“Merit Pay” Hurts Teachers, Staff and Students

From Marjorie Stamberg to ICE-mail:

This is a leaflet circulating in GED-Plus that colleagues may be interested in. Our school was belatedly asked to "participate" in this project.

“Merit Pay” Hurts Teachers, Staff and Students

10 REASONS TO VOTE NO ON "BONUS PAY"

UFT members in the GED-Plus program are being asked to approve a so-called “Performance Bonus Program.” This is a really, really bad idea. We have to organize to vote it down.

On Thursday we received a joint letter from the United Federation of Teachers and the NYC Department of Education announcing that hub meetings will be held next week on this plan. The first meeting was held in Staten Island on January 3, the day the letter arrived. They want to ram this through, just like they got the Delegates Assembly to vote on it with barely 15 minutes discussion, just hours after the deal was sealed.

Beware: this is not a bonus but a bribe. And don’t think you’ll be seeing 3 grand anytime soon. Already they’re talking about $1,500 if the school only makes “partial gains.” What you give up for that is the basic union principle of equal pay for equal work.

While pretending to encourage teachers in impoverished neighborhoods, the “incentives” will tend to push educators away from all but the best-funded inner-city schools. While claiming to support teacher collaboration, it will set teacher against teacher, dividing paras, teachers and support staff.

Call it whatever you want, it’s not really voluntary, it’s not really a bonus -- it’s the same old “merit pay” we’ve been resisting for years, until the UFT leadership caved.

This plan opens the door to individual “merit” pay. Bloomberg says straight-out that’s what he’s after. And once they get that, you can kiss ALL your union protections goodbye. It won’t stop at “bonuses.” Next time around, if “goals aren’t met,” it’ll be your S rating, your appointment, or the ATR sub pool (which Klein is looking to “terminate”).

Teachers and other school staff may be tempted by the money, but it’s a poisoned offer. Look again! Please read the points below and try to have the maximum discussion on the pros and cons at your hub and spoke. Be informed.

Here are ten reasons to vote down this dangerous plan:

1)Why are they offering the bribe? Teachers already work tirelessly because we are dedicated to our students and public education. We can’t “work harder” for the “bonus,” because we’re already working beyond capacity. They know it. The main purpose of the “bonus” (financed by private corporatizers like the Eli Broad Foundation) is not to improve education, it’s to break the power of the union.

2)If they wanted to give teachers more money, they could just grant a raise. If they wanted to improve education in impoverished school districts, they could lower class size. But instead, the DoE has repeatedly refused to spend money offered by the state to reduce class size, and used money earmarked for reducing class size for other purposes (particularly testing).

3)It will set up competition between teachers instead of solidarity. Imagine the kind of resentment that will be directed at fellow union members on the school “compensation committee” who decide who gets how much of a “bonus”!

4)It will increase the power of principals who have veto power. Want more money? Work lunch. Do extra coverages. There will be pressure to teach to the test, or scapegoat teachers who won’t, because they’re “costing” the school a possible bonus.

5)It is bad for the students. Bonus pay is tied to test scores. So economically, it means teachers will drift to schools where students’ test scores can be the highest. (Low-performing students will be pushed out, low-performing schools will be closed.)

6)There’s nothing really “voluntary” about it, since this “data” will be used in part for the “report cards” to close schools.

7)Think of the extra paperwork required to track the increase in the already over-the-top test schedule to track student “gains” on which the bonus depends. We already work tirelessly for our students.

8)In the 2005 contract, the UFT leadership traded away seniority and work time (going back before Labor Day) for a pay increase. This opened the door for the notoriously corrupt “open market system” and the ATRing (a new verb) of up to 1,000 teachers sitting in sub pools across the region.

9)In some ways this is even more foolhardy, because it goes to the very core of the principles of education and teaching. This re-introduces “piece work” – paying per head (literally) of those students making gains – which the union movement fought for years to get rid of.

10) Schools aren’t factories, kids aren’t widgets, and teachers aren’t stupid. Don’t buy the “bonus” pay scam!

It’s not just about the money. Yankees coach Joe Torre said it best when he turned down George Steinbrenner’s “performance pay” contract. He said, “I’d been there 12 years and didn’t think motivation was needed….Incentives, to me, I took it as an insult.” It’s an insult to teachers, too.

They need 55 percent of chapter members to vote this deal up (not just a majority of those voting). Already, 33 schools offered this plan have voted it down. Don’t say later, “I wish I had voted no at the time.”

Broad Foundation and Merit Pay

From Marjorie Stamberg to ICE-mail:

Teachers have asked for information on the Eli Broad Foundation and its connection to NYC schools.

Here are some information points, with references.

The "School Wide Bonus Pay" is being funded by private funds. The major contributor is the Eli Broad Foundation. He is a California billionaire real estate mogul whose agenda, along with others on the "Business Roundtable" is the charterization, privatization of public schools, and for teacher pay linked to student tests scores.

A press release from Mayor Bloomberg (17 October 2007) announcing the school wide bonus plan says the first year there will be about $20 million in bonuses. "These money are being raised privately, and so far, commitments have been made by The Eli and Edythe Broad foundation, the Robertson Foundation and the Partnership for New York City."

Why is private money being used the first year, to be followed with "public funds" later? According to the influential financial weekly, 'The Economist", (November 10, 2007):

"Mr. Klein says that this private source of funds was crucial in paying for experiments that might have involved huge political battles if they had been paid for out of public funds. The hope is that in the future, such reforms might be widely supported."

Mr Bloomberg "has avoided inflammatory political terms --'merit pay' and 'vouchers' are red rags to teachers' unions." Instead, "by using the carrot of pay rises to extract performance concessions from principals and teachers, and by persuading philanthropists such as Bill Gates to pay for innovations that might be hard to sell to the public" he is putting his agenda in place.

--Eli Broad is a California billionaire and real estate and life insurance mogul. With assets valued at $5.8 billion, Broad is the 42nd richest person on the planet, according to "Forbes" magazine. Broad believes "the best way to fix troubled urban school districts is to employ the classic American business model in which a powerful chief executive runs roughshod over a weak governing board." (East Bay Express [California], 10 October 2007. The East Bay Express goes to on say:

"Many Broad Foundation watchers around the country say the real purpose of this group is to diminish the power of school boards for an incremental and eventual takeover of public education by the corporate sector. There are concerns that Broad is carrying out the goals and education agenda of the Business Roundtable, made up of the CEO's of the nation's biggest companies, one of which Eli Broad headed. [Bloomberg is a member of ths Business Roundtable, which has called to privatize all NYC schools and to cut off public education at the 10th grade (!)]

An article in a Oregon community paper ("Willamette Week" 3 May 2006) was titled "L.A. Foundation's Role in Portland Schools Alarms Teachers, Some Parents." The articles states:

"They're troubled by how entrenched billionaire Eli Broad's Los Angeles foundation, which is devoted to making schools more businesslike, has become in Portland schools...."

