Looks like I'm going to lose my bet that the teachers' contract would be announced right before Thanksgiving. Unless you let me count Thanksgiving, 2o10.
Mayor4Life Bloomberg launched an attack on the UFT today, asking for the moon and trying to run an end-around through the state legislature. He wants to tie test scores to tenure, have the right to fire ATRs and in the event of layoffs, to get rid of teachers based on test scores rather than seniority. (All of you who believe that good teachers with high salaries won't get laid off, raise your hands.)
Luckily, Michael Mulgrew and the Unity Crew wisely decided to tacitly support mayoral control and sit on the sidelines during the mayoral election. If they hadn't, the mayor might be calling for more serious concessions, such as water-boarding teachers based on test scores.
I'm sure the ed blogosphere will be buzzing with analysis of this latest assault on teachers, so I won't go too deeply into it here. But I did find an analogy by Bloomberg rather telling:
"...Mr. Bloomberg said that banning the use of student achievement in tenure decisions is “like saying to hospitals, ‘You can evaluate heart surgeons on any criteria you want — just not patient survival rates!’ ”
Any doctor will tell you that some of the best heart surgeons around have some of the worst survival rates because they take on patients in the most desperate situations. What teacher will want to take on the most challenging students, knowing that by doing so, they are risking their careers? Bloomberg, who knows as much about education as my dog (sorry, Spot) obviously can't see that.
