StudentsFirstNY And The New Teacher Project Have A Teachers Contract Framework For You

From the Buffalo News:

StudentsFirstNY, a statewide education reform group, and TNTP, a national education reform group, has released a new report outlining their recommendations for changes to the Buffalo Teachers Federation contract. The report is endorsed by the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, but many of the proposals are unlikely to be readily agreed to by the teachers union.

Their seven-page report recommends higher starting salaries for teachers -- an increase from $32,897 to at least $45,000 -- but it also recommends that many changes that would require givebacks from the BTF, including teacher contributions to health insurance, a devaluation of teacher seniority, merit-based pay, longer school days, a more rigorous tenure process, and fewer sick days.

The report overview states, "In many ways, the current agreement actually makes it harder for teachers to get the pay and respect they deserve, and harder for Buffalo’s schools to ensure that students are afforded effective teachers who can provide a high-quality education."

Do they even read the garbage they write?

They write: "In many ways, the current agreement actually makes it harder for teachers to get the pay and respect they deserve."

Their remedy?

"An increase from $32,897 to at least $45,000 -- but it also recommends that many changes that would require givebacks from the BTF, including teacher contributions to health insurance, a devaluation of teacher seniority, merit-based pay, longer school days, a more rigorous tenure process, and fewer sick days."

Yeah, that'll get quality people to sign on to teach in Buffalo (or anywhere else they push this garbage.)

This is the second "report" out this week from an ed reform hack group calling for higher teacher pay to be offset with other "reforms."

NCTE also touted one.

You can see the framework for teachers contract going forward here - massive givebacks in every area for a little chunk of change in the beginning.

This one goes for the moon - seniority devaluation, merit pay, longer school days, tenure "reform," fewer sick days and cuts to health benefits for a little over $12,000.

No thanks.

Good luck selling that to prospective and current teachers as a sign of "respect."

Wall Street Journal Covers ATR's

The Wall Street Journal reports that the ATR issue is a major part of the contract discussion:

As negotiations drag on over a new contract for the city's teachers, one sticky issue involves how to handle teachers who lost permanent jobs during cutbacks but keep getting full paychecks as they bounce around schools for brief stints, filling in for absent staff.

Hundreds spend years in limbo. A city Department of Education analysis in July said the group's size fluctuates but totaled 1,186 teachers last spring and cost at least $105 million last year in salaries and benefits—after counting the savings from not hiring regular substitutes.

...

 

Representatives for Mayor Bill de Blasio and the United Federation of Teachers confirmed that how to treat the group, called the Absent Teacher Reserve, is under discussion as they hammer out a contract to replace one that expired in 2009. They declined to comment further. Other major issues include back pay and raises.

The WSJ goes to the famed Educators4Excellence, an astroturf group of dozens of mostly ex-teachers now on the Gates Foundation payroll, for context on the ATR issue early in the article:

Educators 4 Excellence-New York, an advocacy group of more than 8,000 teachers, plans to release a policy brief Wednesday recommending that teachers in the pool get two April-to-August hiring seasons to find jobs. The brief argues that if they don't get hired within that period, they should be put on unpaid leave.

"Two hiring cycles strikes a balance between providing a fair opportunity for teachers to find a new teaching position and at the same time provides schools and the system the autonomy they need," said Jonathan Schleifer, executive director.

They get a couple of statements from ATR's, one of which seems to back up the E4E argument:

David Levin, a 13-year teacher in his fourth year in the pool in the Bronx, said it isn't his fault principals usually prefer to hire cheaper "newbies." He makes $80,987 a year.

Mr. Levin said the system should be fixed somehow—perhaps by deploying these teachers as mentors or extra help in difficult classrooms. It is hard for substitute teachers to keep students under control because there is little time to learn their names and behavior, he said. In one class, rowdy teenagers turned off the lights and started throwing chairs. "I don't know the students, the culture or the school," he said. "The kids act out."

