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Personally, I’m shocked and stunned. Who’d have thunk, with schools paying teacher salaries out of their own budgets, that principals would show a preference for lower-paid teachers? Who could’ve predicted such a thing?

This is silly. First of all, there are presumably almost no teachers in the ATR pool with 1-3 years of experience at this point because they’re untenured and they didn’t have guaranteed job protection. By contrast, a significant chunk of the teachers that fall into the 1-4 year “chunk” in the overall teaching pool have between 1-3 years of experience. That skews the data comparison, and I imagine it does so in a not insignificant way.

Second, teachers in the ATR pool have licenses. Some may have licenses in areas that aren’t widely sought by schools that are hiring. So you’d want to look at the licenses held by the remaining teachers in the ATR pool and see if they’re representative of the licenses in the teaching pool generally, or representative of what positions schools are hiring in today. Based on pure intuition, I’d guess that there are quite a few ATRs who have less-desirable licenses and that those folks are more likely to be long-standing teachers who entered the profession at a time when their credentials were more desirable.

Whatever happened to home economics, for example? You can make a case that more schools should offer such a program, but that doesn’t mean that a teacher licensed to teach that subject can expect an easy time finding a job in a market where few schools take you up on that argument. That teacher cannot teach chemistry or English. As a result, he or she is pretty much guaranteed to sit in the ATR pool, regardless of experience or teaching talent within the subject area in question.

The converse also plays a role. Teachers in shortage areas are disproportionately more junior teachers because so many have been brought in through alternative certification programs in the past few years. And I bet that relatively junior teachers are more widely represented in other license areas that aren’t technically shortage areas (for the hiring freeze) but are still relatively high-demand and more prone to turnover–like living environment, for example. I can’t tell you how many living environment teachers I’ve had who’ve taught for a few years, then left to go to medical school. I had virtually no staff turnover last year, except for science teachers. While they weren’t technically shortage positions, it sure felt like they were because I could not find ATR teachers willing to return my phone calls, let alone come out for an interview.

Finally, the DOE subsidized the costs of hiring longer-serving/more expensive ATRs on school budgets this year. I didn’t even think about costs as a factor when I was trying to fill vacancies that I desperately needed to fill. From a school budget standpoint, those teachers’ salaries were discounted to the point that they were less expensive (guaranteed for eight years) than more junior peers. In fact, assuming that experience is genearally a net plus, there was a significant financial incentive in place to hire those teachers at a “bargain” to my budget.

But at the end of the day, a talented, experienced teacher is PRICELESS. I’d gladly hire those teachers out of the ATR pool at full salary. My problem was getting the ATRs in appropriate license areas to apply for posted vacancies at my school, to return calls, and to be serious when interviewing. Last year, literally nobody from the pool applied to posted vacancies in my school. I started calling people from the list of ATR teachers who had the appropriate licenses, and almost nobody called me back. A few candidates gave me a courtesy call saying they weren’t interested in applying because of the school’s location. I met with one candidate who was either the worst teacher (by far) that I’ve ever encountered or who was quite deliberately blowing the interview and demo lesson. I’m about 90 percent sure it was the latter, but either way, she should not be in the classroom. Meanwhile, I had teaching fellows begging for interviews and I couldn’t consider them.

And while I know I’ll be attacked for saying this, in my experience, for reasons that make perfect common sense, longer-serving teachers are more likely to be burnt-out and cynical and counting the days till retirement than their younger peers. I know there are real reasons teachers get to that point. But given that I had a very hard time getting ATR teachers to apply for vacancies in my school, and that this experience was shared by virtually every colleague I talked to about the matter last summer, maybe the reason there are more veterans remaining in the pool at this point is that they were more likely to be those individuals who didn’t really try to get jobs when they were available. This year, it was particularly easy for teachers who wanted to get off an ATR roster to do so. This year, schools could hire experienced teachers at a discount, making the salary argument pretty much moot. Many teachers were quickly hired. Some ATR teachers didn’t apply for jobs or even return calls. Maybe, salaries and discrimination are not the reasons that a disproportionate number of teachers remaining in the ATR pool at this point are longer-serving teachers.

There are many factors in this. Many of the new Principals lack the proper supervisory experience to understand subject areas different than the ones they might have had (I say might because we know that many of the graduated of the Leadership Academy simply have not had the proper experience because in the world of the arrogant incompetent lawyer masquerading as an educator running the schools, a Principal is not a Principal Te;acher but a CEO). I know a very good math teacher who was excessed because his school was closed who taught math in an excellent way in a traditional manner. He went on several interviews with Principals who told him they weren’t interested in math being taught in a traditional manner but only in the discredited mickey mouse math programs that have been adopted by many schools (and have been destroying math education throughout the country for years)…in other cases he was told he would be teaching 4th grade arithmetic. Now, and I know people don’t want to hear this, but there is a big difference between teaching secondary mathematics for which this person was trained and teaching arithmetic on a 4th grade level. I know many secondary teachers who simply would not have the patience or even the knowledge of methodology to teach 4th grade arithmetic. Also in many cases, they simply could not work for a Principal who knew far less about secondary pedagogy than they did.

This is all a product of the idiotic decisions to close the large high schools; something which the lawyer masquerading as an educator just doesn’t get as his education experience is z big fat zero. In the end, it is a deep loss for the system that these people are unable to find jobs in doing what they do best namely teaching secondary school mathematics in a traditional manner. Sorry if that upsets people but that’s what Klein has done to the system.

J, you wrote:
“First of all, there are presumably almost no teachers in the ATR pool with 1-3 years of experience at this point because they’re untenured and they didn’t have guaranteed job protection.”

This is not correct. Any teacher, tenured or probationer, who is in excess, becomes an ATR.

You’ve conflated arbitrary dismissal with layoff.

“Based on pure intuition, I’d guess that there are quite a few ATRs who have less-desirable licenses and that those folks are more likely to be long-standing teachers who entered the profession at a time when their credentials were more desirable. Whatever happened to home economics, for example?”

Are you saying you believe many ATRs are teachers with Home Ec licenses? (I do not know if such a license exists). This does not appear to be a credible guess. Any #s?

Jeff S–I agree with your point. there’s a similar situation when people hire a college person thinking they’ll be great but they’re not ready to teach on the HS level. but I think you missed my point–most kids at non-screened HSs are coming in on less than a HS level. so if I can’t teach fractions/decimals/percentages (a common problem w/9th graders, despite the fact that it’s 4th grade material) then why would a hs principal hire me? it’s no one’s fault, per se–it’s just the reality. if all you can do is teach the honors kids, that’s not particularly helpful.

but to jonathan’s point, I don’t know if that’s the problem with most ATRs, and I certainly don’t think licensing is the problem for most ATRs (though sure, for a few). I really think–and I just have anecdotal evidence–that the commute/parking thing is huge. and that, I think, is ridiculous.

I really think that ATRs should be required to take an opening that’s offered to them. why should I have to pay them out of my tax dollars b/c they refuse to take a position?

J, I’m surprised by your experience. Most of the ATR’s I’ve known absolutely dreaded the prospect of having to work as day-to-day subs and those who found themselves stuck in that role were miserable. Do you run a middle school? I’ve known a few high school teachers who pretty much drew the line at middle school, even though they were desperate for work. I’ve also known plenty of ATR’s who had full or partial programs and some didn’t want to leave their school and were even asked by their principals not to look for work.