Mulgrew: stop paying to recruit teachers when there are no vacancies

It’s not the same as my call to stop recruiting TfA in NYC, ever, period.

I propose … to eliminate … the $5 million it spends on the New Teacher Project to recruit teachers even when there are no vacancies.
– Michael Mulgrew, January 26, 2011, Center for New York City Affairs

But in the flurry of activity these last two weeks around snow storms and school closings, I missed that line from Mulgrew’s speech at the Center for NYC Affairs, on January 26. (Actually, I missed a lot. That speech contains a wealth of proposals, some I like, some I recoil from, but it bears careful review. It was new, and provides some vision going forward.)

TfA is the bigger problem. They leave by design. The City pays a premium to recruit them. In general they don’t collaborate well. And they use their 2-3 years teaching as a credential when they end up building, supporting, or leading anti-teacher, anti-public education organizations and institutions.

But the New Teacher Project’s NYC Teaching Fellows is a problem too. The City pays a premium for them, at a time when we have enough teachers. Now, I am much more warmly inclined towards the individual Teaching Fellows. And all of them, Fellows, and TfAers, once they are teachers, need and deserve our full support as they try to navigate and survive this unkind system. We should be working towards keeping them, towards protecting them and convincing them to stay, as they become good, experienced educators.

Mulgrew’s point was not my ideological anti-TfA point. His was practical, fiscal, and completely correct:

I propose that the system start NOW to eliminate all non-essential contracts, such as the $5 million it spends on the New Teacher Project to recruit teachers even when there are no vacancies.

Well-taken. We will need to say more about this.