Eli Broad says "urban public schools are failing and must adopt methods from business to succeed, such as competition, accountability based on 'measurables' and unhampered management authority--all focusing on the bottom line of student achievement, as measured by standardized tests."

"Broad wants to create competition by starting publicly funded, privately run charter schools, to enforce accountability by linking teacher pay to student test scores, and to limit teachers' say in curriculum and transfer decisions."

"In Portland, the foundation has flown all seven school board members since 2003 to Park City, Utah for weeklong all-expense-paid training."


[Note; at our UFT/NYCDOE informational meetings on "school wide bonus pay," the representative from Tweed tried to downplay the contribution of Eli Broad to the fund for performance pay. However, an NYCODE statement (12/18/07 states that "The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Robertson Foundation have each committed "$5 million to the City's school-wide bonus program. This is the largest amount that the Broad Foundation has contributed to teacher performance pay initiative."]

Can The Past Divine The Future?

Let's start the New Year with a...

....guest column by NYC teacher C.B. Abraham

I have been reading Ed Notes forever. I happen to believe in the concept of a loyal opposition. One can be “in the opposition” without being opposed to the system itself. It keeps the ruling party from running roughshod over those that disagree with the ruling elite’s actions. In short, an opposition party helps to maintain equilibrium.

There, in the December 26^th online issue of Ed Notes “Shuffling the deck on the UFT Titanic” I read the following about Sandra Feldman: “But she trained as a teacher and was a socialist with a trade union background”. As I said, I have been reading Ed Notes for a very long time. That word “socialist” rang a distant bell. And then I fell out of my chair.

As readers of Ed Notes know, sometime during November of 2003, a new Chapter Leader disagreed with the president of the union concerning extra money for teachers in certain curriculum areas. For this, according to Ed Notes, the chapter leader was called a "socialist." Fast-forward 4 years and lo and behold, the specter of merit pay has taken on a new life. It is now called a "bonus". A rose by any other name?

The bonus pay idea has the potential to be so divisive that it will put union members at each other’s throats. Why should anyone work in a school, teaching the same children, under the same conditions, with the same teaching credentials and be paid differently from their neighbor?

All of us, ruling party and opposition, should salute those schools that turned down the money tied to performance. They would not allow any member of their chapter to be construed as a dunsel in the education process. Those chapters understand what it means to be united. They understand the idea of a union.

If that past prediction on merit pay has come true, then what other treats await us in the coming year?

Wishing you a happy, healthy, and a prosperous new year.

C.B. Abraham

Ed Note:

Here is the original article published in the Jan. 2004 edition of Education Notes:

Randi Calls Chapter Leader a Socialist for Disagreeing With Her at Chapter Leaders Training
Reports from Chapter Leaders attending UFT Chapter Leader training on Nov. 23. 2003

Randi gives updates on the union-initiated grievances and says that we are in a holding pattern until the next municipal election. [Is she saying that the grievances won’t be won until we elect a new mayor?] Expect “negative blow back” in the media each time we make any kind of advance.

Eventually she postulates the following idea:

Perhaps more prep time (she may have mentioned money here as well, but our correspondent is not 100% sure ) could be given to teachers in Title 1 schools in an effort to enable these schools to be adequately staffed. A chapter leader from a middle school questioned this and told her to ask for more money and time, not for a select group of schools, but for all schools in the system. Anything less would fracture and divide the membership, create different levels or tiers for the teachers in the UFT and would have the same effect as Merit Pay.

Randi responded by calling him a socialist. She later apologized.

There are reports that Randi also suggested that higher pay for math and science teachers might be inevitable. If true, this would be a major giveback. What next? Elementary teachers asking for higher pay because they teach longer hours? High school and middle school teachers saying they should be paid more because of the amount of papers they mark.

One more note: This is not the first time UFT leaders have resorted to red-baiting as a way to brand people who oppose them. Expect a lot more of this kind of thing in the upcoming [2004] UFT elections.

[Note also the red-baiting that took place in the 2007 elections.]

Brandeis HS Rejects Merit Pay by Default

There's an interesting article in The Chief on the process focusing on Brandeis HS which I have also put up on Norms Notes here.

I've received requests for details of the merit pay plan in terms of the future. I put this out to the ednotes chapter leader/delegate list and will put responses in the comments section of this post.

1. If there is no 55/25 pension does the plan go on hold for next year? Is there a deadline?

2. Does it have to be re-voted every year? When would that vote take place? In other words, would the vote for the 2009/10 school year take place in the fall of 08 like this vote did? or if a school voted for it is it set in stone for the future or until the DOE offers it to other schools?

3. Is there an intention to expand the program throughout the school system or will it be limited to around 250 schools?

Feel free to include details on what took place in your school.

How did you as a chapter leader address the issue? If you are not the CL how did your CL address it.

Anonymity guaranteed but if you don't mind it to be published say so.

Klein and Weingarten Announce 86% Eligible Schools to Participate in School-Wide Peformance Pay

There are links to complete lists of schools accepting and rejecting merit pay on the sidebar to the right.

I posted the full press release on Norm's Notes. Randi and Joel seem so excited that 86% - 205 out of 240 eligible schools – chose to participate in the school-based performance plan. Many of us are thrilled at the 35 schools that are not participating.

Note all the characters involed from Eli Broad to the NYC Partnership, which uses its money to hump BloomKlein commercials in addition to schemes like this - anything but money in the classroom - to old Diane Ravitch attack dog Kathryn "Gone" Wylde.

How One NYC School Rejected Merit Pay plus a Meeting

Some schools that rejected merit pay want to hear about others. Maybe even get a meeting together. Or just attend the NYCORE meeting mentioned below (I will try to attend and report back.) If you know of schools that voted it down let us know and we'll pass it on.

Kudos to Sam Coleman and his colleagues for taking action and having an impact.

Email to NYCORE listserve from Sam Coleman:

To everyone who responded to my request for advice/information about fighting merit pay [see ed notes posts here and here], I took a lot of the ideas and comments that I received and wrote up a little leaflet. I put it in all the mail boxes at my school on Monday. I got a lot of positive feedback. This led to a meeting on Tuesday and about half the faculty showed up.

Folks got really fired up and not only vowed to vote against it but wanted to get in touch with other schools who rejected it and try to organize with them to make some public noise.

The vote was today and it was about 80% against, with almost a full turnout!

So, thanks again to all who responded and if people are interested or have ideas or are already doing something to make noise about this issue, let me know.

thanks,
Sam

p.s. I heard that 20% of the schools offered the merit pay option have rejected it. That's about 40 schools. It would be great to get our hands on that list. . .

Sam also sent this along about the NYCORE meeting on merit pay tomorrow:
NYCoRE’s Justice Not Just Tests Working Group will be meeting on Monday, December 17 at 5:30 at Pless Hall, 2nd Floor Anderson Room

At this meeting we will be discussing the bonus/merit pay issue, and planning our next move.
Our group has spent a couple of weeks thinking about and researching this contentious issue. We are discussing questions such as:


Will merit pay pit teachers against each other?
How will it effect special education and ELL students?
Will it promote cheating among teacher?
Will test prep become even more of a priority?

