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guest perspective
October 27, 2009
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — up by 18 points over his opponent in the latest polls and with Election Day next week — apparently is not willing to use his position to forge new ground with the teacher contract he is negotiating with the United Federation of Teachers. The current contract expires Saturday.
In the first apparent “leak” from the tight-lipped Bloomberg camp, Chris Cerf, now a Bloomberg campaign education advisor and until recently Joel Klein’s deputy chancellor, announced in a WNYC interview yesterday that the Mayor agreed with Bill Thompson that performance bonuses should be handed out to teachers on a school-wide basis, rather than based on the individual merit of teachers. This disclosure, first covered by GothamSchools, likely was a calculated move to dampen expectations before a contract agreement is announced.
If true, the Mayor is sacrificing the straightforward principle that good teachers should get paid more than bad teachers. Now, under the Mayor’s plan (consistent with the UFT’s long held stance), if any bonuses are handed out in a school, everyone — regardless of merit — will get a bonus. Kind of makes it hard to call it merit pay anymore!
This move ends any speculation about whether the Mayor intended to fight the UFT to open up the contract to allow greater education reforms in the City. Bloomberg, despite his vast wealth and Type A personality, apparently has no stomach for a fight with the UFT on the eve of his attempt to secure a third term, after earlier repealing the city’s term-limit law.
Bloomberg’s apparent cave on teacher performance pay may signal a desire to get a contract agreement at any cost, which would mean other key reforms may be dead as well. The casualty list likely includes: removing the data “firewall,” placing time limits on the famed ATRs, and clearing out the City’s “rubber rooms.” Let’s take each in turn.
Student data “firewall”: Last year, the UFT and the state teachers union got the Governor and State Legislature to approve a law that prohibits districts from considering the performance of a teacher’s students when deciding whether that teacher has earned the right to lifetime tenure. The ban on looking at this data is called a “firewall.”
President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have made clear that they will view such laws as negative factors when ranking state applications for grants from the $4 billion Race to the Top fund. In response, California recently repealed its data firewall, and Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle has called for Wisconsin’s firewall to be repealed. Nevada — a state used to gambling — is the only state rolling the dice and refusing to repeal its firewall.
In this context, the Mayor should demand an agreement from the UFT to allow New York’s law to sunset next April.
ATRs: ATRs have nothing to do with ATVs. This acronym refers to Absent Teacher Reserves in New York City. Presently, when teachers are “excessed,” they are placed in a reserve pool rather than being fired. The idea is to give the affected teachers time to get other employment within the City school system. But the UFT has taken this protection to an absurd length. In the current contract, which expires Saturday, there is no time limit on how long teachers can stay in these paid positions. This is costing the City millions of dollars annually, an expense that is hard to justify in these economic times.
Further, the city’s budget officials insisted that Chancellor Joel Klein, who opposes the unlimited teacher reserve positions, to order principals to hire teachers from these pools even if they could find a better-qualified candidate who was not on the ATR roster. Assuming that the quality of teaching is the number one factor in the success or failure of a child’s education, this is an outrageous practice.
But, the UFT feels job protection for adults is more important than ensuring every child a quality teacher. In fact, when it negotiated the ATR provisions in the current contract, the UFT, on its website bragged that the new contract language: “gives our members a no-layoff provision.” At first, the UFT did not admit the implications of this policy — cautioning its membership that “up until now, we have downplayed this gain” for fear of complicating negotiations to finalize the language.
Rubber Rooms: Steven Brill, in a devastating New Yorker article, highlighted another absurdity of union policies. In New York City, when the City finds a teacher to be incompetent or otherwise in need of removal, they are corralled in office spaces throughout the City because it is too time consuming and expensive to remove a teacher in New York City thanks to union-inspired protections for tenured teachers.
Let’s hope that the Mayor’s apparent decision to abandon the notion of paying good teachers more than bad teachers does not indicate an across-the-board caving on these other three key issues — allowing the use of student data in tenure decisions, placing a time limit on ATRs, and eliminating “rubber rooms” through tenure reform.
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October 27th, 2009 11:18 am
very disappointed in Bloomberg’s weak stance against the UFT
until we abandon the notion that NYC Public Schools are about “jobs”, and instead realize it should be about “education”, things will only get worse
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October 27th, 2009 1:54 pm
[...] Carroll of the Foundation for Education Reform and Responsibility seized on a statement by Cerf, on the Brian Lehrer show yesterday, that teacher bonuses should continue to [...]
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October 27th, 2009 4:52 pm
Elsewhere on this site, Chris Cerf, former Deputy Chancellor and current Bloomberg campaign education advisor, respectfully takes exception with my characterization of his comments on WNYC. His full comments are posted in response to the blog entry on Cerf and Thompson debating education on WNYC.
In short, Chris claims that his remarks were not “news” and simply reflected Bloomberg’s longstanding position on performance pay. And, he suggests I misunderstand how performance pay works under the existing contract.
I will concede based on my exchange with him today that he clearly did not intend to make news with his comments on performance pay. What the comments make clear, though, is that Mayor Bloomberg is comfortable with the performance pay provisions of the existing contract. This is news because it is the first indication of what Bloomberg’s stance on this issue would be in the current negotiations, negotiations in which he could have chosen to be much bolder.
I have no problem with school-wide bonuses. In fact, I praised Denver and Houston, which provide schoolwide bonuses when a school performs well. But I also believe that in such schools a teacher who is exceptional should get paid more than a teacher who is average or below average.
That is not a right or left issue as Chris cutely tries to suggest, while staking out the “center” for himself. D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and D.C. Superintendent Michelle Rhee are making the case for individual merit pay and neither are right-wingers.
