and the Regents -- who set education policy in the state -- are battling in court over how much weight should be given to students' standardized test scores when evaluating teachers. Cuomo, meanwhile, has said if the two sides don't reach a settlement by Feb. 16, he'll propose his own teacher-evaluation plan by wrapping it into the state budget.

The outcome will have financial implications for schools. The governor has said that any school district that doesn't implement a new teacher evaluation system by January 2013 will forgo its share of the state funds.

In arguments before a five-judge panel of the state Appellate Division, an NYSUT lawyer said Regents were set to adopt a system in May 2011 that would have counted students' scores on standardized tests as 20 percent of a teacher's evaluation, a calculation set forth in a 2010 law.

But three days before the vote, Cuomo sent the board a letter bashing the law -- and the Regents reversed course, NYSUT lawyer Richard Casagrande told the judges. Regents rewrote the plan to count students' scores as much as 40 percent.

"This collaborative effort was on track until three days before final regulations were to be adopted," Casagrande said, referring to a May 13, 2011, letter from Cuomo to the Regents that was widely reported in the media.

"Governor Cuomo is entitled to great respect. But Regents have a duty to implement the law, not rewrite it," Casagrande said. "It's not hard to see what happened here. The scoring [values] were rewritten" following the governor's letter.

Lawyers for the Regents countered that the board decided the system needed more factors that were easily measured to determine a teachers' effectiveness. "The intent was to make objective student achievement a significant factor," said Robert Goldfarb, a lawyer in the state attorney general's office, which represents the Regents.

Goldfarb said that the new regulations don't mandate that the tests count for 40 percent of a teacher's evaluation, only that they could. He said there are other tests that can be used or school districts can come up with their own measures.

Cuomo's office didn't immediately comment Tuesday.

NYSUT won at the trial-court level. The Appellate Division judges gave no indication how they might lean, although Presiding Judge Thomas Mercure asked whether the crux of the legal fight was "what must be collectively bargained versus what [Regents] may do through regulations."

The court typically takes six to eight weeks to decide a case, -- which means a ruling might not be handed down before the state's April 1 budget deadline.