P.E.P. November 17, 2008 Teacher Advocacy Group NYC
Mr. Michael Best, Counsel for DOE, acting for Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein: I have here the last word on my Freedom of Information request- seemingly. You and your legal department have not complied with the law-if law implies truth and justice. Your legalese explanation as to WHY you can not respond to my request for information - well, I expected no less from a Department of Education that treats law, standards of ethics, and the truth with contempt.
We try to understand WHY: What end is deserving of the destruction of competent teachers’ careers, OR the teaching of our students to lie giving them credit for courses they did not take or complete, OR setting up authorized cheat sessions wherein students are given completed science labs to copy, OR humiliating teachers and sapping the initiative of good students by implementing the credit recovery abomination?
Teachers are turned into ATRs so that their positions can be taken over by novices who leave after one or two years or who stay on to ‘teach to the test’. Why not just hire high school graduates?
Teachers are sent to Reassignment Centers on ridiculous charges. Check the number of music, art, Special Ed teachers and whistle blowers in these Centers. Competent they certainly are- but they suffer, not their unethical principals.
Let me read a bit of an email I got from a teacher I worked with and who left after two years – a certified and very talented teacher. She now works in another state.
“Can you believe that the principals at the schools I work with are not trying to drive teachers out? They actually have a rapport with them....It's really strange to me. I told one of them that I am kind
of fearful of administrators after working in NYC and watching how they haress the teachers. One told me that she had heard the horror stories.”
Why?
Put back into the classroom: Respect, Authority, and the EXPERIENCED, COMPETENT TEACHER.
