If Chalkbeat Spoke To An ATR, Their Articles Don't Reflect It.

Over the last two weeks there has been a media frenzy about the City considering hiring ATRs to fill vacancies after October 15th.   The articles range from calling ATRs "unwanted" to "bad" teachers.  Not one article brings out the real culprit for the ATR pool. the DOE policy called "Fair Student Funding" that discriminates hiring of veteran teachers.

The media has gone out of their way to quote many education deformer groups and a parent who supports them but somehow can't seen to interview an ATR to get their side of the story.   This includes the education deformer and pro charter school online newspaper Chalkbeat.   According to Chalkbeat they claim that they cannot get answers to questions that would put statistics to the questions they want answered like:

1. How many ATRs were subject to discipline?
2. How many years of experience do the average ATR has?  
3. What schools did ATRs last have a long-term or provisional appointment?
4. How many years has the ATR been in the pool?
5. What areas are the ATRs certified in?

Looking at the Chalkbeat questions it certainly appears that the online paper is trying to show that ATRs are terrible teachers, either due to being disciplined or have other negative factors like lack of useless and mind-numbing professional development and being highly experienced. Moreover, they also want to prove that high poverty, minority schools get  the ATRs.

Maybe, Chalkbeat should have asked these questions about the ATR pool instead.

1. What is the average age and salary of the ATR pool?
2. What is the average years of experience of teachers who transferred by the Open Market Transfer System?  What are the percentages?
3. What is the the actual number in the ATR pool as of the start of the school year?
4.  Why does the DOE keep two lists of ATRs?
5. When will the DOE eliminate the"fair student funding" that incentivizes principals to hire "the cheapest and not the best teachers"for their school?

In all fairness Chalkbeat did try to contact me and I ignored them since my experience with sleazy education reporters like the Daily News Ben Chapman has shown me that they don;t care about the truth.  Their aim is to further demonize ATRs.  Case in point.  According to NYC Educator an ATR did speak to the same Chalkbeat reporter that tried to contact me and nothing he or she said seemed to be included in their latest ATR bashing article.  With the possible exception of Susan Edelman, I will have nothing to do with a news reporter.  Since they represent yellow journalism at its worst.

update:   ATR Life in Limbo spoke to Chalkbeat on Tuesday for an hour and set the reporter straight.  Let's see if Chalkbeat writes an article and without the anti-ATR spin.