The authority and procedure for decision-making over reassigning teachers is part of contract language. The "flexibility" movement wants to change the procedure by moving that authority to principals--read, district office.
The abstract alternative to which we turn always sounds more appealing than current mixed reality. That's why we need to be clear that flexibility is not the only thing we'll get from the proposed change in the reassignment procedure.
We'll also get recentralization of the process--this time at the district office instead of in the contract language. As I've opined before, centralization is tightening, and tightening usually invokes a variety of risks.
Politicizing the process is the biggest risk. By that I mean several things. People--at all levels--are more subject to social pressure than contracts are. Vesting authority in a few people means the mechanisms of pressure can be more easily applied. It doesn't take a masters in education to see how that trickles down to incentivize teachers to 'make people (principals, parents, but probably last of all, students) happy.'
Retaining this authority in a few people also gives them excessive power over such a crucial decision. And, to be frank, too many people in district administration are unhappy or unsuccessful teachers. Or, at least, they have something of an antagonistic relationship with teachers.
To put a finer point on it, the switch proposed by the district would work best the higher the trust among all involved.
I think we're headed the wrong way in that area.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Explanation
For the sake of full disclosure, I have invited several people--most of whom are named somewhere in this blog--to respond to the request in the post called Strike:
I hope somebody who supports the 'flexibility' movement will articulate just how that generates better outcomes, and how abuses will be prevented.
So far, none has answered my request.
I hope somebody who supports the 'flexibility' movement will articulate just how that generates better outcomes, and how abuses will be prevented.
So far, none has answered my request.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Strike
I texted a Tacoma teacher friend to ask what had happened Monday night at the union meeting.
I got a one-word response.
Strike.
With 87% of the membership voting for a strike, Tacoma will not be having school tomorrow, Sept. 13. The superintendent says he's going to court to get an injunction to stop it.
I got a one-word response.
Strike.
With 87% of the membership voting for a strike, Tacoma will not be having school tomorrow, Sept. 13. The superintendent says he's going to court to get an injunction to stop it.
The sticking point is 'seniority,' in a subtle aspect. The district wants the flexibility--as Board Member Kurt Miller says--of letting principals reassign teachers as they see fit, without seniority getting in the way. Flexibility would be great, but don't think it comes without negative and unintended consequences.
In an environment where hiring and placement preferences (of principals) can be driven as much by who can/will coach a sport as on teaching/content area abilities, I wouldn't want to have to play the 'satisfy the principal' game and wonder every year whether I'd be reassigned to a new position.
In fact, for the last two years I've had an unusual and new class added to my schedule just days before school starts. I was qualified for these classes, but they were not my first choice, and they were not what I had signed on to do. One class added to my 'regular' routine is manageable. Being completely reassigned to a new subject area or building, that's different.
So, whence comes the big push to create this 'flexibility'? Apparently, the Achievement Gap movement (see Vibrant Schools Tacoma--about 2/3 the way down this link-- and candidate Dexter Gordon) has latched on to the current seniority arrangement as the source of the achievement gap.
They rely in part on the consultant's report, which says
The Advisory Committee found that the achievement gap for African American students is caused primarily by:
- Inequitable distribution of skilled and experienced teachers
This is the first reason listed under the primary causes, even though one page later the report says,
The degree to which quality teachers are available to African American students in Tacoma schools could not be determined with the available information.
The obvious question, then, is by what reasoning do the anti-seniority advocates think that eliminating seniority for the sake of flexibility will help close the achievement gap?
Is it that principals and the district are more responsive to social pressure than the contractual language on seniority?
Or do they think that principals are going to single-handedly discern the best reassignments?
Certainly, the seniority system needs some adjustment, but the district's proposal is a lot more than adjustment.
'Flexibility' sounds great. It's always better than rigidity, I guess. But locating authority in one individual is also problematic (to say the least), especially when those individuals do not always have the full trust of their own staff.