Please join us and bring your own questions, ideas and information. forward this message widely. For more information, contact info@nycore. org

Ed Notes archives on merit pay- 2001

In 2000/2001, I had tried to bring a resolution at the Delegate Assembly calling for the UFT to reject all forms of merit pay. Suddenly, after years of being able to get the floor Weingarten avoided calling on me for months.

It was the way she handled this issue – by refusing to have an open discussion in the union – along with her support for mayoral control that led me to lose faith in her as a union leader and ultimately took me from trying to convince her to move the UFT in a more progressive direction (I had naively thought she would take the union in a positive direction up to that point) to putting me in opposition mode, leading to the formation of ICE in November 2003.

I posted 3 articles Ed Notes ran in April 2001 on merit pay on the Norm's Notes blog here.
ICE original core members Paul Baizerman and Vera Pavone wrote the first two.

The third, "Weingarten Heads AFT Task Force Recommending Merit Pay" includes excerpts from the Feb. 12 edition of Education Week : AFT To Urge Locals To Consider New Pay Strategies. Weingarten sent an email to Ed Notes saying this was a very mild version of merit pay and sent me the report. There is no mild version of merit pay.

Ed Note: Make sure to check out the post below this where teachers sent in their arguments against merit pay for their schools and one teacher outlines how his school rejected the plan.

Is Your School Voting on Merit Pay?

Teachers discuss merit pay in their schools:

Dear Colleagues,
The elementary school where I teach in Brooklyn was just told that we are being offered the option of playing the merit pay game. Apparently some schools rejected it and we were on the second round list. We were given less than a week before we have to vote! I am looking for any advice on how to organize/educate my fellow teachers so that we vote it down. So, if your school was offered the merit pay deal, and especially if you are at one of the schools that rejected it, please write back with ideas, theories or comments. It feels like we are being kept purposely in the dark about what other teachers and schools are thinking/doing about this issue. Thanks,

Response #1
Our school, Bushwick Community H.S., rejected the bonus pay program. It was a long staff discussion, where we came to consensus that we didn't want to offer any perceived support to this idea through our participation. The discussion was not so much about whether or not the program is a good idea for schools (we pretty much all agreed that it is not), but whether it was worth giving up the money to make a protest that will just be symbolic as DOE/UFT pushes this program through regardless. In the end, we agreed that the arguments against this program are strong and principled enough that we couldn't pass them over.

The main arguments we discussed were:

-The program implies that we do not bring our full effort to our jobs, and only money will motivate our work. As teachers, we are thoroughly insulted by that suggestion.

-Singling out schools with marginalized students for such "combat" pay speaks to a bigoted mindset. Of course the schools can use more support, but offering it to teachers suggests the hardship is located with them as they "deal with" students who are cast into deficit-model roles of "problem children".

-There are much more effective and direct methods of using money to improve schools. Any "bonus" money should be going into such programs at the direction of the school community.

-The program utilizes reductionist measures of education which will be easy to manipulate, and the DOE will be able to paint any picture it would like of how merit pay works in order to justify expanding this program to a larger scale in the future.

-We do not trust the DOE and their intentions for schools, the UFT, and standardized testing with this program. From experience, we do not believe they have the best interests of teachers and students in mind, and we will not be bought into jumping on board with their latest initiative.

Also, here are two letters to the editor we wrote to the NY Sun after they did an article on the program and framed it as teacher support for merit pay-

-"As reported in "Weingarten Sees Support for Merit Pay", we teachers at Bushwick Community H.S. will not be participating in the bonus pay program. It is a misguided step in educational policy, and we refuse to give it further momentum by joining. The premise of the program- that we have not been giving our full efforts toward students’ success and we will now step up to our job only because money is dangled before us- is downright insulting. It is a clumsy analysis of public education to believe that the complex challenges facing schools boil down to teachers waiting to have their motivation purchased. If the Department of Education is serious about serving the high-needs schools identified for this program, these available funds should go directly into educational initiatives developed by each school community striving to meet those needs everyday, not into some contest for bonus pay."

-"In response to the article "Weingarten Sees Support For Merit Pay," my colleagues and I turned down the proposal because it was insulting and ridiculous. Implicit in the offer are the underlying beliefs that: 1) teachers are currently not trying to do their best and 2) teachers are only interested in their paychecks. Our priority as teachers has always been, and continues to be, the education and success of our students. Our dedication is to our work. To accept this offer would imply our values were otherwise.

The "success" of the program is a foregone conclusion and a farce. A year from now, undoubtedly, many schools will be lauded for having met the benchmarks. Bloomberg and Klein will trumpet the success of this pilot program. In fact, these schools would have achieved the exact same improvement without the bonuses. If there is a school that wouldn't have improved were it not for cash incentives, that's shameful."

Hope this helps. Good luck to you in discussing this with your colleagues. All the best,

Response 2
Our school was offered the "bonus" plan, but since we are in D75 we still do not have the criteria for it's implementation. We were supposed to vote last week, but since we have no idea what we are voting on, the union said we could hold off.

This only after being hounded about voting and us protesting about it. Our union officials wanted us to vote, but believe it or not, even our principal was against voting. Now we are being told that we should have criteria next week.

Besides the ideas that it is against what we as a union should stand for and that they think we do not work as hard as we can to make sure our students get an education

If you receive 3,000 it works out to a before tax income of an extra 115 dollars per pay period or about 17 dollars per day of school. Before taxes! How much more work can/should you do for that. Remember, It will be a Lump Sum sometime in October of 2008. Remember how much money we actually received in the last lump sum payment/bribe we got. Please do not fall for the "we will get it back at refund time" ploy. I would rather not give the state and federal goverments my money interest free for any amount of time.

It is by nature designed NOT to distribute money evenly, since one person could hold up the process and force a compromise, and the agreement does not EXPLICITLY SAY who the principal can choose as their other member, they can blame that person for the inequal disbursement. You CANNOT promise an equal distribution.

UFT people who work at your school part-time are eligible for a "bonus" but bring nothing to the table. for example: 10 full time uft members work at PSxxx along with 2 part time uft members. the bonus pool is still only 30,000 dollars and you have to find a way to evenly divide among ALL the 12 uft members. So already you have two scenarios in which everyone will not receive the ballyhooed 3,000 dollars.

It is also a management tool. Who do you think will be to blame for those schools that do not make their goals? Klein, Randi, your principal, or you.

Lastly, although the more I write the angrier I get.
If you reach 99.99% of your goal you will receive 50% of the money, (however you disperse it) If you reach 74.99% of your goal you get 0% of the money.

Discussion on Merit Pay
NYCoRE’s Justice Not Just Tests Working Group will be meeting on Monday, December 17.

At this meeting we will be discussing the bonus/merit pay issue, and planning our next move.
Our group has spent a couple of weeks thinking about and researching this contentious issue.
We are discussing questions such as:

Will merit pay pit teachers against each other?
How will it effect special education and ELL students?
Will it promote cheating among teacher?
Will test prep become even more of a priority?

