May 22, 2008 1:56 PM
One of the more inexplicable results of the Department of Education’s budget cuts would be the decimation of the Peer Intervention Program. PIP has been such an unalloyed success since its inception in 1988 that it has been widely copied by school systems across the country. It has received awards from the Ford Foundation-Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and has been lauded by national education groups and even by President Clinton’s secretary of education.
More important, this program has saved the careers of many hundreds of educators who found themselves struggling. PIP is a lifeline — for many it helped them regain their effectiveness. It has also helped a number of other educators who were burned out or otherwise no longer a good fit for the profession to gracefully exit into other fields.
What more could one possibly ask of such a program?
Well, the DOE wants to be more punitive. It doesn’t like the idea that administrators are kept away from the process for three months and, in short, it doesn’t like the idea of PIP and is trying to cut the program.
But PIP works so well, in part, because there is a three-month time out for intervenors to collaborate and build rapport with floundering educators. They do this on a non-judgmental basis. Intervenors do not report to the principal or to anyone else. The intervenors function in the same way that attorneys or physicians do with the educator as their client. They can be effective only because they can build a sense of trust, of mutual effort in which the struggling educator need not fear that missteps or temporary failures will lead to a U-rating or disciplinary action or even just a bad reputation in the eyes of school administrators.
That approach has been so successful that a survey last year found that nine out of 10 of the struggling teachers who were surveyed turned around their performance in the classroom and maintained a Satisfactory rating five years after leaving PIP. Principals whose teachers have been in the program also praise it — see our story on page 4.
What more could one possibly ask of such a program?
Well, the DOE doesn’t seem to care about a formula that works. It wants administrators to be able to observe the struggling educators and, perhaps, to give them a U-rating even before there has been a realistic chance for improvement. If the struggling educators do not yet have tenure then, of course, the principal can simply fire them. That approach would be the exact opposite of what PIP tries to do.
In addition to peer coaching, PIP offers counseling support services in which participants can meet with the staff psychologist to explore factors in their personal lives that may be affecting their professional lives.
There is an alternative career liaison for participants who have decided to leave the classroom or guidance office. They work with a career counselor to translate their strengths and interests into a new professional path. This includes assessment, technology training, job development and on-the-job training externships. There is also a career information resource center, a state-of-the-art resource center to facilitate a job search.
What more could one possibly ask of such a program?
But the DOE is fixated on punishment: Don’t help these struggling teachers to improve; report them to administrators, hang them out to dry, fire them.
That seems to be the DOE mindset these days. Struggling teachers? Fire them. ATRs who don’t have a permanent job? Fire them.
Clearly this makes no sense. As the hundreds of success stories prove, most floundering teachers want to be good teachers and most can be good teachers. They just need a bit of help. Why throw away these good teachers?
PIP operates pretty much on a pittance with its budget frozen at $1.3 million for the last five years. Given the salary increases in the last two contracts, that means, in effect, that PIP’s budget has been cut, and the DOE has been adamant about refusing to budge on the budget unless PIP gives in to its punitive demands.
The DOE needs to take a second look at how much good PIP has done. It should back away from its hard line and provide the much-needed funding for this valuable program.