We learn in the N.Y. Times today that Klein is promising a teacher role in evaluating principals as part of his big reorganization.
Here’s the story lead and the quote:
“Pressing the case for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s latest round of changes to the city school system, Chancellor Joel I. Klein yesterday detailed how the new powers being granted to principals would be accompanied by new evaluations of them: teachers for the first time would be able to rate their supervisors….
“Because of our deep respect for our teachers, we’re looking for other ways to make sure that their wisdom becomes yet a more important part of each school’s culture,” Mr. Klein said. “Their views on how a school is being run are critically important, and we need to formalize the process by which those views are expressed and properly considered.”
If I’m not mistaken this is nothing but a rather exaggerated highlighting of a small section in the DOE’s new School Report Cards where teachers get to rate the principal. These new Report Cards will have a small qualitative section; but though right now I can’t find the draft report card that was on my desk, trust me, the quantitative section–analysis of test scores–gets far more weight. The qualitative stuff is a minor piece.
It is typical of Klein’s MO that when he gets criticism–such as the lack of any teacher involvement in his latest reorganization–he quickly says he’s on it. But the language in that syrupy quote above contains such evident pandering that even teachers will be embarrassed. The truth is no one was consulted on the reorganization but Klein’s inner circle of high-paid, education-challenged consultants, and no one is going to be either, least of all teachers. Teachers’ views on the principal are not going to carry any real weight. We know that.
However, the criticism of these new plans on reorganization, tenure and weighted student funding are really heating up. Regent Merryl Tisch was the top quote in yesterday’s Times analysis of Bloomberg’s State of the City speech and she said “….ugh, even though we have been so successful we are reorganizing again.” Columnist Andrew Wolf in the N.Y. Sun wrote “If this were Iraq, call it a `surge’.”
Privately, people in the education community are either disgusted or amused, but they are not enthused. Klein’s follow-up road show, for reporters, business leaders, principals and the news shows, didn’t win them over, either. Can’t say it’s surprising. Enough is enough, as the Mayor himself said several times in Wednesday’s speech. This third reorganization in four years is trying everyone’s patience. It’s already looking like a colossal waste of time and money and it doesn’t even start until September.
There is so much to dislike in this tenure-funding-reorganization plan. For a good rebuttal of the tenure “reform” check the AFT’s Michele McLaughlin writing on the NCLBlog today. Anyway, they can’t mess with tenure. It’s contractually and legally protected. The only real change they’re trying to effect is to make student test scores part of a tenure decision. That’s so fraught with problems, though. Students’ scores are not a reliable indicator of new teacher quality for so many reasons it’s hard to even begin. I can’t imagine this could work.
Weighted student funding has a surface appeal–who’s not for greater equity and transparency?–but once you dig deeper you find there’s really less than meets the eye. WSF would rejig funding formulas, but there’s nothing beyond mealy-mouthed assurances of “stakeholder input” or “community feedback” to ensure that the new formula is any fairer than the old.
If Klein wants to include teacher salaries in the WSF rejigging–and why else would he have bought into it?–that would mean essentially destabilizing schools with experienced teachers in order to try to drive these teachers to weaker schools. Come on. Many of them would quit and go to other school systems. WSF, for all the equity talk, is about redistributing existing dollars instead of investing in improving schools. We need to increase resources to weak schools, not cannibalize schools that work. The best piece in the Times this morning was an op-ed by a Bronx high school teacher telling what it’s really like in an under-resourced school.
As soon as the complaints started coming, the Chancellor ran around saying WSF will be implemented in such a way that it doesn’t disrupt schools or current teacher placements. So then how are they doing the new budgets? Who assigns the weights? Are principals now going to compete for needy kids and then spend the extra funds on another swimming pool? You see what happens? As soon as you start thinking about this it sounds like they’ll wind up having to recreate the budget formulas and oversight functions they just blew up.
This is sort of like the reorganization: once they implemented the regional strategy they ran into a lot of problems and it looked like 32 community school districts was the way to go after all. They reinvented themselves right back where they started from. The only thing that’s changed is how many good people have fled the New York school system in the meantime and how many kids have suffered through totally unnecessary chaos.
6 Comments:
1 Persam1197
· Jan 20, 2007 at 7:17 am
“Place your bets! Everybody plays; everybody wins!” Why do I feel like I’m in the middle of a three card monte hustle?