So, I hope somebody who supports the 'flexibility' movement will articulate just how that generates better outcomes, and how abuses will be prevented.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Tropes about Education
David Brooks, the venerable (or maybe merely venerated) New York Times columnist, authored these words in a recent piece evaluating the claims of an America in decline:
The United States became the wealthiest nation on earth primarily because Americans were the best educated.
Ahhh, truer words were never spoken or written, you say? A trope, I say.
It seems like an obvious correlation. We are wealthy and we (were) well-educated. We seem to be declining in "wealth" and we all know our education is worsening. It seems further sensible that education is the thing causing the wealth, not vice versa, particularly in this story of only two factors.
But just how well does this assertion hold up?
First, we need to define our terms, in this case two variables that we think are causally related to each other. We are indeed wealthy, for I am certain we are all talking about a measurement of GNP or GNP/capita, or some such. That's clear enough.
"Best educated" is much less clear. By that do we mean, we have the highest standardized test scores? We have the most interesting classes? We have the freest thought in our class rooms? We provide a high quality education to everybody in the society? We have good math skills? We have a wonderfully flexible education system (especially at the university level)?
To some of these we have to answer No. To others, Yes. But we answer thusly and can still make an argument that we are the best educated. We don't have the highest standardized test scores, but it remains clear that those American students in the upper reaches of the standardized test outcomes are doing quite well. And by plenty of measures, student performance has been improving. SAT scores have been swinging upward for 20 years. (Before you dismiss that test for bias or lack of control across time, remember that it's the longest standing standardized test, and we've always put plenty of faith in its measurements.)
Brooks' claim has another difficulty, historically at least. It's not clear we were ever "best educated" in any sense that we just talked about. As I mentioned last week, the 1931 standardized test for passing 8th grade in West Virginia had some serious weak spots. But those kinds of artifacts are most often held up to show (even if implicitly) that kids know and can do less today than they could then. Such is the anecdotal evidence of "better education back in the day."
Education wasn't so widely available to all Americans at the time we were becoming "wealthiest," either. That 1931 test was a bar that a student needed to surpass in order to gain entry to high school. I don't know how many students there were that didn't pass so didn't go to high school, but presumably there were some.
And, of course, 1931 (and some years beyond) was well within the Jim Crow years. African-American students had far less opportunity to go to school, and far fewer school resources available if they did go. "Best education" was not extending across the social landscape, and we answer in the negative another of those variable-defining questions.
(Most historians, economists, political scientists and the like agree that the US was ascending to world dominance, leadership, wealth, etc., in the first half of the 20th Century.)
Look at the story from another angle. Our per capita GNP is high, our GNP is high, our share of global GNP has remained at a whopping 25% for years, our productivity growth rate (the source of real gains in well-being) has been healthy--or, sometimes, less unhealthy than similarly developed economies.
In other words, we're still wealthy. The dependent variable hasn't changed as much as it is supposed to have changed. Or perhaps Mr. Brooks is reading the future....Current bad education is about to cause losses of wealth. We've heard such claims for some time, though. And, like I say, there is evidence that in some ways education is indeed getting better in the US.
Mr. Brooks' assertion was tossed off too easily....I assume he was embracing the trope.
The United States became the wealthiest nation on earth primarily because Americans were the best educated.
Ahhh, truer words were never spoken or written, you say? A trope, I say.
It seems like an obvious correlation. We are wealthy and we (were) well-educated. We seem to be declining in "wealth" and we all know our education is worsening. It seems further sensible that education is the thing causing the wealth, not vice versa, particularly in this story of only two factors.
But just how well does this assertion hold up?
First, we need to define our terms, in this case two variables that we think are causally related to each other. We are indeed wealthy, for I am certain we are all talking about a measurement of GNP or GNP/capita, or some such. That's clear enough.
