Showing posts with label Teach for America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teach for America. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Campaign Against Teach for America is Working: Recruiting Running Dry, Closes NYC Office

A sign TFA is losing its attraction - from Gary Rubinstein blog
Teach for America is having trouble recruiting candidates to teach in New York City schools and will close its New York training site in anticipation of declining numbers, the organization’s New York City leader told program alumni on Friday. “Teach For America is in the midst of a challenging recruitment year,” Charissa Fernandez said in an email, attributing the difficulties in part to “a contentious national dialogue around education and teaching in general, and TFA in particular.”
http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2014/12/12/as-recruitment-dips-tfa-leader-says-new-york-training-site-to-close/#.VI8REpY8LCQ

A lot of credit goes to people like former TFAer Gary Rubinstein for his blog and posts like this: Bait-and-Switch For America


After moving their office out of NYC for ostensibly the same reason…letter linked to below only available to Politico pro subscribers.  

TFA ASKS FOR HELP: Teach for America has always prided itself on attracting such a flood of qualified applicants that it can afford to be ultra-selective. This year, however, the nonprofit is struggling to recruit as many applicants as it would like, despite bumping up outreach to veterans, mid-career professionals and others outside its traditional target market of college seniors. So TFA is asking for help. It's asking its alumni, supportive teachers, partner school districts and college administrators to send out emails, tweets and Facebook posts urging talented individuals to apply to TFA. The organization has even provided sample language: "Bring your passion to the classroom ... Teach." Or: "Schools deserve large groups of diverse talent to choose from, and that's where you come in."
- The group would like recruiting help from "everyone who can help the cause" spokeswoman Takirra Winfield said. It's not that TFA has completely run dry: It's received more than 26,000 applications so far this year. But that's less than anticipated - so much less that TFA's leaders estimate they could fall short of their goal for the 2015 corps by as much as 25 percent. In a letter to partner school districts, co-CEOs Elisa Villanueva-Beard and Matt Kramer attribute the downturn to a better economy, which means college students have more career options, and to "an increasingly polarized public conversation around education" that's "challenging the perception of teaching as a stable, fulfilling profession." Another factor: The "polarization" around the merits of TFA itself, they write. Their letter: http://politico.pro/1GpBlcm.
Go to this edition >> http://www.politico.com/morningeducation/1214/morningeducation16476.html

Monday, February 17, 2014

SUPE Call: #ResistTFA


Help Us Get #ResistTFA Trending on Twitter!

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WHEN: Monday, February 17th
TIME: 8:30PM EST
OUR GOALS: 
  • Get #ResistTFA trending to draw people to critiques of TFA
  • Reach as many potential TFA applicants and supporters
WHAT TO DO: 
  • Simply Tweet why you do not support TFA, and make sure to add the #ResistTFA hashtag to your Tweet
  • Share any articles, blog posts, opinion pieces critiquing TFA
  • Share, Share, Share our event!

Follow us on Twitter: @SUPEnational

Also, we're running a photo campaign. We hope to eventually compile all these photos together to create a short video clip to share as a part of our campaign. Check out a few of these examples. And of course e-mail us your own! What could be better reason to take a selfie? 

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"See" you tomorrow!

In Solidarity,

Students United for Public Education (SUPE)

Thursday, October 24, 2013

The Worm Turns on TFA as New Gen Students Begin to Reject Their Destructive Agenda

Just as TFA was the hot thing on campus such a short time ago, the counter revolution begins as student groups spring up around the nation exposing what is behind the curtain of an ed deform front which attempts to use recruits as a political force for ed deform.

Students who want to not only teach but do it in a context of social justice work where they join the battle against poverty and for resources both in and out of school for their students are rejecting the "no excuses, make do with what you have" TFA message.

Diane Ravitch posted a sample from a senior Harvard student.
Sandra Korn, Harvard ’14, Says No to TFA Sandra Korn, class of 2014 at Harvard, was invited to join TFA. She said no. She explains why here.

Now we do know more than a few TFA alums who are committed to the social justice work and have and are working with MORE. They used TFA to get a quick route into teaching but many of them also had been studying education so they were not totally unprepared to teach. And even if they weren't I can live with people who want to teach and not use TFA as a springboard.

Supplements from Susan Ohanian:
Teach for America rises as political powerhouse
Stephanie Simon
Politico
2013-10-21
http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1712

Teach for America is more than a service organization. It's a political powerhouse.


The debt deal's gift to Teach For America (yes, TFA)
Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Answer Sheet
2013-10-16
http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1710

Politicos hail Teach for America recruits as 'highly qualified' while declaring experienced teachers add no value to their students' school experience.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

SUPE Opens National Campaign: Students Resisting Teach for America

Davids battling the multimillion dollar TFA Goliath. Support them here: Donation Page: http://www.gofundme.com/4ar298

Dear SUPE Supporter,

Tonight, thousands and thousands of soon-to-be college graduates will be submitting their applications to apply to be future Teach for America corp members.
With that being said, we couldn't think of a better night to make our first official announcement of our upcoming national campaign.

We, Students United for Public Education, are excited to announce that this October, we will be launching the first national student-led campaign against TFA: Students Resisting Teach for America.

Yet, as many of you know, SUPE is very limited in funds. Which is why we are looking to all of you for your support and help. We have just set up our fundraising page that gives a more detailed outline of our campaign, as well as what exactly your donations will be used for.

We thank you in advance for your support, and hope you stay tuned for our official launch in October.



In Solidarity,

Students United for Public Education (SUPE)
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @SUPEnational

Thursday, August 1, 2013

SFA, Scabs for America: How Much Heat Will Chicago Newbie TFAs Be Facing?

...when faux Democrat/ Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel fires thousands of teachers and hires TFA grads to teach kids, that's something else altogether. In fact, TFA is now enabling the unemployment of working people. They are making their likely idealistic young college grads into scab labor. Their insane defense, that the jobs were eliminated and they are taking newly created jobs, is nothing more than a semantic game, unworthy of anyone capable of serious discourse. ...NYC EducatorTFA Becomes Scab for America

SFA. I like it. Has a beat and oh so true. I'm so happy there are people like NYC Educator writing about issues I thought of writing about but was just too lazy. So, as usual, NYC says things in a few words that would take me 10 times as long. Glad this is not paper.

