1. First, both the district and the union use their websites pretty well to explain their version of the issues. BTU even put its cable ad on YouTube ad.
2. It’s illegal for teachers to strike even for a day. I’m not sure that’s fair.
True, a one day strike for teachers creates lots of inconvenience. Poor single moms — much of BPS’s parents — often have bosses who are not that sympathetic to them staying home with the kids, and a day’s loss of pay, that $100 or so, really hurts. But it’s not like cops and firefighters striking.
I think teachers should be allowed to strike for a day, with some sort of condition of reasonable notice.
3. While private sector unions have declined, teachers unions have gained, and are probably the most powerful special interest group in most states. Certainly that’s true in MA. There are many reasons, but one is that they’re very good at message control.
If the frame of discussion is class size, they win. If the frame of discussion is “We don’t want to pay 15% of our health care costs, we want to keep it at 10%, even while almost no taxpayers have that deal”….well that’s a loser. If the frame is “$74,000 per year with summers off,” well that’s a loser, too.
4. Probably the union’s best framing device is on salaries. There are two types of raises for teachers — across the board contract increases (X% per year) and “step increases” (i.e., more when you become a third year teacher instead of a second year, etc).
For the last several years, the average Boston teacher has gotten about 5% to 6% annual raises. But by herding (gullible?) reporters away from the “step” and instead to the across-the-board, the raises look smaller (3% to 4%).
Why would the district cooperate with the frame? I’m not sure.
5. Most of this is political theater. Act 1 is “we’re far apart.” Act 2 is “it’s worse than we thought!” Act 3 is set up for Menino to say “Okay, I locked these guys in a room, and we split the difference.”
That is, BTU Prez Stutman and BPS Interim Supe Contompasis are reasonably friendly behind closed doors. But they each need to perform. Again. Same script. It’s not like, say, North Korea, where you really don’t know if a deal will be done in the end. There is no drama here.
6. If I were a BPS teacher, there’s one issue I’d like to see on the table that never is: student decorum in middle and high schools.
I just don’t know how a 9th grade math teacher, for example, is going to teach kids algebra when:
a) kids are streaming into class late, while others are there every other day;
b) few have given a good-faith effort to their homework;
c) if a kid is “sent to the office” for misbehavior, he is often sent back to the class, without any sanction or a little talking-to, and the TEACHER is told “You need to get control of your classroom.” Um, how exactly, without the support of school leadership, without being able to lay out clear consequences?
I don’t think that whether a classroom has a class size of 31 kids, or it has 33 kids, or makes a big difference on decorum. To make the school culture strong, you need teachers, parents, and leaders rowing in the same direction, you need consistency, you need buy-in.
For example, maybe BTU could poll their members to rate the decorum at each school, on a scale of 1 to 10. Then they hand the Superintendent of, say, a half-dozen (of 140 or so) schools where staff are most frustrated. And BPS would then have some sort of affirmative contractual obligation to tackle the issue.
* * *
Disclosures: I work at a non-union charter school, and I’m on the board of a union pilot school, and our school collaborates with two of the large BPS high schools.
<
p>
While I spent 4.5 hours in waiting rooms (and 20 minutes being attended to) in dealing with my severely sprained ankle yesterday, I took some time to contemplate whether or not our current system counts as rationing health care. When I wasn’t doing that, I’m pretty sure I saw the Globe mention that a snow day cancels the strike — that is, it won’t count as a strike day.
<
p>
This seemed genius. You get the gusto that comes with a strike threat, but don’t lose the day’s pay or break the law.
<
p>
I’m not disagreeing, but I’ve never seen any evidence of this. How would you measure? Absolute size of membership? Percent of all work done by union members? Salary increase in the past x years? Largest amount spent on lobbying?
How about a salary structure that results in 5-7% raises every year, while simultaneously making the public think that they’re getting 2-4% raises?
<
p>
If the public fully realized that the step system + contract raises turns every announced “3% raise” into a 6% raise for individual teachers (because the 3% raises all steps, and each year of annual service amounts to another 3% raise on top of the contract raise), there’s no way it would not be on the tips of everyone’s tongues.
<
p>
In this private sector era of 1-2% annual raises, a 6% raise is the sign of a powerful union.
strong, but anecdotal.
<
p>
My question is this: if you wanted to look at all unions in the area and try to rank them according to strength, by what metric(s) would you use?
One way might be to look at each union over a period of time (10 years, 20 years) and look at % increase in both total compensation over baseline (including all forms of side deals, benefits, etc).
<
p>
Another way might be to anonymously survey the Reps, staff members, and lobbyists on Beacon Hill for their opinions.
….are some years where the step increase would cause a teacher to get a higher raise in conjuction with cost of living increases, but that can’t be true for all teachers every year or career teachers would be making high six figure salaries as they approach retirement. Are they staggard? What is the cap for the most a teacher can make?
<
p>
The steps in Springfield applied annually from, I believe, year 0 to year 15, and then once every 5 years after that. The key is that you have to look at starting salaries. Teachers who now have 15 years in the system started probably in the lower $20k range. Teachers who have 30 years in probably started out in the high teens (remember, 30 years ago it was 1977).
<
p>
If you started out at $25k 15 years ago, and got annual 6% raises, you’d be making $56k today. That’s around what the average teacher salary seems to be.
<
p>
I guess one difference between teaching and other professions is that teachers don’t have the same leverage that others do in switching jobs. If another professional dead-ends at his current job, he can shop around and maybe get a 10-15% pay increase — if he warrants it — by switching companies. Or maybe he can take on added responsibilities and get a 10% raise from his current employer. No such track exists for teachers, except jumping to administration.
<
p>
One of the big problems I see is that while this country has evolved away from a job-stability, years-of-service system of compensation, public employees are still operating on this plane. Whereas it may have been common for someone to work for the same company for 30 years in the past, and whereas it used to be acceptable for someone with 5 years on the job to be paid less than someone with 15 years, even if they did the same work, that is no longer the case.
<
p>
That is probably why people’s raises are now so small, because the wage is tied to the job being done, not the experience/qualifications of the person doing it.
<
p>
Think about it for a minute — doesn’t it seem foreign that you’d get a pay increase for taking college classes? This may have been the norm once, but I’ve never worked a job where they told me “if you get X credits, you’ll get a Y% raise”. My raises have always been tied to the external job market, my title, and my recent performance.
