Good News, Bad News

DOCTOR: I have some good news and some bad news.

PATIENT: Okay, Doc.  Let me hear the good news first.

DOCTOR: The good news is that your chances for survival are much better than we thought.

PATIENT: That's great, Doc. So what's the bad news?

DOCTOR: The bad news is that you were only seriously ill in the first place because of my poor diagnosis and criminally negligent treatments. 

No, that is not very funny.  But it is an accurate metaphor for a good-news story that appeared in Monday's New York Times SchoolBook.  The Old Gray Lady reported that the number of teachers in the ATR (Absent Teacher Reserve) has fallen to its lowest point in several years. A year ago, there were 1,139 teachers in the ATR; this April, there are only 831.

Both the DOE and the UFT credit the decrease to the agreement, reached last summer, under which ATR teachers are reassigned each week to a different school.  As the Times puts it, "the game of musical chairs" has allowed teachers to meet a wide range of principals, thus exposing them to a larger variety of job opportunities. 


So what's the bad news?  That none of this was necessary.

*It was not necessary to remove so many teachers from their original positions.  Most of them lost their positions because the Mayor decided to close their schools due to poor performance--performance that has much more to do with mayoral neglect than with teacher incompetence.

*It was not necessary to sentence these teachers to the ATR Purgatory. The Collective Bargaining Agreement--signed by the Mayor, the Chancellor, and the UFT--stipulates that teachers in excess "must be placed in vacancies within [their] district to the fullest degree possible" (see Article 17, Rule 4).  With both class sizes and teacher attrition rates rising rapidly, the DOE (and its frequent accomplice, the UFT) could have killed three birds with one stone by placing the vast majority of excessed teachers in vacancies within their districts.  

*It was not necessary to subject teachers to the indignity of weekly reassignment in order to acquaint them with a wide range of principals.  The DOE could have relied on the job fairs that it held for several years, and it could have made them meaningful for experienced, excessed teachers.  Instead, those who attended these fairs saw many empty tables that should have been occupied by principals, and many young Teaching Fellows, who should never have had a chance for a job as long as qualified, veteran employees were still looking for positions. 

And so, dear colleagues, we congratulate those of you who have found new positions.  Best wishes for a long and healthy career.  And take our advice: find a better doctor. 


Picture credits:
     
http://www.geninv.net/wp-content/uploads/dorsopathy-caused-oxygen-deprivation-diseases.jpg




https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAqg0NYTzYmW-Zqkf7aEw__IHfLxic1eSwQFJJ7AY_aDg095be4c1iF51M-xX-NqBI1fIAOSMChVEiYp1NZkmJrsJWk3CXPGu9s-wZI1inj_QpyUAuDdGKNt6FZdsJihGJCJ6XLekB7u4U/s1600/purgatory.jpg

Cock-and-Bull on Concessions (CBC)

                                          mychinaconnection.com 




The Citizens Budget Committee (CBC) is proud that the New York Times called it,  "A prominent organization that studies government finances."  As a person who does math on his fingers and toes, I will have to take the Times at their word.

When it comes to the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), however, I don't take anyone at their word.  I know what it is, because I've been there. 

So when the CBC opined on their website that the recent concessions made by the UFT regarding the ATR are not really concessions, I stopped counting my fingers and quickly applied them to the keyboard to respond.  Here is what I wrote:

   

I agree that the concessions recently made by the UFT are not terribly severe; on the other hand, it is more than a bit galling of you to ask "What concessions?"

You feel that delaying a sabbatical is not a real concession? What if you had been working for that sabbatical for 14 years? No, a sabbatical is not a perk. It is a contractual provision that a teacher earns a sabbatical after 14 years of work; to delay it for a year is like delaying salary for a year.  And do you really think that after this year the DOE will ever agree to sabbaticals again?

Now, about reducing "restrictions for allowing teachers without classroom assignments to serve as substitutes":  It sounds so benign in the abstract, but so cruel and wasteful in the real world.  First of all, these "teachers without classroom assignments" are in that predicament due to one entity and one entity alone: the DOE.  The DOE has the right and responsibility to place every single one of these ATR teachers in a permanent position, but it has refused to do so.  Instead, it has sent them schlepping around to bogus job fairs where half the principals don't show up,and the other half only want to hire underpaid, undertrained, and underexperienced candidates from Teaching Fellows and Teach for America.

