The city is also on the hook for the plaintiff’s lawyer’s fees, a sum that totaled more than $43 million last year. “It’s a struggle to explain how New York City could spend $38,000 a year per kid with such a poor return, but decisions like this really help people understand where all that money’s going,” said Ken Girardin, a fellow and labor specialist for the conservative government watchdog group Empire Center for Public Policy.
against the former Board of Education, which once ran the city’s public schools before it was disbanded by the state Legislature to give that power to the mayoral-controlled Department of Education. A 2003 trial ended in the city’s favor, but the tests were ruled discriminatory in 2012 by the third Manhattan federal judge to handle the case.
Joshua Sohn, a lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the city knew the certification test was discriminatory and failed to evaluate whether a test taker would be a competent teacher. J.C. Rice The failures resulted in full-time teachers getting demoted to substitutes and prevented aspiring educators from getting hired.