Teachers at two of the most successful charter schools in New York City made a simple request of state officials last week: Free us from the United Federation of Teachers.
The UFT, usually so concerned about teachers’ “voices being heard,” made their response clear in the two sides’ first conference before the Public Employment Relations Board on Thursday.
To paraphrase: “Shut up.”
So now PERB has a choice to make: It can allow the teachers at the KIPP Academy in the South Bronx and KIPP Infinity in Harlem to promptly decertify the UFT as their bargaining representative, as teachers at both schools have requested by way of unanimous petitions, or it can leave them chained and paying dues to a union they want nothing to do with.
It really couldn’t be any clearer cut. The teachers want to save their school; the UFT wants to destroy it.
[archive copy of this column here]
]]>WHAT does it take to lose your job as a public- school teacher in America?
That’s a question worth asking as state education leaders bat around the idea of appointing a commission to study how school systems award tenure to New York teachers.
One way is to threaten to blow up your school, as a teacher in the Bronx did Friday, reportedly because he was upset about having been disciplined by his principal for assaulting a student.
Another is to be nominated for your state’s Teacher of the Year award — but have less seniority than some other teacher.
Yes, that’s what happened in Hampton, NH, earlier this month.
That’s right. Teacher of the Year nominee or no, you’ll be laid off by seniority. And the union will stand behind that decision.
[archive copy of this column here]
]]>WANT a lesson in political cynicism, dressed up as concern for public health? Then grab the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, and read city Health Commissar — sorry, Commissioner — Thomas Frieden’s piece on how to line up support for a soda tax.
His advice: Lure legislators with dollar signs — but convince the public it’s all about health.
The Frieden column is here.
[archive copy of this column here]
]]>Recent posts include:
* New iTunes Pricing: A Neuro Perspective
* Anti-Marriage Ads: Scared Straight
Give it a look. Hope you like it. The bulk of my blogging will be over there for the foreseeable future.
]]>FRESH evidence of charter schools’ success should put President Obama on the spot: Will he put his muscle where his mouth is?
This month, Obama issued a direct challenge to the more than two dozen states like New York that have arbitrary, teachers-union-imposed “caps” on the number of charter schools they allow to operate. But if he’s serious, he’s going to have to put force behind his words.
…
What could tip the balance?
If the president did something bold, to help Paterson and other charter-supporting governors and legislators around the country: Tie one or more federal funding streams to the lifting of the caps.
The most logical candidate would be the “incentive and innovation grants” in the stimulus bill. It’s a $5 billion pot of money over which Education Secretary Arne Duncan (a reformer out of the Chicago school system) has almost complete discretion.
Until there’s federal money on the line for states that refuse to lift their charter caps, not much is likely to change.
[archive copy of this column here]
]]>On March 5th, the Obama Administration will have been in office for over a month. Since the loss of the election in November conservatives and libertarians from across the nation have started to think about the road back not only to power, but how to return the country to believing in free-market principles. Have libertarians and conservatives found their voice? With a plummeting economy, do free market ideas stand a chance? Have Republicans discovered a comeback strategy based on ideas and principles that libertarians and conservatives can support? What is the road back to capitalism?
If you’re in the city, come on out.
]]>It’s not a popular position with the teachers unions, and plenty of the comments (predictably) accuse Matt of insulting and devaluing experienced teachers.
I get this a lot myself, of course. Support merit pay, or acknowledge the data-supported notion that teacher productivity doesn’t go up much after they get their legs in the classroom (after three or four years), and you “hate teachers.”
The truth is, though, that skilled teachers are one of the most valuable assets our economy has. Teacher quality is far and away the most important thing a school or school system can provide. But we pay teachers based on seniority, not skill, and we put up barriers to entry that benefit no one but the teachers unions (who like to create artificial teacher “shortages” and then push for higher compensation).
Alternative certification, which Matt is supporting (and which the Center for American Progress has put out a paper about expanding), is one way of trying to recruit skilled teachers who don’t have the time or patience to deal with the rigmarole of traditional certification. Programs like this, such as New York City Teaching Fellows, have had a lot of success bringing bright young folks, and people changing careers later in life, into the system. They may have higher turnover; but 10 years of a good teacher in the system beats 30 years of a bad one.
Of course, there’s a lot more you’d have to change about the system to make it attractive to a higher quality of candidate. In general, I’m supportive of higher teacher salaries — if decoupled from seniority and all the other union-created barriers to accountability. You could give principals more control over their schools, so that they’d be run more efficiently, according to a set vision. You could create a career ladder, that would allow teachers to rise based on skill (the idea of master teachers, etc., has been around for a while).
I looked at what some teachers in the New York City school system think about all this back in 2004. The column’s called “Teachers’ Secret,” and gets into what I think a lot of teachers don’t want to say in front of their colleagues and union.
]]>In his speech before Congress, in his stimulus bill and in his new budget, President Obama has sent a clear message to the educrats who argue that money is everything when it comes to fixing public schools: Get over it.
Is New York City’s education establishment listening?
“We know that our schools don’t just need more resources,” the president said Tuesday. “They need more reform.”
Specifically, on top of a welcome pledge to “expand our commitment to charter schools,” Obama promised to create “incentives for teacher performance, pathways for advancement and rewards for success.” What does this mean? In short: merit pay.
Of course, the teachers unions, a key Democratic constituency, are allergic to merit pay - as they are to any kind of accountability. Looking at how teachers perform in the classroom and then rewarding the good ones with checks? It’s an assault on mom, apple pie and the American way - if you listen to the status quo’s defenders.
But Obama’s stimulus bill has allocated $200 million to the Teacher Incentive Fund, a pot of money used by the federal Department of Education to assist merit-pay pilot programs.
Of course, it’d be nice if he put even more money behind it. He’s certainly putting enough behind early childhood education, when the real problem in our schools is middle school and high school.
The column ends with a challenge: We’re already trying a merit-pay-light pilot program in New York City (where every teacher at a school is rewarded, collectively, for performance). Let’s apply for the federal money to conduct a real merit-pay pilot program. Our teachers union always wants more money for children? Well, here’s a big federal pot of it.
Let the chips fall where they may. The kids can only benefit. And the teachers can only see higher compensation.
[archive copy of this column here]
]]>Eric Holder, no coward when it comes to being sarcastic to the press, told a Washington news conference: “What the president said during the campaign, you’ll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we’ll be doing here in law enforcement. … What he said during the campaign is now American policy.”
Of course, what Obama said during the campaign is that the federal government has no business interfering with state law and raiding California pot dispensaries. Since Obama took office, however, the DEA has seemed to be on autopilot, and some more raids have taken place.
Hopefully, this means that will end soon. Combined with, say, allowing universities to start doing research on medical marijuana, we could finally be taking a step down the road to more sensible drug policies.
We’re still a long way from decriminalizing marijuana and medicalizing how we treat stronger drugs. But, as my friends at the Post editorial board like to say, small steps for small feet.
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