Teacher Gets Job in Charter School, Cries When Sees Contract

I heard this story today from a non-teacher friend about his daughter. It is not easy to convince the general public about onerous charters. But I didn't have to say much after he saw how his daughter reacted when she saw all the things she would be required to do as a charter school teacher, a lot of it without pay. She cried - and then heard the magic news - she was offered a position in a local public school. She threw the charter contract in the trash.

This happened in my own neighborhood so it hits close to home. Teachers want unions, they want rights, they want to get paid for their work, they want health care and a pension.

Now of course as a UFT non-tenured teacher newbie she won't have a lot of rights for many years - maybe never. Another daughter of a friend in a public school in her 3rd year just had her tenure extended. Out of about a dozen teachers, all of them were denied by the superintendent and a howl went up - so a handful got tenure -- and a principal admitted to me many denials of tenure are due to principal career decisions to show stats to indicate how tough they are on tenure -- especially after Cuomo-like attacks about how could teachers be competent when so many kids do poorly on tests.

With charters proliferating, and with their high teacher turnover and burnouts, replacement shock troops are needed - especially low-salaried newbies. Inexperienced teachers goes a long way to explain the need for harsh discipline codes and big pushouts in charters. The ed deform agenda is aimed at undermining public schools and one aspect is to drive down the competition for teachers so charters can lower salaries and benefits -- increase their labor pool.