And no, I am not referring to DC schools chief Michelle Rhee, who by all indications subscribes to a similar policy, but rather New York City schools Chancellor Joel Klein, because all he thinks that all that has to happen to fix schools is to make teacher's jobs crappier:
Klein told Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute last week that the D.C. contract is marvelous and in fact ground-breaking. 'This deal slayed The three dragons. Seniority. Lockstep pay. Tenure. It got them all.'(emphasis mine)
I understand that management does not like labor unions, and does not like the protections that union contracts afford to workers.
So I can understand how an administrator might see a weakening or destruction of a labor union as a step on the road to school improvement, or at least a step on the road to making his job easier.
That being said, what Mr. Klein is saying here is that crappifying the teacher's working conditions is The Only Thing that is required to fix schools. That is what he is saying when he talks about the three dragons.
School reformers view education like investment bankers, and other chief executives, view their jobs: They have no obligation to work for the stake-holders, children and teachers for schools and the shareholders and employees for businesses, they simply have to work for their own personal benefit.
It's not about education, it's about making things more convenient for administrators, you see.
I can't speak to whether or not Michelle Rhee holds the same opinions as her one time mentor Joel Klein,since she hasn't explicitly stated that she holds this view, as Klein clearly has.
My guess is that she holds these views, particularly since she went out of her way to ensure that millions in private funding for the DC schools was dependent her continued employment as the Chancellor. (Scroll down past the snark about her fiancee.)
This is why, when I hear people like Rhee and Klein talk about accountability, or when I hear someone like Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sing the praises of charter schools (which, by the way don't outperform public schools), I roll my eyes.
The culture of American management for the past 30 years or so has been to maximize personal gain at the expense of both the enterprise the society as a whole, and I guess that this is just a reflection of this warped value system.
While it is a revolting and reprehensible development as a nation-wide trend, it's just plain evil when our children, and their ability to become thoughtful citizens to the alter of executive expedience.
2 comments :
I guess I'm not convinced how ending tenure, lock-step pay, and seniority crapifies the teacher's life. Maybe it crapifies, old, poorly performing tenured teachers, but if I'm young and energetic and performing well, I'd like to get some pay for performanc and not be laid off first because some old fossil has been a teacher for 30 years and so has 'seniority' and tenure.
Frankly, I think tenure, seniority and lock-step pay discourage creativity and energy. Why strive if your performance isn't rewarded. I know teachers who won't move to new schools, because they will lose tenure and seniority, so all this does is encourage inertia.
I'm not saying that the folks you cite aren't evil in some way (don't really know), but I do think that the three-legged stool of teacher priviledge do more harm than good.
Job security has a financial value, just ask any economist.
The proposal is that by eliminating these features, aeasily a value equivalent to 20% of salary, schools will improve.
Furthermore, it buys into the American management principle (there is an oxymoron) that a happy worker is one who is not properly managed, because you need to squeeze every last drop of blood from that turnip.
BTW, I would also note that the reasons that teachers unions are so awful is because the managament, principals are notoriously arbitrary and capricious.
Until principals get adult supervision, the who work environment will suck like 1000 hoovers all going at once.
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