NYC Schools Fail Everyone

I am a teacher in New York City. I am one of about 8000 who entered the system this past year?nowhere near enough to compensate for the estimated 10,000 vacancies due to retirement, attrition to the higher-paying suburbs or just plain burnout. Education "experts" say it takes five years for an educator to reach "full potential." In New York City, it must take twice that, since the potential is stymied at nearly every turn.

Budget cuts, incompetent principals and a cutthroat atmosphere, where cooperation is only for the lucky few or the politically talented, make the path to success one filled with pitfalls, about-faces and shady characters. This is by no means an objective account, but I am confident I'm not the only one who could write this.

?

On my first day in school, two days before the start of classes, I passed a dead rodent in the hallway, smeared between the molding and an outdated math text. I can only imagine how this beast met its fate. In my classroom, there was a sheet of plywood where one window should be. I was pleased to find two Mac computers, but I soon discovered they did not work. The printer was missing its cables. I found one computer mouse abandoned in a file cabinet some days later. A veteran teacher ominously told me, "Never leave the mouse connected to the computer."

The temperature in the room was in the 80s; the a.c. blew only hot air. The shades were either torn or missing altogether. Some teachers didn't have this problem: their classrooms had no windows at all.

A trip to get supplies from the assistant principal drew hostile stares, numerous delays and, finally, one box of chalk and an old eraser. Further requests only made the A.P. bristle that the budget had already been exhausted (so where were the new things?). I was reminded of my Teacher's Choice stipend: a whole $200 to spend on classroom supplies. These would last until mid-November. If you wanted a stapler, you had to borrow the one from the main office. As for staples themselves, the main office distributed them from the one box the school had.

I started to meet other teachers, who had worked at least two years there. They were all jaded and cynical to some degree, trading war stories about the students, laughing about the ones who were repeating a grade for the second or third time. Eyes rolled at the mention of certain administrators. Those who had really served time in the "system"?10 years or more?knew all the local gossip and political goings-on. They dished dirt on how certain people came to have their positions, and about the backstabbers to watch out for. All of this was served with self-righteousness, smugness and preachiness, without a mention of the children we'd be teaching.

?

Indeed, I soon came to learn that the children, supposedly the reason we were all there, were often the last thing on teachers' minds. Between the under-resourcing of the school, the lack of leadership at the administrative level, the physical dilapidation of the building and the lack of cohesion among the staff, morale was, how you say, low. Counting days until vacation was a major preoccupation from the first day of class. Infighting, gossip and power plays ruled the building. Favorite teachers earned certificates for their classes' "good conduct," while the less-favored teachers were constantly called out in assembly for their inability to keep order. Whom you stood near in assembly, whom you ate lunch with, whom you took cigarette breaks with, what church you went to, whom you knew in the neighborhood were all very important social markers, often accounting for more than your teaching skills.

"Support" and "professional development" are terms thrown about with abandon in the school system. From what I've seen, "professional development" consists of catered luncheons courtesy of the union, where "staff developers" (a coveted position, usually arrived at only after currying political favor with school-district bigwigs) give workshops on topics like "balanced literacy," "cooperative learning" and "inclusion." Many teachers skip out on these (paid) development days; the rest sit there and sneer at the presenters, joking about how useless the workshops are. Feedback sheets intended to help these staff developers improve their presentations go unreturned or languish in boxes or closets in a district office, never to be looked at again.

"Support" might come from either a fellow teacher or the UFT field rep. Neither can be trusted. UFT reps take forever to return phone calls, often give misinformation and brag about the extra four "free" periods a week they're given, supposedly to coordinate UFT activities at a school. Meanwhile, it's always dicey grumbling to your fellow teachers. Giving too much information, speaking too much, making a stink about much of anything?unless you have political power?is a career risk.

And as for the administration, think simple mismanagement. I did not receive a full classroom set of books. The books I did have were often vandalized. If I asked about new books or replacements, I was reminded that the budget had been exhausted. Custodial issues went unresolved for weeks or months, including situations that could have affected student safety. Milk cartons that had exploded like bombs in the stairwells rotted in the heat until the janitors felt like getting to them.

Meanwhile, homeroom teachers were harassed by administrators to do chores like collecting "free lunch" forms. These forms are like trading stamps to impoverished Title I schools: the more students who return them, the more money the school will receive the following year. Yet there was no drop box in the main office, no system for making sure the forms were returned in a timely fashion.

A similar muddle turned up with report-card distribution on my first Parent-Teacher Night. Classes had been reshuffled so many times by then that many students didn't have a recorded grade for major subject areas: no teacher had had them long enough to know what grade to assign them. Some teachers arbitrarily gave such students a failing 55.

?

The students, of course, come with their own list of problems, too immense to discuss here. There are the lost cases born to crackhead prostitute mothers, or living in households where the father is selling crack and the family's had to move three times in the last few months because someone is looking to kill Daddy. There are kids who literally never come to school; you'll recall Danny Almonte, who pitched for the All-Stars before they discovered his true age and that he hadn't attended a day of school since arriving in the U.S.

There are kids who cut class wearing several hundred dollars' worth of Rocawear or Iceberg. There are kids who bring guns or knives to school, ones who start fights, ones who try to fight their teachers and ones who send their teachers to the hospital, sometimes with permanent injuries. There are kids who are so molested at home that by age five they have mental health files thicker than the phone book. There are the girls who are pregnant at 12.

Then there are the church kids, the quiet kids, the kids who just got here from the West Indies and have some of their culture's respect for education still intact. There are the ones from poor but good families who are just trying to stay afloat in the chaos of New York's schools, the ones who, by some miracle, can actually read, write and think and learn. There are the students who know the deck is stacked against them but still try, believing that if they can stay out of trouble, attain a modicum of education and the right pieces of paper, they can make it. There are thousands of 12-year-olds in New York City who have grown up believing their time on this planet is quite limited.

?

Yes, some teachers rack up visible "successes" despite all these problems?and when they do you can be sure the media, the BOE and other interested parties will champion them as they way it should be done. The subtext (or sometimes the screaming headline) is that all the other teachers aren't cutting it.

But the truth is that the system isn't cutting it. Teachers do last and thrive in the system, but they are in a minority. I have met many teachers on the verge of retirement who tell me to get out before five years is up or else the financial benefits become too compelling to leave behind. There are others who are cutting their teeth in the New York City schools (some earning fully subsidized master's degrees through various programs) with the full intent of leaving as soon as they have state certification. (The salary for NYC teachers is about 25 percent lower than in the surrounding suburbs.)

The system has been failing for years, despite what the headlines say. I've seen it with my own eyes. When you've experienced the inner workings of the system, it becomes clear why teachers leave New York, why there are constant battles over the lack of UFT contract, why Mayor Bloomberg wants to abolish the BOE and, finally, why two-thirds of all eighth-graders are failing to reach the state's standards in math and English. The education system in New York City is failing both its students and its teachers.