Ron Lapekas, an attorney in Los Angeles, submitted the following comment to the blog about the Vergara trial, in which plaintiffs claim that tenure (due process) for teachers violates the civil rights of students. The case of the plaintiffs is funded with millions of dollars by a wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur, who thinks that teachers should be fired at the will of their employer without hearings or evidence. Lapekas was a teacher before he became an attorney:
This is a show trial in which Deasy, purportedly testifying in “defense” of LAUSD, is trying to provide evidence in support of the plaintiffs to justify his own failed “leadership”. Notice that he was called as the first witness by the plaintiffs. His testimony about the difficulty of dismissing teachers is, to be blunt, false. The primary reason poor teachers are difficult to fire is because administrators like Deasy are incompetent.
Deasy is an example of an administrator who has been out of the classroom too long — and it is questionable whether he ever should have been in one in the first place. Indeed, his teaching experience is scant and completely unrelated to the challenges of LAUSD.
Deasy’s Resume shows the following:
TEACHING EXPERIENCE – SECONDARY SCHOOL
1983-1986 Science Teacher and Resident Dormitory Counselor, Coach for Track and Cross Country: LaSalle Military Academy, Oakdale, Long Island, New York – Population: 800 Students
So, Deasy brings his three years of “experience” teaching at a private military academy that has 100% control over the students it admits to LAUSD and orders teachers to do a better job. Of course, Deasy’s orders would be easier to follow if he had any clue about the challenges of actually teaching in a troubled LAUSD school.
Deasy’s “management style” is consistent with his background in military academies. He appears to believe that giving orders will produce results. Thus, he orders teachers to “be effective”; however, such an order can’t be followed until teachers are given the power to order their students to learn. Oops — learning isn’t part of Deasy’s business model for a successful school — only “objective” results from “data driven” models can determine if a teacher is “effective.”
Like most incompetent managers, Deasy blames subordinates with generalized accusations. However, without specific allegations, teachers are unable to respond because there are no objective means to evaluate improvement — except for standardized testing. And the circle goes round and round ….
The press coverage describes the kinds of teachers who need to be fired as those who fall asleep, read newspapers in class, and show YouTube videos. For these transgressions, one needs to ask “where is the administrator who did not see this in the two year probationary period?” If the teacher has tenure, where is the administrator who did not see this and document it?
Lastly, Deasy’s testimony that teachers are difficult to fire is contradicted by the evidence. Testifying that teachers are “grossly ineffective” is a conclusion, not evidence. Indeed, this trial is an example of how LAUSD substitutes its beliefs for facts. Furthermore, there are several instances where the charges against a teacher have failed to satisfy the three member panel called the Commission on Teacher Competence that dismissal is warranted. However, Deasy usurps the function of the School Board and unilaterally orders that the teacher will not be returned to the classroom.
In conclusion,
I believe that “ineffective teachers” — such as inexperienced and minimally qualified but well intentioned Teach For America” graduates — should be provided an opportunity to improve to meet objective standards of competence.
I believe that any teacher with tenure who fails to meet objective standards should be provided the opportunity to improve as provided by the California Education Code. If the teacher fails to meet objective standards within the 45 or 90 day period provided, he or she should be dismissed in accordance with law.
And I believe that any teacher who acts inappropriately with a student and every incompetent administrator who disregarded complaints from parents and students or was unable to identify such behavior should be fired.
Lastly, I offer a suggestion to help obtain evidence: Cameras in every classroom. I had them in mine. When my principal questioned me, I told him they were legal because everyone knew they were being video recorded. When he said that they might catch me doing something improper, I responded: “If I do, then I should be caught.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Interesting political positioning for Joe Biden:
“He absolutely, unapologetically and energetically embraced the trade union movement.
“You guys are the only guys keeping the barbarians at the gates, man,” declared Biden.
“The truth of the matter is, you built the middle class. Labor built the middle class,” the vice president continued. “You never leave anybody behind—even when it costs you politically and when it doesn’t benefit you directly.”
Labor’s commitment to economic justice, Biden said, explains why corporate-funded conservative groups, and their legislative minions, are attacking collective-bargaining rights. “These guys on the right—they know without you there—they call every shot,” he said. For that reason, he said, they have launched “a concerted, full-throated, well-organized, well-financed, well-thought-out effort waging war on labor’s house.”
It was in front of the UAW, which is of course a private sector union that would be important to him in upper midwest states, but surely Joe Biden has noticed that the moment they succeed in gutting public employee rights they immediately move to gutting private sector unions. It’s happened in state after state.
