A school year that began with a choreographed show of harmony between New York City’s schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, and the president of its teachers’ union, Randi Weingarten, ended on Thursday in discord, with the release of a survey in which thousands of the city’s teachers voiced strong disapproval of Mr. Klein’s leadership.
Of more than 61,000 members of the union, the United Federation of Teachers, who responded to the survey, 85 percent disagreed with the statement that the chancellor’s emphasis on testing had improved education in their schools, while 82 percent said they believed Mr. Klein lacked “confidence in the expertise of his educators.”
The union’s survey, which can be found online at uft.org, mimicked one that the Department of Education has distributed to students, parents and teachers for the past two years, with the word “chancellor” substituted for “principal.”
“The teachers in this city are incredibly heroic and incredibly selfless, because they’ve actually put their own views and the fact that they don’t feel that kind of respect from their boss aside to really help kids,” Ms. Weingarten said at a news conference on Thursday at the union’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan. “Could you imagine what the results would be if they felt respected and if the chancellor actually listened to what they were saying?”
At his own news conference hours earlier, Mr. Klein had questioned the survey methodology, noting that the questionnaires had been distributed by the union itself. Later, education officials pointed out that the survey was conducted as tension between the chancellor and the union escalated on issues including budget cuts and the chancellor’s desire to factor student test scores into teacher tenure decisions.
They also suggested that a survey distributed by union chapter leaders might not yield objective results, although union officials said the responses were confidential.
“Other people want to play politics, they can play politics,” Mr. Klein said. “I just know that fundamentally, I’m staying focused on the things that matter, getting the results that matter for our kids, and I’m grateful for the teachers for that.”
Later, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s chief spokesman, Stu Loeser, issued a statement in response to the union survey, saying: “Chancellor Klein’s results speak for themselves.”
“Test scores and graduation rates are up, the achievement gap is narrowing, and our schools are safer than ever,” the statement said, adding that Mr. Klein “has brought accountability to a system that had none.”
Mr. Klein, who spoke on Thursday at the first graduation ceremony of the Bronx Lab School, a high-profile small high school created by the Bloomberg administration, told reporters that it had been a “great year,” and he praised innovations like assigning each school a letter grade. Since Mayor Bloomberg took control of the schools in 2002, he said, it had become “a very different school system,” adding, “There’s an energy and an excitement.”
At union headquarters, Ms. Weingarten conceded that it had been “a good year in terms of academic success for kids.” Indeed, on Monday, she stood by the chancellor’s side to celebrate the striking gains the city’s students had posted on state math and reading exams.
But on Thursday, Ms. Weingarten used the survey to suggest that climbing test scores were not enough. “Let’s focus on educating the whole child, not simply on test results,” she said.
The dueling messages were quite a distance from the political embrace Ms. Weingarten and Mr. Klein shared on the opening day of the school year, at Public School 53 in the Morrisania section of the Bronx, where they stood with the mayor and Eliot Spitzer, who was the governor then, to affirm their commitment to accountability.
As the school and union leaders assessed the year, dozens of students and parents marched to City Hall to protest overcrowding at several Manhattan schools, one issue Mr. Klein must confront in the coming months.
Eleanor Happy, who just finished first grade at Public School 89 in Battery Park City, shook a tambourine and carried a sign that said: “Stop, our school is going to pop!” P.S. 89 is one of several schools in rapidly growing neighborhoods that are bracing for a surge in kindergarten enrollment this fall.
Eleanor, who is 7, said that all in all, it had been “a pretty good year,” noting, “My teacher was a very nice teacher.”
Complaining about overcrowding, too, had its pluses. “I skipped a little bit of class to help give out pins,” she said, her eyes brightening. “I really like helping out.”
