Kleinberg's Attack On Our Pensions

A teacher in the New York City School System is vested , for pension purposes, after five years. However, a teacher must still put in ten years before the city stops deducting 3% of the teacher's salary into the pension system. Further, to get maximum credit for the pension, a teacher needs to work 20 years (you get 2% a year for every year you work once you reach 20 years, otherwise you get only 1.67%). For example a 19-year teacher who retires gets 31.73% of the highest three consecutive year average salary (FAS). While a 20-year teacher would get 40% of the FAS. Of course if you worked to 30 years you would receive a 60% pension. Almost as important, after 10 years the teacher is eligible to retire on disability, which is 33.3% of your FAS and if the disability was in the line of duty, it would be 67% of the FAS. Finally, once a teacher reaches their maximum pay grade (8b), the city contributes $400 per year and this money accumlates at 5% interest. This is called the Annuity Savings Accumulation Fund (ASAF). After 20 years a teacher can expect to have nearly $8,000 in the ASAF and is used to supplement the pension through an annuity.

All of the above were obtained by hard-won union negotiations and protected (pensions & disability) by the New York State constitution that does not allow reductions for existing employees. However, this has not hampered Kleinberg from trying to reduce pension costs in the New York City School System. How are they doing it? Let's see how.

First, the Kleinberg policy of recruiting teachers over the retention of existing teachers. The recruiting of teachers is the top priority of the administration. It doesn't matter that many of the teachers come from alternate certification programs like the Teaching Fellows and Teach For America and that DOE recruits out of the country to fill other positions. Kleinberg gives a bonus, loan forgivness, and rent payments for up to two years. Further, the DOE, for the first time, allowed schools to hire new teachers rather than first hire from the excessed teacher pool. Since 50% of the new teachers quit by their third year that means many of the newbies will never benefit from the pension plan. The unfortunate part of this is my union's aiding and abetting Kleinberg in their recruitment over the retention policy.

Second, the increased work day eliminated many per session jobs, which are pensionable, especially in the elementary schools. By using the 37.5 minutes at the end of the day, many after school programs were eliminated. More importantly, night school was also eliminated. Many of the more senior teachers use night school to increase their pensions. Therefore, by eliminating night schools, they are reducing pension expenses. Further, the lower budgets for many schools mean no paid tutoring programs, which is a per session activity.

Third, many of the ATR's are experienced teachers who were excessed due to the closing down of large schools or from schools that had budget cuts. Since the DOE allowed the small schools to hire the new teachers, they did not have to take many of the teachers excessed from the schools. While these ATR's are protected by the union contract, it is very obvious that Kleinberg will want a time limit for them in the next contract. In other words, if you are an ATR for 18 months then you will be fired. The more ATR's fired, the less the pension cost.

Finally, the Kleinberg policy to privatize the school system, such as Charter Schools means that more teachers will not have union or pension protection thereby, reducing costs to the City.


What's next? Well, there are rumors that summer school will be privatized, meaning reduced pension costs and of course the administration's attempt to fire the ATR's in the next contract.
Regardless, look for the City to propose a new pension tier for the new teacher. Tier V it will be called and however it will be constructed, it will save the City money and reduce the pensions for the new teachers. An inferior pension indeed!

When Tweed Attacks - Part 2 - Rikers Prep

When last I wrote about how Tweed was angry that our school refused the wonderful DOE offer of cameras in the schools. The result was to treat our school as an impact-like school. (not an impact school but flood the area with police, and arrest the students for such major crimes as jaywalking, littering, and refusing to move quick enough). I mentioned that Tweed had put us on their radar screen and made surprise visits to catch our school unprepared. The result? They found such major safety issues as:

The cafeteria tables were inadequately washed between periods.

Too many students were late to school for first period and filled up the auditorium. it doesn't matter to Tweedie-dee & Tweedie-dumb that some of these students live over two hours away and take up to three buses to get there before 8am.

Too many teachers had pictures on their door windows.

What does this have to do with safety? Beats me. However, Tweed has come up with an age-old solution to try to show that our school has safety problems. What have they done? First some history. In the past as many high schools closed down, they designated my school as one of the schools to dump the unwanted level 1 eigth graders, 8+ students, and the student with language and/or other disabilities into. After community & political pressure this year, Tweed reversed itself and at the beginning of September, my school was 240 students short, resulting in budget cuts and six ATR's. Because our school had space, all students in the Region was assigned to my school. This included students first, moving into the region, transfers due to hardships or safety issues in their old schools, and private school students going into the public schools. This variety of students is similar to the school population. However, Tweed had their secret weapon waiting in the wings. 12 overaged felons from Rikers (Jail) were released and all, yes all were sent to my school in direct violation of DOE procedures that require these felons to terrorize their home schools. Tweed just needs to wait for these felons to do their thing and cause chaos and crime in the school and then label it an "impact school".

My school is fighting back with teachers, the community, and students contacting our representatives about how Tweed's disgusting behavior is endangering the students and staff of the school. We are in the process of getting the media involved and expose Tweed for what it is, a bully that welds abusive power and stacks the deck against schools that dare to question their flawed judgement. Children first? How about Tweed's ego first and children last!

To Tweed - Shame On You!

Good Schools Equal Quality Teachers

The New York Post, of all newspapers, in their Sunday, October 1, 2006 editorial stated that good schools have focused principals who places a premium on discipline and who supports the faculty; parents who take an active role in their children's education, and teachers who are committed and creative - and qualified. Except for low class sizes, the Post is right on the money. However, they incorrectly stated that New York City is making real progress in achieving this goal, the reality is different.

First, the NYC Department of Education (DOE) does not like strong-minded, independent principals, especially those that support the faculty. Instead the DOE is placing many of the Leadership Academy principals, who have little or no school experience, who follow the Jack Welch business model that has failed to work in schools, and worst is that these new leadership principals have little interaction with the faculty and teacher input is not asked for or respected by them.

Second, the DOE has continued to weaken the student discipline code by allowing parents to appeal to an ouside DOE administrator when a school tries to suspend the student. This is in addition to the DOE's policy of placing an overaged violent felon back into the same school he/she terrorized in the first place. Moreover, the DOE has eliminated many of the special schools that handled overaged felons, as well as the overaged 8th graders who are pushed into the large high schools rather than a more suitible setting. Furthermore, the DOE discourages schools from taking a "zero tolerance" approach since too many reported incidents could result in the school being put on the DOE radar as an "inpact" school, or a school that has safety problems.

Third, unfortunantly, the major problem in the New York City Public Schools is a lack of parental involvement. Especially the middle & high schools. The DOE aided and abetted this by eliminating the parent-dominated district councils that had the ear of the old Board of Education and rightly or wrongly nothing could get done with the council's approval. Instead we now have a powerless parent advisory committee that is largley ignored by the DOE Instead of more parental involvement in the schools, we now have less!

Fiourth, A quality teacher means a competitive salary, low class sizes, and experience. However, the DOE's policy of recruitment rather than retention makes a quality teacher in every classroom a pipe dream. The Post editorial states that 100% of the teachers in the school system are certified. However, included in the 100% are the alternate certification programs such as Teach For America & the Teaching Fellows Program - which means the teachers are certified in name only since they still have to pass the certification tests. In other words they are not certified! Based upon 2005 data that means that only 82% are really certified teachers! Finally, how many of the 82% are teaching in their subject area? Many schools have physical education teachers teaching english, math, science, and social studies. The DOE policy to allow schools to hire newly-minted teachers (some not certified) over excessed, experience teachers has resulted in a steep learning curve for these new teachers at the expense of their students. Children first? How about children last! In addition, the DOE's "one-size-fits-all" appraoach and micromanagment stifiles teacher creativeness. As for the low class sizes and competitive salaries? Forget-about-it!

Finally, under the new NCLB proposals, 65% of all money must be spent on classroom instruction. While I have no clue what the DOE spends on classroom instruction since it's accounting transparancy is very foggy. I'm sure they would include instruction-related-activities such as professional development that lacks classroom teacher input, District/Regional office personnel who work on school budgets and assignments, and DOE hearing officers that work on school grievances and other issues. Is this classroom instruction? Of course not. To me classroom instruction includes direct classroom expenses including books, supplies, salaries, school infrastrucrure, guidance and a school nurse. I believe that teacher-directed extracuricular activites (sports, clubs, honor societies, yearbook, plays, band, etc.) should be included as part of the 65%. This is opposite the NEA & AFT positions. However, these activities are part of the total student experience in school and provide positive motivation to do well in the academic environment.

