Tuesday, December 09, 2014

USE ATRS TO LOWER CLASS SIZES

NYC Educator has put up two excellent posts in the last few days as he usually does.  One is on class size where he tells the world how class size grievances are basically useless.  The 34 maximum for students in a class in the high schools is more like a suggestion.

The second piece is on Absent Teacher Reserves.  NYC Educator describes how ATRs  have for the most part been abandoned by our union in addition to our employer.  I have a not so novel idea for Chancellor Carmen Farina on how she can deal with both problems:

USE ATRS TO LOWER CLASS SIZES!

It is easy and could be done at virtually no cost to the city.  Let's say there is a high school with 55 oversize classes.  Send 11 ATRS to that school and give them five classes each and presto there are no more oversize classes.

I know; I know you are going to tell me that there isn't enough space in some of these buildings to make new classes.  The solution here is not that complex either as the DOE would just need to use the ATRS as push in teachers.  We could team teach.  Interviews could be conducted with actual teachers to make sure these are good matches.

Just some simple ideas that might work educationally so they will probably never happen.

4 comments:

  1. This is a great idea!! However it makes too much sense and the DOE does not do things that make sense. The DOE would rather rotate the teachers to different schools because bloomberg hired employees still dominant the DOE employees and they are all devilish evil people. UNtil Farina cleans house nothing will change.. Remember bloomberg said he can see upwards to over 80 kids in a class and it would not matter...

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  2. I agree this makes total sense but the DOE is one strange organization which was poisoned by bloomberg and the stench is still at 52 chambers

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  3. Sorry James, but your missing the whole point of the traveling circus merry-go-round for ATR's.
    According to the DOE, your school failed and was closed because of YOUR incompetence. You now are being punished with the ultimate goal being your resignation or even BETTER, your termination.
    This strategy was masterminded by the corporate lawyer Klein. Remember the clown who posed as chancellor a few years back?

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  4. Sadly, I agree with you about Joel Klein's intentions but we are supposed to have a progressive Mayor and a Chancellor who is an educator now.

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