Peter Greene here reviews and refutes Campbell Brown’s article in the New York Daily News about why she is bringing a Vergara lawsuit in New York. Campbell Brown was once a CNN anchor; her husband advised Romney and is on the board of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst New York. She is a fierce critic of teacher unions, tenure, and seniority. The lawsuit gives her an opportunity to act on her passionate hatred for veteran teachers while claiming to defend the “rights” of students, as the California sponsors of Vergara did.
Brown has thus far found six families to act as plaintiffs. She says that one of the students wrote an essay complaining about the quality of education she was receiving and was harassed by multiple teachers and had to change schools. Brown assumes that by getting rid of tenure, seniority, and due process, there would magically be a great teacher in every classroom.
Greene writes:
“It’s a good story because it underlines exactly what is problematic about this sort of narrative as a model of teacher evaluation. This could in fact be the story of a student who made a reasonable request, wrote an essay about it, and was unfairly hounded by multiple teachers. While I’d like to say that I can’t imagine that ever happening, it’s certainly not impossible (though the harassing phone calls from plural teachers is hard to imagine).
“But this could also be the story of a student who decide she knew better than a trained professional how the teacher should do his job, got called on it, and had the whole thing blow up when the school tried to deal with her insubordination and disrespect.
“Either version of the story could be the truth. If we put in student hands the nuclear option of ending a teacher’s career, we are certainly, as Brown says she wants to, changing the balance of power. But I’m not sure how we get to excellence in teaching by way of a student smiling and saying, “Mrs. DeGumbuddy, my lawyer and I think you really want to reconsider my grade on this essay.”
He writes:
“Tenure– NY makes teachers wait three years and eighteen observations for tenure. This is the most obvious difference between the New York case and Vergara (California was awarding tenure after less time). This is a hard argument to make– if an administrator can’t tell whether or not she’s got a keeper after three years and eighteen observations, that administrator needs to go get a job selling real estate or groceries, because, damn!
“On the plus side, I look forward to Brown’s accompanying argument that all New York schools should be barred from ever again hiring Teach for America two-year contract temps. If it takes more than three years to determine if a teacher is any good, then clearly TFA is a waste of everybody’s time. Do let me know when Brown brings that up.
“Dismissals– Too long, too hard. I’m not in New York, so I don’t know the real numbers here. This was the weakest part of the state’s case in Vergara– while you can’t rush through these proceedings, there’s no excuse for dragging them out for months and years. It’s not good for either party.”
And he concludes:
“In the meantime, teachers here in the East can now look forward to a PR blitz tearing down teachers in support of a lawsuit designed to dismantle teaching as a profession. We can only hope the ultimate result will be better than the California version of this traveling circus.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks to Peter Greene for this wonderful essay, and to Diane for posting it. Brown is drunk with the power in the hands of privatizers. Their billionaire financing enables them to take the offensive on many fronts–some campaigns don’t work out and are written off at great cost, like Gates’ small-school financing, like “Parent Trigger.” like the movie “Won’t Back Down.” Big money doesn’t always win but it on the offensive, making gains, doing horrendous damage to the public sector, democratic rights, etc. My question: How do we public sector advocates go on the offensive? For the most part, our politics is defensive–the billionaire’s finance a project and we mobilize to stop it. These are unavoidable defensive tactics in a war like this. How can we take the offensive, go on the attack where billionaires/privatizers/looters are vulnerable, to put them on the defensive?
I’m no expert, but in my opinion, the best thing to do is to keep doing what Diane Ravitch, National Education Policy Center, American Statistical Association and others have been doing.
Pointing out that the supposed “science'” (eg, of Chetty et al) behind the current reform movement is not really science at all — full of holes and based on cherry picking, faulty assumptions (eg, that correlation = causation) and conclusions that do not follow from the data.
The last thing a techie like Bill Gates wants is to stand up in front of a technically savvy crowd and have someone point out that he is peddling junk science.
Nothing could be more embarrassing — and, in my opinion, embarrassment is the probably the ONLY thing that is going to get these people to change their approach.
You are right. We need to develop offensive rheteric and to shoot from a point of strength instead of our defensive corners–not working! Let’s all put our heads together and brainstorm to come up with a sound offensive strategy! For example, we could begin by labeling addressing the billions of dollars being lost to fraud, corruption and testing materials as opposed to spending those same dollars on art and music teachers and new instruments and school buildings/ less crowded classrooms. T-charts are nice visuals for this
If a teacher is using Common Core materials in the classroom and test prep all of the time, then by all means, lawyers should become involved and the teacher challenged for malpractice, then the case can move to those who support and mandate it, like the unions and administrators, where the teacher can say they he/she was “following orders”.
