The Failure Of Our Union To Make Life Better For Our Members. Part III, The...
Back in 2010 President Obama and his basketball playing buddy, Arnie Duncan, dangled $4.4 billion dollars to the States if they would link teacher evaluation to the Common Core standards, this was...
View ArticleThe Difference Between Getting An Unsatisfactory And An Ineffective Rating.
Before there was a teacher evaluation system, educators were rated on the "Unsatisfactory/Satisfactory" scale. If a teacher received two consecutive "Unsatisfactory"ratings for incompetence, the DOE...
View ArticleMy Response To The E4E Survey.
The education deformer front group, Educators 4 Excellence (E4E) has published an online survey that is geared to make the E4E fifth columnists look like a real organization that advocates for...
View ArticleCan A Developing Rating Terminate A Teacher? Yes, If You Are Not Tenured!
In a previous post a commenter asked if a developing rating can resulted in 3020-a charges for incompetence. Of course the answer is no. However, when it comes to teachers who are not tenured the...
View ArticleDo All Tier IV Teachers Get The Same Benefits? Yes But....
The vast majority of veteran teachers in the New York City schools are under the Tier IV pension plan and there is an assumption that all the Tier IV teachers get the same benefits and that is correct....
View ArticleThe Failure Of Our Union To Make Life Better For Our Members. Part IV, The ATRs.
One of the most damaging sellouts that Randi Weingarten and Michael Mulgrew engineered was the creation of the ATR crisis and the reduction in due process rights that has resulted in the ATR becoming a...
View ArticleDo Charter Schools Outperform Public Schools? Apparently Not.
I was reading the New York Post opinion page and another so-called expert claimed that charter schools outperform public schools and that parents need more choice with a greater number of charter...
View ArticleThe Real Losers When It Came To The Contract, Members On Unpaid Leave. Then...
Back in June of 2014 when the union and the City agreed to a contract there were winners and losers. Of all the municipal unions, only the UFT agreed to contract conditions that hurt some of their...
View ArticleThe Misleading New York Post Editorial About Charter School Teachers.
In Monday's New York Post the Editorial Board wrote a misleading and largely false editorial on the superior qualities of charter school teachers when compared to the public school teachers. This...
View ArticleThe Failure Of Our Union To Make Life Better For Their Members. Part V, PINI...
One of the more obvious changes when Michael Mulgrew replaced Randi Weingarten as President of the UFT was that the union paper no longer wrote articles against vindictive principals, known as...
View ArticleThe Field Assassins Are Comimg!
October is the time when the rotating ATRs are introduced to their field supervisors (assassins). For the last two years the field assassins would introduce themselves with false promises to the ATR...
View ArticleFair Student Funding And The ATRs.
During the October information meetings the UFT leadership would repeat time and again that the Fair Student Funding (fsf) was not responsible for the failure of principals to pick up ATRs since the...
View ArticleMore New York State Parents Find Common Core Harmful To Their Children Then...
A New York State newspaper, the Journal News in the Hudson Valley found that more parents found Common Core harmful to their children than support it. By a 2 to 1 margin, 40% of the parents found...
View ArticleTHE NAEP Results Show That Common Core Doesn't Work.
For the first time in twenty-five years the NAEP scores went down or remained flat for both Math and Reading nationwide and in New York State, In New York City the scores remained essentially flat...
View ArticleThe Failure Of Our Union To Make Life Better For Their Members. Part VI, Lack...
In the final chapter of my six part serious on our union leadership's failure to improve the working conditions and gain respect for their members. We look at the lack of democracy and transparency...
View ArticleHalloween Special - Horror Stories From The ATR Pool
Today is Halloween and its time to reprint my Halloween special from last year on the various horror figures in the form of administrators, fellow educators, and of course those lovely students who...
View ArticleThe Real Problems In The New York City Public Schools.
In the New York Daily News today, Sol Stern wrote an opinion piece on the problems with the New York City Public Schools. While I agreed with his part on the use of the useless and ideologically...
View ArticleEva Moscowitz Wants Special Treatment For Her Schools.
Last week was not a good week for Eva Moscowitz and her Harlem Success Academy Schools. First. there was the PBS story about the student expulsions and then the New York Times wrote a damming...
View ArticleMy "Got To Go" List.
After reading about the Fort Greene Success Academy's"got to go"list, I decided to make up my own "got to go"list if our teaching profession would become that respected and admired profession it once...
View ArticleThe Peaceful Classroom Needs Administrative Support.
Far too often school administrators blame the classroom teacher for the chaos they observe when they look through the classroom door or walk into a classroom. The result is usually a strong lecture...
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