Please join us and bring your own questions, ideas and information. forward this message widely. For more information, contact info@nycore. org

UFT PR on Merit Pay

It is worth repeating this comment from proof of life as a prime example of how the UFT operates to obfuscate the issues and confuse the membership. Sign a deal that rewards teachers for teaching to the test and further encapsulates high stakes testing, but then make it look like they are against the overemphasis on testing. Sort of like having a high stakes testing task force spend a year issuing a report that says much of what PoL below talks about but then doing the very opposite. Check out Lisa North's comments on the ICE blog where she says:

The UFT High Stakes Testing Committee spent a year studying the issue and concluded, "those who advocate for the misuse of student test scores to evaluate individuals, schools, and entire school systems are ignorant of or choose to ignore the fact that the makers of these tests never intended them to be used for those purposes."

Bah, humbug, hypocrites.

Comment from Proof of life:
The UFT is circulating a Petition Against DOE School Report Cards. Some highlights of the petition include.. "By awarding a school a grade from A to F , the progress report trivializes the complexity of teaching and learning. It is a punitive system that ultimately hurts, not helps, schools." Then it goes on to list major concerns "* overemphasizes testing *will potentially drive schools into doing even more test prep at the expense of learning. * is based on a curve so that there will always be losers" It goes on and on, but I personally love the last bullet * demoralizes whole school communities that have worked hard for the success of their schools.. Sounds to me like a petition against MERIT PAY!! What a contradiction. Can't have your cake and eat it too!

Kudos to Teachers at PS 196X Who Reject Merit Pay

Kudos to the gang at PS 196x and to the Lucy and Yoav from the Post for reporting the story. And for going to ICE'ers James Eterno and Lisa North for comments. Kudos to them too for speaking publicly. (Check out more from Lisa and James on the ICE blog.) Make sure to read ICE'er Michael Fiorillo's (yeah, kudos to him) amazing post on this blog from a few days ago on merit pay. (just scroll down.) Oh, and with these 3 founding members of ICE doing their thing it reminds me that ICE turned 4 years old on Halloween. Kudos and Happy Birthday to all the gang at ICE who keep plugging no matter what. And kudos to Jan, parent from Dist 2 for her great comment of support her teachers and the principal at her child's school as it relates to the school progress report. The outrage of some of these grades ties in with the crazy way merit pay will be distributed.

And kudos to eduwonkette for writing this today: "Five years ago, Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article called "The Talent Myth" questioning the management zeitgeist that the NYC Department of Education has swallowed wholesale...."
One thing leads to another and guess which company is the model? It starts with an E and ends with bankruptcy and dissolution on desolation road, or on the road to desolation.

Teachers at PS 196X Reject Merit Pay
From NY Post:
By LUCY CARNE and YOAV GONEN

November 5, 2007 -- Teachers at a Bronx elementary school gave a surprising response to a bonus plan that would pay them roughly $3,000 each for schoolwide student gains: Thanks, but no thanks.

Even without knowing if their school will be selected for the controversial program, more than 30 teachers at PS 196 voted preliminarily to reject it - largely because of its emphasis on
student test scores.

"I'm trying to move away from test scores being the be-all, end-all," said a PS 196 teacher. "I'd rather impress upon them the importance of a well-rounded education."

Mayor Bloomberg and United Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten announced the bonus plan with much fanfare Oct. 17 in conjunction with a pension agreement relished by the teachers union. Many saw the bonus plan as a trade-off, and as a step toward an individual merit-pay plan sought by Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

The bonus plan calls for teachers at 200 of the lowest-performing schools to divvy up $20 million in private funds for improving student performance. Individual teacher payment will be determined by a four-person committee at each school.

But the union was given an escape hatch that some members seem to be savoring: 55 percent of teachers at each school must vote to participate in the plan.

"The whole concept is an insult that you're not working hard unless we throw 3,000 bucks at you," said James Eterno, a longtime social-studies teacher at Jamaica HS in Queens.

Eterno added that he wouldn't be surprised to see at least some schools reject an invitation to the program, which is expected to double to 400 schools next year.

Department of Education spokeswoman Debra Wexler said the list of eligible schools is still being worked on but officials "are completely confident that educators will want to be part of a program that rewards excellence."

Even Weingarten acknowledged that the program, despite relying too heavily on test scores, was better received than she had expected.

"For now, what we did was include enough checks and balances that this is something where the school staff has equal power with the principal to decide to go into this process and decide how the money gets distributed," she said.

Whether schools ultimately accept or refuse offers for the bonus pay, wary teachers maintain that aligning teacher rewards with student scores sets a bad precedent.

"I think it lowers the standard of what good education is," said Lisa North, a literacy coach at PS 3 in Brooklyn.

Grading Public Schools by Jan, parent in Dist. 2

It is outrageous to me that our city's hard-working educators are being subjected to this narrow grading system. How humiliating! How reductive! Chancellor Klein has no idea how to work with or respect professional educators. My son's middle school received a C, and according to the DOE website, a school that receives a “C” 3 years in a row is subject to “consequences.”

This grade does not match my experience of the school in any respect. The school’s principal is stellar -- gifted and visionary. The teachers as well are smart, concerned, and committed; they bring a vibrancy and enthusiasm to a curriculum increasingly threatened to be overcome by test prep. The team of teachers from each grade meets regularly to discuss curriculum and individual students; if a student is falling behind, they are alerted immediately and work together to bring that student back. I am so angry that the chancellor is subjecting these hard-working educators to a meaningless and demoralizing grade.

The DOE’s miserly focus on assessment, their non-stop testing and grading, is deadening to our children – and now the DOE has found a way to demoralize our principals and teachers in the bargain. All the children in our city deserve the opportunity to experience a love of learning, the chance to be engaged in vibrant learning communities, and our educators deserve support.

My grade for the DOE? A resounding F. Unfortunately, I fear that their actions will now resound throughout the system, and it is our schools and children who will feel the “consequences” of this grade.

-- Jan, School District 2 Manhattan

A CONTRACTUAL LANDMINE

Updated with additional material on merit pay, Sunday AM

A CONTRACTUAL LANDMINE
By Michael Fiorillo

Like a land mine buried and forgotten but still active, merit pay exploded in the faces of UFT members attending the October 17th Delegates Assembly. Jamming the membership with a deal that was embedded in the discredited 2005 contract, President Randi Weingarten welcomed the delegates and chapter leaders with an agreement that pits schools and UFT members against each other. In so doing, she once again showed by her actions that she agrees with the use of high stakes test scores for judging school success, and has helped further the privatization and corporate control of our public schools, and the weakening of the union.

INSTITUTIONALIZING HIGH STAKES TESTS

Despite the PR spin and semantic contortions, this agreement will further entrench test scores as the basis for judging student, teacher and school success. They may claim that other benchmarks will be factored in, but the reality is that those who are setting the agenda for education are only interested in what can be counted, measured and controlled in their interests. And it will be an all-powerful executive, free of any checks and balances, that will define what is worth measuring, and how. The end result will be the removal of all programs, methods and individuals that do not further the testing/control/punishment regime. Randi Weingarten makes eloquent noises about the distortions and injustices created by this, but her actions demonstrate her basic support for it.

