OK: Let’s say your school is a Transfer School, in which the students have multiple issues – gaps due to interruptions in their prior education, personal issues that affect attendance and readiness to learn, etc.
You have a teacher of the hardest subject taught at your school.  And this teacher is the “weak link” in your school’s test scores, because in that subject, fewer students are passing the Regents.
BUT, that teacher’s Regents results are better than in any comparable student body to yours — that is, the teacher’s Regents results, while low, are higher than in any other transfer school in the borough, in this subject. This means that this supposed “weak link” teacher is actually the most successful teacher of that subject in all of  the Transfer Schools of that borough.  And that teacher’s scores are improving, but very slowly, only a little, year to year.
You want that $35,000. bonus.  What do you do?
In the DOE, you decide to stop offering that subject in your school!
But the problem is, what do you do with that teacher?  You don’t need any other teachers in that subject area, and anyway, you can save a lot of money by getting rid of this teacher and not replacing them at all.
The only way to get rid of them is to make them out to be a bad teacher.  So you start doing lots more observations, and suddenly they turn out to be “U” ratings.  And you start becoming oh-so-strict with all kinds of DOE regs that you don’t even enforce with the other teachers. That gives you a reason to put all kinds of letters in the teacher’s file.  And you start interviewing the students, looking for the malcontents who will come up with supposed “dirt” on the teacher.  And you find any ruse you can to charge that teacher with anything you can make up, even if it’s unsubstantiated, because remember, the burden of proof goes on the teacher at the DOE, not on the principal.
If the teacher endures this process long enough, they get a couple of “u” ratings for the year, and boom: 3020a charges!  Then, that teacher is removed from your school, and you get your $35,000 bonus!!!

MEANWHILE, even if the teacher survives the 3020a process, at best they become an ATR with “U” ratings, and too high on the pay scale for anyone to hire at another school.  YOU, dear principal, have ruined a perfectly good — even excellent — teacher’s career, and deprived your students from the chance to reach for the stars (by taking this difficult subject that you dropped because only a few of your students were Regents material in this subject).  ALL FOR $35,000.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I know of this exact situation!!!!!

Based on your comments I can tell you are young and inexperienced.  Your comments do not describe reality in most schools.  Please, do not take my post as an insult.

The difference between those invited back and those not invited back seems to have been willingness to work ten hours each day on student work and committees. Teaching results seemed to count for very little, if anything, in hiring decisions.

I personally have little respect for any of the so called Principals who did not fight for their schools, staffs and students and who continue to pull this garbage such as using the new idiotic names for their schools to try to further this nonsense that these schools are being closed.

Further do you actually believe the chief problem with any of these schools is the teachers?  If you have the same students, you’re going to get the same results unless you are in on the credit recovery or grade changing games played by so many of your colleagues.

Now they won the arbitration.  It is not clear their hearts were ever in it.  I didn’t hear a peep from the union when thousands of teachers for no reason were illegally, as the arbitrator has found, were let go.  Now Mulgrew wants to meet with these people to set up a way to make sure the schools are up and running in September.  That’s not his responsibility.  He won, now all teachers illegally “excessed” get their jobs back but we’ll see after the city’s appeal is thrown out just how many of these illegally excessed teachers are thrown under the bus and what he does in September when they all suddenly get U rated lessons just like the union did little when statistically it can be seen that the number of U rated lessons and teachers has risen dramtically and the union hasn’t said a word.  To think for one second this union is first and foremost interested in protecting its members from the slime running the DOE is hard to accept.

In the subject taught by this teacher, this teacher had the best outcomes (Regents scores) of the entire Transfer High Schools program in their borough — maybe even in all five boroughs. Mind you, it was still a pretty low Regents passing rate, but it was the best any teacher had managed to produce. 

Talk about blaming the teacher unfairly!  Perhaps the Transfer Schools were being unrealistic in offering this subject at all.  This teacher was such a good influence on the kids, who truly looked up to this individual, and they were learning — even the ones who were not “Regents scholars” still would come back to visit and some even reported going on to take more of this subject in CUNY and the Community Colleges, and they thanked this teacher for getting them started in learning this subject.

This teacher survived the 3020a  process, thank God, but will nevertheless probably end up in the ATR pool, at best. But with 2 “U” ratings and more than 10 years’ service, who’s going to offer this teacher a job?  If it’s not the “U” ratings, it’ll be that this teacher makes too much money for a principal to want to hire them. 

How did it come to pass that excessed (aka “ATRs”) don’t still get preference and first option when an opening occurs?  How did the DOE become a system that cant even assign a teacher to a school?????

It’s criminal!  This all could have been avoided if the DOE was set up to simply reassign this teacher to a school that wanted to still offer that subject.  This is a successful, excellent teacher with valuable experience in an especially challenging student population, who was merely put through the mill on trumped-up charges that the 3020a process vindicated!

But this teacher’s career is still likely ruined.  And, more important than that, yet another excellent teacher will be withheld from the students who need as many good teachers as they can get.

This country’s public education system is down the tubes, and I don’t understand why the public is not more aware of this scandal, which is eating up more tax dollars than ever!!!!

I could go on and on even more….

education system

instead of supporting it.