<
p>
And wouldn’t you be mad if you knew that the guy sitting next to you, doing the same job you do, was being paid $20k more because he had been around for 10 more years?
Why are teachers, by and large, paid crap… while police officers can earn more than 100k a year?
<
p>
Sure, some teachers make a decent living, but it takes a good 10 years to climb that ladder – just to make a decent living. By the time they get their, when you factor in inflation, suddenly those raises aren’t looking all that great (thus the reason for across the board raises).
<
p>
My Dad’s a teacher – and I’ll be the first to admit, he does fairly well for himself. He’s probably the highest paid person in his town who actually teaches classes. However, he also is the head football coach and co-athletic director… meaning, he never got summers off and most of the year doesn’t get home till anywhere from 6-10pm. In other words, he probably works 60-70 hours a week during the football season and 50-60 every other season.
<
p>
Even teachers who ‘take the summer off’ almost always have some kind of job, because most couldn’t get by without it.
<
p>
Lastly, there may be little to no difference between 31 and 33 kids, but there’s a very real and measurable difference between 33 and 23. The vast majority of classes shouldn’t have more than 20-25 students. Of course, there are exceptions (i.e. Gym), but your standard math, science, foriegn language, and english classes need to have relatively low class sizes so teachers can give out an adequate number of assignments. When papers take 10-15 minutes to correct, teachers don’t have the time to give 30 of them out for every class. They’ll be lucky if they can find the time to correct 20 in a reasonable time, assuming they have 4 other classes too.
I think you’re comparing apples and oranges. Police officers earn in the $100k range when they accept a lot of paid details. Those paid details are funneled through the towns, but in essence they are paid for by other entities.
<
p>
If you’re going to quote $100k salaries for cops, then you have to count year-round salaries of teachers who both tutor and work doing teacher-related duties during the summer.
<
p>
The average police salary seems to be in the $50-70k range, not that much higher than teachers.
Are police officers required to have an MBA to do their job? Do they even need a BA? (I’m pretty sure the answer is no – that they only need X amount of college credits). In addition, not all teachers have the same kind of time to tutor. You have to factor in the considerable time it takes many teachers (especially history and english) to correct papers, tests and assignments. When cops are off duty, they’re free to do as they please. Teachers may be able to get out of their classrooms by 3pm most days, but that doesn’t mean they’re done with their work. Their work goes home with them.
That’s the difference. Maybe we should amend the law requiring a cop on every construction project so that they could hire teachers instead.
Ryan, I agree with your point of the big multiplier that connects time and class size. (Although I think “student load” is really the key number — ie, if you teach 3 classes of 30 and one honors class of 10 you have the same # of papers to correct as the teacher who teaches 4 classes of 25.
<
p>
The reason I mentioned the class difference between 31 and 33 is that the BTU negotiations involve that specific issue, and that exact number.
<
p>
Ie, in a few high schools, they have, say 96 kids per grade, with contract minimums of 31 per class. If district officials get their way, they’d essentially have 3 sections of 32, ie, a waiver to try to hold things to 31 but to go over by 1 or 2 kids if needed.
<
p>
The alternative is 4 sections of 24.
<
p>
Which sounds good until you realize that you then have one “extra” section of math, science, English, Spanish, history, etc means that you have to fire someone in the school. Maybe the social worker. Maybe the only art teacher. Maybe the literacy coach. Maybe the only college counselor. Maybe the youngest teacher, in any subject, b/c she has least seniority, even if she’s one of the best on the staff.
But I think it’s a better decision here to sacrifice a few for the many – and my evil side says that most of the best teachers would either find new jobs fast or be fairly secure in their jobs. I don’t think it’s right that there are teachers who make barely above 30k, working in towns they could never afford to send their kids to school in.
<
p>
All that said, if class sizes were smaller, there would need to be more teachers – not less.
<
p>
What are you basing this on?
<
p>
The starting salary for a BPS teacher — with only a bachelor’s degree — is $42,355 for a 10-month contract. That’s more than the entry-level salary for a state DoE manager. When adjusted for length of contract, that’s more than the starting salary for many recent college graduates.
<
p>
As for the question of whether they are “powerful” or not. Of course they are. They have a monopoly on delivering these services. How else would any employer tolerate complaints such as:
<
p>
– having to work “up to 170 (up from 160) consecutive minutes without a break” (wow… that’s almost 3 whole hours!)
<
p>
– an increase of 6.25% in daily teaching time (what is that 10? 15? minutes?!)
<
p>
– not being paid for attending mandatory training as a result of a substandard performance review (in the “real” world, you just be fired)
<
p>
Tonight, watching the news coverage of the vote to delay the illegal strike, the union rep (president?) says, “We’re going to give them two more weeks to cave in on other stuff.” It made me sick to my stomach. This isn’t professional behavior. Not even close.
<
p>
It’s ridiculous that contracts cover as much as they do. They should be thin — benefits, vacations, etc.. I’m not claiming that management is without fault. This isn’t meant as a blanket statement, but the whole closed system with burdensome and worthless licensing requirements leads to a sort of inbreeding of incompetence.
<
p>
The concession on class size is ridiculous. It’s another one of those decisions that will, in the end, lead to layoffs. The union again eats its young.
<
p>
Bottom line is that the owners — the folks that pay everyone’s salaries — are the ones getting the shaft. It’s the parents who will have to pick up the cost of a strike. It’s the kids who will lose a day of learning. And for what? Are any of the claims of the BTU really worth it?
<
p>
He missed the thread that discussed the hourly rates that teachers receive:
<
p> Bureau of Labor Statistics: public school teachers earn $34.06 per hour in 2005. which is 36% more than the average white collar worker.
<
p>
Detroit: $47.28
NY: $45.79
LA: $44.03
<
p>
It’s tough to say that teachers are underpaid, even on national average level. Certainly not crap. Link
<
p>
Re: the union. Public unions are pretty much uncontrollable. There’s no nature economic force to constraint them like say, the UAW that shrinks as the sector shrinks. Public unions (NEA, MTA…) just grow.
both at the link and on the BLS site — and I couldn’t find a statistic that reported how many hours a teacher worked — that is, what is the denominator?
