Why Tenure Is Necessary

Of course, the papers are full of horror stories about teachers. We have jobs for life. We sit and read the newspaper while our students murder one another. We can't see it because we choose the New York Times, that great big paper that completely blocks our range of view. Furthermore, we're elitist and out of touch for choosing that over the Daily News. Never mind that the editorial board of the Times hates us just as much as that of the News.

In reality, Mayor Bloomberg and his fellow "reformers" wish to fire us for any reason or no reason. Case in point, this young woman, in a story from the New York Post. She's been fired because of photos taken before she started working for the DOE, photos that she claims have been photoshopped for the internet. Apparently, because there are scantily clad photos of her available, now much more widely so because of the story, she cannot advise students on what courses to take, what colleges to attend, or how to be more successful in school.

It looks like the DOE is mired in the illusion that we're all Beaver Cleaver, living in Pleasantville, sleeping in twin beds like Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Any teacher who admits to having a body with more sexual characteristics than a Ken doll is unfit to teach. Of course this is absurd on its face.

But we see that the DOE is willing to take this sort of thought to the point at which they discharge someone. Judging from the story, this young woman started out as a teacher and later became a counselor, which would explain why she hasn't got tenure. It would also explain why she can be discharged without due process. In fact, a probationary teacher can be dismissed for a bad haircut. Or even a good one.

I'm certain that many of us would have been arbitrarily and capriciously dismissed if it were up to Mayor4Life Bloomberg. Having tenure is the wall that keeps him from simply dumping every experienced teacher and replacing us with cheap inexperienced newbies. Despite the nonsense spewed by astroturfers like Tim Daly and his Rhee-originate TNTP, there is simply no substitute for experience. Daly and Rhee don't go to doctors who haven't practiced, or hire $30 an hour lawyers.

That they'd want our children educated solely by neophytes belies their nonsensical claims of putting children first. Their goal is to funnel as much money as possible away from our children into the hands of those who least need it. And they attack tenure because paying those of us who devote our lives to teaching children, to them, is a waste of money.

But we must be ever-vigilant. After Bloombucks loses this lawsuit, he will certainly redouble his efforts to weaken and destroy us. We've given him far too much, and can afford to give him not one inch more.

Good Things Happen

A few months ago, a young teacher asked me for some help with her classroom.  She was a subject teacher who happened to be teaching ESL kids, but her classes were out of control.  What was wrong?

I went in and watched her class.  Five minutes in, a group of kids from one country walked in like they owned the place.  She sent them out and made them get a pass.  The kids were delighted.  More time to walk the halls.  More time to hang with their buds.  I told the teacher not to do that anymore.  I told her to call the homes of every one of those kids any time they arrived late, and to begin that very day. 

I also noticed that one kid was the ringleader of this little group.  I told the young teacher to move this kid's seat away from the group.  There was a group of kids from another country who spoke a different language, so I told her to move the kid there, into another country for all intents and purposes.   "But she doesn't speak that language," the young teacher objected.

One of the things you learn when you teach ESL is that you often need to separate kids who speak the same language.  Why would kids from China speak English if they could just hang around with other kids from China all the time?  Things like that may not occur to teachers who don't have experience.  And despite having been there for months, no one had bothered to tell this young woman anything of the sort.

She took my advice, along with several other suggestions, and her class began to run much more smoothly.  I know because:

1. I went back and watched it again, and

2.  We had a mutual student who was more than happy to informally spy for me.

In any case, this was remarkable, as it was pretty far into the year, and newbies who fall that far don't tend to bounce back by that point.  I was happy, and impressed that she acted so decisively and immediately.  What's better than teaching someone something practical and seeing it implemented precisely and perfectly, with tangible results?

Alas, Chancellor Joel Klein enacted budget cuts, so as to save millions of dollars for the likes of the execrable Tim Daly, and the young teacher was excessed.   This is tough, because non-tenured ATR teachers are more or less wearing targets on their back, fired for cause or even for no cause.

But last week this young teacher went for an interview.  She was asked what she would do if faced with kids from multiple language groups, and how she would deal with keeping them focused and on task.  She had a ready answer for them--an anecdote of just how she dealt with a similar situation.  And guess what?

She got the job.

Consider the Source

We all love praise.  There's nothing like praise from kids--from your students, or from your own kids.  You can see when it comes right from the heart.  I've saved some little notes kids have given me, and I look at them from time to time.  One year I got a letter from a principal commending me for my attendance but I have no idea where that is.

