Most principals control their school budgets (some Renewal school principals do not). Therefore, the Principal has complete control on staff hiring. Because the DOE's policy of school based Fair Student Fundingand the fact that the average school only receives 90% of what they should get under the fair funding budget incentivizes principals to hire the "cheapest and not the best " teachers for their school. Moreover, most schools have stuffed classrooms with the maximum amount of students that the contract allows. Finally, quite a few schools rather pay a "sixth period" to existing teachers rather than hire much needed additional teachers for their students.
Ask most parents and students would they want a "newbie" teacher, with no classroom experience or an experienced teacher who has good classroom management skills and curriculum knowledge and the answer is obvious, unless you are Nicole Thomas, and the education deformer organizations. In other words would you want a novice surgeon, with no operating room experience, rather than a veteran surgeon to operate on your child? The same goes for teaching. Few parents want to make their child a guinea pig for a "newbie"teacher who has a steep learning curve to master the Art and Science of teaching. Yet, the education deformer organizations and their media allies conveniently ignore the obvious and rather demonize veteran teachers, especially the ATRs.
Interestingly, our union leadership has kept silent and fails to launch a counter attack showing why its important for all children to have an experienced teacher and demand that all "newbie" teachers have a complete mentoring and support system to assist them in mastering the classroom. School after school in high poverty areas suffer from high teacher turnover and every year has a staff composed of untenured teachers. In fact, a study done for Chiago found 75% of all new teachers in poor urban schools leave their first school within three years. The refusal of our union leadership to fund an advertising campaign on why its important for children to have veteran teachers is unacceptable.
The bottom line is that between DOE policies, principals caring more about their budget than hiring the best teachers, and our union leadership refusal to embarrass the DOE contributes to a "
children last" policy that hurts student academic achievement.