<
p>
If they used the number of days the teacher reports and multiplied it by the length of the school day (less lunch), they got it wrong. Teachers put in loads of extra hours — preparing the classroom, acquiring supplies, grading papers, parent/teacher conferences, etc. My sense is that teachers put in well more than 40 hours/week when school’s in session. Add to that mandatory summer ed/training, etc., and it wouldn’t surprise me if teachers came within 10% of a (40 hours * 48 weeks) work year.
<
p>
So, what’s the denominator?
Blanket assumptions about teacher workload are part of the problem in teacher compensation.
<
p>
Professional pay expects that the employee works however long it takes to get the job done. The items you mention — preparing the classroom, acquiring supplies, grading papers, parent/teacher conferences — are part of the job of “teaching” and are expected and paid for with this professional salary. On an individual basis, the time required to get the job done is going to vary based on subject, grade level, time management skills, experience, dedication — and that’s just a variance in teacher-centric criteria. There are students who will require more time of the teacher than others as well.
<
p>
It is the out-moded single salary schedule that doesn’t recognize or compensate for these differences. Not every teacher has papers to grade orparent/teacher conferences. However, the majority of teacher contracts still use this structure.
<
p>
Contracts provide stipends which compensate teachers for duties that fall outside of the “teaching” role — coaching, etc.. But other contracts include stipends for duties that do fall under the “teaching” umbrella — afterschool professional development or summer curriculum planning. And even though I think requiring a masters degree for professional certification is a worthless scam, contracts offer increased pay for completing your degree or professional development, so it isn’t as if those efforts are uncompensated.
<
p>
Contracts also include language for a “prep period”, which is time during the school day that can be used for conferences, grading, and all those other items you list. So, if the school day runs 6 hours (excluding lunch), teaching time is 5 hours, so even with the prep period and 2-hrs daily afterschool, teachers are still working an 8-hour day. I think that is a reasonable assumption. Do teachers work more than 8 hrs a day? Some probably do. Some of the time. There are also some teachers who get extra “non-teaching time” due to field trips, assemblies, parties, test administratin. It’s the nature of having a professional vs. hourly salary. And in the end it balances out.
<
p>
But back to the numbers:
<
p>
$34 * 8 hrs * 180 days (the contracted pay period) = $48,960
(again, remember that extra hours are either expected as part of what it means to be a salaried employee or compensated depending on contract terms)
Average teacher salary (NEA/AFT) plus 2% so that we’re comparing the same year = $47,687
<
p>
The numbers hold.
<
p>
A veteran teacher I worked with many years ago put it this way — it wasn’t that the salary was bad, it was that there was a mandatory 2-month furlough every year.
8 hours a day? I’d bet that the average teacher works more than 8 a day during those school days.
<
p>
I’d bet that the teachers also work more than 180 days. I don’t know for sure (didn’t go to school in MA), but do in-staff development days count toward that 180? Mandatory summer coursework/training? Preparing the classroom before school begins, or packing it up after the “last day of school?”
<
p>
If teachers work exactly 180 days, and exactly 8 hours on each of those days, then the numbers work out. However, I suspect that teachers work more than 180 days, and more than 8 hours.
<
p>
Off the cuff, if they work 190 days and 9 hours per day, now we’re talking about $28.63 an hour — much lower than $34/hr.
<
p>
So, my question still stands: if you’re going to calculate the wages hourly, how many hours a year does a teacher work?
<
blockquote>If teachers work exactly 180 days, and exactly 8 hours on each of those days, then the numbers work out. However, I suspect that teachers work more than 180 days, and more than 8 hours.
<
blockquote>
<
p>
Any salaried employee works until the job is done. What is the point of trying to argue — without data no less — the number of hours an average teacher (what defines that) works? It would be countered with more anecdotal evidence of other professionals who put in more than 8 hours a day.
<
p>
Contracts vary. I’ve seen 180-day contracts with all professional development done after school (and compensated hourly). I’ve seen 185-day contracts that build in extra time for teachers to come in before/after the school year and for professional development. Remember, this data isn’t about any specific system or teacher. It’s looking at national data. A computer programmer at one company gets a better deal than his peer — the methodology tries to factor out small variations.
<
p>
Here’s some of the data if you’re interested. I don’t know if it’s exactly the data set referred to in the article cited elsewhere, but it’s from the same source. You’ll note that hourly wages aren’t calculated for teachers.
<
p>
However, you’ll be hard pressed to prove that any salaried employee works 40 hours. Some work more. Some work less. And it varies, even for individuals by the day/week/month. There are slow cycles and busier ones.
<
p>
I don’t know what you are referring to when you say “mandatory summer coursework/training”. Do you have a contract that cites this? And even if you do, that’s an individual case. I worked for one school where I was required to have “duty” — dances, cafeteria, etc.. I worked at others where it wasn’t. While this may have impacted me as an individual, from a national perspective it all came out in the wash. Similar differences occur in the private sector (how overnight travel is handled comes to mind), so these variations are neither unique to education nor particularly interesting.
<
p>
What is more striking about the data is the discrepency in teaching salaries for particular subject areas (and levels) as compared to what a similarly skilled employee could earn in a different business sector. The education industry has resisted differentiating pay based on subject matter. As a result, some teachers — based on their marketable skills — make less than they would in another industry and some make more.
<
p>
I’ve worked in private sector jobs with plenty of unscheduled breaks. You open a Word doc, and zone out for five minutes. You go to the bathroom and stare at yourself in the mirror for three. You tie your shoes very carefully. Twice. You put on your important face while the other guy blathers on.
<
p>
A teacher who zones out for five minutes won’t make it out of a junior or senior high alive. I worked my butt off in college, and I have a job where I choose between eating lunch or going to the can, and if I choose the former, I end up holding it for almost three hours.
<
p>
Give me a break.
Yes, you are right that there are other jobs that do offer opportunities for breaks at will. This has little to do with private v. public sector, and more to do with the nature of the job itself. A comparison of jobs will only just offer more examples of differences, but to what end? Different jobs have different advantages and disadvantages.
