NYC Educator: What About the Kids?

NYC Educator: What About the Kids?:

What About the Kids?

With all this talk about how awful this contract is for us, it seems a good time to take a look at how it will benefit the students we serve. After all, the Daily News is interviewing legal expert Campbell Brown again. Of course, she and whoever pays for her to do whatever it is she does are only interested in firing as many teachers as possible. Will this contract do that?

Well, the city seems to be sending out signals it will divest itself of ATR teachers. Union says it won't happen, and that the one-day 3020a process will be "fast and fair." Only time will tell who's right, what with it never having been tested. It will be a tough day for those who get fined thousands of dollars, as are most, and an even tougher day for those who are fired. Since reformy folks are happy to fire teachers indiscriminately so as to cripple the last bastion of vibrant unionism in these United States, their ideas don't help anyone except those who line their pockets as a result.

So what about our students? Will the new PROSE feature, the one that lets teachers dump the contract in the trash and do whatever for a five-year stretch, help them? Will charter lite be the salvation of our young people? Honestly, I doubt it. Since the secret to all those schools who send 100% of their students to four-year colleges is to get rid of each and every student who wouldn't graduate, I don't see how they do that. Unless, of course, some school wishes to change its contract to take all the rejects from the school in the next town. Can public schools juke the stats as well as charters? Odds are they can't.

And what about class size? I teach two double-period classes right now. One has 14 students and the other has 32. Guess which kids I can give more time to. The NYC class size has been 34 since I started teaching in 1984. This contract continues our proud tradition of doing absolutely NYC Educator: What About the Kids?: