Vous êtes sur le site officiel des Travailleurs Industriels du Monde. Ici vous trouverez à peu près tout ce dont vous avez besoin pour rejoindre l'IWW et commencer à organiser vos lieux de travail et construire un grand syndicat au sein de votre communauté. La plupart des informations contenues ici traitent des Etats-unis et du Canada, mais nous avons aussi des liens vers d.autres sites IWW gérés ailleurs.

L'IWW est une organisation syndicale pour tous les travailleurs, un syndicat dédié à l'organisation des travailleurs sur leur lieu de travail, dans leurs industries et leurs communautés. Les membres des IWW organisent les travailleurs pour obtenir de meilleures conditions aujourd.hui et construisent pour demain un monde économique démocratique. Nous voulons que nos entreprises fonctionnent au profit des ouvriers et des communautés plutôt que pour une poignée de patrons et leur exécutif.

Nous sommes les Travailleurs Industriels du Monde parce que nous nous organisons industriellement. Ceci signifie que nous organisons tous les travailleurs produisant les mêmes biens ou fournissant les mêmes services dans un syndicat, plutôt que de les diviser par secteurs d.activité, ainsi nous pouvons mettre en commun notre force et faire triompher nos revendications ensemble. Depuis que l'IWW a été fondé en 1905, nous avons apporté des contributions significatives aux combats des travailleurs à travers le monde et nous sommes fiers de notre tradition visant à nous organiser indépendamment de critères sexuels, ethniques et raciaux bien avant que de telles méthodes soient courantes.

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A new TV ad, sponsored by the Keep the Promises coalition, began airing this week. The ad, which shows school supplies vanishing in front of kids, urges New York City residents to call 1-800-961-6198 to tell the mayor and City Council to uphold their commitment to kids. Check it out!

[Editor’s Note: Miss G is the pseudonym for a second-year special education teacher in the Bronx.]

With grad school.

As of Saturday, May 9, I’m officially done, and graduation is May 21.

As a final activity we had to fill out chart paper with “things we would take with us” and “things we’d leave behind” – not from grad school, but the Teachers for America experience … from learning to be a teacher, a New Yorker, and… well… a grown up.

Some were funny, some were serious, and some gave rise to this knot in my throat that is still there when I think about the last day of school in June.

I looked around the room at people I’d known for the last 2 years. We came in thinking we could change the world, that we knew everything about urban education, and that nothing could shake us as people. I think all of that was shattered within our first week as teachers.

We were shaken, proved wrong, questioned, and made responsible for some of the toughest kids you’ll probably ever meet — the special education students of New York City’s public schools.

We came in as future accountants, lawyers, investment bankers and politicians. We’re leaving as teachers. Even those of us that aren’t staying in education can’t help but look at the world as an advocate. “My kids” is the way we begin every other sentence, even though very few of us have any biological children.

This is not the end, but the beginning of lives changed, not just for us, but for our students.

We’ve made a difference. Could the impact have been bigger? Yes. Could we have been better? Yes. Is there room for improvement within Teachers for America? Yes. But are my kids better off because I was their teacher? I hope so. I definitely am. That’s what I’ll try to take with me. That and the privilege of getting to know 13 of the most resilient people I’ve ever met.

Posting published by the Principal of PS 71 in the Bronx:

Anticipated Vacancy Circular - School Year 2008-2009. Position: Lower Grade ATR - Absent Teacher Reserve Positions

Duties and Responsibilities: Cover class of absent teacher. Classes to be covered will be kindergarten through fifth grade, with no special education classes. The position is a regular teaching position for a regularly assigned teacher. If no teachers are absent, the teacher assigned will be doing small group AIS. Salary: Salary and Seniority do not change…

Amazing, isn’t it, that while the DoE and The New Teacher Project are telling anyone who will listen that the numbers of ATRs are a burden to the system, principals are issuing — in clear violation of the contract — postings looking for more of them?

The DOE took the opportunity to lash out against the UFT’s recent class size report [PDF] yesterday, telling the Daily News, “The UFT is able to reach its predetermined conclusions only by ignoring key data, such as the impact of team teaching and innovative scheduling.”

For the record, Collaborative Team Teaching classes were included in the analysis of all K-8 classes. And the “innovative scheduling” we ignored–presumably programming middle school students for reduced class sizes in some subjects–is not how DOE itself counts middle school class sizes.

Leaving aside the “predetermined conclusions” dig, this might be shrugged off as semi-harmless PR except it came in the middle of the dispute over the Absent Teacher Reserve, and is emblematic of an almost desperate effort by the department to have the data its way–only. It’s hard to trust their numbers, and that is truly alarming. Because while this is public data on public schools, in many ways the DOE owns it.

First, they have sole access to the databases that record school-level data such as teacher assignments, student performance, and spending. And second, they have the money (well, the taxpayer dollars) to pay for the data-crunching computer systems and legions of analysts. What they typically do with this unique data capacity is produce Power Points that highlight supportive findings and ignore data that might confuse or cloud the picture.

When we at UFT run numbers on the schools, with the data we can access, we are extremely cautious. Here’s why.

1. It’s like counting the stars. NYC is such a giant school district that pinpoint accuracy is very difficult. It’s a moving target too. For example, personnel counts can vary several hundred or even more from one month to the next.

2. If you give people a choice of ten categories to fit into they will choose the eleventh. Neither individuals nor schools seem to conform. For example, teachers teach 5 periods a day or 8, except the ones that teach 6 or 7, but that’s only on Tuesdays and Thursdays in another school, at least for the fall semester . . . you get the idea. The same holds true of schools. They are either K-5, 6-8 or 9-12, plus some that are K-8 or 6-12. Except for the ones that are preK-2, 5-8, 9th and 10th only, etc. etc. Counting them often requires averages, best guesses and exclusions.

3. People of good will routinely misreport, misrepresent or misunderstand the data they think they know. This happens all the time.

In sum, the “hard data” on education that so many of us demand as a condition of reform are in fact dense, “dirty” (this is a data term, meaning there are lots of errors in it) and ambiguous. So it is essential that when we count (and use the results to flog teachers or the system), we at least say what and how we are counting. Good education data analysts are humble folk who use lots of footnotes.

Now we find (using our shoe leather because we don’t have access to the teacher assigment data) that at least one third of educators in the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) are actually teaching full-time programs. Before the DOE went public with a claim that supposedly idle ATRs are costing taxpayers $81 million, they had the obligation to ask that question of the data. Even if the authors of the ATR report, The New Teacher Project, didn’t think to ask, DOE should have. That they didn’t calls into question that ATR finding.

Then that reponse to the class size report–wouldn’t you expect DOE to promise to do a better job next year, or at a minimum ask the UFT how it did its calculations? Making a false claim instead, impugning the results, calls into question whether as a public agency the DOE’s use of data needs some serious fixing, or independent oversight at least.

Once again a step ahead of intermodal truckers across the US, Stockton truckers, led by the majority Sikh drivers, launched a strike over the issue of fuel prices on Monday, May 5, 2008.

While many truckers participated in various protest shutdowns on either April 1st or May 1st this year, the 300-400 Stockton truckers working out of the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern-Santa Fe railyards have shut down their industry until their demands have been met.

Rather than demand the fuel surcharges paid by shippers but often pocketed by companies rather than passed along to drivers, the Stockton truckers are asking for a dramatic increase in the rates paid in order to keep up with increases costs such as fuel.

On April 26, 2004 Stockton intermodal truckers, inspired by rumors circulating of an LA port trucker shutdown, were the first to join what became a strike of west cost port truckers on April 30, and by June had spread to most southern and eastern ports as well.

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By Reed Fujii - San Joaquin Record Staff Writer, May 06, 2008

For the second time in four years, hundreds of independent truck drivers went on strike Monday against companies that hire them to haul cargo containers out of railroad terminals near Stockton.
And again, as in 2004, the issue was the failure of freight rates to keep up with rapidly rising fuel prices.
Ajit Gill of Stockton, a truck owner-operator and a spokesman for strikers, said the truckers face fuel costs that have more than doubled since 2004, as well as higher costs for insurance, stiffer inspection fees and more. But freight rates have not kept pace.
"There is nothing raised," he said Monday by cell phone.
The drivers would prefer to keep working, if it was practical.
"Unfortunately, we have to stop," Gill said. "Nobody can afford $4.35 diesel."

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Disclaimer: The action described here was not organized by the IWW.

By Francine Brevetti - staff writer, inside bayarea.com, May 6, 2008

OAKLAND — About 80 striking truckers from Middle Harbor Road at the Port of Oakland were ticketed and dispersed Tuesday after some of them committed vandalism, police said.

Some drivers had damaged a truck's window while the driver was operating the rig, Sgt. Peter Lau said.

Nevertheless, the protesting truck drivers who own and operate their own rigs vowed to continue demonstrating at the port for the rest of the week. They say motor carrier firms have been underpaying them for diesel fuel.

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By Jim Crutchfield, IWW NYC GMB - Industrial Worker, May 2008

Members of the New York City IWW branch attended a rally on April 1 at a truck stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, where an estimated 300 drivers, mostly owner-operators, met to protest fuel price gouging and address the media. The rally was part of a nationwide work stoppage by truckers that reportedly shut down several major ports on the East and West Coasts and turned highways around Chicago into parking lots.

Drivers from as far away as Florida were present at the New Jersey gathering, along with many drivers’ family members and other supporters. Two Wobblies addressed the crowd and were warmly received. The union collected contact information from nearly 100 drivers, many of whom expressed great enthusiasm for continuing their agitation and solidifying their organization.

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Industrial Worker, May 2008.

On April 1, troqueros from New Jersey rallied on the New Jersey turnpike. On April 3, Houston followed. Truck drivers across the country participated in scattered actions to protest rising diesel fuel prices.

The price of diesel across the United States has risen by 21 per cent since the end of December 2007, from $3.35 to $4.05 per gallon, according to the US Energy Information Administration. A month before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the price of diesel was $1.71 per gallon.

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On May 17, join the IWW Starbucks Workers Union and allies around the world to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the union's founding in a Day of Action.

2008 is the 40th anniversary of the slaying of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., felled by a sniper's bullet as he stood in solidarity with sanitation workers striking for the right to form a labor union.

As a rabidly anti-union, poverty wage employer, Starbucks represents the unbridled greed and exploitation that King opposed. Indeed, the Starbucks Corporation demeans Dr. King's legacy by treating his federal holiday like a second-class occasion as it fails to pay the premium it pays on several other holidays on Dr. King's day. If Starbucks is really interested in "embracing diversity", it can start by respecting Dr. King's holiday.