AN INVITATION TO CHEAT

Financial incentives for increased test scores will inevitably lead to cheating and gaming the tests. Just as corporate executives, through stock options, were given incentives to manipulate their companies' accounting, principals and schools will now be further tempted manipulate who takes the tests and how they are scored. While many, if not most, schools will try to resist these temptations, it is a statistical certainty that others will, and be rewarded for it. The resulting scandals are predictable, and will be used to intimidate and discredit teachers further.

DIVISIVE ACROSS THE BOARD

Although pitched as a way for school staff to collaborate, this program will pit schools and teachers against each other. This has been the Mayor's intention all along. The fantasy that cooperation will magically appear in schools that do not currently enjoy it is typical of the market fundamentalism that governs urban education today, which cannot imagine that people are motivated by anything other than greed or fear. This program will worsen the epidemic of schools screening and cherry picking students based on how they'll make their test scores look, and will diminish services for ELL's, special ed and other high needs students. It will be divisive within communities, creating a two-tier educational system modeled after the two-tier labor markets that corporate America is imposing across the nation. Within schools, it will enable unscrupulous principals to pit UFT members against each other.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK?

For generations, unions have struggled to institutionalize the practice of equal pay for equal work. They've done this for ethical and practical reasons: because it's the right thing to do, and because employers have always tried to use divide and conquer schemes to destroy the cohesion and solidarity of their employees. This is simply another version of that timeless game. Distrust and resentment within and among schools will be the inevitable result, with non-participating schools and those that "fail" to meet the benchmarks essentially being told that they don't "count."

A PROFESSIONAL INSULT

Perhaps the worst quality of this plan is the professionally and personally insulting message that without merit pay, teachers and other educators will withhold their best efforts. While all educators need to make (more) money, they are motivated by things that transcend marks on a ledger. Bloomberg, Klein and the other privateers who've targeted public education cannot conceive of this, but the disgrace and danger is that our own union president shares their blindness and values.

SCARE TACTICS AND POLITICAL MANIPULATION

The timing and manner in which this came about reek of an underhanded deal between the mayor and Randi Weingarten. Consider: the language leading to merit pay was quietly embedded in the controversial 2005 contract, only to be sprung on the DA without any real debate or opportunity to bring it back to the chapters for discussion. Consider: in the weeks leading up to the DA being presented with this fait accompli, RANDI WEINGARTEDN WAS SOUNDING THE ALARM ABOUT INDIVIDUAL MERIT PAY IN A RE-AUTHORIZED NCLB WHILE SHE WAS SIMULTANEOUSLY NEGOTIATING THIS DEAL IN SECRET. She now claims that this "closes the door" on individual merit pay, a transparent falsehood, since any federal law would trump this agreement. Either she was exaggerating the likelihood of individual merit pay to prime the members for a deal she was secretly negotiating, or she negotiated a deal that will become moot. Either way, the membership has been bamboozled.

WHERE TO NOW?

This episode once again raises questions about the values, direction and tactics of the UFT leadership. Members must ask themselves what kind of system they want to work in, and what kind of union is to represent them. Will it be a two-tier, de facto privatized system with rewards and punishments based on invalid, arbitrary, divisive and politically-motivated criteria, enabled by a union leadership that agrees with the fetish for numbers, numbers numbers? Or will there be a membership that recognizes and fights for public education as a foundation of our democracy, and its union as a guardian of that democracy within and outside the schools? The time to begin that discussion is now.

Michael Fiorillo is the Chapter Leader at Newcomers High School in Queens and a founding member of the Independent Community of Educators.


Merit bonuses elude top teachers
WARNING from Susan Ohanian:
Read this at your own risk. It is likely to make anyone who cares about teacher professionalism ill.

By Rachel Simmonsen
Palm Beach Post 2007-11-02

Of about 400 Martin County teachers and administrators awarded bonuses recently, one name was conspicuously absent: Carol Matthews O'Connor, the district's teacher of the year.

Fewer than half of the teachers of the year at the district's 22 schools earned a bonus under STAR (Special Teachers Are Rewarded), a controversial merit pay plan that was approved reluctantly last school year by the school board and teachers union.

"I'm just as disappointed as those who didn't get the money," school board member David Anderson said.

"I don't even know where to begin," teachers union chief Jeanette Phillips said of the program's faults.

Full article posted at Susan's web site here and at Palm Beach Post here.

Kathryn Wylde Goes Wild on Ravitch - Tweed Hit Job

Wylde photo lifted from the eduwonkette blog which has excellent commentary on this issue. Also check out the brilliant Halloween parade of ed stars.


UPDATE Nov. 1

See Leonie Haimson and NY Sun article below showing Wylde's NY Post article aided by Tweed - thanks to reporting by one of our favorite reporters, Elizabeth Green. Yo, Wyldewoman, who's the one without integrity now? And to David Cantor, Tweed head of public relations: want to see a good file? Check out Bloomberg's file on sexual harrassment. Finally! Holy crap - I'm on the same side as Randi Weingarten and Sol Stern on this one. Gotta get my head x-rayed.

Bloomberg hack & flack Kathryn Wylde, one of those dilettantes dabbling in educational policy as president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, went wild in a vicious attack on Ravitch’s integrity for her daring to say the union bested BloomKlein. The wild Wylde writes, “When it comes to public education in NYC [Ravitch is] no longer a source we can rely on for fair-minded commentary.” Wylde wrote this in the NY Post, that paragon of fair-minded commentary.

While I agree with Wylde that this was not a win for the union, her attack on Ravitch is a sign of how critics of Ravitch’s stature are getting under the BloomKlein skin. And while I often disagree with Ravitch, I have absolutely no doubt about her integrity and indeed, have increasing respect for her for her stand on BloomKlein.

UPDATE from Leonie Haimson and NY Sun below

1. Yesterday, the NY Post published an oped by Kathy Wylde, head of the NYC Partnership, which claims to represent all the business interests in this city. The oped was a blistering, personal attack on Diane Ravitch.

Diane is a personal hero of mine. She’s the top expert in the country on the history of the NYC public schools, and a relentless critic of this administration’s wrong-headed education policies, whether that be holding back kids on the basis of their test scores, to the new merit pay proposals that will pay principals, kids, and now teachers for higher test scores at schools.

Diane has also been a big proponent of the need to reduce class size, and the right of parents and the public at large to be involved in the decision making process when it comes to our schools, which puts her at odds with this administration.

Today’s NY Sun reveals that this oped -- ostensibly written by Wylde – originated at Tweed. (See below article.)

Apparently, their highly paid PR department spent days researching in a file on her – to try to show that she had switched positions on a number of issues to use in an attempt to label her as hypocritical.

Yet if anyone is hypocritical, it is really the Mayor and the Chancellor, who refuse to reduce class size, and instead are trying to squeeze out better test scores by bribing principals and teachers and students. All their efforts are turning our schools into the sort of joyless establishments that they would never consider sending their own children to.

