In a Shocker, Campbell Brown's Website Attacks ATRs
Over at Campbell Brown's blog, to which I will not link, there's a hit piece on ATR teachers. Evidently it's a disgrace to pay teachers who don't teach, but it's also terrible if they're allowed to teach. It's written by a lawyer who has never taught, and who boasts of helping to write the 2005 Contract that enabled the ATR, the one he's ironically so worked up over.
The lawyer then musters the gall to call the forced placement of ATR teachers as "the dance of the lemons," which is how he interprets placement based on seniority. This was a favorite phrase of the reformy stinker Waiting for Superman, and I'm pretty sure I've seen it since. You see, every teacher who wants placement is terrible.
In fact, I'm a case in point. In 1993, before the horrible practice was finally ended, I used the UFT Transfer Plan to go from John Adams High School to Francis Lewis. I did this because my supervisor gave me an ultimatum--I was going to teach all Spanish or she was going to put me on a late schedule, precluding the second job I needed to pay my new mortgage. This was not, in fact, because I was the terrible teacher Campbell Brown's article proves I am, but rather because she was tired of the actual Spanish teacher sending kids to her office. Because I never sent kids to her office, this was my punishment.
I did not bother to call Francis Lewis to ask about the position. A favorite motto of mine is, "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission." I thought it would be awkward if they told me there was, in fact, no position, and I got it anyway. I thought the possibility was high that they would protect the position rather than bring me, an unknown quantity, on board.
Of course, Campbell Brown's lawyer friend knows I am terrible, because every teacher who wants to make a move is terrible. (Not to be outdone, the Wall St. Journal calls us "perverts, drunkards, and ofther classroom miscreants.") Naturally, only the principal can judge whether or not teachers are good because they are Mary Poppins Perfect in Every Way and teacher judgment is always unreliable. Never mind that the recently dismissed principal of Townsend Harris was reviled by students and staff, or that she had a horrendous history at Bronx Science. Never mind that CPE 1 Principal Monica Garg placed the UFT chapter leader and delegate up on charges that were not remotely substantiated. And never mind the other NYC Educator: In a Shocker, Campbell Brown's Website Attacks ATRs:
