http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens/dud_of_the_class_V94XccuHkAS9OKOVaTtWMK#.TyVZkJgmDMc.email
Lewd comments to children -easily substantiated –always resulted in termination when I was teaching in NYC (not quite a century ago).
Most teachers were aware of the identity of their sleazier colleagues and reported incidents to the administration. In one case I know about the union chairperson reported the offending teacher.
Administrators are the ones who keep all this quiet and refuse to go further. It's too much trouble for them to substantiate claims of teacher malpractice and they cover up all bad news on their watch.
A subsequent Post article corroborated that the teacher in question was in fact protected by shoddy investigations on the part of the DOE-not by union intervention; proving my personal observation that high priced administrators, not classroom teachers and their union, are responsible for rubber rooms and bad teachers.
I have said repeatedly that the union is there to protect teachers against nepotism and administrators who used to get favors (of all kinds) from teachers -under duress- before we formed a union. I repeat-all kinds of favors were demanded of teachers prior to our having a union. Let your imagination run riot on this one and it won't be too far-fetched.
If the unions are guilty of anything it is in NOT lobbying to cut down on administrative overload and corruption...especially in areas outside the city where the ranks and salaries of administrators grow even as programs and teachers are cut drastically.
I have tried to prevail on NYSUT to cut loose from the Organization of Superintendents...a costly (you pay for their jaunts) , highly paid and generally useless group of supernumeraries...they are the ones who used the tax levy cap to cut programs and teachers and continue to get raises for themselves.
There are undoubtedly abuses of teacher safeguards but these do not rise to the level of abuses by superintendents...costly and mostly "conservative" abuses. They stifle change and progress. They like the system as it is.
In the early days of the property tax reform movement, the superintendents were our worst enemies because property taxes-they claimed- were a reliable source of income. The hell with the obvious chaos and suffering caused by that most regressive tax.
Cuomo-who rails against the unnecessary administrative overload- did not address this problem before instituting the useless tax levy cap which put the ax squarely in the hands of the superintendents he rails against.
The union is also guilty in not addressing teacher evaluations. It is obvious that administrators - who have personal biases and ambitions- cannot evaluate "good" or "bad" teachers…this should be clear to the most simple minded critics of education.
As in other professions, education should have-and I worked for- boards of teachers, taxpayers, and parents who set standards and police the profession.
The current method of evaluating on the basis of high risk tests is ridiculous to anyone who understands that such standardized tests are valueless and that they are a HUGE business in which former administrators and political hacks thrive at the public tit…the phony statistics notwithstanding .
Once again I blame teachers who didn't protest enough when their charges were being devastated by these "standardized" junk tests...now the tests are overwhelming real education and have come back to bite the teachers on their asses.
The people scamming the system should be brought to justice and CAN BE under present law if only the hierarchy did its job in the first place.
The Post of course-and every right wing group -uses anything they can find to bust unions. The outrageous behavior of the teachers mentioned in the article – if proven- are cause for termination; they might also be vulnerable to prosecution.
NOTE: a subsequent article detailed that it was the DOE -not the union- which didn’t pursue the evidence in the matter and was therefore responsible for the situation.
Gioia Shebar
Retired NYC teacher
Coordinator of Property Taxnightmare.org
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