The New York Post was right on everything they said. Except for one, their conclusion that New York City is making progress.

The Kleinberg Plan For The ATR's

It is common knowledge that there are over a thousand Absent Teacher Reserves (ATR's) roaming around with no teaching assignments and wondering what their future is? What is their future? Uncertain at best and ominious at worst.

First, let's start on why we have all these ATR's in the first place. Until this year all excessed teachers were placed in teaching positions within their borough before any other teacher can be hired. However, that all changed this year when the Department of Education allowed schools to hire newly-minted teachers and even uncertified teachers from the alternate certifaction programs like Teach For America & the Teaching Fellows Program without placing the excessed teachers. The DOE did not even try to pretend to care about the ATR's by having their job fair AFTER the new teacher job fair. Therefore, many of the schools that needed teachers were inclined and maybe even pressured to hire the new teacher over the experienced teacher.

Second, why are there so many ATR's? Good question and an equally good answer. The closing down of the large schools into small schools was a primary reason. See, once a large school closes and is replaced by small schools, the small schools are only required to select 50% of the large school staff and since many of the small school principals come from the Leadership Program who's emphasis is on loyality to the DOE and ignorance of how to collaberate with the teaching staff, many of the more experienced and knowledgable teachers were not selected in the interview process. To be fair, many of these teachers didn't bother to apply to the small schools since small school teachers are required to take on more non-teaching responsibilities and prepare more preps.

Third, a secondary reason is the reduced budgets to the remaining schools that are not part of the empowerment zone. Yes, I know the DOE said that the extra money the empowerment zone schools comes from the elimination of mid-level district administrators. However, DOE's lack of transparancy makes that claim highly suspect. Many of the non-empowerment schools have suffered budget cuts for this year. The result, more excessed teachers!

Finally, the increased hiring of new teachers, encouraged by DOE with recruitment packages and job fairs, at the expense of the excessed teachers, increased the ATR's.

The result is that there are over 1,000 teachers without their own classrooms.

Why would the DOE have 1,000+ ATR's doing no classroom teaching? Wouldn't it be in their best interest to place these teachers into the classroom by reducing class size? You would think so since lower class sizes would benefit the children and result in higher test scores. However, Mayor Bloomberg & Chancellor Klein are not interested in the children but are looking long-term to the next contract where their goal is to fire these ATR's.

Just think, the Kleinberg people will wail how the teachers' contract forces them to pay over 1000 teachers their full salary, including senority time, and step pay raises, while they are just doing day-to-day substitute teaching. The Daily News, New York Post, & the Sun will have full page editorials demanding the end to tenure for life for the ATR's and even Newsday & the New York Times will ask for contract changes. The result will be a media blitz that puts the union on the defensive with the ultimate goal of putting a time limit on ATR's in finding a full-time teaching job. An example of this is in Chicago where excessed teachers have 18 months to find a job. If not, they are fired!

I don't believe that whichever faction wins the UFT election will agree to an ATR time limit. Yes even gasp Unity! However, unless the UFT becomes pro-active on this issue by bringing up the class size issue, the waste of experienced & talented teachers while hiring untested and clueless people from alternate certification programs, and failing to ensure a quality teacher in every classroom by running an "education on the cheap" program. The union will find itself increasingly on the defensive and the political pressure may result in an ATR time limit and the beginning of the end of teacher tenure. Therefore, it is a must that the UFT come out strong and hard over how Kleinberg has caused the ATR mess.

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.

What I Want From My Union

In the past year I have complained about many things that my union, the UFT, has done. Starting with the contract and ending with my attack on the clueless educrats writing articles on Edwize that have nothing to do with the classroom. However, while complaining is a time-honored way to air ones grievances when the powers-to-be are unresponsive to their members, it's time to move ahead and state what I expect from my union leaders.

A Pro-active Approach:

It seems to me that our Union never takes the lead in bringing issues to the media. Instead they seem to respond to attacks in a defensive matter. To the general public it appears that the UFT is more interested in protecting union rights than student learning. While this is not true. Remember the preception is what counts and the DOE is winning the media war.

An example of this is the UFT failure to bring up the DOE attack on the large traditional high schools by dumping the 8+ students, special education students, and discipline problems into the schools while exempting the small schools from getting these students. Another example is the failure of the UFT to alert the media of the DOE policy that forces the schools to take back violent, overaged students released from jail so that they can terrorize the student population, rather than finding alternate settings for them.

A pro-active union is a must if we are to combat the DOE attack on the schools.

Retention Issues:

The biggest problem facing the teaching profession is that 50% of the teachers are gone by their third year. This plays well into the hands of the City and DOE since these teachers make less money, don't have pensions, and are unaware of union protections. Presently, our union works hand-in-hand to further the DOE policy by amending our contract to provide subsidies for the new teachers. The union needs to focus not on the new teachers but retaining the existing staff. Its no secret that quality teaching is associated with the 5-20 year veteran teacher and this is the group the union needs to support. Children first means a quality teacher in the classroom and retaining these teachers should be a top prority for the union.

Class Size:

Its no secret that class size is one of the two most important factors in student learning, the quality teacher being the other. The union must insist that a cap of no more than 25 students per class be part of the next contract. Can you imagine the outrage by the public if after the UFT media blitz the City refuses to lower class sizes? What happened to children first?


Competitive Salaries:

To get quality teachers you must have competitive salaries. Even after the last contract, the city teacher salaries are 15-20% lower than the average salaries in the suburbs. In fact our salaries are 10% lower than the Yonkers teachers! That is outrageous! The city is in it's best financial shape ever with a 5.5 billlion dollar surplus and an ever-climbing stock market. The union must, at a mimimum, insist on a restructuring of the teacher salary scale that rewards the mid-career quality teacher and an increase to the average surburban salary.

Under no circumstances should the union go to PERB or accept the pattern. Any official that proposes this should be voted out of office.


No More Givebacks:

Under no circumstances should our negotiators allow givebacks of any kind. That includes ATR tine limits, more teaching time, and extra work. In fact, this contract should include takebacks such as the two days before Labor Day, and grievable LIF.


Student Discipline:

Every year the DOE weakens the student discipline code and the union plays dead as it is rammed through. The result is that a parent can appeal to a non-school administrator to reverse a student suspension. The union must demand that a strict student discipline code be enforced and approved by the union.

City/DOE match on TDA (403b) Plan:

A 100% company match up to 3% of a person's salary would be a good starting point as a way to improve teacher retirement. Further, a commitment by the city to increase the percentage used for pension purposes from 1.67 to 2.0 for the 5-20 year veterans.

Social Promotion To The Large High Schools

Previously, I commented on the Department of Education's (DOE) policy of promoting "not ready for promotion" eighth graders (8+ students) to the large traditional high schools as they mistakenly believe that the size of the school will solve the problem. I pointed out that that the best environment for these 8+ students would be a school dedicated for these students and self-contained small classes similiar to Special Education classes. However, this would cost money and in the Kleinberg tradition of education on the cheap and children last politics, its easier to dump these s 8+ students into the large high schools. For Tweed this is a win-win proposition. First, you don't have to spend any more money on these 8+ students for programs that are necessary for them to succeed. Second, it advances the Tweed ambition of showing that the large schools are academically inferior to the small schools as these 8+ students terrorize their classmates and their inclusion lowers the academic level of the school.

Yes, I understand that it is not in the best interest of the middle schools to have 16 year old boys preying on 12 year old girls or bullying the student body. However, dumping them into a setting that almost ensures their droppimg out before they graduate, is certainly not the answer. The only thing this accomplices is the next generation of criminals and poverty wage workers. Even Wal-Mart won't hire them! For the skeptics that don't believe this does not go on I will give you a couple of examples.

I spoke to a middle school teacher who informed me that she was required to write the exit projects for five 8+ students who refused to write it. When she balked at doing student work her principal informed her that I don't need these students terrorizing the students in the school. She did the exit project and all five were sent to the large high school close to the school.

In another case a student with over 125 absences and had assulted a female classmate in the middle school was passed along to one of the large high schools where within two weeks he and a friend were allegedly involved in assulting another student which resulted in that student being sent to the hospital. What was Tweed's response? Blame the large high school it can't be the child's fault!

I only mentioned two examples However, I'm sure there are many such stories throught the city schools and I would like to hear your experiences dealing with the 8+ students.

Why Don't Quality Teachers Go To The Small Schools?

