Firing teachers vs. fixing schools
BARRY WILLIAMS/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Yet this is the precise situation facing a group of struggling schools, thanks to a “reform” proposal now in state law that essentially blames teachers for the problems of eight New York City schools on the state’s must-improve list. The state mandates that these schools re-interview all existing staff — and systematically push out all employees found to be “unwilling or ineffective.”
This approach is beloved by school “reformers” who keep promoting the notion that that a permanent cabal of ineffective teachers keeps schools like these from succeeding for their students. In fact, the real problem is not teachers staying — it is teachers leaving, fleeing poor management and bad teaching conditions, and leaving chronic instability in their wake.
A UFT review of personnel records at these schools (the state’s technical term for the list they’re on is “out-of-time”) tells a radically different story from that being told by the “reformers” — a story of how hundreds of teachers despair of helping kids in poorly managed and under-resourced schools, and who ultimately, battered by the arduous process, choose to move on to other schools or other lives.
Our review shows that 64% — nearly two-thirds — of the 921 teachers on staff at these eight “out-of-time” schools in 2010 have already bailed out. Almost half of those who left — 45% — went to other schools in the system. About 23% retired. And 21% resigned, heading for different school systems or different careers entirely. Disability, death and other reasons accounted for the balance.
Some schools have had the door revolve even faster. Fordham Leadership has only nine of the 46 teachers who were there in 2010. Banana Kelly High School in the Bronx has only two of the nearly 40 teachers who were there in 2010. Excluding those two hardy veterans, the Banana Kelly staff has been wholly replaced not once, but twice, in the last five years — a turnover rate of nearly 200%.
Rather than scapegoat supposedly bad-apple teachers for these schools’ problems, here’s what needs to happen to institutions on the “out-of-time” list and others in similar circumstances:
Stabilize the situation in these schools. With stability and investment will come progress. Maybe not instant progress, but steady improvement. Only administrators with a track record of collaboration with their staffs and success Michael Mulgrew: Firing teachers vs. fixing schools - NY Daily News:
