NY’s Teacher-Rating Charade

Teachersunion boss Mike Mulgrew admitted a while back that he’d “gummed up the works” to block a new rating system meant to get rid of lousy teachers. This time, the state Board of Regents did the job for him.

Nudged by Gov. Cuomo, lawmakers this year told the board to devise another system, after Mulgrew & Co. made sure the previous gorounds failed. The plan was to go into effect by Nov. 15.

But the Regents decided that date might impose “hardship,” so they’ll grant extensions. New plans may not take hold in some districts until 20162017 — or later. What a farce. Five years back, the feds bribed New York to beef up its teacherevaluation system. Take One proved a sham, so Cuomo vowed to craft a new one to “make New York a national leader in holding teachers accountable.”

Oops: That system also flopped, deeming more than nine in 10 teachers “effective” or “highly effective,” even as only 40 percent of lowergrade kids passed standardized tests.

So the Regents this year devised yet another scheme. But even if Round Three works, it can’t prompt the firing of a single rotten teacher ’til it’s in place at least two years.

Any kid who entered kindergarten when the first plan began in 2010 will be in 9th or 10th grade when (if ) the first teachers are held accountable in 2019 or 2020. A lot of good it’ll do those children. There’s a system to hold teachers accountable now, one readily available and sure to work: It’s called “competition” — private schools, religious schools, charters, whatever.

Raising (or scrapping) the cap on charters and passing the Education Investment Tax Credit could boost such competition. If Albany truly wants school accountability, it will pass those measures this year.