I think Walton Foundation gave another 20 million to SFA in LA and Newark (Walton foundation donates $2 million to Newark Teach For America), in addition to the $3 mil Randi Weingarten pal Bill Gates gave  to our pals at E4E, a branch of Scabs for America.

I am wondering how the laid off teachers of Chicago who will not have new jobs, will react. I know these SFAs will be new members of the Chicago Teachers Union so the CTU itself is in an awkward position, but will wildcat groups of laid-off teachers and the parents and communities that support them target these 5-week trained teachers in the communities where they teach with an information campaign asking if their kids are better off with teachers with scant training while their former veteran teachers are on the unemployment line.

---------
On another TFA front, Leonie Haimson takes them to task for putting their barely-trained teachers in so many special ed classrooms, where the most difficult kids to teach are located.
The biggest scandal of Teach for America?
There has been much discussion and debate about how Teach for America undermines our public schools by encouraging the deprofessionalization of the teaching force, and perpetuates systemic inequalities especially in urban schools. In many districts, TFA has used its political clout to get its recruits hired, as in Chicago, while thousands of experienced teachers are being laid off.  Gary Rubinstein, a former TFA corps member, has been a fierce critic of the inadequate training that the organization provides.  Edushyster recently wrote that the TFA has become a primarily a “placement agency” to staff charter schools rather than public schools – and in the process is fueling the privatization movement.  
All the above is true; but in my mind, the most shocking aspect of the organization is how in many districts, including NYC, raw TFA recruits are assigned to special education classrooms almost exclusively --because this is the biggest shortage area.  See the recent Independent Budget Office report  on p. 24 – showing that 80 percent of TFA recruits in NYC public schools in 2010-11 were working as special education teachers; and 68 percent of Teaching Fellows (a similar program for mid-career recruits, run by TNTP).
That to me is the biggest scandal.  Instead of doing something to stanch the outflow of special education teachers assigned to those children who clearly need teachers with the MOST training and experience,  TFA and TNTP fill in the gap, year after year, with the least-trained recruits, who only stay one or two years and perpetuate the problem.

------
Chicago teacher Katie Osgood has been hammering TFA and her letter to new recruits got a lot of play. Here is her follow-up at Schools Matter/The Chalkface

Why My Students Do Not Need Teach for America

Wow, there has been such a flurry of stories and discussions in regards to Teach for America and its destructive role in education today.  I suppose my letter to new recruits played an important part in calling into question this organization, striking a chord of truth.  TFA has gone into full-time PR mode with a blur of speeches and blogs from the co-CEOs, puff pieces from TFA alums, and even a Q&A from TFA Chicago’s Executive Director.  I am glad this dangerous organization is finally getting real scrutiny, and I have much more to add to the discussion at a later date, but today I want to speak from the heart.
More at: http://atthechalkface.com/2013/07/24/why-my-students-do-not-need-teach-for-america/

Well, that's it for TFA bashing today. On the positive front, a 4 year TFAer who has begun to attend MORE events said at our meeting yesterday, "I've been looking for a group like MORE for 4 years." Hey, TFA, keep recruiting sharp people like her who, even though a minority of teachers who will stay in the classroom, will find their way to MORE and help us build.


Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Gary Gives Advice to an upcoming TFAer

And to TFA:  Shame on you for disrespecting this woman by not providing her adequate training.  And shame on you for having no concern for the 150 to 200 students who she is about to teach.  Teachers who only taught a few fourth graders reading and math for sixteen hours are most certainly not going to close any achievement gaps in their first year teaching middle school science.  There is a reason that 15% of corps members quit (and another significant percent who probably should quit since they are not doing much good).
Excerpt, Gary Rubinstein blog Preventing a disaster

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Teach For America's Civil War: Organizing Resistance Against Teach for America and its Role in Privatization

This summer, alumni and current teachers are launching the first ever national campaign against the organization.
This weekend former TFAers and others gathered in Chicago to discuss a resistance movement to TFA.

James Ceronsky wrote about it for The American Prospect.
Twenty-four years running, the rap on Teach for America (TFA) is a sampled, re-sampled, burned-out record: The organization’s five-week training program is too short to prepare its recruits to teach, especially in chronically under-served urban and rural districts; corps members only have to commit to teach for two years, which destabilizes schools, undermines the teaching profession, and undercuts teachers unions; and TFA, with the help of its 501(c)4 spin-off, Leadership for Educational Equity, is a leading force in the movement to close “failing” schools, expand charter schools, and tie teachers’ job security to their students’ standardized test scores. Critics burn TFA in internet-effigy across the universe of teacher listservs and labor-friendly blogs. Last July, it earned Onion fame: an op-ed entitled “My Year Volunteering As A Teacher Helped Educate A New Generation Of Underprivileged Kids,” followed by a student’s take, “Can We Please, Just Once, Have A Real Teacher?”

Despite the endless outcry, no one has ever staged a coordinated, national effort to overhaul, or put the brakes on, TFA—let alone anyone from within the TFA rank-and-file. On July 14, in a summit at the annual Free Minds/Free People education conference in Chicago, a group of alumni and corps members will be the first to do so.
 More here.

Here's the web site for the conference that ended today.


Tuesday, January 22, 2013

MORE's Brian Jones, Secretary of Department of Education, Will End TFA Contracts and Repeal NCLB and RTTT

In his spare time Brian is running for UFT Secretary on the MORE slate in the upcoming UFT elections.
The Indypendent newspaper "appointed" me US Secretary of Education and asked me "what would you do?" My reply will be in the print edition that comes out soon, and is online here: http://www.indypendent.org/2013/01/21/no-school-left-behind ---- Brian
Brian Jones has taught elementary grades in New York City’s public schools for nine years, and is a member of the Movement of Rank and File Educators (the social justice caucus of the United Federation of Teachers). Brian is a doctoral student in urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center, and has contributed to several books, including Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation.

Brian along with MORE presidential candidate Julie Cavanagh, narrated the film "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman."

Issue # 183
Brian Jones
Secretary
Department of Education
As the new Secretary of Education, my first priority will be to reverse the trend toward the privatization of the public schools, to end the pervasive climate of fear and demoralization among the nation’s educators and to urgently promote desegregation and genuine equality of resources and opportunity in all K-12 schools.

