Teacher Saves Overdose Victim

One of the few positive stories about teachers in the press these days:

Brooklyn teacher Cassandra Byrd-Scolaro can offer help in reading, writing — and resuscitation.

The heroic Public School 17 instructor used her Wednesday lunch break to revive a suspected overdose victim after finding the lifeless woman inside a restaurant bathroom.

“She looked dead,” said Byrd-Scolaro, 34, who flew into action before emergency medical workers arrived. “She had no pulse. I immediately began giving her compressions.”

Three minutes later, with EMS workers on the scene, the unidentified woman was breathing and her heart was once again beating.

“We heard a gurgling,” the teacher recounted. “She was coming back.”

But the drug-addled victim didn’t use her second chance to say thank you: She instead flipped the bird at Byrd-Scolaro and the medical workers.

Most others gave the 10-year teaching veteran an A-plus for her life-saving effort inside the S&B Restaurant at 194 Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott called Byrd-Scolaro to compliment her quickness under pressure and her ability to administer CPR.

And her principal, Dr. Robert Marchi, said he was hardly surprised to learn there was a hero on his staff.

“To me, she represents the very best in what a teacher ought to be,” Marchi said of Byrd-Scolaro. “I can’t think of another person you’d rather have at your side in distress than this lady.”
The fourth-grade teacher, one of 11 PS 17 staffers to volunteer for CPR training, proved that she was an attentive student during her first opportunity to use those skills.

“It was a great feeling,” she said before heading back to afternoon classes

Ah, yes - heroics from the 4th grade teacher at PS 17.

But before we definitely say that she "can offer help in reading, writing and resuscitation" - as the teacher-bashing Daily News said this morning - we need to look up her value-added score on her Teacher Data Report.

Because if that score is below average, the teacher-bashing New York Daily News normally would be calling for this teacher to be fired for being a "bad teacher."

Doesn't matter that the TDR's have a maximum margin of error in math of 75% and a maximum margin of error in ELA of 87%.

The total measure of a teacher these days is the TDR based upon student gains on test scores.

This is about accountability and performance, people - who cares if this woman saved somebody's life?

If she can't raise student test scores as measured by an error-riddled algorithm, she needs to be fired.

And now back to our regularly scheduled media teacher bashing - NY1's top education story is another tale of a DOE arrested for allegedly perpetrating a sex crime...