Think tank: Reform doomed without teacher contract changes
ALBANY, N.Y. --Court-ordered changes in the way education aid is provided to New York City will fail to improve schools unless the city restructures the contract with its 100,000 teachers, a conservative think tank predicted Tuesday.
The Manhattan Institute said current teacher assignment practices, in which educators get the first shot at filling classroom openings based on seniority, tend to funnel the most experienced teachers into the best-funded school districts within the city. Those districts are generally not the ones teaching the "high-needs" students that the court found are being denied the "sound, basic" education they are guaranteed under the state's constitution, the Manhattan Institute said.
If the staffing situation continues under the changes the state has to make to comply with the court's mandate, the aid "reforms" will not work, said Manhattan Institute analyst E.J. McMahon.
He said changes in the contract with the United Federation of Teachers union should be a "make-or-break" issue in the state's response to the court directive in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity court case.
"The courts have made it clear that anything that stands in the way of a sound, basic education for disadvantaged kids is unconstitutional," McMahon said. "The state is well within its rights to use CFE as leverage to help the mayor get a more flexible contract."
A UFT spokesman said Tuesday that UFT President Randi Weingarten proposed incentive pay increases for teachers in the city's highest-needs schools.
In testimony at a New York City Council hearing last fall, Weingarten said it is a "myth" that seniority-based assignments have resulted in the most experienced teachers migrating to schools where they are needed the least. She said that in the 2002-03 school year, only about 600 of the 9,000 teachers hired by city schools were seniority transfers.
She blamed a 40 percent attrition rate among teachers in their first five years for leaving many high-needs schools with less-experienced teachers.
Contrary to the Manhattan Institute's contention, Weingarten also said schools have some flexibility in offering pay incentives to get more experienced teachers into high-needs schools and make them stay under the current contract with UFT.
The Manhattan Institute's predictions were based on a study by its senior education adviser, Raymond Domanico. 