School's Out Forever (with pay for some teachers)

[thundley4]

It would seem like a pretty good gig: About 1,400 teachers in New York City are receiving full salaries and benefits even though they don't have permanent jobs. Two hundred and five of them have been without full-time work for three years. And they can continue receiving payments indefinitely even if they never secure new positions.

These educators are members of what is called the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), a program in which unionized teachers are placed when they don't have jobs. They end up there after being displaced by school closings, program cuts, or voluntary transfers. Technically, they work as classroom substitutes, but, when they don't have temporary assignments, they spend their days in school offices, cafeterias, and break rooms. And they are not required to seek full-time positions. "Teach one year, get [displaced], never apply for another job, but, as long as you work as a sub at full salary, you can get tenure at the end of that," says Tim Daly, president of The New Teacher Project (TNTP), a New York-based education advocacy organization that monitors the reserve closely. And some ATR teachers, it seems, are content to stay right where they are. "I'm happy now," one such teacher told TNTP researchers. "I don't have to prep, I don't have to grade tests, I don't have my own class. I don't really have to do anything."

Over the last three years, the city has shelled out almost $200 million to compensate ATR teachers. This school year alone, in the midst of a recession, TNTP has projected the reserve will cost about $75 million. "I could use those [millions] to spend on early childhood education or to fund retention strategies to get our greatest teachers to stay," an official at the city's Department of Education (DOE) says.

Perhaps worst of all, the ATR is part of what was supposed to be an effort to free New York from the stranglehold its powerful teachers' union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), had for decades on teacher hiring. The reserve was created in 2005, when the devastating flaws of the old hiring system--which privileged seniority and lifelong job security over teacher quality--were finally challenged. Reformers came up with a new system, one that compelled displaced teachers to compete for jobs, often against new, younger teachers. But the union, spurred by traditionalists sticking to a deeply rooted belief that teachers should be guaranteed jobs, pushed back. The final agreement extended old-style job assurances by guaranteeing that, even if teachers didn't have positions, they would always get paid.

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I doubt that a paltry $200M could have been spent any better than this.  

[JohnnyReb]

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I doubt that a paltry $200M could have been spent any better than this.  

Well, Obowma is working on it........another 100 days ought to do it.