And as for his reference to school-based labor-management committees being free to award merit as they see fit, Chris knows the union position on this issue and thus the outcome of that process.
The real issue is why is the Mayor — with $12 billion in his pocket, a Type A personality, and the election all but won — being timid? This is the time to swing for the fences.
The Mayor has done much that is admirable on education, and as Chris Cerf knows I have praised the Mayor repeatedly for his accomplishments. But, the 165-page contract as written is the number one constraint that will stop Joel Klein and Michael Bloomberg from taking reform to the next level. This is important not because this will make wonks happy but because it will enable them to do right by children.
The Mayor fought hard to get mayoral control. But the Mayor is not really in control if he can’t pay good teachers better than bad teachers, has to corral incompetent teachers in rubber rooms, and pay teachers who aren’t teaching indefinitely in Absent Teacher Reserves (ATRs). These are contractual issues.
And that’s why this round of negotiations matters.
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October 27th, 2009 7:04 pm
Let’s talk standardized tests, Mr. Carroll.
You know the current ones used by New York City and New York State to measure student performance are jive, yes?
The city tests have been systematically dumbed down by the mayor and the chancellor so that the scores go up even as the education levels of students are stagnant or actually decrease.
Same happens at the state level. I have been teaching for eight years - when I compare the Regents exams from 8 years ago to now, I see a test that is easier, a rubric that is so much more “magical” (i.e., makes all the bad numbers “magically” disappear and everybody gets over 65!), and results that come from in-house grading.
There has been no progress during the Klein/Bloomberg years in education if analysts would only dig below the propaganda of Tweed/City Hall and their flacks at the Post, the News and the Times and look at the actual level of education students show in circumstances that aren’t controlled by either state or city officials.
We have some evidence for this, albeit only in the fourth and eighth grades, where NYC and NY State students have shown little to no progress in math or ELA and in some cases have actually shown regress.
We also have evidence from NYC public school graduates who go on to CUNY and SUNY community colleges and need a dozen credits of remediation before they can start their 101 classes.
Sol Stern at City Journal seems to have noticed this and has declared the Bloombergian reforms and education miracle phony.
So has Diane Ravitch.
But you seem to believe Mr. Bloomberg’s and Mr. Klein’s education reforms are real and indeed want to double down on them by using the state and city tests to track teacher performance and pay the “good” teachers while firing the “bad” ones.
Cuz’ you know that that bonus pay/performance pay system worked so well on Wall Street the last few years where thousands of crooks at Wall Street firms cooked the books, traded worthless collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps as if they were worth billions, and paid themselves seven figure bonuses all the while driving these very same firms into bankruptcy or government bailout.
Boy, what a great idea - taking the system that DIRECTLY led to near financial collapse last year and bringing it to education.
Then we’ll have an education miracle in every city and state!
So long as the tests (and rubrics are controlled by said city and state officials and graded in-house, of course.
You know, smaller class sizes and more and better technology would go a long way toward solving so many of the education problems in the country.
So would teaching children as “whole people” rather than little test takers and pieces of data to be tracked.
Teaching life skills classes, conflict resolution, and emotional awareness as well reading, writing, arithmetic and the rest would go a long way toward helping students to learn personal responsibility, build self-esteem (through doing esteemable things), and develop as whole healthy human beings who are aware of their thoughts and feelings and have the ability to think critically rather than become the dim little machine cogs you seem to want to create to be just smart enough to run the economy but not smart enough to know you’re jiving them.
And moving society back to a 60 hour, 6 day work week (a typical charter school week) IS jiving them, let me tell you.
That’s what I like to call a Bridge to the Nineteenth Century.
Which is what we are getting courtesy of you and the other education deformers.
Luckily I was Jesuit-trained to know jive and call it such when I see it.
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October 27th, 2009 7:37 pm
Reality-Based Educator,
Folks should list their real names, especially when they take shots at people. You just disqualified yourself for a “Profile in Courage” award.
Let me make a few points.
I didn’t realize the Jesuits were teaching people to use words like “jive.”
The city doesn’t control the content or scoring of state exams (grades 3-8) or the Regents exams. The biggest problem on both has been the state (not Bloomberg or Klein) dropping the cut scores to alter the testing outcomes.
Those who oppose assessment in any form — put aside the merits or lack thereof of the particular ones used by the state — must love living in the dark. If we agree that educated students should know something, then we need to be able to measure whether they actually do. An argument against a particular testing instrument isn’t an argument against all testing. You need to sharpen your critique a bit.
Lastly, reasonable people can disagree on what metric to use to sort good teachers from bad teachers, but it makes no sense to pay them the same. I did not suggest using state exams. I am open to all kinds of possibilities.
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October 27th, 2009 7:52 pm
Jive: Deceptive, exaggerated, or meaningless talk. A perfect word for the Klein/Bloomberg DOE.
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October 27th, 2009 8:49 pm
Mr. Carroll,
The content of your article and comments, while measured and reasonable in tone, contains questionable assumptions, circular reasoning and shifting explanations.
First of all, you assume that a teacher who achieves high test scores is, ipso facto, a superior teacher. Why are they a superior teacher? Because their students receive higher test scores! But these exams are a debased measure, manipulated for political purposes. Test scores have improved because of the dumbing down of the tests, loophole-filled rubrics, the altering of cut scores and the focus, under pain of professional death, on testing and nothing but testing. A teacher whose students get higher test scores than colleagues may be nothing more than a drill and kill martinet. Is that who you would reward as a teacher? Sorry, but no matter what Michael Bloomberg thinks, self-respecting teachers are not sales reps who can be baited and threatened with ever-increasing sales targets. But, then again, self-respecting teachers are among those being attacked, for precisely that reason.
