I think you made the best case for not having mayoral control.

This week the New Jersey teachers and their union head took a stand against state control in favor of keeping school districts and WON!! But let’s hope we can do the same when mayoral control comes up for reapproval and make it END! Hopefully
the UFT has learned an important lesson that pols like Bloomberg or Spitzer are NOT benefiting public education.

Jonathan

There’s no question that any move designed to push veteran teachers into problem schools without making it a positive one with increased money on the table has no chance of success. Two things will happen. Veteran teachers will stay where they are OR leave the system entirely. It’s one of those sound bites that sounds good til you actually deal with implementation and human nature.

As to the increased restrictions on tenure, it’s another example of something that initially sounds great. Keep those crappy teachers from getting their lifetime jobs, at least lifetime til your school gets reorganized or budget cutting throws you out, or until you realize you’ve been had and you escape for the burbs or other careers. But the reality of what WILL happen is very different. The system already can’t retain its new teachers so now you’ve made the job that much less desirable and you’ve taken away the one advantage that the city has had over its smaller local suburban school districts — easier tenure. Result? Fewer applicants and when the borderline teachers who might have become good over time (it does take at least 5 years for a teacher to become worthwhile in the classroom) see they can’t get tenure, it’s another reason to prematurely abandon ship. End Result? Fewer applicants and more retention problems in the short term. Long term? Probably little or no change since so few of the new teachers stay anyway.

Elimination of the regions? For most schools probably little impact. For the poor saps who bought into that reorg scheme/joke, and moved out of their schools, there will be nothing but uncertainty and disgust.

Persam’s so right. It’s three card monte and Bloomberg thinks doing the Curly Shuffle is going to somehow compensate for the damage being done to our kids by turning tests INTO the curriculum, making the job of NYC teacher less desirable than it already isn’t, reshuffling the barely settled in administration before we can even see if the first two reorgs had an impact, let alone a positive one.

Let’s resolve the fact that the CSA can’t get its members a contract by threatening their jobs further and subjecting them to a popularity contest amongs parents, students and teachers.

I’m a NYC Teacher. I don’t want to grade my principal. I’m there to grade my students. I don’t want my students grading me. I want them to learn how to learn, how to perform, how to communicate, how to solve problems and how to get along better. I have have no interest in pandering to the non-fully formed whims of prepubescent life forms who don’t completely know what is and isn’t good for their development. Parents didn’t come out to vote on school board elections. You think they’re going to vote on principals? Enough already. This is becoming a truly sick joke.

-Cut the class sizes.
-Find the proper salary levels to staff the buildings properly.
-Provide meaningful staff development
-Use technology to individualize instruction
-Give teachers the flexibility to teach based on who’s in THEIR class, not some rote one size fits all model
-Support princpals and teachers and the majority of kids by really cracking down on the kids who mess up behaviorally
-Create a system that allows more small group instruction after school to teachers who wish to earn extra money
-Universal Pre-K
-Consult with those that make education their lifetime commitment, not those who see schools as financial fruit trees or political winds to be blown.

I think that it’s time for all of us to do what Tom Moore is doing in his excellent article: expose the emperor and his latest new suit for what it is: more privatization, more suits reshuffled, and absolutely no positive difference in our classrooms!