NYC Teachers Get 15% Raise

[Bucho]

NYC teachers union gets new contract

Monday, October 3, 2005; Posted: 4:03 p.m. EDT (20:03 GMT)


NEW YORK (AP) -- The public school teachers union reached a contract with the city that gives them 15 percent raises over four years, officials said Monday, ending an impasse that threatened the nation's largest school system with a strike.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is running for a second term in next month's election, and the United Federation of Teachers announced the deal after several days of renewed talks. Until this round of meetings, negotiations had stalled for nearly a year.

The tentative agreement extends the school year by two days and requires teachers to work 50 minutes more per week giving pupils extra help.

The New York City school system is the nation's largest, with 1.1 million students.

Starting teachers now earn $39,000, with a maximum base pay of about $81,000, and the union has long argued that city teachers' pay lags far behind that of their suburban counterparts. Under the deal, pay would increase to about $42,000 to start, with a maximum base of $92,000.

"The agreement recognizes our educators' hard work and the outstanding results they have achieved with their students," union President Randi Weingarten said.

The contract also gives principals more powers and contains measures to improve school safety and discipline.

Bloomberg, who took office in January 2002, has made school reform a key issue. Early in his term, he gained control over the system, the nation's largest with 1.1 million students.

The city's teachers have not had a contract since May 2003, and the union had recently upped the ante with threats of a strike -- which would be illegal -- if the dispute continued. The union represents 140,000 retired and active teachers.

Outside of the bargaining sessions, the union applied pressure through rallies and demonstrations in recent days, including a protest at an elementary school where Schools Chancellor Joel Klein was booed as he arrived.

[PrincessGirl]

'Bout friggin time! Some people just don't give teachers the respect they deserve...I mean without them the future doesn't exsist!


You know there is a school district in New Jersey that makes their teacher follow a script everyday...those students don't learn anything!

[Bucho]

yeah, teachers need to be paid a shit ton more than they are now...it's sad to see what kind of value we ACTUALLY place on education and the educators themselves...

[idontcare.com]

good for them!!

[Jennie]

That's great.

Pretty much all public service type jobs get paid shit...policemen, firemen, teachers...the people that keep us safe and ensure a brighter future get paid crap while people get paid millions of dollars to bounce a ball around a court or act stupid in front of a camera.

[PrincessGirl]

That's the way it's been forever and prolly how it will always be, at least there are a handful of people who realize how important those kinds of jobs are and people who are willing to put money aside and do something they love!

[wanting-wings]

that would be great if it were to happen here.....is that really much of a raise there with the cost of living??

[auralassassin]

I used to think that teachers should be the highest paid profession... then I can't help but look at the number of people who still can't read, and all the teachers that don't teach.

Teachers should get minimum wage until they don't have a single student left behind.

[PrincessGirl]

^^^^Fuck off, there are bad teachers and there are good teachers. There are somethings that just can't be helped and some children have such large issues with their homelives that the only thing the teacher can do is give them a sanctuary while they are at school....you can't learn to read when you are too concerned about where your next meal is coming from. Why don't you figure out what the fuck you are talking about before you open you mouth, asshole!

[auralassassin]

Fuck off... thats pretty mature, and certainly a way to encourage open discussion. I'm glad liberals want to exclude free speech from the list of freedoms which I so richly cherish.

If a child has issues, these should have been addressed back in elementary school... those with learning disabilities should have been identified and been given extra help... I've seen as many teachers who care not at all as I have those who actually care. Maybe I should rephrase that, then?

Teachers who have students that fail shouldn't be getting paid. How's that? I'm sorry, but in other professions when you don't produce, you don't have a job... in a situation where you hold people's lives in your hands, you had better produce, or piss right off.

p.s. there is no need for the obsenity, I offered and opinion and did so with a fair amount of decency--at the very least not being obnoxiously vulgar--I should receive the same treatment.

[Bucho]

Teachers should get minimum wage until they don't have a single student left behind.


i'm with tara on this one ralph. that's a pretty ignorant statement. to put teachers below (on a pay scale) what i get to run a warehouse is silly. there's NO WAY you can make sure every kid passes. the average class (i would imagine based on my own experiences) is about 25 kids in size. it's the balance of putting too much time into a few students and not enough into others. you have to treat them equally or at least send them on the right path to pass, but they also have to give a fuck. a kid isn't gonna learn if they don't want to, that's life.

i think mullen was the one that told me something to the effect of everyone has that point where they decide they WANT to learn. it may happen at 16, it may happen at 40, but you run with it. you can't make someone learn if they're mentally not wanting it. doesn't matter how much money you throw at the system or the government.

bottom line is, teachers touch EVERYONE. from birth to adulthood, teachers influence the greatest amount of people out of any profession and most do a really good job, thus, they deserve the fuckin nike endorsements, the sports drink endorsements, whatever. i agree with jennie here, it's absurd to watch people make millions of fucking dollars playing a game when teaching is such a thankless, selfless necessity in our society.

