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Retirees Will Get Their Retroactive Pay In February - Maybe.
In December the UFT General Assembly was informed by President Michael Mulgrew that the retirees will get their retroactive payments in February. Hopefully, he meant February of 2015 since his union's...
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Is This The Beginning Of A Teacher Shortage?
Teach For America (TFA), the darling of education reformers and politicians who want to starve public school districts of adequate funding and proper resources, has decided to close their New York City...
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The Ugly Contract - Its In The Eye Of The Beholder.
Almost without exception, the New York City teacher blogging community has complained how the union "sold out its members"by negotiating a contract that didn't even equal the inflation rate (1.43%)...
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The City's Economic Recovery Continues With Projected Surpluses.
In my last post I wrote about how the "City pattern"that the UFT and the City agreed to was "ugly". From the members it was short on money, screwed various groups (people who resigned and ATRs etc)...
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Santa Claus And The Leadership Academy Principal
Once again its Christmas and poor old Santa Claus finds himself in hot water yet again. This time Santa Claus was hired in one of those Bloomberg small schools, despite his checkered past, because he...
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Why The NYC Graduation Rate Does Not Reflect Real Academic Achievement.
With much fanfare, Mayor Bill de Blasio and his disappointing Chancellor, Carmen Farina, took credit for an almost 3% increase in the high school graduation rate. The graduation rate has improved from...
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How To Really Improve Student Academic Achievement.
We all know that the graduation rates are a poor indicator of student academic achievement. There are too many gimmicks used by the City and State to show academic progress when the reality is that...
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My Predictions For 2015.
Look for very little change in 2015 as the increasingly unpopular Governor tries and fails to get his education agenda through the State Assembly despite linking it with the false"perv teacher" issue...
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NYCDOE Teacher Hiring Policies Ensure That There Will Be Little Improvement...
This school year, mostly due to a wave of retirements added to the normal teacher attrition rates, there were 6,000 teacher vacancies that principals needed to fill. One would think the DOE would have...
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Accountability Is Only For Schools And Teachers Not For The Government.
Accountability! How many times do we hear the word when it comes to student academic achievement and when too many students fail to achieve the benchmarks, who gets the blame? Right the schools , the...
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New Teachers And The Pension Bomb Myth.
Lately the newspaper are increasingly complaining about the upcoming pension bomb that will bankrupt the City when the next recession comes around and if the current conditions stayed the same, they...
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What The Union Forgot To Tell You About The ATR Agreement.
In the new contract the union allowed the DOE to impose special provisions on the ATRs, making them "second class citizens". Moreover, the union has quietly allowed the DOE to keep the immoral...
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Goodbye And Good Riddance To The Children First Networks.
It now seems clear that the useless and money sucking Children First Networks (CFN) will be just a bad memory come the end of the school year as Chancellor Carmen Farina gives the Superintendents their...
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The 65% Passing Rate Bulge.
Back in 2011 the Wall Street Journal published a report that showed there was a significant 65% bulge in Regents scores throughout New York State and for all subjects. In New York City the 65% Regents...
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Will New Teachers Make It To Their Retirement Age? Probably Not.
The attack on teachers in the last two decades has been unrelenting as politicians, the media, and people like Gates, Broad, and Bloomberg want to eliminate teacher rights. Even New York Governor,...
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Constant Teacher Turnover Hurts Student Academic Achievement.
In 2008, the nation suffered an extremely deep recession, the worst since the great depression of 1929. College graduates found few jobs awaiting them and many turned to the more stable but...
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The Open Market Transfer System Ensures High Teacher Turnover In Deep Poverty...
In the aftermath of the infamous 2005 contract the DOE, with the approval of the UFT leadership, developed and implemented the Open Market Transfer System (OMTS) that allowed teachers to move from one...
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Andrew Cuomo Is Out To Terminate Teachers.
Governor Andrew Cuomo took a page out of the education reformer playbook and presented his education agenda and there is little doubt that his main purpose is to terminate teachers using "junk...
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Can A Terminated Teacher Lose Their Pension? The Answer Is No If They're...
Over the years I have been contacted by teachers who are going through their 3020-a termination hearings and the one question they have is "will I lose my pension if I am terminated"? I have always...
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The Legendary "Rubber Room" Teacher, Alan Rosenfeld Passes Away - Rest In Peace
I was just informed by a colleague that Alan Rosenfeld passed away from Cancer yesterday. Who was Alan Rosenfeld? He was legendary for his extended stay in the DOE's "rubber room". Alan spent eleven...
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