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A Philadelphia principal wondered what the point was in Salon.com publishing “Confessions of a Bad Teacher”. As someone who agonizes on a daily basis with the (I’m sorry to say) rotten-to-the-core system we have in NYC, there are many important reasons for publishing “Confessions.” If you missed ”Confessions” earlier this week, please run (do not walk!) to: http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/08/29/confessions_of_a_bad_teacher/My spouse has been subjected to the “Ms. P” treatment for the past couple of years, after eight prior years of shining work as a teacher despite the more normal DOE chaos. My spouse knows, through the teachers’ grapevine, that there are many other teachers experiencing this kind of abuse in the NYC DOE system. Yet, reading the detailed, nearly complete picture “Confessions” describes — which has taken so many proven excellent teachers and flushed them down the DOE toilet — was an extremely validating experience for my beleaguered spouse.Furthermore, I have never read an article which captures the constellation of adversity factors, as clearly and vividly as does “Confessions”. It should be required reading for every mayor, schools chancellor, teacher, “school leader,” and school administrator in the U.S., in my humble opinion.I apologize for such negativity in my descriptions of the system. But, even more, I am horrified for the students, who must somehow try to figure out how to grow up to be good and educated people amidst such waste, incompetence, and corruption as they witness firsthand in their public schools.The only area in which I take issue with the author of “Confessions” is his minimizing of the effects of a “U” on a tenured teacher. If only the effect was merely to lose a raise in pay! My spouse has become the school administration’s resident punching bag. My spouse cannot transfer because of the “U”. In desperation, my spouse has even requested  being “voluntary excessed” (volunteering to become an ATR!) and the principal ignored the letter. It is only a matter of time before my spouse will likely be brought up on “she said, she said” 3020a charges of “incompetance,” even though the “crimes” consist of nothing objectively prove-able at all. Nevermind that nobody rates the raters. Apparently, this matters not! At best, my spouse will be required to pay a hefty fine to the DOE and join the ATR pool then. At worst, my spouse will never be able to teach anywhere, ever again. (It’s not like when you work in private industry and the boss doesn’t like you; then, you can go across town and work at another corporation. Not so with the DOE, where your name becomes mud in all five boroughs and beyond, even if all of your students do well on the Regents! If the principal and cronies decide you are the one they’ll be bullying from now on, Lord help you!)If you ask me, I think my spouse’s biggest “crime” as a teacher is having “master’s plus 30 credits” status on the pay scale, tenure, and more than ten years of service. The school’s administration gets nice bonuses for cutting their costs by driving a teacher like this to quit or be fired. (This is called “constructive dismissal” — much like the landlord getting rid of a tenant by sabotaging the tenant’s apartment: constructive eviction.)So there’s plenty of reason that a readership as sophisticated as that of Salon.com should know the truth about the NYC DOE. I, for one, am thankful “Confessions” was published, and I hope it goes viral on the internet!

Charles M. Blow, Thank You!
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/03/opinion/blow-an-ode-to-teachers.html?_

Moving piece by Blow.

Fire everyone over 30 and rotate college students and military personnel through the system, dumb down the curriculum until it appears the achievement gap has closed when in fact it is the system that will be broken down to nothing more than training grounds for factory and infrastructure work.