Hold an axe above the heads of principals and teachers and demand higher test scores, and by God you’ll get higher test scores, but their validity will inherently be questionable anywhere but in the Alice and Wonderland world of corporate ed deform, where separate and unequal schools are passed off as a civil rights initiative. If you doubt this, speak to some high school math teachers who are trying to teach higher level math to children who have been the subjects of the mayor’s “accomplishments.”
As for your repeated reference to the UFT contract as the dark force holding back the New Millenium of Education Reform, I’ll remind you that the UFT contract is the ONLY thing that restricts class size in NYC. Without those contractual provisions, Klein would place fifty students in a class, although his and your pet boutique charter schools, with their corporate and foundation money, brag about their reduced class size. The hypocrisy and inequity of that fact is conveniently overlooked, but still stands.
As for Fenty and Rhee, and all the other ed deformers who flatter themselves about how politically progressive they are, while helping to destroy a public good that is a cornerstone of representative democracy, they are objectively right-wing. They can deceive themselves and others, but destroying public education and replacing it with private, for-profit charter chains - and make no mistake, the gravitational pull of unchecked free market ideology will inevitably bring that about - is not a progressive act. Nor is busting unions, even when masked by the hollow rhetoric of “doing right by children.”
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October 27th, 2009 9:01 pm
Mr. Fiorillo,
First of all, I appreciate that you are not wishy washy and that you list your name.
On testing, I am asking if we can get a consensus on the proposition that good teachers should be paid more than bad teachers. Do you agree?
If so, we then can have a separate argument on how to sort good teachers from not-so-good teachers. Possible methods include state tests (I agree these are flawed in various ways), nationally normed tests (which can be used to show gains over time), structured evaluations by other teachers, structured evaluations by outside instructional experts, etc.
I am not dogmatic on which method should be used. Perhaps to your surprise I am highly skeptical of the monkeying around with state tests.
I think the challenge is coming up with a method that is viewed as fair and unbiased by teachers themselves, and as mission aligned by school leaders.
What would you suggest if you were given this assignment to figure out? Assume for my thought experiment that you were delegated the authority to figure this out and Klein and Bloomberg had to follow your advice. Hopefully, that assumption would keep out of the thought experiment your strong feelings about them and their motives.
Seriously, I am interested in your thoughts?
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October 27th, 2009 9:17 pm
Michael F. Thank you for your salient points.
No one mentioned the fact about the shameful credit recovery programs that inflated the graduation rate where 70% of the 2008 graduates are taking remedial classes at 6 community colleges and are ill-prepared for the demands and rigors of higher education. I feel that the State had to water/dump down the Regents because NYC has the largest school system in the nation and the Mega-Billionaire Mayor’s political career hinged on the outcome of these standarized exams. When you have so much money like Bloomberg, you will have many politicos in your pocket; the power of the dollar will bring about “favorable outcomes and accomplishments”. The mayor has based his career on reforming education through deformation. The mayor will not accept failure but will use spurious, fuzzy math to display his distorted data. His deformation of education has set back economically the graduates of 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. -
October 27th, 2009 10:16 pm
I love blogs.
“I noticed that…” (Again, another person who doesn’t have the courage of their convictions to list their real name.)
Do you really believe that the State Education Department, which controls the state tests, dumbed down the questions and lowered the cut scores in order to help the “billionaire mayor”?
The Commissioner of the State Education Department is appointed by the State Board of Regents. The Board of Regents are appointed by a joint session of the State Legislature, which means the Democrats numerically control these appointments.
So, are you saying that Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver is in Bloomberg’s pocket? Come on.
Are you saying the Senate Democrats are in his pocket? That is even more absurd. Remember Bloomberg gave/raised about $500,000 or so to the Senate Republicans.
Please connect the specific dots for me. A rant is always fun and therapeutic, but how precisely did this conspiracy you allege take place?
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October 27th, 2009 10:59 pm
Tom,
I’m glad you’re here, but please understand the norms of this community. Many people on this blog don’t use their real names. Griping about it in each of your comments will not change that fact, but will only serve to agitate people who might otherwise appreciate a genuine discussion. Also, please trust your readers: most of us on GothamSchools already have strong opinions about Steven Brill, ATRs and rubber rooms. In the future, there’s no need to spell out the rudiments of the NYC school reform debate in your posts.
“On testing, I am asking if we can get a consensus on the proposition that good teachers should be paid more than bad teachers. Do you agree?”
I disagree, actually. I agree that we should have a proper teacher evaluation system, and we should have a proper, expedited hearing process so that unsatisfactory teachers are dismissed. But I don’t see how merit pay will improve schooling for my students. I think it creates the potential for bitter competitiveness and backstabbing among teachers, in a field where cooperation and collaboration are critical. I think it would motivate teachers to chase after metrics, whatever they are, rather than seeking the overall education of each student. And, call me skeptical, but I don’t see how you’ll ever isolate a single teacher’s impact on student learning, at least in the secondary grades. Why should only the ELA teacher receive credit for improvements on ELA tests, if we’re teaching literacy skills in social studies (and science, and math, and so on…)? This is only one of many problems with trying to measure teacher performance individually, and I personally have zero interest in solving these measurement problems. I have no interest because I don’t care if I get paid more than the teacher in the next room–why would I want that anyway? Let me work with my colleagues to insure that our students perform well, and, if you want to give us merit pay, let our faculty share it as we see fit.