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Please keep calling City Bakery; apparently it has cut off the general manager's extension! You can call at (212) 366-1414 and then just press 0 and ask for a manager. Please send the revised call to action below to your lists, otherwise folks won't be able to get through:
The City Bakery chain enjoys an image of being a "green" and "socially conscious" business. Yet, the City Bakery NY sells seafood from labor rights violator, Wild Edibles, Inc.
Given City Bakery's progressive image, current and former Wild Edibles workers were surprised when owner Maury Rubin refused to even enter into a dialogue regarding the hardships they face.

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Headlines:

• Harvest Co-op fires 2 in Massachusetts
• Diesel price rally hits New Jersey turnpike
• Union rivalry leads to clash at Labor Notes conference

Featured Articles:

• No-Match letters a wedge between workers
• China coal profits cost blood and bone
• Argentina: Zanón workers took union, before factory

Download a free PDF copy of this issue.

She will make you laugh: Eduwonkette on $4 gas and on A Nation At Risk.

The Columbus Education Association has asked a number of educational bloggers, including the AFT’s Ed Muir, to contribute to a colloquium on its blog on the subject of A Nation At Risk. My contribution is here.

In the previous post, Tim Daly of The New Teacher Project [TNTP] responded to the criticisms we made of the campaign the NYC Department of Education [DoE] has mounted against displaced [excessed] public school educators in New York City. Here we respond to his comments. We have organized our response around four key questions in the debate.

Why is there a large pool of displaced New York City public school educators?

According to the DoE’s and TNTP’s account, there are currently 665 displaced [excessed] New York City public school educators, men and women who have lost their original assignment for reasons entirely beyond their control. Educators find themselves placed in this pool as a result of decisions by the DoE to close their school or to reduce its size, and remain in it until they are able to find a new school assignment.

The issue of contention here is why this large pool exists, and why its numbers are growing. The DoE and TNTP have argued that the blame lies with the educators themselves - that those in the pool either do not diligently seek new assignments or are poor teachers no school wants to hire. This is the line of argument TNTP’s Daly recounts once again in his reply.

The truth is that the responsibility for this growing pool rests directly with the DoE. During the 2005 contract negotiations, the UFT told the DoE representatives that the changes they sought in staffing procedures would produce this pool; the DoE replied that they understood this would happen, and they were prepared to pay the cost. In 2006-07, the DoE changed the school budgeting process, putting teacher salaries into play in staffing decisions and creating disincentives for schools to hire senior teachers with higher salaries - all of which made it harder for senior teachers to find new assignments and leave the pool. As the pool grew in size, the DOE has refused to implement the clauses in the 2005 and 2008 contracts which were designed to move educators out of the pool - it has refused to execute a severance buyout for teachers in the pool [Article 17F], and it has refused to send displaced teachers as the first applicants to schools with open positions, before transfers or new hires [Article 17B, Rule 11]. In his response, Daly completely misrepresents our call to implement this last clause as a UFT demand for “forced placements” which “ignore the will of principals and teachers.” This distortion of our position is an effort to cover up the reality of how the DoE has organized the staffing process - displaced educators are usually the last applicants sent to schools with open positions, after most of the positions are already filled. In sum, every practical suggestion made by the UFT to abate the size of the pool, such as subsidies which would allow schools to hire senior displaced teachers for the cost of a new teacher, has been rejected out of hand by the DoE.

But rather than putting its own house in order and implementing in good faith the contractual clauses it negotiated to bring down the size of the displaced pool, the DoE has employed the TNTP to scapegoat and slander the hardworking and dedicated educators caught in that pool. It has decided that the existence of this pool provides a bludgeon in its campaign to win the power to fire teachers without due process, and it would rather have that weapon than seriously address the problem of the growing pool.

What portion of that pool of displaced educators is now engaged in full-time work, with a regular teaching schedule or regular guidance caseload?

After the DoE and the TNTP published Daly’s Mutual Benefits, with its attack on displaced educators, the UFT began our own research of the actual conditions of those serving in the pool. As we noted in our last post, we soon discovered that just less than 1/3 of the displaced educators - nearly 200 of the 665 in the pool - had been assigned regular teaching programs or regular guidance caseload. This revelation laid bare the lie that the displaced educators were poor teachers that no school wanted to hire.

In his reply, Daly attempts to impeach this number on three different grounds. First, he asserts that it is wrong to include guidance counselors in these calculations. He offers no reason for this exclusion other than the fact that his study did not bother to include them. While that is hardly a compelling logic, there were only eight guidance counselors in the nearly 200 cases we identified, so even if they were separated out, the conclusions one would draw from the data would be fundamentally unchanged.

Second, Daly makes a series of claims regarding displaced teachers from the closing of District 79. He did not include these displaced educators in the original study, he tells us, because the closing of District 79 schools was anomalous. Now, even if we accepted his current count of displaced District 79 educators, a number less than half of the 270 supplied by the DoE in September 2007 at the conclusion of the restructuring of the Alternative High School Superintendency, this would mean that he dropped 123 teachers from a study of some 665 displaced educators, and did not even bother to note, much less explain or defend, this major exclusion in as much as a single footnote. When one considers that the numbers of displaced teachers from District 79 were so great that they were not simply placed in new District 79 schools, but also in regular high schools and elementary schools, the most likely explanation is that a great many displaced District 79 educators did make it into the study, but in a haphazard way in which they were misidentified as displaced high school and elementary school teachers. However you cut it, this is an admission that places in serious question the basic design of this entire research project.

