Sunday, November 28, 2010

The Teaching Profession: Out With the Old, In With the New

The Sunday Times book review section review "Shock of Gray" a book about the aging world population, posing the issue of older people vs. younger people for jobs in addition to the fact that as birth rates drop there are fewer workers to support the elderly. What is of interest to us is when the author, Ted C. Fishman, refers to "age arbitrage" where companies trade in their older employees for a younger, cheaper work force elsewhere - outsourcing - attributing this to globalization.

This got me to thinking about what we've seen here in NYC within the teaching ranks and the growing assaults on senior, higher paid teachers. First we saw Joel Klein claim early in his tenure that seniority was harming poor kids because the most experienced teachers could transfer out to better neighborhoods while at the same time attacking senior teachers by claiming the very same seniority transfers were foisting incompetent teachers on principals. He also attacked the "bumping" rules where senior teachers had the right to bump junior teachers within the same license area. The 2005v contract killed these seniority rules and created a pool of ATRs, the use of these senior teachers as short term of long term subs.

Then Klein implemented what he called fair school funding, where for the first time a school was charged for the costs of the teaching staff. Thus, a school with a lot of teachers with over 22 years making a hundred thousand a year (by the way, giving big raises at the top was part of the long-term plan- call it an investment - to create such a gap in salary between new and senior teachers as to start the pressure cooker boiling) could afford less teachers, thus giving principals an incentive to go after the higher salaried teachers.

The next level of attack is coming from the likes of the Bill Gates foundation and Arne Duncan who want to totally revamp salary structure to be based on the scores of each individual teacher using value-added. Part of this attack is to degrade teacher experience. As Susan Ohanian wrote which we quoted Gates' spokesperson Vickie Bernstein in our post ( Calls to action for teachers -) the other day:
Lest you doubt the triage metaphor, consider Vicki Phillips' recent remarks to the National PTA. Phillips is the Education Director for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
So we know master's degrees have almost no value.
We know certifications don't make a difference.
We know that after three years, seniority doesn’t really matter . . . After year three, teachers usually don't get significantly better or worse. 
So you see where this is going. Degrade the profession, use more TFA temps, etc. By increasing non-unionized charters - pay the salaries to make them competitive with the public schools but demand 30% more work, no pensions and possibly lousier health plans - they ultimately will be able to drive down every one's salary so one day we are back to the 50's, with a basic non-unionized work force making peanuts and with lousy working conditions.

The next step will be to demand that when layoffs come, seniority be thrown out - this will be a focus for Cathie Black. Part of their game plan it so appeal to the newer, younger teachers who will demand they be kept on while older higher salaried teachers are let go. Watch the value-added scores be released just in time - can't you see a list in the NY Post of every teacher making a high salary and their value-added score compared to lower salaried teachers in their school? That's coming folks, to a school near you.

Should see this picture for teachers within the context of Fishman's book, as part of a worldwide trend? Or is this a unique case?

AFTERBURN
For those of you who thought of Joel Klein as incompetent - with his multiple reorganizations and all the other hazarai, I disagree. His job was not to improve education or even about education. It was about ideology and to do what I described above. In the latter he was brilliant - a master, especially with a cooperative UFT - non incompetent either by the way, as solidfying and holding on to power is the prime directive and they have done that as well as Klein has done his work.

5 comments:

robert rendo said...

It’s completely ironic that we teachers hold high expectations of our students and our mantra has always been for them to attain the highest level of higher education once they leave 12th grade. Yet, in the same breath, Mr. Duncan and other power brokers are espousing the venomously hypocritical notion that a lower level college degree is all that’s needed to teach.

Mr. Duncan’s shiny new paradigm is that we are not preparing children to become supremely educated (the core of which critical thinking, character education, and reading, writing, and math), but, rather, to be good workers who will enter the job market and produce for companies. Yet, anyone with any morality and intellectual capacity knows that being a critical and cognitively mobile person OUTSIDE the realm of one’s job is equally indispensable for a society to be viable, sustainable, equitable, and democratic. Mr. Duncan’s and Mr. Obama’s orientation about what it really means to develop and have an educated mind is very frightening. Everything is geared to job readiness, but that thrust, while simplistic for corporations, is detrimental to generations of children who are being educated.

