The Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, school board gave a $30,000 contract to a consulting firm for advice. The advice was to turn a certain number of elementary school teachers into “at-large” teachers in their school. This would make them into floaters, permanent subs.
Guess what? Teachers are furious. They will lose their classrooms.
A special meeting of the Upper Darby School Board Thursday night to discuss the educational specifications committee turned into a standing room only plea to keep teachers in their classrooms.
Purple T-shirts with “Let us Teach” filled the board room at the high school as teachers let the board know that they want to teach in their own classrooms and not be designated floaters throughout the district under proposed new elementary school schedules.
These schedules, made up by the consulting firm District Management Council for $30,000, are slated to be presented to the public on Monday night, but teachers who have seen or heard about the schedules are against an alleged idea of having five teachers being “at-large” in schools.
“I cannot see myself going back to being a teacher-at-large,” said Primos Elementary teacher Kristina McBrearty, “which, to me, is a glorified building sub. I want a classroom, that’s where I want to be, that’s where I’m going to make the difference.”
Somebody better start coming up with ideas about how to help teachers, how to retain teachers, how to make teachers feel appreciated.
How can we have better education if we drive away our teachers?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Please follow the footstep of 20 years veteran teacher Vivian Connell to become Attorney at the age of 49. Or please actively become politician in your community like school Councillor, or Mayor, or State representative, or … any available positions in which teacher can make an impact on Public Education, besides classroom setting.
Back2basic.
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My Mom was a teacher of teachers (C.C.N.Y. & Columbia Teachers’ College). I worked as a School Counselor for 24 years (L.C.S.W. For 36 years). When I started in k-8 schools Mom said,”there’s nothing more important to teachers than classroom space & numbers of students”. Her explanation being there is nothing else that teachers have: no status, no money, no appreciation, no accolades, etc. so they will fight for space & numbers! It is demoralizing to not even have that!
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This is deal that Randi cut with the New York City DOE on behalf of the teachers she is supposedly representing. We now have hundreds of floating teachers in the NYC school system – most of whom are older and more expensive. These are the same teachers Farina is targeting for dismissal. It’s disgusting.
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I’ve worked in law firms for a while and it’s pretty common knowledge that if an assigned legal assistant is forced into becoming a floating assistant, the handwriting is on the wall that she (invariably, she, and, invariably, an older woma) won’t be around much longer. Periodically law firms purge their floaters on the basis that it’s “too expensive” to have them. And then eventually other assignments are doubled up or otherwise re-arranged so there are more surplus assistants who become floaters. And then those floaters become “too expensive”. And round and round she goes. I’m guessing something similar happens with teachers.
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The other tip off is if an employee is promoted to Director of Special Assignments.
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Dienne: spot on!
😎
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I would be interested to hear the full context of why the advice was sought in the first place. While it’s easy to judge the answer, sometimes the solution matches the problem.
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And many times the problem is misidentified so that the “solution” causes more harm than good.
Unfortunately the federal DoE, state DoEs and the edudeformers and privateers have vociferously identified many wrong problems resulting in adminimals implementing the wrong solutions to the detriment of students.
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The Columbus Dispatch ran an article today revealing new hearings on VAM in Ohio. VAM is another way to demoralize teachers. Measure them using flawed data for factors they have no control over to produce meaningless results. Dr. Evil would call it pure genius. But here’s the kicker – legislators making the laws supporting VAM – apparently purely on the assurances of Fordham and probably Battelle for Kids – admit they have NO idea how VAM works. And these are the law makers on the education committees. Why do we put education in the hands of politicians and not teachers?
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I saw they’re coming up with a measurement system for guidance counselors.
It never ends. Entire careers will be spent determining Ohio’s VAM models, while the actual public schools whither and die from neglect.
How much has this cost? I cannot even imagine.
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MV, How many public school teachers are there in Ohio? How many have phoned/written their legislators and Governor? They can cite ASAssn re VAM invalidity. Each teacher should get relative, friends to call, too.
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The school board in Upper Darby has outsourced hard decisions rather with the aid of the superintendent rather than consult with the the teachers, administrators, parents and citizens in this district. What’s more they paid $30,000 and some memberships fees to hand off their responsibilities to some “experts” who gave them a boiler-plate solution and who, taken together, are not noted for their success in managing schools.
Here is the pitch that the school board and Superintendent bought from an outfit called “The District Management Council.”
“GREAT RESULTS ARE THE GOAL. MANAGEMENT IS THE KEY.
Public school system leaders cannot simply be great educators. They also have to be great managers.
In 2004, The District Management Council was founded on the belief that strengthening the management capacity of school district leaders is essential for raising student achievement, improving operational efficiency, and allocating resources more effectively.
DMC’s mission is to supply superior strategic insights and practical solutions to improve the function and operation of public schools. Whatever the challenge or need, our extensive experience and creative thinking can help develop solutions that work.
Today, our member districts serve more than 4 million students across 34 states. And we’re just getting started.”
