The Renewal schools that the Department of Education (DOE) keep pouring money into keeps on losing students as savvy parents refuse to send their children to these acaddemically struggling schools. Even with all the wraparound services the DOE supplies these schools, they still continue to lose students. The result is that the Renewal schools end up with few academically proficient students and no sane "quality teacher" would ever apply to the Renewal schools with all the additional accountability requirements and the added stress associated with these struggling schools. Yet our clueless Chancellor would have everyone believe that "quality teachers" are applying to work in the Renewal schools in her own fantasy world.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Renewal schools keep on losing students, especially the high schools. The DOE's response is that things will be getting better and more students will be going to these schools in the future. Of course they said that in 2014. How is the DOE going to do this? They will allow the Renewal schools to recruit more students for specialized programs like culinary and sports medicine. Unfortunately, the culinary class at one school had ten students enrolled in the picture in the Wall Street Journal article and that does not make a dent in recruiting academically achieving students to these struggling schools.
I'm not optimistic that things will change for the better for the Renewal schools as they cannot attract "quality teachers", suffer from high teacher turnover with an inexperienced staff, and fail to improve their academic performance as they cannot encourage academically achieving students to select these struggling schools. To try to stem the loss of students and keep their numbers up, the DOE is now allowing the Renewal schools to accept over-the-counter students, many of them "high needs".
For the high schools, only bringing back the neighborhood school zones will improve the Renewal school's academic performance as high school free choice means that no academically achieving student will select these struggling schools and the Renewal schools will continue to lose students and be an academic failure.
29 comments:
My neighborhood high school was incredible. We served approx a half mile radius, give or take. Things were much easier with one principal. Now my "campus" has 6 principals and enrollment is wide open to students who travel over 1 hour in all directions to get here. I have no idea why since all high schools offer an eight period schedule pretty much, which includes:
Math
English
Science
Social Studies
Foreign Language
Gym
Lunch
These 7 classes are required. This only leaves 1 period for other types of classes, electives, whatever. The school across the street from a student's house who's traveling 1 hour to get to my campus, is literally offering the same exact classes. Literally. I just don't get it. So the other class might be a computer class, maybe a music or art, maybe whatever.
You mean to tell me the one single period that is different is the reason kids are traveling? Each school is offering the SAME CLASSES. ITS REQUIRED CWHAT ARE THESE PEOPLE DOING?????
No one cares about it. A parent who leaves their child in one of these schools is insane or clueless and you're correct no sane teacher would stay or go to work there. Farina knows it, but has to play the game.
What is Fariña doing? And why?
I work in one of these Renewal schools. We have no prep period, must justify failing students by documenting what I did to help the student and how many times I called home, and get blamed for the fact that most of the students are level one and can't pass Regents exams.
I don't know if experienced teachers actually apply to my school but all I see are new teachers replacing retiring veteran or ATRs picked up for the year who can't wait to leave.
I have ten years left and I did go on the open market and received not one interview (15 years experience) and realize that-no school is going to carry my salary ($85,000)
I work in a renewal school only 180 students, get paid pro rata to teach health class 8th period probably 70 bucks an hour. Can't complain my Pe class size is like 30 students. School did great on state and local measures last year, can't complain much.
In my school, one teacher was removed to the rubber room and so they gave an untenured teacher many of his classes and as a result the untenured teacher now teaches 7 out of the 8 periods and won't say anything out of fear he will receive backlash. Terrible!
Anon 6:54 maybe we work at same school. I get the pro rata too at my fine renewal school. The school has more money than Trump. I can't believe the DOE gives renewal schools extra millions. I personally have seen the school budget.
Anon 6:54
PE and Health don't have a Regents to pass and are not penalized by having level one students. Too bad the rest of us are.
The renewal schools are pushing students out to improve their graduation percentages. Especially the students who have no chance to graduate on time. DOE is encouraging this and the students go to other large schools where they wont make such a big dent in graduation numbers.
hey, Anon 6:54
How long do you think your school will survive with only 180 stydents? Soon you will see it close or merge and you will be in the ATR pool. No per session, no respect, noplace to call home.