Toward this end, I will seek an immediate repeal of No Child Left Behind legislation and of the Race to the Top competition. Together, these have raised the stakes of standardized assessments beyond any reasonable proportion; narrowed the curriculum; created a culture of corruption; cheating and competition between schools; and have increased the trend toward teaching as a short-term job, not as a long-term profession. I will call for an end to high-stakes standardized testing and a moratorium on school closings. Just as we commit ourselves to teaching every single student, we will likewise commit ourselves to improving every single school.

Teachers must be trained in the very best practices and must be given the opportunity to learn from experienced educators during their training. In our highest-needs municipalities, students only rarely have teachers who are from their community, and teacher turnover is high. Teach for America cannot be the model of teacher training for our schools. Therefore, I will seek an end to Teach for America contracts with municipalities nationwide. Shortages must be addressed by strengthening our schools of education and by developing pathways to train community members to serve as educators in their schools.

READ MORE

Brian Jones has taught elementary grades in New York City’s public schools for nine years, and is a member of the Movement of Rank and File Educators (the social justice caucus of the United Federation of Teachers). Brian is a doctoral student in urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center, and has contributed to several books, including Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Another Parent Vents at Teach for America

The organization is disorganized, unresponsive and over promises. The worst part is they throw these kids into situations that they will likely fail  .... If you know someone or if your child is considering this, DON'T let them go. There are other ways to teach and help the school system. Please.  ---Parent of TFAer
A TFA parent left this comment today on a March, 2009 post: A Parent Vents At Teach for America --
My daughter is in Teach For America and nothing has changed since this [A Parent Vents At Teach for America] was first written. The program succeeds because they recruit well and once the best of the best leave this program they do good things because they were good to start with, not because they got something from TFA. The organization is disorganized, unresponsive and over promises. The worst part is they throw these kids into situations that they will likely fail in, but they hire kids who won't quit, so they create a significant problem for the students. My daughter is breaking down and will likely need therapy before this is over and I am trying to get her to quit. Such a terrible shame. If you know someone or if your child is considering this, DON'T let them go. There are other ways to teach and help the school system. Please. 

---------
March 19, 2009

A Parent Vents At Teach for America

Hi D,
I have a friend whose kid just signed up for Teach for America. Wasn't that the program that gave [your daughter S] so much trouble? Care to elaborate? I'm sure they'd be interested in more info. Maybe [S] can write directly to her son. Thanks.
L

Hi L,
Teach for America only has one program, which is for recent college graduates from prestigious universities with no or little educational experience and training. TFA gives them about one month's worth of training, mostly in record keeping, along with room and board, but nothing else. TFA then puts them in an inner city classroom (for which they get an undisclosed fee of about $1,500 to 5,000 from a school district), based on the totally erroneous assumption that high achievers can get by with determination, some mentoring (which in S's case was denied by the elementary school in Brooklyn she was assigned to two days before school began), and taking a few mediocre education courses.

S initiated all types of interventions at the school directly, through Teach for America, through her union, and through an attorney we hired to get Teach for America to intervene at the school to get the mentoring she was entitled to, but TFA told her she was not working hard enough at being a leader. S also attempted to get a transfer to a school which wanted an untrained, uncertified teacher, and TFA flatly refused the request. TFA also refused to provide us a copy of the contract between TFA and their teachers, as well as between TFA and the NYC Department of Education.

TFA also flat out lied to us when they said S would be flown to NYC for placement interviews before her "training" began. They also mislead us to believe that the placements took place during training. Finally, we were upset to find out that there was no compensation to get her to NYC, while she lived in their dorm, and while she was on her own for one month between the end of training. She only got her first pay check in October, which meant she was dependent on us for about a half-year after our first parent's briefing from Teach for America..

We also discovered that because of its foundation supporters and general philosophical outlook, that TFA is fanatically anti-union. They never tell their trainees that they will be in a unionized work force, and their staff even told us in writing that if they were to attend a meeting at S's school with a union rep present, that TFA would fire them from their staff positions!

Later we discovered the work of the foremost scholar on teacher education, Linda Darling Hammond of Stanford (who was Obama's chief education adviser during the transition period). She totally slams Teach for America and told us S's experience was not that unusual. She also is an advocate for serious teacher training, which means getting an MA after graduation instead of five weeks of summer school training.

Bottom line, it was a horrible experience in a horrible program. Your friend's son should turn to a serious program in teacher training.

A few of the articles we got, largely from Prof. Darling-Hammond, are attached. I will also copy an education blogger in NYC, Norm Scott, who published something we wrote about her experience in TFA. He may have more material. Also an old friend, who is now the president of the state Federation of Teachers, may have more thoughts, especially about TFA's strong anti-union outlook.
D

Darling-Hammond article is posted at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcj5ndsz_28cdp2gbhd
There is also a pdf of a Slate article but only available as a pdf from email.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Where Were TFA/E4E Types During the Chicago Strike?

UPDATED: Sept. 26, 3PM

Did you notice no talk of scabs in Chicago? Where were the TFA people? I think that was one of the most remarkable achievements of the CTU -- 100% support -- on the surface at least -- of the teachers. One would have thought someone would have dragged out one E4E type to protest the strike.

There were rumors that Rahm was going to bring in massive TFA scabs. Even TFA is smart enough not touch this one with a 10-foot pole.

Has anyone seen any comments from any of these teacher groups commenting on the strike?

===============
What the Chicago teachers accomplished

This just came in from Lee Sustar at Socialist Worker. Lee admits the union took a hit: While the CTU had to take a painful concession in reduced compensation for laid-off teachers .... Meaning that the pay period for laid-of teachers is cut in half, they are still laid off -- no ATRs in Chicago. Lee says: Emanuel also had to agree that half of new teachers hired anywhere in the system would have to come from a pool of laid-off CTU members-- This is one I'd have to actually see implemented to believe it. You know how they played games here with the ATR pool. Let's say Rahm closes 100 schools and throws thousands of teachers out of work who get to vote in the next Chiago TU election next May. We know the CTU has a target on its back and front and side.


COMMENT: LEE SUSTAR

What the Chicago teachers accomplished

Lee Sustar looks at the significance of the Chicago teachers' strike victory.

