[ProgressiveEd] New York Post article re: teacher and math coach recruitment

[carolyn.prager@att.net]

FYI.  Carolyn
--
Carolyn Prager
APRPE
Advocates for Public
Representation in Public Education
175 West 93rd. Street, #16J
New York, NY 10025
(212)865-1780
----
MATH PROBLEMS 
By CARL CAMPANILE 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
 Chancellor Joel Klein hugs eighth-grader Kareem Omar.
- Dan Brinzac  
  Email  Archives 
 Print  Reprint 
August 12, 2003 -- The city will be unable to provide each of the public 
schools with its own full-time math coaches as planned this fall because 
there's a shortage of available experts, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said 
yesterday. 
Klein said some schools will have to share coaches. 
"We're going to have coaches, but there may not be [one for each school]. 
There may have to be one for two schools or something like that," Klein said 
after attending a training session at the School of the Future for more than 
200 new teachers recruited from across the country. 
The coaches are a critical component in training new teachers on the new math 
and English programs being implemented in 800 schools, as announced by Mayor 
Bloomberg and Klein earlier this year. 
The chancellor said more schools will have their own full-time literacy 
coaches. 
Despite math staffing woes, Klein said he was optimistic that the Department 
of Education will implement the reforms needed to begin the sweeping 
transformation of the public school system - which includes better teacher 
training. He said the coaches are now being trained on how to teach the 
instructors. 
He told the new recruits that there will be more one-on-one help for teachers 
and no more "listening to boring lectures." 
Klein described the 10,000 new teachers hired this year as "the most 
drastically successful recruitment effort" in the city's history. 
"It reflects the incredibly hard work done by our people," he said. "It's all 
about the excitement about what's going on in our city school system." 
But despite the ambitious effort, Albany recently approved Klein's request to 
hire 3,000 unlicensed teachers for the upcoming school year and 1,500 the 
following year because there's a shortage of certified teachers in hard-to-
staff subjects such as math, science, foreign languages and special 
education. 
More than one-quarter of city teachers this year flunked the basic state 
license exam - the Liberal Arts and Science Test - which they must pass in 
order to be accredited. 
Recruiters from the department's Excelsior teacher-recruitment team said 
there's also a shortage of physical-education teachers. 
But there's been progress. The percentage of unaccredited teachers is 
expected to drop to 3 percent from 12 percent two years ago. 
And the city is doing a better job of outside recruiting - more than 75 
percent of the Excelsior program hires are from outside the region. 
Home  
NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc. NYPOST.COM, 
NYPOSTONLINE.COM, and NEWYORKPOST.COM
are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc. 
Copyright 2003 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.