It doesn’t work that way. Administrators are backed to the hilt. The teacher’s life is destroyed.
The elites, the billionaires, the hedge fund managers, libertarians and their flunkies in both parties and the media are on this “holy” crusade to crush unions, tenure, seniority and LIFO. This whole crusade is not based on data, facts or evidence but upon ideology and belief. And yet the states with the most successful public schools by NAEP scores and many other measures, have unionized teachers with tenure, seniority and LIFO. Getting rid of tenure and seniority will not improve the schools but it will pave the way for the total privatization of the schools and the debasement of the teaching profession.
“[W]hile you can’t rush through these proceedings, there’s no excuse for dragging them out for months and years. It’s not good for either party.”
Indeed. Yet in New York City, here’s a recent case that is not atypical: it took three years to get a ruling on a case involving a teacher who was terminated at the end of a three-year period where he lost control of his classroom. The majority of appellate judges believed his 18-year-record prior to the 3-year-long lapse meant he should get a mulligan, and he has been reinstated. (Most likely this triumph of due process will not affect the districts where the judges or their loved ones send their children to school.)
http://nypost.com/2014/07/07/incompetent-special-ed-teacher-cant-be-fired/
The process is in desperate need of improvement.
“Yet in New York City, here’s a recent case that is not atypical: …”
For the life of me, I don’t understand why it takes months and years for teachers either to be exonerated, reprimanded, or dismissed. I do object, however, to the statement above that assumes that the case presented is not “atypical.” Give me a break. Are NY administrators so incompetent that they fill their schools with teachers like this one? The details of this case are rather sketchy, so I hesitate to pass judgement based on the limited history provided. On the surface of it, there were serious problems with this class that should have been addressed long before. Apparently, they were documenting three years of incompetence? So how long does it take before someone notices a teacher is in trouble? THREE YEARS?
“Apparently, they were documenting three years of incompetence?”
But that’s the point, from the Post’s perspective. Documenting years of incompetence is one of the things that a principal is required to do in NY before a teacher can be terminated on that basis. In this particular case — the years in question being 2009, 2010, and 2011 — I believe the rule would have been that the DOE couldn’t initiate termination proceedings unless the teacher had been rated “unsatisfactory” for two consecutive years. And the teacher is entitled to an appeal of each “unsatisfactory” rating; hence the need to document. Then there’s a termination proceeding, which includes some discovery and a hearing before a judicial hearing officer.
And then the teacher can appeal the outcome of that proceeding in state court. And *then* the teacher can appeal the state court ruling. And then you get this decision.
Note that, assuming all other administrative appeals have been exhausted, anyone can appeal any decision by an administrative agency (which the NYC DOE is). That’s essentially a universal right in the U.S. So appeals to state court systems that aren’t baked into the statutory due process protections shouldn’t be viewed as part of the slow machinery of tenure.
Also note the caption of the decision, link provided below by Joe: “Anthony J. Russo, appellant pro se.” This appeal was all Russo, not the union.
And yet in all that time this teacher was left alone with no help to run a class he repeatedly tried to be transferred out of. I think there is enough stupidity to go around here. I am not saying this is the case but transferring a teacher into a class where they do not feel competent or qualified is a time honored tradition for getting rid of a teacher that has offended the wrong person/people. Perhaps a recognition of that dynamic is why the review board was reluctant to terminate him. This is pure speculation but I wonder why a teacher with an excellent record is transferred into a situation such as this classroom. Knowing what is being done to credentialing in special education, all of us are finding that we are being declared competent to educate a much broader spectrum of students than we were trained for. That non-categorical classification is just a way to save money and certainly does not provide better instruction. In my last job I taught high functioning autistic students, “cognitively delayed” students, a wide range of learning disabled students, OHI, and BD students in the same classroom. If you think I was able to fully meet the needs of all those students, you drank the koolaid.
You who hate “tenure,” which doesn’t exist for K-12 teachers, don’t know what you are talking about. You, like Campbell Brown, don’t even know what it is, let alone can “fix it.”