Pasqual Pelosi, a language arts teacher in the Bronx pool who makes $75,937 a year, said his 12 years of experience were being squandered. He said at times he thinks shuttling teachers to different schools weekly is designed to wear them down so they quit in disgust.

"There's plenty of frustration," he said.

Among the frustrations over his career, Pelosi acknowledged facing several accusations, including an instance of alleged corporal punishment. 

"Any teacher who has been around for as long as I have is bound to have had some sort of allegations lodged," he said, adding that was especially true for a "disciplinarian" such as himself. "Nothing has been proven against me," he said.

And of course the Journal provides the two page Educators4Excellence "policy paper" putting forth the "Fire The ATR's" policy, along with quotes from education reform shills at StudentsFirstNY and The New Teacher Project, to slam home the idea that the ATR's are valueless employees.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew is given the last word, however:

The union's Mr. Mulgrew said nearly three-quarters of the teachers in the pool get permanent jobs within three years. "Our studies show that the most important single factor is money," he said. "The least experienced (and thus cheaper) teachers are the first to be selected."

If they ended the "fair funding" system that had schools paying for teacher salaries dollar for dollar out of their own budgets and went back to the system at large covering the salaries of teachers, many of the ATR's would be hire.

The truth is, so long as the dollars come straight out of the individual school budget, an administrators is always going to look to hire the $50,000 candidate over the $80,000 candidate.

The New Teacher Project Attacks The Unions For Pulling Back On Common Core

New Teacher Project leader Tim Daly wrote the following on his official TNTP blog today in response to NEA President Van Roekel calling for a "course correction" on Common Core:

1. Change is hard – but this has almost nothing to do with “botched” implementation. Or standards. “Implementation” is a catch-all complaint that union leaders have often—and successfully—used to extract themselves from commitments they no longer wish to keep.  Aiding in the rollout of Common Core is just such a commitment. The unions routinely complain that states are moving too fast in transitioning to the new standards, but the truth is that educators have already had years to prepare. In New York, for instance, the standards were adopted in 2010—four years ago. Implementation was always going to be difficult and, with a change of this magnitude, no one could ever be 100 percent ready. No matter how long the lead-up time, it’s easy to balk when you are staring at the year when it all counts. If four years is not sufficient, how long is? Eight years? Ten? Stretching out the timeline amounts to nothing more than a slow pull of the band aid.
    
2. This has everything to do with politics and job protection. On the right, debate about Common Core has been clouded by the Tea Party’s dislike of anything associated with the federal government. The debate on the left is clouded, too. There, the discussion about Common Core is really a discussion about accountability in the form of stronger teacher evaluation systems that factor in student learning results alongside other measures. The standards themselves are incidental. Unions hoped that the occasion of Common Core (and their support for it) might present an opportunity to roll back or dilute teachers’ accountability for results. (Never mind that, even when students begin to be measured against tougher, Common Core-aligned tests, there’s little evidence to suggest a drop in scores will put teachers at any real risk.) As it has become clearer that no such accountability holiday is forthcoming—and that educators, in addition to schools, will be on the hook for advancing students toward the standards—the union withdrawal has been a foregone conclusion. Many policy leaders were awaiting this moment for a year or more.
    
3. There will be more political fallout ahead. The long-term implications of the loss of the unions from the Common Core coalition are meaningful. It’s easy to exaggerate the short-term effect of the NEA announcement or the AFT announcement that preceded it. Unions were already fighting accountability measures associated with Common Core at the state and district level. But officially, it was possible for the unions to claim some form of alliance with the Obama administration, however strained it might have been. That’s no longer possible. The unions are now taking aim at the administration’s central education policies. There isn’t much ground left for alliance in this fractured marriage. Going forward, the question is whether the unions hold the Democratic Party to its own views or seek new political patrons. If you need an illustration of what the future may hold, look no further than my home state of Illinois, where the state NEA affiliate is spending heavily on behalf of a Republican primary candidate for governor who is a member of ALEC, while withholding support for the incumbent governor, a Democrat, who crossed them on pension reform. If Barack Obama could run for a third term as president, it’s a very good question whether he could garner an NEA or AFT endorsement. . . and whether he’d accept one.

