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I think children need unions. Who is standing up for children in these labor talks? Interesting thoughts on unions from a teacher: http://ahighcall.blogspot.com/search?q=unions

Teachers are often treated like children – forced to participate in silly “warm-up” activities during professional development, not allowed to disagree with their superiors, having letters put in their files for simple workplace disputes that could be resolved with mediation, but often are treated as disciplinary issues.

I think Teach for America has been terrible for the profession as well as Teaching Fellows programs because both promote a philosophy that there is no particular skill set needed to teach nor body of knowledge or expertise that accumulate over time. One can simply do a 6-week training and voila you’re a teacher; not just a teacher but often a better teacher than those who have been at it for years.

Dissenter,

The question is not whether they’ve lost ground relative to other fields. The question is whether they’ve lost ground relative to their predecessors.

There’s no question that non-unionized workers — and most unionized workers — have lost a ton of ground with respect to pensions and health benefits. Shifts from defined benefits to defined contributions have hurt workers. Shifts to 401k — especially without employer matching — has hurt workers. Increases in the % of health insurance taken out of employee salaries have hurt workers.

The fact that others have suffer more does not mean that teachers have not lost as well. However, we can look at the disparity and see that the mere fact that key labor battles were once won does not mean that we can rest on those laurels. Gains can be lost, and labor unions are one way for workers to fight against that.

(I know that in a perfectly transparent and rational market, whether something is a employer or employee contribution doesn’t matter, but for different tax treatments. However, the market is not perfectly transparent and rational. Workers and potential workers do not have all the information and they tend not to respond to the information they do have with perfect rationality. Thus, theses kinds of shifts erode gains by redefining the status quo without workers quite being aware of it.)

Sodeskune I can definitely say without qualification that the best math and Latin teacher I ever had did not have an “education” degree. It’s worthless. And I put money on the fact that in another 20 years, the rest of the education establishment will realize this as well.

My experiences are not NYC although the other teacher in the family had some amazing stories about NYC tyrant principals. For her, a dynamic Black woman from generational poverty, teaching in the projects of Bed Stuy was pure joy, until NYC won the Broad Prize. At that, her principal adopting all of their disgusting approaches and even drove all of the TFAers out of the school. I’ll second the comment about treating teachers like children and their silly warm-up games.

But I want to focus on the reason why growth models will always be unfair to neighborhood school teachers. And the refusal of the central offices to recognize the differences leads to so much of the demeaning mentality and makes it inevitable that we’d be second class citizens at best.

You have to expect more violence down here but I literally can’t remember anymore when we had a year without losing a student to murder and I can’t remember a year when one of our students didn’t kill someone, and then when you consider the trauma of family members. … For instance, the two middle schoolers in our area who watched last night as their father murdered their mother and then commiitted suicide won’t be ready to learn in four weeks.

My best single example of why models can’t account for variance was my year before last. I mostly had seniors, 1/2rd on IEPs, 504s, or the equivalent, but none of my mentally ill patients were disruptive like they had been their earlier years, and the kids on parole saw light at the end of the tunnel.

And the few times I got punched I got the best of it because I got to rag on the students who accidently hit me, being able to bring the class down in laughter everytime I’d needed to tease one girl, “so, that’s why you attacked me? am I safe now?” I did, however, get bloody plenty of times helping out with the fights that didn’t involve my students. A VAM would have shown outstanding growth in test scores, and I was elected teacher of the year for the school, the area, and runner-up for the district. I saw the freshmen and middle school teachers with their “thousand yard stares” but my year was a breeze

But at the semester a veteran teacher couldn’t take it anymore and he got my seniors and I got his freshmen. Before NCLB when I taught freshmen, the violence was worse, but we got some disciplinary backing. And everyone knew I’m a popular teacher with excellent classroom management. They ate my lunch. It was obvious the first week that freshment knew they had a license to do anything. I’d been buddies with the excellent assistant principal for years, and even though I hadn’t had to write referrals for seniors, I knew they had gotten worse in assessing discipline. But I had no idea about what the frshman teachers across the hall had been dealing with. Students knew that NO referrals would be worked and reacted predictably.

