New York Teachers Union Versus The Children

The teachers union is so dedicated to keeping crappy teachers in their jobs that it forced New York to forfeit $58 million dollars. And that might be just the start.

New Yorkers have 58 million reasons to jeer teachers union President Michael Mulgrew.

Thanks to him, 33 schools in desperate need of money to improve have just lost $58 million in funds intended to turn them around. Thanks to him, some of the worst teachers at some of the worst schools will continue to be protected at the expense of the kids in their classrooms.

Thanks to him, the state may soon have to forfeit $700 million in additional federal Race to the Top money awarded based on promised reforms.

These are reforms that Mulgrew, along with city and state leaders, pledged to help implement — before it became clear through his actions that he had no intention of following through.

On Friday, five months of negotiations between schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott and the union on sculpting a teacher evaluation system in exchange for School Improvement Grant funding hit a wall.

A state deadline set for year’s end had failed to focus Mulgrew’s mind.
Walcott rightly walked away.

Nobody was asking Mulgrew to demonstrate particular courage here — simply to, in a tiny subset of failing schools, put in place a professional system for identifying underperforming teachers and, yes, removing some of them.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/uft-president-mulgrew-flunks-big-schoolteachers-test-article-1.999101#ixzz1i7XacHpn