Judgment day for NY teachers?

Judge not, the saying goes, lest ye be judged.

Yet nearly everyone who earns a paycheck is judged sooner or later. Most of us have a boss who decides if we're doing a good job, and entrepreneurs are subject to the ruthless verdict of their customers.

But thanks to tough unions and compliant legislators, public school teachers are virtually alone in existing beyond meaningful evaluation. That makes it practically impossible to reward good ones, fire bad ones or help those in the middle get better.

Tantalizingly, a new evaluation system for teachers and principals is coming, due to legislation New York adopted last year to get nearly $700 million in federal education funds. This law, passed in Albany with all the ease of a kidney stone, is a testament to the Obama administration's Race to the Top program, designed to push schools to change in a nation with a highly decentralized education system.

Teachers unions have shortsightedly battled evaluation for years, recognizing that it could weaken ironclad job protections and the pernicious seniority system that assures cutbacks always involve the newest teachers rather than the worst. Tragically, the unions' stance has tarnished a noble profession in the eyes of the public and blocked reforms that are needed most in schools serving disadvantaged children, for whom public education is a lifeline.

Last week, the state lurched closer to adopting an evaluation system. But the process says more about the bureaucratic nature of public education than it does about whether any new evaluation plan will succeed. And David M. Steiner's announcement last week that he'll resign as state education commissioner casts further doubt on the project.

The good news, in other words, is that we're getting a system. The bad news is, it might be a useless mess.

What happened is that a special task force on "teacher and principal effectiveness" gave the Board of Regents, which presides over education in this state, a report on how to set up the evaluation system. But the task force seems as much a part of the problem as the solution. Nothing if not inclusive, this panel had 65 members representing teachers, principals, unions, school districts and the Regents themselves.

This is hardly a nimble band of reformers. And its report -- at 113 pages -- could hardly be less definitive. "Because the Task Force members represent diverse constituencies," it says, "the report expresses multiple perspectives on many of the policy options."

Indeed it does, in sentences that are hedged, conditional and seasoned with jargon and pettifoggery. "The Task Force," the report says at one point, "has been working on defining rigor."

Since most of us are judged by our bosses, one would think teachers could be evaluated well enough by school principals, who could in turn be evaluated by superintendents, all perhaps with input from parents (who often know perfectly well which teachers, at least, are capable). But the unions have a horror of this, and so state law requires a more complicated system that may yet prove unworkable, with 60 percent of the evaluation based on locally developed measures which (the task force suggests) might include classroom observation and "teacher self-reflection." These are open to collective bargaining.

Another 20 percent would be based on student improvement from previous years' tests. And 20 percent would be based on "locally selected measures of student achievement." Don't even ask.

The results, such as they are, will be made public, but not necessarily with teacher names attached; the New York City teacher union is fighting disclosure in court and publicly worries that parents will demand that their kids be assigned to top-rated teachers. Imagine!

Despite all this, by the coming school year an evaluation scheme should be in place. So for better or worse, here comes the judge. With our children's future at stake, we can only hope he means business.