So…. how does he square the Obama administration’s record on labor rights with this campaign tactic? We shall see, I suppose! 🙂
http://www.thenation.com/blog/178297/meet-happy-class-warrior-joe-biden-tries-out-2016-persona#
Ask him about his brother’s chain of non-union charter schools. 90% of charters are non-union.
I know! That’s what I was thinking. Seems like a bit of a political problem to me 🙂
It’s funny, because I don’t know if you know this, but there’s a quite a bit on ed reform and public school privatization on labor sites. It’s become a real focus.
Maybe he doesn’t read labor sites 🙂
Please post lnks to info on Deasy’s brother’s charter school activities. This is important info that more people need to read about. Too many people don’t anything about Deasy’s brother.
Thank you.
Well, after reading so much speculation from other than LAUSD California educators, even the Joe Biden comments, and no input from the teachers I know here in LA, I feel the need to post this HuffPost article about the Vergara case and the portent for my community, and the eventual portent for the nation should the billionaires win.
I will leave out my oft repeated comments on the case really being aimed at unions and the terrible danger if it goed to SCOTUS.
So, here goes….
John Thompson.
Award-winning historian and inner-city teacher
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The Billionaires’ Big Plans for California Schools
Posted: 03/26/2013 4:35 pm
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Los Angeles Public Schools , Ted Olson , Billionaires Boys Club , Due Process , School Reform , Students Matter , Teacher Evaluations , Teacher Seniority , Vergara v. California , Los Angeles News
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Remember the good old days when Theodore Olson helped found the Federalist Society? Remember when Olson joined with Edwin Meese, Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, Samuel Alioto, and Clarence Thomas to proclaim, “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.”
Now, the “astroturf” education policy group Students Matter has hired Olson to argue that it doesn’t matter what the law is; what matters is what the billionaires think the law should be. They want the court to overturn the California education laws that they believe are wrong. So, they have filed Vergara vs. California which would strip Californians of their democratic right to an education system consistent with their beliefs.
Don’t get me wrong. I would strongly support a civil rights lawsuit, grounded in the law and based on solid evidence, if it was likely to help — not hurt — poor children of color. Vergara, however, is based merely on the beliefs of some powerful non-educators.
Students Matter is remarkably silent about its constitutional argument. Its legal brief argues that a small number of “grossly ineffective” teachers are “disproportionately assigned to schools serving predominantly minority and economically disadvantaged students. Vergara thus asks the court to prohibit the enforcement of any policy that is “substantially similar to the framework” which is now the duly enacted law of California.
Vergara seeks that extreme ruling based on claims that are even more extraordinary. It argues, “The key determinant of educational effectiveness is teacher quality.” In fact, up to 90 percent of the factors that determine student performance are beyond the control of teachers.
The heart of Vergara is the assertion that “California’s schools hire and retain grossly ineffective teachers at alarming rates.” Students Matter, like so many other market-driven “reformers” supported by the “Billionaires Boys Club,” seems to be devoted to firing teachers. If it wins in California, the next step very well could be legal campaigns against teachers’ due process and collective bargaining rights in other states.
But, why would Students Matter stop with the micromanaging of the terminations of teachers? Why does Students Matter not go to court and order principals to stop hiring “stagnant, disinterested and uninspiring teachers?” Granted, Students Matter links to research that admits “high-poverty schools typically receive fewer applications for each teaching position,”and top teachers are less likely to stay in those schools. But, the whole idea of Vergara is that the plaintiffs believe that they have better ideas for running schools than those enshrined in state law.
Striking down due process laws will accomplish nothing if qualified replacements do not apply for positions in high-poverty schools. So, shouldn’t Vergara prohibit principals in the top schools from competing with high-poverty schools when hiring teachers? Should it not also prohibit principals in high-poverty schools from hiring anyone other than applicants from the top universities? Should it not create a statistical model that estimates the future effectiveness of teaching candidates and create a matrix determining what types of schools can hire the teachers that the billionaires would approve of?
And, why should the billionaires stop there? Once they have imposed their will on school board elections, starting in Los Angeles and moving across the country, what other hiring and firing practices will they mandate?
Vergara could make us yearn for the good old days when Olson and his Federalist Society buddies merely opposed government efforts to protect working people. Now, Olson and Students Matter also want impose the most indefensible corporate policies on public sector employees
Ellen Lubic
Tenure in public schools is simply a guarantee of due process. If Americans won’t properly fund schools so that due process is in effect then, yes, it will probably be much harder to fire a teacher. Most administrators simply do not have the time or expertise to evaluate teachers at a level that provides for due process. But, hey, it’s an interesting distraction from that whole poverty thing.
