I've read Unity folks writing elsewhere about how wasteful the school closings were. They're upset over the number of teachers who will be dumped into the ATR program. Oddly, when the ATR program was introduced in the 2005 contract, these same people were all over Edwize telling us to vote for it, and threatening rank and file with a strike if we didn't march along with them.
I'm very proud to have been among the 40% of working teachers that voted against the contract. Also, more than 75% of working teachers did not participate in the vote that led to Ms. Weingarten's most recent coronation.
Do you think Randi cares about ATR's, the UFT membership, schools or even students when she can conga with Mayor Bloombug?
Does Randi care about anybody but herself? Does she really care about teachers?
Sometimes I think that the UFT should be investigated under RICO laws....
From the Daily News:
Though the six closed schools earned low grades on the report cards, they aren't all among the worst of the worst - even by the city's standards.
At Public School 79 in the Bronx, about 50% of students scored proficient or higher on state math and English exams. And EBC/East New York High School for Public Safety and Law outperforms about a quarter of city high schools in graduation rate, with 48.2% graduating in four years.
http://www.nydailynews.com/
ny_lo...at_flunked.html
Yet some of the worst schools in the city were given As and they are not closing.
Randi statement is also a joke. It's one thing when less than 100 teachers are ATRs and you can hide them from reality. Now this will be explosive and others will see the error of ever voting for the '05 contract.
If you check the Edwize archives, you will see that I posted against the loss of excessing rights and the power it would give the DoE. I did so without sarcasm or rancor, but was met with hateful comments.
And, to those of you who voted for both contracts and still don't see this, I really have to question both your judgment and motives that would place your fellow teachers (and quite possibly yourselves) in this situation.
You just figured out that we are just pawns of Randi and Bloomberg. Welcome to the real world. With the home day care workers in the UFT now, good luck ever effecting change. Reality isn't much fun.
Anon:
"Just figured out..."
Is this your first time visiting this blog?
You need to visit other blogs and go review the archives.
btw, how did you vote in 05?
Sooner or later, teachers, parents, and the community of schools being closed in NYC may have to follow the lead of the protest in Washington D.C. tomorrow over Mayor Fenty and Chancellor Rhee's planned school closings. If ever there may be a parent/community/teacher opportunity for true protest involvement...these school closings may be it.
Sorry about this. Just have to make one comment.
There is a common myth about how many Teaching Fellows replenish the system (and then leave, of course)each year. The fact is that only approximately 10% of all "new hires" are Fellows. 90% of the remaining new hires come from other teaching paths, primarily traditional route. Fellows also come from disciplines that are notoriously difficult to fill (one in every four math teachers in NYC is a Fellows/ Former Fellow).
Constant replenishment of teachers is a major concern, of course.
Oky, now you owe me a new screen for my computer after all that fabulous acid leaked out from every line of this post.
Dude, I wish this stuff was just exaggeration. But we know it's not.
Yomister makes a good point. I am really hopeful about the TF people who stay as we now see them getting involved in the union. We should also distinguish between then and Teach for America - I spoke to a parent of a new TFA and he said they were a cult.
The line about inexperienced Teaching Fellows replacing experienced teachers at ACORN came from the Sun article. Here's the quotation:
"The school's atmosphere suffered as Mr. Parker brought in a flood of inexperienced teachers through the city's Teaching Fellows program and failed to give them support, an art teacher, Maria Pascual, said."
I would agree w/ Norm that we need to differentiate between Teaching Fellows and Teach For America missionaries and I will try and do a better job w/ that in the future.
That's a good line about TFA'ers being a cult, Norm.
The "cult" line came from the parent of a TFA here in NYC, who by the way may be writing a piece with his daughter for us to use exposing TFA. I hope to have more stuff from them soon.
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