[PrincessGirl]

I apologize for being so vulgar, but this is an issue close to my heart. It really upsets me when people who have no idea about the educational system (aside from their own experience) voice their opinions without evan a thought as to how it may impact the job. If you lower teacher salaries and still require that you have a college education to be a teacher, there will be even fewer teachers. The cost-benefit analysis would prove leave any half way intelligent person looking for another career.

The problem is in regulating education. When dealing with such a diverse population, you can't hold steady to one rule. As history has again and again proven, there are expections to each rule. Thus it would make sense to say that when dealing with billions of students, regulating a rule that would benefit the majority could easily leave out millions of children. When requiring results for pay, commonly known as merrit pay, the question becomes how do you evaluate success. Standardized tests have been proven to be biased to middle income white families. Another problem with standardized tests is that if they become the mark of teacher success, then the teacher will teach to the test and not real material. The result of which is that the student will not retain any useful amount of knowledge. If you used another type of evaluation who is to say that the results from one school could even be compared with another since there is no standardization.

So, the question that I've been asking myself for years in now asked...if we are to hold teachers accountable, what is a reliable method?

Again, I apologize for my crude response, I hope that I have better expressed my opinions. Would you care to rebuke?

[Bucho]

and you know, honestly, once i found out how the standardized tests worked, i fucked around my sophomore year on it, then nailed it my senior year. it looks good for the school, but standardized testing is ridiculous at best, but unfortunately one of the only ways to measure educational standards across the board.

[auralassassin]

What idea could anyone have about the educational system other than thier experience? FYI, I'm not trying to major in philosophy so that I can write books and know all there is to know about every philosphy in the world. I want to TEACH. And not on a highschool level.

So, I might not be the BEST person to ask, but from the perspective that I will one day be holding myself to the same scrutiny, I think I have the right to my opinion--and I'd expect people to seek results out of me.

not having any sort of care for education is one thing, those kids should be offered therapy and special education classes, but if they don't want to learn and don't care to participate, there is a very simple solution: expulsion.

I'm more of a no tolerance kinda guy when it comes to bullshit. I was one of those people that could have slept the whole class and still done quite well, but chose to not do anything while I was at school other than disrupt--so I've also been that fucking asshole who disrupts class all the time. I should have been kicked out very early, but for some reason, I one day took and interest in learning. It actually had to do with a teacher that wanted to kick me out of his class permenantly... while sitting down in the principals office, I started to see the point... I was ruining my own life, not just the life of everyone else in the class...

I thought about how bad it would suck to go to work every day knowing that I would have an asshole like me in class--I'd probably like it about as much as my job at that point... and I thought to myself, SELF... you've really gotta get your ass in gear!

I went back to class and begged for him to let me stick it out, and promised not to fuck him anymore with my crass comments in his class.

He never gave up on me. I wasn't stupid. I wasn't unable to read... I was, however, an asshole. He deserved good money for teaching.

I've had a few teachers touch me in ways that have made a mark, and are guiding me today... a few out of...well, lets just say that most of them looked like they barely rolled out of bed before coming to class--it's a matter of effort, and most teachers just aren't willing to make that effort. I would prefer for there to be rewards for doing your job properly... such as a pay increase, or something to that effect.

All of my teachers said they didn't do it for the money... coulda fooled me. They used to piss and moan openly about how little they got paid. In my school, most of the kids drove nicer cars than the teachers, and now that I think about it, that might have been a shitty deal for them, but I never had a car or daddy's money, or was the Abercrombie clad homecoming king--and as such, I was passed up because I wasn't "classy" like my snobbish classmates...

I remember times when I'd walk into class and not make it to my seat without getting shit from some of my teachers...

"did you do your homework?"

"sure did, and I even fixed a few errors in your typing and a few issues with your equations"

"did you show your work"

"No, but the answer is there in plain english... perhaps you don't know how to do this stuff, so I need to explain it to you? Do you want ME to teach the class, or do you think you could just grade the paper and get off of my case"


My solution to the problem with teachers is to punish them for not producing results. pay cuts, being laid off, etc... teaching should be a high stress job. You hold peoples lives in your hands--it shouldn't be taken lightly

[auralassassin]

and I find it hard to believe that standardized tests are biased against anyone except those who can't pass the tests...

i.e. I never marked my race, ethinic group, etc... I always got done well before time was up, and I was from a low income family in a rather rich school, still scored in the 95th percentile and beyond every time. AND I didn't give a damn about school... how is it biased?