September 26, 2012
IT'S TIME to take stock of the significance of Chicago teachers' strike that beat back corporate education reform--not just for teachers and other public-sector workers, but the wider labor movement.

But before considering its impact in on future fights, let's take another moment to savor a labor victory in one of the most important union struggles in many years.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

TFAer Responds on Onion Satirical Piece

A TFA corps member responds to the Onion piece. It is thoughtful and self-examining. I wonder what year this person is in. On this point: "the fact that about 1/3 of TFA corps members stay in the classroom after the two years seems to go unnoticed." Yes that only 1/3 stay DOES get noticed. And beyond that, what are the numbers for year 3, 4, 5 when people really get their chops as teachers?

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The Onion Takes on Teach For America":
As a TFA-er in New Mexico, this article was certainly humbling. But I have to say it was also kind of unnecessarily harsh... Not that I want to defend TFA in any way from these criticisms that are true in some cases, but I'm kind of tired of the blanketed criticisms of TFA. We're not all like this (hopefully), but I can understand how some more "privileged" corps members may ruin it for the rest of us. I'll admit, I'm pretty tired of TFA boasting its minute accomplishments with 1-2 students per classroom. Those are the students who would have probably succeeded anyways relative to the rest of their classmates. I get the optimism, but sooooo many voices of still underperforming students with severe needs for a better education are still unheard. From being on the inside, I definitely sense that people in TFA don't really like to talk about their failures with students.

But back to why the article doesn't really do much....Somehow, the fact that about 1/3 of TFA corps members stay in the classroom after the two years seems to go unnoticed. I think TFA thus at least manages to feed teachers into the field, who may not have otherwise decided to teach. Also, after being exposed to the classroom, many TFA corps members struggle with the decision of whether to stay or not in the classroom. TFA is changing enough mindsets, in my opinion, to be making a positive impact on education. The more advocates, the better.... though we still have a long way to go and many TFA alum should stop thinking they are the God-sent answers to our enormous education problem.

Bottom line: I'm sure this article will make many people in TFA, including myself, think about our own teaching and motivations to be here. However, the preaching of this article may only hit home with the choir. I'm trying to think, if I was one of the TFA-stereotypes this article highlights, I would be uber defensive and dismiss it. Try again, the Onion!! Not that you're known for this, but some epic facts to tell us arrogant TFA corps members off would be even more effective. 
 Let me add:
I was in one school for 27 years in a high at risk neighborhood in Brooklyn. Most of my colleagues spent their careers in the school where there was little turnover. TFA does not take into account that a stable teaching group in a neighborhood school is a crucial element and TFA has helped the ed deformers destroy that.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Teach for America rap: A Scab is a Scab is a Scab




 Treme, the HBO series focused on New Orleans by The Wire crew hits all the right notes.
Remember how The Wire took a strong stand against ed deform? Arne Duncan said the best thing that happened to New Orleans was Katrina in that it allowed them to fire all the teachers and bring in TFA and open charter schools. Check NO over the next dew years to see the results.

 From the episode "Santa Claus, Do You Ever Get the Blues?"

http://youtu.be/b8t3YQe3CEU

See our recent post on TFA: The Onion Takes on Teach For America
which prompted this cry baby comment:
I'm sorry, but no where on The Onion’s website does the article even mention Teach For America. To say that The Onion has a piece "on Teach For America” is quite the leap—especially given that the details in the Onion article don’t actually match details associated with Teach For America. To start, their teachers are, in fact, NOT volunteer teachers.  Not to mention that there are very few Teach For America corps members with a middling GPA or sparse law school application.
The last line says it all. How insulting to connect us elites to middling GPAs.

UPDATE:
This comment came in:

Jack has left a new comment on your post "The Onion Takes on Teach For America":

So Anonymous actually thinks the satirist who wrote this was not using TFA as the object of this parody.
Hmmm... let's check out some excerpts for a better handle on this:

"... some privileged college grad who completed a five-week training program and now wants to document every single moment of her life-changing year on a Tumblr... "

A well-known alternative teacher training with program with a specific length of "five-weeks"? Nahhh, that's nothing like TFA. I'm sure there's countless alternative training programs famous enough that a satirist outside of education would have used one of those programs to satirize. Anonymous, if you can find a link to another such well-known-enough-to-warrant-
satire program other than TFA that whose training last exactly five weeks, please offer it so you can prove me wrong.

The kids is sick of "... dealing with a new fresh-faced college graduate who doesn't know what he or she is doing... "

Again, that's nothing like the well-known critisms people have lobbed at TFA for the last two decades.

The kid desires "... a real, honest-to-God degree in education and not a twentysomething English graduate .... "

DITTO.

"... a qualified educator who has experience standing up in front of a classroom and isn't desperately trying to prove to herself that she's a good person.... "

DITTO.

"... sort of stepping stone to a larger career... "

DITTO.

"... someone who actually wants to be a teacher, actually comprehends the mechanics of teaching, and won't get completely eaten alive by a classroom full of 10-year-olds within the first two months on the job.... "

DITTO.

"... adopted puppies you can show off to your friends... "

Yeah, like you never read TFA blogs or books from former TFA-ers who talk of their students in such a manner.

"... Underprivileged children occasionally say some really sad things that open your eyes and make you feel as though you've grown as a person... "

Yeah, like you never read smarmy anecdotes from TFA-ers that condescend to low-income students while the writer gushes about how it makes him/her a better person in the process.

"... can't afford to spend these vital few years of my cognitive development becoming a small thread in someone's inspirational narrative."

DITTO.

One more thing: nowhere in the fictional kid's letter does he ever refer to the alternatively-trained teachers as "volunteers", so that's a strawman.

