5/20/11 SHOW: WACKY SCHOOL BOARDS; PUSHY DONORS; TEACHER LAYOFFS
On this week’s show we discuss the sad state of affairs–for students and teachers–in the Jordan-Elbridge School District. Is the locally-elected school board a relic of the past, or the best way to deliver education? Continuing with education, has Florida State properly handled a gift from the Charles Koch Charitable Trust meant to hire two new economics professors? How much control should donors have about how their money is used? Finally, Governor Cuomo wants to drop seniority as the measure for teacher layoffs. He wants to substitute standardized test scores as a measure of teacher quality. Bob Greene thinks this is nuts. Is Greene correct? Join us in the conversation by posting a comment in reaction to our views.
11 Comments to “5/20/11 SHOW: WACKY SCHOOL BOARDS; PUSHY DONORS; TEACHER LAYOFFS”
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drubin says: Dear Ms. Brown:
Assuming that you represent the view of most teachers in public schools in Central New York, then why doesn’t the powerful teachers union organize against the hegemony of tests? Why not adopt as a mantra: “Let your teaching professionals be professionals!” Your union’s support for our politicians in Albany is crucial to their re-elelction. You can sway them. Let’s drop the mandates. Let’s drop the incessant testing. Your union should take the lead. What do you think?
David Rubin
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Joan Brown says:
Dr. Rubin,
Our union does take the lead in asking for relief from relentless and senseless testing. We do lobby our legislators frequently. We get push-back from both them, the media, and mainstream America accusing us of not wanting to be accountable. I believe that it is a matter of trust- we in the public schools are not trusted to be professionally competent enough to know how to teach without a test looming over our students. As I’m sure you know, the Board of Regents just adopted emergency APPR regulations. We had been collaborating to develop a fair evaluation system for over a year and Regents basically threw it out. Apparently we don’t have as much clout as you think.
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Paul Ketchum says:
I feel compelled to commend the panel members for their thought provoking discussion of school district consolidation. I have long believed that we, the public, would be far better served with a county wide school district managed professionally under the oversight of the elected legislature. As Professor Rubin pointed out in his Post Standard article, this would go far towards equalizing the distribution of resources so that children through-out the county have the same educational opportunities. A similar consolidation of fire departments would also be a good idea in my view.
On another note, I again find myself in agreement with Professor Greene. As a graduate of a New York State secondary education institution, I remember well spending the first semester of each school year on academics and the second semester preparing for the regents tests. While this did make me a skilled test-taker, I would have preferred more exposure to knowledge. I quite agree that holding teachers accountable for student performance on standardized tests is absurd. However, I feel that we should have some mechanism, other than seniority, to use should it be necessary to reduce the force. Perhaps it would be a good idea to assess teacher performance and effectiveness once they reach twenty years service and retire those who are “over the hill”. The United States military has a very effective “vitalization” program that could be a model. The question then becomes what are the standards and who sets them? I often wonder what we are trying to achieve in our public education program.
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ldola says: A question: It seems like the issue of how to evaluate teachers—at least as presented by the media—is always reduced to “seniority vs. test scores.” Surely (I hope, anyway!) teachers aren’t evaluated, whether for purposes of deciding who to layoff or for general evaluation purposes, just based on test scores. Right? I mean people in all variety of occupations—including chemists, lawyers, and professors, in my experience—are evaluated based on a number/large number of varying criteria, such as communications skills, productivity, meeting deadlines and commitments, leadership, etc. In higher education, even post-tenure, instructor evaluations include classroom visits, reviews of our student evaluations, reviews of our syllabi and the exams we administer, etc. Aren’t elementary and secondary school teachers similarly evaluated against a variety of criteria? If not, why not? (By the way, obviously it is important that teachers be evaluated not just to decide who to layoff, but to ensure qualified and quality performance in the classroom and in their other responsibilities. Or do union contracts and/or the award of tenure obviate such multi-criteria performance evaluations in public schools?).
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AARON BENEZRA says:
RE: EDUCATION – FALSE QUESTIONS, FALSE PROBLEMS
There seems to be an ideology in the USA that education is a manufactured product, much like banging out cars cars, toothpicks, or chopsticks. We should not be surprised at this, as the Twentieth Century saw the burgeoning of the Industrial Age, such that the educational model mimics that social reality. Now we appear to be in a Post-Industrial Era that has yet to be well-defined, but, is clearly influenced profoundly by the technological innovations of the Twenty-First Century, most notably the Internet. Even so, no social model is ever perfect. There were flaws in the American educational models of the Ninteenth Century that led to the unionization of the Twentieth Century; there are flaws in the unionization of the Twentieth Century that will lead to transformations in the Twenty-First Century.
