Why does The NY Times keep giving The New Teacher Project so much credibility? They are nothing more than a front for the Reform Movement! You never see real teachers interviewed. Even when you go to a school, you fail to publish any statements from the union representative.
Many fine teachers were put into this pool when schools were closed or when their positions were cut by budgets even though they received glowing recommendations.
Case in point--James Eterno. Find him. Interview him! Get more than a slant on this story from powerful privatizes!!!
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THIS is what unions do. Their lifeblood and stock in trade is mediocrity, chaos and disaster.
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Once again commenters who have little knowledge on the subject. As a member of the New York City Teaching Fellows I spent 7 years in the DOE as a teacher. As schools closed and reorganized I was thrown into the NYC teacher reserve. ( Bloomberg / Klein wiped many schools with poor records clean by simply reassigning a new PS or MS # and throwing teachers into the reserve pool. They gamed the system and made scores appear to rise as the worst school scores disappeared ! ) Despite the fact that my ratings were excellent I remained in the reserve. Why? With two Masters I was expensive and school management has a budget that strongly favored hiring those new to the profession. Job searches were very difficult as many "openings" were placeholders by principals & not real jobs. After two years in the reserve i moved on.
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So many things wrong here. Most of these teachers would be fired with cause but for union rules that protect terrible and border-line criminal teachers. The decent teachers will want to find work and will be hired away.
The numbers for passing state tests are abhorrent.
The graduation rates are abhorrent.
As far as the race angle, please. NYC students are overwhelmingly black, Hispanic, and Asian. Whites are the minority.
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No, not most. 12% if the evaluation was fair, which it often is not. And most are boarder-line criminals? The decent teachers, if they have been teaching a long time, are not hired by new schools because they are more expensive than newer, inexperienced teachers, and teaching is not something that one becomes good at without experience. Try it.
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How is it that only 12% of teachers in the ATR pool received the lowest possible rating and yet a third of them face legal or disciplinary charges?
Protecting these poor performers weakens support for teacher unions among the general public. Teachers deserve due process and fair treatment, but not guaranteed lifetime employment regardless of performance.
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Teachers don't have guaranteed lifetime employment regardless of performance. There is a due process for dismissing a teacher in the union contract. Teachers who become ATR's due to the closing of a school or downsizing to make room for co-location of new schools are not treated fairly. The DOE decides to shrink a school and take their space before parents get to choose. Then because of the 2007 decentralization of the payment of teacher salaries, the newer schools don't hire more experienced teachers. They cost the school more --- with good reason. When they are ATR's, they not part of the school budget, and thus are cheaper to hire than permanently hired faculty. That's a disincentive for those principals to offer an ATR, no matter how excellent, a permanent position. One teacher in the department where I taught had become an ATR in our school -- after teaching there for more than a decade. Her duties were the same; she worked just as hard. Only her status, method of financing and lack of job security had changed. That is not fair treatment. And not her fault. And the position was needed.
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The truth nobody wants to say is that poorly performing schools have more vacancies because fewer teachers want to work in them. It is rare for a principal to be unable to fill a position in a high performing school because many teachers prefer working with that populations.
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The DOE created the ATR pool by closing schools and getting rid of instruction in many valuable suobjects, such as arts, vocational and business classes. Then Bloomberg changed the funding system for schools, penalizing them for hiring the most experienced teachers and vilifying ATRs in the press, in order to fill the schools with cheap, young teachers who could easily be exploited and themselves replaced after a few years.
Many of the teachers in the ATR pool who have faced disciplinary procedures have done so because they are whistleblowers, union chapter leaders, or are simply too expensive. Some ATRs don't want to work because they have been betrayed by the DOE, and they see how their colleagues in the classrooms are mistreated. Most of us would like to work in a setting where we are given a chance to show our skills, but the DOE and the media, including the Times, have convinced principals and parents that we are bad teachers, thereby having their own smear campaign come back to bite them now that they ostensibly want to place us.
Meanwhile, teachers and students who could very much use our help are denied it while we languish in teachers' lounges throughout the city. ATRs are among the most experienced teachers, and research has demonstrated that experienced teachers are usually the most effective.
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A lifetime job guarantee, first-class benefits, a nice middle-class salary and defined benefit pensions, all for not working. Yes, most teachers work hard. But those who don't work at all should be shown the door. The teachers' unions want it both ways: They want full stature as professionals, but they don't want the productivity and performance measures that come with professionalism. When things go right, they take the credit; when things go wrong, they blame it on society, parents, whomever. And Randi Weingarten wonders why Eva Moskowitz makes headway and why union optics are so bad.
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Jersey jazz engages in classic union bashing stereotypes. The article clearly states that most teachers are in the pool because their school closed or because of declining enrollment. This is not the fault of unions or teachers but a system that is routinely mismanaged.
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But the question is whether or not teachers should still be guaranteed employment even when the schools close or because of declining enrollment. Most professionals do not have this type of protection.