===========
The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The Onion Takes on Teach For America

Just once, it would be nice to walk into a classroom and see a teacher who has a real, honest-to-God degree in education and not a twentysomething English graduate trying to bolster a middling GPA and a sparse law school application. I don't think it's too much to ask for a qualified educator who has experience standing up in front of a classroom and isn't desperately trying to prove to herself that she's a good person.
More signs the tide is turning in this hilarious send up of TFA

Point/Counterpoint

July 17, 2012 | ISSUE 48•29

Point

My Year Volunteering As A Teacher Helped Educate A New Generation Of Underprivileged Kids

By Megan Richmond, Volunteer Teacher
When I graduated college last year, I was certain I wanted to make a real difference in the world. After 17 years of education, I felt an obligation to share my knowledge and skills with those who needed it most.
After this past year, I believe I did just that. Working as a volunteer teacher helped me reach out to a new generation of underprivileged children in dire need of real guidance and care. Most of these kids had been abandoned by the system and, in some cases, even by their families, making me the only person who could really lead them through the turmoil.
Was it always easy? Of course not. But with my spirit and determination, we were all able to move forward.
Those first few months were the most difficult of my life. Still, I pushed through each day knowing that these kids really needed the knowledge and life experience I had to offer them. In the end, it changed all of our lives.
In some ways, it's almost like I was more than just a teacher to those children. I was a real mentor who was able to connect with them and fully understand their backgrounds and help them become the leaders of tomorrow.
Ultimately, I suppose I can never know exactly how much of an impact I had on my students, but I do know that for me it was a fundamentally eye-opening experience and one I will never forget.

Counterpoint

Can We Please, Just Once, Have A Real Teacher?

By Brandon Mendez, James Miller Elementary School Student
You've got to be kidding me. How does this keep happening? I realize that as a fourth-grader I probably don't have the best handle on the financial situation of my school district, but dealing with a new fresh-faced college graduate who doesn't know what he or she is doing year after year is growing just a little bit tiresome. Seriously, can we get an actual teacher in here sometime in the next decade, please? That would be terrific.
Just once, it would be nice to walk into a classroom and see a teacher who has a real, honest-to-God degree in education and not a twentysomething English graduate trying to bolster a middling GPA and a sparse law school application. I don't think it's too much to ask for a qualified educator who has experience standing up in front of a classroom and isn't desperately trying to prove to herself that she's a good person.
I'm not some sort of stepping stone to a larger career, okay? I'm an actual child with a single working mother, and I need to be educated by someone who actually wants to be a teacher, actually comprehends the mechanics of teaching, and won't get completely eaten alive by a classroom full of 10-year-olds within the first two months on the job.
How about a person who can actually teach me math for a change? Boy, wouldn't that be a novel concept!
I fully understand that our nation is currently facing an extreme shortage of teachers and that we all have to make do with what we can get. But does that really mean we have to be stuck with some privileged college grad who completed a five-week training program and now wants to document every single moment of her life-changing year on a Tumblr?
For crying out loud, we're not adopted puppies you can show off to your friends.
Look, we all get it. Underprivileged children occasionally say some really sad things that open your eyes and make you feel as though you've grown as a person, but this is my actual education we're talking about here. Graduating high school is the only way for me to get out of the malignant cycle of poverty endemic to my neighborhood and to many other impoverished neighborhoods throughout the United States. I can't afford to spend these vital few years of my cognitive development becoming a small thread in someone's inspirational narrative.
But hey, how much can I really know, anyway? I haven't had an actual teacher in three years.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

With Chicago Teacher Strike Looming, Will Teach For America Send in Strike Breakers?

The whispering is that there are 5,000 nubile young "idealists" From Teach for America ready to roll into town for Rahm. --- George Schmidt, Substance
I'm heading to Detroit next week for the AFT convention and will be checking out the Chicago crew, many of whom I know. Here are some articles worth reading on the battles in Chicago. The CORE caucus has inspired the new MORE caucus here in NYC which was profiled on Gotham in a great piece by Rachel Cromidas (Teachers union faction wants to shake up electoral status quo). Rachel gave up an entire evening to hang out and listen to Michael's and my presentations followed by an hour of Q and A (not posted yet).

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 JOIN MORE ON THE CON ED PICKET LINES TODAY. MEET UP AT 4 IRVING PLACE AT 4 FOR THE MARCH TO UNION SQUARE AT 5:30. Please bring a sign showing MORE’s support for the locked workers and their families
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There is a story from The Guardian in Britain, a sign of the international implications of the strike as it compares the upcoming struggle to PATCO, a major event in undermining unions in this country. MORE will try to organize an event to support the Chicago teacher union. Remember that Chicago had corporate ed deform 8 years before we did here so every educator in NYC should see that supporting the CTU is crucial for our own battles to come. Another story was published in June also bringing up the PATCO story.

Here is a link to coverage at Substance. Will TFA make it perfectly clear where it is coming from by sending in the strike breakers? The corporate deformers are counting on it. George writes:
Teach for America doesn't do "boot camp" for this reality. Mercenaries are mercenaries, and scabs are scabs. A mercenary has to have a hole in his soul — but also a little guts. The jobs is not just for a kid with a fancy university degree, a vapid ignorance about reality, and a perfect score on the quiz that followed the most recent airing of "Waiting for Superman". Six viewings of "Waiting for Superman" and a couple of Attaboys from Jonah Edelman, Becky Carroll and Wendy Kopp aren't going to get your through one day scabbing in Chicago. Reality here is as close as the difference between a Latin King and a Latin Dragon, a false flag — crown up or crown down? — that can get you a year in therapy if you are lucky. They don't teach that at Princeton, and by the time Rahm's scabs wake up it will be sadly too late for them.
The full piece it at: SCAB TEACHERS NOT WELCOME: Rahm's Scab Army will be a debacle... Rahm's disinformation campaigns will lead to chaos for a couple of days in scab classrooms until the last TFA or New Teacher Project mercenaries are driven out of our classrooms
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The Guardian