"Best educated" is much less clear. By that do we mean, we have the highest standardized test scores? We have the most interesting classes? We have the freest thought in our class rooms? We provide a high quality education to everybody in the society? We have good math skills? We have a wonderfully flexible education system (especially at the university level)?
To some of these we have to answer No. To others, Yes. But we answer thusly and can still make an argument that we are the best educated. We don't have the highest standardized test scores, but it remains clear that those American students in the upper reaches of the standardized test outcomes are doing quite well. And by plenty of measures, student performance has been improving. SAT scores have been swinging upward for 20 years. (Before you dismiss that test for bias or lack of control across time, remember that it's the longest standing standardized test, and we've always put plenty of faith in its measurements.)
Brooks' claim has another difficulty, historically at least. It's not clear we were ever "best educated" in any sense that we just talked about. As I mentioned last week, the 1931 standardized test for passing 8th grade in West Virginia had some serious weak spots. But those kinds of artifacts are most often held up to show (even if implicitly) that kids know and can do less today than they could then. Such is the anecdotal evidence of "better education back in the day."
Education wasn't so widely available to all Americans at the time we were becoming "wealthiest," either. That 1931 test was a bar that a student needed to surpass in order to gain entry to high school. I don't know how many students there were that didn't pass so didn't go to high school, but presumably there were some.
And, of course, 1931 (and some years beyond) was well within the Jim Crow years. African-American students had far less opportunity to go to school, and far fewer school resources available if they did go. "Best education" was not extending across the social landscape, and we answer in the negative another of those variable-defining questions.
(Most historians, economists, political scientists and the like agree that the US was ascending to world dominance, leadership, wealth, etc., in the first half of the 20th Century.)
Look at the story from another angle. Our per capita GNP is high, our GNP is high, our share of global GNP has remained at a whopping 25% for years, our productivity growth rate (the source of real gains in well-being) has been healthy--or, sometimes, less unhealthy than similarly developed economies.
In other words, we're still wealthy. The dependent variable hasn't changed as much as it is supposed to have changed. Or perhaps Mr. Brooks is reading the future....Current bad education is about to cause losses of wealth. We've heard such claims for some time, though. And, like I say, there is evidence that in some ways education is indeed getting better in the US.
Mr. Brooks' assertion was tossed off too easily....I assume he was embracing the trope.
When history is too hot to handle
I don't think anybody in our school is doing anything about 9/11, in class that is. One explanation might be that it's not part of the state standards. My explanation--for me-- is that it's too difficult for me to imagine doing what I think really needs to be done (would take much more than a couple of one hour class sessions). Too difficult without invoking significant risks of covering it in a way that bothers somebody. And I don't want to cover it in a way that ends up bothering me--for the brevity and incompleteness.
Too petty of me, you say? It all happened last spring in my school....
The 3/5 compromise for kids, specifically, can be simply put as a method to sort the deadlock between Southern American states and Northern American states over the issue of counting slaves in connection with taxes. There! This is all I have about 3/5 compromise which now seems like a political gimmick to appease the slaves superficially, now what we would have called as minority. (Emphasis added)
Too petty of me, you say? It all happened last spring in my school....
Our social studies teachers were close to securing a small Civil War Re-enactment group for our school when "risk management" intervened. They said no guns, no explosives, no horses.
Fine enough...the ever-trumping "safety issues" come into play with these factors.
But then they suggested that we "may also want to think about how [we] will address the issue of allowing the civil war troops bringing Confederate flag on your property as it could (as it has done in other sites) cause issue w/ local NAACP, etc."
This apparently--I don't know for sure, as we get very abbreviated summaries of the decision, but not the thinking--set in motion some anxiety at the 'district level.'
The leadership decided no guns, no explosives, no horses, no Confederate flag.
This touched off disappointed response from the history teachers. It looked like this....