<
p>
One of my first teaching jobs had a schedule with both my lunch and my prep block at the end of the day. That was 4 hrs and 45 minutes straight. I found this neither difficult nor out of line with non-teaching jobs. Maybe as you get older it becomes more difficult to work for 5 hour stretches?
<
p>
My point is that it is ridiculous to negotiate down to the minute. If unions would stop pushing for clock time of less than 7 hours, you might actually end up with a work day that provided enough flexibility so that you could have more time for that drink of water or trip to the bathroom. Ultimately, isn’t that what you’re getting at — that you’d like to be treated as a professional?
<
p>
When you put it into contract language it becomes something for each side to use as a bargaining chip. Then we have scheduling decisions, which primarily should be made for the benefit of student achievement, being constrained by contract language.
<
p>
I’m not begrudging wanting to be able to get a drink of water or use the bathroom on a regular basis during the workday. It’s just frustrating to see this done via contract negotiations.
<
p>
Why not measure all kinds of factors to see who is producing and who isn’t? I’m not just talking test scores here, I’m saying moniter how cleanly the bathrooms are, how many stalls don’t have toilet paper, how many classrooms have trash on the floors. Hold the janitors there accountable.
<
p>
Hold the vice principals accountable for disciplinary problems. Is the number of kids getting detention rising or falling? If it is skyrocketing then perhaps just holding kids an hour after school isn’t effective. If one school has found a better way, and disciplinary issues are falling there, then you can compare notes district wide and see whats working and what isn’t. Give a raise to the effective VP, and the boot to the ineffective one.
<
p>
You can find measurable aspects for every position in a school, and in most other professions as well. It might not be as easy as it may appear on first glance, but you can find an equitable formula to measure just about everything. Then, give everyone the across the board pay raise, but hold your “step” pay raises to those who are performing. An added benefit is that you can also see who needs help the most, and pair them up with someone who is doing well.
<
p>
A teacher with only 2 or 3 years experience may be young and dynamic and doing a fantastic job. It makes sense to pay her more than the guy who is doing a mediocre job but has been there for 25 years. Like anything else, experience helps, but there are better ways to give raises.
1. Measurement costs aren’t zero. Who’s going to measure how many stalls don’t have TP or how much trash is on the floors? How much will that person’s employment cost?
<
p>
2. You’ll get the results you measure for, not the results you want. The big gripe with high stakes testing is that it encourages curriculum to be limited solely to “teaching the test.” In the frame of the VP you mentioned above, if you use rising rates of detention to boot the VP, what’s he going to do — overrule and not give detention to as many kids. You haven’t fixed the discipline problem, you’ve merely encouraged the VP to change his behavior so he doesn’t look like he’s doing a weak job, just like high stakes tests encourage teachers and students to collude into making it look like the student is learning, rather than focus on actually learning.
Of course there will be an added cost to measuring, but it doesn’t have to be huge. It can be done reasonably, and I think it is a wise investment. If you stop giving automatic raises to teachers who are not up to snuff but who have been there for a decade or more then you may be able to pay for it that way, as well.
<
p>
If you involve all the key stakeholders, including the people who will be measured, in the process of decided what metric to use then you can come up with a reasonable list. Say what you will about Rudy Guliani, but he did a hell of a job turning around New York City and it was largely a data driven process. Police Commanders were not simply arresting fewer people and claiming crime had dropped. I don’t think we should simply measure how many hows of detention are issued either. There are numerous things that can be measured – acts of vandalism, acts of violence, bullying, etc – and when you use all of them you can determine how the VP is doing. At the very least, you will have a better measure of how effective a VP is than what step he is on in his contract.
<
p>
I might add that Theo Epstein uses a similar model to manage his baseball team, and we all saw the results that got us.
with this logic that I don’t know where to start.
<
p>
<
p>
This is all well and good in an industry that is widget-driven. The simplicity with which you seem to believe the problems are solved belies a poor understanding of both education and the problems it faces.
<
p>
<
p>
Are you for real? I have to say this is the most stunning display of ignorance about what an assistant principal does and should be doing that I have seen in ages.
<
p>
Why are you holding an assistant responsible for acts of vandalism? Why are you holding an assistant responsible for the numbers of fights or tardies or bullying episodes? They are aren’t responsible for their students’ behaviors; the students are. And the more complex the students’ psychosocial and economic stresses are, the more you will see of this behavior come hell or high water. Do you think that suspensions and detentions are deterrents to vandalism, violence, and bullying in the aggregate? If you do, I have a bridge for sale in New York.
<
p>
The motivating factors behind the behaviors you mention have everything to do with the student’s issues, his/her anger, frustrations, boredom, showing off, peer pressure, etc. The list is lengthy and complex. A detention or even a suspension does not really have a deterrent effect on these behaviors in any meaningful way for a student who is prone to such behaviors. Are they sorry they did stuff after they did it and realize the consequences? Yup. Are they usually so impulsive that they chronically fail to consider consequences before they do something? Absolutely.
<
p>
What works with students exhibiting destructive and aggressive behaviors is to get at the root of the behavior and work to resolve it, not punish it. This is Skinnerian behavioralism 101. Punishment doesn’t teach anything except don’t get caught. We have 3-hour Saturday morning detentions, The Breakfast Club. Has this incredible bummer of an inconvenience decreased our numbers of detention-worthy incidents? Not one bit. In fact, we have more than ever.
<
p>
The problem lies with the stresses in students’ lives, not the ineffectuality of an assistant principal.
<
p>
Here’s what a good assistant principal does in a middle or high school:
<
p>
1. Manages behavioral and disciplinary issues. That means weighing the kid, the behavior, and the punishment and coming up with an appropriate consequence to anti-social behaviors.
<
p>
2. Cultivates relationships with those students who are on the frequent flyer plan. That means spending time with the troubled and chronically difficult kids and figuring out a way to get them successfully through school.
<
p>
3. Keeps a finger on the pulse of the school by walking & talking with teachers, staff, and students. A good assistant can tell when there’s a rift in the time-space continuum just by walking the halls.
<
p>
4. Helps student government and students groups and clubs in their co-curricular missions.
<
p>
5. Actively solicits teacher support (in combination with guidance) for those students who are at risk or struggling with attendance, behavior, tardiness, truancy, and aggression.