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October 27th, 2009 11:49 pm
Mr. Carroll,
Have you head of The Federalists Papers? Are you aware they their authors did not publish them with their real names? Do you think that Hamilton, Madison and John Jay lacked the courage of their convictions?
They made their reasoning clear, however. You have made claims about why you think Bloomberg should do, but not provide reasonsing for it, or mechanisms for how these changes that you advocate will actually help students.
Frankly, I would far prefer strong reasoning and explanation to legal names, if I had to choose.
I would also prefer thoughtful disagreement to ad hominen attack, but based upon what you have written here, I know what to expect.
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October 28th, 2009 5:52 am
Mr. Carroll,
Your seeking consensus on this sounds reasonable, but Fort Tryon Teacher responded appropriately: most teachers, unlike ed deformers who place such faith in the pseudo-scientific conceit that everything in the classroom can be measured and quantified, know that the range of influences and variables affecting a child’s performance are immense. The web of causation is too interwoven with psychological, social, political and economic factors to be neatly reduced to a number.
You cover yourself by criticizing the obvious gaming of state and city tests, but the reality is that other methods of assessing teachers are political non-starters within the current discourse and are not seriously considered. While you claim a lack of dogmatism, other’s hands shake with the passion of True Believers, and are busy looking for heretics to sacrifice.
Again, your “reasonable” proposals are based on the premise - a fundamentally ideological one - that teacher quality is all that really matters. This point has behind it 25 years of political momentum driven by anti-public school and anti-teacher rhetoric, beginning with “A Nation at Risk.” It has made it virtually impossible to discuss other factors affecting student performance in the mainstream media. Those who attempt to do so are shouted down with claims of being “special interests,” “supporters of the status quo” - that’s a hot one, coming as it does from a self-selected group of billionaires - and various other goldbrickers and abusers of children.
As for the assignment you’ve given me, I’m going to decline, since I don’t want to be placed in a box where I must accept the premises driving this intentionally narrow debate. You say in your comment that the challenge is coming up with fair and unbiased teacher assessments. That’s precisely the point, when the discussion is so skewed by power, ideology and propaganda.
Readers may think I harp on the point too much, but the debate about education needs the doors and windows opened wide, with many voices having not just a say, but some equity in the decision-making process. Mayoral control, as a vehicle for privatization of the urban schools, has functioned to strip away input and equity from the system and the debate, allowing self-interested plutocrats to buy policy and determine the very language used to talk about the issue. Give parents and teachers a voice and a vote, which has been striped away from them, and I will reconsider your offer.
So, thanks, but no thanks.
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October 28th, 2009 8:24 am
Michael F,
I don’t think that Mr. Carroll’s desired policy changes rely much on the idea that teacher quality being important.
Breaking down the firewall might, yes. But only a VERY narrow idea of what constitutes teachers quality, one that the rich and powerful would not abide for their own children’s parents. Care, compassion, nurturing? The ability to teacher so-called 21st century skills — including what have long been known as higher order thinking skills. Heck, even more importantly, it assumes that there is some sort of more-or-less stable skill in teachers that makes some of them more effective as raising test scores than others — something without any basis in science or research, and certainly far outside the bounds of test specifications.
Ending the ATR? I don’t see any argument about teacher quality there. Rather, he makes reference to teacher qualifications. There are plenty of qualified teachers out there of rather low quality. He really makes no effort in his presentation to explain what qualification has to to with quality, and certainly presents no argument about how anyone has ascertained the quality of those in the ART pool vs. the quality of other applicants. My guess — and this is only an informed *guess* — is that he is speaking of college reputation and SAT scores, traits that TFAers have a greater quality than most ATR teachers.
The rubber rooms have never been about teacher quality, and he doesn’t make the argument that they are. They are about the simple idea that the accusation is not proof of the offense. Of course, his support for the immediate dismissal of those currently sent to the rubber rooms is quite at odds with his previous two objections, because no one is sent to the rubber room for low qualifications or for producing low test scores. In the best cases, they are sent for extreme violations of a sort of teachers quality that he does not acknowledge exists, and in the worst being rather inept at workplace politics.
He should read Aaron Pallas’s great piece from Monday on scaling programs up, certainly.
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October 28th, 2009 8:25 am
Fort Tyron Teacher, I disagree with you on differential pay, but I appreciate that you stated your position clearly and unequivocally.
Ceolaf Wolfheim, I guess the fact the many folks don’t use their real names doesn’t bother me as much when they are making substantive points. A number of folks on this blog routinely engage in uncivil attacks on other bloggers and on various public officials. When they cross the line and start doing that, I do indeed think they should reveal their names. Verbal “hit and runs” by anonymous sources are despicable. I don’t love any of the anonymity, but I will retreat from my more general objection.
Michael Fiorillo, I think I understand your position now, but if you don’t mind two more questions. First, do you think you can tell a good teacher from a bad teacher? Second, if so, is your primary concern about differential pay (a) with your lack of faith that anyone would ever fairly capture the difference between the two, or (b) do you — like Fort Tyron Teacher — simply believe that there is no reason to pay different quality teachers differently. Thanks in advance for responding.
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October 28th, 2009 9:44 am
Mr. Carroll,
Why should better teachers be paid more money than average teachers?
That’s a serious question.
According to economic models, the reason to do pay a more productive worker more money is that you can afford to by their greater productivity and another firm will pay that greater amount if you do not. This is why teachers makes so little money in the first place, after all. If they made more money for their employers in the short term, they would get paid more, else another employer would grab them. But teachers do not make districts, towns, cities or schools money, at least not in the short term. So, differential pay for teachers is not needed to keep them from going to another employer.