Colleague 1
I totally understand on the no horse, no live ammo and actual firing. I totally understand that those are safety issues. But the part I have a big issue with is the Confederate flags part. Is having the Confederate flag for historical presentations against board policy? If not, I think we should allow it. If a confederate flag isn't acceptable at a historical presentation, why is it acceptable in the classroom? This doesn't make sense. I understand that the Confederate flag sometimes creates controversy, but only for those who don't understand history. We are not going to celebrate the Confederate flag and what it represents, but it is part of history. I shouldn't water down history to appease ignorant people. Can we all get together (administration and history department) and discuss this part.
Colleague 2
Can we mention slavery as part of the Civil War….or is that out too?
Your blogger
That's an interesting question. I remember my visit to Monticello (Jefferson's home) in 1978 included extensive discussion of slaves' lives and conduct. In my 1991 visit I don't remember hearing the word slave or slavery once.
I sincerely hope we can use the Confederate flag, as the absence of too many elements of the story leaves blanks that end up diminishing the complexity of the history. The gravity of the Civil War is partly derived from the intensity of the social, political and emotional meanings bound up in these details. For instance, Americans will likely never stop arguing over whether the war was about slavery…unless after long enough time of banishing the right symbols, ideas, images, etc., from the discussion we collectively forget those fundamental aspects of the story.
Might I suggest considering this situation in the other direction? Europeans talk a lot of remembering. 'Don't forget what things have been done.'
That's why Occupation (Soviet and Nazi) museums, Oppression (Soviet and Nazi) museums, Holocaust museums and Concentration Camp museums abound. I've visited a half dozen of these myself, from Auschwitz to the KGB prison in Vilnius, Lithuania to a two-room memorial maintained by one person as a 'labor of love' (in order to remember the Soviet genocide of Lithuanians) in a tiny town on the Baltic Sea. (Sorry, I don't think he has a web site. But there is this.)
Barring the Confederate flag may not seem like that big of a detail, but then again, it's a surrender of one more small portion of the story. Enough small cuts and you bleed to death.
--
Subsequently, Colleague 1 mused about whether we should discuss things like the 3/5th Compromise, which legalized the counting of slaves as only 3/5th of a person, and other such potentially offensive historical realities.
This is no fusty academic discussion. If you google "3/5 compromise," you might get an auto-filled "for kids" at the end of it. One of the first options on this list is a piece at buzzle.com, whose motto is "intelligent life on the web."
If you read the buzzle summary of the compromise, you'll encounter this, by an author who has "done my Post Graduation in Political Science as well as i hold a Journalism and Mass communication degree. I have worked for a Pune-based Tabloid as a reporter and copy editor for a year."
Fundamentally, although it was 'all good' and slaves did appear to be valued and held as fellow beings, the 3/5 compromise ultimately augured well for the Southern states as they started dominating the House and the governmental agencies. It had a major impact on pre American civil war politics in the USA.
The 3/5 compromise for kids, specifically, can be simply put as a method to sort the deadlock between Southern American states and Northern American states over the issue of counting slaves in connection with taxes. There! This is all I have about 3/5 compromise which now seems like a political gimmick to appease the slaves superficially, now what we would have called as minority. (Emphasis added)
I don't even know where to begin, so I won't.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Infectious Disease and IQ
An argument that infectious disease correlates with IQ...regionally speaking.
More infectious disease in a region, lower IQ. That makes them inversely related. Look at me, I can sound sciencey.
I do wonder about the causal relationship. Is it infectious disease generally, or is it specifically in the teachers?
I assume it's the latter, else it wouldn't be something we could fix by breaking the union, or creating more cultural training, or revamping the teacher evaluation system.
Okay, seriously, the author uses his theory to weigh in against the 'genetics causes IQ variation' argument. Along the way, of course, the claim also adds weight to the idea that situational factors can matter in educational outcomes.
More infectious disease in a region, lower IQ. That makes them inversely related. Look at me, I can sound sciencey.
I do wonder about the causal relationship. Is it infectious disease generally, or is it specifically in the teachers?