<
p>
6. Supports teachers as they deal with problematic students by being responsive and receptive to input and suggestion.
<
p>
There’s are myriad other tasks that good assistants do, as well, but these are the nuts and bolts.
for a VP to be doing, and I did not mean for my few examples to be exhaustive. I think you are right, if a VP (or just about any responsible adult) got involved with a troubled kid you would see marked improvement. When that happens, the number of incidents of vandalism will go down. That can be measured. When the kid is self confident enough the number of times the weaker kids get bullied will go down. That too can be measured. The number of tardies will go down, etc. I never meant to say that negative discipline was the only way to get results.
<
p>
Lets say you have two schools, roughly equal in all things. After the first year of measuring behavior issues they are both about the same in that area as well. One school gets a new VP who does all the things you mention and behavior issues drop (I’d also guess that test scores would start to rise as well). The other school keeps the status quo and the behavior level also stays the same. The VP who was effective should get the raise AND she should help the other VP improve his performance. The VP who wasn’t as effective shouldn’t get a raise just because he had been on the job longer.
<
p>
<
p>
I am holding them responsible because it is their job to make sure those things don’t happen, and to punish the aggressors when they do. I have worked in 4 schools (2 middle, 2 high) as I have been working on my thesis in education reform and in all 4 that was at least part of the VP’s job. The VP in turn holds kids responsible for their actions.
live in the real world where behavior is not particularly measurable with any confidence or consistency. While well-intentioned, you are off in the weeds here.
<
p>
And this:
<
p>
<
p>
Is both wrong and contradictory. An assistant is NOT responsible for behavior that has not yet occurred. Get a grip; the notion is absurd. And second, if you are so far along in your education, why is it you do not grasp the reality that consequences are not a deterrent for the really at-risk kids who are at the root of the very problems you cite? If a ratio of 1:500 exists per assistant, what do you think the difference in effect that assistant has in, say, Fall River v. Wellesley? Hmm…..lemme think. Man, this is 101 level stuff, your thesis notwithstanding.
<
p>
And this:
<
p>
<
p>
This is gibberish. Where are you going to get schools that are “roughly equal in all things” when we’re talking about a mix of hundreds, if not thousands, of actual people with varying degrees of support and stresses? All urban schools are not the same; all schools with greater than forty percent SLL are not the same; all schools with similar populations and average income are not the same. I don’t know how many times I can explain this, but it’s vital that you do if you have any future at all in public education: an assistant is not responsible for behavior that has not yet occurred. The only meaningful way to get at anti-social and destructive behaviors is through school culture and intervention by appropriate social services if the issues warrant, not the consequences doled out by an assistant.
<
p>
You should spend some time thinking about school culture and less time thinking about comparing assistant principals in a concocted world that bears little resemblance to reality.
<
p>
An assistant is responsible, as I said above, for doling out the consequences of behavior that has already occurred according to the agreed-upon guidelines of that school. You conveniently fail to acknowledge the nuts and bolts of real-life experience in favor of your pie-in-the-sky “measurement” approach because it appeals to you–and I can tell you right now, ya ain’t go nowheres with that because it has no application, as you have currently described it, in the real world with real kids with real problems. Children are not widgets. For some reason, you have it in your head that an assistant is a miracle worker–and that’s just silly.
How do you determine who is doing a good job and who is doing a poor one? What objective standard can we hold them to? I’d also like to hear your thoughts on how we can hold the superintendent accountable, and the janitors and the teachers and the lunch ladies, too. Give me a realistic way to do it, not just some “pie in the sky measurement” approach.
if I was clear on what you’re trying to do. Sounds like you’re trying to separate those who are doing a good job from those who are not. Okay, but what exactly is the problem you are trying to solve?
<
p>
What needs to be clarified and agreed upon before any improvement initiative is begun is this: what the problem is exactly and what resolution (or mitigation) of the problem looks like.
<
p>
So what are you trying to achieve? And don’t offer up some bullshit like improved student performance. What specifically are you trying to achieve? Increase total points awarded to 10th-grade MCAS students in the long composition by 2 points? Increase literacy scores by x percent among third-grade cohorts in urban elementary schools of 700 students or greater? Increase mathematics performance on MAT-8 in 8th graders by district?
Since teacher effectiveness is more important than poverty in determining how well a student will do (Making School Reform Work, Hill & Harvey, Brookings Institution; also Cumulative and Residual Effects of Teachers on Future Student Academic Achievement, Sanders & Rivers, University of Tennessee; others.) I want to be able to identify good teachers. I then want to learn what they are doing in class and share that information with teachers who are struggling.
<
p>
I also want to get rid of the teachers who are perpetually underperforming. After 3 years with bad teachers students can fall 50 percentile points behind their peers. New York City Community District Two went from struggling to garnering national attention for their achievement by “counseling out” poor teachers and hiring better teachers in their place.
<
p>
Tell me how can can find the bad teachers and replace them, like NYC CD2 did.
You don’t know what you want to measure.
<
p>
You have vague ideas wrapped up in “good” and “bad.” How are you measuring “good teachers”? What is a “good” teacher in Lexington vs. a “good” teacher in Springfield? Are their differences? If so, what are the criteria? Are we talking primary, middle, or high school? Content-specific?
<
p>
I’ve no idea what NYC’s District Two has done. I’ve no idea what their historic problems were, how their success was measured and over what period of time. This isn’t a cookie-cutter business. You don’t seem to think these things matter, but I can tell you as an educator and a school committee member that they do matter and that sweeping generalities about “good” and “bad” are not helpful.
<
p>
One school is not a template for all schools, just as one school’s problems are not the problems of all schools.
<
p>
The issues I think you want to get at demand specificity that you seem either unwilling or ill-prepared to offer. Either that or you see teaching as an abstract exercise disconnected from the lives of real students, faculty, and administrators.
<
p>
I have to ask you: how many years have you been a classroom teacher in a public school?
I’m trying to get you to tell me how you can identify a good teacher, and how you can identify a bad teacher is. As a school committee member, what metric do you use to decide which teachers are performing and which are not? How do you do it with your colleagues? I understand that the town you live in and the town you teach in may have many differences, but surely there are similarities between what makes a good teacher in both.
