Last month I
gave a short presentation about unionism and the UFT to a group of teachers,
many of whom were incoming Teaching Fellows. At one point during the question
and answer portion of the event, the topic of divisions (real, imagined and
provoked) between veteran and new teachers came up. There was wry
acknowledgement of the false stereotypes and caricatures that are used to
divide us: veteran teachers are jaded, lazy burn-outs who don’t believe in kids
and are responsible for their failure, while newer/younger teachers are
arrogant, know-it-all drinkers of ed reform Kool Aid, and crypto strikebreakers
(as if a teacher strike is on
anyone’s radar for the next political eon).
In other words,
it was the usual nonsense people say, and something that we could shake our
heads over and laugh about.
But it was
upsetting to hear them say that, in a speech to them and other incoming Fellows
(and, according to the “At the
Chalkface” blog, in other venues, as well) at a June welcoming event, the
Chancellor told them to stay away from their senior colleagues and “Stay out of
the teacher’s lounge.”
For years now,
teachers, especially experienced and senior teachers, have been blamed for the
“failed status quo” responsible for the frequent dysfunction of the public
schools and the problems of their students. Classroom experience, once seen as
highly desirable, almost overnight became a liability, and veteran teachers
have become rhetorical and literal targets. Under Joel Klein, the school budget
process was changed to penalize schools that might be so foolish as to hire
veteran teachers, and created incentives for hiring inexperienced one’s, who are cheaper, more vulnerable
and presumably more compliant.
Meanwhile,
newer/younger teachers, while glorified in the media and by management, in
practice are beaten down at least as badly as their senior colleagues.
Achieving tenure now resembles a desert passage, as the DOE pressures
Principals and Superintendents to postpone granting it, and it can be a five
year ordeal. Newer teachers are also stuck in new pension tiers that
discriminate against them, relative to their senior colleagues. The entire
system is being purposefully re-configured so that fewer and fewer people
receive tenure, let alone a pension.
The election of
Bill De Blasio and naming of Carmen Fariña as Chancellor was supposed to at
least change the way DOE management looked upon and interacted with teachers.
The open contempt that Michael Bloomberg habitually expressed toward us was to
be a thing of the past. After all, Ms. Farina was a real educator, and promised
to bring “joy” – a buzzword that even Arne Duncan has recently picked up – back
to the classroom. (That she also promised to “sell” the Common Core to teachers
and parents was not given the same prominence).
But now we know
that the Chancellor is going around telling new teachers that only “whiners”
are in the teacher’s lounge. We know that she is telling the Daily News (8/31)
that ATRs will disappear “… as principals are taught best practices for writing
up teachers and beginning the arduous termination process” (which for ATRs is
not arduous at all - MF).
I always
thought “best practices” were successful teaching and classroom management
strategies, not paper trails and DOE lawyer hit squads. Does that make me a
whiner?
Suddenly, the
widely reported fact that PS 6 had eighty percent staff turnover when Farina
was principal doesn’t look quite so benign, if it ever did. Oh, and she was
Deputy Chancellor under the Lord of Darkness himself, wasn’t she?
Possibly worst
of all, and suggesting that De Blasio either is suffering from Stockholm
Syndrome or that he promised something he wasn’t willing to fight for with his
campaign rhetoric about charters, is finding out that the Chancellor sits on
the Board of the New York City Charter School Center.
The NYC Charter
School Center says that its mission is to “… help new charter schools get
started…” and that their work involves “Foster(ing) a favorable public policy
environment.” In less delicate terms, the Chancellor’s name and reputation are
being used to lobby for ever-more money for charter schools, and eventually a
raising or elimination of the charter cap. That would further undermine the UFT contract, and
negatively affect all future teachers, some of whom might now be students now in those very same charter schools.
Additionally,
as we all know, charter schools are famous for the enviable working conditions their teachers
enjoy, as well as the “joy” their
students feel as they march
silently down their hallways , on their way to becoming “little test taking
machines.” Then there’s all the additional funds charters bring to neighborhood
public schools.
Some of the
Chancellor’s fellow Board
members at the Center include such
friends of public education as Geoffrey Canada, he of the expelled classes and
half-million dollar a year salary. Also on the Board is Spencer Robertson, a
Wall Street scion whose family foundation promotes charters and who sits on the
Board of charter schools that have aggressively coveted and taken over public
school facilities.
So-called
reformers will keep repeating, and the Chancellor will perhaps be obliged to
affirm, that charters are public schools, but the reality is that they are not:
they are private entities, privately controlled and managed, that receive
public money. They undergo minimal public oversight, and do not serve the same
populations as the public schools they siphon money from.
Chancellor
Farina has said and done some good things. Changing Chancellor’s Regulation
C-30, so that non-educator’s can no longer be made principals and APs is an
important rollback of one of the many terrible things Bloomberg did (assuming
it’s not undermined by the waivers
it provides for).
So, then, what
is the Chancellor doing on the Board of the New York City Charter School
Center? Why is she boasting of “best practices” to harass and fire ATRs, rather
than re-integrate them back into the schools? Why is she telling new teachers
to stay away from their colleagues?
Maybe I’m just
a whiner, but I’m not feelin’ the joy.
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