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When you look at the video, there’s a teacher (blond hair) speak about the seniority rule. I thought I recognized her. The teacher’s name is Jane. She’s also in a Michelle Rhee video at StudentsFirst.org upholding the importance of teachers doing more for the students. Jane and Ruben are popular with the ERN and the Rheeform movement. How can teachers say that it doesn’t matter the number of years in the system that the best teacher should be kept. Have they ever heard about corruption and croonyism and nepotism, and favoritism used by principals to keep certain teachers? Place them all in Iris Blige’s school and let them learn the hard way.

Here’s that video of Jane. See Jane talk. Go Jane Go away!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWpiq5IgRdE&feature=player_embedded

What if we started with the 2.5% of teachers who have U-ratings?  that is nearly 2000 teachers who could go first right?

Jane is probably the best teacher at our school.  She has had remarkable results with her students and has the highest AP passing rate for any school with our demographics in the city.  I would never want her to go away!  She shows that excellence is what matters not seniority.

Make no mistake: The city has enough money to keep ALL teachers on the job. The bottom line about all of this is power. Bloomie simply wants to break up NYC public sector unions and run everything on the cheap. He has pretty much declared financial war with cops, firefighters and teachers. (Attack on pensions and LIFO) I just don’t understand how he plans on attracting new civil service workers in the future when his idea of utopia is a complete disregard for decent working benefits.

LIFO is the only fair way to determine fiscally induced personnel reductions. Any attempt at laying off teachers in the ATR pool, or those who received a “U rating” would be a circumvention of due process rights afforded to tenured teachers. Those layoffs would most likely be challenged in court.

John G: I totally agree with you that there will probably be no layoffs. As I wrote above, the city has plenty of money to keep teachers on the job. However, Bloomie is still crying wolf to the public and to Albany about money so he can change LIFO forever. His plan is not to fire veteran teachers at this time. I think his plan is to simply destroy seniority so future teachers will all be TFA folk who stay on the job for 2 or 3 years and then leave. His grand plan is to have a revolving door of cheap teachers who will never stay long enough to even care about seniority. His goal is that there will never again be a pension “crisis” with NYC public employes. I am actually glad that he is going to financial war with the police and firefighters. The UFT now has some serious allies on it’s side for once.

Well they can distort and politicize all they want, it seems the folks who actually make the laws up in Albany are not buying. However, a very interesting few days as the unions appear to be willing to take it to mayor Mike. I guess his comments about Christmas bonus money versus teacher layoffs might have upset a few labor leaders. I hope they can organize a city wide rally against the failure of the mayor to negotiate many of the items he knows have been the subject of collective bargaining. He chooses to use his media outlets to drive home his agenda. My guess, many politcos and labor folks burning up the e mails, phones and text messages. The NY Times had most of the New York section devoted to labor and their strategy to counter the ad wars run by the mayor and his associates. It also seems the mayor made some anti-Irish comments last evening. I have a great group of lads and lassies to take on the Boston Bully. How about Cassidy,Lynch,Mulgrew and Quinn getting their Irish up and go a few rounds with the mayor.

Arthur Goldstein, chapter leader at Francis Lewis HS, wrote a great article about the merits of LIFO. You must read it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arthur-goldstein/the-merits-of-lifo_b_821181.html?ref=fb&src=sp

Seniority is a proxy for competence, yes. But that is not the main real it is used, and therefore shuld not be subject to the criticism that it is not a GREAT proxy for comptentence. 

The reason why seniority is used is that it is foolproof. Any fool can look a seniority list to figure out who should be laid off. There is no favoritism with seniority lists. There are no special favors. There is no retribution for personal slights. There is no payback. It is an objective standard.

Moreover, it is one that is easy to understand and easy to predict. Workers know when they are in danger, and when they are not. Thus, they can plan ahead with contingency efforts, if necessary.

What other system would you use? The popular answer among some is value added scores.

Value added scores? Aren’t they volitile? Aren’t they subject to massivise manipulation based on assigning disruptive students to a class? Aren’t they subject to error based on mistakes in the record keeping of what students are in which classes? Aren’t they limited to the test subjects, leaving a huge fraction of teachers without such scores? 

So, if not value-added, then what? Value added doesn’t work because not all teachers have valued added scores. You would need another measure or method.

So, stop whining about using seniority and come up with an alternative. Don’t say “Effectiveness” unless you define it and tell us how you implement the system. It is easy to take potshots at a fully detailed system. It is easy to say “no.” Actually come up with a real proposal, rather than a 1/10-baked idea. 

Tru Game,

That’s actually a legal problem, using attendance that kind of thing.

It could run afoul of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It could run afoul of the Family and Medical Leave Act. It could run afoul the New York Human Rights Law. It could run afoul of the Uniformed Service Members Employment and Reemployment Rights Act.

There are reasons why someone might be absent that are legally protected. There’s illness, disability, family illness, jury duty, military service and probably a few more minor things. 

So, I applaud your effort to come up with something. However, attendance would be incredibly difficult to use, and could even open problem with legal protected confidentiality of various issues. So, it is not foolproof, because following an attendance list would lead to a huge number of well-justified lawsuits.

Once you take out all those legally protected things, you — legally I mean — cannot fire people for taking vacation or sick days. That would invalidate their existence as vacation or sick days, so your BAFO layoff policy can’t take those days into account.

So, all you are legally left with is people who have fraudulently used sick days to work another job, show up late or other infractions. Do you really think that there are enough of those to enact such a policy? Once such a policy was enacted, would there still be enough? Wouldn’t you end up laying off the teaches who happened to get a flat tired on the way to work this year, or got stuck behind a train that had a medical emergency. Is that really what you want to fire teachers for?

This idea — Bad Attendance First Out — doesn’t work. Got another one?

While Akademos’s comment might be my favorite comment ever, I want to address Tru Game’s effort.

Tru Game came up with an idea. At least he proposed something, and gave some thought to whether it was workable. He engaged with my question and what I was saying, and responded directly with a possible idea. The fact that that particular idea doesn’t work does NOT mean that all other ideas wouldn’t work, either. 

So, I would like to hear more from Tru Game. I want to hear people propose ideas in ways that are responsive to the concerns of naysayers — and there are naysayers on every sides of these issues.

Good points, Norm. And obviously Bloomie and the Deformists are unconsolably perturbed because layoffs would take their most recent brainwashees out of the system. THIS is actually a good thing in general as protection against drastic reactionary improperly unfunded reforms. The deformists don’t understand the students, don’t understand the teaching profession, don’t understand human development or intelligence, and don’t understand the roles parents can and should play. They know business and data. Who doesn’t? Who can’t walk and chew gum? They really know nothing, but are taking advantage of a situation that could have been smoothly and properly improved. The time was ripe for it. They’ve screwed it up royally.

Near the end of my first year teaching, when I confided to much older experienced teacher concerns about my effectiveness, he said to me “Don’t worry kid, the first few years, you learn more than your students do.” Was he ever right! It generally takes more than a couple years to get teaching skills up to and / or past the good intentions. (that is if the young teacher doesn’t bail out first) Of course good, experienced, effective, dare I say older, teachers generally are higher paid. You can get a great bang for the buck letting them go and keeping inexperienced kids in front of the classroom…And so it goes…

What a phony front organization with the puppet chancellor appointed by an anti-union mayor. Oh my!