It is and interesting and very good point, ” most administrators simply do not have the time…” The administrators in the school district where I worked, who were knowledgeable and respectable on many levels were often burdened with an insurmountable work load, as well as the teachers. The observations they did manage, were within the constraints of the formal, required observations with rubrics designed by, again, policy makers. They often left specialized teachers like myself to the last and then either omitted the observation all-together or performed a hurried observation at a time when it would be impossible to observe all features of the rubric. Although every administrator I had, instilled in me the confidence that they trusted my abilities, the evaluation, as a result never reflected as such. I do not
blame many of the administrators under fire either, but certainly relate to Mr. Lapekas’ perspective.
There IS no “tenure” in public schools–quit calling civil service protections that are SOP for public employees, “tenure.” It isn’t.
It also isn’t “hard” to “fire” a teacher–teachers are booted out all the time. In fact, there is no such thing as a “fired” teacher–they are “dismissed” if they go through the show trials called “due process” hearings and lose, which they do 75 percent of the time nationally. They are “non-renewed” if a school district decides to cancel a contract of a teacher who is probationary. Teachers “resign in lieu of a dismissal” if they take a severance packing in lieu of the hearings, thus saving the districts money on lawsuits and administrative hearings and possibly unemployment insurance as well. Teachers are often forced to resign or forced to retire, and that’s another way districts have to boot unwanted teachers.
ALL of these are actually “firings” because the districts have decided not to keep teachers on and they are not laid off (RIF’d). However, districts hide behind the jargon and say “few” teachers fired when in fact they know better than to spew lies like that.
Most teachers kicked to the curb have done nothing wrong other than being too old, too expensive, too outspoken, or too independent of administrators.
I will add very, very few teachers go through the sham hearings, preferring instead to take severance agreements (including a promise not to sue) called “settlements” in school district jargon.
This is sort of amusing, given the current debate.
It’s called “due process rights for charter schools” :
“What are the due process considerations for appeals of authorizer actions?
What are the possible entities that could hear charter school appeals?
When an appeal is successful, who should issue the contract?
How does the presence or absence of multiple authorizers in a state
impact appeals?
How can the interests of strong authorizing be balanced with the need
for viable appeals?
How can statewide charter school appeals boards be tools for effective
process?
How have courts handled charter school appeals?”
Due process for me but not for thee!
So let me get this straight. Teachers don’t get any due process, students don’t get any due process before they’re expelled, but charter schools get due process.
Click to access Charter_School_Appeals.pdf
Charter teachers don’t get due process but their CEO and family have a job for life.
Ron Lapekas makes it clear that the tools a responsible and responsive administrator needs to identify and terminate or remediate ineffective teachers are available. Without the protection of due process, it becomes too easy to get rid of a teacher someone doesn’t like. A large part of me does not like the idea of cameras constantly monitoring my classroom. Where do you have confidential conversations? I also find it a way for micromanagers to have a field day. On the other hand, it does offer teachers some protection from false accusations by students as well as administrators. I can think of a few teachers filming would have helped. The possibilities for abuse, though, are daunting.
In NJ, the trial period has increased to 4 years, in which a teacher can be fired for any reason. The administrators and principals are the ones who hire the teachers in the first place. If they are doing their job interviewing the future hires, vetting their records and student teaching evaluations, then they should be hiring very strong candidates in the first place. Then there is the 4 year trial period in which a competent principal does thorough and careful observations. But the observations don’t stop after the trial period, they are ongoing for the whole career of the teacher. Most principals roam around the school through the day and often will institute pop in or unofficial and unannounced observations. Principals have more than enough tools to eliminate an incompetent teacher. Of course it is entirely possible to have an incompetent, vindictive and petty tyrant principal who would look for any excuse to victimize and fire a teacher he didn’t like. That’s one of the reasons for having tenure.
Do you think only the “incompetent” teachers are removed? What fantasy world do you live in?
Yeah, I’m sure you will see the kind of people taking an administrative position in school, especially many of those coming from non-public education track are not trained how to tell goats from black sheep. Kind of fantasy they are in, especially if you have a bossy governor, and an inexperienced, hawkish ex-TFA superintendent who keeps screwing herself for the series of bad decisions that upset thousands of teachers, students, parents, and schools.
