Attacks on ATRs is Spear at All Teachers Plus Why Not Have a Permanent Corps of ATRS

Obviously, this is about more than placing a few hundred teachers out of a system of 80,000 to teach classes that don't have a regular teacher over a month into the school year. Ed deform leaders know that if they finish off our seniority rights, it's basically over for the unionized teaching workforce (see Chicago teachers for some evidence). Ending seniority rights altogether is the holy grail of union busting that Joel Klein pushed for and is still the treasured goal of the zealots who want to destroy our profession. ... James Eterno, the ICE Caucus Blog

The other day I raised the issue of why the billionaire backed ed deform movement - On "Fair" Student Funding, ATRs, Chalkbeat Deformer Reporting with such shill organizations as Families for Excellent Schools (FES), Students First, Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) are so obsessed with the fates of a relatively few ATRS, people who are on the margin of the system - people who have in essence reduced the need for hiring pile of substitute teachers by creating a permanent, though often unwilling, pool of people to do a necessary job.

I mean, why not actually create an ATR pool of volunteers to that job in some kind of organized manner? I was an ATR for a year and a half in one school at the beginning of my career. By covering classes I learned a lot -- it was a good training ground -- and when there was no one absent they assigned me to handle a bunch of other issues that the school never had people to take care --- even helping in the supply room --- remember those days when we had loaded supply rooms?

There is a corps of Homebound teachers who visit kids who are sick. Why not an ATR pool, especially for newbie people who can benefit from a hands on training period?

But of course the attacks on ATRs is part of the decade assault on seniority, teaching as a career, union protections, tenure, etc --- call it---

The Road to Making Teachers Individual Contract Workers 

James Eterno has an important piece delving into the history of that is a must read--

THE REAL AIM OF THE RENEWED ATTACK ON ATRS IS TO BUST UNION

I would not have framed it as just an attack to bust the union -- after all as James points out, the UFT agreeing to the 2005 contract was a peg on the road to the union busting itself.

At pre-2005 city council hearings on education - run by Eva Moskowitz -- Randi testified agreeing with Joel Klein in essence on seniority transfers. Klein at that point claimed that the transfers drained poor schools of senior teachers -- barely true as the rules allowed many loopholes --- a shill ed deform argument -- and then flipped the argument by claiming senior teachers were burned out.

You may hate Klein - but admit he was a genius in running rings around Randi - he is one of the great heroes of ed deform despite proving to be so incompetent in a everything else -- I mean the guy can't hold one job for very long - other than his 8 years in office -- if not for the UFT compliance he would have been an object failure even at ed deform -- his greatest success -- even greater than the victory over Microsoft.

Klein owes oh so much to Randi Weingarten.