Build it and they will come
May 10, 2007 4:45 PM
After spending time this winter working with school communities, like Tilden’s when they were fighting the closing of their school, the unfairness of these situations became particularly galling to me. Teachers in tough schools deal with all the effects of society's failure to invest in children, yet you are told to do more with less, and — under NCLB and state and city accountability rules — are threatened with the school’s closing if you don’t.
What we proposed at the Spring Conference is an alternative strategy — a positive, constructive way for turning this around and really helping students at risk. All the proposals we made could easily be negotiated as part of the path to making sure all our public schools are schools of choice for educators and parents alike.
Here are some excerpts.
[Recently, as I reviewed the events of the past year to prepare for this conference, I was pleasantly surprised by the tremendous progress we’ve made.]
We heard a lot of tough talk, true. And we faced some serious threats — to job security, to tenure, to our pensions and health benefits, to name a few. But in the end, we fought them all off, protecting tenure and job security and maintaining all our rights and benefits. And, to boot, we secured an early contract, bringing the increase in salaries in six years to 43 percent and breaking the $100,000 barrier. …
Of course, while we’re reviewing the year, we must highlight the work done by a broad coalition of parents, educators, labor and community activists and elected officials to win the Campaign for Fiscal Equity funding suit, and the political fight to get it implemented in Albany. More than $5 billion of additional aid over the next four years will go to our schools, much of it for the things we advocated, including those long-sought class-size reductions!
Now we’re coming up on the system’s third version of Extreme Makeover. &133; Ironically, mayoral control was supposed to ensure top-to-bottom accountability, but under [the new reorganization] it seems that the only ones being held accountable are those who work in schools — and that is a concern.
[However,] just last month, we won an agreement that makes some major changes in this new reorganization plan. What are they?
- For the next two years, no school will lose money as a result of the new funding formulas. Successful schools will not be destabilized, and struggling schools will receive more resources.
- Senior teachers seeking transfers, and newer teachers seeking tenure will not have the deck stacked against them. And if they do, we will not hesitate to grieve.
- Kids at risk will benefit from increased funding.
- Class sizes will start to shrink.
- Long overdue middle school reforms will be launched.
- And a new process that could potentially give greater voice to parents — a group that everyone in education should be embracing, not isolating or denigrating.
Will [this agreement] make our jobs perfect? Far from it. I’m sure that, like the last reorganization, it will take some time to learn to navigate the new structure and figure out who’s in charge and where to go when a problem can’t be solved within the school.
We’ll also still have to fight the testing mania — both here at home and in Washington, as No Child Left Behind comes up for reauthorization.
And, finally, well in advance of 2009, when mayoral control automatically sunsets, we must have a serious discussion about what type of school governance will foster effective teaching and learning in New York City.
But, among the changes we secured is one that overrides all — and that is voice, for ourselves and for parents.
Will they listen? I certainly can’t offer any guarantees. But for now we are committed to trying to make the dialogue work. And if the promise to listen and work together proves to be illusory, then we will be on the streets again.
However it turns out, we gained something else in this battle — something more valuable than any provision in any official agreement: We gained partners. Maybe the strongest partnership with parents and community in the union’s 47-year history. …
We all know the African proverb about how it takes a village to raise a child. Well, today, we are presenting the John Dewey Friend of Education award to the village. To the people who worked so hard with us, shoulder to shoulder, to secure CFE funding and put the public back in public education. &133;
[W]e are honoring parents and community leaders who had to shout to be heard and demonstrate to be seen. It shouldn’t have had to be that way. They should be listened to because of who they are. The same is true of educators and this union. After all, we know a thing or two about what works in our schools.
We proved that with the Chancellor’s District, which used our ideas about what our children needed — and it worked. And the main reason it worked was that everybody involved in those schools bought in; they were invested in it and felt responsible for its success. …
The new reorganization could have done that, too. In fact, most parents and teachers believe in many of the things that this new reorganization strives to accomplish. …
So what’s the problem? As usual, the problem is not so much with the goals, but with how we get there.
For instance, Chancellor Klein talks a lot about the importance of good teachers. But we must really work hard to make sure that every child has a good teacher and every public school is a school of choice for parents and educators alike.
Let me be clear. Research has shown that the children who need highly skilled, experienced teachers the most get them the least. And we know that highly skilled teachers, especially two or three in a row, can make a tremendous difference in a child’s success.
Obviously, experience has a lot to do with a teacher’s effectiveness. Of course, there are some brand-new teachers who are amazing! But let’s be honest. Most of us — including me — remember all too well the struggles and mistakes of our first year or two. It takes time to master the many skills that make a great teacher.
So when the statistics show, as they do, that because of high teacher turnover, there are many more inexperienced teachers in schools with high concentrations of at-risk youngsters, then that’s a concern. New York City is no exception to that national pattern, although the disparity is less than in many other places.
This “unequal distribution of experienced teachers” has become a big part of the debate over No Child Left Behind. Yes, there is a growing consensus that urban schools are under-funded, but many educators and advocates say that, even if the money were there, the job would not be complete until all children have equal access to the most valuable education resource: highly skilled, experienced teachers.
[T]he union bashers have seized upon this issue as yet another reason to get rid of teacher unions. If there were no unions and no union contracts, they say, they could force teachers to go wherever they wanted them. (Isn’t it ironic? The same people who denigrate seniority are the ones singing the praises of experienced — aka “senior” — teachers.)
How many times have we heard the pundits call for involuntary transfers right here in New York? Talk about a solution that creates many more problems than it solves! Thankfully, it was not an issue raised in the last negotiation, but it remains a line in the sand for us every time it is raised.
So the newest idea of the day for forcing teachers to move is a school funding formula that follows the child and, then on top of that, gives schools more money for their at-risk students. So far, so good.
The problem is that if this is a zero-sum game, the schools that work get penalized. Schools that have been successful at keeping their experienced teachers lose funding, so they can no longer afford their experienced teaching force. And hard-to-staff schools become the only schools that have the budgets to hire and keep senior teachers.
This is what the city announced in January. But now, because of the intervention of the UFT and our Dewey Award winners, it has significantly changed. That’s a good thing, because otherwise, many solid, stable schools — including some serving poor communities — would have been destroyed.
And, it never would have worked! You cannot turn around a low-performing school by forcing teachers to work there. Success happens in a positive, committed learning community where everyone feels invested.
We all want all children to meet high educational standards, and we all recognize that children of color and those in poverty often have the longest way to go. If we are to close that achievement gap, we must make sure that the children who are furthest behind have the teachers they need to help them catch up.
So we need to get more experienced teachers into high-poverty schools. And we can! Through the collective-bargaining process, we have gone a long way already. Between expanding transfer opportunities, introducing incentives to staff SURR schools, enforcing certification standards and fighting for higher salaries, we now have — by the mayor’s own admission — one of the most highly qualified teaching forces in this nation.
