Today's NY Times magazine has a cover story about teacher's unions NYTIMES. This diary is my reaction to it--basically, I want to defend our teachers--my teachers. Warning--I am a former UFT chapter chair, but not always a team player with them.
For the lazy reader, let me summarize my thesis, it isn't the teacher's fault that our schools are not scoring high--it's society's fault. It's the result of years of segregation, neglect, disrespect, and fake liberalism.
The latter is the Liberal's hesitancy to admit that a good part of the problem is defective children. Children without fathers in the house--many in prison--makes a dent in a child's life. Drugs sold in your neighborhood also does extreme damage--for many ghetto kids (ghetto is still the correct word), the most successful man visible is the drug dealer--or the pimp. Makes for strange aspirations--not conducive to working hard in school.
Parenting matters--remember when your parents took you to the museum, the zoo, the movies, the supermarket? Mom/dad probably talked about the things you saw--the zebra's stripes--the dinosaurs stubby front legs--the express checkout. These early child experience teach so much when done correctly--and there is a cost in not doing so. I begged parents to give their 4th grade students a shopping list when they went shopping--and to critique what he/she had in their cart. Was it the right size, the best price, fresh, etc? No parent followed my advice--why, I don't know, but the child missed the opportunity to be a better student.
Inferior buildings and supplies send a not too subtle message to students that this place isn't as important as is the new jail down the block--you know, the one with the big gym and spotless cafeteria. The child doesn't understand the hell of jail--but does see the outside appearance. Add to that, the buying of new reading and math series as if they had the "answer" to low performance. The best readers I ever used were written in the 1950's--Dick and Jane. Kids don't want relevance, they want fantasy. They want to dream, to expand their horizons through books--or at least teachers want them to experience that.
Another problem is defective Board of Educations--which often seem more concerned about costs than outcomes. A glaring example is the constant use of incentives to buy out senior teachers and replace them with rookies. You might need new blood, but you rarely get better results when you indiscriminately eliminate your experienced hands. Principals have 3 years to decide if a teacher deserves tenure--3 months would be more than enough. Not enough administrators have the brains or the nerve to eliminate the inferior instructor (in bad neighborhoods, principals need warm bodies--the area is not safe). I saw many teachers granted tenure that should have been let go the first week they were in the classroom.
Finally, when imports flooded our shores with better made cars, the media blamed the lazy American factory worker, except, that same labor force started making Hondas and Toyotas that were the equal of the imports. The problem wasn't the UAW--it was management--and probably US tax policy. Granting tax breaks to get foreign plants located in your state was good for the locality--maybe--disaster for the country and the industry.
Most teachers I encountered in 37 years at NYC Title 1 schools were hard working--were possessive of the children in "their" children--and were frustrated by inferior leadership--their General Motors ceo crew. We're not going to improve our students performance until we admit some kids have been held back by the parents who love them, the society that makes promises to them, the textbook industry that makes outlandish promises, and the politician that refuses to tell it like it is. Blaming all this on the teachers, and their union, is double talk--scapegoating. The smartest teacher is not necessarily the best one--teaching is partially an art. If principals are competent and weed out incompetents, the best teaching corps still won't succeed without fixing the other, more serious, problems.