A Non-Offensive Update

My what a shocker. I send out an email full of passion and truth to raise teacher conciousness about the current bargaining negotiations and the best response I get (apologies to my socialist comrade) is from people thanking me for apologizing at misusing the email system to promote my ideas. Ugh.

So here I am in the privacy of my own blog and if you don't want to read it or you feel you will need to report these ideas I have to administration and imperil my teaching career do me a favor and stop reading now and work your own way through this morass.

But as promised this update will be non-offensive and mostly without opinion, devoid of passion and caring and to the best of my ability a simple reporting as to what is transpiring at our contract negotiating table interspersed with the authoritative comments about the misguided nature of the most recent effort at school reform from Diane Ravitch and her article "Stop the Madness" in the August/September edition of NEA Today. Diane Ravitch, if you don't know was one of the loudest advocates for No Child Left Behind under the Bush administration, who having seen the damage it has done to schools and the teaching profession, is now the oft quoted sage about why it's not the teacher's fault or the teacher's union's fault after all.

Hopefully, you had a chance to go to one of the focus group sessions that the Union held between July 24th and July 27th. As you probably know, after last year's fiasco when the district and the union tried to negotiate in public but in doing so got an earful of why their plans were impalatable, this year they are negotiating behind closed doors so we won't even know what is in the contract before we show up to vote on it. Luckily, the union, understanding the grave consequences and significant changes the district's proposal has decided that before it shows up with this totally new contract will show it to us before they propose we accept it in September to avoid a strike. Yes, they will recommend we accept it because for them it is the politically expedient thing to do in an environment where union's are the poster children of those who are standing in the way of school reform. If you don't believe the union has this first and foremost in their mind you might want to read the last communication you received from the bargaining table where the union spent most of its communication explaining why they are not at fault. But let's talk about the district's proposal.

SERVE-Yup that's the name of the district's proposal. I am wondering how much they paid some PR consulting firm to come up with that title. I can just see it now. Teacher's Union Rejects District's Offer to SERVE Students. I wish the union had the money to spend on PR for teachers. Ok, so what is this offer.

The first and foremost thing everyone must understand in the district's proposal is that absolutely everything; collaboration time, increase in wages, professional growth opportunities is tied to a new plan for Teacher Evaluation. In the past teacher evaluation was simply one part of the negotiations. No more. All of the district's offers to improve any part of our working conditions or increase our teaching salaries is linked to our willingness to accept this new evaluation system. In otherwords if we don't accept this new evaluation system there is absolutely nothing in this contract to improve our working conditions or our wages. So this means that this contract is all about teacher evaluation and nothing else. It is a totally one sided negotiation with the District deaf to any of our interests regarding more collaborative time or smaller class sizes or increased compensation unless they are connected to SERVE. So what is SERVE?

SERVE has many components. It is proposed to cost 3.9 million dollars to administer over the next four years of this contract which includes the purchasing of expensive software (wouldn't suprise me if it was made by microsoft) to monitor student testing and I guess to track teacher evaluations and to hire 3 new high paid administrators to oversee the program. I am thinking to myself how much new curriculum materials could be purchased with this money or how many IA salaries to support the new inclusion of special education students in the mainstream classes. Here is what Diane Ravitch has to say about the effectiveness of administration to manage testing. "state education departments were drowning in new bureaucratic requirements, procedures, and routines and that none of the prescribed remedies was making a difference." Here Seattle wishes to put in to its adminstrative costs its own self funded oversight program.

The Teacher Evaluation System in SERVE. I am quite sure I can not do this aspect of their proposal justice from pure recall and the few notes that I took at the meeting but I will do my best.

Student Evaluations based on Testing account for 25% of a teacher's evaluation for courses that are being tested. Student evaluations based on testing will not account for any of a teacher's evaluation if they are not in a subject that is being tested. The current testing courses include reading, math and science and there is also proposed end of year assessments for Social Studies with the intent of over time creating end of year assessments for things like foreign language. Here is what Diane Ravitch has to say about this.
" The most toxic flaw in NCLB ws its legislative command that ALL students in EVERY school must be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014 including students with special needs, students whose native language is not English, students who are homeless and lacking in any societal advantage, and students who have every societal advantage, but are not interested in their school work...One of the unintended consequences of NCLB was the shrinkage of time available to teach anything other than reading and math. Other subjects, including history, science, the arts, geography, even recess were curtailed in many schools. Reading and mathematices were the only subjects that counted in calculating a schools's adequate yearly progress, and even in these subjects' instruction gave way to intesive test preparation. Test scores became an obsession.....In urban schools, where there are many low-performing students, drill and practice became a significant part of the daily routine."

