I find your assertion that if I disagree with your notion of what a “teacher” is and is not then I am not a “real teacher” to be very insulting. Also, I would have to say it is inaccurate. Our profession is clearly constituted by individuals that hold your belief system…we are also represented (probably in growing numbers) by many individuals that do not believe their union represents what is good for kids or for teachers. This discourse is essential and to say your colleagues are lesser professional because they disagree with you only perpetuates an argument grounded in defenses as opposed to ideas.

Respectfully,
Teacher

Again, I don’t think think your argument supports your conclusion.

We agree that Michael’s point is a poor one, that contracts do not set maximum hours. So, how can you use it as an explanation for why you don’t support union contracts? You mean that it proves that some people don’t want to work hard, or don’t want to work lots of hours? That’s a reason not to support union contracts?

Can you explain your reasoning a bit more completely? What does his comment have to do with not supporting unions contracts?

I can’t believe you actually said this out loud: “The work day is effectively infinite, and will thus be set by the most sycophantic teachers…”. Wow. So let me get this straight: teachers who work hard are sycophants trying to bring down the profession or at least make it so you can’t get home to the family, and should be stopped by a contract that prohibits such hard work.

If anyone has any questions about why I don’t support union contracts, please see the above quote. Even when (as Ceolaf points out) the contracts don’t put a maximum amount of time you can spend at school, people like Michael are there to sneer at and threaten those who dare to work beyond the minimum. Lest anyone think I’m jumping to conclusions, I’m not; I’ve had many a union rep insist that I stop the unpaid after-school tutoring. Usually, people aren’t willing to so clearly state what their objection is to hard work, though. I always assumed that the teachers who complained about the hard workers were in fact afraid they’d look bad, but they never actually said it. Even the most jaded and laziest teachers generally are reluctant to accuse the harder workers of sycophancy. Kudos to Michael for not beating around the bush.

http://gothamschools.org/2009/05/15/highly-anticipated-uft-green-dot-contract-is-on-the-way/#comments

1) If there is no grievance or arbitration procedure, then it will end up in the courts. That will take longer and likely cost more money.

2) This does flip the presumption, certainly. Some teachers will be wrongly fired, no doubt. This will make the deficiencies of overworked, under-prepared and under-supported principals all the more clear. The shortage of truly great principals will even greater effects. Independent schools, like new small businesses, will have a great range of success — and failure.

3) No contract has ever set maximum working out for teachers. Rather, they’ve set maximum required hours. You know as well as I that many teachers work late at school and many work late — and on weekends — at home. I don’t think that this would change much. Of course, a problem could pop up if schools demands teachers work longer at school, and fill the additional school hours without leaving time for their preparation for classes, grading, communication with parents and meeting with students.

4) I think your best point — and I first heard it from Richard Rothstein — is that the more we treat schools like experiments or small businesses, the more failures we should expect. Most experiments fail. Most small businesses fail. Yes, you can get some fabulous successes, but you’ll get failures, too. The minimum quality that regulation ensures won’t be the floor, anymore.

As for Randi and others’ talk of charters as “laboratories,” let’s stop for a moment and examine the logic of that metaphor. I take it to mean that if these school are laboratories, the kids are not only lab rats, but that, as in many experiments, there is a high liklihood of failure. But doesn’t this direectly contradict the sanctimonious rhetoric of ed deformers, always harping about how “the children can’t wait?” I guess if you’ve privatized the system and turned it over to the “magic of the market,” then maybe they can. After all, the corporate malanthropists had no objections while they earned their billions and stood by for decades as the public schools were underfunded. Only when the legitimacy of privatizing the public schools reached a certain critical mass did they voice their concern for “our kids.” Of course, “their” kids never went to public school. That’s just for other people’s children.

Elizabeth, I appreciate the information and reportage that this site provides, but I’d strongly urge you to reflect on your uncritical use of the word “innovation” when describing what’s happening to public education. I seem to recall that there was a lot of PR about the benefits that “financial innovation” would provide us - not coincidently, by some of the same Wall Street players who are lurking behind the curtain of so-called education reform - and we’ve all seen how that turned out.

I asked Socrates which particular rights of students he was worried about teachers trumping. (I’d still like an answer, by the way.)

Can I turn the same question on you? What particular rights of teachers are you concerned about? Surely you don’t believe that teachers should have a right to keep their jobs regardless of what they do, and Socrates is surely not saying that teachers should not have the right to vote or a living wage.

Students have some sort of right to an education — at least by most state laws/constitutions. Beyond that, I am not sure what Socrates is arguing. There’s not right to an excellent teacher. I’m not even sure that there’s a right to a decent teacher — though I sincerely hope we can someday give every student at least a decent teacher every year.

I don’t think that Socrates is arguing against the existence of unions — which get to freedom of speech and assembly. He seems to be arguing against bad contracts. (Personally, I think that he is arguing against past practices, which is why I am confident that he won’t find support for his position in the contracts.) So, what individual do you think he does not support?

And perhaps more fundamentally, must the “starting point for all political discussions” be a mutual respect for the *same* individual rights? What if someone is concerned with different (but overlapping) set of individual rights? Can you have a discussion with them, then?