We need a completely new paradigm, a brand new narrative that will afford opportunity for everyone’s brain to be well developed. Playing down the importance of getting a masters degree for teaching, which is mandated in New York State, is dumbing down a segment of the educated workforce.

The so called “research” that shows that a masters degree does not make any difference compared to a bachelor’s degree is flawed. Looking at this one construct is like looking at a single construct that causes stocks to go up and down and concluding that such a construct is the primary cause of fluctuation. You simple can’t isolate one factor and highlight it as a primary catalyst. Teaching children and analyzing their performance, while greatly dependent on teacher quality and training, also depends on resources of staff and money, space, parent involvement, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds of students, local, state, and federal policies, and the linguistic status of each student.

It would not surprise me if Arne Duncan holds only a bachelors degree. But please keep in mind that this is all the agenda of the president as well.
How sad, when you analyze this as a system. If this mindset becomes actualized, it will dumb down an already intellectually compromised society, and that has widespread, chronic, and profound implications for the middle class and the accelerating stratification of America.

Ultimately, if you connect all the dots on a micro-level, I believe very strongly that very little of Mr. Duncan’s direction has anything to do with creating an informed and critically thinking population; rather, it has everything to do with class equality and who gets to gain and retain economic power. How disturbing indeed it has become for the business class to have permeated education to this extent. Who will become our great thinkers, writers, surgeons, orators, advocates, etc. be when Duncan and company are moving in this violent direction?

Robert Rendo

(The commentator teaches English language arts in the public schools and is also a published editorial illustrator with work in the New York TImes, the Chicacgo Tribune, and the Sacramento Bee).

robert rendo said...

It’s completely ironic that we teachers hold high expectations of our students and our mantra has always been for them to attain the highest level of higher education once they leave 12th grade. Yet, in the same breath, Mr. Duncan and other power brokers are espousing the venomously hypocritical notion that a lower level college degree is all that’s needed to teach.

Mr. Duncan’s shiny new paradigm is that we are not preparing children to become supremely educated (the core of which critical thinking, character education, and reading, writing, and math), but, rather, to be good workers who will enter the job market and produce for companies. Yet, anyone with any morality and intellectual capacity knows that being a critical and cognitively mobile person OUTSIDE the realm of one’s job is equally indispensable for a society to be viable, sustainable, equitable, and democratic. Mr. Duncan’s and Mr. Obama’s orientation about what it really means to develop and have an educated mind is very frightening. Everything is geared to job readiness, but that thrust, while simplistic for corporations, is detrimental to generations of children who are being educated.

We need a completely new paradigm, a brand new narrative that will afford opportunity for everyone’s brain to be well developed. Playing down the importance of getting a masters degree for teaching, which is mandated in New York State, is dumbing down a segment of the educated workforce.

The so called “research” that shows that a masters degree does not make any difference compared to a bachelor’s degree is flawed. Looking at this one construct is like looking at a single construct that causes stocks to go up and down and concluding that such a construct is the primary cause of fluctuation. You simple can’t isolate one factor and highlight it as a primary catalyst. Teaching children and analyzing their performance, while greatly dependent on teacher quality and training, also depends on resources of staff and money, space, parent involvement, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds of students, local, state, and federal policies, and the linguistic status of each student.

It would not surprise me if Arne Duncan holds only a bachelors degree. But please keep in mind that this is all the agenda of the president as well.

How sad, when you analyze this as a system. If this mindset becomes actualized, it will dumb down an already intellectually compromised society, and that has widespread, chronic, and profound implications for the middle class and the accelerating stratification of America.

Ultimately, if you connect all the dots on a micro-level, I believe very strongly that very little of Mr. Duncan’s direction has anything to do with creating an informed and critically thinking population; rather, it has everything to do with class equality and who gets to gain and retain economic power. How disturbing indeed it has become for the business class to have permeated education to this extent. Who will become our great thinkers, writers, surgeons, orators, advocates, etc. be when Duncan and company are moving in this violent direction?

Robert Rendo
(The commentator teaches English language arts in the public schools and is also a published editorial illustrator with work in the New York TImes, the Chicacgo Tribune, and the Sacramento Bee).

Anonymous said...

