“While I’m pleased to see the court ruling play out in Long Island educator Sheri Lederman’s favor, I hope this has been a serious wake-up call for the governor and Legislature. It’s clear that the current model of teacher evaluations is an unfair judgement of teachers across our state and country, so why continue to hold it over their heads?

“The threats to withhold funding from districts until they implement the current, but soon to be phased out, system by this fall is unnecessary and distracting from what really matters - the needs of students throughout the state. Commissioner Elia has already unveiled an estimated timeline for reconstruction and implementation of a new set of statewide evaluation standards, so rather than continuing to put pressure on schools to adopt a system that has proven faulty, the Legislature should take immediate action to repeal the current evaluation system in its entirety.”