In an Edwize article a comment by the respected Peter Goodman of Unity (yes I do respect his opinon - unlike the rest of the Unity hacks) stated that the small schools would have welcomed any of these excessed teachers if they only showed up for an interview? That left the unaware of why wouldn't an experienced quality teacher interview in a small school that would welcome them with open arms? Well, if I have one problem with Peter, it is his bias in pushing small schools and ignore the problems with many of them. Including their inability to attract experienced quality teachers. Therefore, after talking with a few excessed teachers who did interview at small schools, I decided to come up with a hypothetical interview of an excessed Chemistry teacher at the 350 student small school called The School of Environmental Justice.

School: Why do you want a position at our school?

Teacher: I want to teach in a classroom, not being a day-to-day sub in my home school.

School: Why?

Teacher: I fell embarrassed and my self-esteem has suffered in working in a school that no
longer can use me as a classroom teacher. It's difficult to face my ex students as a sub.

School: What did you teach in your school?

Teacher: Chemistry, AP Chemistry, AP Environmental Science.

School: Have you taught Living Environment, Earth Science, & Physics?

Teacher: Not recently, and I have never taught Physics.

School: In our school we have no money for AP courses and you will be required to teach all four
Regents science courses.

Teacher: You mean four preps?

School Yes.

Teacher: Will lab preparation be my professional assignment?

School: Yes, but in our school the teachers must do an administrative assignment as well.

Teacher: Like what?

School: Hallway duty, cafeteria patrol, or policing the bathrooms.

Teacher: Are there any other duties you expect me to do?

School? Yes, we expect you to volunteer for Saturday instruction and help in our after school
program.

Teacher: Will I get paid for the extra work?

School: Sorry, we don't have the funds to pay the teachers anything extra.

Teacher: Let me get this straight. I must teach four different Regents science courses, volunteer to teach on Saturday for free, do a professional and administrative assignment, and help out in the after school program?

School: Yes, and by the way, you will become a team leader and spend an occasional lunch with your group of students. See, we can only afford one guidance officer and the teachers must do double duty.

Teacher: Thank you for the interview but I think I will stay at my school as an ATR until a real teaching position becomes available.

When Tweed Attacks

On the first day of students my school received an unpleasent surprise, a boatload of NYPD's finest showed up at the school. What were they doing at my school? Our halls are clear of students during classroom instrunction, our student population have not participated in crimes that would put us into the impact school category, we have improved our Math & English statistics under NCLB, and our school saftey scores were the highest(best) ever. Our school safety scores have almost always been near the top for all NYC high schools! Why the police?

Well, it seems my school is on the Tweed radar screen because the school refused the Tweed offer of putting cameras in the hallways, entrances, and lockerooms (big brother). Further, Tweed has already proposed that my school be reorganized into small schools, which was defeated and rejected by the banding together of the teachers, administrators, students, and community leaders. Finally, Tweed took a beating on dumping many students who were not selected by the small schools that replaced the closing down of other large high schools on selected high schools in Queens including my school.

What was Tweed to do? How can they punish a large traditional high school that dares to fight the mighty powers of Tweed? First, Tweed reversed course and not only stopped dumping excess students into my school but limited the amount of students entering our school. This resulted in a budget reduction and caused the excessing of five teachers ---more about them later. Second, Tweed apparently pressured our principal (or so he claims) to use precious budget money to pay for non-educators to teach us how to keep in touch of our feelings. Finally, Tweed authorized the NYPD to flood our non-dangerous school with police officers. Does Tweed really think that armed police in our school is going to increase learning in the classroom? I think not!

What justification did Tweed use? I cannot be sure but I did hear they took into account our attendance figures, which are lower than the surrounding schools because of our "zero tolerance" policy that does not allow students to walk the halls, hangout in the back stairwells, or sneak into lthe cafeteria. With their only choices to either go to class or not go to school, many of these problem students become truants. The result is a quiet, safe school and an increased absense rate. Reasonable people would take this tradeoff but not the maniacs at Tweed. These are the same educrats (some have no experience in education) that see nothing wrong in sending overaged students from Rikers Island (jail) back to the very schools they terrorized in the first place! In their warped prorities the child is important but the children are not. Tweed also claimed they wanted to see a better graduation rate. How does the police presence increase the gradation rate? are they going to shoot the non-graduates? Will the police fan out from the school and track down the truants and forceabily bring them to school so they can graduate? Obviously, Tweed is trying to punish us for our refusing their generous offer of cameras in the school.

What can be done to stop Tweed from bullying our school? Well the only way to stop a bully is to hit back. In this case the union, PTA, politicians, and media must join together to expose Tweed's revenge on a school that didn't want any part of big brother in the school.

On a side note. All five of the excessed teachers failed to land a position in other schools. These teachers, all excessed because of the budget cut included our very popular ESL coordinator who nobody wanted to see leave. Well, thanks to Joel Klein's intimidation on hiring other school's excessed teachers, all are ATR's and hopefully will land a position before the next contract.

Remember, when Tweed attacks, you fight back!

Defined Benefit Vs. Defined Contribuition Plans - Which Is Better?

Over the last decade there has been an explosion of defined contribution (401k) plans in the business community. In fact the Federal Government switched to the defined contribution plan for it's new employees in the mid 90s. The advantages of the defined contribution plan is it's portability (you can move from job to job) and employer match (free money). However, is it better than a defined benefit plan? Apparently, the answer is a loud no!

A study by a Boston research group on pensions found that the average defined benefit plan outperformed the average defined contribution plan by 1% annually and the average defined benefit pension was 20% greater than the definded contribution plan for the same period of time (20 years). Why such a difference? Because defined benefit plans are run by professional investment companies who are always rebalancing their allocation between stocks, bonds, and cash. On the other hand, the defined contribution plan is controlled by the employee who are either too conservative (money market fund) or too risky (company stock - think of Enron). Furthermore, the definded contribution plan has higher fees than the defined benefit plan and many defined benefit pensions have a COLA adjustment, the defined contribution plans do not. Therefore, it is accurate to say the longer a person works on the job, the greater the difference between the defined benefit pension and the defined contribution pension.

Unfortunantly, the defined benefit pension is under attack. Recently, IBM and Verizon have terminated their defined benefit plans and only about 28% of all companies have a defined benefit plan (1n the 1970's it was 86%). Mayor Bloomberg and the MTA have proposed a Tier V pension which can either be a less generous defined benefit pension or a defined contribution pension. Even the labor-friendly New York Times has jumped on the Tier V pension as a way to save money. While the New York State constitution does not allow for pension changes for existing employees, unless they are pension improvements, new employees may find themselves on the receiving end of a vastly inferior pension plan.

The New York Teachers Retirement System (TRS) provides a defined contribution (403b) plan that suffers from not including an option that should be included in all defined contribution plans. A life cycle fund. Depending on your age and date of expected retirement, the life cycle fund would automatically be rebalanced between stocks, bonds, and cash with little cost to the employee. However, presently the TRS has not proposed any changes to their fund and without a company match, the annuity generated by the 403b plan is inferior to the NYC defined benefit plans that include the life cycle funds.

If the future for new employees is a defined contribution plan then these plans should be low cost, have life cycle or retirement funds, and professional investment advise.

By the way, the fixed income investment return of the TRS 403b plan is 8.25% and this value will not change until June of 2009. If inflation stays between 3-6%, you get a minimum return of 2.25% above the rate of inflation, not a bad deal. I suggest that all teachers put at least 50% of all new money into this fund and take any money you have in Option "B" and switch it to the fixed fund (it takes one year to complete the switch).

Thank You Randi, Joel, & My Clueless Administrators For The Two Most Miserable Days In My Teaching Career

I just spend the two of the most miserable days in my teaching career doing nothing at my school. Instead of recharging my batteries on vacation and preparing for the next school year, I found myself subject to mindless (un)professional development, a principal who spent precious time telling us how great he is, and assistant principals who had a mind-numbing session on bulletin boards, hallway practices, and classroom sharing. We were also exposed to an afternoon of videos of "right to know" that drove most of the teachers bonkers.

You might ask. "How about working on the classrooms?" Well my school administrators didn't program time in for this in our very busy two days of mindless nothingness. But Randi said the two days were to fix-up the classroom? Well, tell that to the administrators because they didn't seem to care what Randi said. What follows is my two days of misery.