In general, note has to be taken here of Daly’s ex post facto justifications for not undertaking an analysis of the 2006-07 data, beyond the District 79 process, when that year would clearly provide the most recent and important insights into a growing phenomenon. Given that this is the same year that the DoE’s changes in school budgeting was introduced, one does not need to be much of a skeptic to conclude that the most recent and complete data was just dropped from the study because it would lead to inconvenient conclusions.

Third, Daly contends that our data on educators working full programs is unreliable because is “self-reported” - by this he means that among other sources of information, we went to real schools and talked to real people to see what was actually taking place inside them. Note that the data which is being “self-reported” - whether a teacher has a regular teaching program vs. covering classes of absent teachers on a day to day basis - is hardly a grey area: one is as likely to mistake one for the other as one is to mistake teaching English Language Arts for teaching Algebra. Yet when you read the “methodology” section of Daly’s paper, it is painfully obvious that most of its analysis is based on “self-reported” data, surveys with very low rates of completion. If he truly believes his criticism of “self-reported data,” he has impeached his own study.

Has the DoE created a system of perverse incentives, which allows schools to use the services of displaced educators without paying for them?

In our post, we pointed out that the DoE had created a system of perverse incentives that allowed principals to obtain the full-time services of displaced teachers or guidance counselors without actually paying for them, since displaced teachers remain on the central payroll. In reply, Daly argues that one-third of the displaced teachers are on the payroll of the school which excessed them, rather than on the central DoE payroll. For the most part, displaced teachers on the central DoE payroll are from closing schools, while those who remain on the local school’s payroll come from schools in good standing. One could simply grant Daly’s numbers, and still conclude that a widespread system of perverse incentives exists for the great mass of schools with displaced teachers.

What is the true cost of pool of displaced educators?

Ever since the DoE and TNTP began their campaign against the displaced teachers, they have been telling everyone who will listen, from editorial boards to edubloggers, that the pool was costing New York City public schools $81 million. In our post, we noted that if the DoE had the power to fire all displaced educators, it would still have to replace all of the displaced educators with regular, full-time assignments, as well as hire substitutes for classes of the absent teachers now covered by the displaced teachers. In short, the UFT economists calculate, the true cost is a fraction of $81 million, between $18 and $19 million. We have no difficulty publishing the basis of our calculations, as Daly requests.

The most stunning statement in this entire response was Daly’s two word commentary on the UFT’s suggestions “that some of costs for ATR teachers are offset by savings elsewhere (for example, in reduced substitute costs).” “We agree,” he said. In short, whatever we might conclude about the true cost of the pool of displaced educators, Daly now concedes it is not the misleading $81 million.

Why have the DoE and TNTP spent the last weeks trumpeting to all who will listen a cost that the author of its own analysis now concurs was misleading?

What follows is a response from Tim Daly of the New Teacher Project to our posting, Stubborn Facts, Pliable Statistics and The Manufactured Crisis of Excessed Educators. At his request, we are publishing it here, exactly as we received it, together with our reply, which appears in the next post. While the Department of Education has never provided the UFT with opportunities to respond to their publications on their web site, we believe that New York City public schools are best served by a complete discussion of this issue.

Statement from The New Teacher Project
May 5, 2008

Over the past several days, representatives of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and others have sought to challenge specific findings of “Mutual Benefits,” our recently released study on New York City’s school staffing policies. We appreciate the UFT’s engagement in this dialogue and welcome their participation.

The New Teacher Project (TNTP) researched and released “Mutual Benefits” with the goal of sparking a substantive, data-driven policy debate from which better policies would emerge. We are glad to see this debate taking shape and remain optimistic that it will lead to reforms that better serve New York City students.

As our paper indicates, the current policy on teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATRs) is flawed in four fundamental ways:

1. Teachers in the ATR have no incentive to search for positions aggressively and no requirement to apply for positions
2. Teachers have earned and will continue to earn tenure while serving in the ATR
3. There is no limit to the amount of time teachers may serve in the ATR, earning full salary and benefits regardless of their placement status
4. The ATR includes a higher concentration of teachers with documented performance problems than the overall teacher population, and that concentration is growing over time

It is important to note that our assessment of these flaws in the current policy has not, to our knowledge, been rebutted or addressed by any criticism of the paper to date. We stand by these findings and continue to believe that, if unaddressed, the stresses that these flaws put on the school system will inevitably undermine the fair, open and efficient staffing process now in place in New York City.

Though the arguments by the UFT and others against our findings and recommendations have not centered on these core issues to date, many of them mischaracterize our research and threaten to distract everyone involved from the real issues at hand. Below we respond to each of the primary arguments leveled against our report, as discussed primarily in posts on the UFT’s official blog, EdWize.org, and on Eduwonkette.com. We have asked both sites to post this response as part of the larger discussion.

* One-third of ATRs are teaching “regular programs” on a full-time basis.