Another economic argument might be that people respond to incentives, and that the potential for greater pay could spur teachers on to greater or more productive work. Unfortunately, the research has not shown this to be case. First, we already know that teachers are not particular sensitive to money as an incentive, else they wouldn’t have gone into teaching in the first place. That is, they would choose a field with much higher ceilings on income. Second, the kinds of bonuses or quality differentials (i.e. the amount of money we are talking about) that we are talking about have never been shown to have an impact on teachers’ work.
Of course, there’s the question of goals here. Cooperation is so important in improving education — e.g. inter-classroom visitation, mentoring, collaborative lesson planning, looking at student work together, etc. — that setting up a competition for pay has serious counter-productive implications who impact one would need to sure the positive implications outweigh.
We then have some practical questions. What sorts of teacher quality are we talking about. Can we really come to a decent agreement as to what makes or marks a high quality teacher? Are we going to be able to measure that reliably? Or, are we going to go by what we know we can measure reliably, even if we do not actually believe that that is what is most important to teacher quality? (The old saw, not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.)
I believe that I can identify good teaching and good teachers. Give me a about a day with a teacher, or a few observations of a single class (5 periods?), I can judge teacher quality. But that’s not the issue here. The issue is whether I think others can, and whether I think they’ll come to the same judgments that I do. To put in a differential pay scale by teacher quality, I would have to trust the judgments that others makes about teacher quality, be they by some standardized tool or otherwise. In other words, teacher quality might be one of those “I know it when I see it” sorts of things, which really cannot be done reliably at scale. You know, like attorney and pilot quality. Or potential spousal quality. Or gourmet food quality.
So, there are two fundamental questions here. Why SHOULD we pay better teachers more money? Do we think that we can reliably identify better from worse teachers in ways that we believe matter deeply to children’s most important learning? Before advocating differential pay for teachers, I would need strong answers to both of those questions. I’ve been thinking seriously about them for over 20 years now, and I still don’t have the kinds of answers I would need.
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October 28th, 2009 10:05 am
Ceolaf Wolfheim,
Very thoughtful response.
Couple additional comments:
1. The concern about teachers being pitted against each other can be resolved by stipulating that everyone who hits whatever metric is automatically entitled to a performance supplement. This is superior to having a fixed pie that assumes that one person’s gain is another person’s subtraction.
2. I agree the foundational question is should a better teacher getting paid more. This is not an empirical question, of course, but rather a matter of philosophy, or, if you will, taste. I have always thought it unfair that a better teacher gets paid the same as a lesser teacher, and I think that can have a corrosive effect. But, I understand that many others view the world differently.
3. I agree that if a performance system is implemented unfairly — or even perceived as unfair — it can have a decidedly negative impact on morale.
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October 28th, 2009 10:47 am
Mr. Caroll,
I don’t think that you answers quite hit my points.
1) That’s not how education funding works. There is not some magical and unlimited source of funding. In profit-driven organizations, better performance can be linked to short term profit, thus the better performances can be expected to pay for themselves. In education, we don’t have that dynamic. Money is budgeted for education, and then is budgeted within education. (I also question the idea that a “metric” is how teacher quality can meaningfully be judged, but that’s a different objection.
2) But WHY? You don’t have a reason for why teachers should get paid more? You cite some corrosive effect without any even any examples, let alone mechanism. Why not pay the teachers who work harder more? Why not pay the teachers who work longer hours more? Why not pay the teachers with the most challenging students more? Why not pay the teachers with the best students more? The best results? The greatest gains? Whose students win most awards in competitions? The fewest discipline problems? Who students become respected role models for other students? Shall I go on?
Your claim that we can deal with the supposed corrosive effects of ignoring teacher quality when it comes to setting pay assumes that there would be some sort agreement as to what constitutes teacher quality. If you pay teachers more by some definition, but a group of teachers in that school/district/state disagrees with that definition? Then you still have corrosive effects. In order to eliminate corrosive effects of pay you need to have universal agreement that the pay system is fair, but we know that that is not going to happen. So, that means that we need a pay system that offers the least corrosive effects. The common salary scale that all teachers can take equal advantage of was designed to do precisely that.
The fact is, as I have best been able to ascertain it, that teachers do NOT objects to being paid the same as other comparable or average teachers. The problems arise only when really poor teachers are paid more than they are. That is, when the comparisons are painfully obvious. Of course, most of us think that there are many teachers who should be removed from the classroom, and I think that these are the teachers whose pay other teachers find objectionable. If we properly evaluate teachers USING THE TOOLS WE CURRENTLY HAVE and remove them in a timely fashion USING THE PROCEDURES WE CURRENTLY HAVE, the corrosive effects that i think that you are mentioning would be taken care. Unless, of course, you are talking about theoretical corrosive effects that don’t actually exist in any real school. I mean, no teacher says, “I know that I’m 10% better teacher than him and I cannot accept that I don’t make more. Dammit, I am going to stop working so hard!”
3) I want to be rich. Right now. I want to be the grand super-duper-czar of all education in America. I want the body and hair I had when I was 22. And I’ve got to say, this bright yellow skin and pronounced overbite make it harder for people to take me seriously, so I wish that they were fixed. But simply wanting these things to be possible doesn’t make them so. The issue with differential pay for teacher is not merely that we need to make sure that it is fair. The issue that those who have thought and worked on it for decades have been unable to find a system that is universally seen as fair. You are advocating for something that it appears is not possible, like my calling for end of private schooling (bad for democracy, bad for America). The burden is on supporters of differential pay by quality to offer a system that addresses these issues.