It’s completely ironic that we teachers hold high expectations of our students and our mantra has always been for them to attain the highest level of higher education once they leave 12th grade. Yet, in the same breath, Mr. Duncan and other power brokers are espousing the venomously hypocritical notion that a lower level college degree is all that’s needed to teach.
Mr. Duncan’s shiny new paradigm is that we are not preparing children to become supremely educated (the core of which critical thinking, character education, and reading, writing, and math), but, rather, to be good workers who will enter the job market and produce for companies. Yet, anyone with any morality and intellectual capacity knows that being a critical and cognitively mobile person OUTSIDE the realm of one’s job is equally indispensable for a society to be viable, sustainable, equitable, and democratic. Mr. Duncan’s and Mr. Obama’s orientation about what it really means to develop and have an educated mind is very frightening. Everything is geared to job readiness, but that thrust, while simplistic for corporations, is detrimental to generations of children who are being educated.
We need a completely new paradigm, a brand new narrative that will afford opportunity for everyone’s brain to be well developed. Playing down the importance of getting a masters degree for teaching, which is mandated in New York State, is dumbing down a segment of the educated workforce.
The so called “research” that shows that a masters degree does not make any difference compared to a bachelor’s degree is flawed. Looking at this one construct is like looking at a single construct that causes stocks to go up and down and concluding that such a construct is the primary cause of fluctuation. You simple can’t isolate one factor and highlight it as a primary catalyst. Teaching children and analyzing their performance, while greatly dependent on teacher quality and training, also depends on resources of staff and money, space, parent involvement, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds of students, local, state, and federal policies, and the linguistic status of each student.
It would not surprise me if Arne Duncan holds only a bachelors degree. But please keep in mind that this is all the agenda of the president as well.
How sad, when you analyze this as a system. If this mindset becomes actualized, it will dumb down an already intellectually compromised society, and that has widespread, chronic, and profound implications for the middle class and the accelerating stratification of America.
Ultimately, if you connect all the dots on a micro-level, I believe very strongly that very little of Mr. Duncan’s direction has anything to do with creating an informed and critically thinking population; rather, it has everything to do with class equality and who gets to gain and retain economic power. How disturbing indeed it has become for the business class to have permeated education to this extent. Who will become our great thinkers, writers, surgeons, orators, advocates, etc. be when Duncan and company are moving in this violent direction?
Robert Rendo
(The commentator teachers English language arts in the public schools and is also a published editorial illustrator with work in the New York TImes, the Chicacgo Tribune, and the Sacramento Bee).

robert rendo said...

It’s completely ironic that we teachers hold high expectations of our students and our mantra has always been for them to attain the highest level of higher education once they leave 12th grade. Yet, in the same breath, Mr. Duncan and other power brokers are espousing the venomously hypocritical notion that a lower level college degree is all that’s needed to teach.

We need a completely new paradigm, a brand new narrative that will afford opportunity for everyone’s brain to be well developed. Playing down the importance of getting a masters degree for teaching, which is mandated in New York State, is dumbing down a segment of the educated workforce.

The so called “research” that shows that a masters degree does not make any difference compared to a bachelor’s degree is flawed. Looking at this one construct is like looking at a single construct that causes stocks to go up and down and concluding that such a construct is the primary cause of fluctuation. You simple can’t isolate one factor and highlight it as a primary catalyst. Teaching children and analyzing their performance, while greatly dependent on teacher quality and training, also depends on resources of staff and money, space, parent involvement, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds of students, local, state, and federal policies, and the linguistic status of each student.

How sad, when you analyze this as a system. If this mindset becomes actualized, it will dumb down an already intellectually compromised society, and that has widespread, chronic, and profound implications for the middle class and the accelerating stratification of America.

Ultimately, if one connects all the dots on a micro-level, I believe very strongly that very little of Mr. Duncan’s direction has anything to do with creating an informed and critically thinking population; rather, it has everything to do with class equality and who gets to gain and retain economic power. How disturbing indeed it has become for the business class to have permeated education to this extent. Who will become our great thinkers, writers, surgeons, orators, advocates, etc. be when Duncan and company are moving in this violent direction?

Robert Rendo

Al Catasus said...

An interesting aside, regarding the Teacher Data Reports (Teacher Report Cards). In order to prove the point that experience is irrelevant with regard to teacher quality and effectiveness, the formula used to grade teachers give a BONUS for LACK of experience. Yes, boys and girls, teachers get extra credit for lacking experience!