This assertion is inaccurate and misleading for several reasons, including:

1) It wrongly includes guidance counselors
The UFT estimates that 200 or more individuals in the ATR are, “teaching full programs, with regularly scheduled classes, just as they had done when they were regular assigned to schools.” However, the UFT includes not only teachers but also guidance counselors in this figure. Our report does not include data on guidance counselors or address their hiring patterns at any point. Guidance counselors should therefore be excluded from this calculation. Data from New York City’s payroll system appear to indicate that approximately 85 guidance counselors remained in excess as of April 2007.

2) It includes District 79 teachers, whose excessing and hiring processes were anomalous
In his posting on EdWize.org, Leo Casey of the UFT claims that 270 of the 665 teachers in the ATR are from District 79 alternative schools. Neither figure is correct. According to the NYCDOE’s payroll system, 123 teachers from District 79 schools were in the ATR as of December 2007. These teachers were not included in the 665 figure or our study in general because District 79 underwent a substantial and atypical restructuring in 2007 that led to many teachers changing schools. The rules governing the hiring process for these teachers differed from those for other excessed teachers.

For this reason, TNTP did not include 2007 excessed teachers from District 79 schools in its analysis; it would have been misleading to consider them along with other teachers whose excess process was quite different and far more typical of the city’s normal hiring process. If the UFT believes that the restructuring process for alternative schools should have happened differently, that is a worthy debate - but it is quite separate from this one.

Even so, District 79 teachers fared very well in obtaining new placements. Overall, only 24 percent of teachers excessed from District 79 in 2007 still had not found a new position by December-lower than the unselected rate for teachers who were not from District 79 schools.

3) It is based on unreliable data source
Last, the UFT’s data is of questionable quality and requires more scrutiny and explanation. It is not enough to conclude that because a teacher reports working a full class schedule that the teacher is actually filling a full-time, permanent vacancy. Self-reported data is vulnerable to a host of inaccuracies. For example, the teacher could be substituting for a teacher who is on long-term leave but who will return again. Verification of the UFT’s claim would require communication with the building principal and an examination of the course allocation for each school. It would require knowing whether the only factor preventing principals from placing ATRs into permanent positions is the budget issue raised by the UFT, or whether they are assigning them to classes merely because they have been instructed to do this as the best way to accommodate ATRs who are housed in their buildings.

It is entirely possible that some teachers in the ATR are effectively teaching on a full-time basis. Indeed, as we have noted before, it is difficult to know exactly how principals are putting these teachers to use. In instances where a reserve pool teacher truly is filling a permanent position, we believe that teacher should be formally appointed to the position. That is a reasonable and fair outcome. Limiting the amount of time a teacher may serve in the reserve pool, as we recommend, may in fact provide an incentive for principals to appoint these teachers to positions formally (or risk losing them).

* TNTP and DOE claim that excessed teachers are “incompetents that no one wants in their schools”

TNTP neither believes this to be true nor has made any such statement. While we have been straightforward in our discussion of the trends in the job-search and hiring patterns of excessed teachers in the ATR, our analysis of these trends is based exclusively on the data available to us. We cite the fact that ATRs who remain unselected for one year are about six times as likely to have a past U-rating as the typical DOE teacher. Nineteen percent of the ATRs excessed in 2006 who did not have a position by September 2007 had a U-rating. Those are facts, and they are meaningful facts in this discussion.

In light of these data, we have suggested that at least some teachers in the ATR may be unable or unwilling to find new positions. However, we have never claimed (in the report, in this statement, or elsewhere) that past performance problems are the only reason that teachers remain unselected. As the data show, some teachers did not access the primary job search avenues available to them: hiring fairs and filing online applications. The data show that teachers who found positions were far more likely to use these avenues. It is our belief that the vast majority of teachers in the ATR pool are competent and hirable, and if they engaged in a well-structured, aggressive job search, they would be hired.

* “The DoE has done nothing to find permanent positions for excessed teachers… serving as ATRs”

As indicated in our paper, the NYCDOE offered extensive job-search support to excessed teachers through a newly created Internal Hiring Services Center (IHSC) that operated during the summer and fall of 2006 and 2007. The IHSC, which TNTP operated at its own expense in 2006 and with NYCDOE support in 2007, was created expressly to help excessed teachers find new jobs and it provided a broad range of staffing supports to ATRs. For example, in 2007, IHSC staff sent out 2,414 welcome letters and placement guides to excessed teachers; created and distributed a bi-weekly newsletter to 2,314 individuals via mail and email; developed a website specifically for excessed teachers, with job search tips and event listings; provided in-person support to 496 excessed teachers at seven NYCDOE job fairs; communicated individually with 823 excessed staff members; and offered 18 skill-building workshops, information sessions and “office hours” for excessed staff at locations across the city. This work is important and is consistent with TNTP’s longstanding commitment to matching teachers with schools where they can thrive.

What the NYCDOE has not done is slot teachers into open positions without the teacher or principal’s consent (an action that the UFT sometimes refers to as “placing”). As our previous research has demonstrated, slotting or force-placing teachers on schools is an extremely ineffective staffing method that damages schools and corrodes the staffing process by ignoring the will of teachers and principals. We continue to believe that a return to forced placement is the worst possible policy outcome for New York City in this debate over excessed teachers.

* “So long as the teachers and guidance counselors remain as ATRs, they remain on the central DoE payroll, and the school can have the benefits, but not the cost, of their services.”