While I don't treasure praise from admin quite like I do that from kids, it's fine nonetheless.  It's better, for example, than the counseling memo I got for strolling into a PD session two hours late.  Still, what if you're garnering praise from, say, Jack the Ripper on what fine work you do?  Would you be proud if Charles Manson sent you a Christmas card?  I'm not at all certain I'd put it out for my guests to see.

So when Tim Daly, who took Michelle Rhee's former post as head of The New Teacher Project, starts writing you valentines, it's time to seriously re-examine your priorities.  After all, Daly's name pops up again and again when it's getting rid of working teachers is on the agenda.   He's famously been behind a report called "Mutual Benefits" that suggested firing ATR teachers and offered no benefits to anyone but the Bloomberg administration and its Death Star approach to personnel matters.  It was full of such blatant manipulation of statistics, even I could see them with a cursory examination.

And who is Daly praising?  None other than AFT President Randi Weingarten.  What are her accomplishments?

1.  She's allowed teacher pay in DC to be linked to "performance" in DC, and allows them to be dismissed more easily at the whim of Michelle Rhee, a "common sense" approach, according to Daly.

2.  In New Haven, apparently, test scores also determine who is and is not a good teacher.

3. In Colorado, she was part of a negotiation that allowed 50% of a teacher rating to be judged by test scores and pretty much allowed teachers to be fired on that basis.  Layoffs will no longer be done on basis of seniority but on the basis of test scores.  Raise your hand if you think senior teachers will be getting the best kids.  Anyone?  Anyone?  Incidentally, these changes were vigorously opposed by the NEA.

Daly goes on and complains because Weingarten didn't lead the changes, but acceded to them.  He says it would have been easier for her to fight them.  If there's any truth to that, since no study supports the validity of "value-added," why the hell did she insist on falling down when no one pushed her?  And why was UFT President Michael Mulgrew, here in NYC, so keen on following in her misguided footsteps?

Perhaps the NEA's frank rejection of this nonsense will shock Mulgrew and Weingarten into reality, and coax them into acting in the interests of working teachers.  I'll keep my eye on the convention.  Hopefully, when Bill Gates spouts similar praise, AFT leaders will join rank and file in copious vomiting. 

When parasites write op-eds in the Daily News thanking you for all the lifeblood you've allowed them to drain, it's time to seriously scrutinize how you do your job.

Reverberation

There are always unintended consequences. When the UFT agreed to establish the Absent Teacher Reserve, a writer on Edwize suggested it had been done before and everything was fine. A difference, of course, was that the current chancellor saw fit to keep hiring new teachers even as experienced ones sat in the purgatory he and the union had created. The other difference was that principals no longer had to hire the floating teachers.

Inquisitive souls could go to the New York Times and read the helpful solution proposed by the completely objective New Teacher Project. To help all parties involved, they proposed to fire ATR teachers after one year (They didn't explain precisely how that would benefit the ATR teachers). You knew they were completely objective because their business entailed replacing the ATRs with new teachers they themselves trained and recruited. If that weren't enough evidence, they had millions of dollars in contracts with the city. What possible ulterior motive could they have?

The UFT is often on the cutting edge, so when it enacts a bad idea, "reformers" closely study how they can take it and make it even worse. It appears uber-reformer Michelle Rhee has found a way to do so in DC, where the new contract proposes to take the ATRs, offer them a one-time buyout, and fire them at the end of one year should they fail to take it.

This is precisely what Joel Klein would like to see in New York. Will this becomes a demand in exchange for our receiving the pattern? It may not matter we're entitled to as a matter of course. The UFT has an odd habit of paying for things two or three times.

I stand amazed that after the failures of the Bush administration, the "reformers" have managed to take the same abysmal ideas that tanked the economy and insist on applying them to education. It's all about getting those billions we spend on education into the right hands, the same ones who caused the current crisis.

It's indefensible, and patently incredible that the President who promised us "change" is giving us more of the same, with little or no evidence it will help anyone whatsoever.

Tweedie Birds and Math

According to today's Daily News, budget cuts notwithstanding, the city hired 5400 new teachers this year. They did so even as 1400 veteran teachers sat in the Absent Teacher Reserve. In fact, 229 of the new teachers have not even been placed yet. They were "such good candidates" that the city could not risk losing them.

The 1400 ATR teachers, most there because of school closings, apparently have none of the qualities that make the inexperienced newbies so necessary. The facts that their salaries are higher, and that they make such convenient scapegoats does not even enter into the equation.