I’ve faced some incredible challenges but this was the first time I had completely failed. Did I change from being a truly great teacher in Decemebr to a complete incompetent in January? Did the challenge of freshmen completely change between the gang war of 2000 to 2007 when it should have been easier because violence was at a lull?

One thing that changed was that we got a superintendent from the Borad School who brought his theories and went around the city proclaiming that teachers who want disciplinary backing are incompetents with low expectations and racists.

Day in and day out, there is no comparison between the Algebra I teacher with the majority of his freshmen having multiple IEPs and other conditions, mostly including emotional and behavioral disorders and the Algebra II teacher who has juniors who have matured and who see the finish line, after the majority have dropped out.

The ultimate absurdity is when the same person is equally skilled in teaching both classes but the growth models show that 1/2 of him is a great teacher and the other is an incompetent.

To submit to such an accountability regime would be the ultimate in professional degradation.

I meant to say Broad School, not Borad School, but my typo raises a question. Maybe those theorists should be called the Borat School. After all, their educational policies read like satire.

I want to look at this more macro, and I hope this isn’t too roundabout.

My grandmother’s sister was a NYC school teacher, as were a number of their peers. She started teaching during the Depression (not this one, the one in the ’20s). Back then, being a NYC school teacher was one of the best, if not THE best, careers for a smart woman.

Flash forward 40 years and my mom’s generation was starting to look at law school or med school. Teaching was no longer as alluring. Not less noble, just not top draw.

Flash forward another 40 years to the present. One of my kids’ teachers — who clearly has a “calling” and a love for teaching — left last year for a HUGE raise to teach somewhere on Lawn Guyland.

So here’s the point: How can we get the best, brightest, most motivated teachers when teaching doesn’t have the allure it once did, there are other career options open, and NYC gets whomped in the current salary market, even amongst teachers – let alone across all professions? That, I would suggest — not whether to work the day before Labor Day and hang around into July 2010 — is what we should be focusing on.

ceolaf,

Within this CURRENT world, we are not able to RETAIN those teachers who we should — the motivated ones with the ability, interest, and initiative to seek greener pastures. Those are EXACTLY the ones we should be making efforts to retain.

Similar, btw, for younger NYPD officers. In both cases, NYC taxpayers are provided the training and screening for the burbs. Where’s the thanks?

And in both cases “tiering” the retirement plans leads to less employee loyalty.

“Flail?” “Futile?” Sheesh. But hey, thanks for the wisdom.

Dissenter, I would suggest that the type of student you were and the school you attended were different than the typical NYC classroom. In my 9th grade classroom, for example, it is not uncommon to find students who read on a 1st grade level with students who are reading above grade level and everything in between. The challenge for me and other teachers is how to create curriculum that meets the needs of all these different levels. It’s a challenge that gets easier as you develop as a teacher. An experienced teacher understands how to present material at various levels so that every student can be engaged in some meaningful way. I have mentored and coached new teachers and I can tell you that differentiating instruction and scaffolding instruction are the biggest challenges for them, particularly TFA and TFs. The individuals who are in TFA and TFs are people who were quite successful in school and they are often shocked at the low level of skills and abilities many of our students have. They are often thrown into schools with very needy students. These teachers have a very difficult time at first designing curriculum that meets the needs of all learners. They have a lot of dedication and caring. They need time to hone their craft – experience really does matter in teaching.

Leonie,

I know you really believe that class size stuff, but I think you are wrong here.

I don’t know any teachers who changed schools or left the NYC public schools because of class size. Sure, they complain about class size, and they might even remark that class size is better in their new school, but non one I know has actually made a decision based on class size. On the other hand, lack of support from their principals, lack of guidance from experienced and proficient teachers have often been cited. So has the school climate and the types of students — usually in terns of preparation and discipline.