[Bucho]

then the question becomes, with what standards do you measure the success of a teacher? is it a 95% pass rate of the students? 35%? what would determine a pay cut or a pay increase? if a teacher gives their students all A's because they deserved it and because they grasp what the teacher is teaching, wouldn't someone look at all the grades and say "huh. that's fuckin shady. that can't be right."

i'm just sayin, there's a lot of gray area there that can't be pinned down. WAY too many variables.

and where the fuck is mullen on this subject?

[auralassassin]

he's formulating more info on why Bush is an idiot, and not enough info on what to do about it.

you make a good point, Bucho... I don't know how to solve that issue, but I think talking about holding them accountable for what they are/aren't accomplishing is an issue that is best discussed and constantly evaluated... I haven't the solution, but by not talking about it and not doing something, the problem is showing itself to only get worse.

[PrincessGirl]

the standardized tests are biased in the questions they ask. They assume that the person taking the test has experienced certain things. I never noticed it, and in my methods class I argued with my teacher about because I couldn't see it...the reason was because I'd had those experiences. Imagine being asked questions about a mountain, for example, and you live a very poor life in a very urban school district. The chances of you ever seeing a mountain are slim. I think that we can all agree that there is a difference between seeing a picture of a mountain (or any bit of nature for that matter) and experiencing it in real life.

I was unaware that your goal is to become a teacher; it's mine, too. But there is a slight difference, you desire to teach at the college level whereas I am going to be teaching on the elementary level.

I'm not saying there aren't bad teachers, there are too many! But look in ANY area and you will find people who have a job they don't deserve (insert political commentary here). It's not just in public service, it's everywhere you look.

Bucho is right, there are too many variables to really determine an effective measure of teacher success. There are really good teachers out there who try their best, but their success isn't found in gradebooks or test scores, it's found in the self concept of the student. The self concept of the student must be there before anyone can really learn anything. And your story about yourself demonstrates that idea, perfectly.

[auralassassin]

Before I moved out to the mountains, I had never seen a mountain.

I'm from a poor family that never traveled, and moved from the inner city out to a badass(money standards, not people friendly) school... I spent 2 years in this school, during which time I was called trash daily, and made fun of for not being rich...

even coming from the poor school, I still made damn good grades... even fucking around in class...

I still never did bad on tests, in fact, doing better on tests than the actual assignments... perhaps the tests are biased, but they surely aren't biased on basis of class... so what would it be, race?

Now don't take this question the wrong way, because I don't intend it--

does this mean that certain races are predominately less intelligent? or is it more of a sex issue? 9 of the top 10 people in my class were female... does that make it a sex issue?

Do males and blacks just not care about thier education?

I don't think this is the case. I think that is a cop out for poor teaching. I had a mountain of shitty life going on when I was in Elementary school, and now that I think back on it, any ONE of my teachers coulda been a whistle blower and had me pulled out of a terrible environment... any one of them could have asked me about my homelife.... and they'd have been doing thier job. The job of a teacher is to do everything within the law to provide for the welfare of the students during that school day... and it wasn't until highschool that I met even a single teacher who gave a damn.

ever stranger, was the fact that it was the all white, preppy ass school where they gave a shit... like they wanted me to fail when I was poor white trash.

[wanting-wings]

So, if my patient does not go home and take their medication to relive their high blood pressure that i just counseled them on and then they die of a heart attack, have i failed? should I lose my job? should I be paid minimum wage because the patient could not remember to take the medication or refused....even after I counseled them on it several times...and took their blood pressure at the pharmacy showed them the results and contacted their physician to let him/her know the patient was not improving.......I have done everything in my power to help this patient besides move in with them and shove the pill down their throat everyday.....


now relate that to what a teacher does everyday...at least the ones I know personally, including my mother....teaches in the classroom, assigns work, encourages and explains the importance....does that mean the student will go home and do the homework or study for the exam...does contacting the parents necessarily help? does staying after to offer extra help mean the students will stick around to get it?

I loathe the No Child Left Behind attitude. I abhor the concept that a failing student = a failing teacher....numerous environmental factors play into a students learing process.....roll models, parents, home environment that allows for study time and encourages it.....students not having to work after school to ensure the family eats...etc.....

Ralph, I awknowledge your wanting to make a difference and hold yourself to higher standards....yet I challenge you....I am curious to see if your views remain the same after your first year as a teacher.....and i will wait patiently to find out.

[PrincessGirl]

Ralph, I respect you for having your opinions and voicing them. I have trouble with the biased standardized test arguement, but it's been proven. I am just regurgitating what I've been taught and what has been written in text books. Now I don't believe everything I am told or read, but I am more apt to believe a text book than some random internet source. I would be interested to see if you could find these studies on the internet.