Thursday, August 03, 2017

Same ATR Attack, Different Day

In the Daily News, there's yet another hit piece on ATR teachers. This one is unique in that it's written by a public school parent. However, it fails to distinguish itself beyond that. It contains the same tired old arguments that every other hit piece has.

I have to trust that the principal is picking the best teachers and holding them to high standards.

Well, actually you don't. There are some awful principals around. Two of them were just bounced very publicly--the one from CPE 1 and the one from Townsend Harris. And if you read Sue Edelman over at the Post, you hear about all sorts of hijinks from these figures. In fact, assuming that principals are infallible is almost as offensive as assuming ATRs are "dud teachers." But it's equally ridiculous.

They land in the ATR — sometimes for a short period, sometimes for a long one — because they are unable or unwilling to find full-time teaching positions after losing their placements.

Actually quite a few land in the ATR because their schools close. A whole lot of schools were closed by Michael Bloomberg for test scores. In a game of musical chairs, he ended up closing even new schools he'd opened to replace original closures. With Mike Bloomberg, nothing was ever his fault. The buck stopped with the ATR teachers.

We've always known it was tough for older teachers to find jobs outside the city. We cost more money, and we know our rights. A lot of principals, the ones the writer deems infallible, would rather deal with more pliable newbies. And under so-called fair student funding, schools have to pay actual teacher salaries. Principals might think twice before laying out extra tens of thousands of dollars. Of course, that wasn't contained in this, or indeed any hit piece on ATR teachers.

In a rational world, if a teacher couldn’t find a job somewhere in our massive school system, he or she would be cut loose. 

I'm gonna have to make an inference here that the United States, led by Donald Trump, is somehow representative of a "rational world." In Europe, unions are more powerful and seniority rights mean a lot more. In New York City we gave them up in 2005. I know because when I was a new teacher, I got bumped out of several schools. If placing hundreds of teachers in limbo for no good reason is rational, if firing them for no reason is rational, I shudder to imagine what is not.

We know that in 2014, a third of the teachers in the ATR had unsatisfactory ratings and a quarter faced disciplinary charges.

What we don't know is why they had unsatisfactory ratings. Was it because they didn't do their jobs well, or was it because they reported malfeasance by the principal? I know people who fit that description. Or was it because the principal was exercising a personal vendetta? I've seen that too. As for disciplinary charges, they are just that. Were they proven? What were they? I know a person who had to pay a fine for missing one meeting and asking someone else to place a sign on an office door. Does that make him incompetent? You'd think so if all the info you had was this article.

But all the mayor seems to care about is rewarding the teachers union during an election year. So instead of fighting to protect public-school kids, he is focused on building support for his reelection campaign.

That's what you call a strawman. Until and unless this writer can establish to me that she can read the mind of Bill de Blasio, it's nonsensical. You might just as easily assume that the city is telling the truth when it says it wishes to put ATR teachers to work. Of course, in the "rational" world of this writer, people are fired based on unsubstantiated accusations. Hey, it's just as likely de Blasio believes people are innocent until proven guilty. I read somewhere that was the American way.

Parents should trust that only quality teachers can stay in the system, but the ATR pool is evidence of the opposite.

This is an odd conclusion, since the writer has offered absolutely no evidence that ATRs are not quality teachers. That's one of the disadvantages of basing arguments on stereotypes rather than facts. You could just as easily substitute any racist or bigoted conclusion here. People of this color, this religion, this nationality are all terrorist, drunk, cheap, stupid, or whatever. Allowing them in our country keeps us from making it great again.

More than half of them had stopped even applying for teaching jobs, meaning they weren’t so interested in being in the classroom. 

Yet another foray into mind reading. Now I'm not sure how many doors you need to have slammed in your face before you stop knocking on them, but people are intelligent and learn from experience. In fact, the DOE places black marks on certain ATRs and warns people not to hire them. And even if they didn't, now that fair student funding enables principals to hire on the cheap, no one's surprised to see that city principals are now picking and choosing just like Long Island principals do.

It's unfortunate that superficial nonsense like this is what passes for argument nowadays. But in a country quite literally run by mediocrity and worse, that's what you get.
blog comments powered by Disqus