Ask yourself if the following District Management Council members who took $30,000 from the schools in Upper Darby PA, served in “superior” districts that produced “GREAT RESULTS”
Arlene Ackerman Former Superintendent School District of Philadelphia
Karla Baehr Former Deputy Commissioner Mass. Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education
Peter Gorman SVP, News Corp.; Former Superintendent, Charlotte-Mecklenberg Schools
James Lytle Professor, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education; Former Superintendent, Trenton Public Schools
Andrew Parsons Director Emeritus, McKinsey & Co.
Tom Payzant Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Former Superintendent, Boston Public Schools
George Russell Former Superintendent Eugene School District 4-J
Abelardo Saavedra Former Superintendent, Houston Independent School District
The superintendent and school board need to bite the bullet and do some facilities expansion IF overcrowding is really the issue (and I think it is not).
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This doesn’t make sense. What problem was this “consultant” hired to solve?
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Marcia,
One guess: the consultant was hired to cut the budget
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“The advice was to turn a certain number of elementary school teachers into “at-large” teachers in their school. This would make them into floaters, permanent subs.”
The corresponding teachers in colleges are the adjunct profs. They are an ever increasing population of profs who juggle 4-5 jobs, making under $30K—some even under $20K. They are the future, according to Gates, because they can be fired at will, without due process—unlike the dreaded tenured profs.
In TN, an adjunct prof makes $1500 per 3 credit course. To make $2000 a month, the adjunct has to teach 6 of these courses. This could be as much as 3 times the normal teaching load, and the prof has no time to meet students out of the class room.
I’d expect “adjunct school teachers” would have to maintain a correspondingly crazy life—an impossibility.
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We don’t need no stinkin college profs, we don’t need no college, we don’t need no edumacated citizens, only workers for the oligarchs.
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Hi Mate…i have always functioned as an adjunct prof, but have had a somewhat more stable academic existence than young colleagues today, by teaching mainly at one city college, and one university, at a time. But the competition was not as fierce as now. It is a heartbreak to see amazing young PhD educators running from college to college each day, ‘freeway flyers’ they are called in Ca., to make ends meet. There are NO benefits of health care, retirement, and only a marginal representation by the union.
The situation for them is similar to what is proposed in this post.
I chose this adjunct status because I also functioned as an educational researcher and wanted to be able to pick up and travel throughout the US and other nations doing longitudinal studies, when great projects were offered me. These often took a year or two of time. But I always came back to teaching and academic writing and editing, plus writing major grant proposals, all of which I still do.
The young higher ed folks now, however, are in huge trouble and I cannot imagine when they will be able to have stable lives, buy a home, raise a family, stay healthy, and eventually have enough savings to retire.
All education situations have turned out so badly since the Reagan era, mainly due to the greed of the ruling class which started their push to privatize it all by giving an oft repeated ‘bad rap’, telling the big lie about “bad, ineffective, political, educators at all levels”, which actually took hold in America media and filtered down to the public.
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“There are NO benefits of health care, retirement, and only a marginal representation by the union.”
In addition, some states, like Tennessee, are right to work.
Here is where Gates talks about his preference of adjuncts (just listen for 30 seconds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf_rxN8Dqfg&t=38m20s
Thanks Ellen. This is the first time I heard of somebody who chose to be an adjunct.
Weird that people complain about enormous tuitions, statistics lectures for 500 students, while we have these young starving PhDs. Class sizes and tuition could be easily reduced by employing twice as many profs and reducing high and midlevel admin positions by at least 50-75%.
Admin salaries increase 2-3 times as fast as profs’ at some (maybe most) public universities.
I think privatization of public universities has reached a highly advanced stage, and here again the main players are philanthropists.
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Ellen, the video of Gates is enlightening. In the first minute he’s bravo-ing the proliferation of adjuncts & noting how handy his data-systems could be for assigning them performance grades so as to more effectively deploy them. In the next minute he’s bemoaning the attrition in home-grown hi-quality STEM grads, noting that majority of U students & applicants for US jobs are increasingly foreign-born. He discusses adjuncts only in relation to community colleges, giving kudos to U’s for excellent ed, viewing the STEM-attrition issue as simply a product of inexplicable low US student interest in tech fields.
I think he views everything thro the tunnel-vision of MS product sales. No awareness that adjuncts proliferate at the major U’s as well, no connecting the dots as to how that might affect quality of instruction there– he clearly undervalues comm college as mere fodder/ consumers of MS admin programs, no awareness that U costs have made comm coll the feeders to 4-yr coll for all but the richest (or heaviest into student debt), no big-picture as to why more students might choose phys ed over STEM (could I just suggest that sports programs garner huge $ support for coaches– no adjuncts there!) (or maybe students are aware of unemployed US STEM folks who are reqd by MS to train their cheap H1b-visa replacements in exchange for severance?)… All of which makes utter sense. He is, after all, the CEO of a programming empire. So why put him on the panel for the future of public ed? It’s not his bailiwick.
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I gave the link so that it jumps into the part about adjuncts—which is in the last third of the video. He started talking about comm colleges because he was asked why he supports community colleges. It’s clear why: he thinks the masses should be trained workers for private corporations, and at this point,. community colleges are easy targets for his philanthropy dollars to do their magic while universities are still stronger than he likes due to tenured folks.