One constant is the quality – or lack of quality – of Students. A prior constant, with which I began this commentary, is the ideology that education is a manufactured product. This ideology has been developed in such a way as to fail to weed out substandard educational institutions, as well as to admit and graduate ignorant and stupid students barely able read, write, add, subtract, or think in critical ways. This ‘democratic’ education [read the short story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut in his short story collection WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE] inflates education in the same way the government prints money today. As a society, we ought not delude ourselves, that every student is an Einstein in the raw; many are bona fide idiots, if not worse. It is cruel to delude idiots into thinking they may be Einsteins. It is equally cruel to teach Einsteins to model themselves after idiots. The question is, will the success of the popular culture of the idiot continue to dominate our educational system – and will we continue to blame our teachers and tie their hands – teachers, who are prohibited to be more than babysitters for the vast majority of students – or will we develop some discipline in our schools and develop alternative pathways for those students, who are not cut out to be academics, and greater resources, for those students, who have what it takes?
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bspitzer says: Apropos the discussion on the program of the Jordan-Elbridge school district and the governance of local schools, here is a link (you may need to paste it into your browser) to David Rubin’s thought-provoking May 21 article in the Syracuse Post-Standard on this subject:
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2011/05/be_learned_from_the_turmoil_at.html -
drubin says:
First let me thank Joan Brown for her two posts.
In the second one I think she puts her finger on an important problem; that is, do we think our teachers are truly professionals, or do we think that Albany, elected school boards, and superintendents need to micromanage them? One reason teachers cling to a union, and develop a union mentality, is because they are NOT treated as professionals. I predict that if Albany, boards, and administrators got out of their way and let them teach, and trusted them to teach, matters would improve greatly. The thousand-page union contracts would go away. Now, how are we going to make that happen?
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Seems to me that clinging to unionism and displaying union mentalities are the very things that stand in the way of teachers being looked upon as professionals. It appears that teachers are caught up in a vicious circle. Unions are most visible when there is a threat to pay and benefits, or when protecting a union member from discipline which, in most other vocations, would result in immediate termination. Quite frankly, the impression one gets is that the unions are self-serving and anything but professional. A good example would be the display put on in the Wisconsin State Capitol.
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drubin says:
In response to Paul Ketchum, I agree that the union mentality is not healthy for our schools (as it was not healthy for the Syracuse Symphony). On the other hand, if I worked in a district like Jordan-Elbridge I would need a union to protect me from the school board and its administrators.
It is, indeed, a vicious cycle. Where do we break it? I think it has to start at the top. We need much better administrators who are more closely tied to the classroom experience and who still teach at the same time. (I did it. It can be done.) We need better school board members who are not petty tyrants. We need higher pay for teachers based strictly on performance with a pay scale much more closely aligned to pay for administrators. We need greater accountability for both the poor and the strong teachers. That would be a start toward weaning teachers away from the union.
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Lisa Dolak: Yes, teachers are evaluated on criteria, it is currently called the Model for Practitioner Evaluation in Syracuse, and it encompasses all aspects of teaching, including planning and designing instruction, classroom management, and professional responsibilities. Union contracts do not obviate such evaluations, we were instrumental in developing the model in Syracuse. It can be found online on the SCSD website. The Syracuse Teacher’s Association is a professional union, striving to help our members become highly effective teachers.
David Rubin: I agree with everything in your last comment except the first and last sentences. When did unions become the bad guy in this country? Unions were instrumental in the fight for civil rights, and integration of schools, among other battles. Unions have always worked to raise the level of treatment for it’s workers, and in our case, we have devoted ourselves to having a voice for our students. In Syracuse, it was the teacher’s union who negotiated Peer Assistance and Review- a system of support and evaluation of new teachers by veteran teachers. No one wants an ineffective teacher teaching next door, we want the best for our kids. We are not something teachers need to be weaned away from.
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Dear Mr. Greene,
What makes you think that you would have to argue with UNIONS against teachers teaching to the regents exams? None of us went into teaching with the idea that we would inspire students to achieve a score. We are horrified at the Regents idea that our teaching should be judged in this way (with the new Teacher Evaluation System in NYS) . We want our students to learn and be able to apply ideas to the broad spectrum of global issues that the U. S. struggles with daily. We are teachers, not test-preppers. Please don’t buy-in to the idea that teachers in public schools want less than you do for our students. WE want them to thirst for knowledge, and explore their world. We want them to be reflective thinkers. We did not create the Regents exams.
I love Ivory Tower and watch it weekly. As a social studies teacher, I love the discourse among panelists. Please don’t hold unions responsible for Regents testing. The Syracuse Teachers Association union is made up of teachers, teaching assistants, school sentries, school nurses, and food service workers. We did not write or implement the regents exams. Your remarks should have been aimed at the State Board of Regents.