Does this sound like a guy looking to fix the "chaos," "confusion," and "anxiety" over Common Core in NY State, as Governor Cuomo himself described the environment in a statement he made to the press yesterday, or a guy ready to push through the CCSS reforms no matter what and blame any problems on teachers and unions?

Remember, Cuomo put the Executive Vice President and General Counsel of The New Teacher Project, Dan Weisberg, on the Common Core panel, so what the president of The New Teacher Project is writing on his official TNTP blog matters.

Want to make a bet EVP Dan Weisberg, member of Cuomo's Common Core panel, feels the same way that Daly does over CCSS?

Want to make a bet Governor Cuomo knew that before putting Weisberg on the panel?

Want to bet that's the reason Weisberg is on the panel?

Arne Duncan Doesn't Get To Frame The Common Core Debate

Excellent piece by Stephanie Simon in Politico on the fallout from Arne Duncan's "Common Core opponents are just white suburban moms who have discovered their kids aren't as brilliant as they thought" attack.

Simon writes that Duncan and other Common Core proponents are frustrated because the debate over Common Core has splintered into different fights in different localities over different issues:

To the immense frustration of Common Core supporters, an eclectic array of critics have raised sustained and impassioned objections about the new standards. From New York to Florida to Michigan to Louisiana, their voices are so loud and their critiques so varied that they have muddied the narrative around Common Core. It’s no longer a focused national debate about high standards; it’s hundreds of local debates, about everything from student privacy rights to cursive handwriting to computerized testing to the value of Shakespeare.

Over the summer, Duncan complained that opponents were “fringe groups” who make “outlandish claims” about “really wacky stuff” such as “mind control, robots, and biometric brain mapping.” There is undoubtedly some of that.

But there are also substantive critiques from all corners. Catholic scholars say the standards aren’t rigorous enough. Early childhood experts say they demand too much. Liberals complain the Common Core opens the door to excessive testing. Conservatives complain it opens the door to federal influence in local schools. Teachers don’t like the new textbooks. Parents don’t like the new homework.

And some critics sense a conspiracy, suggesting that the difficult Common Core tests are designed to make public schools look so bad that parents everywhere — including white, suburban moms — will rush to embrace charter schools, cyber schools, vouchers and other models that turn public education over to private entrepreneurs.

There was a time when education reformers could just attack critics as teachers union shills or fringe people on the left and right and get away with it.

But no longer.

In NY State, one of two states that has already switched state test alignments to the Common Core State Standards, the criticism and opposition to the Core is coming from parents in suburban districts who are pissed at the plummeting scores their children received on the tests, pissed at the absurdity of some of the Common Core lessons and modules that are being taught, pissed at all the test prep that is forced on teachers by the new evaluation system and pissed that the state wants to hand sensitive student information over to Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch.

These are not people that can be marginalized as fringe elements, no matter how much Commissioner King tries to do it with his "special interests" statement or Arne Duncan tries to do it with his "white suburban moms" attack.

 

The frustration we're seeing from the reformers these days, frustration that is playing out in stupid comments like Duncan's or claims that John King is under attack because he is black, stems from the lack of control reformers now have over the debate.

 

In the past, they controlled the debate, got their message out over friendly corporate-owned airwaves and in friendly corporate-owned newspapers.

 

They had friendly corporate-owned politicians backing them up on the reforms and everybody was talking the same language and issuing the same talking points.

 

But they lost control of the debate sometime in the past year, even some of the corporate-owned media is beginning to cover the fight over the Common Core and other reforms with something other than the "crazies vs. sane people" frame they've been giving these stories in the past, and the politicians in NY State have begun to run for cover as parents are showing up at town halls and telling them they will take out their frustration on their legislators next election.

