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Nota bene: according to the tenure rubrics, teachers will be judged by Regents scores and pass rates. This is good news for teachers because they correct their students’ Regents exams and set their own course pass rates. In this tempting set-up, ignored by SED, DOE, and UFT, how many probationers will commit career suicide via honest grading and how many principals will discontinue probationers who produce the desired results by any means necessary?

As everybody in the system knows, administrator and teacher tampering is already epidemic. It will now go apocalyptic.

1.1 million children and over 80 thousand staff are led by individuals with no integrity, namely Mayor Bloomberg and his chancellor, Joel Klein.

“We know that the most significant factor in a student’s performance is the quality of his or her teacher.”
- We don’t know this. In fact the most compelling evidence we have is that a child’s home life, where they spend the majority of their time, is the most significant factor in a student’s performance.

“From now on, only teachers who demonstrate significant professional skill and meaningful, positive impact on student learning will receive lifetime employment.”
- There is no such thing as “lifetime employment.” Being granted tenure means that you are entitled to due process and cannot be fired for arbitrary reasons, like reporting corruption or expressing an opinion that is different than that of your principal or Mayor. Tenured teachers can and have been fired by principals who aren’t too lazy to go through the necessary procedures.

These are two gross mischaracterizations that serve as evidence of the absence of integrity from Mayor Bloomberg, Joel Klein and those at Tweed. The real sad part is that their lack of integrity is being paralleled down to our children by adults who emulate their characterless brand of leadership .

No matter how much we protest. Despite objections from parents, teachers, students those in power are beant on destroying the most educated in society. Those in power want to stay in power by exploiting the ones that have no education including the kids. I have one reform strategy that has not been tried actually listening to the community. Listen to the community instead of pushing the to the side. Principals will be able to keep all the uncle toms under this new system. All the ones that are willing to stay quiet and let the illegal activities go by will be rewarded. Just like the private sector where fraud and all types of bad are ignored to save their jobs.

I am up for tenure this spring, and have only ever received satisfactory observations. Now do I have to worry about being denied tenure?

@EFM
I speak the truth. I don’t care if its ugly because its true. The “city” believes teachers are inept?? How do they feel about principals and assistant principals and fake coordinators? I guess they reward em like they rewarded the principal from Murry B with 25K to make school safety threatening comments over the PA system? I guess they reward em by allowing principals to change grades and inflate their schools grades. I hear what you’re saying though EFM, but seriously, my comments or others are nothing compared to what’s really happening in the schools. It is MAYHEM!

“THE CITY WILL TRANSFORM THE AWARDING OF TENURE GRANTED PRACTICALLY BE DEFAULT, TO AN HONOR BESTOWED UPON ON OUR OUTSTANDING TEACHERS”. This is such an insane sentence. It goes to show how out of touch the current DOE administration is. Tenure will now be an honor “bestowed upon” outstanding teachers? Tenure is a fundamental working condition for public school teachers in the majority of school districts across the country. The current tenure process, which has worked fine for the majority of teachers in America does not need tweaking. Tenure is not easy to get if and when teachers/administrators do their jobs correctly. Tenure is not something “bestowed upon” a teacher. Tenure is provided when a teacher proves over time that he or she is competent and and is deserving of due process. However, in The World of Tweed, teachers are little people who must be have common civil service protections “bestowed upon” them by the Almighty DOE.

41% of my students are truants, failing 4 or more classes due to lack of attendance. Ummmm and how is this my fault??

It is all teachers fault, we are the scapegoats do you know Hitler scapegoated teachers because they objected to his treatment of jews in the beginning of World War II. We were able to get Einstein and many educated people because of one persons ignorance. Bloomberg is just as ignorant and will do anything to stop the most educated from challenging his policies that harm kids. He can now claim success in handing down to his billionaires club continued economic dominance over the lower classes. Working class people are too overworked to fight and realize we are being bamboozled into giving away the guarantee of a free publc education for all no matter which politicians are in power. That is 6000 teachers a year for the next 3 years plus the throves of teachers retiring because they are being pushed out Bloomberg hates teachers for constantly challenging him . Tenure is meant to protect teachers from mean spirited managers such as blloomberg and his leadership academy principals.

Not that anyone cares, but I received my “tenure by estoppel.” Why? Because for the first three years I was on the job, I came in every day except when I needed sick time, I didn’t abuse my sick time, I got all of my paperwork done on time (which was a challenge in and of itself, considering that no one really implements the Paperwork Reduction Act), and I was effective with my students. But in my 5 years in the DOE, I was only observed 5 times, exactly once per year, 4 times by outside supervisors, and only once by an administrator in my building. All of my observations were “pop-ins,” but I always had a lesson planned, and because the nature of my job requires flexibility in planning, I sometimes had to abandon the actual lesson and work with whatever was going on in other classes. My supervisors noted that I was an effective teacher in their written observations, but I only received 3 out of the 5 – the other 2 were never written, even though supervisors and administrators are required to do so. My principal never, EVER set foot in my classroom and so had no idea what kind of teacher I was, except by the written reports he received from others.

At the beginning of my 4th year, I received my tenure by estoppel, but had to wait until the following June to get written confirmation, in the form of my ratings sheet. Even though I received my tenure in this way, it was by no means automatic. And it didn’t guarantee me a job for life. All it did was guarantee that I couldn’t be fired without a good reason.

When BloomKlein started making noise about how the tenure process shouldn’t be so easy, a lot of teachers up for tenure suffered because of it. I know someone personally who should have been granted tenure due to Jarema credit two years before, but when s/he applied for it, was told that the application would be denied. Why exactly was never really explained. The principal at the school did not like this person and basically told him/her that there were two choices: get a job in a different school and the principal would not oppose tenure, or stay in the school and be on probation for another year. Huh? How is that not an abuse of the process?
My license area does not participate in statewide testing, except that we work with individual students who have learning difficulties and help them to develop learning strategies, and, by extension, test-taking strategies. We hope that the strategies we teach them for multiple choice and essay questions will generalize into their studies, and eventually into the workplace and their lives at large. What would now be the basis for my tenure? Who evaluates the evaluators? The anti-tenure, anti-LIFO sentiments ripen the breeding ground for abuse of authority by the administrators and non-educator officials.

I have left the DOE. Apparently, just at the right time.

Chaning the paperwork that principals fill out is not reform. If they want to keep you they’ll give you tenure, if not, they won’t. Simple.

@Bronxteacher: what you say is so true of the tenure process. Your tenure was denied because your principal actively blocked it. But no one should even guess that it might have been for cause, because it’s not necessary for the principal to provide a reason for denial of tenure. So it can be a capricious decision based on his or her likes and dislikes, or worse, on the likes and dislikes of a subordinate administrator with whom you do not get along. Who knows who has the principal’s ear? I received S ratings all 5 years that I was with the DOE. However, it is permissible for principals and supervisors to grade every one of your observations with an S and still give you a U rating at the end of the year. And these ratings are difficult to appeal. If you appeal on a technicality, such as, “I never received pre-observation notice, nor did I have an opportunity to have a pre-observation conference, and the principal simply popped in,” you’ll win the appeal. However, the next time the principal observes you, he or she will make damn sure they follow every technicality and then give some subjective reason they didn’t like your lesson. You’re right, of course, Bronx Teacher, that these ratings only partially reflect the teacher and his or her ability – they also reflect the biases of the observer. Good luck to you.