Monday, July 11, 2011

As teachers are excessed, the bureaucracy continues to grow....


As news spreads of large numbers of teachers are being “excessed” throughout the system because of the budget cuts, DOE is still hiring new “teams” of “talent coaches” (under the titles of Senior Educational Research, Evaluation & Program Planning Specialist, Liii-Ea40),: each of whom  will coach school leaders (6-8 schools) on implementation of a pilot teacher evaluation and development system, under the supervisions of “lead talent coaches”.  Salaries will be $97,199 per year. 
Talent “coaches” will engage with “network-based Talent Managers” to “inform development of systems and tools to support teacher evaluation and development across a network of 20 schools.”
  • · DOE is also hiring  “lead talent coaches” (under the title  of Senior Educational Research, Evaluation & Program Planning Specialist, Liv-Ea40)  to “coach school leaders” and to “Facilitate principals’ communication with teachers regarding the pilot teacher evaluation and development model. This will include information on how to create materials, agendas, and talking points to help principals communicate with their teachers around expectations of teacher practice and student learning.”  Salaries at $106,201 per year.
  • They also are hiring “achievement coaches” (under the heading of Senior Network Team Achievement Manager - Instruction Specialist, Achievement Coach, Liv-Ea20) to be part of the Children First Network teams,  to help teachers “align their curriculum, assessment, and instruction to the Common Core” and to “serve as a change agent across his/her schools, providing support that integrates the DOE’s instructional initiatives around the Common Core and teacher effectiveness and guidance to school-based instructional teams while simultaneously establishing a standards-based culture of continuous growth in service of student achievement. Performs related work.”  Salary at $106,201 per year.
Some of these positions may be paid for through Race to the Top funds, but this will be temporary, and like the millions spent on new tests, the city taxpayer will be left holding the bag.  Meanwhile, DOE is creating whole new levels of bureaucracy, whose headcount will probably be hidden at the school level, to obscure the growing expense, as teachers continue bleed from the system and class sizes grow ever larger.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is no surprise. The Bloomberg administration aided by his friends in the media have gone all out to destroy the public school system and the teachers who work in it.Through excessive testing, charter school's taking needed space from public school buildings,continuous rise in class size and hiring and hiding enormous number of unnecessary administrative positions they have shown their constant disregard for the children and their parents in our city.

Anonymous said...

You are all silent. Why are you not protesting? Why are you not going to the press and making a stink?

Many HS, including the better ones, are so low on funds that kids will not me able to take anything outside of required classes. No 4th year of math and no 4th year of science. They will only get 1 year of language.

Check school budgets and see the damage. Say something. This is about your kids. Protect your kids.

Sean said...

but it's so in vogue to be a budget hawk

Anonymous said...

I have watched the decline of our school system in the last 10 years with sadness. Most parents I know are frustrated but feel powerless. They have pretty much accepted that nothing will change until this mayor is gone. By then the damage will be so far reaching it may never be completely reversed. My children's class sizes have gone up every year since they started and they are now probably at or close to max capacity. Our list of supplies to send in keeps growing and includes even the most basic necessities like soap, reams of paper and paper towels on top of all the regular school related supplies yet they have money for more bs consultants making 6 figures? We live in a "good district" and are feeling it so I can't imagine what it is like in the ones that are struggling more. Who can blame people for leaving the city, we will be doing the same next year so we don't have to deal with the horror show they have turned the HS application process into.

Chaz said...

Thanks for the heads up about the DOE adding more bureaucracy. I wrote a post showing that as they add headcount they drop a literacy program that received good reviews and student improvement.

Remember it is Tweed first and children last.

Anonymous said...

Why aren't these actions being appealed to the Commissioner of Education under Education Law §310?

If the Commissioner denies the appeal, then an Article 78 lawsuit under the Civil Practice Laws and Rules can be filed in Albany County.

Sari said...

1. That there is more bureaucracy is the least of the trouble.

Bloomberg hired a cadre of lawyers over the past decade. These lawyers are paid to concoct methods to impose daily psychological, mental and physical torture upon the teachers in every school in the DoE.

Each principal is supplied with both contact information for particular lawyers to whom they are assigned, and written material detailing how to practice outright sadism and terror upon the teachers in their school.

Over the years, more personnel were recruited, trained and assigned to refine the methods and materials of scrutiny, harassment, outright threat to the physical safety and ability to have shelter, food and medical care of all teachers, paraprofessionals, guidance counselors and other school workers.

Any literate person reading the new "career opportunities" posted on the DoE website can immediately spot the malevolence and openly declared rapidly escalating and horrifically sadistic threats to teachers.

The language and concepts are chillingly reminiscent of the restructuring of German society as Adolph Hitler rose to power way back during the last century.

2. Spending the rapidly decreasingly money any NYC public school parent manages to scrape together on the necessities legitimately and morally due to be provided by our taxes is prolonging the agony. Soap, books, toilet paper, etc. for our public schools are already paid for by all of us by our taxes.

The beginnings of solutions?

1. Strike - wildcat and/or citywide.

2. Install a padlock on every door of every "school" and board up every window so that business as usual is over.

3. Paralyze the city with tens of millions of children and adults in the roadways and blocking both private and public buildings.

4. Decertify the thieves and sadists who term themselves the United Federation of TEACHERS. Form an authentic union and participate vigorously with concern for every single member.

Impossible? No. Educate yourselves a bit about the actions of educators in Honduras and Mexico, for a start so that you understand that resistance, rebellion are more than possibilities for those with integrity, intelligence, social conscience and courage.

Sari