Today, May 3rd, is teacher appreciation day and I received a call by a devastated twenty year teacher who was given her 3020-a charges today by the DOE. If that wasn't disgusting enough, another veteran teacher told me that he was told by his Principal that he will be given his second consecutive "ineffective" rating and that he should retire rather than face 3020-a charges. Finally, on this date three years ago a teacher I knew quite well was officially terminated by the DOE after going through his 3020-a hearing. Yes, for the DOE teacher appreciation day is just like any other day to deliver the bad news to teachers they target for termination.
The DOE has shown that the only teachers they appreciate are young and inexpensive "newbies". To the DOE, the only "quality teachers"are the ones who never question authority, don't have an institutional memory, and have not attained tenure. Remember what Chancellor Carmen Farina said about veteran teachers? Worse, school administrators are encouraged to micromanage teachers in their classroom and teacher autonomy is discouraged. Finally, the DOE has made it clear that student misbehavior is no longer a suspend-able offenses and teacher safety concerns are minimized while students academic achievement suffer from the continued presence of misbehaving students and electronic devices that result in no action or a restorative justice program that the students think is a joke.
On this teacher appreciation day, teachers continue to teach in fear, as school administrators use the punitive Danielson rubric on them, dump 34 students in a classroom that includes ICT classes with more than 12 students who have IEPs and blame the teachers when these students don't test well due to the unacceptably large class sizes. demands an audit for teachers when a student disputes theuir grade, Finally, the DOE's bloated data mining and legal departments mean more money to attack teachers, be it their evaluation results or filing 3020-a charges due to alleged misconduct while keeping school budgets at less than fully funded. That's how the DOE appreciates the public school teachers of New York City by continually putting a target on them.