NO OTHER OCCUPATION HAS SUCH A LONG PROBATIONARY PERIOD AS TEACHERS, other than college professors, GOT IT?
This is all about stealing the pensions from older, more experienced workers. I am sick and tired of reading the same garbage over and over and over again by people who don’t know anything about this–and it is similar all over the United States.
Due process exists for public employees because it is considered a property right that cannot be taken away without “due process.” It has NOTHING TO DO WITH parents, giving grades, “academic freedom,” or anything else. STOP conflating it with postsecondary education. It’s only the “right” to a hearing that, at least outside of NYC, is almost always rigged for a school district’s benefit. IT IS NOT MANDATORY FOR TEACHERS–almost all of them opt for severance packages which are similar to private sector work.
Do NOT comment on my posts and critique them when you haven’t been through it and don’t know squat.
You aren’t protected if a principal wants you to change a grade to appease a parent, okay? You don’t do that, the principal can come after you for “insubordination,” or whatever bogus thing they come up with.
The statutes are so vague as to be meaningless. It is all up to the board or up to an arbitrator or whoever is over the few termination hearings that take place.
I am very tired of this, people, when you try to explain something that you have no direct, personal knowledge about.
For the fake lawyers around here who think the few teachers who avail themselves to hearings can “appeal”: That depends on the state. Most states you can’t appeal an arbitrator’s ruling–you have to try and get a lawyer to sue in civil court. Lotsa luck with that, let me tell you.
Some don’t understand administrative law is not civil law, and it is not criminal law. It’s a completely different branch of law, and let me tell you from personal experience, it is a sham branch of law. The hearings are sham tribunals, with all kinds of misconduct by school districts allowed–perjury, tampering with witnesses, forgery, bribery, the whole nine yards–and violators can’t be charged criminally.
See, somebody here knows this process, so I am going to call b.s. on this. NYC is virtually the only place in the country where teachers have a least a fig leaf of protections. Teachers in the rest of the country have fewer rights than McDonald’s workers.
“seniority over quality when teachers are laid off”
Measuring seniority is a no brainer, but how do you measure quality again?
Microsoft couldn’t figure it out.
VAM is a roulette wheel, so seniority is all they got.
“This is the most obvious difference between the New York case and Vergara (California was awarding tenure after less time). This is a hard argument to make– if an administrator can’t tell whether or not she’s got a keeper after three years and eighteen observations . . . .”
I’m not against tenure, but I’ve never found this argument very compelling. It’s been my personal observation that although there are many things you can tell about an employee in three years, some of those things can change a lot over time, including some important attributes that are not related to skills. The most obvious of these are things like enthusiasm, energy, and attitude, all of which can drop off dramatically after several years, especially when the job is extremely taxing. To repeat, I don’t think that means that there shouldn’t be tenure, and I understand that every anti-tenure talking point must be met with an equal and opposite rebuttal. I just don’t find this particular rebuttal very convincing.
Sure, FLERP. But we have to be observed multiple times every year for the rest of our careers, often by administrators who have FAR less teaching experience (With 13 years in, I have more teaching experience that the three administrators in my building COMBINED). Tenure, as you know, is NOT lifetime employment. So, if an administrator is doing his/her job, administrators can terminate ineffective teachers pretty quickly. I think the main reason that they don’t is that there are often shortages of teachers–so who would replace that person?
There is a lot of paperwork involved, so many principals are too lazy. It is much easier to try to make the teacher’s life miserable so they will leave on their own. I just got moved to fifth grade after teaching preK, K and first grade for the last 20 years. Makes no sense except to see it as a retaliation toward someone he doesn’t like. Doesn’t matter to him that it’s not the best thing for the KIDS! Plenty of other teachers who’d be better with the older kids. Oh well, I’ll do my best, but this kind of stuff happens all the time. No one ever factors in bad principals and administrators who don’t have a clue.
“The most obvious of these are things like enthusiasm, energy, and attitude, all of which can drop off dramatically after several years,….” After 10 years, 20 years, 30 years? What about the experience, the wisdom and the knowledge gained after many years of teaching? You are saying that older teachers are lacking in or have a diminishing amount of enthusiasm, energy, and attitude? Isn’t that a bias or an example of ageism?
For some people, it drops very quickly. For others, it never drops off.