<
p>
I interned part time as an undergrad in the public schools of Washington DC. Right of of school I was a substitute full time for a couple months. Then, when I went back to grad school, I again subbed for a full school year. I haven’t had my own classroom.
<
p>
First and foremost, good teachers love being around kids. They teach not to pass on their knowledge and show how smart they are; they teach because they like being around kids. They possess content area expertise and a love for the subject, have high expectations for student achievement, have well-planned lessons designed to engage students in response to state frameworks, understand when something isn’t working and are not afraid to bail on it, develop a rapport with students that makes them want to believe they can succeed, understands the stresses students are under, appreciates the social issues impacting performance in the classroom, and understands that a child is a complex being that cannot be reduced to a three-digit number on a high-stakes test.
<
p>
How do you measure this? Yeah, right. First of all, education is a continuum, not an incident. The group of sophomores I may have in a class one year may do quite well on MCAS, but the next year they may tank. What’s different? In the absence of major curricular changes, the kids. Am I the one to be held accountable for poor performance this year? Uh, no. Am I the one to be rewarded for outstanding performance another year? Uh, no. Their performance is a more of a result of the ten years of instruction that preceded mine versus the few months I’ve had to bring them up to speed. Now I could compare their 7th grade scores with their 10th grade scores and see what we have. What should we have? Should they be the same? Should they be higher? If so, by how much? What’s the SD on reasonable performance?
<
p>
Give that, how do you propose to measure me? I didn’t have them in English for 8th, 9th, and 10th grade English. Well, I supposed we could pre-test and post-test, but who is to decide what’s reasonable progress? What is the benchmark? What if my midlevel English group is, by luck of the draw, saddled with four behavioral kids and seven kids on plans/504s who have a rather sustained impact on instruction over the course of the year while my colleague has another midlevel group without a single issue and no special needs? What if three of the kids in my class suffer traumatic loss during the course of the year and do only what they need to do to get by instead of their best? Am I to be held accountable for that?
<
p>
I could go on and on for pages. The point is that there is no equitable way to split these hairs. There is no magic bullet. If a school is underperforming across the board by an objective national measure, then incentivize the whole school and enlist all players.
<
p>
<
p>
School committees don’t make those decisions. Those decisions are made by school principals through the observation and evaluation process that is contractually agreed upon.
<
p>
I’m going to tell you this sincerely: you cannot attain any expertise about public education unless you have taught in the public schools for a substantial period of time. It’s like asking someone to be a surgeon without ever having any real experience on living, breathing patients. It’s just not possible. Education is practice, it’s not theory.
Kai,
<
p>
1. First, here is a link to some articles about the sort of data crunching you’re describing
<
p>
2. I wrote an article about this maybe 10 years ago for New York Magazine about District 2. It was a lot of fun, so briefly —
<
p>
A super-dynamic superintendent named Tony Alvarado ran that district. He later was a finalist for the Boston supe job, but Menino took Tom Payzant instead, and Alvarado ended up in San Diego.
<
p>
Anyway, Alvarado did NOT have the sort of tight, clear metrics that you describe.
<
p>
He focused on elementary schools — at the time, high schools were part of a different NYC district.
<
p>
He put together a team of principals that believed in two things: a) professsional development (ie, real teacher change, not BS, and not optional) was not remedial (ie, not just something for the really droopy teachers), and b) obsessive focus on literacy.
<
p>
The teachers who were counseled out tended to disagree with one of those two things.
<
p>
Some believed that literacy was not a priority, but instead one of many reasonable elementary school goals, like making sure kids played well with others.
<
p>
Others did not like the notion that they needed to change what they’d done for years. Even if you showed them facts — that most of their kids were really bad readers — the facts just bounced off their “frame,” which was that they (teachers) were already doing the best that could possibly be done with minority/poor kids.
<
p>
Alvarado got those teachers out, and was able to cherry-pick more of “his” type of teachers as new hires.
<
p>
Just as baseball is increasingly torn between the Joe Morgans (old school, scoff at stats) and Theo Epstein (new school, measurement-obsessed), so too is K-12. Old school won’t accept your question — if you don’t like my measurement, what do you propose? — because they don’t accept your basic premise that numbers can describe complex performance.
Thanks for the link, I will be sure to check it out.
<
p>
A lot of what I am reading is that the districts that have done the best job in turning around urban schools have adopted a “no excuses” mentality. Saying “I’m doing the best I can with this group of kids” just isn’t good enough. Its a common theme throughout all the literature on turnarounds in tough districts. The “old school” teachers might not accept the premise, but the results speak for themselves.
<
p>
If you can find a copy of your article, I’d love to read it.
Some schools are better than others – there is little (any?) argument about that. Some teachers are better than others – this is also easy to agree with.
<
p>
Once these statements are on the table, it follows that school and teacher performance is measureable.
<
p>
My frustration with the teacher’s union is that I haven’t seen them propose a decent, meaningful measurement system that people can live with. All measurement schemes have flaws. But find one that doesn’t suck, and use it.
<
p>
Stomv, feel free to weigh in on this.
And I mean this with all due civility, but as a teacher and a union activist I would ask you to consider that it really isn’t appropriate for the union to present such a scheme or plan. That is managements perogative. Our job is to make sure that whatever system is a agreed upon and put in place is fair and equitable.
<
p>
It is managements job to hire good teachers – and believe me, I’ve worked with and seen great principals, good principals and horrendous principals. It is the principals job to hire good people, and then evaluate them.
<
p>
Teachers don’t like teaching with other bad teachers. That may come as a shock to some people here, but it is as true in teaching as it is in any other work situation and probably more so.
<
p>
If the principal is good, and includes other teachers in the decision about who gets hired – that is usually the formula for hiring really good teachers.
<
p>
And the key here is not to get rid of teachers – but to hire good teachers from the start, support them and then help them grow to keep them energized, engaged and committed.
<
p>
Focusing on getting rid of people is a red herring. At least in my opinion, which is based on years of experience sitting on committees that hire other teachers.
<
p>
Nope. Measuring and performance ranking are not the same thing.
<
p>
UCLA is a better basketball team than Boston University. That’s a performance ranking. Precisely how much better requires measuring, and its harder to do with teachers than it is with basketball teams (for which it is also actually quite hard).
