Lately, the news media has been on a crusade about "bad teachers", especially the ATRs. Be it Charkbeat, Daily News, Post,Times, or the Wall Street Journal, the one-sided articles blasting teachers appears all the rage. All of a sudden the old Klein era Tweedies have articles that blast teachers. Be it the insufferable Eric Nadeelstern, The lying Daniel Weisberg, or the sleazy Marc Sternberg. Let's not forget about clueless patents like Nicole Thomasalso.
Maybe if it was just confined to the education deformer groups and brainwashed parents, I could accept it. However, Our own Chancellor, Carmen Farina, tells new teachers to stay away from the teacher lounge and don't listen to those veteran teachers and she admits she visits schools to ferret out bad teachersand pushes principals to start a paper trail to terminate them. Even Governor Andrew Cuomo revamped the teacher evaluation system so that more teachers can be rated "ineffective"and the burden of proof was shifted to the teacher at their 3020-a hearing.
Instead of appreciating their veteran teachers, the education deformers, and their media and political allies rather continue the narrative of the bad teacher when the truth is the continued demonizing of teachers and their profession will simply hasten the day when we experience a teacher shortage as few college students will choose education, due to low morale, high teacher turnover, inferior pay, and lack of respect. The result is a lower student academic achievement and a continue3d achievement gap between different cohorts.