It certainly is interesting that soon after this lecture of Gates to a few hundred college presidents, Tennessee implemented the “free” 2-year college system, called TN Promise, which weakened the 4 year colleges since enrollment significantly (10%) got reduced as a result. Last year Obama talked about a similar national program, and now you can read this
The White House said Monday it is launching a new $100 million grant program to expand worker training as the administration works to make good on President Barack Obama’s offer of two years of tuition-free community college.
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/government/white-house-launching-grants-for-worker-training-program-patterned-after-tenn-promise–3155a02e-4c0d-377033991.html
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I learned years ago, that any and all cockamamie ideas find their way into education, because there are 15,880 schools systems, in 50 states, and eh right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. iHave watched the critters running East Rampao into the ground, decide to remove the walls in one school, and have open classrooms… with predictable chaotic results.
Let me say this to all of you who follow my commentary here: “I have seen it all.”
I went to school in the forties and fifties, graduated along with classmate Bernie Sanders in 1959. My kids went to school in the sixties and seventies, and I taught from 1963 to 1998 when this happened to me, and I knew something had changed… and that SOMETHING was the right to civil justice.
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
I listen to all of you talk about what needs to be done, and I can tell you this. and I will put this up on my facebook page and at Oped News:
At the very root of the evil that tok out our schools, is the removal of the law from the school workplace. Lorna Stremcha’s book reveals the extent to which a principal could go and face no penalty.
Looking back it is so simple. They ensured that the professional educator had no voice in the conversation.
How simple is that. I remember how it was, so I know what is gone.
Respect for the voice of the teacher.
I speak as a teacher, and for teachers, and I say loud and clear, I am an American citizen who discovered that I have not a leg to stand on when my reputation or my word is attacked. I could not fight allegations of any kind in that workplace, and there was one and only one reason… something I once had… WAS GONE!
Once, I had a contract that lead out how my rights would be supported, and how my grievances could be addressed. it was backed by the law of the land, before lawlessness entered our public schools.
VAM and the move to evaluate teachers, moves on the back of a lawlessness which allows the liars to and charlatans the power to dictate what happens to teachers.
Below is the story of one teacher who was there in the nineties, and if you read nothing else, let it be Bravery, Bullies and Blowhards,” or google her Facebook pages, because the story of Lorna Stremcha has at its CORE, when is happening to YOU teachers now… the utter loss of any way to say: ‘StoP! That is not true, and it is not fair to be treated like this. Have a right to defend myself against any and all allegations, with our having to go to the courts and lose my life savings to prove my innocence or my competence.
I give you Lorna Stremcha from Montana! What is done to you teachers today, is a direct result of what ‘they’ got away with in the nineties, and what they are doing right now, in LAUSD.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGMBKF2UMq4&feature=em-share_video_user
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Dearest Susan:
I could envision your sufferance through Lorna’s story.
Both of Lorna and you are very brave and very high spirit so that both of you can conquer the bullying in order to have your health, confidence, and beautifully written expression to expound the corruption in Public education system in the past 5 decades (1970- 2010 +)
I always emphasize to strengthen body – mind – spirit so that we can self-defense in all aspects in any set-up. We believe in higher spirit and the universal law of Karma.
We do not need acknowledge the severe sufferance of all bad people who commit unspeakable or viciously devilish acts towards all conscientious teachers.
All conscientious teachers should get together once a year, like in NPE conference to pray and curse all people who intentionally harm teaching profession. This should yield a result accordingly and visually to teachers.
I believe in forgiveness, but evil shall be kept in hell without a chance to harm innocent people who mind their own business in order to improve their own body – mind – spirit within their own pace of learning. May.
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Reblogged this on Mister Journalism: "Reading, Sharing, Discussing, Learning" and commented:
Diane Ravitch writes…
The Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, school board gave a $30,000 contract to a consulting firm for advice. The advice was to turn a certain number of elementary school teachers into “at-large” teachers in their school. This would make them into floaters, permanent subs. Guess what? Teachers are furious. They will lose their classrooms. A special meeting of the Upper Darby School Board Thursday night to discuss the educational specifications committee turned into a standing room only plea to keep teachers in their classrooms.
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This story raises more questions than it answers, for me at least. Supposedly enrollment is down 14 classroom-teachers’ worth. If true, doesn’t leave many choices. You could lay off 14 teachers; use aides & substitutes as needed. Or tweak that as they’ve done here, laying off 9 & reserving 5 as floaters to substitute/ aid claases that end up a bit too big, which also hedges bets in case enrollment fluctuates. The tweak may be partly to head off community protests at losing so many teachers at once (one wonders whether enrollment could possibly have dropped so much; couldn’t they have stepped down gradually?). It could be a way to isolate the 5 most experienced/ highest-pd teachers as floaters, encouraging them to leave sooner.
But why on earth do you spend 30k to make rather straightforward decisions that are surely w/n the scope of what they pay admin to do?
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So that when parents (and/or the public) do get upset, the admin can say,”it wasn’t our idea” to deflect criticism.
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