The Hard-to-Staff School Bonus

Under the new contract, NYC teachers will be awarded bonuses for working in certain City schools designated by the Chancellor as "hard-to-staff."  I'm guessing these are the schools with higher percentages of impoverished students where, not surprisingly, academic scores take a dive.  These schools generally lack teachers with experience because when students have such high needs in overcrowded, underfunded classrooms, teacher "burnout" is generally high. 

One might think that the City's bonus will do the trick.  But if you are a teacher and money is your magnet, you're probably already teaching in the wealthier suburbs, or thinking about it.  Any $5,000 bonus seems paltry in comparison.  

Teachers who work in these "hard-to-staff" schools will need some additional job protections.  Some teachers who took bonuses to work at such schools in the past ended up digging their own professional graves.   They went off with the best intentions of helping kids, but then kids suffered low test scores, graduation rates lagged and, voila, the school was closed.  Many of the teachers became nomadic ATRs, continually castigated by the media.  

If the City wants to attract and keep a committed cadre of teachers in "hard-to-staff" schools, it needs to offer significantly smaller class sizes and some more services to students and their communities.  Otherwise, I would predict teacher burnout will be high and student academic progress pretty much stagnant.  And, in the event of another Bloomberg, schools will be shuttered and so many teachers who once worked in these schools will  become instant martyrs.  These are some of the realities with which we must deal in an era of educational deformity.