Enjpy it while you can since the day of reckoning is quickly approaching.
I find it very interesting that some teachers are oblivious of the design the DOE has for Tier IV teachers. They want us out so that we end up with reduced pensions while pushing Tier VI teachers to leave the profession before they are vested,
I work in a renewal school. We are hoping to get removed from this status after this year. We have a principal who knows how to manipulate data. I mean seriously knows how to do it.
We are at capacity because our principal takes everyone and anyone. Most of our students are between 2nd and 4th grade skill levels. This is proven by testing used to assess this information.
We age out kids who have no hope of passing regents. We 'invite' only those whom we think have a shot at passing the regents. Our credit recovery, oops, I mean credit-bearing classes, are breathtaking in their ease of passing. We do not suspend anyone for any reason nor do we report anything up the chain. Everything is hushed up in house. Our teachers are worked like slaves but all of us stay quiet because we fear for our jobs.
In short, our principal is brilliant but a slave master, and we might just pull this thing off.
Chaz, many of us with 10+ years experience do see the DOE's devious plan in action. We feel helpless about it. Many Tier VI teachers I know are absolutely clueless and actually believe they will be make it 30 years to retirement. It is so sad to hear them talk about it as if it is a given.
Lots of younger newbie teachers have been fed the Kool-Aide that they are the future and that they are needed to push out those old lousy crusty teachers who are 35+ and who are responsible for all the failures of the public schools.
The joke will be on them. In the meantime, I and many I know like myself are quietly preparing for other careers just in case we get canned from phony witch hunts. Some are going back to school, some are buying rentals, others are investing. Some are opening web businesses or learning coding or other marketable skills.
My advice to all Tier IV is to do the same. Pay off every debt you have and invest in things that will get you side income. Do it now before you are blind-sided one year by a terrible principal who relishes the thought of ruining your life for nothing.
Of course I know that I am 15 years in. Still have to be linked to a regents exam which is beyond ridiculous as it is. Most of or kids are level 1-2 hence we are renewal.
I agree and with 2 masters I am over qualified in this corrupt system. My only hope is when both schools in our building merge they keep
Both pe teachers bc the other guy has one year on me
Take of two cities. If you happen to be in a decent school with a nice admin (and they are out there) then you're good, not having to worry about what Chaz refers to as "by design". I never heard such nonsense and I love the blog with all the info, but Chaz that was bizarre. I don't feel like I am being targeted nor do I feel a strategy designed to take me out. This is really reaching Chaz with the design to "get Tier IV" members. A little paranoid buddy? Maybe there's a percentage that feels this way but certainly not the majority, not even close. Paranoia!
Anon 5:59
You are just fortunate to have a good admin, ask veteran teachers who have Leadership Academy principals how they feel?
Paranoid? No, just the truth.
The overall plan is to weaken the public pension systems in NY State and around the nation, and replace them with privatized systems, and also politically to weaken strong unions and replace them with employees who are more like temps or short term contracts. All of this is being sold as a "major improvement."
I too am lucky and I work in a functioning school. I don't feel anyone is out to get me. But I know it is different in other less happy places. If we are in a good place we may feel like everything is ok, but in the big picture some bad things are going on. And don't forget we have some things being negotiated that we don't even know about, thanks to our good ole UFT.
The problem with tier 4 is that it provides a decent retirement package. The tier 6 kids don't know how lousy their package is, and the tiers to come will be worse.
Tier 4 is the last of its kind. We are the last generation that will see such rewards upon retirement. My admin is fine and often jokes that we are in this together as we both want our pensions. Admins want their pensions as well as us. We are all entitled. And by the way, SCREW these Leadership Principals. I don't work for one and hope I never do.
Just want to second Chaz that the plan that he outlines is correct. Just look at the newer middle and high schools in Manhattan. The entire staff is under the age of 35 and every new hire is 22 years old. If they want experience, they hire from charter schools, not DOE schools. So there is no way to transfer in from one school to another school in the DOE system if you have ten years or over of experience. The supervisors are under the age of 40 and very few have 15 years of experience. I basically believe that everyday you work teaching is one day closer to being fired, chased out, denied tenure, etc. Teaching has a short shelf life and the system wants the teacher to put four years in and leave. I have heard that the shelf life for an administrator is five years. Five years in the job and either you move up or move on. This is what I see and I do not see this getting better in the future.