I left administration in 1985. At the time it was stated that you could not get rid of teachers. It was not something to be relished but I did get rid of incompetent teachers, quite a few in fact. For which I was castigated by people who did not understand. They were not in the classroom. Did not observer what was going on but were absolutely sure that they knew why I did what I did.
Too, we had an asst. superintendent who would hire teachers and then we had to fire them. NOT a good situation.
Some that were let go it did not bother me. They were truly incompetent but on one occasion I had a teacher who had been hired by that asst superintendent, had a short time left until she could retire but was a DISASTER in the classroom. When I told her we were not going to renew her contract she started to cry and said that she guessed we did not like her. I assured her that that was not the case but that the situation was not good for her either. [her classroom was chaos. I would not have wanted to face that chaos every day.] Anyway, I will never forget it. A VERY difficult thing to do but the point is that it can be done if one is willing to expend the energy and face the ire of those who think they know but have no idea of what is really going on.
That’s always been a bunch of nonsense. In the old days, administrators had more ethics, and they knew that throwing a teacher out would undermine morale and the stability of a school. That’s why few teachers were “fired.”
The term “fired” doesn’t exist in public ed anyway; it’s called “dismissal,” “forced to resign,” “resignation in lieu of a dismissal,” “non-renewed,” and so on.
And please don’t lie about how “hard” it is to “fire” a teacher. It is laughably easy because school districts defend administrators, no matter how rotten or incompetent they are, when they decide to unilaterally get rid of teachers they don’t want. No other supervisor in any other part of the economy has the unlimited power and no accountability as a school principal.
I have been there, and I KNOW what I am talking about. The person who did it to me should herself have been fired, but she continues to be moved from job to job to job making around 100k plus benefits. She is completely unfit to head a school, but there she is while I live in completely destitution because of her illegally actions.
Excuse me for my typos. When I read stuff I know not to be true about the “firing” process of teachers, it angers me to no end. Administrative law is a black hole where anything goes with school districts.
Cameras in every classroom! Now that is an idea that I and I would think most parents can get behind. It would certainly provide a more immediate and compelling record of what actually happens in the classroom. It would also be useful to teachers trying to hone their skills.
Forget it. Invasion of privacy. Administrators can get around that if they want to boot teachers.
I really wish more teachers who have been unlawfully kicked to the curb by administrators would chime in.
It stinks but on paper it looks good. It is really easy to get rid of probationary teachers. There is no recourse; most unions sacrifice the rights of the probationary teachers for better treatment of “tenured” staff in their contracts. I don’t know how nonunion teachers are treated. I just wish administrators did not feel the need to justify their decisions when there is no good reason. Just keep their mouths shut and admit the “nonrenewal” has nothing to do with a teacher’s performance. Instead they go out of their way to diminish that teacher.
I do think that videos of teachers’ classes, taken by them, reviewed by them with colleagues, can be extraordinarily valuable. We need not to give administrators bigger sticks. We need to start communicating to teachers that we take them very, very seriously as professionals and empower THEM to make continuous improvement and put the tools and resources for doing that in THEIR hands. We need to create a culture in which teaching is thought of as a practice, a yoga, that people come to with enormous SELF discipline. We cannot expect people to nurture independent, intrinsically motivated learners unless we create a culture that is about autonomy and responsibility, unless we expect of teachers that they will be independently intrinsically motivated to improve. And we should not DARE to presume that we know where what they will learn on their paths as teachers will be. There are many, many ways to be a great teacher. There are many, many kinds of learnings and ways to impart those. No one can put the real thing into a bullet list of demands, and no one should ever want to do so. That way of thinking is WRONG FROM THE START. It misconceives the entire enterprise in which we are supposed to be engaged.
Parents can also watch the misbehaviors of their children. We wouldn’t just be watching the teachers, would we?
Linda:
Excellent point. I am always in favor of having good data whether it be about how the students are behaving or the teachers are teaching.
Teachers have been gathering “data” for years Bernie. You are late to the party. It is not always quantifiable and you would know if you were a teacher: conversations, facial expressions, emotions, written responses, poems, stories, personal letters, relationships. Teaching is a human interaction based upon trust and love. #evaluatethat
Linda, please report to MiniLuv for retraining, immediately.
He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake. . . .
I want to watch Bernie and Joe Nathan…they are experts at everything related to teaching and learning.