Clearly, the administration has decided that they cannot stand any dissent but are now using Wylde and the NYC Partnership as their attack dogs. It’s becoming like the Nixon White House with their enemy lists -- and our taxpayer money is paying for this!

Here is a link to yesterday’s NY Post oped, attacking Diane : http://www.nypost.com/seven/10302007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/hypocritical_critic.htm

The NY Sun article is below.

Please write a letter to the NY post in defense of Diane and her courage and integrity in speaking up for our kids, when so many others have been cowed into submission. letters@nypost.com

You can also write a letter to the NY Sun – decrying the city’s efforts to smear her, and the way our taxpayer money has been used in this effort: editor@nysun.com

2. The administration’s dishonesty was also in evidence in their attempt to obscure the fact that on their own parent survey, class size came out as the number one concern of parents from throughout the city. As recounted in articles in the NY Times, Post, and on our blog, the Mayor actually claimed that “enrichment” came out over two to one over class size, whereas smaller classes were chosen by 24% of parents, compared to enrichment at 19%.

Steve Koss, PTA pres. at the Manhattan Center for science and math HS and former CEC member, has just written a devasting expose on our parent blog – showing that parents at nearly 50% of our general ed public schools opted for smaller class sizes over all other nine options – as did parents at more than 55% of our failing schools – many of which continue to have classes of 30 or more.

There’s a lot more fascinating detail in his analysis --check it out at

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2007/10/parent-survey-results-more-spin-spin.html

But first, read the piece in the NY Sun below, and then write a letter to the Post and/or the Sun in support of Diane.

We need people like Diane, strong enough to stand up to the bullies in this administration, more than ever before.

leonie@att.net

www.classsizematters.org

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/

Feud 'Twixt Wylde, Ravich Laid to City's Machinations

BY ELIZABETH GREEN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 31, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article

A scathing opinion piece deriding a prominent critic of Mayor Bloomberg's education policies was generated with the help of city officials, sources said yesterday.

The article, written by the president of the Partnership for New York City, Kathryn Wylde, and published in yesterday's New York Post, accuses Diane Ravitch of opposing the Bloomberg administration irrationally, despite formerly supporting the policies it has implemented, perhaps because of a personal grudge. It concludes that Ms. Ravitch is "no longer a source we can rely on for fair-minded commentary."

Ms. Ravitch yesterday said the piece plainly originated from the city's Education Department, calling it a "paid hit job" meant to silence all critics of the Bloomberg administration. "They're trying to intimidate me, and they're trying to silence me, and I'm not going to be silenced," Ms. Ravitch said.

Ms. Wylde said the idea for the piece was her own, but that she wrote it with the help of a research file composed by the Education Department that chronicles Ms. Ravitch's policy positions over the years. The seven-page document, titled "Diane Ravitch: Then and Now," tallies quotations by Ms. Ravitch on nearly a dozen topics, comparing comments she made in the 1990s to statements in recent years.

A spokesman for the department, David Cantor, defended the decision to make a file on Ms. Ravitch. "She's the most influential educational commentator probably in the United States. If she is typically either distorting what we're doing, or if she is reversing long-held opinions in order to attack us — that's an indication that there's something more there than fair-minded observation," Mr. Cantor said.

A former education aide to President George H.W. Bush who has written numerous books on American education, including the definitive history of the New York City schools, Ms. Ravitch was a strong supporter of Mayor Bloomberg's move to take control of the public system but has since ridiculed many of his education efforts.

Ms. Wylde's article accuses her of abandoning former support for more than a handful of policies, including merit-based pay for teachers; increased autonomy for principals; standardized testing as a way to set high expectations for achievement, and even the belief that every child is capable of academic success — all points that appeared in "Diane Ravitch: Then and Now." The reversals, Ms. Wylde writes, "seem more tied to her unhappiness with the personalities in the Bloomberg administration than its policies."

Ms. Ravitch condemned the characterization of "an odd Ravitch turnaround," saying it is grounded in misunderstanding.

The moment her disagreements with Mr. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein, emerged, she said, exemplifies the point. She had indeed long argued for setting a single standard curriculum in the schools, but when Mr. Klein implemented a new reading curriculum around the idea of "balanced literacy," Ms. Ravitch said she balked. Balanced literacy is a method of teaching that mixes phonics and other approaches, but Ms. Ravitch said she had never meant to advocate for a standardized pedagogy. What she wanted, she said, was a single curriculum mandating, for instance, when to teach American history.

Ms. Ravitch said her support for standardized testing has not wavered, either, though she has sniffed at Mr. Klein's emphasis on tests. She said that is because she has lost confidence in the ability of local and state governments to administer fair and reliable tests — the temptation to let political interests affect results is too strong. She said she still supports a national test.

Ms. Ravitch said her most serious concern with the Bloomberg administration is the way it responds to dissent. She said that many educators who are professionally reliant on support from the city, through grants or contracts, fear voicing any differing opinions.

"It's a very sad situation, when people don't feel free to speak their mind," she said.

"The Legislature eliminated the independent board; they eliminated the community boards, and now the mayor and the chancellor are trying to shut down all independent critics," she added. "That's dangerous to democracy."

Ms. Wylde disputed that characterization, citing the city's recent agreements with the teachers and principals unions over merit-based pay as evidence of its ability to cooperate with critics.

She said she and city officials have mulled their frustration with Ms. Ravitch for years, but she said the Bloomberg administration did not ask her to write the article. She said she decided to write it herself after Ms. Ravitch published an opinion piece criticizing a program to bring merit-based pay to public schools — a plan that Ms. Wylde's Partnership is partially financing. She said the attack was reminiscent of other critiques Ms. Ravitch has made against programs supported by the Partnership, which Ms. Wylde said she also felt were unfair.

"The largest fund-raising we have undertaken are in public education," she said. "It's damaging to those projects, to our fund-raising efforts."

The president of the teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said Ms. Wylde's article offended her. "Anybody worth his or her salt in education has been both criticized and praised by Diane Ravitch," Ms. Weingarten said. "That voice should not be silenced."

Another critic of Mr. Bloomberg's education policies, the Manhattan Institute fellow Sol Stern, said: "It's been clear for a while that City Hall and the DOE want to cut off all serious debate about their education policies. But they've never stooped so low as to try to delegitimize the country's leading historian of education."

Eduwonkette on NYC Performance Pay Plan

"I see this as an individual plan with an additional step - first, the school must meet benchmarks, and second, teachers can be differentially rewarded. Unless the committee of four announces upfront that bonuses will be distributed equally (can someone weigh in here about whether a distribution plan will be ratified upfront?), teachers are going to operate under the assumption that there will be unequal shares based on their students' test scores. Even if we see equal bonuses this year, the door is wide open and I see Mike and Joel on the horizon in a performance pay Mack truck."

Full post is here.

The Daily Merit Pay

The Luftwaffe got merit too. But only a chintzy medal.

There is still lots of fur flying on the school-based merit pay plan.

