UFT Moratorium--Too Little Too Late

It's fairly amazing to see Gotham Schools write that "the teachers union is already hoping to slow things down."  While it's true this is the first year junk science evaluation is officially in place, the fact is UFT officials were party to the law that mandated them. UFT supported it then, supported it through negotiations, and continued to support it when it was clear Reformy John King would make all decisions about it. In fact, UFT sources called people ignorant for objecting to King John's fiat, suggesting they didn't understand negotiation.

Unlike Gotham Schools, some of us have an attention span of years rather than weeks. We remember the selling point when this first surfaced. UFT bigshots said junk science only counted for 40%, while in other states it counted 50 or more. They neglected to point out that if you happen to fail the junk science portion it becomes 100%, and you're facing unemployment if it should happen the following year. Even when that became clear, UFT supported it.

In fact, UFT still supports junk science evaluations. UFT also supports Common Core, though it's never been field tested or proven valid anywhere. The sole objection UFT makes is that it ought not to be used to make high stakes decisions since there is not much curriculum available. While there's sense to that argument, it's pretty much a band-aid on the underlying issue. In fact, high stakes testing is a failed enterprise, unless you're looking to enrich the likes of Eva Moskowitz and Rupert Murdoch. The primary reason kids fail tests is neither because their schools are awful or their teachers are incompetent. The primary reasons they fail are that they are mired in poverty, unable to use English, or learning disabled one way or another.

Yet UFT and AFT have played along with the fiction that our teachers and schools are awful, and have collaborated to bring mayoral control, junk science evaluations, and neighborhood-killing school closures all over the country. UFT has supported charter schools, which are not generally little enterprises to offer enrichment to needy children. More often, they're investments for people who are not needy in the least.

Several teachers today approached me with comments about their young children, who were coming home only to spend hours with homework. One told me his kid, who usually loved to read, was beginning to hate it. Another told me her second grade son was doing algebra already, and that she'd surreptitiously entered her classroom and photographed every page of his English and math books to be able to hep him. This is simply unconscionable, and it's occurring in schools that actually have curriculum in place.

While a delay is something I support, it's only a band-aid. That's not optimal treatment for a cancer. If we are to support teachers, to support neighborhood schools, to support the students it's our job to serve, we must get back to teaching and remove high stakes. It would be one thing if they were proven to work, but that's not the case in Common Core. In fact, pretty much every other facet of corporate reform has been proven not to work.

So while this step won't hurt, it's time for activists to stand up and demand research-based practices. It's time for us to demand practices that are not based on ignoring root factors like poverty. It's time to demand practices designed to do something other than enrich Rupert Murdoch and his BFFs.

In fact, it's time to demand we reject all high stakes measures,and that we focus on helping neighborhoods and children rather than labeling them failures. Because make no mistake, that's precisely what school closures and Common Core are designed to do.

Despite all the talk about working hand in hand with the likes of Bill Gates, he's not our partner. The neighborhoods and children we serve are our partners, and we must focus on them. They don't need a band-aid solution, and neither do we. We need to reject junk science outright. We need to reject experimentation with untested arbitrary mandates on America's children. We need to tell Unity-New Action that working teachers are tired of appeasement, semantics, and waiting games

Nothing less makes any sense at all.

It Will Be a Reformy September

Next year, there will be a new evaluation system in place. No one knows precisely what it will be like since Reformy John of Albany has not made up his mind yet. We do know, however, that teachers will be judged by value-added methods. We have heard a couple of reasonable-sounding arguments from union leadership as to why this is a good idea.

1. Principals have too much power under the current system. It's true that, via observations and whatever else makes principals decide, they can pretty much singlehandedly say thumbs up or thumbs down on any given teacher. And it's also true that there are crazy vindictive principals who do so for no good reason. The solution, according the UFT leadership, is to use multiple measures rather than leave it entirely within the hands of any principal.

Unfortunately, adding junk science to the mix does not precisely enhance the process. Here's the story of one teacher who got a crap VAM rating one year and an excellent one the next, through no discernible fault of his own. Here's another, a DC teacher regarded as excellent, but fired for VAM scores. Here's an excellent teacher in NYC, denied tenure for value-added scores.