Are you speaking specifically about teaching, or just employees in general? When someone does something they’re passionate about, energy and enthusiasm tend to increase over time as people feel that they’re really getting good at what they do. Certainly not all, but I’d say most teachers who stick it out do so because they are passionate about it, so I don’t think waning enthusiasm would be such a big problem in teaching in general.
Where I have seen waning energy and enthusiasm is in the corporate sector where the eager-beaver young yes-people eventually get jaded and realize that they’ve spent their career on a hamster wheel not really accomplishing a great deal of anything meaningful and that nothing they do really matters (often not even to one’s own bosses, as one discovers when one fails to submit a routine report and no one notices).
Getting back to teaching, to the extent that once-passionate teachers do lose energy and enthusiasm, I would guess that is very often a result of “reform” – teachers have begun realizing that teaching, under corporate reform, is becoming just another corporate rat race as they are being prevented from doing much of what makes the job truly meaningful.
Employees in general, although my observations are specific to my field. I work in a particularly burnout-heavy field, but I would expect the same phenomena happen in other fields, including teaching. You may be correct about the “passion” factor, although passion has a lot to overcome when the job is a grind, the working conditions are difficult, pay is low, and stress is high. Another name for burnout is “depression.” Some of us are prone to it. Others, for reasons I’ll never understand, aren’t.
Dienne,
XO,
Ang
It seems that some would have us believe that all teachers are to model themselves on Mother Teresa. “Once passionate” teachers or even just quite competent teachers are human beings. They have lives outside the classroom. They may have young children and/or elderly parents. They may have chronic health issues (some caused by toxic environments in unkempt school buildings), substance abuse problems or other personal issues which affect their daily performance in their classrooms.
Unlike an office job where there is an opportunity to regroup in the privacy of the bathroom, teachers have no safe haven at times of personal crisis. They are on stage all day with a captive audience.
So what are we to do when someone who has been effective for years loses it due to normal human stress? Toss ’em out or find a way to support them because they are valuable due to their years of experience and institutional knowledge?
We know what Campbell’s answer is.
Campbell needs to teach for a year in the inner city….then let’s hear her thoughts. Let her survive on a teachers salary as well! I hate when people who have never set foot into a classroom give their opinion of what’s wrong with education
FLERP, my response to that is simply that you’re giving administrators way too much leeway and credit for knowing how to actually evaluate objectively. In my school, we hired a new administrator two years ago. He had three years experience as a teacher. He is of the opinion that all of the teachers he inherited “don’t listen to him.” We do, it’s just that his suggestions are exceedingly narrow and he fixates on one thing each year. Hence we all get the same advice.
He then made his first hire and, oh, was she golden! Because she kissed his ass.
He’s said in coded terms that he would love to hire his own staff entirely. Without tenure, we’d be engaged in constant battles to fend off his “observations.” That’s way more energy-draining than 20 years in a profession. And it’s one of many reasons that due process should be there.
The ability to carry out orders without complaint or question is probably also something that wanes over time.
From that NY Post (Rupert Murdoch, cough, cough) article: “In a 3-2 decision, Appellate Division judges overturned the Department of Education’s firing of PS/IS 377 special education teacher Anthony Russo, citing a 21-year record that had been spotless until the [sic] his last three school years — when he lost total control of his class.” This decision was made by judges, so don’t blame the union or tenure. Do you have a problem with due process and innocent until proven guilty? Since this special education teacher had such a good record until his last 3 school years shouldn’t he have been entitled to have a chance at improvement, supervision and remediation? Why throw out due process and the dismissal procedure based on this one case? This is so typical of the NY Post to always emphasize the worst about public schools, assuming that they have presented all the facts correctly.
He probably got a new principal that didn’t like him and started rating him poorly. Happens all the time if you rub a principal the wrong way. How does he suddenly “lose control” when he had a spotless record?
