To: - This Week In Education



To: Interested Parties

From: Michael Powell, Assistant to President for Communications

Re: Steve Brill’s NY Times Magazine Article

Date: May 23, 2010

Steven Brill has written an article that appears in today’s Sunday New York Times Magazine, “The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand,” that, sadly, represents what’s wrong with so much of the discussion today about public education. Brill’s article presents public education, teachers unions and others involved in the enterprise of education through a tired and obsolete industrial model prism. Here are several points that push back on the premise of Brill’s article

• This outdated perspective labels all public school teachers as bad and caricatures contract negotiations as an exercise in which administrators prevail upon unions to concede to enlightened reforms and unions doggedly resist. The side that is stronger or savvier emerges as the winner.

• Randi Weingarten has negotiated many more labor contracts than Brill. While labor and management in our schools rarely agree on everything, more often than not we share the same end goal of providing children with a great education.

• That is not to say that anyone should be satisfied with the current state of education. Yet in places where teachers unions and administrators have left the industrial model of education in the past, and work together to create schools that prepare students for full lives in today’s knowledge economy, great things are happening.

• In Washington, D.C., where Brill reduces the tentative contract agreement to a “winners and losers” scenario, three years of negotiations—and lots of give and take on both sides—resulted in an agreement replete with innovative education programs, abundant and relevant professional development for teachers and the conditions to achieve safer and more supportive environments for students and staff. The chancellor maintained control of teacher evaluations, which in the District of Columbia cannot be bargained.

• Collective bargaining is the best tool to meld the expertise of frontline education personnel with the responsibility communities have to provide the tools and resources necessary to provide all children with the education they deserve. Both sides have a say, and both sides have to sign.

• Collective bargaining today increasingly is a creative tool to codify collaboration on approaches that improve teaching and learning. In places like New Haven, Douglas County, Co., St. Paul, Philadelphia, and many other districts, teachers unions and their management partners are using teachers’ contracts to lay out visions for a new era of education.

• In New Haven, the teachers union and school district are jointly developing a teacher training and evaluation program with the potential to greatly improve teaching and learning. In New York state, the state education department and teachers unions have agreed to overhaul teacher evaluations, incorporating student learning, including achievement scores as one of several factors. The union and school board in Douglas County, CO have adopted a comprehensive teacher development and evaluation program developed by the AFT and leading researchers on teacher performance. The hard, crucial work of improving teacher practice and creating conditions for student success is underway, often unheralded, but occurring nonetheless.

• That’s the reality that Brill ignores. The other glaring reality absent from Brill’s article is the devastating fiscal crisis that has ravaged school budgets to the point that so-called extras are long gone and cuts now are into bone. And, for schools, the worst effects of the just-ended recession are expected to occur in the next year, and perhaps the year after that. No where in Brill’s article is there any acknowledgment of the crippling effect this has on school improvement efforts.

• Regarding the Washington Teachers Union tentative contract agreement, Mr. Brill did not cover the contract negotiations day-to-day or follow the arduous process closely and, as a result, he misses the significance of what was achieved in the agreement. The compromises that went into this agreement will help teachers and administrators provide all our children with a great education. It’s a shame he so narrowly focused on winners and losers when thousands of DC teachers are pouring everything they have into making schools better for kids. Those that did follow the negotiations closely like the Washington Post editorial page (link editorial) have lauded the agreement as good for kids and fair to teachers.

• It’s also disappointing that Mr. Brill made up a quote in the article and attributes it to Randi. He falsely quotes her blaming President Obama for creating an environment to demonize teachers. Brill’s fabrication of her quote – which tries to pit her against President Obama – only gives license to those who seek to further polarize the debate around public education reform. Randi had staff with her when Brill did the interview and he didn’t have a tape recorder. No where in the notes reflect her saying this about the President, nor would she. President Obama and Randi may have legitimate philosophical differences in their approach to improving our schools, but they share a commitment and passion to achieving the goal.

• What’s most important is that we will not be deterred from the work that Mr. Brill does not understand: the day-to-day work that goes into providing the kids of DC and children in public schools all across America the world class education they deserve. We will stay focused on improving schools for kids, and Mr. Brill and others in the blame the teacher crowd will continue to say what they think, rather than reporting accurately the reforms and improvements that are being made in schools everyday.

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