 

It's too this makes Arne sad, but just because he's a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of the Gates Foundation and he's used to getting his way on everything in these reform debates doesn't mean the public can't eventually take back the power to oppose the reform agenda on their own terms.

 

That's what's happening now and reformers from Arne Duncan to John King to Tim Daly of the New Teacher Project are showing their frustration with their stupid comments and statements.

NYCDOE Breaks Law In Order To Pay Off Crony Consultant, Joel Klein In Illegal Contracts

The Daily News covers the story this morning:

The city Department of Education evaded state law to pay a controversial consultant $287,500, officials with the city controller's office charge.

Even after the Education Department's $20 million teacher-recruitment contract with The New Teacher Project got rejected in March on technical grounds, the city sneaked through three payments last month, the officials charge.

"We have requested a meeting with DOE to address their persistent attempts to circumvent the Education Law and pay outside consultants without registered contracts," said Mike Loughran, a spokesman for Controller John Liu.

A review by Liu's office after it discovered the New Teacher Project payments found that the city Department of Education also attempted to pay $1.3 million to Wireless Generation.

The company is now owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and overseen by former city Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

Liu's office blocked that payment because it had rejected the Wireless Generation contract earlier this month, saying Klein had not filed a necessary letter recusing himself from involvement in the contract.

The city Law Department and the city Department of Education, however, consider both contracts to be valid and are not recognizing the controller's rejection.

In a Wednesday letter to Deputy Controller Geneith Turnbull, city Law Department Contracts Division Chief Steven Stein Cushman blasts the controller's attempts to thwart its deal with The New Teacher Project, calling it "not consistent with the Education Law.

"Accordingly, the DOE rejected your return of the [New Teacher Project] contract and deemed the [New Teacher Project] Contract registered," he wrote.

Liu has to take Bloomberg, the DOE and the city Law Department Contracts Division to court to force this issue.

The DOE does NOT get to circumvent the law just because they want to pay off cronies at the New Teacher Project and Wireless Generation.

The Law Department Contracts Division does NOT get to declare a contract legal when the controller has rejected it.

And the Klein connection just smells bad.

In fact, the Klein connection needs to be looked at very closely.

How much of the $1.3 million DOE contract money does Klein get, either directly or indirectly, as a News Corp. employee overseeing Rupert Murdoch's K-12 online education division?

Klein himself signed this contract with Wireless Generation when he was chancellor and now stands to profit from it working for News Corp. overseeing Wireless Generation.

The impropriety on the face of it is bad.

Worse is the DOE's insistence on making these payments when the controller has rejected the contract because Klein refused to recuse himself from the contract.

In the same week that Bloomberg continued to threaten layoffs for thousands of teachers and STILL is cutting school budgets to the bone and forcing class sizes ever higher, how is it that he gets to hand out this contract money to consultants and cronies when the controller has rejected them?

He gets to do it because nobody takes him to court for it.

John Liu needs to remedy that forthwith.

In fact, this might be a job for the U.S. attorney's office as well.

Given the corruption that has been endemic with many of the outside consultant contracts handed out by the Bloomberg administration, any other contract that smells this bad on the face of it may just be as rotten as the CityTime Project contracts, the Willard Lanham contract and the Judith Hederman scandal.

Bloomberg's New Teacher Project Contract

Let's be honest here - Bloomberg wants to hand the New Teacher Project a $20 million contract to hire new teachers because

a) he loves hiring new teachers and firing veteran ones

b) hiring new teachers is cheaper than continuing to pay old ones

c) the people running the New Teacher Project are part of the education deform crony system and they MUST be paid their ed deform largesse for continuing to do the GREAT EDUCATION DEFORM WORK of demonizing veteran teachers and privileging the hiring of rookies.

Kudos to John Liu for calling Bloomberg out on this:

"Twenty million dollars to recruit teachers as the DOE insists on laying off thousands of teachers seems curious, at best," Controller John Liu said.

How can there be ANY problems hiring new teachers when the DOE hasn't hired in two years and lots of people have graduated education programs and are dying for jobs.