This argument assumes that all ATRs are paid through central DOE resources. That is incorrect. Of the 235 teachers from 2006 who were still in excess in December 2007, the salaries of 81 (34 percent) were funded through local school budgets, not the central budget. In those cases, the principal is paying the teacher’s salary but has not made the decision to appoint that teacher to a permanent position. Likewise, nearly half (48 percent) of the teachers excessed in 2007 who were still unselected as of December 2007 were locally funded. It is possible that some principals with teachers who are centrally funded may have an incentive not to appoint them to full-time positions, but this does not sufficiently explain the situation of all ATRs by any means.

* DOE wants to fire all ATR teachers immediately

This is flatly incorrect insofar as it relates to TNTP or its report. TNTP believes that the policy for excessed teachers is fundamentally flawed and must be changed, but we do not advocate for taking action against any ATR teachers immediately or for permanently dismissing them from the system. An effective excessing policy must offer a fair amount of time for teachers to seek consensual positions. Our recommendation is one full year for tenured teachers and three months for probationary teachers. Past data suggest that this is more than enough time for the overwhelming majority of excessed teachers to find placements.

In its Edwize posting today, the UFT profiles two 2007 excessed teachers who are in the reserve pool. Neither has been in the reserve pool for a full year yet. Under TNTP’s proposed policy, both would still be in the reserve pool at this point with the opportunity to continue looking for a position.

Furthermore, even if teachers exceed their time in the reserve pool, we recommend placing them on unpaid leave, not firing them. Such teachers would be welcomed back at their previous salary and seniority level if they are able to find a full-time, permanent job within a certain number of years (with the exact time period to be determined by the UFT and the NYCDOE). Virtually no other industry offers a policy this generous. To equate a policy of extended reserve pool time and unpaid leave with “firing” is misleading and unhelpful to this debate.

* “The $81MM figure is manufactured”

Our report states that the cost of providing salary and benefits to teachers in the ATR as of June 2008 is projected to be $81 million. This is a fact, based on the seniority levels of the teachers in the ATR and New York City’s standard salary scale and benefits package. The UFT has suggested that some of the costs for ATR teachers are offset by savings elsewhere (for example, in reduced substitute costs), making this cost lower. We agree. But the UFT has not shared the methodology behind its calculations. We would be happy to review these calculations and discuss their implications.

At the end of the day, no one has argued yet that the policy of unlimited reserve pool time for all ATR teachers is not an exceedingly expensive one for the district, and no one has argued that the costs will not continue to grow unless the district ends its commitment to mutual consent and slots teachers into opening.

* TNTP is trying to protect positions for its Teaching Fellows

We find this claim reprehensible and could not disagree more strongly. A non-profit organization, The New Teacher Project strives to improve teacher quality so that poor and minority students can get the education that our country has promised them. Accordingly, our programs respond and adapt to the needs of the local schools that they serve. We have never and will never advocate any policy position because it creates opportunities for our programs to hire more teachers. In fact, in keeping with our mission, we seek to increase the stability of school systems and increase average teacher retention so there is less hiring to do. We also focus on high-need subject areas such as math, science, and special education, and have voluntarily curtailed our programs in other subjects where the supply of teachers is greater.

We honor the service of all New York City teachers, including the more than 8,600 we have helped the city recruit, but our bottom line is maximizing the number of excellent teachers in classrooms, not seeking to ensure that they are recruited by our organization specifically. We look forward to the day when every child is taught by a high-quality teacher and cities like New York no longer need us to help meet their new teacher needs.

We welcome a debate over the data on these issues. We are confident that a close look at the facts will drive a consensus that the current policy is flawed and must be amended. Though we have disagreed with the UFT about our report, we believe that this debate will be productive and we believe that the UFT wants what is best for teachers and schools, just as we do.

By DAVID TABER - Jamaica Plain Gazette, May 2, 2008

SOUTH ST.—Two workers who were fired from the Jamaica Plain store of Harvest Co-op Markets in the last six months claim they were terminated for expressing support for union organizing efforts at the nonprofit supermarket. Harvest denies their accusations.

Diego Bencosme and Deon Furtick had both worked at Harvest for close to four years. They were both fired for failing to punch out when they went off shift—a rule they claim was rarely, if ever, enforced during their tenures.

They were fired without prior warnings, they said.

Both say they were fired because of their support for a current effort by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) to organize at Harvest. Both have filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board.

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By By Alex Kane - The Indypendent, May 2, 2008

Brooklyn, New York—Around 150 people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge with Make the Road New York and the Industrial Workers of the World NYC Branch for a May Day immigrant rights demonstration. Flanked by red and black Wobbly flags and signs that read “Opportunity for Immigrant Workers,” the demonstrators chanted slogans like “Si se puede,” and “El pueblo, unido, jamas tera vencido.”

There was a boisterous rally held before the march at Cadman Plaza Park in Brooklyn, with music, dancing and chanting. One song’s lyrics, roughly translated, said “we will overcome misery” and “we’ll have to break the chains.”

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“Facts,” John Adams once said, “are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” That may be true, Mark Twain later wrote, but “statistics are more pliable.”

Faced with a set of “stubborn facts” around the situation of excessed teachers serving as ATRs, the Department of Education and the New Teacher Project manufactured a crisis using what, it has now become clear, are “pliable statistics.” In the days since they first published their paper and launched their assault on these teachers, we at the UFT have been engaged in the careful research that should have been done by the DoE and NTP, if there was an honest and sincere attempt to ascertain the actual facts of the situation. In this morning’s New York Sun, Elizabeth Green reports on some of what we found. Here is our account.

