The Providence Journal story "Hundreds of RI teachers rally to protest policies of Commissioner Gist" describes the continuing self defeating conflict between the Rhode island Teachers unions and the Rhode Island educational system and their taxpaying supporters. This guest posting reflects one person's take on the situation
Guest posting from Ethnographer
The question of trust and respect seem to be at the heart of the teacher vs public controversy now taking place here in Rhode Island. If these issues are not resolved between the teachers and public, it doesn't matter what the union or the courts say, the educational system in Rhode Island will continue to fail the students and the tax payers.
The industrial labor management mind set shared by the teacher's unions and the school systems is at the core of the current dispute. It is an outdated business model based on the lack of trust between the owners of capital and the workers who use that capital to make a commodity product that the capitalist owner sells to the public. If you believe that students are coffee beans, that model works well.
However, if you believe a student is a Human being, then this model does not work. An educational system in a modern civilized society is supposed to produce a human being who is an educated, self supporting adult who can perform to the best of his or her ability as a citizen in the community. Such as system would be based on a human investment business model.
So what happens when you can't trust the system to produce the results you expect for your child? Why should you respect those who are responsible are messing up the job and producing an inferior product?
Parents, employers, and taxpayers are tired of hearing the complaints from the unions about pay levels, tenure, seniority, and pensions. These complaints offer only one solution to the larger educational system-wide problem. That solution is based on the theory that more money and security paid to teachers is the only thing preventing better performance.
The wider problem is not more money for teachers, the problem is better and more effective allocation of the current educational budget and resources to address the needs of the student. Cutting programs and services in order to pay higher wages and pensions to teachers is not the answer. But the unions fail to recognize this, asking for higher pay instead.
The unions, in selecting this solution, are responding to a problem brought on by mandates created by the General Assembly and Federal government. These mandates create "mission creep" problem by imposing more responsibilities upon the classroom teacher. These are responsibilities that they are not trained for or given resources to deal with effectively. Based on the industrial model, the unions respond by asking for more money for a heavier workload and more restricting work rules. Again, this makes sense if you are producing and now packaging coffee beans.
Who is responsible for this? The community and the parents are responsible when they ask their legislatures to mandate services for children that should be the responsibility of parents and performed at home. These services are imposed on the schools and, in turn, to the classroom teachers.
Our society has imposed more and more parental responsibilities upon the nations schools and their teachers. No longer is their only job to teach and educate the student in a set of proscribed skills; instead teachers are also expected to be a social worker and handle the problems the child brings into the classroom from home; to be a psychologist who diagnosis and treats psychological disorders and mental health issues that the student has; to act as a police officer to detect incidence and enforce rules against problems such as child abuse, bullying, substance abuse, etc. that may be brought into the school or classroom. No amount of pay increase is going to solve the problem of too much responsibility, limited time and resources, and inadequate staffing that are brought on by these mandates. No amount of money is going to solve the mission creep problem.
It is no wonder that the teachers are frightened and don't trust the school system to come up with a fair evaluation system. What are teacher going to be evaluated on? Are they being evaluated for their role as teacher, or social workers, or psychologists or police or all of the above? All they hear is "TEST SCORE."
This concern is expressed, for example,in this quote from the story.
“Poverty is an issue, and it has to be addressed,” said Debbie Scarpelli, a Pawtucket teacher. “We are there for our kids. But I have kids coming into school who had a brother shot in a drive-by. I have students who arrive from other countries whose first year of formal education is seventh grade. I don’t think it’s fair that only teachers and principals are held accountable for this.”
A school system that relies on a single quantitative measure as an indicator of quality, such as A Single Test Score, is using the same industrial labor management model that the union is. That "test score" is effectively the "profit" for the capitalist. And as we all know, profit bears no relation to the quality of the product produced by labor, only to the skills of lawyers and accountants to manipulate the numbers.
The problem teachers fear is that they will evaluated not as teachers but on the basis of their other roles. That test score is a combination of what the student brings into the classroom, something which is outside the teacher's control; and what the teacher can teach him or her in the classroom. But what part of the score belongs to the student and what part has been contributed by the teacher? Where do you draw the line? This is the question.
Trust can only be regained if the evaluation criteria are
real, fair, and meaningful for both the teacher and parents. It is up to their respective representatives, the school system and the union, to find the common ground. Instead they are now maximizing their differences. They should come to an agreement that their common ground is preparing students to become educated and productive citizens.
Real means the teacher is evaluated only on what is done in the classroom. The impact on the students should be measured by what they know at the beginning the term and what they learned at the end of the term. For the parent, it is a perceived improvement in the student's total behavior both in the classroom and outside of it.
Fair is that the teacher is evaluated only on their teaching performance in the context of the classroom and school population. This is where they have control of their destiny and it is what they can honestly be held accountable for. They should be evaluated based on their teaching of these students, not on how they perform as social workers, police man, etc. For the parent, it is that their child's teacher is taking a personal interest in the child's educational needs.
Meaningful means that the teacher is being evaluated on the student's overall progress and not a single test score. For the parent it is a visual objective body of evidence that their child is being challenged and making progress. This is, for example, where a portfolio system is a more effective measure for individual progress as well as teacher performance.
Respect can be earned only when the parties involved can learn to trust one another. Building trust is the first step to education reform. Trust can come when the representatives of the teachers and the parents get away from the industrial business model and adopt a human investment model.
Ethnographer