Chicago's teachers could strike a blow for organised labour globally

If the fight to halt school budget cuts in Obama's Democratic heartland succeeds it would be a huge boost for unions
Demonstrators Protest The NATO Summit In Chicago
'Some Chicago unions found that reaching out to Occupy [such as at this protest against the Nato sumit in May] helped them resist rightwing attacks.' Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Last month, approximately 90% of Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) members voted for strike action. Only 1.82% voted against. This was a shock to the local administration.
Not only is this the heart of Obama country, where unions are expected to play ball with the Democrats in an election year. It is also a city where, thanks to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, teachers are not allowed to strike unless more than 75% of union members vote for it.
Yet it is not just the local establishment that will be unsettled here. This is getting national attention in the US, and a strike could be an embarrassment to President Obama. Moreover, it could re-ignite the American labour movement at a time of global unrest.
The basis of this dispute is what is innocuously termed "school reform". This is a process of privatisation and union-busting. Since the 1990s, Chicago has been a laboratory for such reforms, which have been rolled out across the country. The programme enjoys the support of the Democratic leadership as well as leading pro-Obama liberals such as Davis Guggenheim, whose film Waiting for Superman was a lengthy attack on teaching unions and a tribute to private schools.
Chicago intends to open 60 new privatised, non-union "charter" schools in the next five years. Public schools are being closed to make way for this change and capital spending has been slashed. The CTU's new leadership has been driving a campaign to tackle chronic underfunding in Chicago schools, and broaden the curriculum. They describe the system as one of "educational apartheid", and demand an elected school board which reflects the needs of the city's population.
But the final provocation was when the "reformers" increased teachers' working hours by 20%, while cutting a promised 4% pay rise in half. They falsely imagined that the CTU would be a pushover, having recently elected a bunch of "rookie" candidates to the leadership.
In fact, the victory of these "rookies", from the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE), demonstrated two things. First, it showed the unwillingness of members to be as compliant as the leadership has been in the past. Second, it proved the new leadership's ability as grassroots organisers. They showed the same skill in building support among teachers for strike action in a series of mock ballots and mass public meetings.
The administration and local media are now running with the story that this is purely a fiscal problem. The government, they say, is trying to close a £700m deficit. But the teachers' union has obtained, through a Freedom of Information Act request, evidence that the money that was to pay for teachers' salaries has been spent on paying police officers to patrol public schools. This is typical of reform in the neoliberal era: budgets are cut, but just as significant is the shift in the balance of state intervention away from welfare and toward coercion and discipline.
Having effectively built support among teachers, much now hinges on the union's ability to win over parents' groups , who have been alienated by the budget cuts. Parents are a key target of the administration's propaganda. Rahm Emanuel has tried to appear above this dispute, but his mayoral campaign in 2010 was led by education "reform", and his allies are running campaign ads attacking the teachers, and encouraging parents to pressure them into dropping their campaign.
But this is just one aspect of a general problem facing the union. Unions in America have been so diminished over the years that membership is concentrated in a public sector rump. Their struggles can thus appear as sectional, even where they have much wider significance. Union members in Madison, Wisconsin won widespread support. In the end, however, they lost the initiative by falling back on a narrow client relationship with the Democratic party. Pushing a recall vote against Governor Scott Walker, they haemorrhaged members while the new anti-union laws were passed, then lost the recall vote.
Chicago teachers don't even have the option of appealing to the Democrats, who are their antagonists in this case. But if they are to succeed, they will need allies. The unions have strategic power, but they are too small to fight in isolation. Some Chicago unions found that reaching out to Occupy last year helped them resist rightwing attacks.
If this strike goes ahead, it will be the first such strike since 1987. But the stakes are much higher. Teaching activists say this struggle recalls the Patco dispute. When the airline workers union failed in that battle with the Reagan administration, it was a setback for the whole American labour movement for decades.
A failure in this case would potentially be much worse than Patco. On the other hand, a success would partially redeem the heavy defeat inflicted on unions in Wisconsin, and signal a fundamental shift in American politics. And more than this: from Sichuan in China to Asturias in Spain, labour protests are growing in scale and militancy. America's influence is such that a return of the labour movement in the US would tilt the balance in favour of workers globally.
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Ghosts of PATCO and the Coming Battle for Teachers


I've been there.
Your ears ring so badly the sound of a spoon stirring coffee hurts. You can't sleep past dawn, but you can't prop your lids open through dusk. Your exhaustion runs so deep the next 75 days seem over before they start...filled as they'll be with summer jobs to pay bills, workshops to stay certified, planning for the fall---and dare I say it?---family.
You love your work, though it's the hardest thing you've ever done and never gets easier...and you won't get rich on what they pay you...yet those who've never done it are actually jealous of you in June.
Teachers use these bittersweet first days of summer both to get a life and find new energy to live it.
So it hardly seems time to add one more thing to teachers' plates...
After giving up teaching more by circumstance than choice, I served about a dozen of the past 18 years on my school board.  Since 1994, I've watched schools remodel themselves after corporations, de-professionalize teaching, gut local control by rendering boards nearly powerless and alienating parents, and squeeze budgets past the breaking point while funneling resources out of communities.
For the past quarter century we have been frogs slowly boiled by corporate interests, and we have yet to jump out of the water. Next fall may be our do-or-die moment.
This is the mess that gets slopped on your plate this summer: It's an approaching showdown for parents, teachers, and all who care about kids, not to mention policemen, firemen, and other union workers: ignore it at your own peril because you're next.
If it comes to a strike, the CTU will need help from teachers across the country, so the smart money says be ready. This will not be a time for a timid response. The CTU will need solid moral support, possibly including cash and sympathetic job actions to draw attention to their cause.
The first years of this decade saw the highest highs and the lowest lows for unions. Public sector unions were gutted in Wisconsin, inspiring union busters everywhere yet kindling the largest, loudest united backlash in the memory of all but our oldest. The attack was so outrageous it brought those slated by Walker for “divide and conquer” together and brought him nearly to his knees.
Nearly, but obscene piles of money plus one heartbreaking Tuesday all but crushed that rebellion, puffing up dozens more would-be Walkers across the country. Both sides know that was a watershed.
Union-busting currents flow deep in most of our communities, and I saw that clearly from the school board. As a board member in Maine, I received mailings from the state school boards/school management association barely containing its glee supporting ALEC-inspired initiatives from a tea-party governor. The superintendent himself, every time the door closed, bashed away: belittling union activities and openly plotting the union's demise, all with barely a peep of opposition.
I yelled myself silly, but unions have precious little support in our conservative towns, where even teachers' salaries look good and every benefit seems stolen from citizens' pockets. Any talk of parents and unions joining forces for better schools meets polite silence.
Yet that is exactly what the good folks in Chicago---parents and union activists---are trying to do right now, and if they fail we will face a moment this fall which will combine the worst of Walker's Wisconsin sleeze with Reagan's PATCO orgasm while shredding teachers' unions for our generation.
A short crib-note on Chicago school politics might be in order. Remember Arne Duncan? His twisted logic for “school reform” was first tested in Chicago. Now he's running the Department of Charter Education and Teacher Bashing in DC. Barack Obama? FOA (Friend of Arne). His national agenda for schools?---'nuf said. How about Rahm Emanuel? FOB, FOA...now strangling Chicago schools with closures, arrogance, and promises to sell kids to the highest corporate bidders.
The Chicago Teachers' Union (CTU)? Once a compliant bunch, but recently taken over by the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) in a stunning victory for grassroots organizing.
Those are the actors. The plot thickened last week when the CTU authorized a strike vote if contract negotiations break down. The vote was not close: nearly 90% in favor and less than 2% of membership opposed.
Chicago teachers threw down the gauntlet for nothing less than a good-faith, fairly negotiated contract, but Emanuel's minions were surely emboldened by Walker's victory. If it comes to a strike, the CTU will need help from teachers across the country, so the smart money says be ready. This will not be a time for a timid response. The CTU will need solid moral support, possibly including cash and sympathetic job actions to draw attention to their cause.
Chicago is a front-line skirmish in Washington's drive to dismantle public education across the country, and should be considered no less. If we can't draw a line there, don't bother to wait for the fight to come to your neighborhood.
Do your research this summer while you have breathing room. Sleep on what this means to you while you have time to sleep. Talk with your friends and colleagues around the country about what this means to you...while you have time and energy to talk.
Next fall, be refreshed and ready with your summer reading done, your homework completed, and your mind made up to fill the trenches in solidarity with your colleagues...and ultimately for your own students and schools. Big money will be throwing all they have at the CTU, and the negative effects of their PR smears will find you wherever you live, so better get a head start.
Nobody will lead you into battle in 75 days, but if you do your work in July and August, nobody will have to.
Alan Morse
Alan Morse is a parent, once a teacher, and more recently a school board director living in western Maine. He can be joined or harangued at alanmorse@gmail.com


