With some 6,000 New York City teaching jobs on the chopping block, Chester E. Finn, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, reassures Gothamites that teacher layoffs aren’t necessarily bad for education, so long they aren’t seniority-based. Resulting increases in class sizes, he argues, can be outset by improvements in teacher quality and technology.
NYC teacher Ms. Eyre—who, despite a distaste for crowds, was planning on attending a rally for public schools this afternoon—is considerably less sanguine:
I'm rallying for the kids in my class who already get too little of my time one-on-one and who desperately need it, and will get much less once 40 of them are crammed in the same room. I'm rallying for my colleagues facing layoffs. And I'm rallying to get the attention of a mayor who continues to believe that faceless consultants can do more for struggling kids than the caring adults who see them every day.
Teachers have also been rallying in protest of budget cuts this week in California and Detroit.