A comment on ATRs and the New Teacher Project

I think we have more than the evidence we need to conclude that the Department of Education has structured hiring to be discriminatory.

The “open market” may have had some features of “mutual consent,” but between a principal with a several-million budget, staff of dozens or hundreds, and the ability to slosh some cash around, and a teacher-applicant with an electronic resume, the inequality places a huge question mark over the idea of anything being genuinely mutual.

But now, “Fair Student Funding” destroys the last vestige.

The DoE will pay the salaries of all teachers in the system. That doesn’t change. Principals do not pay salaries. They allocate internal funding.

So the DoE saves no money through FSF. But by giving principals control over local allocation, the Dept encourages them to pass over senior teachers.

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In stronger schools, in schools in middle class and upper middle class neighborhoods, principals are somewhat constrained by needing to deliver to parents and kids. But in most of the City, esp in “that” half of Brooklyn and most of the Bronx, in the Blackest and most Puerto Rican and Dominican neighborhoods, there is no such constraint, and the discrimination has become rampant.

By pushing senior teachers (with higher salaries) into ATR status, by also throwing a handful of U’ed teachers into that status, the DoE seeks to conflate the two categories. They will, mark my words, seek to discontinue ATRs. That’s where $ savings comes. And by churning the teaching corps they work towards weakening the union (and, they think, getting more concessions next time, or the time after that…)

As to the New Teacher Project’s reference to the UFT analysis, I must state openly that I believe the analysis was self-serving, with the union not willing to admit having sent older members to the abatoir. As the evidence mounts, and it is mounting, we will be seeing franker analysis.

Which brings me back to the beginning. While we (I am a teacher, I support my union despite mistakes) must negotiate with the DoE, we have no real choice at this point but to assume that they are acting in bad faith at every turn, that they have hidden agendae, etc, etc.

The problem is an anti-teacher, anti-education Dept of Education. They actively promote hiring the newest teachers possible. They actively promote high teacher turnover. They actively promote instability in the schools. They are powerful and dangerous and must be countered.