UFT President Randi Weingarten and her crack negotiating team never foresaw this. You may recall that she and her patronage mill signed onto reorganization three, which stipulated that principals had to pay teachers out of their own budgets. They are shocked (shocked!) that principals seem to prefer 40,000 dollar teachers to 100,000 dollar teachers. Fortunately, UFT patronage employees are all still going to conventions and gala lunches, and receiving double pensions, so this only affects working teachers, and who cares about them anyway?

Meanwhile, the New Teacher Project, which receives millions from Tweed, is outraged that 100 of these 1400 teachers have not yet wasted their time applying for new positions. They've been oddly silent about the 229 newbies sitting around doing nothing.

But why bite the hand that feeds them?

Thanks to Pogue

Mutual Benefits

Every day I get email about the ATRs. And every day I have more questions about Tim Daly and his merry New Teacher Project. According to Mr. Daly, the UFT's criticism of his figures is all wrong, primarily because it included guidance counselors. The NTP never said to put guidance counselors on unpaid leave, only teachers. Evidently, paying teachers to be in ATR is a huge financial drain, but paying guidance counselors to do the same is a different animal entirely.

I've written before about Mr. Daly's questionable use of statistics. Actually, though, it's remarkable that none of the tabloids mention word one about his millions of dollars in DoE contracts. Even more remarkably, no one notices that his organization actually trains many of the people who are bouncing veteran teachers out of their jobs.

The biggest irony, though, is that Mr. Daly can write a report, entitle it "Mutual Benefits," offer no benefits whatsoever to working people, and have virtually no one question his integrity.

If that's indeed the case, consider me the first.

Mayor Mike's Kinfolk Issue a Report

After reading widespread claims about Mayor Bloomberg's 81 million dollar bill for ATR teachers, it's nice to see that the UFT is finally speaking up. I only hope someone is listening.

The New Teacher Project, a completely objective organization (which just happens to have a bunch of DoE contracts) released a "fair and balanced" report calling for amendments to the UFT contract. Apparently, those goshdarn lazy ATR teachers don't want to look for jobs at all.

But the UFT says 194 of the 665 ATR teachers are actually working regular schedules full time. Not only that, but with the central system paying their salaries, principals have no incentive whatsoever to put them on payroll. Why not have a free teacher in perpetuity and buy that all-important plasma TV for the principal's office? Why not invest in daily donut deliveries to freshen up the place?

And while you're at it, why not let the mayor and his "fair and balanced" NTP quadruple the supposed cost of this enterprise? The UFT estimates it costs substantially less than the city claims.

The president of the New Teacher Project, Timothy Daly, said he knew of no way to collect data on precisely what ATR members are doing inside schools.

"Why didn't I hear about this before now if this is a widespread problem?" Mr. Daly said.

Interesting that Mr. Daly, despite having no knowledge of what ATR members did within schools, had no problem issuing reports and coming to conclusions about them. And Mr. Daly's conclusions are interesting indeed:

As we have seen in New York already, only a very small percentage of the entire teaching force (235 teachers out of approximately 79,000, or only about 0.3 percent) was unable to find a mutual consent position after a full year in the reserve pool.

Note that the "fair and balanced" approach of Mr. Daly's group is not to actually use the percentage of teachers in the reserve pool, but to compare it to the number of working teachers in New York City, the overwhelming majority of whom have never even been in the reserve pool. You know the old line about "liars, damned liars, and statisticians?"

Another example of Mr. Daly's approach to statistics can be found over at Eduwonkette's comment form.

38 percent of the most senior group of excessed teachers found a new position compared to 35 percent of the most novice.

Note that when Mr. Daly refers to "excessed teachers," he makes no distinction between new teachers excessed for declining enrollment in their subjects, and veteran teachers stuck in schools that got closed. That right there is misleading, as a one-year English teacher might easily go from school A to school B with little problem. It's different for the vet, who's gonna cost principal B over double what one-year teacher gets. And Mr. Daly acknowledges, somewhat, that new teachers are less likely to find themselves in the ATR pool:

...the most novice teachers were more than twice as likely to be reabsorbed by their former schools as the most senior teachers (44 percent compared to 18 percent).

Here, the statistics become even more questionable. There are simply more novice teachers than senior teachers these days. So if 38% of them found jobs, while 35% of novices found jobs, it's entirely possible that many more novices found jobs than senior teachers did. We don't know, of course, because in Mr. Daly's "fair and balanced" report, that info is unavailable to us.

Is there anyone naive enough to believe that if Mr. Daly's group came to different conclusions they'd still be riding the DoE gravy train?