You could get broad support — even among teachers — for being the better teachers more, if only you could convince them that you’ve got a valid and reliable way to discern teacher quality. Satisfying non-educators or people who do not — and might not ever have — work(ed) in the classroom is almost irrelevant. This is not an incidental requirement pay-for-performance. THIS is the central question. THIS is the problem. The saying is “the devil is in the details,” right?
I found an interesting quote on the idea that many good theories don’t actually pan out. “Subsequent research will of course be necessary to sort out whether the theoretical statements hold up under scrutiny, or whether they will join the long list of theories that only deserve to be true.” (Sutton & Staw, 1995) Clearly, you think that differential pay by teacher quality is good DESERVES to be true. But we are LONG since past the point when we should be talking in the abstract. People have tried to design and implement these sorts of things for decades. Maybe this is one theory which only deserves to true, and sadly is not true.
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October 28th, 2009 10:48 am
Mr. Carroll,
(Those numbers are in response to yours. I am trying to address your comments, as best I can.)
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October 28th, 2009 11:32 am
Mr. Carroll, Why don’t your publish your address, home, work , and cell numbers since you are so courageous. I’ll give you a call or give you a visit and we’ll debate the issues at hand.
In the meantime, the Board of Regents and SED have new commissioners, Tisch and Steiner. But prior to them, we had Richard Mills, and a very dysfunctional Albany that had three people running the system for the entire state. All these deformation of education policies are presently being created by the millionair & billionaire populace who feel that they have the money to influence people to make these radical changes to the school system without taking into consideration the voice of the experienced educators. It is time to stop the ideologue of those who have no teaching experience from deforming the education policies and bring in change agents from the trenches of the classrooms!
I look forward to you publishing your cell number in this blog so I can give you a call.
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October 29th, 2009 5:41 am
Mr. Carroll,
I think that ceolaf did a good job of answering your questions directed at me.
Again, a question arises: what defines a superior teacher? Is it someone who aids in the social and emotional growth of a child, but who may not be so strong in “hitting their numbers?” Is it someone who exposes young people to new ideas, and challenges them to question their assumptions? Is it someone who can make an alienated and fearful child feel accepted and valued as a human being? Is it someone who has the observational skills to presciently see that a child might be suffering problems or abuse at home? Someone who can get a failing student to find one thing in school that keeps them off the streets? Or is it someone who’s social and career antenae are such that they will uncritically follow the ever-shifting mandates of remote authorities whose experience in the field and motives are open to question?
My point is that, lost in all the debate about testing and numbers, is the fact that teaching is - or should be - a fundamentally human encounter. The very term you use to discuss the means of separating effective from ineffective teachers - “metric,” as in metering or counting - displays a bias that limits the debate.
It may sound scientific, but it’s not. It’s scientism, and they’re not the same thing.
So, for now, since good teachers can be good and effective in a multitude of ways, and since people should be rewarded for the time and commitment they give to a job and a community, my vote goes with sticking with the current system, especially since I have so little faith in the competence or intentions of the people who are proposing alternatives.
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October 31st, 2009 8:43 pm
I can tell you that as a teacher I get a lot of mixed messages about what is good teaching. My principal will tell me one thing. I’ll do it and then my department chair will come in and tell me the things I did that my principal suggested weren’t engaging the students and I should try this other thing that my principal said he didn’t want to see in the classroom. We’re a good school full of good teachers. Both my principal and my department chair are great teachers with very different styles hence the mixed messages. Good teaching is not just one thing - it’s a lot of different stuff. Many people don’t believe it, but teaching is very complicated.
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October 31st, 2009 9:37 pm
inexile,
I agree with you: good teaching spans many different styles and personalities. I’ve had and observed both traditional talk-and chalk teachers and cooperative, group instruction-style teachers, and everything in between. I’ve experienced enough to know that it’s invalid to make a blanket statement about any one style and methodology. I’ve seen excellent and awful teachers within every style along the spectrum.
Some of the often contradictory demands that are made of us stem from the “flavor-of-the-month,” faddish quality that has afflicted education for as long as I’ve been in school or observing education, and some of it is administrative will to power. Both are negative presences in the schools. Unfortunately, the current fads are far more malign that in the past.
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November 1st, 2009 12:34 am
Michael’s last comment does a great job of addressing the teacher quality issue. I notice that all too many people seem to have two categories of teachers: good and bad. Or try to describe people as better and worse. People who have worked in schools have a much more nuanced view of teacher quality. I can honestly say that in 35 years in the system I have seen relatively few “bad” teachers. And many of these self select themselves out of the system. Or get out of the classroom in some way. Quite a few simply become principals.
I find it interesting how many really excellent and caring teachers I know are so adamantly opposed to all the schemes that would get them more money through merit pay. By the way, some people equate caring with excellent teaching. Not always true. I worked with teachers who always came in with very high test scores. Some seemed to be really good teachers (but we still suspected something funny going on) and others were lazy and just did test prep (we knew something funny was going on). Some teachers did not stress test prep and were held up to others that did and were “punished” by not being given the top classes. There were teachers who resisted the trend and tried to swim upstream by providing a rich and varied curriculum. Some teachers were great at creating a working and effective community in their classrooms where kids got along and enjoyed coming to school. Character building was stressed. But academics in terms of measurable results suffered in comparison to teachers who mainly stressed the tests. How do you measure character building?
