NEW YORK – New York City’s new teacher evaluation system, designed to make it easier to remove poorly performing teachers, will actually make it more difficult to fire newer instructors.

The city’s old teacher evaluation policy gave the Department of Education authority to quickly remove non-tenured teachers who couldn’t cut it in the classroom, but the new policy now forces administrators to take into account teacher evaluations that aren’t completed until the next school year, NY1.com reports.

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“There’s a slight irony in the new system that makes it more difficult,” NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott told the television station.

“We just don’t want teachers who are poor performing teachers in front of the classroom, plain and simple,” he said. “But the new system does make it a little more difficult, and so we’re aware of that and we’ll work with our staff on it.”

We’re not sure why New York City officials would sign off on an evaluation system that makes their jobs more difficult, and ensures bad teachers remain in the classroom much longer than necessary.

The city has traditionally fired between 200 and 350 probationary teachers each year, which represents about 2 percent of non-tenured NYC teachers, according to news reports.

It’s probably safe to assume that many of those teachers did not meet standards and deserved to go. But now they may be protected by a system that was supposed to be designed to separate the good teachers from the bad.

Warren Richmond, an attorney whose firm represents several Long Island school districts, told the Wall Street Journal he expects the new evaluation rules to result in a lot of legal fights. If school officials want to fire a highly rated non-tenured teacher, for example, it would be much more difficult than before, according to the WSJ.

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“There’s bound to be a tremendous amount of litigation about this in the next year,” Richmond told the WSJ. “It was pretty obvious to me pretty early on that this was going to be a big problem.”

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew acknowledged the new evaluation system essentially prevents administrators from firing teachers during their first year in the system, and said he believes that’s a good thing.

“The law for the first time is telling the Department of Education that they must focus on supporting first-year teachers,” he said, according to the WSJ.

The new system is based on a 2010 state law that requires teachers to be evaluated with up to 60 percent based on classroom observations and up to 40 percent based on student test scores. Teachers are rated in one of four categories – ineffective, developing, effective, and highly effective, the WSJ reports.

“Previously, less than 3 percent of New York City teachers were rated unsatisfactory, with the rest rated satisfactory,” the newspaper reports.

It seems obvious to most logical people that it’s virtually impossible for 97 percent of the city’s teachers to be satisfactory. The new evaluation system was supposed to be designed to provide a more accurate assessment of teacher skills, allowing administrators to take appropriate action for those who fail.

While the new evaluation system may result in more non-tenured teachers hanging onto the jobs longer than they deserve, the true test will be whether the evaluations effectively identify educators – tenured or not – that don’t belong in a classroom.

Time will tell.