I believe the main goal of BloomKlein and the deform movement is to change teaching as we know it. They'd like to end tenure, longevity pay, and pensions. They'd like a longer work day and year. They'd like to eliminate traditional public schools and replace them all with charters--schools that they can dole out to their pals like Eva Moscowitz as rewards for loyalty. They'd like to have a transient work force, comprised primarily of Teach for America type recruits who'll work hard for a few years and then move on to greener pastures.Let's suppose they achieve that goal. My question is: Who will they get to teach the children?
I think it's a reasonable question. It wasn't all that long ago that the DOE held recruitment fairs in foreign countries. They could not get enough bodies to fill all the classrooms. Of course, a few things have changed since then. Salaries are higher, but not much higher (if at all) than the inflation rate. What has really changed is the economic picture in this country. Now that unemployment is high and college grads are having a tough time finding work in their chosen fields, teaching for a few years seems like a good career move. So, for now anyway, there are a lot of bodies available to fill classrooms. Short-sighted thinkers like Klein probably believe this situation will last forever, but I don't.
Teaching has always had a (very) few good things going for it (I'm leaving out the existential rewards of teaching the children themselves): a shorter work day relative to other jobs, more vacation time, and job security. There are a lot of negatives to teaching, as well. Lack of respect, poor working conditions (trailers, etc.), low pay considering educational level, all make teaching a job you have to love or leave.
The negatives are all still there. The problem is that if the deformers have their way, the positives will slowly evaporate as well. They'd like to make the school day and year longer, and take away job security. Given that, who would want to become a teacher?
The deformers may be deluding themselves that they can have such a revolving door policy, but they simply can't. According to a Times article, it's been found that about 85% of TFA candidates leave by the end of the 4th year of teaching. That means in a fully TFA-staffed DOE, of the 80,000 teachers needed, 68,000 will leave every four years. And that would mean that the DOE would have to replace 17,000 teachers every year. The DOE couldn't fill that many vacancies in these awful economic times; how on earth could they fill them when times get better and companies start hiring graduates again?
So what is the DOE's endgame? I know they want to destroy the union, but the reality is that career teachers stabilize the system because we stay in good times and bad times. The city has already tried recruiting in foreign countries, and that was when there were about 6,000 vacancies due to retirement incentives. The DOE will have to start recruiting on Uranus to fill 17,000 annual vacancies.
As for me, my endgame involves retiring by the time all of this happens. Of course, that may be Bloomberg's strategy as well. Destroy the system, and then leave it to the next mayor to pick up the pieces.