How to judge teacher quality? I’ll use Michael F. as an example, though I’ve never seen him teach. Not long after I retired I met him at his school and we went to lunch. On the way back into the building he was stopped by kids for various reasons or just said hello to kids. The way those kids looked at him and related to him and he to them made me miss teaching. Can we find a way to measure that?
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November 1st, 2009 1:43 am
I think it would be very naive to try to judge what Bloomberg has in mind. If he wasn’t a prescient individual, he wouldn’t have a $16 billion fortune and would not have been able to dupe a population like he has for the past 8 years.
All Bloomberg needs to do is declare a “Financial Emergency”, and even our current contract would not be able to protect against layoffs.
This being said, there are 3 fundamentals in the contract relations; a) the UFT b) what others predict Bloomberg will accept and/or dismiss c) the reality in which nobody foresees and fails to understand.
Yes, we know the economy is bad (at least people on planet earth). However, lets evaluate the problem without pointing fingers at anyone;
1) The reserves in the FDIC are in the red, which means that the banking system and the US dollar can crash any day. Yes, there is $250 billion + of a treasury line, but essentially this involves printing more money, devaluing currency.
2) NY State is on the verge of issuing IOU’s.
3) When you take out the Cash for Clunkers and Tax Credit lifelines, where is there growth with 0% interest…and then when interest is raised, this will further devastate the middle/lower classes. And if we print more money to sustain these programs, we are debasing our currency.
I predict that in the next 4 years, EVERY JOB will face the hassle of having to adjust salaries with hyperinflation, increased crime rates, larger classes, more accountability for teaching 50 student classes…..
This is not a conservative or liberal argument..it is an argument about fiscal sanity, and the government and corporate fiscal insanity will virtually incapacitate every union from protecting the working class.
Yes…We won’t be protected, the students will be crammed in larger classes without proper resources, teachers and other civil-servants and working class Americans will be exploited, while your beloved oligarchs continue to put the greatest ponzi-schemes in the history of mankind.
It’s not the contract that makes me nervious….it is the “economic-doom” abyss that we are soon to enter!
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November 1st, 2009 11:31 am
J,
As a layman who follows the world of finance closely - with a “know your enemy” purpose - I largely agree with your take on the structural economic issues the country is facing. Still, if we are to remain a representative democracy, in spite of its shortcomings, we need to be educated and prepared to respond to the shock and awe policies that are coming down the pike, in the name of “fiscal responsibility.”
One of the reasons why deficits - local, state, federal - are so huge is that we don’t tax the rich in this country, we borrow from them. One tax that would be painless to to the overwhelming majority of Americans would be a financial transactions tax, directed at taxing all stock, bond, foreign exchange and derivative transactions. A tax like this would instantly raise billions upon billions of dollars for the public sector, while also providing the incidental benefit of being a potentially mild brake on speculation. I believe there is an opening for discussing a tax like this, and that many people across the political spectrum would support it.
Additionally, raising the income ceilings for the Social Security tax - something candidate Obama supported, but which has lately been replaced in his rhetoric by disturbing noises in the opposite directions, namely cutting benefits - would end once and for all the propaganda about how SS is going broke.
The current and emerging financial crisis of the state is real and need to be addressed from a progressive standpoint, before the oligarchs, plutocrats and privatizers use it to their advantage.
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November 1st, 2009 5:44 pm
Correct me if I’m wrong and going back to the previous financial crisis of the 1970’s, I believe layoffs as opposed to excessing must be done within license area on a city wide seniority basis. That should protect the vast majority of senior teachers and I don’t think Blommberg/Klein would want that to happeh; that is of course as long as the UFT stands up to them on this issue.
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November 1st, 2009 6:31 pm
I agree with what you are saying. Your solutions, in addition Ron Paul’s Fed Reserve transparency bill which is also supported by Barney Frank, would revolutionize and turn back the clocks on middle class society.
However, with the Goldman Sachs, Citi-Bank, Bloomberg, Soros, Rothchild out of control “Bilderberg” empire, these people are involved in a CRIMINAL GANG. I put Bloomberg in the category because ANYONE that goes along with the manipulation on the market and in this free-market society should be scolded.
There was sufficient revenue for the public sector, but the city felt it was prudent to build two baseball stadiums and focus on a 3rd stadium in Brooklyn. This is around 1.5 Billion in city tax revenue. This is enough to save around 30,000 civil servant jobs.
The banksters implement Keynesian economics and use it as a manipulation mechanism until the oligarchs can walk away with their money stolen in the massive “bubble”, while we are left to starve.
This has happened all over the world, in different ways and to varying degrees. And we ARE too uneducated of a society to realize what is occurring. We could very well have food shortages, bank-runs, a currency crisis, public disorder and chaos, because we are depleting and diluting around resources, our currency, accruing more debt that will never be paid.
The true meaning of the UFT and other unions needs to be reformed into a middle-class neo-educated philosophy of intolerance, discontent, and activism. When we have protests, Mike Bloomberg quarters the protesters between barriers and police brigades like we are cattle. Let me tell you, that last years protest was the saddest display of activism.
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November 1st, 2009 8:07 pm
How many more rallies and protests can a union have in order to shake up city hall? Everyone knows that it doesn’t seem to affect a billionaire mayor who has the political power of the dollar to shoesh the unions away.
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November 1st, 2009 8:11 pm
Mel, you stated: very disappointed in Bloomberg’s weak stance against the UFT
>until we abandon the notion that NYC Public Schools are about “jobs”, and instead realize it >should be about “education”, things will only get worse
Goldman Sach’s steals your tax money….so does the government. The corporate and bankster slobs use it to fund stadiums to feed the oligarchy, thus creating a giant bubble.
