Most principals control their school budgets (some Renewal school principals do not). Therefore, the Principal has complete control on staff hiring. Because the DOE's policy of school based Fair Student Funding and the fact that the average school only receives 90% of what they should get under the fair funding budget incentivizes principals to hire the "cheapest and not the best " teachers for their school. Moreover, most schools have stuffed classrooms with the maximum amount of students that the contract allows. Finally, quite a few schools rather pay a "sixth period" to existing teachers rather than hire much needed additional teachers for their students.
Ask most parents and students would they want a "newbie" teacher, with no classroom experience or an experienced teacher who has good classroom management skills and curriculum knowledge and the answer is obvious, unless you are Nicole Thomas, and the education deformer organizations. In other words would you want a novice surgeon, with no operating room experience, rather than a veteran surgeon to operate on your child? The same goes for teaching. Few parents want to make their child a guinea pig for a "newbie" teacher who has a steep learning curve to master the Art and Science of teaching. Yet, the education deformer organizations and their media allies conveniently ignore the obvious and rather demonize veteran teachers, especially the ATRs.
Interestingly, our union leadership has kept silent and fails to launch a counter attack showing why its important for all children to have an experienced teacher and demand that all "newbie" teachers have a complete mentoring and support system to assist them in mastering the classroom. School after school in high poverty areas suffer from high teacher turnover and every year has a staff composed of untenured teachers. In fact, a study done for Chiago found 75% of all new teachers in poor urban schools leave their first school within three years. The refusal of our union leadership to fund an advertising campaign on why its important for children to have veteran teachers is unacceptable.
The bottom line is that between DOE policies, principals caring more about their budget than hiring the best teachers, and our union leadership refusal to embarrass the DOE contributes to a "
children last" policy that hurts student academic achievement.
Municipalities are not concerned about hiring and retaining quality educators anymore. Teaching has become an in between temporary job. It is no longer a career. Five Years and Out, that is the formula for the DOE, they damned well know that most of the kids being hired will be burned out totally in a short period of time, frustrated and disgusted and will leave teaching. The DOE will replace them with another group of Naive people, kids or Teach for America personnel and they will be ground up into chopped meat in a few short years too. While this is going on they will gun for and head hunt Teachers who are masters of their craft, Senior Teachers who have spent their lives helping and teaching the kids of NYC. The Senior teachers can now look forward to being micro managed getting belittled, being forced out, terminated via lies and false charges, or Be made so miserable each day that they become physically and emotionally ill. It is all about Pensions, the city does not want to pay pensions and benefits to Teachers anymore. The Union should be ashamed that they allowed their senior members to be put in this type of situation. The DOE will be hiring people off the street soon, because nobody will be going to college for education anymore....
ReplyDeleteNYC should have a great reputation. Instead NYC public schools are the joke of the education system with their inflated grades, lack of criteria for passing courses, grade fixing, etc. Students from third world countries have informed that it has the reputation of being 'easy'.
ReplyDeleteAnyone read the NY Post on Sat 8/19? It headlines an article on pg 6. stating "25M for teachers banned from class", written by 'education reporter Selim Algar. and then goes on to discuss the ATR issue. Since when were ATRs banned?
ReplyDeleteHey Mulgrew, are you going to sue them for defamation or what?
In a society with a common culture, it is easier to get people to pool their resources together for the common good. After all, that person you don't know over there is someone whose way of life and values you understand. They look sort of like you in a general way and back up in the family tree you might even be distantly related. In such an environment, it is easy for communities to support their schools because the students are 'their people.'
ReplyDeleteIn a multi-cultural free-for-all like we have now, every racial, ethnic and cultural sub group only looks out for its own. This is natural and is also the reason why multicultural states always fail and wind up in civil wars (source: all of human history). In NYC you have Jamaicans over here, Haitians over there, An Armenian enclave down the block, Ecuadorians in Corona, Chinese in Flushing and... well you get the picture.
Group identity becomes more important when you are surrounded by so many 'strange' groups. This is built into our psychology. So in NYC and many other big cities, we see no one caring about the schools anymore (read: white people) because they are filled with students from communities that hate us. We have a dying society, literally we Americans are dying off and not being replenished, and then you have a literal invasion of the world here, each group carving out its territory and colonial outposts.
Why would the people in the school system care anymore about 'quality' or 'experience?' It's all about patronage for one's own group. There are schools and administration offices where everyone is largely of one or another ethnic group. How did that happen? My wife's friend works in a central school dept. that is almost all Haitian. My own school seems to be run by a Puertorican mafia, as every single admin and office person is from there.
I think we can eliminate a lot of our grief at the injustice of school funding and the constant culling of experienced (read: white and Jewish) teachers if we understand what is happening in an overarching sense. We are a dying nation undergoing transformation into a multicultural polyglot where civil strife between races and ethnic groups, native born and immigrants will grow until our nation dissolves into chaos.
Forget the whining about Danielson's or school funding or ATR status. Look ahead 20 years and invest in land, gold and lead. We are the educated people. If we cannot put two and teo together, who can?
You've made some interesting points. Too bad most people in these days of political correctness, don't grasp it.
DeleteAverage age of NYC ATRs is 55.
ReplyDeleteAverage age of NYC teachers is 42.
1:52- I totally disagree. NYC has always been a place for immigrants and newcomers. In the beginning the Dutch, then the English. More recently the Germans, Irish, Italians, Poles, Russians, African Americans, Puerto Ricans and even more recently people from all over. That's just the way NYC is.
ReplyDeleteCommunity schools have been run down by union-busters and land speculators. Wreck the union and they can profit from charter schools. Destroy the community schools and they can grab the land.
To 9:39, but don't forget the power of tribalism and human psychology. The "my people" thing is very strong, and as the core American population dwindles to nothing, the squabbling of the world is taking hold here. The European immigrants of the past you mentioned assimilated easier because they looked like the locals. Now you have people from vastly different racial, ethnic and cultural stock, and they do not want to assimilate. Our Leftists tell them not to: multiculturalism!
ReplyDeleteGood points!!
Delete9:04-I totally disagree. What do you mean "the core of the American population"? And almost all immigrants hold on to at least some of their "old culture"-language, dress, food. In a generation or two the younger kids become more assimilated. Just because the first generation comes to the US, doesn't mean that they want to leave their old life completely behind and they shouldn't have to.
ReplyDelete@4:35 a lot of what is said is true. what is left out was UN-certified teachers in the nyshitty system. right now the suburbs don't allow UN-certified teachers BUT, they do allow you to be a substitute teacher with only a high school diploma. little by little its the dumbing down of the schools. the students and too many parents are all ready dumb!!
ReplyDeleteTo 11:14
ReplyDeleteThat is easy to do if immigration leads to assimilation in a wider culture. That doesn't happen as much anymore because because fresh immigrants are coming in too fast for the previous ones to escape the pull of the old country's culture. We have more immigrants now than at any time in our history, and it is always increasing. Plus with the Left's new 'multiculturalism' kick, they don't want people to assimilate anymore.