I know, I've seen it in my school.

Many of these folks are working as subs.

They're also bartending, waiting tables, and temping.

I think the UFT characterized this issue well:

The teachers union head called the contract a waste of money.

"I think one of the deputy chancellors should go to the CUNY schools of education graduations and say they have jobs - they could fill every one," said United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew

.

Maybe the deputy chancellor should bring a couple of buses with him.

There's going to be a lot of people he brings back to Tweed in tow.

As for the work John Liu is doing, it is finally good to see ONE politician STAND UP to the Mayor of Money and call him on things when it is appropriate.

Quinn hasn't done this. Stringer hasn't done this well. Neither has De Blasio.

They're too scared of the mayor to be effective critics.

But so far, Liu has been doing his job as comptroller and serving as a counterpunch to Bloomberg's steamrolling of the system and the city.

Liu Rejects New Teacher Recruitment Contract For DOE/NTP

Gotham Schools has the story:

Comptroller John Liu rejected a $20 million contract for teacher recruitment today, calling the proposal wasteful given the city’s current fiscal climate. Yet the main reason for the comptroller’s refusal came down to paperwork.

A spokesman for the comptroller’s office said that the five-year contract with The New Teacher Project was rejected this morning because of problems with the DOE’s submission. In reviewing the contract, officials in the comptroller’s office said that the DOE did not include information on conflicts of interest or what the dates of service would be. The department can choose to resubmit the contract.

The New Teacher Project, or TNTP, is a non-profit that handles the recruitment and training of New York City’s Teaching Fellows. It also studies teacher job markets around the country

In a statement sent to reporters, Liu — a possible candidate in the next mayoral election — said he objected to the contract’s premise. The city does not need to spend money recruiting new teachers, he said.

“Twenty million dollars to recruit teachers as the DOE insists on laying off thousands of teachers seems curious at best,” Liu said.

Indeed it does.

Some might say that at worst, this is payola to Michelle Rhee's old group.

Regardless of WHAT it is, the WHY it is really is the biggest problem.

The mayor says he needs to save $300 million in the DOE budget by laying off 4,666 teachers. But he insists upon spending $20 million to recruit new teachers via the New Teacher Project, an education reform-friendly group that is loaded with lots of Klein and Rhee cronies.

Gotham Schools points out that the Panel for Educational Policy approved a similar contract for the New Teacher Project last May for $5 million even though Bloomberg was threatening layoffs then too.

It is good to see Liu reject this contract, albeit for a paperwork problem, but also call the mayor and the DOE out for the hypocrisy of looking to spend $20 million to recruit new teachers when they're in the process of laying off 4,666 teachers to ostensibly save $300 million.

More and more, John Liu is becoming the counterpoint to the corporate oligarchy that Bloomberg is running in this city.

Bloomberg/Klein Spend $5 Million To Recruit New Teachers While Laying Off 8,500 Current Ones

Explain the rationale of this:

The city may lay off 8,500 teachers, but education officials still want approval for a contract of up to $5 million a year to recruit even more teachers.

The agency's Panel for Educational Policy will vote later this month on the hefty contract, but already critics are questioning the need to spend money to recruit during a time of layoffs.

"We should put a freeze on any spending related to new hiring. We should not even be going through the expense of negotiating a contract now," said Patrick Sullivan, the panel's Manhattan representative.

Since 2000, the New Teacher Project has contracted with the city to recruit New York City Teaching Fellows. For this school year, the group received $2.8 million for recruiting 705 teachers.

You know what? I'll explain the rationale for this.

Bloomberg and Klein want to make sure their cronies at the New Teacher Project get paid off despite the severe economic conditions that Bloomberg's says will require 8,500 layoffs in schools.

Also, Bloomberg and Klein want veteran teachers who are too "expensive" off the payroll, but you can only move vets out by bringing cheaper "newbies" in.

Thus we have the city spending $5 million to recruit new teachers even as they try and lay off 8,500.

Outrageous.

But not a surprise.