1) Guilds are defined by their ability to exclude potential members, not professions. The existence of state bar associations do not may the law a profession. I don’t have a firm definition of profession, but if I did it would be based upon that.

2) The NEA was once entirely dominated by administrators. Now, it is dominated by teachers. At no time was it a professional organization *for* teachers and other educators in appropriate proportion.

3) Doctors all over this country have contracts that specify the hours they must work and the only hours they may be required to work. So do airline pilots. Does this keep those from being professions, or just the individuals subject to those contracts — collectively bargained or otherwise — from being professionals?

4) Why would a principal want to review every teachers’ lesson plans every week? That’s crazy. Aren’t you busy enough with other things? Your goal, stated above, was collaboration and alignment with a school wide curriculum. Monitoring lesson plans does not promote that.

You seem to adopting the NCLB mechanism for change: if we monitor it — even if we monitor it poorly– it will get better.

You want collaboration? Set up teams and give them common planning periods. You want to know how it is going? Drop in on some of those meetings. You want to know what they are teaching, and know the material well enough to judge it? Drop in classes for 5-15 minutes. (Ken Marshall writes about this all the time.)

It sounds to me like you want things in a lesson plan that an able teacher would not need in order to do a good job — because they know what real goals, objectives and methods of their pedagogy are without writing them down. Sure, some like to put it down anyway, but not every teacher needs that. You want them to do more work, and do it your way, so that your job is easier. Not so that their teaching is better, but so that your job is easier.

You can’t effectively monitor and coach 50 teachers, anyway. That’s why you have APs, coaches, chairs and grade level leaders in some combination or other. You’ve got to prepare, empower and support your lieutenants, work with your cabinet/leadership team and get past the idea that if you are not directly involved that it is not being done well.

If there was actually a real need for principals to review every teachers’ lesson plans every week, then it might make sense for the DOE to insist that principals have the right to insist on a common lesson plan format. But in a school your size (i.e. ~50 teachers), such a need does not exist.

5) It is not at all clear that kindergarten teachers and 5th grade teachers should have the same format for their lesson plans, given how different their pedagogy and lessons must be. It is similarly unclear why ELA teachers and math teachers should have the same lesson plan format. Or 9th grade ELA and AP literature.

Why would you want to do anything that hampers a teacher’s ability to plan the best way for his/her subject, students and content? Imposing a one-size-fits-all approach hardly seems supportive of their work.

Regarding the lesson plan issue, the contract states “The development of lesson plans by and for the use of the teacher is a professional responsibility vital to effective teaching.” I agree that there is a difference between format and content, but can you imagine as a principal having 50 teachers each turn in a lesson plan of their own devising, deciding how to organize it and what to include. Can you imagine trying to build an aligned curriculum and provide useful feedback to teachers in that scenerio. I think it is a professional responsibility to participate in a collaborative learning community, aka school, where using common language, tools and systems is critical to success. I believe teachers have a right to adequate working conditions, but preventing principals for getting lesson plans in a school-wide format is a good example of contracts run amok.

The SBO Staffing and Transfer plan began in the ealry nineties in International HS at LaGuardia … eventually negotiated into the contract … totally agree … the plan made the entire school community responsible for hiring … it built communty … Klein is committed to the William Ouchi (”Schools That Work”) “Principal as CEO” model … based upon the theory that one person, the principal must be the core of school accountability … and ultimately the guy at the top, the mayor, is responsible … Ouchi argues that collabortive models hold no single person accountable ant lead to the absence of leadership and gridlock.

You might want to look into the SBO for Transfer & Hiring that used to be part of the NYC teacher contract. It make hiring a collaborative responsibility of the whole school community, and principals liked it, too. (I’ve not been able to find a principal who didn’t like it or who found it an impediment to getting the people they wanted into their schools.)

Bloomberg/Klein insisted on its removal a few years ago. Insisted.

Yes, there was a model for collaboration right there in the contract. Hundreds of schools used it — in large part because it allowed teachers and admins to work together to prevent the crappy seniority-based transfers from messing with their schools.

Bloomberg/Klein insisted on its removal a few years ago. Insisted.

Unfortunately, the folks in charge are not interested in collaboration and they appear to be absolving themselves from responsibility for supporting leaders growth and development through their careers.

Superintendents, state DOE folks, ed school folks and people from a mostly independent reform group. Oh, yeah, a token appearance by the state superintendent (i.e. 15 minutes, once). No practicing school admins were invited. No practicing teachers were invited. No members of the NEA or professional association were invited.

The committee would come up with stuff, and then DOE folks would work it over for the next meeting a couple of months later. And then the same process, again. The state DOE folks got what they wanted in the beginning, despite what others in the room kept pushing for, because they had the regulatory power in the first place and they controlled the documents’ revision processes.

If that is the dynamic — and its the only one I know about, not having been able to find insider accounts of how it has worked in other states or for teacher licensure — how can teachers or school administrators wrest control of licensure from the states, if that is what you want?

See prior GothamSchools essays on “value added” models, etc.