Linda, Dee Dee and Robert:
Ron Lapekas, the lawyer who wrote the post stated:
“Lastly, I offer a suggestion to help obtain evidence: Cameras in every classroom. I had them in mine. When my principal questioned me, I told him they were legal because everyone knew they were being video recorded. When he said that they might catch me doing something improper, I responded: “If I do, then I should be caught.””
Mr. Lapekas obviously did not have an issue and, presumably having considered the legal implications, recommends it . Perhaps we should ask him to explain his thinking.
And Linda, I worked in an open plan office. My work and that of my 30 or so colleagues was always visible when we were in the office. It is a very common set up for many professionals. I believe many lectures at colleges are now also recorded.
I am very visible too. I have a door that opens and tall glass windows that people can look thorough. I have a mic on my phone that is operational 24/7. Anyone can listen at any time. I have email that is tracked and stored.
I have 125 human persons who listen to my every word and they tell their parents what they learned, the fun they had and the teacher they love.
I update a website daily and I send out remind101 texts to my students weekly.
I send out weekly progress reports for students who struggle. I update IEP’s eight times a year. I send out progress reports to all students four times a year, and report card grades with individual comments for all students four times a year.
I upload artifacts to Bloomboard supporting my SLO’s, my focus areas and our school goal (to prove my worth).
I am accountable ever second of every minute of every hour of every day I teach.
#evaluatethat
And while we’re at it why don’t we videotape doctors and lawyers. We could get coaches in locker rooms, ministers, psychologists, social workers, counselors…why the possibilities of watching are limitless! I think the definition of professional is going out the window. Does that mean we can tape the shenanigans on Wall Street? How about my neighborhood/multinational bank? People wake up!
They certainly could have used them in the showers at Penn state when Sandusky was “coaching”.
So we catch one sicko and video hundreds of boys showering. It all comes down to what kind of society we want to live in. I cannot see that the current climate of micromanagement in so many facets of daily life has done anything to improve our society. In the current climate any device which allows further/deeper scrutiny into our lives would probably not be used to the benefit of the individual. A video tape done by a teacher to improve their own practice should be totally under their control. Today’s trustworthy administrator may move on and there is no guarantee that future administrators will earn the trust of the staff. Too much effort has been devoted to destroying the teaching profession to entrust our careers in anyone’s hands but our own.
Bernie, my objection is not about privacy. It wasn’t until I moved into executive positions with fancy offices that I ever had any in business offices, and I always thought of my classroom as a public space. My objection is that I think schools should not inure children to living in a continual surveillance society. I care very, very deeply about kids learning that they have a right NOT to be under continual surveillance.
I am certain, in fact, that micromanagement is a great evil. People are AMAZING when they are empowered, when they feel a combination of responsibility AND autonomy. I don’t know if any of you have ever served on a jury. I have, several times. And each time, these people with me–of all socioeconomic stations and walks of life, of all ages–too a person took the power and responsibility entrusted to them extraordinarily seriously and deliberately. It was a beautiful thing to watch, each time–to watch people rise to the occasion when it was up to them and something important was at stake.
Suppose that I were to hire a housekeeper, and I stood over that person every moment telling him or her how hot the water in that pail should be, how much cleaner to pour into it, which way to hold the brush. I suspect that I would be looking for a new one very, very soon and that that person would find every opportunity TO DO A LOUSY JOB. People work best under conditions of autonomy, and the best results in all complex situations come from independent agents at work rather than from top-down enforcement of uniformity of action, belief, outlook, approach, etc. You create a system, you create some rough goals, you hire good people, and YOU STAND THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY AND LET THEM DO THEIR JOBS. And sometimes you make suggestions. And sometimes you make those firmly. But you don’t take your position as an opportunity to indulge your petty need to exert power.
We have created a nation of petty Napoleons. People complain about how the ranks of teachers have grown over the past five decades, but most of that growth has been in teachers providing special services–ESL, for example. But the growth in layers of administration has been breathtaking–much greater than the growth in numbers of teachers–and the micromanagement has gotten entirely out of hand. Every textbook writer in the United States today is working with lesson formats so intricately predetermined that the possibility of creating something insanely good, as Steven Jobs used to say he wanted, is nil. Nil.
Teachers are now expected to follow some invariant format specified in the evaluation rubric, to deliver the scripted lesson in the scripted way. Hello, I am robot teacher model CCSS.5.rev5. Pull my string to begin lesson CCSS.ELA.RI.7.3b.
And as a result, those lesson are mind-numbing. From all this top-down micromanagement of the classroom, of curricula, of pedagogy, we will get nothing but mediocrity. Of course. Anyone who knew the slightest thing about management ought to know that.
