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05/27/2004: "After Seniority"
Article in today's Inqy detailing a hearing on the lack of certified/experienced teachers in many poor-performing schools.
Reading between the lines, you can see that the district, aided by their good friends in the press, are gearing up for an attack on the PFT's seniority system. Unfortunately, the goal will be to create site-selection in each school, a worthy idea that is irrelevant in a system of 270+ schools and 13,000 teachers.
First of all, the magnet schools already have site selection. We can all pretend that they play by the same rules as comprehensive high schools, but look at the staff at Masterman, Central, Girls, and tell me that they arrived there by seniority alone. The good administrators know how to play the system and they find ways to recruit and keep effective teachers regardless of union rules.
Second, the hardest job in the city- teaching middle school in a tough neighborhood- doesn't exactly draw thousands of applicants. The staff at a school might decide to adopt site selection but that doesn't mean that they'll have a choice about who actually wants to come there. And supposing you do get a school that is working well, that just means that applicants who have some background will go there, leaving other, troubled schools out of luck, regardless of whether they have site selection.
If you want a puff piece on site selection, see the Penn Newspaper for their take on the Sadie Alexander school. This school is a success but that success has NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH SITE SELECTION.