To many teachers, Mayor Bloomberg has blamed the various ills of students on them. Not the dysfunctional parents, not the poverty or community, and certainly not the waste of money by the bloated Tweed Bureaucracy on high priced consultants and useless technology. His blaming the teachers was apparent when he tried to not only layoff 4,666 teachers but even tried to get the State to pass a bill that would make the layoffs permanent and those laid off could not get their jobs back even if the economy recovers. His hatred for teachers made him use all his influence to circumvent the teacher union's "collective bargaining rights" which failed of course. He even embarrassed himself by claiming experience does not count in teaching! Finally, he refused to follow the "City pattern" by unilaterally freezing teacher raises while giving the very same raises to all other unions.
All knowledgeable people know that the City's Finances are much better than the State's. However, Bloomberg's budget called for 6.3% of the teachers being laid off while the average Statewide School District only had a 3% layoff rate. Some people may claim that the New York City Schools have too many teachers. However, the reality is that New York City Schools have the largest class sizes in the State, yes the largest! Ranging from a low of 22.3 in Kindergarten to a high of 25.5 in fifth grade. The Middle School averaged 27.8 students per classroom and the High Schools averaged 27.5 students, based upon the 2010-2011 school year. With an additional 2,500 teachers leaving the classroom and not replaced, it is expected that the average class sizes will go up between 1.5 students (DOE estimate) to 3 students (UFT estimate). It will be very interesting what the "average class size" will really be for the 2011-12 school year.
Will the union negotiate with this Mayor? I certainly hope not since his only goal is to destroy the teacher union's power and make teaching in the New York City classroom as miserable as possible.
30 comments:
Do you honestly think the mayor hates teachers? I don't know why he loves this job. This is purely enonomics.
Bloomberg's goal is to destroy the NYC Public Education system and break the UFT by the time he leaves office. He has 2 more years to make this happen unless EVERY teacher and parent stand together against this meglomaniac!
Teaching is already miserable.
Teaching is the only job where Maalox doesn't work!
There no way to improve education with a strong teachers union, and this is speaking as a teacher. you have to be able to put teachers where they are needed and cut out all the bs. zip codes almost always determine whether a school will be successfull. paying teachers for pd and taking additional credits makes the system unsustainable. it is always city hall vs the unions. nothing will ever get done outside the middle class zip codes. the next time someone quotes an archaic work rule from the "contract" tell them its the 21st century. love your blog chaz. every teacher should have to work in the real world for at least a year before they start teaching.
Great point about zip codes determining success level of a school! I would love to take the staff at Garden City HS for a year and put them in a place like Beach Channel or Franklin K lane for a year and see the results. Just flip flop the staffs for a year and see results etc
Although I feel a lot of the contract is archaic, we still need it. These principals are so vindictive that you need some form of defense
It's like anything else. If principals were really fair minded and cared about the students I would agree with anon 7:28 about union contracts but they are not.
I do agree zip codes count and that is why District 26 schools do a lot better than District 9 schools.
The District 26 schools are not doing as well as they used to thanks to the Bloombergian/Leadership Academy mentality of the newer principals, such as the horror at Middle School 67 or the other horror(s) at Middle School 216. Francis Lewis High School is now #35 in the city; it used to be competing with Cardozo HS for #'s 3 or 4, right behind Bronx Science and Stuyvesant. Bayside High School, in the prestigious 11360 and 11361 zip codes, has severely curtailed the once-sought-after SMART program, cancelling it for this year's junior class and throwing the better kids under the bus to address the lower 1/3.It also divested itself of the (very expensive) college office, leaving college planning to inexperienced and unknowing guidance counselors. It's not the same school as it was two years ago. I have a close working knowledge since my own child attends this school and entered as a SMART program student. I agree with anon 5:22. Bloomberg appears to hate children as well as teachers. He is on a slash and burn mission to totally destroy public education in New York City.
Here is my point. Public education except for district 26 a small sample here and there is destroyed. lets try something else.
Thanks for pointing out the crowding factor in all of this.
The latest issue of NY Teacher has a piece on how school overcroding is at its worst in ten years.
A link to a NY Times story that picked up on the UFT's overcrowding report.
As to districts: we're living in a Tale of Two Cities: an inner city school is starved for resources; yet a middle class district has classrooms that look a lot more like those in the rest of the nation than what you see in the inner city.
Hats off to veteranteacher for suggesting switching Garden City staff for Franklin Lane, and checking the results.
http://nycityeye.blogspot.com/">New York City Eye
Zipcodes: Bloomberg has created smaller schools, a better zipcode, within a larger school, worse zipcode. There is the honeymoon phase when quiet descends into the halls and classrooms. The children have not changed zipcodes in the greater sense. Newbie principals and teachers at the new school can't understand why the students aren't making progress.
Blame the teacher....blah, blah blah. Meanwhile we haven't had a new contract in two years and our income is frozen and we still spend out of pocket money on our kids. What is going on? The next mayor will roll back all his changes which failed. He was the education mayor. Nobody will be impressed.