“It would also be useful to teachers trying to hone their skills.”
No, most of the time it would be no help at all for that.
Ang:
I am intrigued. Why couldn’t teachers make use of video data to refine their skills?
As for video monitoring, the Japanese have been doing it for more than 20 years now to improve teaching practice. But they also have a teacher’s union and due process and do not video monitor all classes daily. They respect their teachers and do not have open public records laws. And it is not used as a method to evaluate teachers. It is used as a means to help improve teacher craft. It involves significant time for teachers to review a lesson with other teachers. In essence, it takes time and costs extra money. Are the rewards worth the extra costs and teacher time?
Video monitoring a class on a daily basis has proven problematic in the US. As long as the video is used for teacher craft/evaluative purposes and kept in-class (in-house), then it seems to be somewhat okay as long as it is not advertised. If it is used for student discipline, then the area is grey. Additionally, public records can be seen as “open pubic records” if there are no specific laws precluding their release (see New York and California as examples where this has proven itself to be troublesome for the school, students, administration, and parents). Parents may not want their children seen by outsiders or the news. I know I wouldn’t. And that is why I didn’t go down this road as an administrator.
Larry Ferlazzo has chewed on the pros and cons of this bone for some time. I find that I agree with some of his points: The teachers and students need to view the tape together to see what they all could improve on. Other teachers can and should view the lessons to help improve craft. But if it is used as an administrative tool to determine teacher efficacy, then the administrator or the random 3rd party does not have its finger on the learning pulse or tenor of the classroom. And once the tape leaves the school, anything can happen.
Yes, and the Japanese use it as a part of a culture of Lesson Study in which teachers are GIVEN THE TIME IN THEIR SCHEDULES to spend reflecting, with colleagues, about what worked and didn’t work in lessons from the preceding week. This is a wonderful practice.
Continuous improvement flows from the bottom up. You know what flows from the top down.
“video data ”
Really?
Now “data” has moved beyond meaningless numbers generated by dubious tests and is now to include random videos also?
Funny. When I was in school we had a higher standard for “data”.
But to help you out, no, Bernie, no random video of some teachers classroom will help another teacher.
Ang:
Are you suggesting that video is not “data”? That will be news to every college and pro coach. Of course it is data. It is not data from a controlled experiment, but it remains data and certainly could be entered into a court of law as evidence, which I believe was the point Ron Lapekas, the lawyer and former teacher, was making.
Bernie,
My father played in the NFL.
Please lecture me on game videos.
Information and data are not the same thing.
Except to the dissembling, obfuscating types.
A court of law?
Was the goal post heavy?
I was not talking about criminal cases.
I was talking about videos being helpful to other teachers.
I believe you suggest we could hone our craft or some such nonsense.
And the answer is still no.
Do you want to live in a society where people get used to being watched at all times?? Sounds creepy to me.
Let’s watch Bernie!
Great idea.
What do you say Bernie ?
Could people “hone their skills” by watching surveillance videos of you doing whatever it is you do do?
Cameras in every classroom. The school as panopticon! Great idea! By all means, let’s inure people to the total surveillance state from Day 1.
Suppose that I am an administrator and I want to fire you and give your job to my mistress or to my golfing buddy’s mistress or to my golfing buddy’s cousin’s idiot son. All I have to do is assign someone to go through your tapes and edit together every incident that can be found in which conditions in your classroom were not PERFECT. Even if you are the best teacher in the world, I can nail you. There will be times when one of your charges is doing something he or she should not have been doing, when you misspelled something on the blackboard, whatever. I can splice those together into quite a lovely little tape. So, yes, this total surveillance in the classroom would be a superb tool.
CATO recently ran a piece on its website about how almost every American has done something that could land him or her in jail. It described how total information awareness can be used as a means to coerce compliance due to that fact.
And of course, that’s what we want. Total compliance to the state, in all its manifestations. That’s why we have to get rid of the eunuch’s shadow of tenure that we have left in some K-12 schools–because an oligarch and his or her flunkies along the food chain should always be able to make any decisions that he or she wishes to make regarding the lives of others.
And let’s set up a room in every school for data chats. Let’s call it Room 101. The office of the former director of the East German Stasi was on the second floor, and he wanted his office to be Room 101, so he had the first floor rechristened the Mezzanine, to that end.
