July 24, 2007

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Open Market Transfers and Staff Stability: Does the Left Hand Know What the Right Hand Is Doing?

Filed under: Education NYC DOE by Peter Goodman @ 2:48 am

Quietly, without fanfare a few thousand teachers are skipping from school to school under the Open Market Transfer System. The previous Seniority Transfer Plan limited transfers to 5% of any school, three consecutive S ratings and restricted “shortage area” transfers. Open Market: anyone can transfer anywhere. No 5% rule, no rating limitation, no senior needed, you just apply.

As teachers decide to cut their travel time, or flee from a particular principal, or for whatever reason; principals are actively recruiting. Open Market does not require any notice to the home school, you just apply, and if the new the school employs you the system eventually informs the original school.

Last year the Department reported that “more than 3000 exerienced teachers” took advantage of Open Market and it is clear that many are taking advantage of the system this year. Teachers have until August 7th to move to another school without the approval of their current principal.

There is an irony to this phenomenon.

New teachers are chased away in staggering numbers - about half of all new teachers are gone by the five year mark. Staff staff stabilty is the keystone to pupil achievement. Teacher quality is the crux of a successful school.

The free marketeers at Tweed crowed when they negotiated Open Market - then again few of them are educators. Maybe teacher mobility should be one of the metrics in a School Progress Report?

Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing? We know the answer.

As Klein walked away from the bargaining table in 2005 lauding Open Market the union negotiators must have been smirking. Did they rent “The Sting” that evening?

2 Comments »

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  • The first thing I tell parents, including myself, is to look at the School Reports from the State. Page three is the key; it shows how long teachers at the school have been teaching and how long they have been teaching in that particular school. A school that cannot retain its staff year after year is not going anywhere.

    In my experience, any school that plays musical chairs with its faculty is not going to make much progress. We see that with Tweed as their lack of stability translates into a system that is in need of real leadership and direction. All Bloomberg and Klein have done is to shuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic.

    For a school to be successful, it must have stability and a committed faculty who believe in the educational vision of the school. My school is an example of this and is making progress since we don’t have to reinvent the wheel year after year. However, word is that our new “empowerment network” will be providing instructional “mandates” to all teachers. I saw a draft of the document before school let out and it was pure garbage. For all the talk of “empowerment,” it’s still the same old stuff coming from Mt. Olympus and my garage has boxes filled with “the next best thing” from the last 15 years.

    At least our staff knows how to file the stuff we get year after year and continue to collaborate together to educate our kids. That doesn’t happen when schools are destabilized.

    Comment by Persam1197 — July 24, 2007 @ 8:50 am

  • We have to make the information Persam mentions widely available. Can we share information about how many September ‘06 teachers are still teaching in the same school in September ‘07?

    We also need to be careful not to be smug about a transfer system that is working against our members in closing schools.

    Jonathan

    Comment by jd2718 — July 27, 2007 @ 12:39 pm

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