A View from the Trenches of the War on Teachers in New York City Schools

----Or The Gotcha Culture at the NY City Department of Ed.

by Matt Frisch

July 5, 2010

Imagine for a minute that we live in a culture in which we are judged solely on the basis of our shortcomings- our strengths, talents, past experience and accomplishments all have no bearing on how we are judged by the world at large. One tiny slip, one miscue, one weakness and we are labeled a failure for all the world to see. Now, imagine that we are forced to submit to other people’s highly subjective criteria of what constitutes an error or a weakness and that the criteria are constantly in flux but the decisions of those sitting in judgment over us are nonetheless final and irreversible. This is not the stuff of science fiction or a nightmarish prediction of the future; this is now. This is the culture created by 8 years of mayoral control of the NY City school system.

The mayor and chancellor have spawned a generation of principals and assistant principals who are encouraged to consolidate their own power in their buildings by bringing in their own people and by pushing out independent-minded veteran teachers. The arsenal of weapons at the disposal of these aggressive administrators to use against non-conforming teachers is virtually limitless. Any infraction, no matter how insignificant, can serve as the pretext for disciplinary action. The stakes in this unfair fight are the teacher’s mental health and livelihood.

Allow me to describe how this blood sport is played in the elementary schools. A principal decides that he wants to get rid of a teacher. Perhaps the teacher has questioned the principal’s pet professional development program as irrelevant to the most pressing needs of the students. Perhaps the principal just needs to meet his quota of unsatisfactory ratings. In any case, the principal drops by the teacher’s room and notices that a student is sitting by himself rather than with the group. The principal asks the student why he is sitting by himself and the boy says, “The teacher says I talk too much.” The principal leaves without a word to the teacher. This “incident” leads to a disciplinary meeting and invariably to a letter in the teacher’s file saying that students must not be excluded from lessons and ending with the dread word- “unsatisfactory.” Or imagine that a teacher on the principal’s hit list has a sick parent or child at home, has to take a phone call and is seen by an administrator with a cell phone to his ear during class time- another negative letter to file. All principals need are two of these critical letters and it is well within their authority as supervisors under the NY City Department of Education to rate that teacher’s work, over the entire school year as unsatisfactory. There is nothing the teacher’s union can say that can change that decision, as long as the principal has adhered to the letter, if not the spirit, of the UFT contract.

These are just two examples of the awesome power principal’s hold over teachers. As I said earlier, the grounds for rating a teacher’s performance as unsatisfactory are only limited by the breadth of the administrator’s creativity. Today’s administrators are not held back by any quaint notions of collegiality with teachers or by an understanding of the realities of teaching that might be gained through experience. Graduates of the DOE’s Leadership Academy are for the most part young and inexperienced. Their primary motivations for becoming principals are the salary and the power, rather than any desire to make a difference in kids’ lives. They go about their work of consolidating their power and doing their higher ups’ bidding without ambivalence or scruple.

A year or a career’s hard work are trashed because of a cell phone conversation. The profound, perhaps life-changing influence a teacher has had on his students, the important lessons he has taught, the way he has shared aspects of his own personality and given his students a safe space to explore and express their own unique qualities- all of this is beneath the notice of these young, ruthless administrators. All that matters is that on March 15th, the teacher was seen drinking a hot beverage during class time or on April 6th, he took his class to the front of the building to see the daffodils during the “writer’s workshop” timeslot.

Principals are impervious to any excuse for an infraction, once they have you in their sights. And they are all powerful. Who can a teacher turn to when he is caught for example with his head on his desk during a preparation period and is accused of sleeping during the prep? Unless the principal’s accusations violate specific rights guaranteed in the teachers’ contract with the DOE, the UFT cannot come to the teacher’s rescue and he is at the mercy of the principal.

The new breed of principals is not weighed down by any ethical baggage. They don’t believe in anything other than consolidating their own power and protecting their own sorry skins. They do what they’re told by higher-ups; they aggrandize themselves and punish anyone who rocks the boat. Principals fear two things- low test scores and angry parents. Test scores are not a problem because the tests are so dumbed down and curved up that nearly every student is judged above average. Never mind that 4th graders don’t know their multiplication facts and can’t write a grammatical sentence- the Department of Education in conjunction with the test publishers can virtually guarantee that almost every student will pass.

The risk posed by angry parents is tougher to manage. The short term solution that most principals choose is to dispense with discipline in the school. Incidents short of violence causing serious injury or bringing weapons to school are swept under the rug. No consequences for the rule breaker; a few pat assurances to the parents of the injured party and on to the next incident. No one takes a stand and no one is the wiser. This approach allows the principal to steer clear of the shoals of angry parents for the short term but the atmosphere in the building gradually deteriorates, a little each day. Disrespect and roughness toward classmates and teachers alike become the norm and sooner or later something really bad will happen. But by then, no one will connect the dots between this one isolated incident and the overall lack of discipline or leadership in the building.

All the discipline that principals could implement, in a uniform and consistent manner, with students is inflicted, in a capricious, self-serving way, on teachers. Kids go to the principal’s office with a swagger because they know that nothing they do, short of really hurting someone or bringing a weapon to school, will get them into any real trouble. Teachers go to the principal’s office with their hearts in their hands because unsatisfactory ratings for two years in a row can get you terminated. Bloomberg/Klein’s new graduates of the Leadership Academy are the system’s hit men. The more veteran teachers they can bring down, the higher their star rises.
Principals can make limitless errors without any real consequences. Scheduling can be haphazard, communication with staff can be sporadic and their scores for trustworthiness on the school environment survey can be abysmal but none of this will pose an obstacle to the principal’s advancement. It almost seems the more dysfunctional a building, the more the DOE likes it.

Principals are given broad financial discretion. They can hire more assistant principals than the number of students can justify, they can sign up for intensive, costly professional development that no one wants, they can hire an endless procession of substitute teachers so that regular teachers can engage in endless reinvention of the wheel and there are no repercussions from above.

Students can’t write or do arithmetic? Again, no problem as long as they pass the dumbed-down tests. The more counter-intuitive and convoluted the professional development program, the more popular with principals. How better to keep teachers jumping through hoops with the wool pulled tight over their eyes than with an emperor’s new clothes circus of professional development swirling around them. When professional development is on hiatus, the “mushroom” theory of management- keep ‘em in the dark and feed ‘em sh*t- takes up the slack.

Without any real accountability for poor administration, what’s an ambitious young principal to do to keep his edge? Bullying veteran teachers makes a good substitute for real leadership. It allows principals to feel like tough administrators and win accolades from superintendents and network leaders without making any substantive changes to the corporate-friendly status quo. Do as you’re told; follow a few simple rules spelled out in the teachers’ contract; check your humanity, sense of fair play and sound educational principles at the door and you’re set for life. That’s all the Department of Education asks of its new principals. This is the Kafkaesque culture that we immerse our children in when they go off to elementary school each morning.

Matt Frisch
frischome@aol.com