Michael Fiorillo is a teacher, MORE member and former Chapter Leader at Newcomers High School in Queens
The Corporate Reformer’s Game Plan
- Proclaim austerity for the public schools, while continuing to expand charters
- Create incentives for non-educators to be in positions of power, from Assistant Principal on up
- Maintain a climate of scapegoating and witch hunting for “bad teachers,” who are posited as the cause of poverty and student failure, doing everything possible to keep debate from addressing systemic inequities
- Neutralize and eventually eliminate teacher unions (the first part largely accomplished in the case of the AFT). As part of that process, eliminate tenure, seniority and defined benefit pensions
- Create and maintain a climate of constant disruption and destabilization, with cascading mandates that are impossible to keep up or comply with
