How to grade the teachers?

If every teacher in New York State were superb, and they were all equally superb, the union tenet of "last in, first out" would work wonderfully to decide who should be laid off in times of economic turmoil. We wouldn't need a comprehensive teacher evaluation process.

But our teachers aren't all extraordinary - though many of them are. The economic turmoil is here and we must have a functional system for grading them.

It's the only way we're going to identify the ones who must go, and the only way we're going to find and foster the ones who could, with help, shine. We must replace "last in, first out" with "best in, worst out."

The teachers' unions are aware of how bad state and local finances are, and how much taxpayers have soured on their ever-increasing salaries, generous benefit packages and freedom from workplace evaluations. The recent turmoil over collective bargaining in Wisconsin and Ohio and last week's name-calling between Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and union leaders have only brought matters into sharper focus.

Two bills addressing teachers are being considered in Albany.

The first, introduced by Sen. John Flanagan (R-East Northport) and passed in the Senate, applies only to New York City and is a direct attack on one cornerstone of unionism at a time when the city's teachers are actively engaged in a battle with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has threatened massive layoffs to offset funding cuts. Flanagan's plan would create nine considerations upon which layoffs would be based to replace seniority, currently the only standard.

Most of these, while they should certainly be enforced, are rarities, and such obvious reasons to be laid off that the fact they are even being debated shows how out of whack teacher contracts are. They include being convicted of a serious crime, lacking a permanent position at a school, excessive lateness or absenteeism, substantial allegations of misconduct, not being certified to teach and failure to achieve tenure.

But those are distractions from the criteria in the bill that get to the crux of the ferocious struggle between the New York State United Teachers' union and Bloomberg: Teachers could be laid off for receiving an unsatisfactory rating in the past five years or, for those teaching grades 4-8, ranking in the bottom 30 percent of city teachers in student test-score progress, adjusted for a number of factors.

The best part of this proposal is wording preventing impoverished schools, now the biggest losers in layoffs because of the relative youth of their teachers, from suffering.

But because Flanagan's bill addresses only New York City, and because it merely describes a new way to lay off teachers, but no quickly implementable system for evaluating them, it doesn't create structural improvement. This bill won't pass the Assembly and would likely be vetoed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo if it did.

The second law was introduced by Cuomo last week moments after Flanagan's bill passed in the Senate. It applies statewide, would create a comprehensive evaluation system composed of student test score progress, principal and peer evaluations and a combination of other state and locally mandated criteria.

Cuomo's bill would expand and hasten a process that began last year with the state's application for federal Race to the Top funding. Properly executed, it could eventually ensure bad teachers are purged, so-so ones helped and great ones rewarded.

But this plan won't bring change fast enough. The improvements would take an absolute minimum of four years to actually start moving substandard teachers out, and experience suggests it could be 40 years, or 400.

State aid to schools in New York State is projected to dip $1.5 billion next year and communities are furious over ever-increasing property taxes. Talk of layoffs, though most heated in the city, is also heard on Long Island. In response, unions have abandoned their traditional opposition to any evaluation of teachers and say they support Cuomo's plan, in theory.

The fear is that the union will support the idea of rating teachers and acting on those ratings, but oppose each specific detail of the system as it is proposed. By decrying every individual standard and method as biased, unfair and unworkable, the unions could try to stymie all change while claiming to champion it.

And beyond assessing teachers lies the process for dismissing them, which, as it operates now, can create years of wrangling. Neither bill addresses streamlining this, and neither would do much good unless it did.

It is possible to fairly evaluate teachers, just like members of any other profession. Everyone involved in a school knows which educators combine talent and dedication and which are apathetic or ineffective. Great teachers get great results, which can be measured, seen and felt. Seniority, in and of itself, is no substitute for standards.

A system for evaluating teachers and ending strict seniority-based decisions must begin quickly, and not just because layoffs are threatened. In good times and bad, the worst teachers need to go, the best ones must be celebrated and the ones in the middle helped to improve.

The unions are no longer openly arguing with this. The question is whether they'll stop fighting it.