Leonie Haimson on the NYC public school parents blog has a summary of yesterday's action, highlighting some of the great work being done by Eduwonkette on this issue in her week-long series. (While at Leonie's blog, make sure to check out Gary's satire on Klein's resignation over merit pay - I picked Bobby Valentine for the next chancellor.)

Leonie focuses on Diane Ravitch's piece in the Daily News. Diane scored this one for the union - it could be a UFT PR piece. And probably will be used by the hordes of Unity hounds inundating the schools to win the hearts and minds of the members.

Leonie raised a few questions on her listserv:

Good oped by Diane in the News. One question; the variable conditions that she observes between classes at particular schools that might make teacher merit pay unfair vary even more between schools – esp. as regards class size and overcrowding.
So can anyone answer my question; how can this proposal be fair – if the measures for school improvement don’t take these differential impediments to success into account?
Also, I predict that the measures to determine which schools will receive these bonuses will primarily rely on test scores – like the school grades, with survey results and attendance relegated to a minor role at 15% -- really nothing more than a fig leaf. I’ve heard nothing so far that will effectively counteract the fact that, as Diane points out, “tests now in use are imperfect measures of children's learning.”

There were a few reactions to Diane Ravitch's piece on Leonie's NYCEducationNews listserve and on ICE mail. I posted this:

Diane's piece is based on theory, not the reality of most schools in NYC.

It also doesn't address the points made by Leonie and others on this list that the school-based merit system will only exacerbate the high stakes testing craze. I find it hard to believe that somehow the union outfoxed or "beat back" BloomKlein. Like, what did they have to gain in this? Since they've violated just about any agreement with parents and teachers, they must feel it was worth it to get the camel nose in the tent, as someone commented on NYC Educator.

You see, BloomKlein know full well what is going on at the school level, something the UFT is either blind to or chooses to ignore - That is the weakness of the UFT at the school level.

Thus, Diane's article doesn't account for are the objective conditions in the relationship between staff, especially younger staffs, and the administrators of many, if not most, schools.

So this "victory" for the union has to be seen in the context of empowered principals even beyond the classic czars that existed before the union came into existence.

Rubber rooms with trumped up charges, U-ratings, unfair observations, letters in the file that cannot be grieved due to the 2005 contract, dictatorial rules, fear on the part of staffs where an often helpless school union tries to make a stand, retaliation against school union reps who try to make a stand - -I could go on.

The name of the game in most schools is "intimidation." And the union just has no answer.

A teacher in one such school posted this on ICE mail:
"I like Diane Ravitch's views a lot, but I think she's missed it when it come to this "Committee" thing, for shares in any school "Bonus. Principals who are crazed, and who intimidate their staff, will forfeit the "Bonus" rather than vote to have teachers who they don't like share in the Bonus. What's more likely is that this kind of principal will intimidate the two teacher members of the committee into voting shares to teachers that are in the Principal's own network, in the school. So much for merit. Just another tool for crazed principal academy grads to wield even more power."

I faced a similar situation when I ran for one of the 2 positions on the teacher/parent group who chose the Assistant principal in the mid-90's. My principal spent 2 full days going around the school trying to intimidate people into voting for her candidates. When I won anyway (the other tied between one of hers and an independent) her efforts elected her person to counter me and she also packed the committee with parents of her choice.

Training in how to do these things are part of the Leadership Academy curriculum.

The same occurred in my school with the school leadership team. The "strength" of the union barely exists at this level and is weaker than ever.

So that is why we are seeing the visceral response and revulsion by teachers at this "merit pay" that Diane says is not merit pay from teachers who have faced these principals (what is your guess as to what % of all principals fit this model vs the truly collaborative principal where the plan could theoretically work.)

Of course it is not merit pay. Just as principals do not use money they have to reduce class size, they will act the same here. Reward their sycophants. Any objections? You'll be receiving a visit from a supervisor to observe you.

Teachers will find any attempt to get the union to do something will be met with "file a grievance" or "keep a log and when it grows to 15 pages give us a call and THEN we'll file a grievance."

An objective look at the pension winners and losers (the unborn teachers are real losers here, not the best ad for recruitment) as James Eterno has pointed out on the ICE blog.

Diane says about the pension issue: "This change was one of the union's top priorities."

Class size reduction was part of the same clause as pension and merit pay in the 2005 contract. Supposedly equally with the other clauses. In UFT-land all clauses are not equal.

Unfortunately, Diane's piece will be trumpeted far and wide by the UFT PR machine to counter the teachers who have been critical of the plan.

Diane may "score this one for the union." Maybe for the union leadership.

For the teachers in the classroom it is a loss.


Woodlass posted a more visceral response to Diane's piece:

There is so much to disagree with in Prof. Ravitch's Oct.24th editorial in the Daily News that I had to look up her biography to see if she had any public school teaching credentials. I couldn't see any (Wikipedia says she began her career as an editorial assistant at the New Leader magazine, then became a historian of education in 1975). I hope someone can say she has at least some experience in a classroom, particularly an inner-city one, because I am not at all sure she understands the dynamics of a school building, or the classroom, or the balancing act that each of us face period after period, day after day, maneuvering between the needs of the kids, admin, and other staff. Prof. Ravitch is called an education historian, in much the same way, I guess, that I was early on a musicologist, or music historian. I couldn't compose music and I couldn't play it at a professional level. I just studied it, wrote about it, and cataloged it.

When Ravitch says about this new Merit Pay cum Pension scheme: "Score this one for the union," perhaps she's not referring to the teachers at all, but rather to the union leadership. Yes, they did score one -- politically. But, alas, the rest of us did not.

Her statement in paragraph 8 is the most naive piece of writing I have ever seen from someone so thoroughly versed in this subject: "When a school receives a bonus, the decision about how to divide it will be made by a committee in each school, composed of two administrators and two teachers. They may decide to give every staff member -- including not only teachers, but paraprofessionals, counselors and secretaries --an equal share, or allocate the money by title, or give extra money to the teachers with the highest score gains; the decision is theirs to make. If they are deadlocked, the school will forfeit the bonus."

Where is the "win" for teachers here? The whole scheme is subject, as many have already said, to the possibility of stunning abuse: admin to staff, teacher to teacher, major subject to minor one, tested subjects to not-tested subjects, etc.

She doesn't mention the veiled threat -- yes, threat -- that if a selected school doesn't opt in, it might get itself closer to being phased out. Here is the UFT's exact wording: "A school's agreement to participate in the bonus program shall be considered, along with other criteria, as a positive factor in determining whether the Participant School is to be phased out....." That impurity alone in the procedure nullifies any good in it at all.

And not everyone involved in making a school successful would be eligible for this bonus. Only "UFT-represented staff" would get it, yet I know many other categories of people who are equal partners in making it a good place: supportive parent teams for one, custodians for another (Prof. Ravitch, have you ever tried to teach in a filthy room, or one that is not kept in good repair? Chaotic backgrounds make for all kinds of instability and wild behavior.) And I can't tell you how helpful the aides are in my school, who wouldn't get a share in the bonus either. They are frequently the softer and friendlier figures that make things run smoothly: the helpful, goodnatured women and men who man the offices, halls, gyms, and locker rooms. They are the wonderful authority figures that take a lot of the burden of crowd control out of our hands and a very welcome antidote to the sometimes overly aggressive security forces. We can't say thank you enough to these people when they do their job well. And the APs, do they get a bonus from the principal's share, because they aren't in our union.