Ron Lapekas agrees that the tools administrators need to do their jobs are available. Remember that the tools teachers need to do their jobs are NOT always so readily available. That does not stop the dedicated teacher from doing his/her job, however. Those teachers usually go out and BUY the things they feel they need. I strongly object to cameras in the classroom. I have observed the misuse and abuse of cameras in the hallway far too often to ever agree that they should be used in the classroom. Remember, you can see what you think you see but you’re not hearing what’s being said. Administrators have had a field day with using “perceived” misconduct to their advantage. I’d rather have the FLY on my wall!
Administrators have UNLIMITED power to get rid of teachers and have no accountability for their actions. It appears that teachers, as well as the general public, actually believe that it is “difficult” to “fire” a teacher when in truth it is virtually impossible to fire an administrator. I spend so much time posting the contrary because I have been through the process, and I did absolutely nothing wrong to deserve being sacked nearly six years ago other than a pair of administrators felt they had to scapegoat me to cover up their own ineptitude. It is so easy to get rid of teachers it’s laughable because school districts are governed by administrative law, which is a farce. Teachers are often not told or are made aware of EEOC until it is too late to file a complaint; if one does not do that if in a protected class, as I was, it is virtually impossible to sue a district civilly. It’s difficult anyway to get an outside attorney because they are loathe to take cases that can drag on for years and years before a settlement is reached.
susannunes: Didn’t your union go to bat for you?
Everyone knows they keep their buddies on staff no matter what. Yes, I’ve heard other people say it is really easy to fire teachers. Maybe it depends on what state you live in.
mary:
How exactly have you seen the data from hallway cameras misused or abused? If it is the issue of sound, I am pretty sure that the technology exists to collect sound in the classroom at the same time.
When it comes to principals, I have concluded that they seek these positions to get out of the classroom. Once in that job they enjoy the fruits of confs and joining committees which keep them out of the building many times. Their goal is higher salary, and job security as principals never get fired, just moved to central office. I’m a bit jaded so I apologize for the negativity.
Well said. When I defined tenure as due process, I meant to say that it’s tenure. And I know that even due process by any definition is gone. My
point was more that our evaluation systems are, for the most part, useless. They neither help good teachers continuously improve nor provide the information necessary for due process. Sorry I got your dander up.
Infographic on Ineffective Teachers — No definition effective or ineffective and no mention that for every “ineffective” teacher there is an administrator that is not doing his/her job of documenting and trying to help the teacher. http://www.edudemic.com/ineffective-teachers/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Remove the eunuch’s shadow of tenure that teachers now have, and what you have left is absolute power.
Robert:
In what ways are teachers different from other professional employees? Why should teachers be presumed to have more rights than other employees? Isn’t tenure or “procedural due process” part of the contract? As such why can’t it be amended as part of the bargaining process? I understand why teachers want to keep tenure, but I also understand why administrations would look to stream-line the due process associated with letting a teacher go.
Checks and balances, Bernie. Due process provides a necessary check on abuse of power. But you know that. All public professionals should be protected by due process from arbitrary, capricious termination.
And teaching, Bernie, is a sacred calling. I know that I risk sounding silly, in the current climate, when I say something like that, but I believe it. We need to have more respect for those whom we call “teacher.”
And so, yes, teaching is different. Or it should be. And until we start treating it that way, with reverence, all the rest of this nonsense about “reform” is just the running round the most newly minted hamster wheel.
Robert:
My question was why should teachers be treated differently from any other occupation. I do not buy that teachers should be treated with anymore automatic respect than a nurse or doctor, bank teller or bank manager, author or editor. It is a tough job, but there are many tough jobs.
As an employer I endeavored to treat all employees with respect. (I once vetoed a well qualified applicant for a PhD level position because they showed our receptionist a lack of respect.) I am for “due process” in personnel decisions – but that due process should protect both the employee and the employer. I agree that power can corrupt and people can abuse their power, but there is nothing automatic about those processes and both employer and employee have the same potential for self-serving and bad behavior.
It would be interesting to determine the actual frequency of “arbitrary, capricious termination”.
‘It would be interesting to determine the actual frequency of “arbitrary, capricious termination”.’
Are you kidding? “Arbitrary, capricious termination” is not exactly something on which anyone keep stats. “I fired these people for cause, but I just didn’t like these people, so I cooked up some reasons to axe them.” Teachers are not going to announce when they have been terminated unjustly. Everyone who loses a job is taught not to badmouth the old employer if you want to work again.
As for Robert’s dream that teachers be treated with respect for taking on a difficult job, I am with you on saying that everyone deserves to be treated with respect. The problem is that teachers are not being treated with respect. The reform narrative is anti teacher despite their claims of loving teachers. It’s like saying a python “loves” his prey by hugging it to death.