One of the very first things that struck us was how often excessed teachers serving as ATRs said they were teaching full programs, with regularly scheduled classes, just as they had done when they were regular assigned to schools. There are also guidance counselor ATRs with full caseloads of students. We began a systematic study of how often this was taking place, and kept coming across more and more instances of it. To date, we have identified almost 200 teachers and guidance counselors in these circumstances, and we fully expect to have more cases identified. [A list of the school sites where these educators have been assigned is reproduced at the end of this post; where the site appears more than once, it has more than one educator in a full-time program.] Since the DoE has announced the total number of excessed educators serving as ATRs is 665, the “stubborn fact” is that close to 1/3 of them — and perhaps even more — are teaching regular teaching programs and counseling regular caseloads of students.

Who are these educators? Here are two teachers I interviewed.

John Murray is a dedicated 30 year veteran who until this past September worked with the neediest students in New York City public schools, those in the Alternative High School Superintendency. In an ill-considered, ill-planned and ill-executed move undertaken late last June and over the summer, the Department of Education decided to close down most of the schools and programs in that district, which serves pregnant teens, students involved with the legal system, students in drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs and students in GED programs. As his old school was closed down, Murray was assigned in September to Stuyvesant High School. With a Ph.D. in English and a background in Art History, which he studied in Rome on a sabbatical, Murray is now teaching a full program in Art History at Stuyvesant.

Tom Nixon teaches at Tilden High School in Brooklyn, a school the DoE first slated for closure last year. The school administration thinks so highly of Nixon that they have asked him to be the person who opens up the school every morning. He teaches classes that culminate in Regents exams and serves as a dean for the school. When I spoke to him on Saturday afternoon, he had just returned from doing tutoring that morning at the school.

Murray and Nixon and the other educators lay bare the disgraceful lie the DoE and the TNP have propagated, that the excessed teachers and guidance counselors serving as ATRs are incompetents that no one wants in their schools. To the contrary, these are excellent, dedicated educators who have lost their positions due to decisions by the DoE to close their old schools, decisions over which the teachers and guidance counselors had no control. The administration of the schools in which they are now located clearly have the confidence in many of them to assign them a regular teaching program or a regular counseling caseload. Indeed, the DoE is the victim of its own system of perverse incentives — so long as the teachers and guidance counselors remain as ATRs, they remain on the central DoE payroll, and the school can have the benefits, but not the cost, of their services. And since the DoE has done nothing to find permanent positions for excessed teachers and guidance counselors serving as ATRs, preferring to use them as pawns in its campaign to gain the power to fire without due process, these educators remain without a regular appointment and on the central DoE payroll. [The Chapter Leader at one closing school told me that without the ATRs teachers teaching regular programs, the school would collapse. In this regard, it is worth pointing out that among "the cuts to the central DoE budget" made in January, an Orwellian named category as most of these cuts were cost transfers to schools, were cuts in aid to phase-out schools. The ATR positions have become a crucial lifeline for those schools.]

Having failed to exercise due diligence in their own research and been caught red-handed, the DoE and TNP are flailing about, with Deputy Chancellor Chris Cerf attacking the revelations reported in the Sun as a “red herring.”

Would that Chancellor Klein, Deputy Chancellor Chris Cerf, DoE Chief Executive for Labor Policy Dan Weisberg or The New Teacher Project’s Tim Daly, the four individuals who have been the media spokespersons of the DoE’s campaign against the excessed teachers serving as ATRs, had ever done the hard work that Murray, Nixon and other ATR educators do every day for New York City public school students. Instead, they have disparaged and misrepresented these dedicated teachers to serve their political ends. In his report, Daly goes on at some length about how many excessed teachers serving as ATRs have not sought permanent positions through the open market, implying that they do not want to teach. In fact, 270 of the 665 educators now with ATR status, those who came from the Alternative High School Superintendency, never had the opportunity to go on the open market. Against our advice, and to the detriment of the students served by the superintendency, the DoE closed down the schools long after the Open Market season, which starts in late April. Virtually all of those teachers applied last summer for positions in the new schools and programs in the Alternative High School Superintendency in the 18D process, named after the section of the contract that governs it, but Daly simply ignores this process and those applications in his drive to misrepresent those teachers. Facts are stubborn things.

While the misrepresentation of the ATR educators is most egregious, what also becomes clear is that the “pliable statistics” of the DoE and TNP have completely misrepresented the cost of ATRs. If tomorrow everyone of the 200 ATRs with full programs were fired, as the DoE is demanding it be given the power to do, it would then have to hire 200 educators to replace them. If tomorrow the other ATRs who cover the classes of absent teachers were fired, as the DoE is demanding it be given the power to do, it would have to hire substitutes to cover those classes. When the real cost of ATR educators is calculated, therefore, it is a fraction of the $81 million claimed by the DoE and TNP — the “stubborn fact” of the true cost, the UFT economists calculate, is $18.7 million. [So, yes, Eduwonk, the $81 million figure is manufactured, just as the entire crisis has been manufactured to pursue the political objective of giving the DoE the power to fire without due process.]

