Needle in the Haystack Department

Hidden like a needle in a haystack in an excellent Gotham Schools article about the monitoring of standardized tests for cheating in New York City public schools:

Monitors did not visit charter schools in 2012.

Geoff Decker, the author of the article, writes in a comment that he has asked for an official explanation for the absence of monitoring in charter schools, but has not yet received an answer.  

"Experienced teachers are a better fit for oversize classes"

(L. to R.: A P.S. 130 kindergarten teacher;
Chancellor Walcott; Principal Lily Woo; a
student. Note: the teacher, with all due
respect, appears to be over 22 years of
age.)

Thomas Forbes, a veteran NYCATR contributor, drew our attention to a recent article in Gotham Schools.  It's about P.S. 130 in Manhattan, a very successful school that is struggling with a recent jump in class sizes due to budget cuts.  Here is a quotation that should resonate with ATR teachers, most of whom have many years of teaching experience, but find themselves being replaced by novices:

One consolation, [said the Principal, Lily] Woo...is that experienced teachers are a better fit for oversize classes. 

“For a highly effective teacher, yes, they would be even better with a smaller class. But for a less experienced or younger teacher, you could be one-on-one, and they still would not make an impact on the child,” she said. “Our teachers are very, very strong. They know that this is not something that we want, but it’s what we have to deal with whatever resources we have.”

Gothamschools.org does my job for me

Gothamschools.org has been kind enough to feature a few NYCATR articles, so we will now repay the favor.  The good folks at Gotham went to a DOE job fair yesterday and filed a golden report about a situation that is pure, putrid tinsel. NYCATR added nought but a bit of colored highlights and an extra link.

Schools are hiring, but veteran teachers say job outlook is grim

by Rachel Cromidas

With just weeks to find teaching positions before the start of the school year, recent college graduates rubbed shoulders with veteran teachers at a Department of Education job fair yesterday.

New teachers who attended the fair said they are optimistic about their chances of finding a school to hire them, now that the city has relaxed its two-year-old hiring restrictions.

“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be — a lot of my friends have already received offers,” said Arbiana Asani, who is looking for an English teaching position after graduating from Hunter College in June.

But pessimism was the prevailing mood at the fair among experienced teachers whose previous positions were recently eliminated. Those teachers said few jobs were advertised in their license areas and that some principals seemed to balk at the expense that would accompany their years of experience.

Caroline Schulz said she left the job fair with the sense that no schools would be hiring an art teacher so late in the summer. She has twice been excessed from art teaching jobs at a time when more principals are unable to fund full-time arts teachers. This will be her second time entering the Absent Teacher Reserve, the pool for teachers whose positions have been eliminated.

“The reasons were definitely the budget cuts,” said Schulz, who has been teaching for close to two decades. “In my experience, it’s always the arts that are hit first.”

Schools received their budgets from the DOE later this year than usual, forcing principals to cut positions over the summer. The department has not yet released information on how many teacher positions were cut.

Mary Smith, a science teacher, said she has scrambled to apply for jobs since she was excessed from a Brooklyn high school in July because she was the least senior teacher on staff. She also attended a job fair in Brooklyn at the beginning of the month. This week’s fair featured schools in the Bronx and Manhattan.

Smith said she got a grim sense of her job prospects from meeting with principals and teachers at both fairs. Some of them, she said, didn’t seem committed to interviewing all of the job candidates available.

“They talked, they were pleasant, but some of them packed up their tables and left by 4 o’clock,” Smith said. She said the job hunt has taken time away from her teaching duties.

“By now, August 16, I should be starting to put my lesson plans together, reviewing the Regents so I know my plan for next year. But I’m in limbo,” Smith said.

A new rule requires schools to interview teachers in the ATR pool but does not require that they hire from the pool [thus spake NYCATR, who still suspects that the UFT is sugarcoating the matter].

One social sciences teacher who asked not to be named said she worried principals viewed her 30 years of teaching experience as a reason not to hire her. “The principals look at our resumes, and when they see the date or how many years we’ve been teaching, they sum up that we cost too much. One looked at my resume and just said, ‘Oh, it looks like you’ve been teaching for a while.’” Meanwhile, she added, “They’re hiring brand new teachers who have never taught, they just got out of college.”

The teacher, who brought a book bag stuffed with portfolios of past students’ work to the job fair to show interviewers, said she was dismayed to find teachers and guidance counselors standing in for principals. “They’re sending a message that it’s not that important to fill whatever position, because the teacher doesn’t have the authority to hire anyone anyway.”

This will be her first year in the ATR pool. She lost her job after her school, M.S. 321 in Manhattan, closed due to poor performance.

Though her salary will not change this year even if she can only find work as a substitute, she said the DOE is not using her to her full potential. “Right now I would be giving my free time to setting up my library in my classroom, and writing introductory letters to parents and students, welcoming them to the school,” she said.