The Out Of Time Schools Are Out Of Luck When It Comes To Getting Effective Teachers.

Chancellor Carmen Farina made a great show of propaganda by claiming the renewal schools will be recruiting "effective teachers" for their schools and improve student performance.  However, anecdotal evidence from staff at these schools saw only young and inexperienced teachers being hired at those schools not the "highly effective teachers" that the DOE had vetted and gave to the principals to hire.  Few, if any, actually were offered or took a teaching position in the renewal schools.

Now we have the first real data from one renewal high school, the "out-of-time" Brooklyn Automotive high school.  Of the 32 teaching positions at Automotive, 14 were filled by teachers who were never in the classroom before that is an astounding 44% of the teaching staff with zero classroom experience!  Furthermore, if you eliminate the eight highly specialized CTE teachers in hard to fill or hard to replace occupations, approximately 60% of the academic staff are "newbies'.  Who in their right mind believes that these struggling students will improve academically with inexperienced teachers who have a steep learning curve and poor classroom management skills themselves?   No real educator believes that this is a recipe for success.

While the renewal schools are being given additional resources and support, the bottom line is that the lack of "effective teachers" will result in continued poor academic achievement and I strongly believe that the Mayor's and Chancellor's renewal school policy will be a failure.   A final issue is that the renewal schools have an extra hour built into their student schedules and teachers who are working the extra hour have not been paid by the DOE as of yet,  This should have been resolved before the school year stated.