My point is that even the "best" zip codes and the accompanying district are affected by Bloomberg's apparent hatred of teachers and kids alike; his mission is carried out by DOE operatives running the schools. When parents can, they send their kids to private schools, where they feel at least they have a modicum of control over their kids' education. In the public sector, parents are lied to and fed propaganda constantly. It's not "purely economics". If it was, then explain the explosion of no bid contracts, marginally useful technology, and the rapid expansion of the legal division of the DOE.
Anonymus 7:28 makes some good points but perhaps on further reflection will realize that the vast majority of teachers have worked in the "real world".
Do you teachers take responsibility for anything???Everything is someone else fault.
Teachers and the teachers union are no better then the principals or Bloomberg. It is one big game. Bloomberg blames the teachers, the teachers blame the principals and the principals blame Bloomberg. Everyone is blaming the other group. Each group needs to grow up and take responsibility for their short comings and work together to improve the entire education system.
It all starts at the top and in this case, it's the 'education mayor'
Of course Bloomberg hates teachers! His every action supports that assumption.
Large class sizes
No Contract
Proposed layoffs
Lack of respect for experience in teaching.
This is a given.
Hey Anonymous 10:26 AM,
After reading your posts and viewing your spelling mistakes and poor knowledge of the English language, I can safely assume that you have an ample supply of evidence to say that you have learned very little in school. However, I must ask, is it the fault of the union that you do not know 'then' and 'than' or that shortcomings is one word?
Bloomberg has indeed accomplished his goal of destroying the NYC Public Education System and breaking the UFT, as far as I am concerned.
With the new policy of "Snapshot FORMAL OBSERVATIONS", 65% of the teachers at my school were rated ineffective, after five to ten minute observations.
Our principal waits outside some teachers' classrooms, peering in to see if any kids are talking, and then bursts in for five seconds when she sees some kids talking, and declares the teacher "ineffective".
This new system of teacher evaluation has every teacher in the school completely stressed out.
This is Bloomberg's goal.
He wants a teaching force of non-union workers, who can be fired at will, just like the business world.
Teaching is not the same as the business world. If you're at my school, you're teaching children living below the poverty line, usually lacking a mother and/or father, Level One or Two learners, many barely able to speak English, and you're supposed to magically transform them into Level Threes or Fours.
I've had enough. I'm quitting and going into something with more of a future; maybe sky diving over Afghanistan without a parachute to wipe out the Taliban.
Bloomberg's term should be terminated by any means possible.
I really don't understand how anybody can defends Bloomberg's treatment of teachers, especially veteran teachers. Chaz is right on target with his analysis of the Mayor.
If you do your research, all the negative comments about the mayor are said about every mayor that is in office. The educational system is like baseball, you can't fire the kids, but you can fire the chancellor or change the mayor.
Why aren't we allowed to rate the principals??? They have been given too much power and it has gone to their heads. Many principals are just bullies!
and by the way I believe Bloomie is the only mayor who has had full control over the school system...which he has ruined
I believe the point if that no mayor has ever had control over the school system. If you can't hire and fire or move resources you have no control.
Mayor Bloomberg is not like other Mayors. No other Mayor presented a LIFO bill to get rid of veteran teachers. Further, no other Mayor eliminated teachers from the "City pattern" by freezing their wages. Finally, only Mayor Bloomberg has taken class size reduction money and used it in other ways resulting in rising class sizes.
If you did your research 4:03 Anonymous, you'd know that Bloomberg is the first mayor to have full control of the schools.
He appointed Joel Klein as chancellor- the lawyer who headed Clinton's attempt to break-up Microsoft's monopoly. Guess what union he tried to break-up during his tenure?
I read Bloomberg's biography over the summer. He's just a lowlife business man who got rich by coming up with a business computer terminal. Since the recession, he's now the thirteenth wealthiest man in the world. Do you think we have a chance against someone as wealthy as that?
What do he and Klein(who now works for FOX) know about education?
I suspect that even when he finally leaves office, he'll still be spending his money (just like Bill Gates) and influence making life miserable for NYC teachers.
According to Brill's new book, Klein would have eliminated tenure, seniority, and any other union rights if it wasn't an election year for Bloomberg.
The fact that most city teachers live in LI, and our shitass union refused to back Thompson, made Bloomberg a shoe-in.
We all have to post as Anonymous, or we'd lose our jobs!
Beam me up, Scotty...
I believe the chancellor has as much power over education then Johnny Grant the honorary mayor of Hollywood. Nothing ever changes. Give vouchers to every child in a failing school. Only then may the system change.
Anon 10:26
You mean the Mayor's poodle is not independent of the Mayor? Golly gee.
TOP 3 WAYS TO SAVE 50 MILLION PER YEAR IN THE DOE - 1. RESTORE NEIGHBORHOOD HIGH SCHOOLS AND ELIMINATE SMALL SCHOOLS WITHIN A BUILDING - DUMP AT LEAST 100 PRINCIPALS, MAYBE MORE. 2. ZONE SCHOOLS AGAIN WHICH BUILDS COMMUNITY AND ELIMINATE METRO CARDS AS THEY WILL NOT BE NEEDED. 3. FIRE EVERY NETWORK/CONSULTANT. THIS WILL BRING AN EASY 50 MILLION PER YEAR BACK TO THE SCHOOLS! EASY!!!
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