Thursday, August 31st started off with coffee & bagels as the principal spoke about how our school improved their Math & English scores over last year. Clap, clap, clap. Next he introduced teachers who came back from sabbaticals and informed the staff of the teachers he excessed. We did not lose any teachers to transfer using the open market system. Note; teachers don't usually leave large traditional high schools in Queens for smaller schools despite the best efforts of Kleinberg to make the smaller schools attractive. See my August 24th blog. Next, he informed us how he single-handedly fought the Tweed educrats on adding cameras, security officers, and a police presence in our school I thought it was a total effort between parents, students, teachers and some administrators? What do I know. Finally, he finished it up with how we should all work together and collaborate on issues that affect the school and that we are one big family. Boy was I getting sick of this phoney. My principal is a "cya person" and will stab you in the back if that is what his Tweed masters want.

Next, it was off to our department meeting for the rest of the morning where we discussed what should go on our bulletin boards. Should it be student work, or posters? What can go on the walls? Can student work be put on the hallway walls? Thankfully, the session ended for lunch as the assistant principal was explaining how three teachers can share one room.

The afternoon session consisted of two videos on the "right to know" what chemicals are being used in the school and what the procedures are to inform medical personnel. However, our right to know apparently does not include knowing if our students have Communicable diseases. We are forbbiden to know if a child is HIV positive, another reason why a teacher should not break up fights. By the time the videos were finished it was time to go home.

Friday, September 1st we are back to coffee & bagels and another speech by the principal. Charitably, he limited it to a half hour. However, he had a wonderful surprise for his teaching staff, a day-long professional development session. Of course, despite his statements that he wants to collaborate with the teachers, he didn't ask for teacher input or comment on the type or necessity of professional development. By the way the administrators were exempt from the professional development sessions. The professional development consisted of
non-educators telling us how we should be in touch with our feelings. What a wonderful waste of time and money. Yes, he used his budget to pay for this rather than saving the money for before/after school tutoring. This professional development was to extend to the end of the day but a revolt by the teaching staff truncated it to 1:50 pm. This allowed the teachers one hour to fix up their rooms!

Didn't Randi say that the two days before Labor Day will be used for teachers to fix-up their classrooms? Well I took a look at the contract and under section 6C it states that "part of the time on the days before Labor Day will be allocated to classroom preparation. " The question is what does part mean? Half a day, 2 hours, 10 minutes? Another, poor job by Randi and her lawyer friends that did not specify what part of a day means. Does giving us one hour on the second day meet the definition as part of a day? What about not having any time on day one? What are the penalties for non-compliance of the contract by the administrators? I suspect there will be no consequences for the administrators for violating the contract. Can you imagine if you refused to go to the professional development session? Yes, you would be charged with insubordination and at the very least receive a letter to the file and maybe even being removed from the school!

My miserable day ended with my assistant principal (who I have a good relationship with) coming into my room and asking me if I finished the Earth Science lab booklet. My response was "you must be kidding" I informed him that had I not been required to go to the professional development session, I would have been finished. He left my room and told me that I forced him to find a common lab paper to hand out next week. My heart bleds.

In conclusion, I would like to thank Joel Klein who does not understand the law of diminishing returns and thinks quantity means quality. Joel, more time in the classroom does not mean better grades if you overwork the teacher & students. I would also thank Randi Weingarten who first, agreed to the two days before Labor Day that ruined many a planned vacation and second, lied to us about how the two days were to be used. Finally, I would like to thank my school administrators who time and again fail to practice what they preach and use limited funds for professional development that nobody wanted.


Before I forget, I want to give special thanks to Randi & Joel for the precedent-setting 190 day school year.

Department Of Education Claims The Regents Is 33% Of A Student's Classroom Grade - Really???

The principal of Lafayette high school has reduced student Earth Science classroom grades 10 to 15 points if they failed the Earth Science Regents. While I question the principal's wisdom in changing student grades without teacher discussion and input, I'm more concerned with DOE's response to the event. According to DOE, the policy is that the Regents should be 33% of the classroom grade. I have been teaching a decade and have never heard of this. In fact the Regents was not part of the classroom grade at all!

Granted if a student tanked on the Regents (less than 50%), our policy was to reverse any passing grade to a failure since the student did not possess an adequate knowledge of the subject.
Further, some students who passed the Regents had their failing grade reversed if they were close to passing. However, I have never read or was verbally informed that the DOE had a policy that the Regents is 33% of the classroom grade! In fact, final grades must be bubbled in days before the Regents is given and maybe more than a week before the Regents is marked! Just imagine the chaos if teachers were required to incorporate the Regents scores into the classroom grade.

Lets take an example of how DOE's policy works. First, you give student X a classroom grade of 75%. A week later after you finished marking the Regents, Student X received a 52%. How do you deterimine the final grade? Easy if you are a math and science teacher.

Final Grade = 75(.67) + 52(.33) = 67%

Student X passed but now do this for 125 students at the end of the Regents week and then have to bubble in the grades. Rush, rush, rush, mistakes are very likely and the stress on the classroom teachers trying to complete the paperwork for the year is greatly increased.

Finally, all teachers should know that a principal can change a grade but they first must consult with the teachers and must justify, in writing to the teacher, why the grade was changed. A principal cannot just change a grade because they want to.

The Advantages Of Going To A Large Traditional High School

The large traditional high schools have been attacked as a relic of the past and not serving the needs of today's students. Instead the Kleinberg administration is gun ho on developing small schools and fighting tooth and nail to increase Charter Schools. To try to prove they are right the DOE dumps the "not ready for promotion 8th graders", discipline problems, and children with disabilities on the large traditional high schools. To their surprise and disappointment there has been no net improvement for students who go to the small or charter schools, when compared to the large traditional high schools The reason for this is not evident. However, I do have some theories on why the large traditional high school can still do better on an uneven playing field.

First, the large traditional high school gives a student a wide variety of Honors and Advanced Placement courses as well as electives such as forensics, computer courses, finance courses, and law courses. By contrast, the small and charter usually don't have the ability to offer anything but courses associated with the school's theme (example the school of Law Enforcement only have courses associated with law). The lack of a varied and challenging curriculum limits student choice and therefore student achievement.

Second, the large traditional high school has many extracurricular activities an area that motivates student school participation. Sports programs, clubs, and academic teams. In particular the sports programs of the large high schools are usually split by gender. For example my school has football (Varsity and JV), soccer, track, basketball (Varsity and JV) swimming, volleyball, golf, handball, bowling, fencing,and baseball for the male students. The female students have swimming, volleyball, track, soccer, softball, basketball, bowling, golf, handball, and fencing. Students that join sports and other extracurricular activity do not get themselves in trouble and do well in class. By contrast the small and charter schools have very limited extracurricular activities and little or no sports teams.

Third, and I believe most importantly, the large traditional high schools have a higher percentage of experienced quality teachers. The flexibility of the course selection, and the chance of teaching highly motivated students in Honors and Avanced Placement courses attract teachers to the school. Case in point, my principal informed me that he received ten applications for two openings. All were experienced teachers with good references. I'm sure the small and charter schools do not receive the same quality teachers. In fact, based upon discussions with various teachers, it seems the small schools are looking for young, inexperienced teachers they can mold. As for the Charter schools? They are lucky if the teacher is certified and lasts for more than a year. Quality teachers? Give me a break!

In my overcrowded Queens high school not one teacher is uncertified and the average school experience is eight years! Are all of them quality? Of course not! However, many of them are
quality teachers and the students benefit from being exposed to them.

In conclusion, send your child to the large traditional high school if you want a well-rounded student that colleges will be happy to have on their campus.

Reflections of Summer School

Well, summer school is over and it is time to reflect back on my summer school experience. For the many of you that don't do summer school, I suggest you do it once so you can appreciate how lucky you are that you don't need the money and have a relaxing summer. However, enough of this and lets get on with what its like to teach summer school.

First, and most important are the students. Summer school students are not your regular year students. The summer school students are there for various reasons, all bad. Some of them are there because of poor work habits, others because of behavior problems, many are there due to academic dificencies, and a few due to attendance issues. In other words these students are the unmotivated bottom layer of the school system. To motivate them is a real challenge since if they were motivated, they wouldn't be in summer school in the first place!

Second, class size. While my three classes stabilized at 30, 32, and 32 students, there were some Math and Living Environment (Biology) classes with up to 48 students in a class. Some of the students were standing, sitting on the window sills, and shared chairs. What an environment for learning with already "at risk" students!

Third, many of the summer schools are not air conditioned and the average heat index in the summer is 92 degrees (temperature plus humidity). Even motivated students would have a problem with learning in these hot and humid classrooms, can you imagine what is like for the unmotivated student? What's interesting is that the Department of Education (DOE) claims that these old schools cannot handle air conditioners. However, all of these schools upgraded the wiring for the administrative offices and are air conditioned. Children first? Yeah right, if you believe that then I have a bridge to sell you.

