From day one many of the bloggers were wary of the appointment of Carmen Farina as Chancellor of the New York City schools. It was pointed out that she was Deputy Chancellor under Joel Klein's anti-teacher crusade until she was forced to retire. Moreover, she bragged about her sharp memory and remembered everything, except when she was interviewed by investigators about the infamous Cobble Hill cheating scandal and couldn't remember anything, despite being Superintendent during that time. Finally, how about how she replaced 80% of her staff, while Principal of PS 6 in Manhattan and allegedly diverted money allocated for one program to others without approval. You can read it yourself from Phillip Noble and Betsy Combier. Read Betsy Combier's latest post about Chancellor Carmen Farina Here. While the Chancellor replaced 80% of her staff at PS 6 as Principal she retained 80% oi the Bloomberg policymakers at the DOE.
Last year Politico New York reported how Chancellor Carmen Farina's top priority was not improving student academic achievement and bringing joy, respect, and the love for learning back in the classroom but how to remove "bad teachers" from their classrooms. How about bad administrators? That's right Chancellor Carmen Farina's top priority was removing teachers and this was her recurring theme taken out of the Politico article.
Fariña said asking principals to weed out their weakest teachers has been her “first statement when I get into any school visit. ... I repeat it over and over again."
To the Chancellor its not about the already too large class sizes, frozen school budgets, or student discipline issues that have exploded during her tenure as Chancellor its all about firing teachers.
Just read the entire Politico article and one can see that Chancellor Carmen Farina cares little about education, she only cares about having it her way. Just look at the Superintendents she hired, since becoming Chancellor, be it Amiee Horowitz or others who expect the principals under them to discontinue and slap the "ineffective" label on more and more teachers. Furthermore, who can forget what Chancellor Carmen Farina said about veteran teachers at a new teacher workshop. Proof ofher anti-teacher attitude can be found in the continued numbers of teachers under 3020-a termination charges as the Chancellor has chosen to justify the employment of the large numbers of lawyers by pushing them to terminate teachers. For different takes about Chancellor Carmen Farina read the nyc educator and ednotes online posts.
The bottom line while the Chancellor continues her anti-teacher crusade our union leadership sees nothing, does nothing, and fails to hear what the Chancellor continues to spew about teachers.
5 comments:
So she wants to get rid of bad teachers. What is wrong with that?
Except she thinks many veteran teachers and ATRs are "bad teachers". Moreover, in her renewal schools all those "newbies" are great teachers.
Read my post thoroughly.
Philip Nobile is a convicted felon and supporter of notorious dirty cop Louis Scarcella. I wouldn't have any confidence in his testimony. He's disgraced himself.
The "bad teachers" narrative is alive and well at my school. The Admins openly tell us we suck, do punitive 'observations,' are already working to fire several untenured teachers who don't deserve it and who also engage in a whole host of underhanded tricks to boost our stats (bogus credit recovery for one).
The attitude among the entire staff, and I mean all of us, is now "what's the point?" We bust our butts serving a nearly 100% immigrant (illegal) population from some of the poorest and most backward places on Earth. We work so hard with impossible odds (class sizes close to 30, most students illiterate in their own language) and all we get is "developing" and "ineffective."
When you know your bosses are under pressure to 'identify' and 'remove' 'bad teachers,' and that if they do not appear to be firing people that their bosses will not be happy, then you no longer can trust the 'system.' I know it's not just in my school. I know a lot of teachers in other places. There is near unanimous agreement that there is no futre in teaching for any of us.
Bad teachers is synonymous with experienced teachers, many principals going after experienced teachers who speak up.
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