My son is an NYC Teaching Fellow. This September, he is teaching special education middle school math in the Bronx.
My son has a bachelor’s degree in math from one of America’s top STEM universities. My son is working on his master of science for teachers in math (grades 7–12) and special education, and taking separate graduate courses in math on top of that.
My son is passionate about his subject and, as someone who left high school to educate himself, believes that schools must exist to serve the needs of students, not teachers, administration, or parents. He deliberately chose to use his degree to teach underserved 7th and 8th graders rather than “making rich people richer or helping AI destroy the planet.”
My son completed his seven weeks of training over the summer—working as an assistant teacher at a Washington Heights high school for its Regents Algebra sections—and passed his first set of mandatory exams, including Educating All Students; Mathematics; and Multi-Subject: Secondary Teachers (Grade 7–Grade 12): Literacy and English Language Arts, Mathematics, and Arts and Sciences (the latter with a perfect score).
My son did everything that was asked of him with dedication and commitment. And yet, there is no way that my son will be the teacher his students deserve.
Because he doesn’t yet possess the most important piece of being an effective educator: experience.
Programs like Teach For America and various charter school networks are regularly excoriated over putting inexperienced teachers in the classroom.
And yet public schools are doing the exact same thing.
To add insult to injury, these most inexperienced of teachers aren’t being put in Specialized High Schools where the students basically teach themselves (one of the primary reasons why my son dropped out of Stuyvesant), or in wealthy elementary and middle schools where parents regularly pick up the educational slack.
They are being sent to low-income, underperforming schools. The teacher shortage there is so great that there is even a financial bonus for being willing to work in the Bronx.
What this means is that the students who need effective teachers the most are the ones least likely to get them.
New York City’s latest state test scores show a six-point drop in reading proficiency for grades 3 through 8, while math scores for the same level remain flat.
Some 43 percent of NYC kids attend schools where most students are not performing at grade level.
Collective teacher efficacy has been repeatedly proven to be a more important factor in explaining student achievement than socioeconomic status. Student poverty is the excuse most often given to explain away NYC’s lowest-performing schools and absolve teachers of responsibility for them.
I am not blaming teachers. I am, however, blaming a system that puts the least competent—no matter how well-educated or enthusiastic—in front of students who are in desperate need of being instructed by the very best. This problem is getting worse annually as more brand-new teachers are hired to comply with the class size law.
No, I do not believe that teachers should be forced to work where they don’t want to be. That’s a recipe for disaster. (Though, for those who insist that integration is the sole key to solving America’s education crisis, I would like to go ahead and see students from low-performing schools moved into high-performing General Ed schools, where it will quickly become clear that it’s not a case of those schools having “better” curriculum—curriculum is mostly uniform across NYC public schools, with some exceptions—or more efficient teachers, but that it’s families with the means to pay for their children to be tutored outside of school who are doing the heavy high-achievement lifting.)
I do, however, think that the same incentives currently being used to entice brand-new NYC Teaching Fellows to work at high-needs schools in the Bronx should be employed for traditionally trained public school teachers. (This was attempted by the de Blasio administration in 2018. Subsequent contract agreements shifted toward universal retention payments for all United Federation of Teachers members rather than isolated stipends.)
Currently, some teachers are eligible for an $8,500 bonus if their class size exceeds the agreed-upon cap, compliance with which has been kicked down the road for two more years. But since the most popular and highest-performing schools are the ones most likely to host overflowing classrooms, this bonus will do nothing for low-performing schools. In fact, it’s likely to exacerbate inequity, as experienced teachers leave undersubscribed, low-performing schools for wealthier, better-paying ones.
If we want more effective, more experienced, more skilled teachers in the neediest classrooms, we have to be willing to reward them for it.
One day, NYC Teaching Fellows like my son may be among that hallowed, effective cohort. Until then, they should hone their skills on those who need them the least, so that they might become good enough to work with those who require them the most.
Editor’s note: This was first published by Families of New York.