Anonymous 253
You work at Bryant, don't you? Namita Dwarka isn't brilliant, she's an evil witch.
A trusted insider.
Thank God I am Tier IV. Just compare it with Tier VI.
Our jobs get more impossible by the day. We are now foreigners in our own land teaching people from cultures that do not meld with Western Civ.
Even retirement scares me because where am I going to live and be around Americans? In most of NYC traditional America no longer exists: just a mish-mash of cultural colonies that mistrust each other.
Who exactly at the DOE is so concerned about pensions and removing tier iv and less people? I mean we live in a society where people manage their own lives and work for a company. The DOE is a government facility and the people working there are nothing but working stiffs. So my questions is why are people who work there looking to hassle their best workers with most experience to offer students?? Where are the meetings that plan out these divisive strategies that ultimately destroy the lives of hard working people! The DOE is nothing more than a bunch of stiffs working at a "company" but they are so concerned about harassing experienced teachers?? What do they care?? ITs government money and NYC will always have a huge flow of monies as everyone and their grandmother wants to come here. So again my question is who are these people at the DOE who are harassing atrs, making a work life so miserable for the people in the trenches?? THE DOE are people but there must be ONE person who is spewing this information down to departments to throw out there to our schools and wreck them. THis is my point. Again, who are these people and why do they care?? DO they want to save NYC from the brink of extinction?? DO they want to be chest bumpers like mike bloomberg?? Not sure who the DOE really is. Any answers? And before anyone answers my question like the DOE is concerned about the best education for it students please do not bother.
11:25,
You kind of know the answer already I think. But, consider some of this. Sure there are some stiffs working in the DOE but it hasn't been our parents' and grandparents' DOE for a long time. When it was 65 Court St. that was a dead bureaucracy and no one cared. Now, every budget is on a screen. Tweed is full of people who have never/ will never teach, they make their salaries and bonuses by squeezing school budgets. Above every principal are people checking to see he/she is tough on tenure, using the proper funding formulas, etc. One of the major purposes of the new eval system was to prove that most veteran teachers are incompetent and need to be evaled out of the system. Where is this planned? Well, the Cuomo people embraced this for a while and maybe still do - the Bloomberg people were all about it, the charter school people and their hedge fund friends, TNTP, E4E, TFA, Broad Foundation, Gates, the endless testing including Race to the Top, and ultimately the whole neo-liberal and big data technocratic movement. Is there a guy in a room with a dossier on me planning my doom, no of course not. But are there policies to shrink or reduce expenses, which, when the rubber hits to road can get translated into [hire cheaper teachers], [make teachers pay more into systems but receive less], [create obstacles to full retirement], and others ... sure there are.
I am in a nice school and doing fine personally, but there is a lot of this going on in other places. I also know it is hard to make a move somewhere else, as a veteran at max.
DOEvet
You can be the best teacher in the nation and the NYC schools won't pick you up because of your salary and seniority. Only the worst (renewal) schools would consider picking you up but then you would never apply to these places in the first place.
There are administrators right in my school plotting my demise.
Abigail Shure
My Bronx school has been Renewal for 3 years. While there has been annoying additional paperwork, our school offers Pro-Rata ELT and has a clinic which is helpful to the stuents. Enrollment increased this year. Our principal does a good job insulating us from all the Renewal BS
My school also has been a renewal for 2 years. And I think it really helps us to energize, and with renewed vigor in the work involved in. So, it was needed for our school, but now I have other difficulties. I have problems with writings and to deal with(rated writing reviews) there is such catalogs with online writing services. For all my classmate's such sites are really a rescue.
Dwarka has destroyed W.C. Bryant High School, she got rid of good experienced teachers and she is handing credits as candies. Fraud, harassment and a toxic environment the ingredients to fail.
Post a Comment