<
p>
It’s easy to pluck out the superstars and the bottom feeders. But in college basketball and in teaching, few participants are either. Most are somewhere in the middle — where it gets far more difficult to make “greater than” or “less than” comparisons with any reasonable certainty.
<
p>
Why is this? Well, because the game of basketball and the “game” of education are really freaking complicated. Also, because certain teams (and certain teachers) excel against some opponents (with some students) but suffer mismatches against generally considered inferior opponents (struggle to reach particular types of students). Just as there’s randomness in a basketball game (officiating, ball bounces, injuries) there’s randomness in a school (discipline, home issues, illness).
<
p>
Most importantly, you run in to sample size problems. If UCLA played BU 30 times over a span of 300 days, we’d be able to use statistical analysis to get a feel for “how much” better UCLA is than BU. But, play them once? Its a weighted coin flip, and even a 80:20 coin will come up losing one game in five. A teacher gets a set of kids unlike any other set of kids, and gets them for 180 days. There are all kinds of other things happening in these kids lives which can’t be controlled for, and each set of kids is different, having come from different classrooms the year prior, etc.
<
p>
All of this ignores that there’s more to teaching than generating good test takers. Generating good people is a critical part of a teacher’s role. Instilling fairness, ethics, and compassion are important, and teachers do a fair bit of that. Given the choice between a really smart ethically challenged high school graduate and a dimwitted but ethical and compassionate dropout, I’ll take the dropout. How do you measure that?
<
p>
So, that’s a lot of reasons. Measuring “goodness” is hard. Measuring specific numeric outcomes is easy, but it’s often hard to establish causality to any correlation found, not to mention correct for sampling bias, inconsistent data sets, and just plain bad luck. If all we care about is teaching to the test, and a teacher consistently generates scores that fall relative to his grading peers, there might be a problem. Or, he might be an average teacher with superstar peers. The superstar, not wanting to jeopardize big raises, is now encouraged to not share good teaching methods with the seemingly mediocre teacher, because if that mediocre teacher does better the superstar won’t look so shiny, and the raises might be reduced.
<
p>
This stuff is really complicated, both in mathematical and real life terms.
When discussion of measurement and accountability come up, invariably someone brings up the argument that education is like some widget-based business.
<
p>
You use similar logic — There are all kinds of other things happening in these kids lives which can’t be controlled for, and each set of kids is different, having come from different classrooms the year prior, etc.
<
p>
But that is like saying the children are the widgets. They are not the widgets. The instructional methods, management strategies, and curriculum materials are the widgets (let’s call them “tools”). The efficacy of these tools can be measured, and in turn, professional performance can be measured by the degree and skill with which each of these tools is utilized.
<
p>
A teacher who is skilled in classroom management can tell you — better yet can teach you — how it is done. The same is true for those who are skilled in teaching reading or working with at risk students or . In other words, we do know what goes into delivering a quality product.
<
p>
Students are not the prodcut either. They are the consumers, and just like in the real world, they each have their own values and demands. And you are right that students and teachers can “suffer a mismatch”. The industry — specifically contractual terms, social promotion, and heterogenous grouping — have been focused on surface-level equity to the detriment of customer satisfaction.
<
p>
Throw in another layer, the owners (aka the community members). There is disagreement about what “quality” is. For you: Given the choice between a really smart ethically challenged high school graduate and a dimwitted but ethical and compassionate dropout, I’ll take the dropout. For others, they want schools to focus on academics and leave values-based education to the parents. And then of course, there are the mandates set by the government.
<
p>
Are these different demands so unique to education? Of course not!
<
p>
Take a look at a widget-based industry such as auto-manufacturing. The consumer might be 6’5″ and that high quality sports car isn’t going to fit their needs. Thankfully they have lots of choices. The owners/shareholders might want a company that boasts big profits, delivers dividends, is eco-friendly, specializes in high-end vehicles. There is a choice there, too. And government mandates? Yes, there are mandates to meet and still the industry delivers choice to the consumer and stockholder.
<
p>
Using children and their life circumstances as an excuse for poor quality and performance (however those are defined), is almost like blaming the 6’5″ driver for blaring his horn because his knee is shoved into the steering wheel. I say almost becasue the driver has a choice of vehicle. A student who is mismatched in a system that protects itself from improvement simply by placing the blame elsewhere has no choice.
<
p>
How are you determining the efficacy of the “tools”? Oh yeah…..by measuring results on real people. Efficaciousness is revealed in outcome by its very nature.
<
p>
A Collins writing program may work well for some students but Six Trait might work better for others. Now what? What cohort is going to be your benchmark test group? Which program is more “efficacious”? Ooops! Maybe a teacher really likes Collins and hates Six Trait and gets good results with Collins. What if another teacher hates Collins and likes Six Trait and gets good results with Six Trait? Which do you throw out? What are the instructional costs associated with that decision? Does the decision need to be made at all?
<
p>
There are no widgets in education. None.
<
p>
Moreover, claiming that a student’s life circumstances has no impact on achievement is just ridiculous. Only someone who doesn’t teach middle and high school would say such a thing. And if you do teach either, I pity your students. Messy divorces, chronic illnesses, alcoholism, and myriad other stresses impact a child’s achievement in the real world. Sorry to break it to you.
Why must “the way” it’s done now be the only way?
<
p>
To your point about efficacy of tools. I thought this was obvious, but yes, student performance — demonstrated mastery of skills — is what I was talking about. Is there some other measure you had in mind? If you don’t have some sort of desired outcome in mind, I would suggest that therein lies a problem.
<
p>
What of the fact that “real people” are involved? What would you expect? That we test the efficacy of curriculum on chimps? 🙂
<
p>
But back to your writing program example, you ask “Which do you throw out?” That’s part of the problem, isn’t it? Why does a choice need to be made? Why not both?
<
p>
You misunderstand me if you believe I claimed individual circumstances don’t affect individual performance. Of course they do. However, stresses are not a limiting factor. Children can learn to deal with challenges. I would argue it’s a valuable life skill. Your pity for my students is unwarranted. My students knew that I cared, and that I’d keep expectations high. Again, why not both?
