Now that Klein-Bloomberg have brought conditional cash transfers to NYC, Chancellor Michelle Rhee has set them up in D.C. Capital students will now be paid $100 monthly for good test scores and behavior. Money will be doled out to students who perform such amazing feats as showing up in class each day, arriving at school on time or sitting still during class. Hey; isn’t this what normal average students who supposed to do anyway? Will we soon pay students to each lunch, play in the school-yard, brush their teeth or practice personal hygiene?
Rhee defended the monetary give-away as merely giving inner city students the same equal opportunities as their suburban counterparts. “Kids in richer communities who achieve high grades are rewarded with cars, trips and money.” Gee; most families I have seen over the years just expect their children to attend school daily and perform well. Here in NYC the cash for grades programs have not exactly proved to be a rousing success. When our high school students were paid last year to take advanced placement exams , the failure rate actually increased.
Rhee will now attempt to emulate our failures in D.C.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
D.C. COMES CLOSER TO ENDING TENURE
As I have previously reported, D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee is aggressively moving to end tenure and bust the teachers’ union by awarding humongous salary increases and bonuses to employees willing to forego tenure. The August 14th Washington Post reports that the union is almost evenly split, with all the younger teachers enthusiastically embracing tenure’s demise, while the older teachers wish to retain job security. The younger teachers who want bonuses are even planning to picket the offices of the teachers’ union in an amazing march of the scabs, demanding right to work laws for educators. A thirty-four year veteran educator remarked, “Rhee wants to purge older teachers and that for instructors to sell out hard-won protections against arbitrary or unfair dismissal is unthinkable.”
Naïve youngsters are willing to sell their souls in pursuit of the almighty dollar. A second year novice said “she would have no problem with a system in which her pay and her job was tied to her students’ academic growth.” Another genius said, “I’m secure with my teaching practices and my pedagogy. I know that if the growth of my students was questioned, I feel I would have enough data and anecdotal data to back it up. Why is it that veterans are against rewarding teachers for improved test scores?” Even a thirteen year veteran said she agrees with Rhee’s objectives. “All of us know there needs to be a weeding out. She has the right idea to aggressively get new blood.” Yes, we just need a revolving door of warm bodies staffing our classrooms. The anti-unionists are often Teach for America missionaries who are brainwashed into believing that they will succeed where older teachers have failed. Even in college, education majors are often told that it is their destiny to save inner city school systems from collapse. (La Forza Del Destino.)
Older teachers have the option of opting out of tenure and taking bonuses designed to bring salaries up to $130,000, almost the highest in the nation. Under Rhee’s latest proposal, newcomers will automatically not have tenure; which does not seem to bother the new recruits. The rookies just want to take the money and run as many of them only see taking this job for a year or two. Other novices feel that if they are fired, so what. They can just find another job in another field. Rhee herself commented in June of 2007 that we should look at teaching as a field where people will only stay a few years before moving on. We should not view education as a life-long career.
The right to work educators are oblivious to the fact that the goings on in schools defy logic and common sense, with most administrators functioning as political hacks who care very little about real learning. These dedicated kids really believe that principals wear halos over their heads and take vows of chastity. They are merely the grunts for the chancellor’s hidden agenda of busting the union while ridding the system of higher paid educators.
.
Naïve youngsters are willing to sell their souls in pursuit of the almighty dollar. A second year novice said “she would have no problem with a system in which her pay and her job was tied to her students’ academic growth.” Another genius said, “I’m secure with my teaching practices and my pedagogy. I know that if the growth of my students was questioned, I feel I would have enough data and anecdotal data to back it up. Why is it that veterans are against rewarding teachers for improved test scores?” Even a thirteen year veteran said she agrees with Rhee’s objectives. “All of us know there needs to be a weeding out. She has the right idea to aggressively get new blood.” Yes, we just need a revolving door of warm bodies staffing our classrooms. The anti-unionists are often Teach for America missionaries who are brainwashed into believing that they will succeed where older teachers have failed. Even in college, education majors are often told that it is their destiny to save inner city school systems from collapse. (La Forza Del Destino.)
Older teachers have the option of opting out of tenure and taking bonuses designed to bring salaries up to $130,000, almost the highest in the nation. Under Rhee’s latest proposal, newcomers will automatically not have tenure; which does not seem to bother the new recruits. The rookies just want to take the money and run as many of them only see taking this job for a year or two. Other novices feel that if they are fired, so what. They can just find another job in another field. Rhee herself commented in June of 2007 that we should look at teaching as a field where people will only stay a few years before moving on. We should not view education as a life-long career.
The right to work educators are oblivious to the fact that the goings on in schools defy logic and common sense, with most administrators functioning as political hacks who care very little about real learning. These dedicated kids really believe that principals wear halos over their heads and take vows of chastity. They are merely the grunts for the chancellor’s hidden agenda of busting the union while ridding the system of higher paid educators.