Fourth, Teachers are paid on a per session basis ($37.96/hr) and are required to work five straight hours with only two 5 minute breaks in between the first and second period classes.Teaching three straight classes in less than ideal conditions is not condusive for good learning.

Fifth, school supplies and textbooks are usually inadequate since many of the summer school teachers come from other schools and the administrators don't like to give up precious resources to the summer school program. The result is that the school gives the summer school teachers outdated and poorly conditioned textbooks, little, if any photocopying services, and no technology. Pencils, paperclips, staples, and chalk are usually in short supply.

Finally, the DOE starves the summer school program of money. There is no money for test prep courses, tutoring, or allocation of extra hours for test scoring. The result is a "bare bones" program that meets the minimum requirements for summer school students who really need a maximum effort by DOE to educate the neediest of students.

Over the years the summer school program has changed, and not for the better. Once a student missed three days (summer school is 30 days long) the student was automatically discharged. Now a student can go on a two week vacation (10 days) and still demand to pass. Misbehaving students were discharged at a teacher's request, Now the administrator puts the student back into the class after a lecture. Finally, the lack of enforcement by administrators have seen an increase in cell phones, sidekicks, blackberries, and ipods in the summer school classrooms. A teacher can do little but threaten to fail the student but without administrative muscle teacher threats are not taken seriously since the student does not believe that they will fail until it's too late. (urban myth: There is a mistaken belief by high school students that if you show up enough the teacher can't fail you - wrong).

In conclusion, summer school is for the student misfits and the teachers that need the money. In our profession its called "blood money".

Postcript. My students had a 85% passing rate and a surprising 52% passed the New York State Earth Science Regents. Not bad considering the roadblocks in their way.

DOE Erodes Teacher Authority With It's Revised Student Disciplinary Code

The New York City Department of Education has decided to further erode the classroom teacher's authorty by proposing to revise the student disciplinary code in allowing a parent to appeal the removal of their child from the classroom. Presently, the classroom teacher has the right to remove a disruptive student for three days from his/her classroom. Most administrators don't like this regulation and try to pressure the teacher from enforcing the regulation. The reason they don't like this regulation is that the disruptive student is usually assigned to the assistant principal's office and the AP must oversee the student.

In my school, the administration tried to set up a procedure to limit the removal of the disruptive student, First, you had to talk to the child at least twice about his/her behavior. Second, you contacted the parent (trying to contact the parent was not good enough) and let the parent know about their child's behavior. Third, if the first two fail you send the student to the AP for a lecture and is sent back to class. Finally, only after the three procedures failed to change the student's behavior can the teacher issue a 3-day "do not admit" order for the student. The result was a teacher outcry and the Administrators backed down. However, they still try to discourage teachers from removing the disruptive student.

The proposed DOE regulation allows the parent to appeal to the Regional administrators, who don't care about the classroom, and will, in many cases, allow these disruptive students to return to the classroom so they can cause more damage.

This propsed revision is another attack on the classroom teacher's authority. First, it was micromanagement, then it was the one-size-fits-all curriculum, and now limiting the rght of a teacher to have a peaceful classroom. What's next?

To the union's credit the president Randi Weingarten has objected to this change. However, objecting is one thing doing something about it is another. The union must be pro-active on this issue and take whatever action that is necessary to ensure the revised student disciplinary code is not implemented. Talk is cheap, we classroom teaches expect action from our union representatives.

The UFT Questionnaire - What It Didn't Include

Today I received the UFT questionnaire on what we should ask for in the next contract. Of course most teachers want more money, better health benefits, low class sizes, and enforceable student discipline codes. However, I was more interested in what the UFT questionnaire did not include.

First, a priority for many teachers is getting back the two days before Labor Day. All the teachers I spoke to bring this up as a top priority, on par with a competitive salary. Why doesn't the UFT questionnaire include this?

Second, the reinstatement of the grievance procedure that protected teachers from overzeolous administrators who, if not kept in check, can give teachers Letters-To-The-File (LIF) at their leisure.

Third, the elimination of the 90 day unpaid suspension based upon a student accusation. Already teachers have been subject to these false accusations. Why didn't the UFT include it in the questionnaire?

Fourth, How come the UFT questionnaire didn't include changing the 1.67% factor for teachers who are vested to 2% in the pension plan. Instead they only seem to care for the 30 year teacher.

Fifth, why wasen't a limit of 183 school days, as is done in the suburbs, included in the questionnaire?

Finally, The UFT questionnaire should have had a question that read "should Randi and her lawyer friends negotiate the next contract rather than the classroom teachers?" I guess we all know the answer to that.

I know there are other items left out of the UFT questionnaire. However, I believe these are the most important.

I would like to hear what other teachers think.

Mayor Bloomberg's & Chancellor Klein's Children Last Program

I have reached the halfway point in teaching summer school in my non-air conditioned building and have come up with the following observations after talking to my students.

First, I have eight students who have been thrown out (explled) of Private/Religious/Charter schools in June. Four of them due to behaviour issues, the rest for poor grades. All are waiting to be placed in the public school system. The rest of my students come from four public high schools and despite their obvious behaviour and academic problems, are forced to go back to their public schools. Let's see under the Chancellor's regulations you can't leave the school if you want to and the public school can't transfer you to another school if you are found to be a disruptive influence. How does this help the child? It doesn't of course.

Second, how can the DOE allow children to learn in non-air conditioned schools? I do notice all the administrators have air conditioners. Maybe the DOE should be using the money they claim their saving on central administration to air condition the summer schools. Oops, I forgot that money has already been allocated to the empowerment school principals not the classroom or it's students.

Third, class size in my classes are reasonable, 26, 28, 32. However, the Living Environment and Math A teachers have class sizes of 40+ each. What a wonderful learning environment for students who have academic problems as is.

Fourth, under the Chancellor's regulations in summer school the teacher cannot automatically expell a disruptive student. Instead an Administrator removes the student and sends the student back to the class the very next day. the student wins and the class loses.

Finally, the summer school program is the stepchild of the DOE funding activities. In particular, the high school students. Therefore, the high school students lack classroom supplies, up-to-date books, and a proper learning environment necessary for the majority of the students to succeed. The DOE would rather give money to Charter schools than use the funds to help prepare high school students who are in danger of not graduating by adequately funding the summer school program.

In conclusion, when it comes to the summer school program it's children last not first!

New York City Has Agreed To A Contract With No Givebacks - Very Interesting!

Shockingly the Bloomberg administration has agreed to a tentative contract with it's largest union (DC37) that apparently does not contain union givebacks. This development is of extreme importance because it "sets the pattern" for the next contract for the teachers. For people unfamiliar with municipal bargaining in New York City. Once the city agrees with one of the major unions (usually DC37, the largest and weakest) on a contract. All other unions are subject to the parameters of that contract. For teachers to get more than the DC37 pattern, the teachers usually have to give up days and work extra time during the school day. Therefore, lets see what the general outline is of the DC37 contract.

The DC37 contract gives the union a 3.15% raise for 13 months (July 2005 to August 2006), a 2.0% raise for the next 6 months (August 2006 to February 2007) and a 4.0% raise for the last 13 months (February 2007 to March 2008). By compounding the interest it comes out to a 10% raise for a 32 month contract. The extra 2 months were added so that the city could give the union's welfare fund a much-needed cash infusion of 23 million dollars. Interestingly, the union won a very important takeback, the right to live in the New York State suburbs, as long as they pay the New York City Income Tax. This takeback (given up in 1987) is based upon the reality that the average DC37 employee (annual salary of $28,000) cannot afford to live in the big apple.

Why did the city give such a relatively (for them) generous contract to a union that they have used previously to impose a "pattern" on the rest of the unions? Simple, its politics, and the city's ever-growing budget surplus. First, Lillian Roberts is in serious trouble as head of DC37. She is outvoted on the executive board and has made enemies of the other unioms with her approval of a vastly inferior contract that was short on money and long on givebacks, which of course established the "pattern" for all of the other unions. Second, the city's ever growing budget surplus, presently 5 billion dollars! The tentative contract for DC37 was payback by Mayor Bloomberg to Lillian Roberts for saving the city millions of dollars in the previous contract when the city was claiming a budget deficit (it turned out the city had a budget surplus of 1.3 billion dollars). Further, Lillian Roberts is up for a tough reelection campaign later this year and the Mayor is supporting her reelection and this contract will help her immensly. Finally, by comng to a contract with DC37, the city has set the "pattern" before real negotiations with the tougher unions (police & teachers) get going.

