GUEST BLOG: Are Teachers' Unions the Enemy of Reform?

Like myself, many of my friends are (or have been) teachers. Teaching in the NYC public school system can be a huge struggle and many of us try to go in so hopeful each and every day but are met with so many different challenges. The job is not an easy one, that's for sure.

A former co-worker of mine reached out to me with a guest post about her thoughts on the public school system in NYC today. I agree with many of her sentiments and I am sure many other teachers in our situations will as well.

I agree that the current education system needs an overhaul. I agree that there are bad teachers out there shielded by our outdated union contract. I agree that poor leadership makes for an unsuccessful school. If you treat education as a business, a new union contract would be necessary. Under the current contract, it is very difficult to boot a tenured teacher out of his/her job, let alone the union. Many of my friends  (tenured teachers) may dislike this, but I think it should be within a boss's right to fire an ineffective employee, regardless of how many years of service he or she has contributed. It's the parameters within such a firing takes place that needs an overhaul. How do you evaluate a teacher's "effectiveness?" According to the education reformers, a lot of the evaluation needs to be aligned with standardized test scores to weed out the "bad" teachers. To a layperson, it does stand to reason that lack of student progress is directly related to the effectiveness of the teacher. I was a good teacher. I was a good teacher with about a 55% pass rate. If you judge me by that alone, I should have been fired (side note: I voluntarily left the system). But those in education know better; they are not the lay people trying to instill this new way to evaluate teachers.

Lack of parent involvement has changed the environment of schools. Left to their own devices, teenagers will usually not make sound decisions when it comes to their education. In my experience, many lived without consequences for his/her academic and/or social behavior in school. How many fifteen-year-old "self-starters" do you know? What has resulted are an increasing number of teenagers that don't graduate on time, or that graduate with an embarrassingly low reading level. According to education reformers, the blame lies in the teaching. I'm not saying it doesn't in some cases. However, let's take a look at the current climate from a teacher's perspective.

We are no longer just teachers; we are expected to take on the roles that parents should be taking:

• Most schools have an "advisory" class added to their schedules. This class exists to create a sense of community within a small group of students whose individual progress a teacher can track. In this way, a teacher can advocate for a small group of students. THAT should be a parental job. Parents should be tracking their own child's progress, once a week, once a day, once a month.... whatever it takes.

• Students have embarrassingly low reading levels. I think it's more plausible to think that their reading skills are not practiced at home over thinking that a teacher isn't teaching the proper curriculum. Education doesn't stop at school -- sound habits of mind begin with what a child sees at home. A child needs to know that his/her parent values education.

• We no longer have tracked classes. In one class you can have a child with a 3rd grade reading level along with a child with an adult's reading level. A "simple solution" thrown at teachers is to differentiate your lessons. What does differentiation actually mean though? In theory, it means making your lessons plans accessible to everyone in the classroom. Right, I was to make a standardized NYS Regents exam "accessible" to a child that read like a 3rd grader. When my ability as a teacher lies in the mind of a 3rd grader in a 15-year-old's body, I worry.

How fair is it to judge teachers based on their students' progress when most of these students won’t lift a pencil to copy the assignment's name from the board? How fair is it to judge when parents don't respond to teachers’ outreach? 

No one wants to blame the parent. Everyone wants to blame the teacher. If you are a parent, ask yourself the following: do you know what your child's homework is? Do you know what classes he/she is taking? Do you know his/her teachers' names? Do you know how to contact your child's teachers? What do you do to discipline your child when he/she misbehaves at school or is not putting forth any effort at his/her academics?

If you're going to hold teachers accountable, you're also going to have to find a way to hold parents accountable.

Author: Wainby