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I suspect the principals will do anything rather than end up having to take a teacher from ATR. Some of them may be OK, but the principals probably suspect many of them are problematic and will not work out. So the only jobs they will get are in schools that no one wants to teach in.
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Jonathan- I was an ATR teacher. I was hired and central would pay my salary. At the end of the year, I was let go and two new teachers were hired. They no longer are teachers and I am in my 22yr. It is about the money. When the budgeting for teachers was changed the tiered effect of experience teachers retiring and new teachers entering worked fine. I was mentored by one of the older/experienced teachers. It is called AGEISM and it is happening in many other occupations, a brian drain. And for someone who is a proponent of charter schools, you have no idea how unprepared those uncertified teachers are. Come on Jonathan stop drinking the corporate kool-aid
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The report in this article that 12 percent of teachers in the Absent Reserve pool received lowest ratings for 2015-16 may be both true and inaccurate. Many of those ratings come not from performance over a year in a school, but from drop-in ratings by roving supervisors who see a teacher who has been placed in an unfamiliar classroom for a day so that the rater can tick the boxes.
A fairer measure for this article would have identified for comparison only those reserve teachers whose ratings had come from regular classroom assignments during the 2015-16 school year, or from their last full-time assignment.
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Many qualified teachers with experience are thrown into ATR due to school funding procedure AND THE CO-LOCATION of Charter schools. Reduce the student population ofthe public school - take over the school - not enough students so we don't need the teachers. In two years my school's population went from 1200 to 300 -GreenDot took over 4th fl, thn the 3rd fl , then the auditorium, then the computer lab and on and on..Now there is no more public school.
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But the real question is why did the "public" school (keep in mind that charter schools are also public schools) shrink in size. Is it because of declining enrollment (i.e. families don't want to send their kids there probably because the school may be struggling) and thus blaming the co-locating charter school is convenient (families for whatever reason decide to send their kids to charter)? Quit blaming charter schools and let parents have the choice to send kids to where they see there children will more likely succeed! Families will send their kids to the most successful schools (charter or not). A school is likely declining in enrollment because it is being perceived as not being as successful in educating children. Everyone should have the right and freedom to send their kids to a successful school. I am tired of the anti-charter comments that blame charters for declining enrollment. Furthermore, the vast majority of schools in NYC (charter or not) are co-located with other schools. It's NYC- we should provide classroom space where it's needed. Why let vacant space go unused?
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Unless there is a different one, the GreenDot school that you refer to, as far as I know, is still only on the fourth floor and are no longer GreenDot. But even if that is not the case, it is a high school that not only graduates 98% of their students (and most head off to college), it also retains most of their students from day 1, so the whole 'oh, they push kids out' doesn't fly either. These are mostly under-served students that come from the surrounding area (South Bronx). They were also recently named a Blue Ribbon school. If the local public schools performed in such a manner, then maybe you'd have a legitimate gripe, but since they don't, I cannot blame parents for wanting to send their kids to schools that get results. Heck, if they continue to perform the way they are, I would have no objections to them taking over the entire building. Don't blame the shortcomings of one thing on the successes of something different.
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As permanently placed teacher, I have come across many ATRs; the truth is, many don’t want to find jobs because they have little to no responsibilities. I know ATRs who purposefully fail interviews in order to stay in the pool. On the other hand, I have encountered a few who want to work and are willing to work, but no school will hire them because they are labeled a ATR. The system should exist, but changes need to be made; like a time limit.
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These ATR professionals are basically full time hall monitors, often getting paid WAY more than the teachers who are actually teaching in the classroom. Give them a real assignment, helping and teaching students in need, or get them to hit the road. If the people running the NYC school systems can't figure out how to place these people, then maybe we should start looking into replacing those people. Many of the ATR teachers don't want a real position and are riding the wave to retirement, while many schools have over crowding in classrooms. Many schools can hire these ATR's for a reduced price and yet no one wants to hire them. Change the contract, make changes, move the budget, do what it takes to put these people to use. The children of NYC deserve all the help they can get.
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This is just absurd, robbery from New York City's children. Capable teachers should be placed and the ones nobody wants should be dismissed.
Studies show that the most important factor in a child's success is the ability of the teacher. It is nothing less than shameful that children are being saddled with bad teachers, that good teachers are being warehoused rather than used, and that bad teachers whom nobody wants are being paid with money that could be used to improve instruction.
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Wait, what studies show that teachers are more influential than parents? Or socio-economic status?
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I think it's obvious that he doesn't mean that teachers are more important than the 2 you mentioned.
I assume by "most", he means factors outside parental and SES that can't be controlled by schools.
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What Eddie B said and, no offense, but "obvious" is the right word here.
Remember, the biggest barrier to getting these teachers hired is the 2007 contract which, by establishing the teacher unit average as the way schools would be funded for teaching staff. Senior teachers--those above the teacher unit price--pull money away from other things within a given school. Anyone at the top of the guide is too expensive, regardless of teaching skills. Principals know that they can't afford them.
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