In fact, with the value-added fairy in the picture, principals may have less power in evaluations. But it's likely their power will be decreased only in their ability to help good teachers. If 40% of a rating is test scores, 60% is still in the principal's discretion. Since you will need 65% to avoid an ineffective rating, you could have perfect VAM scores and still be derailed by a vindictive principal.

2. Under New York State law, co-crafted by UFT leadership, we get to negotiate an agreement. This sounds promising. After all, the crazy reformers will want to be as unreasonable as possible in their ongoing effort to get rid of unionized teachers with salaries and benefits. For example, they've already persuaded our union to embrace a system that has no basis in science or practice, a system that's a crapshoot at best, and voodoo at worst. But won't we be able to negotiate it to make it more reasonable?

That was indeed the hope. However, Bloomberg rejected whatever it was the UFT and DOE had hammered out. Naturally, he blamed the union, and insisted he wanted a system that would hold teachers' "feet to the fire." The UFT then agreed to binding arbitration. Many opposition voices complained that this was not what we were promised, and that this was not the negotiation we'd depended upon. Unity-New Action's responses seemed to indicate that these people were ignorant, and that binding arbitration was indeed part of negotiation.

It's true that binding arbitration is often a part of negotiation. However, it's not true that the dissidents are ignorant or incorrect. This is because an arbitrator is presumed to be objective. I'm sorry, but NY State Education Commisioner John King, who taught one year in a public school, two in a charter, and began his meteoric career trajectory by running charters, is far from objective. He embraces every piece of reformy nonsense that comes down the pike, and has no problem subjecting our children to excessive testing and anything else Bill Gates thinks is good for them. I say our children because Reformy John, like Gates, sends his own kids to private schools, where they aren't subject to this nonsense.

King is a hypocrite, with insufficient classroom and public school experience. He's unqualified for his current position, and not remotely objective enough to make a reasonable decision.

The UFT has failed its membership. Any teacher can be fired in two years under this system, for any reason or none. Tenure is moot. While the UFT can proudly boast it now takes two years to fire a newbie teacher, I hardly see one extra miserable year at a job where said newbie is unwanted and unappreciated as much consolation.*

This is a terrible deal, the worst I've seen in almost 30 years of teaching. I honestly wonder how people who negotiate such things, under the guise of advocating for working teachers, can sleep at night.

*Correction: Jamaica Chapter Leader James Eterno informs me I am mistaken about untenured teachers getting two years, and says it's his understanding that they will not receive such protection. I apologize for my error, and to any untenured teachers I may have disappointed.

The Good Old Days

A colleague told me yesterday about how she got her job. She was doing student teaching in our building and constantly being observed by her college teacher. The professor was effusive with praise for her, and her first department AP always found an excuse to be around and eavesdrop. He would shuffle through papers on a desk pretending to be looking for something, or stumble around as though lost in his own office.

When she finished her student teaching, he was able to offer her a job. Before she got tenure, he formally observed her, almost religiously, precisely six times a year. She generally did well, but her first time was particularly interesting, to me, at least.

The AP came in with his notebook (There were no iPads back then.), and sat in back of the classroom. My friend froze. Everything she did was wrong. She forgot what she was doing, started shaking, and could barely keep track of where she was. This, of course, is what E4E claims teachers are jumping up and down to demand more of.

The following day she went for a post-observation conference. She apologized profusely, and explained her panic attack the best she could. The supervisor told her not to worry. He said he could see she wasn't herself, and that she need not worry about this. It was as though it never happened.

He told her they would start from scratch. He would meet with her and discuss what her lesson would be like, he would tell her what he was looking for, they would agree on a plan, and there was nothing whatsoever for her to worry about. She was greatly relieved.

After that, he did exactly what he said he would. Her observation went smoothly, and her respect for that AP continues to this day.

Imagine how she may have fared with some Leadership Academy automaton with some absurd DOE-generated checklist. Imagine if the AP had to say, "Well, I think you're a good teacher, but you're still going to be discontinued if you don't get enough value-added points."

It's kind of sad to look at the progress in education and see how far backward we've come.