.
Monday, August 4, 2008
SCABBING OUR SCHOOLS
The Washington Post Magazine, on Sunday, August, 3rd, ran a cover story, Outsourcing Our Schools, showing a glamorous photo of the smiling face of a Filipino teacher in Prince George’s County. The blurb accompanying the portrait read, “Desperate for qualified teachers, Prince George’s County has imported hundreds from the Philippines. It’s good for the country’s students, but what about the teachers’ own children,” What follows is a letter to the editor I sent to The Washington Post.
As a dedicated veteran teacher of forty years in the New York City school system I was very upset by the cover story of the August 3rd Washington Post Magazine glorifying modern day scabbing of the suburban schools. It's a sad commentary on our education system that we are outsourcing the education of our students to foreign workers willing to work for lower salaries than American teachers. The propaganda article glamorizes the hard work and dedication of non-citizen Filipinos who are dazzled by salaries that are high by labor standards in Manila. We are made to sympathize and empathize with the teacher whose smiling portrait graces the cover as she valiantly struggles to support a husband and three children back in the Philippines.
Why are not American teachers being employed in these schools systems? There are hundreds of thousands of hard-working, dedicated professionals across the country who would be able and willing to successfully teach in Prince George's County. If the pay and working conditions in the schools were improved, American college graduates would be lining up for these jobs. School systems need only employ qualified pro-teacher principals and administrators who are willing to help teachers deal with difficult students, rather than harass them, work against them and attempt to drive them out of the system before they gain tenure.
There are plenty of professional educators in this country who have families to support and who would make superb teachers. The goal of school systems should not involve importing cheap foreign labor into our classrooms in an effort to depress wages and bust unions.
The Post Magazine cover proudly proclaims, "It's good for the county's students." Who would you want in front of the classroom instilling knowledge and the values of citizenship to your children: a highly qualified American educator or a foreigner with little knowledge of our nation's deep heritage, culture, history and civic values. The history of the Philippines has unfortunately never been associated with the growth of democracy and civil liberties.
Postscript: I would like to note that NYC emulated this feat in the early 1990’s by bringing in cheap labor from Manila, as well as from Trinidad, Austria and Eastern Europe. UFT President Sandra Feldman boasted about helping these replacement workers find housing in NYC. I always wondered why she never questioned why the Board of Education could not raise salaries and improve working conditions, so as to attract educators from the metropolitan area. After all, in our better paying suburbs they have no need to import cheap labor from abroad. In her infinite wisdom our own leader was helping to scab our schools. However, the influx from abroad was a total failure as the novices were unable to control their classes and could not afford the high cost of living in NYC. (I always wondered if the Filipino contingent was nicknamed “the Manila folders.”)
As a dedicated veteran teacher of forty years in the New York City school system I was very upset by the cover story of the August 3rd Washington Post Magazine glorifying modern day scabbing of the suburban schools. It's a sad commentary on our education system that we are outsourcing the education of our students to foreign workers willing to work for lower salaries than American teachers. The propaganda article glamorizes the hard work and dedication of non-citizen Filipinos who are dazzled by salaries that are high by labor standards in Manila. We are made to sympathize and empathize with the teacher whose smiling portrait graces the cover as she valiantly struggles to support a husband and three children back in the Philippines.
Why are not American teachers being employed in these schools systems? There are hundreds of thousands of hard-working, dedicated professionals across the country who would be able and willing to successfully teach in Prince George's County. If the pay and working conditions in the schools were improved, American college graduates would be lining up for these jobs. School systems need only employ qualified pro-teacher principals and administrators who are willing to help teachers deal with difficult students, rather than harass them, work against them and attempt to drive them out of the system before they gain tenure.
There are plenty of professional educators in this country who have families to support and who would make superb teachers. The goal of school systems should not involve importing cheap foreign labor into our classrooms in an effort to depress wages and bust unions.
The Post Magazine cover proudly proclaims, "It's good for the county's students." Who would you want in front of the classroom instilling knowledge and the values of citizenship to your children: a highly qualified American educator or a foreigner with little knowledge of our nation's deep heritage, culture, history and civic values. The history of the Philippines has unfortunately never been associated with the growth of democracy and civil liberties.
Postscript: I would like to note that NYC emulated this feat in the early 1990’s by bringing in cheap labor from Manila, as well as from Trinidad, Austria and Eastern Europe. UFT President Sandra Feldman boasted about helping these replacement workers find housing in NYC. I always wondered why she never questioned why the Board of Education could not raise salaries and improve working conditions, so as to attract educators from the metropolitan area. After all, in our better paying suburbs they have no need to import cheap labor from abroad. In her infinite wisdom our own leader was helping to scab our schools. However, the influx from abroad was a total failure as the novices were unable to control their classes and could not afford the high cost of living in NYC. (I always wondered if the Filipino contingent was nicknamed “the Manila folders.”)
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)