Further, these ATR teachers have already been serving as substitutes, some of them for as many as 5 years.  The concession recently made (not by them, but by the UFT) is that they can be moved from school to school on a weekly basis.  Not really a concession, you say?  Tell me something, CBC: do you work in a different office every week? Do you have to acclimate to a new set of supervisors every week?  Do you have to learn anew where the ladies room is every week?

We are not talking about untested college grads who are trying to break into a profession by working as temps. We are talking about proven, experienced professionals who found themselves in a school that needed to downsize--and because they had the least seniority within a particular area, they were excessed.

You write at the end of your article that you wish to see the ATR abolished. So do I.  This group of approximately 1,900 professionals should be immediately placed in schools where they can do their best to educate the children of New York City.  We could then save the millions of dollars that the DOE has wasted on recruiting newbies and on running pseudo-job fairs for the ATR teachers.

Hyperlogosensitivity

In this age of public confession, I would like to make a confession:

I suffer from hyperlogosensitivity.

In other words, I am overly sensitive to words.  Sticks and stones might break your bones, but it's words that drive me crazy.  Maybe it's the result of my studies that led to degrees in Literature and Reading; or maybe, my hyperlogosensitivity is what attracted me to those wordy fields in the first place.  

In any case, my eyebrows arched up to my receding hairline when I read in the New York Times that the word excessed is "union language."  

Sorry, Ms. Fernanda Santos of the Times, the word excessed is not an invention of the UFT.   The word appears 61 times in a document entititled "Agreement Between the Board of Education of the City School District of the City of New York and United Federation of Teachers."  

A hyperlogosensitive person such as myself recognizes this as an awkward, bulky title--but also as a title packed with meaning.  It is an agreement between two parties; its content and its wording are just as much the work of Joel I. Klein as they are the work of Randi Weingarten.

And what does this venerable document say about teachers who have been excessed?  Take a look at these provisions (all from Article 17 of said document) and allow NYCATR to provide a bit of explanation:

* "Within the school, district or other organizational unit, the teacher with the least seniority within license will be the first to be excessed."  Teachers are not excessed because they have performed poorly; they are excessed because they have the least seniority within a license area.

* "Teachers in excess...must be placed in vacancies within the district to the fullest degree possible." The burden of finding positions for "teachers in excess" is upon the DOE, not the teacher.     

*  "The central board has the responsibility for placing teachers who are excessed from a school...and cannot be accommodated by their own district/superintendency."  Again, it is the DOE that is obligated to place excessed teachers; it is not the teachers' job to wander about with sheaves of resumes and attempt to sell  themselves. 

* "Unless a principal denies the placement, an excessed teacher will be placed by the Board into a vacancy within his/her district/superintendency.  The Board will place the excessed teacher who is not so placed in an ATR position in the school from which he/she is excessed, or in another school in the same district or superintendency."  The Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) is intended to be a last resort for an excessed teacher who cannot find a principal who will agree to hire him or her.


True, a principal has a "right" to deny placement to a particular teacher.  One wonders, however, who is directing principals to deny placement to so many qualified ATR teachers?  One of my former principals once complained that directives from the DOE streamed into her email in-box "by the moment."  Principals do as they are told to do by their superiors.  If the DOE were serious about its contractual obligation to place excessed teachers in permanent positions, they would issue the appropriate directives to the principals, and there would soon be few, if any, teachers left in the ATR.   

THE WEEK'S LINKS 8/21-27/2011

* Two Teachers and a Microphone rap Arne Duncan and nominate Diane Ravitch for Secretary of Education. accountabletalk.com


* 1,040 Teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) as of August 19, 2011. nytimes.com


* A New Approach to School Discipline: Criminal Prosecution.
joannejacobs.com


* Due to budget cuts, a record number of teachers have been in the Absent Teacher Reserve this summer.  wnyc.org


* Bloomberg's two-pronged attack on working mothers, at Bloomberg LLP and at the DOE.  New York City Eye


* More reports of cheating on standardized tests in NYC.  NY Daily News


* Charter schools admit it: they have fewer English Language Learners and fewer children with disabilities.  NY Daily News


* The ATR crisis grows, together with class sizes.  Chaz's School Daze