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Officials say gone are the days when teachers are automatically awarded lifetime job protection after three years. Now principals will have to submit a justification for each candidate and only those who are rated highly in three different categories for two years in a row will get tenure.

"This is a huge change. This is culture shift across our system from one where we accept tenure as the de-facto option to one where we make it the highest reward that the system has to offer its teachers," said John White of the Department of Education.

Principals will now have to rate teachers either highly effective, effective, developing or ineffective in three different categories: how their students do on tests and other work, the quality of instruction delivered in the classroom, and the teacher's general contribution to the school community.

"Not every teacher is the system is going to deserve tenure and certainly not everyone is going to deserve it immediately after that third year. Teachers move at different paces," White said.

Principals can recommend to either deny a teacher tenure or delay the decision and let the teacher try again the next year. And this is one policy change Mayor Michael Bloomberg can do without union approval.

"Under law, they have control of this process. It's always been their process. If they were giving it away as they were claiming, they shouldn't have been giving it away. It's their responsibility to make it a real process," said United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew. "It seems every time they want a headline they come out and start talking about tenure. What I really wish they would do is spend half the time they do talking about tenure coming up with a plan to support teachers because we are still losing 40 percent of the teachers in that first three years."

Chancellor-to-be Cathie Black, after touring a high school in Queens Monday, told NY1 she hasn't seen the new policy yet, but says she wants top teachers.

"I want to have the most effective teachers that we can have in front of our children," said Black. "We know, over and over that that is the key to success. And I think that we should be looking at all ways to loosen tenure if we possibly can."

When asked why Bloomberg didn't overhaul the process in his first or second term, officials say the changes have been in the works for years, and they've already made some progress.

In 2006, less than one percent of eligible teachers were not granted tenure. By last year, a record 11 percent of teachers up for tenure either had it denied or delayed.

This spring, the number of teachers who are denied tenure and then have to leave the system may be much higher.