Greetings!
Good Day, and we hope you had a relaxing week.
Reminder: There is a membership meeting this week, Wednesday, 2/24, at 4. This is the February meeting that was postponed because of the snow day. The March meeting will be held on March 10, at 4.
The negotiating package will be presented to the BTU membership at the March membership meeting, and, upon approval, formal negotiations will commence. We will use our Building Rep list serve for dissemination of the negotiating package prior to the membership meeting, so as to give all of our members ample time to review. We thank the 40 members of the Collective Bargaining Committee for their hard work in putting together this packet over the last three months. BTU Building Reps--if you have a new or preferred email address, please email it here.
Late last week, we received word that the BTU won the Tax-Sheltered Annuity aka 403-B arbitration. More information will be forthcoming. Congratulations and thanks go to BTU Atty. Matt Dwyer and BTU Vice-President Patrick Connolly for their efforts. Atty. Dwyer will give an explanation at either this membership meeting or the next.
And thanks again to those who donated clothes and other essentials on 2/13 at the BTU for Haitian Relief. The BTU has rented a trailer to house the donated goods.
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Later this week the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) will release a study entitled Human Capital in the Boston Public Schools. NCTQ is planning a multi-pronged series of events around the release. Boston is just one stop on NCTQ's tour; previous 'studies' have brought it to examine the Seattle Public Schools (10/09) and the Hartford Public Schools (5/09). All three reports ( Seattle's , Hartford's
( http://www.nctq.org/p/docs/nctq_hartford_human_capital.pdf ) and Boston's ) read similarly and have virtually identical recommendations . Some of the recommendations common to each plan include:
1. Teachers should have no job protections
"Teachers should never be guaranteed a position." Boston draft report, p. 5.
2. The school day for staff should be extended without additional compensation
"Create an additional (unpaid) teacher-work period after students leave at the end of the day..." Boston, draft, p. 9.
3. Not enough teachers are being rated unsatisfactory
"Too few teachers in Boston are being held accountable for their job performance. Only 70 teachers out of a teacher corp of 4,873 were rated as unsatisfactory in the 2008-2009 school year, not even 1 percent of all teachers." (Boston draft p. 7) Memo to NCTQ: Hard to believe, but in Boston we know our percents; any sixth grader knows that 70 is more than 1% of 4,873.
4. Reduce sick leave, bereavement leave, and pay for advanced study and degrees (Boston draft, pp. 8-9).
Funded in part by corporations such as Gates and Exxon-Mobil, NCTQ travels around the country for a fee and pushes a pro-business school model that masquerades as reform. Each city's report, while pretending to be independently 'researched,' follows the same formula, and has generally the same recommendations. In development of the Boston plan, NCTQ received funding from, and aligned itself with,
the Mass Business Alliance for Education (MBAE), which most recently pushed for the Education Bill that passed the legislature. The MBAE is supported by similar business interests, such as the Boston Foundation, Comcast, Verizon and the like, and this particular study was paid for by the Barr Foundation, the Boston Foundation and Gates.
Knowing NCTQ's formulaic 'research' habits, the BTU refused, as did the Hartford Teachers Union, to speak with the NCTQ. The Seattle Teachers Association pointed out technical errors, but made little or no impact on substantive issues. Had the BTU spoken with NCTQ, some technical errors may have been corrected (like the '1%' mentioned above), but their conclusions would have remained the same.
The BTU received an unsolicited DRAFT copy of the report from NCTQ in mid-December (and another DRAFT in January), and we noticed immediately the animosity shown towards teachers. In one comment that NCTQ chose to highlight, a principal remarked that he/she called our excess pool of teachers a 'cesspool.' That comment was dropped after we expressed our displeasure. Aside from registering our disgust with the 'cesspool' comment, the BTU offered no other feedback. Frankly, it would have been a waste of time. The overall premise of much of the DRAFT report is faulty, essentially: Teachers need to be 'fixed' and the 'fixing' needs to be done to them, not with them. And principals, though flawed and often inexperienced, need to have full flexibility to do what they need to do.
The Boston report focuses almost entirely on what to do with teachers: how to pay them, how to move them, how to evaluate them, how to hire them, and how to terminate them. It's not very creative. And, although the report suggests that there are many ill-informed and lazy principals who need to be more closely monitored, the report also seeks to give the same principals full and total control over all aspects of staff and schools. Go figure.
One area of misinformation stands out. The report suggests that the school system's woes in teacher hiring result from the teacher assignment excess-pool procedure. The NCTQ claims that the excess-pool procedure forces principals to fill vacancies much later in the assignment process than ought to be. 36% of all vacancies, the DRAFT claims, are filled in the two weeks before and after the opening of school. This is bad practice the report concludes. We agree that is bad practice. One might think, perhaps, that the excess pool procedures take place in early August or even late July, thereby boxing in the hiring timeline for remaining vacancies against the opening of school. At least that's what NCTQ wants us to think. But here's the problem with that hypothesis.
Excess pools take place in early March/late February. That leaves principals no less than 5 1/2 months before the opening of school to fill all the remaining positions. There is no contractual provision that precludes principals from hiring 100% of their staff as soon as March 15. That many principals wait nearly one half a year is their problem, not ours.
Further, NCTQ claims that the excess pools are a place for unwanted teachers. NCTQ calls this the "dance of the lemons." (All three city reports use the same phrase.) Never mind that many, if not most, of those who find themselves in the pool are there because they are returning from leaves for study, maternity or child care, or leave for adoption. NCTQ has a simple answer for all of these returnees: Find a position within one year or "be dismissed" (p. 5 DRAFT).
NCTQ gives a blanket reason for their proposal to terminate people who find themselves in the excess pool: Principals say that these folks are poor teachers. And what about the research behind this premise?
"Boston principals believe that the quality of teachers in the excess pool is generally poor. We were unable to verify the substance of this claim ..." Ok, so there is no research for their assertion, just a feeling. Interesting while the report admits it has no evidence to support its point of view, it promotes the following statement from a school principal as a positive tool.
"I did everything possible to discourage people from selecting my school. I told them that we had a shooting the previous year near the school yard, that we don't have parking--anything to make the school seem as unappealing as possible. (Boston principal)
This principal had five or six months to find a teacher and couldn't succeed. So he or she resorts to this cynical ploy. And we are supposed to think this is good management practice. Really?
The 61-page report is flawed throughout, and you will be able to read it for yourself. You will also be able to compare it to its look-alike twins in both Seattle and Hartford if you'd like. Calling these pre-ordained conclusions 'research' is an insult to those who actually study our educational system.
All of the reports are one-dimensional and narrow, focusing essentially on teacher staffing issues. Not only is the 'research' flawed, the reports do not mention any of the broader issues that affect our students, such as the quality of resources, infrastructure, curriculum, testing and assessment, central leadership, teacher input, administrative efficiencies, and so on. Nor do the reports tackle other key issues, such as the need to provide better health care for our students and their families, adequate employment opportunities, and any other tools needed to overcome the cycle of poverty. These are not issues the business community tends to concern itself with. It's much easier to place all of the blame on teachers.
We all want better schools, and there are many ways to collaborate in this endeavor. The key is working together for a common goal. That's how you get schools that are good for students and policies that are fair to staff. What won't work, however, is forcing a bad solution on a problem that doesn't exist. To not guarantee a woman returning from maternity leave a teaching position doesn't solve a problem. It creates one. Put another way, calling something a 'reform' doesn't make it so.
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