What will this contract mean to the New York City teachers? First, the New York City teachers contract expires on October 7, 2007 and the teachers will receive the same 3.15% raise starting on October 7, 2006 that DC37 will get in their first year of their contract. Logically, the city is willing to give a 4% raise to the teachers for the first year (October 2007 to October 2008). This is the "pattern" set by the DC37 contract. Any increase in that number will be associated with givebacks, a situation that is not likely to be receptive to the teachers. Therefore, the 4% value seems to be a reasonable value for the first year.

The problem arises with the second and third years of the contract. Since DC37's contract will be ending and unless other major unions have settled a long-term contract (highly unlikely), the final two years will be based upon the city's financial condition, Randi Weingarten's willingness as leader of the Municipal Labor Council (MLC) to agree to give the city a less generous Tier V pension for the newbies, and/or paying a percentage of the salary (1 - 2%) for health benefits. Obviously, if Randi caves here, all the municipal unions will be getting significant raises (up to 5% if both are implemented) by giving back on the pension and health issues. However, if the MLC refuses to giveback on the pension & health issues the question is how much will the city offer? This is difficult to say. First, it depends on the city budget surplus/deficit. Second, what other givebacks the city wants from the teachers? A sixth period? More time during the day? Less time off? Required coverages? Randi has already said she will no longer exchange time for money and has committed to a three-year, 4 -5% per year contract to try to catch up to the suburbs. Therefore, unless the city is willing to pay the teachers close to what Randi wants without givebacks, the best the teachers can probably do is a 2-3% raise without the givebacks previously mentioned and that's assuming the city has not fallen into a budget deficit.

Personally, I expect one of two scenarios to occur. First, and the most likely scenario, the MLC caves (Randi caves???) and allows the city to start a Tier V pension and/or a 1-2% employee contribution to pay for health benefits, allowing the city to give the unions a 3 - 5% raise, based upon the status of the city budget surplus/deficit. The second scenario is that the MLC does not agree to the pension and health givebacks and the city may just decide (quite likely) to fake negotiating until either Bloomberg's term expires or the State finds the city bargaining in bad faith. In which case look for the city to offer a 2-3% raise with some very minor givebacks to save face.

In conclusion, it would appear that without the city receiving major givebacks in the pension and health area don't look for a contract anytime soon.

A Quality Teacher In Every Classroom? - You Get What You Pay For

A nonpartisan organization called the Education Trust has found that students in urban, high-povety high schools were twice as likely to meet State standards when taught by highly rated teachers. This conclusion was not based upon a limited study but from a comprehensive study rating 140,000 teachers in Illinois. Further, teacher experience made a profound difference in student performance. Therefore, to maximize student achievement in the urban high schools it is important to have an experienced, highly rated teacher in the classroom. The question is how does New York City achieve the goal of providing such teachers in their urban high schools?

First, you need to pay a competitive salary. Why would a highly-rated, experienced teacher teach in a school system that pays 15% less than the surrounding suburbs?

Second, you need manageable class sizes. In the New York City high schools the average class size is 32 students compared to 23 students in the surrounding suburbs. Thats 39% more students and less attention given to the needy students.

Third, teacher control of the classroom. In the New York City schools teachers have very little control of the classroom and many of the classrooms have safety problems. DOE student discipline regulations gives classroom teachers little say in removing disruptive and dangerous students.

Fourth, a continuing practical and informative professional development program, led by these very teachers to make other, less experienced teachers better. Instead of ideological (i.e. Columbia Teachers College) mindless professional development that has little if any classroom application.

Finally, the lack of strong and classroom-based administrators. Unlike the suburbs where most administrators were once those highly-qualifed, experienced teachers, many New York City administrators have little classroom experience and come out of a business-based "Leadership Program". These administrators were not master teachers and their experience with dealing with the teaching staff is not collaborative.

How does New York City attract teachers to work in their schools? They have job fairs, out-of-state-recruitment, and yes a global recruitment outreach program! I kid you not.
If they ever found life in space they would probably have a intergalactic job fair, that's how desperate the City is to attract teachers. Furthermore, many of the teachers hired by the City are not really certified as the highly-rated teachers are. In New York City (with State approval), many of the newer teachers come from the NYC fellows program, Teach For America, and other alternate certification programs. In my high school (like most) besides having teachers with alternate certification, we have had teachers from Jamaica, Slovokia, Austria, Nigeria, Germany, Hati, and the Phillipines. Most of the foreign teachers left after their two year commitment was finished . In all cases the reason they left was the culture shock of student disrespect and the tepid backing of the administrators. Very few of the alternate certification teachers last in the profession as the teaching job is found to be too tough to handle. By contrast the suburbs pick and choose among the many applications from quality teachers. Why? because the provide competitive salaries, low class sizes, teacher control of the classroom, and enforceable student discipline codes. The very things a highly-rated teacher looks for.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that to attract highly qualified, experienced teachers you most make the job professionally satisfying, and less emotionally exhausting. Things the New York City school system has failed to do.

Is Our Union Strong? Let's Compare With The Heavy Construction Union

I can only laugh at how my union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), is so feared by the New York City media. If you read the Daily News and New York Post, the New York State legislature cannot go to the bathroom until the UFT gives them the go ahead. However, perception is not reality. In today's Newsday the heavy construction unions settled their two-day strike and received a nearly 6% raise each year for four years. What did they give back? The right to sit on a chair and take a snooze (a la Sopronos) if their heavy equipment is not ready to be used at the construction site.

While I think these unions made a good deal, you don't hear any media outrage on the generous package the contractors gave them. In fact, mayor Bloomberg offered his offices to close the deal. By contrast our union obtained a "shitty contract" that gave us a 15% increase for 54 months or 3.25% per year which is less than the inflation rate! For this little money we gave up three teaching days, ten more minutes each day, the right to grieve, a 90 day unpaid suspension, and unprofessional hall, cafeteria, and bathroom duties. I decided to compare the raises the heavy construction unions received since 1982 to the UFT negotiated raises teachers received during the same period.

In 1982 the heavy construction unions pay was $14.82 and as of before this settled contract it has risen to $82.00 per hour. Therefore, the average yearly raise was a generous 7.5% per year for the last twenty-four years. By contrast the average teacher salary was $29,000 per year in 1982 and has risen to $48,000 in 2006, a 2.0% annual raise! Why are their raises so much higher? Simple they strike while the UFT does not.

Some of the Union flunkies will claim I'm comparing apples & oranges. No, I'm comparing the money! In New York City the city teachers are called the "brightest". However, when it comes to getting the money during negotiations the UFT is outsmarted by a union that the vast majority of its members never went to college, they just strike to get what they want. Who are the "brightest"? It's certainly not the union that represents the New York City Teachers.

Bronx Sixth Graders Pass The Living Environment Regents

In the Wednesday New York Times there was an article on how ten of the twenty-three sixth grade students(23 not 34 in the class?) passed the Living Environment Regents. The school is named Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science. One of the many small schools that has popped up throughout the city. Looking at the school's website the only thing I could find is that they have 517 students for grades six through eight. Therefore, I cannot deterimine if this school is like Ms. Fizzle's school where only level 3's and 4's need apply or any other screening is done to weed out the poor academic students. However, this is not about the students it's about the Regents.

The Living Environment Regents has, like all the other introductory Regents, has been dumbed down. Why? Well its because the State of New York believes it is important to have as many students as possible to graduate with a Regents diploma. Since the State can't increase the academic ability of it's students, the next best thing is to dumb down the Regents.

In my school the three best science teachers teach Earth Science, Chemistry, & Physics. They basically get over 50% passing in their respective Regents (the average passing rates are 35% for all the teachers in these subjects). However, the Living Environment teachers (who are not considered top teachers) have achieved a 72% passing rate! The reason for such a high passing rate is simple. The students only need to get 37 points to achieve a Regents grade of 65! Talking about math gone wild! Using a matrix that only the great gods of the State prepared allows students who have no where near mastered science to advance where they hit the brick wall of Earth Science/Chemistry. Is it any wonder that the students are doing poorly on federal tests while improving on the state tests? The reason the states are dumbing down the tests being elementary, middle, or high school.

The bottom line is if you cannot make the students smarter, then dumb down the tests!!!!

School's Over! Or Is It?