Beyond my own personal knowledge, research is on my side. Teachers leave because they don’t feel supported or that they can grow there. I don’t know of any studies (can you cite any?) that list class size as a primary reason for leaving a school or district.

Obviously, smaller classes are easier for teachers. Fewer papers to grade, fewer students to plan for, etc.. But I don’t think teachers leave because the job is hard. They leave — from what I’ve seen and experienced — when they believe the job is impossible now and looking forward. And that comes down to lack of support.

I have no interest in entering this debate with this anti-union administrator,
but,
just to be careful about how words get thrown around,
stupidly,

a teacher in my first school was opening an old (ancient) window,
which dropped unexpectedly from a fixed position.
He lost his finger.

I think the children need a union.

Ceolaf: there are many studies that show that lowering class size leads to higher teacher morale and lower attrition; also many surveys which reveal that a main source of dissatisfaction among teachers who are considering leaving the profession are their large class sizes, particularly in high needs urban school districts.

In New York City, a survey done in 2004 showed that the conditions teachers said would most likely to entice them to stay in their jobs longer were a higher salary, smaller classes, and betterdiscipline and safety. Since then salaries have risen significantly, but class sizes have shown little improvement.

These findings have been replicated in a national survey of teachers who left their
jobs in urban high-poverty schools, who said that offering higher salaries (69.9%),
smaller classes (42.5%) or improving student discipline (39.3%) would be the best steps
schools might take to improve retention.

Class size, in turn, has direct effects also lowers disciplinary problems, according to many studies. In another national survey, 62% of teachers agree that overcrowding and large class sizes are an importantcontributor to discipline problems in schools.

As Neil Theobald, a national expert on reducing teacher attrition in urban school districts, has written, based on his surveys of teachers in high needs schools in the Midwest, “What is most striking in the surveyresponses is the utter lack of comments about ‘difficult kids’ … What the surveys focuson instead is the difficulty in remaining altruistic in the face of a perceived lack of
resources in some districts for providing smaller classes and the personal attention
children need.”

I agree that class size is important to teachers. I agree that when teachers think about what school to transfer to or at which school to take a position that class size comes up. I agree that when teachers complain about why there job is so hard that class size is fairly high on the list.

However, I don’t think that class size is what pushes them out. It’s not the last straw, or the issue that they didn’t know about. From what I’ve seen and from what I’ve read, when teachers finally make the decision to leave it is not about class size.

Obviously, if it is not the straw that broke the camel’s back it could still have been a contributory straw. I’m would love see good research about teachers who have decided to leave. It is the decision to leave that interest me, on this point. Not the decision about where to go once the decision to leave has been made.

I would love to read more about the studies and reports your allude to, Leonie. Do you have a place on your site that lists research on CSR’s impacts on teachers?

This isn’t my field so I was shocked to read something I had never heard of in Charles Payne’s So Much Reform. The Sanders study is frequently cited to debunk the roll of class size, but that study found (as I recall) that class size was more important with Black kids from poverty.

That fits my personal experience.

Class size depends on a lot of factors. I’ve had sixty seniors in a class for weeks where they couldn’t move their elbows. That wasn’t near the challenge of 43 freshmen or 44 sophomores.

When I first started teaching with freshmen, the practical limit was somewhere near 33. Now I’d say at my school that fter the 28th, or 29th freshman, problems go up geometretically. My administration is arguing, perhaps correctly, that our population mix has reached the point where we shouldn’t have more than 20. The brass won’t buy it though.

I written about the mess four years ago when we became The Wire. How did we solve it? We just hired more teachers the next year. All of a sudden, problems that seemed impossible seemed managable. Then when we we back to the normal allotment, problems increased again.

Real solutions require more teachers of real high quality and better policies. Class size, I bet, is an adequate substitute for real reform and needs to be involved as a supplement.

