March 7, 2008

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Picking Cherries and Planting Orchards

Filed under: Education by Jonathan Gyurko @ 3:02 pm

Good luck to Mr. Vanderhoek and the Equity Project charter school.  As reported in today’s New York Times, the school is premised—almost exclusively—on recruiting top-quality teachers, as this is “the crucial ingredient” for success.  Little argument from Edwize, and this is one type of capacity-retaining innovation that charter schools are well poised to develop.  But we do offer a few friendly suggestions and comments:  technology, small class size, teacher quality and other reforms need not be tradeoffs, as successful schools weave together these complementary strategies.  Also, the division of labor between school aides, paraprofessionals and support staff can allow teachers to focus directly on teaching, learning and the building of a positive school culture; we suspect that over time Equity Project will grapple with how to best manage its human resources.

Moreover, if and when the school’s teachers want to gain more influence over their practice through collective bargaining, we hope that Equity Project embraces this expression of ownership and accountability.  Lastly, recruiting and retaining expert teachers may make for a stable school, but is only two of the three legs needed for a strong school system.  Developing great teachers is also essential if we are to build the profession’s capacity and provide the highest quality education to all of our students.  As the Equity Project takes its planning year to pick the best teachers, we hope they’ll also consider ways to cultivate the orchard.

6 Comments »

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  • Earning $125,000 but doing more work than I do now doesn’t appeal to me. Earning $100,000 with a half-time assistant who has a key to the supply room sounds wonderful.

    Comment by MichaelB — March 8, 2008 @ 7:53 pm

  • Our UAW trade union brothers said that Americans would never buy those Japanese cars … they fought, and fought in Congress to keep their world the way it was … and the world changed.

    Teaching is entering into an evolving world … what will classrooms look like in ten years? will we have classrooms? will hundred thousand dollar new teachers make a difference? differentiated staffing? distance learning? internet? None of us know.

    We can emulate the auto workers, or, be part of the decision-making process …

    The one scenario we don’t want is to become the auto workers of the next generation.

    Comment by Peter Goodman — March 9, 2008 @ 12:29 pm

  • Moreover, if and when the school’s teachers want to gain more influence over their practice through collective bargaining, we hope that Equity Project embraces this expression of ownership and accountability.

    What’s this “if and when” stuff? I think we have a right to expect a pro-union blog, not a union-agnostic blog.

    Further, who is the “we” running through this piece? Does Edwize take a stance independent of the UFT?

    Jonathan

    Comment by jd2718 — March 11, 2008 @ 10:59 pm

  • [...] Unions should be pro-union March 12, 2008 pm31 8:01 pm Posted by jd2718 in Teachers Unions, UFT, United Federation of Teachers. Tags: Charter Schools trackback I am concerned about a recent article on Edwize. [...]

    Pingback by Unions should be pro-union « JD2718 — March 12, 2008 @ 11:01 am

  • [...] class with his hands down his pants to circling ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in answer to questions about a photo.”Edwize contends that you don’t need to sacrifice support staff, administrators and technology for high [...]

    Pingback by The $125,000 Salary Experiment — March 27, 2008 @ 6:13 pm

  • [...] small classes, and decent facilities. I see them work every day.Related: A thoughtful post on Edwize and another on [...]

    Pingback by NYC Educator: What's a Raise? — March 31, 2008 @ 1:19 pm

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