Is he telling us that teachers have an achievement gap, that some teachers lag behind others? Well then, he's been on the job a year. How has Walcott improved performance among the bottom half of all teachers in his system? Quantitave and qualitative answers please.
He hasn't? Those teachers haven't improved standardized test scores any more than they did last year?
Okay then, fire Walcott. If the next chancellor fails, fire the mayor. If the next mayor fails, fire mayoral control.

The "buy-out" proposal has been in the contract for years and the city has shown no interest ... more PR than reality ... simply return all teachers in the ATR pool to full time assignments and monitor their performance and rate them accordingly

I like the idea of a buyout, but not if it is forced.

I resent that we, the "ATR's" are being labelled as underperforming teachers. I am sure there are a few who do not pull their weight, but that is certainly not the case with the majority of teachers that I have come across.

As reported in the NYT story, if the average salary of the teachers in the ATR pool is $84,000, then the majority of these 830 teachers have been in the system for at least 10 if not 15 years or more. In a system with at least 75,000 teachers, why are 830 being scapegoated in this way? How much is it really bringing the system down to continue to pay less than 2% of it's workforce until retirement?

Being an ATR is not an easy job. Since September, I have been assigned to 30 different schools. Every Thursday at 2:00 PM I get an email telling me which school I will be subbing in the next week and the school gets an email letting them know someone will be coming. Some schools have given me a very full schedule, other schools, less so. I rarely know from one day to the next what classes I will be teaching and my schedule is often changed during the course of the day. Rarely do I get a key to the bathroom or a place to leave my coat. I have had to be enormously flexible and ready to adapt to a new school culture, new age group, new subject matter in the blink of an eye. I have become an excellent classroom manager.

The majority of us ATR's have not found placements because of the budgeting changes of the past several years which gives schools a disincentive to hire a teacher with any significant experience. In addition, as people in our 40's, 50's and 60's, we understand the value of the Union in securing our jobs and benefits in ways that childless recent graduates in their 20's do not. This makes us more willing to speak out against injustices and less able to be pushed around by administrators who are in line with the new "business model" of education.

Its necessary to invest above all teachers, they are the most mportant profesion of the world...

The question above makes two presumptions, neither of which may be correct--not certain the point of the buyout is to increase the numbers of "good" teachers as much as it is to reduce costs and potential litigation; and the second, and much greater, presumption is that the teachers in question are truly "unsatisfactory." The measures that the department uses to determine quality are themselves highly questionable.

In principle, I have no problem with buying employees out, whether through a cash severance deal or through an early retirement incentive. If the goal is headcount reduction, it's one way to get there, and is less stressful for all concerned than a lay-off.

But if the goal is to improve the quality of the workforce by buying out bad workers, I just don't see how it's going to have that effect. The ATR is small. Even if 100% of the teachers there were bad (which is far from the case), and 100% are regularly given long assignments (also far from the case), they represent such a small percentage of the workforce (less than 1%) that getting rid of them would have an immeasurably small impact on the overall quality of instruction.

In addition, even if you accept the premise that ATR=Bad teacher as of today, that is clearly going to change in the not too distant future as test scores start to dominate teacher evaluations. Testing comes with many incentives to teach badly, and it establishes a road map for bad teachers to keep their jobs. You might be the most anti-kid, nasty and indolent waste of space imaginable, but you'll keep your job forever if you can test-prep your way into middling-or-better scores.

I don't see how one can avoid the conclusion that Walcott is doing this as a smoke screen, and I'm disappointed to see the Schoolbook question phrased this way.

The way schools are now, a teacher coming into a school must be 100% flexible in all areas and very competent in all areas, do not complain, and do not make too many requests for supplies, then that teacher can make it the next year. Years of experience does not matter much because it is more important to adapt to a school, and they are so differently run. At the heart of school reform is what teachers are giving to the students. An integral ingredient to this is teacher training and support in an environment that will allow for struggle. This is where administration comes in. There are not enough supportive administrators that care more about their teachers rather than their "bottom line." Ironically, the bottom line is educating the teachers that educate the children. A school that has a revolving door of teachers will not have a positive school culture nor have impactful instruction for life-long learning. I was at a school for 8 years when I started and I was given every opportunity available at the school to observe and meet with other teachers for the time of the first math AP and principal that I saw. I made mistakes, met with my AP, worked through them with him, watched his class as he modeled what he felt was good instruction, increased my knowledge in pedagogy, chatted with and had intervisitation with other teachers on a regular basis and was always given opportunities to earn extra money for PD or per session when funding was available. My efforts were recognized in department meetings on a regular basis and I was never given a disciplinary letter, but talked to on the one or two occasions I had an issue with lateness. I learned immensely at that school, looked forward to coming to work daily, got along with all teachers from every department, and could see myself spending 20 plus years there, as several of my colleagues did, with whom I am grateful to have collaborated with. Then a teaching fellow with less years teaching than myself became the head of the department upon the retiring of my treasured mentor. The principal also changed earlier. After a year of bouncing between four schools and interviewing to get a position, I landed at a school that gave me a first ever unsatisfactory. That nightmare is repeating this year at a similar school. Since being excessed I have begun a program to improve my instruction but it seems that I will have a time finding where I can practice what I am learning.

Wrong question. The proposed buyout would be for teachers who have been excessed from their schools because of budget cuts or school phaseouts or closures. These teachers tend to be more experienced and get a higher salaries. Because of this, the DOE can't place many of the teachers in schools, because their salaries come out of the school budgets. To get a buyout, the teachers have to have been excessed for at least a year, according to the UFT contract.

So the proposed buyouts are for highly paid and experienced teachers whom principals can't afford even though the DOE is still paying them.