The role of the New Teacher Project in the production of these “pliable statistics” demands special note. Far from being an independent and objective research entity, the New Teacher Project has millions of dollars in DoE contracts. There is a direct conflict of interest between the New Teacher Project’s role in at least one of those contracts — running the Teaching Fellows program — and a complete and accurate account of the situation of the ATRs: if the DoE actually followed the contractual procedures and sent ATRs to open positions before novice teachers, it would mean less positions for new Teaching Fellows.

Since we have published here the account of the practical proposals we have made to the DoE, again and again, to diminish the pool of ATR educators by moving them into regular appointments, their response has been one of silence. There is no answer, because the “stubborn facts” are that they have no interest in solving the problem so long as they believe that they can use it to win the power to fire educators without due process. That is a very poor estimate of the UFT: all that they can secure by such tactics is shame.

SCHOOLS WITH ATRS WITH FULL-TIME PROGRAMS

Academy for Environmental Leadership ACORN SOJO ACS BRONX FIELD OFFICE ACS FIELD/TEEN CENTER ACS FIELD/TEEN CENTER ACS MANHATTAN FIELD OFFICE ACS Queens FIELD OFFICE ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE ARGUS COMMUNITY, INC. ARGUS COMMUNITY, INC. Art & Design H.S. Bedford Academy BOYS & GIRLS HARBOR BRIDGE BACK TO LIFE BRONX LEBANON HOSPITAL BROOKLYN JOB CORPS BROOKLYN JOB CORPS Bushwick Leaders Academy Bushwick School of Social Justice CARES @ ST.LUKE’S/ROOSEVELT HOSPITAL CHELSEA HUDSON GUILD CUNY CATCH @ Bronx CC CUNY CATCH@LA GUARDIA DAYTOP, VILLAGE District 88-Suspension Center District 88-Suspension Center District 88-Suspension Center District 88-Suspension Center District 88-Suspension Center DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN ACCESS DYNAMITE YOUTH CENTER, FALLSBURG DYNAMITE YOUTH CENTER, FALLSBURG EAST BROOKLYN ACCESS SOUTH SHORE EAST BROOKLYN ACCESS SOUTH SHORE EAST BROOKLYN ACCESS SOUTH SHORE Evander Childs HS Evander Childs HS Evander Childs HS Evander Childs HS Evander Childs HS Evander Childs HS Evander Childs HS FANNIE BARNES - URBAN STRATEGIES FLOWERS WITH CARE Fordham High School for the Arts Fordham High School of the Arts Fordham Leadership Academy Grover Cleveland HS Harvey Milk HS Health Professions High School of World Cultures HUB/ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION HUB/BRONX REGIONAL HS HUB/BRONX REGIONAL HS HUB/JAMAICA LEARNING CENTER HUB/JAMAICA LEARNING CENTER HUB/JAMAICA LEARNING CENTER HUB/MARCY AVENUE COMPLEX HUB/ST. GEORGE HUB/ST. GEORGE HUB/ST. GEORGE HUB/ST. GEORGE IS 126 IS 126 IS 204 IS 285 IS 285 IS 285 IS 2R IS 318 IS 72 IS 7R IS 96 IS 96 JEFFREY C. TENZER JEFFREY C. TENZER JEFFREY C. TENZER JEFFREY C. TENZER JFKennedy HS JFKennedy HS Lafayette HS Lafayette HS Lafayette HS Lafayette HS Lafayette HS Legacy High School Legacy High School Liberty HS Liberty HS LINDEN LEARNING CENTER LINDEN LEARNING CENTER Louis Brandeis HS Manhattan Center for Science and Math Martin Van Buren HS MARY MITCHELL FAMILY & CHILDREN’S CENTER MARY MITCHELL FAMILY & CHILDREN’S CENTER MARY MITCHELL FAMILY & CHILDREN’S CENTER Mathematics, Science Research, and Technology Magnet School Metropolitan HS Monroe Academy of Business and Law MS 127 MS 135 MS 144 MS 158 MS 180 MS 258 MS 258 MS 8 Murray Bergtraum HS NEST NEW SETTLEMENT APTS. Norman Thomas HS Norman Thomas HS PATHS on Jefferson Campus PROMESA, INC. PS 102 PS 104 PS 106 PS 106 PS 106 PS 106 PS 11 PS 110 PS 112 PS 127 PS 13 PS 134 PS 137 PS 137 and PS 116 PS 145 PS 147 PS 147 PS 151 PS 152 PS 16 PS 160 PS 160 PS 18 PS 182 PS 184 PS 198M PS 19R PS 204 PS 209K PS 250 PS 270 PS 270 PS 276 PS 298 PS 31 PS 42 PS 48 PS 62 PS 73 PS 75M PS 7R PS 99K PS/MS 109 PS/MS 140 PS/MS 189 Queen Prepatory Academy Roosevelt HS SAMARITAN VILLAGE, ELLENVILLE SANITATION SOUTH BRONX JOB CORPS SOUTH BRONX JOB CORPS South Shore HS South Shore HS STANLEY ISAACS NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER Stuyvesant HS SUNSET GED CENTER THE DOOR Tilden HS Tilden HS Tilden HS Tilden HS Tilden HS Tilden HS Tilden HS Tilden HS Tilden HS Tilden HS Tilden HS Tilden HS Tilden HS Tilden HS V. A MEDICAL CENTER BRONX Walton HS WEST FARMS WEST FARMS WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT @ LA GUARDIA YOUTH ACTION PROGRAM YOUTH BUILD YOUTH LEADERSHIP - City Challenge