2old2teach:
Surely a systematic review of Union and School District files associated with termination and attempted termination actions would provide a rough estimate. It really is not that difficult to get a first order estimate.
Nope.
Bernie, no one wants terrible teachers in the classroom. But we are going about this from entirely the wrong direction. If you want great people, you have to raise the barriers to entry so that only very learned and qualified people can become teachers, and if we want THAT, then we have to pay people very well and give them a lot of autonomy and respect because the best and the brightest will not work under conditions of intense micromanagement, which is what we are creating. There’s a lot of intense, anti-teacher propaganda flowing through state houses these days as a result of the flawed premise that our schools are failing, but they are not failing. Correct the international test scores for the socioeconomic status of the students taking the tests and even today, with our current requirements for becoming a teacher, our students are among the very best in the world as measured by the deform movement’s own preferred measures. At any rate, our ideal, what we should strive for, is a situation in which that person in the classroom is so qualified that people will think twice about micromanaging him or her, about being so presumptuous.
Robert:
I am all in favor of raising the standards for teachers and the rigor of teacher preparation programs. I taught statistics and economics in a prestigious and presumably selective Graduate School of Education. Some of the students, particularly the women, were excellent. Others, however, were downright awful. I had a teacher of Economics who could not transpose and equation and English teachers who could not write a coherent paragraph. But raising the standards for future teachers really begs the question.
I am less persuaded that US students are doing pretty well based on International comparisons based largely on PISA scores after controlling for “poverty”. As I have said here many times before, those scores do not indicate what students can and cannot do. We need to look at the actual items.
Equally importantly if teacher unions do not put together an effective process for ensuring that their members are effective then they can hardly be surprised when management or, even worse, politicians step in with their own systems. The evaluation system in Montgomery County looked good initially but the steam seems to have gone out of it and now we seem to be back to the original status quo.
Bernie, it’s certainly the case that there are awful teachers–ones who don’t know the first thing about their subjects. There are 3 million K-12 teachers in the country, and some of them are going to be bad apples. Years ago, I got my teaching certificate alongside a young man who was going to be a high-school science teacher. A conversation I had with him one day on the long drive to the place where we were doing our student teaching:
“So, what’s your particular area of interest in science–biology, chemistry, physics, geology, astronomy? Something else?”
“I don’t really care for science.”
“None of those interest you?”
“Nope.”
“Then why on Earth do you want to become a science teacher?”
“Everyone needs a job.”
“But shouldn’t you get a job in something you’re interested in?”
“Lots of people do jobs they are not interested in. I was going to major in Phys Ed, but there aren’t many jobs there.”
“I see.”
I’ve taught alongside an Algebra teacher who didn’t know what a prime was, a French teacher who had to read the next lesson in the first-level French text to learn what her kids would be studying the following week. But those people are rare, and they are easy enough to identify and to remove from classrooms. Most teachers I’ve known weren’t like that, not by a long shot.
As I have said on this blog many times, I would like to see the implementation of a system like Japanese Lesson Study in which time is created in teachers’ schedules for them to review with colleagues what worked and didn’t work in the previous week’s lesson, pose problems that particular kids are encountering, go over lessons for the following week and create a plan of attack, etc., and I would support having administrators sit in on those meetings. In other words, I think that we get continuous improvement by putting teachers in charge of it. In such a situation, it would become evident, soon enough, which teachers were just awful and irremediable and which could learn from mentors among their colleagues. I say, put it on the teachers: You folks are the professionals, here. Let me see you acting like it and working ALL THE TIME as a team to improve your practice. But a system like that requires quite a lot of time in teachers’ schedules and requires training for the teachers doing it, starting with models for doing it well.
I think it very, very important that no one be in the classroom who is not himself or herself an intrinsically motivated, lifelong, independent learner in his or her subject area, and administrators need to figure out whether candidates fit that description during the hiring process. If the candidate does not fit that description, then he or she does not know what the goal is. And we need to make sure that we are testing teaching candidates for knowledge of content. Many states are doing great jobs of doing that, BTW. I mentioned to you that I recently reviewed the questions for the social studies endorsement here in Florida. I was pleasantly surprised. Those questions required a lot of specific knowledge and covered a lot of ground in civics/political science, American history, world history, sociology, economics, archaeology, cultural geography, physical geography, etc. Rarely do I see something from a state department of ed. that I completely endorse. This I did.
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