I assume it's the latter, else it wouldn't be something we could fix by breaking the union, or creating more cultural training, or revamping the teacher evaluation system.
Okay, seriously, the author uses his theory to weigh in against the 'genetics causes IQ variation' argument. Along the way, of course, the claim also adds weight to the idea that situational factors can matter in educational outcomes.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
More complicated than it appears
I suppose it's easier for news reports and partisans to latch on to something like 'teachers want to protect seniority' and skip over the complications of such a situation.
Today, news reports said the Tacoma district was willing to retain seniority. I hear it as the district agreed to retain seniority in layoffs. But there's more to it. One of the other aspects of seniority has to do with who gets to decide which teachers can have which assignments. And this part the district wants to eliminate, I'm told. This could create a situation in which principals can freely (and therefore sometimes arbitrarily) move people where s/he wants.
Consider this scenario. The district seems to want to end seniority completely in cases of school to school transfer/displacement. It then becomes possible that a principal could move to another building and entice a few of his/her favorite teachers to come along, promising them choice assignments, and displacing those who already hold those jobs. If such 'flexibility' (as the district calls it) were in place you could end with something like this:
A veteran teacher retires from a long-held spot. The principal brings in a teacher from another school, enticing him with a promise to make him department chair and give him a plum class assignment, jumping him over longer serving teachers in the department. The department meets and collectively decides that they prefer not to have the new member get thusly ushered in to the choice assignment, without any experience.
Seniority rights are part of the support for the teachers' claim. But let's not get hung up on the notion of seniority or flexibility.
The real issue is about governance of the school and its programs. Let's face it, teachers are not always completely confident in principals' decision-making and judgment. And such authority is a lot to vest in one person.
So seniority may be somewhat rigid and mechanistic (so let's talk about adjustment to that), but it has been designed to safeguard against scenarios like the one above--which did happen.
Construing 'seniority' as a nothing more than a scam to protect teachers, and therein substantiating demands for 'flexibility' is unhelpful in that it swings the pendulum just as far in the opposite direction.
Let's not scrap one institutional arrangement in favor of another equally problematic institutional arrangement. Let's make sensible choices about adjustments....Let's create systems that actually work.
Today, news reports said the Tacoma district was willing to retain seniority. I hear it as the district agreed to retain seniority in layoffs. But there's more to it. One of the other aspects of seniority has to do with who gets to decide which teachers can have which assignments. And this part the district wants to eliminate, I'm told. This could create a situation in which principals can freely (and therefore sometimes arbitrarily) move people where s/he wants.
Consider this scenario. The district seems to want to end seniority completely in cases of school to school transfer/displacement. It then becomes possible that a principal could move to another building and entice a few of his/her favorite teachers to come along, promising them choice assignments, and displacing those who already hold those jobs. If such 'flexibility' (as the district calls it) were in place you could end with something like this:
A veteran teacher retires from a long-held spot. The principal brings in a teacher from another school, enticing him with a promise to make him department chair and give him a plum class assignment, jumping him over longer serving teachers in the department. The department meets and collectively decides that they prefer not to have the new member get thusly ushered in to the choice assignment, without any experience.
Seniority rights are part of the support for the teachers' claim. But let's not get hung up on the notion of seniority or flexibility.
The real issue is about governance of the school and its programs. Let's face it, teachers are not always completely confident in principals' decision-making and judgment. And such authority is a lot to vest in one person.
So seniority may be somewhat rigid and mechanistic (so let's talk about adjustment to that), but it has been designed to safeguard against scenarios like the one above--which did happen.
Construing 'seniority' as a nothing more than a scam to protect teachers, and therein substantiating demands for 'flexibility' is unhelpful in that it swings the pendulum just as far in the opposite direction.
Let's not scrap one institutional arrangement in favor of another equally problematic institutional arrangement. Let's make sensible choices about adjustments....Let's create systems that actually work.
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