As Mr. M. points out, this thread was not originally about class size, but I’l like to point out a few important things about the issue that we need to keep in mind.

* We don’t know how the affects of class size reduction (CSR) vary across grades or subject areas.

* I’ve don’t think there’s been even one study that compares class size (i.e. number of kids in a room) to crowding (i.e. how much space in the room for each kid there).

* People occasionally try to hit this from the other side, by adding paras or additional teachers to large & overcrowded classes. Results have been mixed.

* Class size is perhaps the most expensive possible reform, requiring additional staffing, additional rooms and even additional buildings.

* There were serious problems in poor and minority-dominated districts CA when the state mandated CSR.

Anyone who has taught classes of different sizes knows that it just feels different. It’s less draining/exhausting every day to have 30 students in a room than 35 or 40. Teachers certainly feel — and I’ve been through this myself — that they can do a better job with fewer students. It is quite possible that the areas in which it makes the biggest difference are those they we don’t know how to test or measure.

My biggest concern here is that it appears to me that CSR advocates often present it as a panacea, that through real CSR that we can address all of the major issues facing education. I have found that the claims for its effectiveness are far ahead of substantive research, and they are rarely balanced out by examining the costs — which are quite significant for a dominant market player like we have with the NYC DOE (as compared to some small district on LI).

John, this part of your comment is one of the most important points made:

“I written about the mess four years ago when we became The Wire. How did we
solve it? We just hired more teachers the next year. All of a sudden, problems
that seemed impossible seemed managable. Then when we we back to the normal
allotment, problems increased again.”

Just hire more teacehrs to solve basic problems, the notorious “throwing cash at the problem” we see debunked by the ed deformers. I wonder where you guys got these teachers from? Were they vetted for quality? This is what the deformers say- teacher quality is more important than class size. But what you did was raise the quality of all teachers because TQ does not exist in a vacuum.

When I raised this issue at a forum with Rotherham and Russo, Jennifer Medina from the NY Times, and Richard Colvin of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College, Columbia University. Colvin was incensed when I compared class size in urban areas to suburban schools, saying how the cost was astronomical. “Some people drive Mercedes but not everyone needs to drive a Mercedes,” he said. “You can still get around in a Toyota.”

Of course, when the financial crisis hit and Bear Sterns and AIG needed enormous funding, all the money that would have enable urban kids to sit in a Mercedes magically appeared.

In NYC they supposedly cut crime by putting lots more police on the streets. They were not vetted for quality first. Some were good and some were bad, but their very presence as a resource had an impact. I say instead of using that stimulus money to reward school systems that kill tenure or expand charter schools, try a few experiments by inundating the very worst schools with masses of teachers, social workers and other services – sort of an expansion of the Harlem Children’s Zone. But no one wants to try that. Better to target teachers and unions by using the “it’s so hard to get rid of bad teachers” sob story as an excuse not to reduce class size.

I dare say that in Mr. T’s senior class of 60, he didn’t have 60 lesson plans per day, based on how each student scored on an IBM-crunch test.

I sure didn’t! Had I had to put up with a lot of that NYC cya, or even what our young teachers and tested teachers do, I’d have put my keys on the desk and walked out. As it was, I’ve done something the last few years when the system fouled up that I never did before – I’d tell, not ask, my principal that tommorrow Im taking a mental health day.

Too many of the best most dedicated teachers today keep burning themselves out.
Getting back to the original thread, in NYC and elsewhere, they could show respect for teachers and improve teaching conditions and thus improve teacher quality if the bosses would just think a few minutes, put pencil to paper, make some honest evaluation of evidence, and stop buying the dumbest ideas promoted by the “reformers.”

Stop thinking of teachers as dispensable commodities. The experiments they try on us may seem neat at their cocktail parties, but like Frank McCourt said, these “reformers” especially in NY are dilletants. (except he spelled it correctly.)