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.

How Bloomberg, and the NY Times fail to listen to parents

The NY Times has an editorial on what they hope and expect from Bloomberg’s third term, which begins today. The section on education reveals how little the editors really understand about what has happened in the last eight years in our schools:

”After the State Legislature finally scrapped the board and gave the mayor control of the schools, he brought much-needed stability.”

Actually, there has been continual confusion and chaos under this administration, with repeated re-organizations, school closings, worsening overcrowding, Kindergarten students placed on wait-lists, changes in management structure, delayed and error-prone admissions processes, mid-year funding cuts, and all the rest.

"He has also swept away the bureaucratic underbrush..."

Here, the Times' credulousness comes into relief. This is one of the administration's most repeated claims, without any evidence to support it. Instead, new levels of bureaucracy have proliferated, with the establishment of the School Support Organizations, Senior Achievement Facilitators, Portfolio officers, Integrated Service Centers, Network leaders, data coaches, and a huge growth in the press office and accountability division at Tweed, not to mention all the other corporate-type positions that are continually created, even as schools are forced to make huge budget cuts to the classroom and the teaching force shrinks. Not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent annually on consultants and no-bid contracts.

“He also wants bad teachers out of the classroom and off the payroll.”

Of course, everyone wants bad teachers out of the classroom -- parents most of all. Yet by making principals pay for the salaries of their staff out of their own budgets, what the administration really appears intent on doing is getting experienced teachers out of the classroom, no matter what their quality. Why? Perhaps because they are paid more and because they tend to remember the way things used to be before Bloomberg and Klein, which causes them to resist the manipulation of test scores, the granting of credit recovery, and the myriad other ways in which pressure has been exerted on educators to lower standards -- all in the supposed name of improving results.

“In all, the mayor’s education policies have been a good thing for students...."

To the contrary, Bloomberg's top-down policies have not been helpful to students, with
class sizes rising, discharge numbers rising, test prep taking over our schools, art, music and science devalued and diminished, and parental involvement suppressed and repudiated at every turn.

“…but he and his school officials still have to spend more time listening to concerned parents.”

At least this one statement is correct, even as it understates the contempt that Bloomberg and Klein have shown for our views.

Yet if this editorial reveals anything, it is the need for the editors of the Times to spend more time listening to public school parents. It’s not clear from the above remarks that they have any idea of what we've been saying for the last eight years, or how the mayor’s priorities conflict with our desire for our children to attend safe, uncrowded schools with small classes, experienced teachers, along with art, physical education and all the other activities necessary for a well-rounded education. Or perhaps, they simply refuse to take our views seriously.

Let’s hope in 2010, they as well as Bloomberg begin to pay attention. It would be long overdue.

Growing the bureaucracy: but guess which office at Tweed has actually shrunk?

The Daily News carried an article this morning, showing that despite the budget cuts, and the increasing class sizes in our schools, and the fact that there is supposed to be a “hiring freeze” at Central, Tweed continues to hire more educrats – with nearly a hundred new ones since last February: Bureaucrats and class sizes are up sharply

Here is where you can see the headcount as of November 2008 (the latest available data)-with Central at 2422 full time employees; as of February 2008, there were only 2342. In October 2004, the earliest data I could find, there were only 1984 – which means the bureaucracy has increased by 22% since then.

In October 2004, the Department of Assessment and Accountability had 19 employees. As of Nov. 2008, this number has grown to 89 – an increase of 421%. Enough to create more useless and misleading test score data.

The Chancellor’s office had seven positions, while now he has16 underlings, a growth of 129%. Enough to help him run around the country and brag about his non-achievements here in NYC.

Office of School Enrollment Planning and Operations (OSEPO) had 19 employees, and now has 35 – an increase of 84% --enough to screw up preK admissions royally!

The Office of Public Affairs had 13 employees as of 2004; now Communications, Communications, Media Relations & Community Affairs is up to 23 – an increase of 77% -- enough to spread disinformation far and wide.

But not all offices of Tweed have grown.

For example, the Office of the Deputy Chancellor for Teaching & Learning had 133 positions in October 2004. Now it is down pitifully to 23 – a reduction of 83%. This is symbolic of the actual interest in teaching and learning at DOE.

The teaching staff has also shrunk since last year. According to a DOE spokesperson, there are “440 fewer teachers working directly with students than … the year before.”