Wednesday, August 24, 2011

NYC Teach For America Members Under the Radar

EdNotes has been pretty rough on Teach for America over the years and there has been some buzz about bringing local dissident TFAers together for a chat.

Along with Mark Naison, who hosted, I helped get some TFA corps and alumni together for a fascinating meeting last night which was illuminating for Mark and I as the TFAers drilled down into the culture of the organization. In one exercise each participant listed the positive and negative aspects of the organization and we as non-TFAers received some serious insights.

The call for the meeting emerged from the responses to critiques of TFA by Mark and on Ed Notes (see Musings of MAB tab at top of this blog) along with a push within NYCORE to begin to address some of the core issues that disturb so many core members who are not drinking the Kool-aid.

Can a group within TFA gather enough steam to force changes at the top level in the TFA approach? Like longer training periods, an end to data munching as the way to judge success and failure for students and teachers, urging teachers to look beyond their classroom and into the families and broader school community, and encouraging TFAers to remain in teaching and put down roots in one school community as the best way to have a long-term impact?

There was lots more discussed with plans to expand the initial group and meet again. If you know TFA people looking to nudge the organization in another direction, have them contact ed notes.


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Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on right for news bits.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

"provide the highest performing applicants from Ivy League schools with a 6 week medical tutorial and set them loose on our nations inner city hospitals" - Brian De Vale Urges Nurse for America Program to Meet Shortage

TFA and the Fellows program create the illusion that there is no shortage of "cerified" teachers. These folks are considered licensed, thus eliminating the need to pay more to attract more folks into the profession.

I propose a similar program NFA... Nurse for America to deal with the health care crisis.

We will provide the highest performing applicants from Ivy League schools with a 6 week medical tutorial and set them loose on our nations inner city hospitals...we will do this because the nurses and doctors of America have failed our inner city people.

Thus we must fire the [current crop of older] nurses.

Rather than try to understand what decades or in some cases centuries of neglect, public policy and the resulting lack of education about good health choices, alcohol and substance abuse, diabetes, sickle cell, asthma etc...have created, we will blame the doctors and nurses and shut down their hospitals and replace them with CHARTER HOSPITALS!!!!!

Maybe Arne Duncan can be Surgeon General. He is as qualified for that as he is for Sec. of Education. Didn't he sprain his ankle at least once while he was a basketball player? So he understands healthcare...just like he understands education because he went to school.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Tenure Extensions Lead to Growing Disaffection of Young Teachers - What Say You E4E, TFA?

And now it's some of the high-quality, newer recruits - the same ones the administration was trying to save from layoffs - that are being pushed to other careers or jobs elsewhere because of the crackdown. Department of Education officials haven't released numbers but acknowledge that they expect an increase in extended probation periods after setting out new standards last November. --- Rachel Monahan, Daily News
E4E ought to come out with a public statement decrying the process, if their members feel it is invalid. --- Leonie Haimson
Isn't this process what E4E was advocating? They just didn't think it would affect them. - ---Diane Ravitch
Yeah, funny how folks' criteria become much more thoughtful and sophisticated when it is their job on the block.  --- jmb
We have been predicting for months that the numbers of teachers leaving the system will be much higher than predicted based on sources in the schools who told us teachers who were told how good they and ended up having tenure extended were outraged enough to walk away from a system more dysfunctional than anything experienced under the old status quo.

Numbers we are hearing are that 50% of 3rd year teachers did not get tenure or were extended. I hear FDR HS in Brooklyn only gave tenure to 4 out of 16 (or was it 20?) teachers.

Don't underestimate the importance of the Daily News stories by Rachel Monahan, who has been on this case for a month or more - we've been waiting for these reports but Rachel probably had to wait until the official results are in. Philissa Cramer of Gotham Schools also has been on the case.

We have no such qualms about waiting for facts and have been hearing for the last two months on the growing denial/extension to a 4th year of tenure. This will turn into bad news for both the DOE and their allies in Educators 4 Excellence and Teach for America.
 "The irony is that a lot of these teachers were teachers that the city paid millions of dollars ... to recruit," he [Mulgrew] noted, referring to Teaching Fellows and Teach for America.
Mulgrew must have had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek. Do you think the UFT is rushing out to help these teachers out?

Wasn't it just a short time ago we heard from Wallslug and Bloomcrud and yes E4E about how important it was to end tenure and seniority protections to keep these excellent (because they are TFA and young) teachers?