With regard to the pension scheme, there is much to read on the blogs about this, but James Eterno's analysis on the Ice blog would be a good start. He lists the Winners, the No Gainers, and the Big Losers for the pension scheme; for the merit pay, he gives the The Winners (nobody), and the Grand Losers (the whole lot of us).

Lastly, whereas each of these two schemes were benchmarked in the 2005 contract in separate clauses (and thus voted upon by the membership), union leadership negotiated their linkage without our knowledge. There was no discussion in the schools, and we had no idea they were going in this direction. An exec. board meeting was called a half an hour before it was announced at the Delegate Assembly. The board voted on it unanimously, and poof! a done deal. That was an extremely undemocratic and immoral thing to do to the membership.

So, I just can't understand where Prof. Ravitch is coming from in all of this, esp. where she says "The union won both parts of the negotiation and gave up nothing in exchange."

You can't win anything if you abandon some pretty core values of public education, democracy, and morality.

Pensions, Merit Pay, Class Size and Collaboration....

...UFT Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Updated 10/26 pm

James Eterno has written a piece today for the ICE blog on the winners and losers in the pension and merit pay plan, apples and oranges that have been merged by the UFT leaders (call it an appor.) One of the little tidbits James points to is that the original agreement in the horrendous 2005 contract where little bombs were set on pensions and merit pay that meant teachers voted for the future 2007 agreement when that passed the 2005 contract:

With regard to the long term recommendations the 2005 Fact Finders made subject to adequate CFE funding, the parties shall establish a Labor Management Committee to discuss the following issues: a)bonuses, including housing bonuses, for shortage license areas; b) a pilot project for school-wide based performance bonuses for sustained growth in student achievement c) salary differentials at the MA-5 through MA-7 levels; and d) a program for the reduction of class sizes in all grades and divisions. If the parties agree on the terms of any or all of these issues, they may be implemented by the Board using whatever funds may be identified.

Note provision d on class size reduction the one item ignored. Are you surprised? We have claimed all along on issues such as high stakes tests and class size, watch what the UFT does, not what it says. The merit pay plan endorses high stakes testing and the entire agreement shows where the UFT really stands on class size. Actions certainly do speak louder than words.

TJC's Peter Lamphere and Megan Behrent have written a piece on the merit pay issue which I posted at Norm's Notes here.

Eduwonkette is running a series this week on performance pay from her usual research-based perspective. And 8 year Teach For America's (see, some do stay) Ms Frizzle seems willing to try it based on the fact there's trust in her school. Schools where there's none should probably skip jumping in. Of course, there's no accounting for the high percentage of lunatic, power-hungry principals. In my continuing saga - "The Play's The Thing" posted a few days ago, all incidents are exaggerations based on the reality of my school. And that principal would be one of the better ones today.

On Collaboration
The NY Teacher is covered with the word "collaborate." Now, we haev used that word to brand UFT Leaders as co-conspirators with BloomKlein, Eli Broad, etc in their attacks on public education adn unions. So it nice for them to affirm what we have been saying all along, branding them as today's version of Vichy. And the fact that Vichyssoise will be added to the menu at Executive Board meetings affirms this point.

People have been telling us they are a bit tired of the constant use of the word. So we have decided to assist our buddies at the NY Teacher in an effort to make the paper more interesting.

Synonyms for collaborate:

act as a team coact cofunction collude come together concert concur conspire

cooperate coproduce fraternize get together go partners hook on hook up interface join forces join together participate pool resources team up tie in

work in partnership work together work with

Add one more: sellout

Merit Pay - The Play's the Thing

Schoolwide Merit Pay is now playing in a school in New York City near you.

ACT 1 Scene 1

A Principal's Office in a school that will be dividing pay for performance. A meeting is taking place. Present: principal, Assistant Principal, two teachers elected by the staff which also voted to participate with 65% of the vote. The principal campaigned aggressively, going from room to room for 2 days to lobby.

When the vote came in at 45%, the principal called a "do-over," claiming the air conditioning wasn't working that day and teachers must have been addled. She told people the air would never be turned on again if she lost the vote. She also claimed irregularities. When the chapter leader complained, he received a visit from the AP that afternoon and was given an Unsatisfactory because his trash can was 4 inches away from the designated spot. He went to the UFT to complain he was being harassed for union activity. "Welllll, you can't grieve the letter because we gave up that right in the 2005 contract. Keep a log."

Some teachers went to the UFT to complain. "Ummmmm, file a grievance," said the UFT district rep. "But that will take a year and in the meantime the school will be divided over merit pay," the teachers responded. "Ummmmmmm," said the UFT rep.

Principal: Okay, I want Schmeril to get the bonus money.
Teacher 1: But Schmeril had nothing to do with the academic program. She hangs out in your office all day.
Principal: That's the point. She keeps my papers in order, does all the paperwork my incredible difficult job requires, and most importantly, takes care of all my responsibilities on the computer, which I still don't know how to turn on. Schmeril also dusts my shelves and gets me lunch and coffee. All this frees me to manage the school, which is why the scores went up and we are getting the bonus. You don't think our success is due to any teacher in the classroom, do you?
Teacher 2: But...
AP: Quiet. Don't you know Ms. Z has been empowered by the mayor and chancellor and the UFT to do whatever she wants?

TO BE CONTINUED

City Hall and the United Federation of Teachers have worked in secret for months

to come up with this plan. The teachers union says the bonus plan might sound like something they have long opposed, merit pay where principals decide what teachers deserve extra money, but it's not the same.

But delegates get no notice, little time to discuss, refusal to allow schools to discuss, etc. etc.

Democracy at work.

full article @
http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=4&aid=74693

Joe Torre Rejects Merit Pay

With Joe Torre out of a job after leaving a potential $8 million incentive laden offer on the table by the NY Yankees, he has been asked to accept the job of UFT President in case Randi Weingarten relinquishes the position when she becomes president of the AFT this July. After a few minutes consideration, Torre rejected the UFT, unwilling to have any association with an organization that accepts any semblance of pay for performance.


In other news, the UFT announced a performance for pay plan for UFT borough staff. The borough office that wins the most grievances will be offered a large bonus to be split among all employees who are members of Unity Caucus.


Gary Babad at GBN News reports at the NYC Public SchoolParents blog that schools will be given 3 choices on how to divide the bonus money (excepts):

1. Teachers who spend all day on test prep will receive more money than those who waste their students’ time with unrelated activities such as art, music, and social studies.

2. During assembly period, teachers will break open the piñata and each will keep all he or she can scoop up.

3. A committee consisting of the Principal, a designee appointed by the Principal, and two UFT members will travel to Atlantic City and try to double the award.

Read it all here.