Families are destroyed, divorces increase, the “mental-makeup” of society goes into a maelstrom, to the point we need more school psychologists, teachers, and support.
It is a fundamental that we all (policemanfirefighter, teacher, businessman, blue-collar worker) go to work, and aim for success and a high quality product…..wait, this doesn’t exist anymore.
So, according to you and the rest of uneducated society, cuts to middle-class teacher families are prudent, instead of holding accountable the oligarchs and representatives in which create the DISORDER that WE WORK SO HARD TO CLEAN UP!
Yes Mel, there are bad teachers…like bad everything. There are things about society, unions, and non-unions that are both good and bad, but your solution would be to cut teacher salaries 50% to parochial school levels, further choke middle-class families……while you go to your yankee game at a STADIUM WHICH THE PUBLIC HAD NO BUSINESS FINANCING THROUGH TAXES….1.5 Billion between all the stadiums!!! This is 33% of NY State’s budget gap over the foreseeable future.
You would be amazed to see how dedicated we are to helping the lives of the pupils in NYC schools. Do we strive for excellence, yes! However, your reasoning is manipulative and will lead to a worsened NYCBOE and a 20% national unemployment rate.
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November 1st, 2009 8:18 pm
>How many more rallies and protests can a union have in order to shake up city hall? Everyone >knows that it doesn’t seem to affect a billionaire mayor who has the political power of the dollar >to shoesh the unions away.
As I stated, last years UFT protest at city hall was a “comedy routine”, and a political activist event (more people were yelling “yes we can”, instead of stating the true issues).
Packing people in barricades surrounded by thousands of police officers is not a protest. If you want to see a protest of discontent, watch videos of the economic collapse of Argentina in 2000, when the currency and economy was hijacked just like ours has been now.
When you see these videos, you will see what true discontent for corruption and mismanagement is.
How many protests should we have? Well, so far there technically have been no protests
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November 1st, 2009 8:31 pm
To Mel, provide the website of the event in Argentina 2000. I would like to look at it. Thank you.
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November 1st, 2009 8:35 pm
Jeff S,
You are correct about how layoffs would go down: by license area, according to date of hire.
We are fortunate that the contract still retains such “archaic” language, which the deformers are sweating and panting to remove.
Teachers in DC had no such provisions in their contract, and Rhee was able to fire people across the seniority spectrum. The question for us is, “How far will the UFT go to defend seniority against the attacks that are sure to come?”
Recent past practice is not so encouraging. Randi Weingarten had a bad habit of selling off pieces of the contract - extra time, grievance protections, seniority transfers, etc. - in exchange for cost-of-living wage increases.
Perhaps the other night Michael Mulgrew was telling Bloomberg that he’s mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore, while they were watching the Yankees together the other night, in the stadium we helped pay for.
Yeah, that’ll show ‘em.
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November 1st, 2009 8:46 pm
Michael F., I value your opinion on issues from education to the economy, from morality to ethics, and from rights to privileges. In today’s Daily News opinion section, Matt Polazzo, a teacher from Sty HS, wrote a piece about the UFT contract and how it should be ripped to shred. What’s your opinion? Do you feel that he’s on the same Ariel Sacks’ bandwagon of not looking at the big picture of today’s complex education issues? Thank you.
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November 1st, 2009 9:27 pm
I noticed that…
Thank you for the positive feedback.
Whatever my criticisms of the UFT, I am a union member and will fight to defend it and the contract. I also think the contract protects students as well as teachers.
The only thing that limits class size in the public schools is the contract. The only thing that provides the many, but mostly unacknowledged, benefits of having teachers remain parts of their communities for years is the seniority provisions of the contract.
This deluded and self-important teacher - ooh, he teaches at Stuyvesant! - like most other critics of the union, makes that cliched, tired reference to the “165 page contract,” as if its length is by itself proof of its dark powers. Has this innocent ever considered that the contract’s length is in direct proportion to the idiocies enacted by management over the years? Provisions in the contract are there to protect teachers from the chronic over-reaching and intrusions by administrators. Whatever professional autonomy he has is because of the contract, the people who struggled to achieve it, and those who struggle everyday to see that it remains a viable thing.
I criticize the UFT all the time, but there are many hardworking and dedicated officers and staffers there and I sympathize with their professional obligation to represent management suck-ups like Mr. Polazzo.
If Mr. Polazzo is so convinced of his specialness and untouchability, a la Ariel Sacks, he is fooling himself and endangering the rest of us. Should the UFT ever strike again, he sounds like a certain fink (aka, a union member who crosses a picket line). How surprising that Mortimer Zuckerman should give him space on the opinion page.
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November 2nd, 2009 6:35 pm
MF.
Thank you. My same sentiments! I am pro-union and believe in fighting for our rights that were gained through negotiation between the UFT and the DoE. Mr. Polazzo doesn’t seem to don’t want to comprehension that the contract, which clearly states on the front page “Agreement between the Board of Education of the City School District of the City of New York and United Federation of Teachers”. The operative word here is “Agreement”. Michael you stated it succinctly, “the contract protects students as well as teachers.” Why do we have the chancellor regulations? Because it protects students as well as teachers. I wonder if Mr. Polazzo would sing a different tune if he were working in a phasing school, and becomes an ATR, where he must cover classes, and then he is all of sudden accused by a student of corporal punishment and then thrown in the rubber room. Well, I guess he would not need the contract because he’s not a mediocre teacher and that along would set him free.
Michael thank you for your feedback.
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Mapping the Budget Cuts
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