Opinion | Editorial
When Protest Hinders Progress
October 8, 2009 - 2:46amNews that Michelle Rhee ’92 was coming to campus brought the Cornell Organization for Labor Action to its feet. With little time to spare, COLA met to calculate a response and to strategize. They would print out some quarter cards, draw some attention to their cause and get people talking. We welcome a good debate, but COLA’s actions on Monday did little to ignite constructive dialogue. Instead, they oversimplified the complexities that lie beneath Rhee’s speech, polarizing the multifaceted issue that is educational reform.
Rhee, the chancellor of the D.C. public schools, is certainly a controversial figure. Tasked with transforming what she described as “the most troubled public school district in the country” two years ago, Rhee has taken drastic steps like closing 23 under-enrolled schools and replacing almost one-third of principals in the district. This past Monday, as Rhee spoke to a crowded Bailey Hall, hundreds of students and teachers protested the layoffs of 229 teachers back in D.C.
For obvious reasons, COLA fixated on labor rights issues, protesting the layoffs and a lack of accountability behind these dismissals. By doing so, COLA equated labor rights with educational reform, painting a black and white portrait of a rather colorful debate.
The issues surrounding Rhee’s handling of the the D.C. public schools are for more complex than what COLA made them out to be. To focus solely on issues of hiring and firing is to merely scratch the surface of a dense educational policy debate. Many education experts — ranging from progressive charter school principals to doctors of education to teachers — criticize unions, which they claim hold teacher’s interests as employees as a main priority, rather than protect the best interests of students.
A current example of how labor issues hinder progressive action in education can be seen in New York City. Upon closing a number of under-performing schools in the city, Chancellor Joel I. Klein was forced to keep close to 2,000 teachers on payroll, providing them with salaries and benefits, which cost New York City over $200 million per year. As a result, Klein enacted a hiring freeze prior to the start of this school year in an attempt to close the budget deficit. This inactive pool of unqualified teachers — whose pay is protected by the teachers’ union — is presently preventing schools from bringing new, young teachers into the classroom. Instead, schools are forced to hire from within the pool, bringing back teachers who were already deemed unfit.
We worry that the narrow focus of COLA’s protest, which sought to blanket support for labor unions, is in fact detrimental to real “action”. Rather than encourage a discussion — no matter how passionate it might have been — COLA vehemently supported one faction involved in the debate, which in fact stifled progress.
COLA’s protest glossed over the intricacies that are behind Rhee’s actions as chancellor. If their goal was to inform attendees about the opposing viewpoint, quarter cards outlining four over-simplified simplified points did not do the job. Rather, their actions only made them contrarians in a debate that could have benefited from proactive discourse.
Error in your Comment
Here's where you opinion is wrong. Nobody has ever said the 2000 teachers in New York City's Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) are unqualified. The vast majority of them are quite qualified. If there are incompetent teachers in that group, it is the fault of the Principals, many of whom are unqualified themselves and lack the experience to properly supervise instruction, to carry out their responsibilities under secton 3020A of the New York State Education law. The reaso the vast majority of them have not been hired is because Mr. Klein, a totally unqualified incompetent non educator occupying a position for which he is uncertified, changed the way in which teachers are budgeted. Instead of all teachers, no matter their salary counting as one unit, Principals are now chanrged in their budgets for the exact salary of a teacher. Principals would rather hire 2.5 new teachers than 1 veteran teacher on maximum.
If you're going to make blanket statements about groups of teachers, get your facts right.
I think the author makes two
I think the author makes two major oversights.
First, we need to keep in mind that supporting "labor issues" in this debate is just supporting the teachers. The author is quick to dismiss teachers and their union as stiffling progress, but I think we should be conscious of what teachers need to do their job - after all, these are the only ones spending their whole days and even their careers in the classroom with kids. By putting admistration of schools at odds with teachers, the Rhee-style education reforms are doing kids no favors. Listening to teachers means paying attention to their only independent representatives- the union.
Second, to say that teachers are stifling progress unilaterally is to blame teachers for the shortcomings of education. I'm not insisting that every teacher is perfect as is, nor that teachers should be allowed unilateral decision-making power over their own working conditions, but we should not treat educators as second-rate. We need to ensure good teachers who can gain experience. Turnover in the education system serves noone. New educators bring energy, but there is a big learning curve to any job and kids deserve teachers who are ready to teach.
I don't mean to dismiss teach for America or even the reform movmenet- for I believe they are keys parts of the next steps to education- but we should do so With educators o all walks of life instead of alienating the folks we are hoping to motivate.
"Many education experts
"Many education experts criticize unions ... which they claim hold teacher’s interests as employees as a main priority, rather than protect the best interests of students." --- The thing that Rhee seems to be forgetting is that BOTH teachers and students are important in the whole debate over education reform, as well as parents, community members, school administrators, tax payers, etc. and, yes, the teacher's union. The quality of education becomes most obvious in students' performance, but teachers will not be very effective if their basic rights in the workplace are being disrespected.