Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Randi Does It Again - Recruitment Over Retention


In a New York Post article Randi Weingarten complained that to encourage qualified minorities to join the New York City teacher corps, the city should give bonuses, loan forgiveness, and housing assistance. Here again Randi chooses to ignore the real problem, retention of quality teachers. In response to a somewhat bogus study that showed that minority children respond better to their own kind despite all studies that show an experienced quality teacher is the most important thing to have in the classroom, regardless of race, creed, and religion. Instead of stopping at the colorblind statement, Randi continued on how we need to attract more minorities to enter the teaching profession. At no time did she bring up the retention problem, the most important factor in the successful classroom.

It certainly appears to me that Randi & gang seem more focused on the high and low end of the the teacher memberts in the UFT. Much of the problem with the last contract was Randi's insistance in not selling out the newborns. However, Unity sold out the rest of us. with god awful givebacks. She should have stuck it to the city and see if they can hire a $25,000 per year teacher, instead she chose to screw us. Further, she is trying to enhance the high end members (30+ years in the system) by sweetening their pensions while doing nothing for the 5-20 year teaching veteran.

As a 10 year teacher who is subject to the Unity givebacks and lack of union support for the very teachers that are the backbone of the union, is it any wonder I am anti-Unity? The shocking thing is how clueless many teachers are to the issues and it is this ignorance that must be addressed if our Union is to become responsive to the classroom teacher.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't disagree with you at all.

I've heard other people speculating that Mayor Mike wants to bring in young white teachers who may last three or four years in the bizarre belief it would lure more white parents to send their kids.

Personally,I don't really believe race is a factor in quality teaching. Those studies, however, indicate that this factor is not important if classes are smaller.

Great pic, by the way.

Anonymous said...

I totally agree that an experience quality teacher is the most important thing to have in a class room. I just don’t understand how something can be more important! The thing is that finding a good teacher is very complicated today. Everything depends on a school but most of teachers work hard and their salaries are quite low. Thus, a friend of mine is a brilliant teacher but she wasn’t appreciated at work so she decided to quit and use New York resume writing company reviews to order a good resume and to change a job.

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can you do my homework for me said...

It is very difficult to find a good teacher who will be able to interest children. Often children require attention. Patience is the main quality of a qualified teacher. If he himself loves his subject, the children will also love him. Therefore, keeping a good teacher high salaries or other benefits is very important.

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