September 25, 2006

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The Chalkboard Does A Humpty Dumpty Jig

Filed under: Charter School by Leo Casey @ 10:50 pm

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “who is to be master - that’s all.”

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

In our last collective bargaining agreement, New York City public school teachers agreed to add ten minutes to our work day. When combined with the additional twenty minutes from the previous agreement, and reconfigured across 4 days [Monday through Thursday], this additional time created an 37.5 minute at the end of the school day. The agreement to create this time period involved a rather clear and unambiguous definition of its purpose: it was to be dedicated to providing students at risk for academic failure small group, tutoring and test preparation assistance. This is the only time of the school day expressly used for such support.

In order to protect this purpose, explicit language was written into the agreement which limited the size of the groups [no more than ten general education, or five special education students], and which defined the activities that would take place on it as “tutorials, test preparation and/or small group instruction.”

There are those who question the need for such explicit language in our agreements, but they have obviously never attempted to work with school management such as that at Tweed. No sooner had the contract been ratified then the supervisors of Teachers of Speech decided that they should not provide those services, but should teach an additional, sixth class. [The Teachers of Speech cited here are not educators who teach public speaking and debate in a regular educator classroom, but special education providers who supply a combination of therapeutic and educational services.]

The UFT grieved this rather flagrant violation of the agreement. Not surprisingly, the arbitrator upheld the plain , unambiguous meaning of the agreement, and ruled against the Department of Education. Teachers of speech will now use the 37.5 minute periods for exactly what they were intended to provide — critical tutoring and test preparation assistance to students in need of such help.

All of this provides an occasion for The Chalkboard, the blog of the New York Charter School Association, to launch into a tirade of how this decision is a “charade” which justifies “vouchers.”

In the Alice in Wonderland world of Chalkboard’s Joe Williams, agreements between New York City public school teachers and our employer should mean whatever management wants it to mean. Who cares if supervisors decide that there is no need to provide at risk students with an important service, in open defiance of the agreement? Teachers should just do what the master tells them to do.

Not these teachers. We are professional educators who work in schools. We entered into an agreement with specific language designed to protect the integrity of our work with our students, language which we have read and understood, and we will not stand idly by while that agreement is violated.

If that justifies vouchers, maybe it is because the Chalkboard’s question really is “who is to be master?”

2 Comments

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  • EXPERIENCED EDUCATOR WANTED

    We’ve had an engineer (Mayor Mike) and a prosecutor (you know who) in charge of education for long enough to see how that plays out. Not well.

    When our current chancellor moves on to greener pastures (I still think he’ll go to work for Bill Gates), wouldn’t it be nice if his successor is an actual educator?

    Or is that too much to ask?

    Comment by institutional memory — September 26, 2006 @ 10:02 am

  • Hey Leo,

    I found Joe’s comments provocative as well. However, I took a different meaning from them. I think the “charade” he is referring to is the incredible amount and detail of regulations that govern how we teach our kids. These regulations lead to seemingly odd situations like the one Joe writes about.

    You write: “There are those who question the need for such explicit language in our agreements, but they have obviously never attempted to work with school management such as that at Tweed.” Parents find arguments like this really frustrating. They don’t like it when Tweed blames the UFT or UFT blames Tweed — they just want good schools. Meanwhile, I rarely hear a charter school operator complain about Tweed, likely because they are given more independence in how they operate their schools. I hope the UFT opens more charter schools — great ones — and finds themselves arguing about Kafkaesque scenarios like this one much less often.

    Finally, in a voucher system, the “master” is not management, it is the parents. The parents would choose where to send their kids, just like the wealthier “masters” in our city do. I am guessing that these new “masters” wouldn’t appreciate much of the fighting between Tweed and the UFT.

    Ken

    Comment by curious3 — September 26, 2006 @ 11:43 am

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