At 2:45 pm on June 28th I walked out of my school to enjoy the summer off. Let's see I don't have to report back to my school until August 31st. A whole two months! However, there is this nasty program called summer school and unfortunatly, I am teaching in it. Yes summer school is voluntary but when the cost of living in NYC metro area is 5.1%, the rent controlled apartments went up 4.25%, and the next teacher raise is only 3.15%. I must volunteer if I am to pay my bills and send my children through college.

When do I start summer school? June 29th, yes the day after regular school ended! Not even one day off between the two. For the many of you teachers who have not experienced the joy of summer school teaching. Let's just say it's known as "blood money" as it drains you like no other job in the school system. What is it like teaching summer school? Let me explain by going step by step into the joys of summer school teaching.

First, you get per sesson pay, about $38 per hour which is equal to a 2nd year teacher salary and a pay rate much lower than the average summer school teacher makes during the year.

Second, most summer school classrooms are not air conditioned and you must work in hot & humid classrooms and scream over the noisy industrial fans that DOE provides us with. Some teachers actually have to shut off the fan so they can be heard by the students!

Third, In the high schools you teach three back-to-back 90 minute periods with only a 5 minute break between each class. Need to go to the bathroom? Forget-about-it, you don't have the time plus god forbid an administrator leaves his/her air conditioned office and sees you away from the class. A letter-to-the-file will certainly be issued and you can't even grieve it!

Fourth, classroom supplies are usually not available and even copying paper is scarce. You want to photocopy something? Good luck in finding a working copying machine that teachers can use.
Experienced summer school teachers know to bring their own supplies and hope they last.

Fifth, class size limitations are thrown out the door in summer school. I once had 52 students in one of my classes. They were sitting on the window sills, the floor, and even the lab desk. Hopefully, after they get their July metro card 25% of them won't show up again and the class sizes drop into the low 30s.

Sixth, since the administration is unfamilar with the summer school teachers they will do as little as possible to help you with disruptive students. Further, they get pissed off that they must leave their air conditioned office to listen to your complaint and if they do take the student out of your class that day, you can bet the student will be back tomorrow.

Finally, the last day of summer school is August 18th and that gives you 12 days to have a vacation since all teachers report on August 31st. Yes to all you unbelieving teachers I said Thursday August 31st. Thanks Randi.

Do you really want to teacher summer school? Only if you are really desperate for the money.

New York State Refuses To Increase Charter Schools. Hooray!

The New York State Legislature refused to increase the number of Charter Schools from the existing 100 to 250, as Governer Pataki demanded. Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg of New York City and Joel Klein, Chancellor of th DOE are all strong supporters of the Charter Schools and this is a major victor for the NYC public school system. Why is this important? Well at least 80 of the extra 150 Charter Schools would have been located in New York City, further weakening the NYC public school system. All three politicians would use public school money to fund the Charter Schools and further limit funding for the public schools. In fact, the city's priority is to push for charter/small schools and starve the rest of the public schools. Moreover, the charter/small schools are given space in the public schools adding to overcrowding in the large schools, especially the large high schools.

To the uninformed Charter Schools are schools that take public money but are not subject to DOE regulations and don't need to be unionized. Their only subject to the condition that the school shows that they are meeting State standards in educating the students. If the story ended here how could anybody be against Charter Schools? Well, here is the problem, despite all the advantages the Charter Schools have over the public schools they compete with, they show no improvement academically. How can that be given the advantages the Charter Schools have? Listed below are these advantages given to a Charter School.

First, the Charter Schools have smaller class sizes, the Charter Schools usually have between 15-20 students per class while the public schools have between 28-34 per class. The smaller the classes, the better the students learn.

Second, the Charter Schools, while using a blind lottery to select their students, requires parent interaction and support. Parents who don't follow closely their child's education, don't bother to apply to Charter Schools. In fact many Charter Schools require parent involvement as a condition of their child's acceptance to the schools.

Third, the Charter Schools have much more strict discipline codes. Student misbehavior can and does result in that student being expelled from the Charter School. By contrast the DOE does not even allow public schools to suspend students or send them to another school.

Fourth, almost all Charter Schools have longer days and even Saturday school. Meaning students are in an educational setting for longer periods of time and therefore, increased learning.

Finally, the Charter Schools, like the small schools, don't have to take their fair share of students with special needs or limited English learners. They simply tell parents of these children (assuming many actually apply) that as a new school they don't have the funds, teachers, and equipment to work with these high-maintanence children.

You would think that with all these advantages, the Charter Schools would blow away the Public Schools? However, with some exceptions (KIPPS) this is not the case. Why? It's really simple. Poor Administration and inexperienced teachers who get burned out due to the increased demands on them.

Many of the Charter Schools are run by private organizations who usually try to run the school as a private business. The result? the administration is usually sparce and they quickly find out that the students are not widgets and each child needs some sought of guidance and that the school is not usually prepared to deal with these issues. Worse are the teachers that are hired. Many of them are not certified, most are inexperienced, and some are failed teacher from the public schools. Further, the teachers are overworked, threatened (no union protection), and abused. Teacher quality, to say the least , is very uneven. Furthermore, the teachers find that they must teach many different subjects and for longer periods of time. The result is teacher burnout and teacher turnover. It may be nice that the administration can fire a teacher at their leasure but the dirty little secret is that high quality and experienced teachers are not knocking at the door to be abused in the Charter School environment. Even the successful Charter Schools (KIPPS) have serious teacher retention problems that are only partially handled by large salaries for the additional work. Finally, increased instruction does not always translate into better academics. Here, "the law of diminishing returns" applies as worn-out terachers and bored students cry enough and just go through the motions.

Therefore, it is no surprise that the Charter Schools are in serious trouble. The City of Denver is so disgusted with the charter/small schools that they are thinking of closing them down. All of them! If the public schools had the same advantages of the Charter Schools, the public schools would blow them away. However, even with the advantages the Charter Schools have statistically, they show no improvement academically with the public schools they compete with.

Same Old UFT, Givebacks For The Members & Salary Increases For The Leadership

Last night the UFT Leadership voted itself the same 15% pay raise that the members received. Sounds like this is fair....Except the 15% raise to the UFT leadership came with only one minor giveback. The UFT offices will be open one hour extra once a week. Big deal! What did the members giveback for their 15% raise?

1. 37.5 minute tutoring session four days a week and you can have up to ten students for each
tutoring session. Furthermore, you can have as much as 20 students in a classroom if you
share the classroom with another teacher.

2. The introduction of administrative duties such as hallway, cafeteria, & bathroom duties.
These non-professional duties are an insult to all teachers.

3. The elimination of grievences when given a letter-to-the file.

4. The eliminating of senority transfer rights. The Open Market Transfer System will result in many of the older, more experienced teachers being forced to stay at their own schools as
principals select younger, less experienced teachers for the open teaching positions.

5. The possibility of being suspended without pay based upon a simple student accusation.

6. The giving up of three days (two for classroom instruction) making our year 190 days, the
most ever!

Now you don't need to be a rocket scientist that giving back one hour, one day a week is in no way equal to the major teacher givebacks that our leadership negotiated away.

Will Leo Casey check for Unity bathroom passes at the UFT bathroom? No!!!
Will JColletti make sure that the people using the UFT cafeteria is limited to 45 minutes? No!!
Will Peter Goodmen patrol the hallway to ensure the UFT members are in their offices? No!!
Will Randi and her leadership gang using the extra time to tutor the students? Of course not!!

In fact, except for the extra hour, one day a week, of attendance with undefined duties, the UFT leadership will be getting the same 15% as it's members. Is this fair? Of course not but this is the UFT where they are more concerned in protecting their backroom deals with the DOE (new teacher stipends, large high school discrimination, & special education bias to name a few) than protecting the teacher who pays the dues.

Where is the union that is supposed to represent the teachers and not themselves? It certainly is not the Unity faction that leads the UFT. What about the other factions (ICE, TJC, UTF)? I just don't know but my vote will go to the faction that I believe best represents the classroom teacher,

Small School" Bias "- The DOE Lies & Our Union's Silence

The federal Department of Education is investigating the complaints filed against the New York City DOE by the Citywide Council on High Schools who claimed that the small high schools were not getting their fair share of students with disabilities and limited English skills. Obviously, the federal agency found the complaint valid and has proceeded to remedy the discrimination in enrollment practices. Even at a UFT Chapter Leader meeting the State representative stated that she was concerned about the "bias" in assigning students at the high school level.