There are some interesting nuggets. Rachel went to Aspirations HS in Brooklyn a few weeks ago to talk to Chapter Leader Jeff Kaufman and some of the teachers. Jeff has been keeping us informed  about some of the goings on at the school, where a young principal (other sources beyond Jeff who knew him at Columbus HS and other venues describe him an asshole) recruited lots of TFA teachers, who basically helped run the school. The principal pushed Educators 4 Excellence with the staff and many supported E4E - initially. He hired almost all young women and used to call them Matt's Harem. Nice. What does E4E, which organized a mixer for Matt's Harem think of that? (Read Jeff's account: Up Close and Personal With An Opposition and his follow-up analysis of the E4E lies and misdirections: “White Paper” on a Roll: How Ed Deformers Distort ...  Also his piece  on how some of the E4E and TFA people began to show their union consciousness: UFT Chapter at Aspirations HS Stops Charter School...

Some people think Jeff has been off-line but he has been doing the scut work of basic chapter organizing.

Rachel writes:
At Aspirations High School in Brooklyn, three of the school's founding teachers, all recruited through Teach for America or Teaching Fellows, were told they need to serve another year before being considered for tenure. They say none had been observed in the three years since they arrived at the school, even though it's a requirement for tenure. At a meeting with a superintendent, they said they were told that because the school received an F on the high-stakes report cards, they should not expect tenure. The teachers say the decision is galling because they helped build the new small school over the last three years, filling in the gaps for a principal who was new to the job - and who has decided to leave after this year. He didn't respond to requests for comment.
Jeff has told me so many goodies about the whole scene there. The role the UFT played through slimeball Distict Rep Charlie Turner and HS VP Leo Casey in their attempt to undermine Jeff is a classic story - I have the emails somewhere but I may do a video interview with Jeff to flesh out the whole story.

Philissa wrote:  but there's more to this story than it reveals
At Aspirations High School in East New York, many teachers did not have any formal observations from their principal, teachers said. None of the eight Aspirations teachers up for tenure this year received it; instead, their probationary periods were extended.
One of them, Samantha Love, said she had finished her third year at the transfer high school with increasing confidence in her abilities. Following the city’s new guidelines, she put together a portfolio that included detailed statistics about her students’ Regents exam passing rates; evidence that she had improved her instruction; and proof that she helped run the school, even earning thousands of dollars in grants to buy supplies and pay for a class trip to Washington, D.C.
But she learned that she did not receive tenure the same day she turned in the portfolio, before the school’s superintendent could have reviewed it. Jeff Kaufman, the teachers union chapter leader at Aspirations, said the extensions came as a surprise because the principal never told the teachers their tenure was in jeopardy.
Love and Kaufman say Aspirations teachers were told that they were not eligible for tenure because their school received an F on its most recent progress report — one of just nine high schools to do so.
In fact, the city does not have a policy of prohibiting tenure for teachers in F-rated schools, Mittenthal said.
Along with some of her colleagues, Love and other teachers at Aspirations are members of Educators 4 Excellence, the group of young teachers that advocates for tougher evaluations and changes to layoff rules. “I do believe we should be examining our personal effectiveness, and I don’t think [tenure] should just be a given,” she said. “But the way the process is being carried out is not an objective assessment.”
Duh, Samnatha! Not an objective assessment? Your group admits there are no value-added models that are fair but still advocates for using them. What about the unfair U-ratings given to so many people in just as an unfair manner? The leaders of E4E admits there might be unfair U-ratings but so what if some innocent people get chopped.

Come on Samantha, when do you stop showing your love of E4E, which has been caught with its pants down. Is it possible that even E4E's Ruben Brosbe, who blogs at Gotham, was either denied or extended tenure, as SBS is reporting -  Is Th-Th-Th-That All Ruben? Go tell E4E to issue a statement on where they stand on tenure denials. E4E has invited people to
Spend your summer break with E4E! We will be hosting events throughout July and August. Join us on Wednesday, July 13 for the first in a series of roundtable policy discussions on different issues.
  • What: Roundtable Discussion on Teacher and Principal Evaluations (Dinner will be provided)
  • Where: E4E's offices at 333 W. 39th Street, Suite 703
  • When: Wednesday, July 13 from 6:30 - 8:00pm
  • RSVP: Join us for the summer's first roundtable discussion!

 Hey, free food on E4E. All you have to do is sign the pledge in blood.

No wonder TFA wants go get their people out of the schools in two years before objective reality hits so they can go off spouting how much they know about fixing education. They become tenure bashers before having to go through the process themselves. I haven't talked to one teacher whether TFA or not who doesn't want tenure and the protections it offers them.

The bottom line is the principal who pushed E4E to his staff and recruited all these teachers lied to them about why he had to deny them tenure and screwed them in the end. I'll do another post on the Aspirations story after I speak to Jeff. Here are some more comments on the tenure situation:

Leonie Haimson:
Definitely the case that fewer teachers are getting tenure and many are being delayed with third years…Superintendents are often the ones deciding tenure (belying principal autonomy) and they have been told by Tweed only to allow a certain number in schools each year. Lots of good teachers are very disaffected and say they will go elsewhere -  they are sick of being abused by a system that does not accord them the respect they are due.
NYC Educator had some comments: Tenuous Tenure in NYC

Retired UFT Bronx District Rep Lynne Winderbaum said:
I have yet to see any sign that the Department of Education gives a darn if they retain teachers or not. They do not believe this is a skilled profession and, regardless of what they say, promote the sense that anyone can teach and teachers are totally replaceable. They are indifferent to the loss of talent be it veterans or idealistic new teachers. I swear they think they can maintain the same standard of instruction no matter how much they abuse and disrespect their teaching staff and how many leave.
They are wrong. But it no longer matters in this system.
Read Daily News article:

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2011/07/07/2011-07-07_new_york_city_awarding_less_tenure_to_young_teachers_in_public_school_systems_ed.html#ixzz1RSimwKk9


And Gotham piece:

Instead of giving or denying tenure, city is deferring decisions (click headline for original article)



AFTERBURN
Look for an upcoming post about a great venture from a new group of young teachers:
New Teacher Underground
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Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on right for news bits.