Here are some of the other components of Teacher Evaluations:
1. 10% or 20% for non testing subjects the evaluates how close you are to reaching target on two teacher selected, administration approved student academic achievement goals.
2. 10% for overall whole school student's growth data. Which means if the students of the school don't improve on a two year rolling average you are dinged for 10% of your evaluation.
3. 5% of your total evaluation would be based on "surveys" from peers, families and students.

This leaves 50% to 65% of the rest of the evaluation to be subject to the new adminstrative evaluation system which includes four ratings; classroom environment, instruction, planning and preparation and professional responsibility. These would be from administrative observation and you can receive a rating of unsatisfactory, needs improvement, average, strong and exemplary.

Collectively when all of these percentages are tallied together you get a percentage number evaluation which translates into one of four categories; unsatisfactory (put on probation), basic (if you don't improve by next year you will be put on probation, proficient (for which there is no particular reward it just keeps you off the watch list) and innovative (which provides you opportunity for professional growth up the ranks of master and mentor teacher for which you can qualify to make more money by taking on new responsibilities as a teacher-teaching other teachers.

I think that is pretty much the SERVE plan and if you opt to join this plan you can get a 1% increase in salary next year and another 1% increase the following year and make yourself available to go up the teaching career ladder. If you do not opt to join SERVE you will get no raises and even if you choose not to opt in during this contract extension, you will be required to join SERVE for the next contract extension.

Other motivations to encourage union members to approve the contract are the fact that along with this new evaluation system the district will implement a district wide friday early dismissal program of 19-2 hour teacher collaboration periods that will be split between teacher and administration controlled with the single caveat that we agree to add 12 minutes to the school day for no extra pay but to stay within the hour requirements for students.

As I evaluate this new evaluation procedure I see an awful lot of top down oversight and management that will take up most of our school administrators' time and simply burden the administrative structure with undoable evaluations. Imagine a principle meeting with teachers on goals, tracking performance, rating teachers, inputting student performance and calculating percentages on teacher evaluations. Conducting stakeholder surveys and tabulating the results to come up with a 5% number. Not only will this be problematic but just imagine if a teacher wishes to disagree. (I think they wrote non-grievable). In any case given all that the administrators are currently dealing with I can't imagine this will enable them to be better administrators of their schools. Oh, and by the way over the next four years during the role out some teachers will be in the system and some will be without of the system. Clearly the District spent most of its money on PR without really considering the logistically nightmare of putting this into place and the distraction it will be to both teacher and administrator for focussing on the classroom and the student.

Well this is the crux of the SERVE program and you may ask what does that do to our current contract structure. Well, when I grant myself the opportunity to be opinionated in my next blog I will share with you the impact on the contract but the bottom line, it makes the union functionally irrelevant to protecting the employee from any effort the district would make at any time to dismiss him or her.

What does Diane Ravitch have to say about all of this effort to end the influence of unions on education?

" One would think, by reading the critics, that the nation's schools are overrun by incompetent teachers who hold their jobs only because of union protections, that unions are directly resonsible for poor student performance, and that academic achievement would soar if the unions were to disappear....This is unfair. No one, to my knowledge, has demonstrated a clear, indisputable correlation between teacher unionism and academic achievement, either negative or positive. The Southern states, where teachers' unions have historically been either week or non existent, have always had the poorest student performance on national examinations. Massachusetts, the state with the highest academic performance, has long had strong teacher unions." (Guess where Dr. Goodloe-Johnson has spent most of her working career as an administrator?)

And what does Ravitch have to say about the Gates, Walton and Broad foundations that are setting "policy agenda not only for school districts, but also for states and even the U.S. Department of Education." She says, "There is something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquising control of the public education policy agenda to private foundations run by society's wealthiest people....They have taken it upon themselves to reform public education, perhaps in ways that would never survive the scrutiny of voters in any district or state."

I would love to quote more of Ravitch's article but if you have your August/September 2010 NEAtoday you can read it for yourself.

Okay you've been patient and I have been to the best of my ability neutral which is pretty hard in this environment. Next blog I have no intention of being neutral. I will explain the writing on the walls of this agenda to end the influence of unions on our public schools and scape goat the teacher.

And remember, this is a free speech and freedom of thought blog. While you may choose to censor me in the neutral proceedings of union busines, if you come here and read this stuff, expect to see MY OPINION of the unvarnished truth of what is happening today. Next Blog.
The Fifth Column amongst the Ranks of the Teachers.

SHMUEL Willner