From the decision regarding Russo v. NYC DOE: “Petitioner [Russo] avers that the remediation efforts were inadequate in that he never received organized or consistent lessons from his peers and that they usually consisted of rushed, disorganized, and informal hallway meetings. Petitioner also contends that the assistance he received from the assistant principals was uncoordinated and often contradictory. In one instance petitioner sought help designing a lesson from one assistant principal but when a different assistant principal observed the lesson that the first assistant principal had prepared with petitioner, the second one rated it as unsatisfactory because the lesson failed to follow a specific structure established by written guidelines.” http://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/appellate-division-first-department/2014/12032-103000-12.html
Also: While the dissent finds that petitioner had a “long-term pattern of inadequate performance,” that “pattern” involves the same class from which petitioner sought a transfer. In actuality, petitioner had a lengthy unblemished record prior to being assigned that class, which consisted of students at their most difficult age. Petitioner asked for a transfer, and at least for an aide to be assigned. His requests were ignored and instead he was kept with the same students for three years without an aide, even though the principal found his ability to handle that specific group of students unsatisfactory. The dissent notes that petitioner’s spotless record for the previous 18 years is not determinative, but it is still an important factor to be considered (see Matter of Riley v City of New York, 84 AD3d 442 [1st Dept 2011] [termination disproportionate where student was not injured and the petitioner had a 15-year unblemished record]). Moreover, [*3]remediation efforts that were made proved unsuccessful at least in part because the advice given was neither consistent nor adequately targeted.”
I was fired for not returning to my classroom until there was an air quality inspection. My school was on a toxic dump and three brick layers had won a lawsuit when they became very ill just building it, it was a toxic lagoon of chlorinated solvents that had to be drained before building it. The union cared little about due process then, though Bill DeBlasio and Speaker Quinn called for an investigation. Union is powerless and has no teeth, teachers are on their own. Their “place at the table” is at the expense of teachers and children. I showed that the city was building Prototype schools to bypass the environmental review laws and refused to do testing, while turning off the vapor intrusion system without permission from the State.
How disgusting that you were treated that way. I’m so sorry.
Thanks Diane for releasing my posting. This is a main reason I am against putting Pre K children in unsafe schools in NYC, where there is no air quality inspection (along with Common Core).I was the Advocate for School Indoor Air Quality since 2004 and testified numerous times before the City Council and advised Councilmembers about toxic schools being built in their district. I believe that the union gave up its right to do testing in 2000, or thereafter. Before that, they would close schools all of the time to fix problems. This led to the push by the City to build on horrible sited knowing that no one could test them. I served on the Mayor’s panel against Intro 650, which would have required that all inspections be approved by the police commissioner!! This was the power of the real estate lobby where zoning laws were ignored that protected children in schools, the union was an accomplice.
Send an email to mmulgrew@uft.org and ask the president of the UFT why he will not support this teacher and the Whistleblower law to protect children passed by former Speaker Quinn in regard to PS 7 in Elmhurst Queens. It is now being investigated by the Public Advocates Office. Why do the unions not support due process to protect children and teachers. For what I have learned through discovery send an email to j.mugivan@yahoo.com. It will make your skin crawl,. included will be letters for Speaker Quinn and Bill DeBlasio and the chilling environmental report about this toxic lagoon.
If my comment is awaiting moderation Diane, request these documents directly.
Come on, what do you expect from a former/failed anchor at CNN —when you can’t achieve higher ratings than Wolf Blitzer, it is time to reevaluate your career goals—in the case of Ms. Brown, well, where all failed pundits end up….going after education–an easy mark in their minds.
While I agree with Greene’s assessment of Brown’s case I’m disappointed that he didn’t look into the student he dismisses as unlikely. Her essay and eventual transfer from her school was a local story in Rochester a year ago. The superintendent made a statement that the district had handled the students concerns poorly and there was some vocal complaints by teachers who were offended by her comparison of them to slave masters. She wrote an articulate essay after reading about Frederick Douglass and there were some problems for her after. That said, it’s hardly grounds for a Vergara style case.
One thing that never gets said in tenure discussions is that working in the public sector means you essentially work for a monopoly. So if you are a teacher in NYC and you get fired, you can’t just go to “another DOE” to look for a job. (Another school, maybe, but your record/reputation follows you.) Often it means you must move, uproot your life & family, etc. That’s a big deal, which is worthy of due process. Anyone who thinks capricious, “at will” employment is sufficient under those circumstances — for the very people who devote their lives to educating children — must have financial/power/political motives to make that case. Either that or they just have a lump of coal for a heart! (I am writing this as a NYC public school parent employed in the private sector, who prefers that my kids be taught by experienced, career-minded and well-compensated teachers.)
My father was a high school English teacher in Brooklyn in the 1980s. It took his school administration a year to gather evidence, fire him, and have his teaching license revoked. It can be done quickly, trust me.
He wasn’t even a bad teacher, just a very rebellious one.
Which is why there should be tenure! It should protect people who might speak their minds, while still doing their job.