<
p>
What good comes of excusing poor performance because of “life circumstances”? It just adds to their problems if they are passed through not reading or having mastery of a subject because you pitied them? Maybe your experience is different than mine was, but my students trusted me with a lot of heavy stuff. I think it was in part because they knew I wouldn’t lie to them and tell them it was okay when it really wasn’t. Life sucks sometimes. Now what?
<
p>
Umm, you are the one who made this statement, not me:
<
p>
<
p>
Your statement seems to suggest that the efficacy of these strategies is some how disconnected from the student performance as product. If you’re not saying that, then you’re not saying anything at all other than standardized assessment is valuable. So what’s your point?
<
p>
<
p>
That’s my point, but it’s you who claims that the “widgets” have proven efficacy that seems to exist outside of the notion that a student’s achievement is a “product,” to use your word, that we are to be measuring “utilization,” which means teaching, not assessment. Again, all it seems you are saying is that assessment is valuable. We already know that.
<
p>
<
p>
Uhhh…yeah. That’s my point. Thanks. Again, you are the one making the claim that only efficacious “widgets” are to be used, not me. In some assessment, one “widget” is not efficacious and in others it is. By using both, as I would obviously recommend, the emphasis is not on the widgets you seem to value so much but on the actual instruction provided by a teacher. Indeed, for many years writing was taught without any “widget” at all.
<
p>
<
p>
Who has ever claimed that both is not the norm? Certainly not me. You’re the one, again, making claims on behalf of students you neither know nor teach. Our prisons, you see, are loaded with students who could not cope with the stresses in their lives and dropped out of school. So your generalization that “children can learn to deal with challenges” is pap. Of course they can. Some cannot, and that is reality.
<
p>
<
p>
This has to be one of the most blatant strawmen I’ve seen yet. Who here has made the claim you state above? Who here has stated that “excusing poor performance” is to pass them along without mastery? No one. I know I haven’t. What has been said is that life stresses affect student performance. Period.
<
p>
As for students lagging in achievement, there are many considerations to retaining a child K-8 that must be weighed in the best interests of the child. While you may wish to attribute this thoughtfulness to “pity,” real educators consider such thoughtfulness responsible and professional behavior.
Maybe it’s just a breakdown in communication, but it doesn’t seem like this discussion is going anywhere.
<
p>
For a more thoughtful conversation on measurement, I recommend the discussions over at Jenny D.’s. For those who might be interested in this from a compensation viewpoint, you may consider this. I’ve only just started it (and just found that there is a more recent edition).
It’s simple if you ignore the complexity.
I don’t know which you are….
<
p>
This is very well stated and spot-on, especially this:
<
p>
<
p>
I was making a similar point to Kai in a different part of this thread. This is exactly why incentivizing “teacher” performance is virtually impossible.
<
p>
I do not know what you mean by “hard”, but surely “hardness” is not reason enough to shy away from measurement. Are you familiar with Project Follow Through?
<
p>
<
p>
What problem would that be? Remember that in MA, teaching to the test is teaching to the state curriculum. I would not claim that the curriculum is perfect, but this lamenting of teaching to the test seems off the mark. Is it that you don’t think students should be able to demonstrate mastery of multiplication tables by 4th grade, or is it the manner of assessment, or something else?
<
p>
Also, you should not equate test scores as the only and only metric to be used. One could also include customer satisfaction, use of integrated curriculum or technology, or any number of goals which are set for the school building or district.
<
p>
<
p>
It is possible to determine a standard deviation so that in any given year you could determine if performance was in the “expected range” for gains. Also, if you do not want superstar teachers to hoard skills, you include knowledge transfer/teambuilding/mentoring as part of their evaluation. It makes sense that veteran or more highly skilled teachers would be evaluated on the basis of different goals than the novice. What a waste in the current system which every year evaluates teachers with 20-years experience on classroom management! If they haven’t got that down by then, well, maybe they should have been nudged into a different career path.
<
p>
Flag on the field. We need some clarification.
<
p>
The way the typical teachers pay scale works is very simple. It is a chart, with years of services on th left side going down. And then education/degrees going across the top.
<
p>
The typical pay chart looks like this:
<
p> BA BA+15 MS MS+15 MS+30 MS+60
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
<
p>
In Boston, the “lanes” of education actually include Master’s +45 and 75 and Doctorate – but in most districts the looks pretty much like the one above. If you want to see the actual salaries of BPS teachers – go to http://www.BTU.org and click on “Contract Highlights”.
<
p>
It is true that as individual teachers move up the latter that the 2.5-3% pay raises are spread across the pay scale, so that each “step” is 3% higher than it was the year before (or 2.5, or sometimes 2%, or sometimes only 1% – depending upon what the union agrees to).
<
p>
So while it may be true that younger teachers are seeing their earnings grow a bit faster than they might in the private sector – at least for the first few years, you need to consider the following facts:
<
p>
1. All teachers in Massachusetts are now required to have their Master’s degree – and I can tell you from having sat through almost 75 interviews as a member of my schools personell sub-committee, that most of the applicants applying already have their masters coming in the door. This matters here for one simple reason. The starting pay for a profesional level degree sucks. On the top ten list of worst cities to live in according to salary vs. cost of living – Boston is #10 on the list (San Fran is #1). So while their pay may be increasing some faster than normal, it is still very low compared to their earning power and professional skill set.
<
p>
2. The job is so demanding and difficult that greater than half of all new teachers hired by the BPS in the last five years leave the profession. So the public is hardly getting bilked their.
<
p>
3. As for the rest of us who are ‘maxed out’ in years on this scale (which is greater than half of all BPS teachers), the pay raises are only 3% or whatever number the union has negotiated plus a small bonus for longevity.
<
p>
One last disclosure. I am Master’s 75, Step 9, which probably puts me on the list of 100 highest paid teachers in the state of Massachusetts. And yet, my wife and I still drive one car and rent an apartment. Don’t get me wrong – I am not complaining. I love my job and it is an honor to help poor and working kids and families every single day.
<
p>
But let’s not get carried away with the whole “greedy teachers getting blah blah blah”. Believe me, it is a very very tough job, and teachers need to make a living too.
Does 75 mean you’ve been teaching for 75 years? Good Lord. Surely it means something else?
Contract language I’ve seen calls these out for professional development credits (typically in-house training or pre-approved outside seminars) or college credits not counted towards a degree.