I think that it’s time for all of us to do what Tom Moore is doing in his excellent article: expose the emperor and his latest new suit for what it is: more privatization, more suits reshuffled, and absolutely no positive difference in our classrooms!
2 guidancehelpme
· Jan 20, 2007 at 8:02 am
You don’t get something for nothing. It should have been obvious there were alterior motives to settle a contract a year in advance. Bloomberg and Klein don’t do anything nice just for the sake of it.
3 paulrubin
· Jan 20, 2007 at 3:13 pm
You watch what the police get in the next round of arbitration with the city and state showing increased budget resources and the increased difficulty in attracting police candidates and you won’t think it was so nice then. What Bloomberg got was some breathing room so he could play around with the system some more rather than invest effort in contract negotiations. What we got was status quo with what we were going to get anyway once DC37 settled. It’s not win-win, it’s push-push.
There’s no question that any move designed to push veteran teachers into problem schools without making it a positive one with increased money on the table has no chance of success. Two things will happen. Veteran teachers will stay where they are OR leave the system entirely. It’s one of those sound bites that sounds good til you actually deal with implementation and human nature.
As to the increased restrictions on tenure, it’s another example of something that initially sounds great. Keep those crappy teachers from getting their lifetime jobs, at least lifetime til your school gets reorganized or budget cutting throws you out, or until you realize you’ve been had and you escape for the burbs or other careers. But the reality of what WILL happen is very different. The system already can’t retain its new teachers so now you’ve made the job that much less desirable and you’ve taken away the one advantage that the city has had over its smaller local suburban school districts — easier tenure. Result? Fewer applicants and when the borderline teachers who might have become good over time (it does take at least 5 years for a teacher to become worthwhile in the classroom) see they can’t get tenure, it’s another reason to prematurely abandon ship. End Result? Fewer applicants and more retention problems in the short term. Long term? Probably little or no change since so few of the new teachers stay anyway.
Elimination of the regions? For most schools probably little impact. For the poor saps who bought into that reorg scheme/joke, and moved out of their schools, there will be nothing but uncertainty and disgust.
Persam’s so right. It’s three card monte and Bloomberg thinks doing the Curly Shuffle is going to somehow compensate for the damage being done to our kids by turning tests INTO the curriculum, making the job of NYC teacher less desirable than it already isn’t, reshuffling the barely settled in administration before we can even see if the first two reorgs had an impact, let alone a positive one.
Let’s resolve the fact that the CSA can’t get its members a contract by threatening their jobs further and subjecting them to a popularity contest amongs parents, students and teachers.
I’m a NYC Teacher. I don’t want to grade my principal. I’m there to grade my students. I don’t want my students grading me. I want them to learn how to learn, how to perform, how to communicate, how to solve problems and how to get along better. I have have no interest in pandering to the non-fully formed whims of prepubescent life forms who don’t completely know what is and isn’t good for their development. Parents didn’t come out to vote on school board elections. You think they’re going to vote on principals? Enough already. This is becoming a truly sick joke.
-Cut the class sizes.
-Find the proper salary levels to staff the buildings properly.
-Provide meaningful staff development
-Use technology to individualize instruction
-Give teachers the flexibility to teach based on who’s in THEIR class, not some rote one size fits all model
-Support princpals and teachers and the majority of kids by really cracking down on the kids who mess up behaviorally
-Create a system that allows more small group instruction after school to teachers who wish to earn extra money
-Universal Pre-K
-Consult with those that make education their lifetime commitment, not those who see schools as financial fruit trees or political winds to be blown.
4 jd2718
· Jan 20, 2007 at 10:29 pm
No matter what we think of our principals, we should not be appealing to the might and justice of Tweed to deal with them.
Jonathan
5 Schoolgal
· Jan 21, 2007 at 10:43 am
“The only thing that’s changed is how many good people have fled the New York school system in the meantime and how many kids have suffered through totally unnecessary chaos.”
I think you made the best case for not having mayoral control.
This week the New Jersey teachers and their union head took a stand against state control in favor of keeping school districts and WON!! But let’s hope we can do the same when mayoral control comes up for reapproval and make it END! Hopefully
the UFT has learned an important lesson that pols like Bloomberg or Spitzer are NOT benefiting public education.
6 Leo Casey
· Jan 23, 2007 at 11:30 am