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Comptroller John Liu rejected a $20 million contract for teacher recruitment today, calling the proposal wasteful given the city’s current fiscal climate. Yet the main reason for the comptroller’s refusal came down to paperwork.

A spokesman for the comptroller’s office said that the five-year contract with The New Teacher Project was rejected this morning because of problems with the DOE’s submission. In reviewing the contract, officials in the comptroller’s office said that the DOE did not include information on conflicts of interest or what the dates of service would be. The department can choose to resubmit the contract.

The New Teacher Project, or TNTP, is a non-profit that handles the recruitment and training of New York City’s Teaching Fellows. It also studies teacher job markets around the country.

In a statement sent to reporters, Liu — a possible candidate in the next mayoral election — said he objected to the contract’s premise. The city does not need to spend money recruiting new teachers, he said.

“Twenty million dollars to recruit teachers as the DOE insists on laying off thousands of teachers seems curious at best,” Liu said. (more…)

With the economy in the shape it is, some people are considering pursuing teaching as a “fallback career.” But the reality is that the very same economy means that there are relatively few jobs for teachers this year. Looking at budget cuts and expecting fewer people to leave, many districts, including New York City, are cutting down on hiring.

The city’s Teaching Fellows program, the most prominent route into the classroom for career changers, is planning to accept significantly fewer applicants. I heard from one friend who got an acceptance last week, but far fewer applicants are being accepted than in past years. Two GothamSchools readers reported in the comments section of a post from January that their Teaching Fellows application statuses were finally updated last week: One was rejected, and the other was deferred even longer, until the city’s budget situation becomes clearer.

Still, the Department of Education has extended employment offers to some applicants it considers likely to be particularly successful in shortage areas such as math and English, through a new initiative called TRQ Select. (TRQ is the acronym for the Office of Teacher Recruitment and Quality.) This week, the DOE’s hiring office is using its Twitter feed to profile some of those new teachers in under 140 characters. Here’s an example: “Pia, ESL Teacher- Fordham grad, taught English in Haiti and Panama, served in Peace Corps in Morocco.”

Teach For America, the program that places recent college graduates in high-need schools, has long drawn criticism for recruiting people who leave the classroom after only a few years. Critics say this perpetuates a cycle where poor students get inexperienced teachers.

But in reality, programs such as Teach for America and the city’s Teaching Fellows program have made the distribution of high-achieving teachers more equitable across New York City and might have helped narrow the gap in students’ test scores, a recent study concludes.

Between 2000 and 2005, these programs drove an improvement in the academic qualifications — SAT scores, college selectivity, and other measures — of teachers at schools with lots of poor students. At the same time, the test scores in those schools rose. The researchers’ analysis suggested that the increase in qualifications contributed to the higher scores. (more…)