Last week, the UFT released a white paper, Case Study in Partisanship: A Critique of The New Teacher Project Report “Mutual Benefits: New York City‘s Shift to Mutual Consent in Teacher Hiring.”
In an article “City and Teachers’ Union Disagree on Reserve Pool,” Saturday’s New York Times reported on the UFT white paper and the controversy over the NYC Department of Education and the New Teacher Projects attacks of displaced teachers in excess [aka ATRs].
Today, the first signs of the Department of Education’s response could be found on the Eduwonk blog, where Andy Rotherham reported* that the DoE top brass are now claiming that only 30 ATRs — unlike the near 200 we found — are in regular programs, doing the same teaching and providing the same services to students as they had before they became ATRs. 
For some time, the NYC Department of Education has gotten away with offering sheer assertion, unsupported by evidence, about these matters of education policy. Once again, this is their latest tack. But it is increasingly wearing thin. It is worth reviewing here just where we stand.
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UFT |
DoE/TNTP |
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In our white paper, the UFT reproduces our calculations on the true cost of the displaced teachers in excess, showing how it would have to be a fraction of the $81 million claimed by the DoE/TNTP – a figure taken as gospel on the tabloid editorial pages. |
While TNTP’s Tim Daly has asked the UFT to publish its calculations, there are is still no explanation of how he and the DoE decided that the displaced teachers cost $81 million – months after they published the claim. |
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The UFT has published the names of the schools and school sites where the 194 teachers and guidance counselors in full-time positions work. |
The DoE claims that there are only 30 such positions, but makes no effort to identify the schools and sites where they claim such positions exist or the schools and sites where they claim they do not. |
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With their permission, the UFT has identified by name a small number of teachers serving as ATRs who are in full-time positions. |
The DoE offers no rebuttal regarding those teachers, yet their claims can be easily checked out. |
| The UFT included all ATRs in its calculations. |
As issues were raised about the teachers identified as ATRs in the TNTP paper, a series of confusing ad hoc justification were offered that do not add up. Daly claims that he did not include District 79 ATRs in his study, yet his count is so low and so inconsistent with official DoE databases, that he must have mistakenly included District 79 ATRs assigned to non-District 79 schools. |
* Andy has written to us that he took this number from the New York Times article, not from any independent communications with the DoE.
Apologies for the formating issues in this post, which we have tried to correct without complete success a number of times. If anyone can help us do tables better in WordPress, please send on the information.
1 Comment:
1 MichaelB
· Jun 12, 2008 at 7:28 pm
I have two friends that are ATR’s with regular programs. I know another ATR who had a regular program last semester and is now back to subbing. And I’m supposed to believe there are only 30 such teachers in the entire city? Furthermore, I knew another ATR who taught two periods in his license area last year while subbing the other three (not sure if he’s still doing this).
This is classic Times reporting – give “both sides” of the story while keeping the reader thoroughly uninformed.