What did the federal agency find that warrants the investigation? Well, for starters the feds used statistics that are commonly available, like the the typical large high school has a population that consists of 34% of the students with disabilities or have limited English skills. By contrast the typical small schools are limited to 12% of these students and this figure is even lower for the first three years where the small schools are allowed to further "screen out" these students. Moreover, the "not ready for promotion eigth graders" who are promoted anyway are almost always assigned to the large high schools. Finally the small schools use "skimming" to filter out unruly students and select students with involved parents. Talk about discrimination in enrollment practices. Even if you were to believe (I certaintly don't) the DOE filtered statistics, you would still find that the average large high school will have 24% of it's student population made up of special education and limited English proficiency students compared to 16% for the small schools, an 8% difference!

Incredibly, the DOE denies that they discriminate. City DOE council Michael Best claims that there was "no basis for any inappropriate findings". How could Michael Best say this when the chief executive of the DOE's small schools, Garth Harries stated that "a deliberate policy to exclude otherwise eligible students with disabilities (special education) from the small schools during the first three years of each school's existence". I guess if you tell a lie often enough it becomes the truth according to DOE. By the way, people who heard Mr. Harries speech believe that this exclusionary policy appears to also include the limited English proficiency applicants to the small schools.

Is our union aware of the DOE discrimination? Of course they are! Many commenters have brought up the question why the UFT has not challenged the DOE on the discrimination in enrollment practices between the small & large high schools? Why did it take an outside group to complain to the Federal agency about this exclusion policy? The UFT response? Deafening silence! It's as if the union secretly buys into the DOE discrimination. How else is one to think?

It is a pity when our uncaring union collaborates with a lying DOE to screw the teachers and the students of the large high schools in the City.

The TRS 403b (TDA) Plan Revisited

In my previous column I commented on how limited, inflexible, and uncompetitive the New York City Teachers' Annuity Plan is when compared to the New York City's 457b/401k plans. Many of the people who read that article asked me if they can start contributing to the City plans without contributing to the TDA? The answer is yes. In fact you don't have to invest a dime into the TRS TDA and uses the City plans until you max out your contribution. Interestingly, if you ask the UFT they advise you to use the City's 457b/401k plans only after you max out in the TRS 403b plan. If you are an ultra-cautious invester and selected the fixed option (8.25%) for 100% of your investment, that is good advice. However, many teachers invest into the inferior variable options and the union is more concerned with keeping teachers clueless about the TDA shortcomings than the better deal the teachers can get using the City plans.

Further, the UFT acts like they have no control over the Trustees of the fund. What a load of crap! The UFT directly elects three of the seven Board members. Moreover, any decision made by the Board Of Trustees must include one of the UFT elected menbers. Therefore, the UFT has veto power over any changes the TRS wants to do. In addition, if the UFT really wants to improve the TRS TDA they only need to propose it. All seven trustees are beholden to the UFT since the four other Trustees are appointed only after being informally approved by the UFT. Since all the Trustees serve three-year terms, any of the Trustees that disappoints the union can find themselves out of the Trustee business.

Finally, I hear rumors that the variable options will be enhanced (whatever that means). How?, when?, does it compare to the City plans? I hope it is true? However, in my case it is "seeing is believing"!

A Classroom Teacher's Report Card Of The DOE

I was very amused by the June 1, 2006 letter from Chancellor Klein to the parents about the new school report card. The report card will include the school's attendance, safety, and student improvement (?), whatever that means. To compare screened schools with overcrowded large high schools is like comparing apples and oranges and the only thing they have in common are that they are fruit.

What I found really amusing is that Chancellor Klein stated that he developed this report card after asking parents, students, and teachers. Funny, I don't know of any parent, student, or classroom teacher who had any input into the plan. i would like these people to please identify themselves, if you really exist.

What I found chilling was that "experienced educators" (Tweed & their Regional flunkies) will observe the classrooms, talk to the students (yeah right) staff (principal and assistant principals, I'm quite sure thay will not be talking to the classroom teachers) and develop a "Battle Plan" (I can't wait to see this) for each student (ha, ha, ha). I just hope that the joke is not on us.

I figured it was time as an "experienced classroom teacher" to give the DOE a report card grade.

DOE's Understanding Of the High School Classroom

Calandar Year September 2005 - June 2006

********Activity************************************ Issue ************(Grade)

Teacher input into classroom policies*************** Does not understand******* (F)

Class size reductions****************************** Does not understand*******(F)

Knowledge of classroom conditions****************** Does not understand******* (F)

Student discipline problems************************ Does not understand********(F)

School overcrowding*******************************Does not understand********(F)

Promoting 8th graders without proper skills***********Does not understand********(F)

Respect for teachers******************************** Does not understand*******(F)


Based upon my report card the DOE has shown to be unaccountable and a failure when it comes to my classroom. The final grade? " F"

Our TDA (403b) Plan & It's Many Faults

In my decade of employment as a teacher I have been a willing participant in the New York City Teachers Retirement System and its 403b plan. Hereafter known as the Teachers Defined Annuity Plan or TDA. First, let me make this clear, I am not criticizing the pension, which is quite good but the TDA which, to be kind, is found to be inflexible, limited, and costly, relative to the New York City's 457b/401k plans. I believe it is time to enlighten the New York City teachers on why the TDA needs to be upgraded and improved.

Selection Limitations:

The TDA is limited to three selections. Fixed, Variable "A" (stocks), and Variable "B" (bonds). By contrast the city plans have five investment funds and nine life cycle funds. The city plans allow for more diversity in investment selections and allows the participant to be aggressive, cautious, or safe and increases the chances of a large payoff at the time of retirement.

Administrative Fees:

You would think that the TDA would have low administrative fees to manage such an old and large fund. However, believe it or not it cost each TDA participant $18 per $10,000 invested in administrative overhead for the Variable options. By contrast in cost $6 per $10,000 invested in the city plans. In other words the TDA charges three times more in administrative fees than the city plans!

Limited Transfer of Funds

The TDA does not allow more than 1/12 of the investors total Variable "A" to be transferred monthly. In other words to get out of Variable A (stocks), it would take one calander year to completely leave stocks. Not good when the stock market is going down. In fact this is down right criminal! To my knowledge, no other 403b plan limits such transfers as the TRS TDA does.

Fund Performance

The only true attractive fund is the Fixed Option. Over the last ten years the Fixed Option has returned an eye popping 8.25% and is never to fall below 7% which is backed by the State. A very good option for the very cautious investor.

The Variable "A" option is basically composed of common stocks and has had a mediocore return of 9% for the last 10 years. Many similar funds averaged 10-12% in the same time period. While the Variable "A" option is not bad, it's certainly not good. Of course, try taking your money out of Variable "A", it takes a year!

The real turkey is the Variable "B" option that is composed of bonds and other fixed-income instruments. Over the last ten years it has returned less than 5% while similar bond funds averaged 6-7%. The Variable "B" fund is a poor performer. In fact a lawsuit has been brought by investors on the poor performance of the Variable "B" option.

Financial Planner Joel L. Frank who writes for the civil service newspaper, The Chief, has stated that it would be best to terminate the TRS TDA and replace it with a more competitive & flexibile plan. I agree and request that the UFT demand significant changes to the TDA or opt out to a more competitive and flexible plan.

The Next Contract ? Read This!

Already there is talk about the next contract and the failure of the negotiation committee to have a no giveback position. While I'm not holding my breath on dynamic, classroom teacher centered negotiations, I do believe that the parameters of the next contract pattern is starting to crystalize. Unfortunatly, it will include givebacks for a raise that won't equal inflation.

What am I talking about? Buried in last week's The Chief, the civil service newspaper, in the for the record section was the City's preliminary proposal to DC 37. It included a 3.15% raise for 2007 (same as ours) and two 2% raises for 2008 & 2009. What' are the givebacks? How about paying for health insurance (TWU) and a 6% contribution for new employees to the pension plan (Tier V). While both need outside approval (health -Municipal Labor Council and pension - State legislature) it is the basis of the next "pattern".

The UFT may say loud and clear that they will not agree to any City proposals for more time and a sixth teaching period, it is interesting that they are very quiet about other givebacks like paying for health and a new pension tier for new employees. Further, it is interesting that the UFT are not talking about takebacks. First, the contract negotiations must include getting back the days before Labor Day. The giving up of these days was a travisty and must be eliminated in the next contract. My previous articles have talked about the other takebacks and needs not be repeated here.

Finally, it is very important that the next leader of the UFT represent the classroom teacher and not the lawyer elite. While I'm interested that a candidate is coming forward to contest for the UFT presidency. I need to be convinced that this candidate is not an idologue and is a true champion of the classroom teacher.