John C. Antush
is a public high school teacher in New York City, a delegate in the
United Federation of Teachers, and a member of MORE (Movement of Rank
and File Educators). He was Monthly Review’s assistant editor in the early 1990s.
The biggest threat to education today is the corporate education
reform movement—what many of us call “Ed Deform.” It is also the biggest
threat to teachers’ working conditions. Changes in education
legislation are creating new government-funded markets for education
entrepreneurs. Spending is being shifted away from teacher salaries,
benefits, and pensions and into standardized tests, curriculum, and
technology.
1
To maximize this investment opportunity teachers must be reskilled away
from deciding on content, assessing students, and tailoring education
to meet diverse students’ needs and interests. This reduces the room for
teachers to implement, for example, the demands of anti-racist
advocates and concerned parents for “culturally relevant curriculum” or,
indeed, anything that deviates from relevant test-prep skills.
2
Standardized test scores provide a simple metric for measuring
“productivity” against teacher labor costs. One example of this
Taylorist dynamic is New York City’s new “Advance” Teacher Evaluation
system.
In 2013, State Education Commissioner John King imposed the Annual
Professional Performance Review (APPR) system, “a multiple-measures
evaluation system” for evaluating teachers in the wake of the failure of
the city’s Department of Education and the UFT (United Federation of
Teachers) to come to an agreement. I have been a public high school
teacher and UFT member for nearly thirteen years. This is the largest
change in our working conditions since our last contract was ratified in
2006.
New York’s Race to the Top application required the state to pass
legislation mandating a new teacher evaluation system that “makes
student achievement data [i.e., standardized tests] a substantial
component of how educators are assessed and supported.” “Advance”
imposes greater standardization over teachers’ labor and education in
other important ways as well.
In
Capital, Marx singles out teachers to provide an example
of the absurd universality of exploitation under capitalism: “a
schoolmaster is a productive worker when, in addition to belabouring the
heads of his pupils, he works himself into the ground to enrich the
owner of the school. That the latter has laid out his capital in a
teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, makes no difference
to the relation.”
3
Of course, most New York City public school teachers are employed by
the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE), not by private
capitalists. However, a growing number of teachers work in charter
schools managed by private corporations. More broadly, New York’s Mayor
Bloomberg, who ended his third and final term in December, was an
exemplary Taylorist “gang boss” in his promotion of Ed Deform. As Diane
Ravitch put it, Bloomberg “applied business principles to overhaul the
nation’s largest school system.”
4 Unfortunately, these trends are likely to continue under our new Mayor, De Blasio, because they are part of Race to the Top.
Harry Braverman explains in
Labor and Monopoly Capitalism that
for business, “every non-producing hour” someone is employed is a loss.
Therefore, management pursues “complete, self conscious, painstaking,
and calculating” control over the production process.
5
Facing stiff competition in the market, capitalists are driven to
streamline production, splitting up skilled work into discrete tasks
that can be executed by less skilled workers. This dynamic is “the
underlying force governing all forms of work in capitalist society.”
6
Of course, for the most part the public sector does not directly face
market competition, but is subject to political processes. Ed Deform
seeks to bring market-type pressures to bear on teachers’ labor. This
requires a metric for measuring teacher productivity and quality, which
is what “Advance” is designed to provide.
Education experts like Diane Ravitch have branded “Value Added
Measures”—formulas used to quantify teacher impact on student test
scores—as “junk science.” “Scientific management,” created by Frederick
Taylor in the 1880s, was the original junk science. As Braverman puts
it, scientific management—Taylorism—does not seek to improve production
in general, but adapts “labor to the needs of capital. It enters the
workplace not as the representative of science, but as the
representative of management masquerading in the trappings of science.”
7
Taylor’s First Principle: Dissociate Labor from Workers’ Skills
Taylorism’s first principle is “dissociation of the labor process
from the skills of the workers.” Taylor writes that, first, “managers
assume
…the burden of gathering together
all of the traditional knowledge which in the past has been possessed by
the workmen and then classifying, tabulating, and reducing this
knowledge to rules, laws, and formulae.”
8
As Braverman explains, “the purpose of work study” was never “to
enhance the ability of the worker, to concentrate in the workers a
greater share of scientific knowledge
…. Rather, the purpose was to cheapen the worker by decreasing his training and enlarging his output.”
9
New York City’s new teacher evaluation system is tied up with Obama’s
Race to the Top, which also induced New York State to adopt the new
Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and to develop a new gauntlet of
standardized tests. The CCSS were developed by the National Governors
Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers in conformity
with the requirements of Race to the Top. For the 2013–2014 school
year, new CCSS tests in Math and English were introduced. According to
New York State’s Race to the Top application, in coming years New York
State “will build an integrated and comprehensive [student performance]
assessment system that includes: formative, interim, and summative
assessments aligned to the Common Core standard; comprehensive K–2
assessments; assessments in the arts, economics, and multimedia/computer
technology, and the next generation of high school assessments.”
10
Proponents of the CCSS argue that they were created with an eye
towards developing critical thinking among students and to promote
collaborative student-centered learning.
The editors of the important
education journal
Rethinking Schools point out that some
teachers “are trying to use the space opened up by the Common Core
transition to do positive things in their classrooms.” However, the CCSS
were “written mostly by academics and assessment experts—many with ties
to testing companies.” Achieve Inc., a consulting firm that has worked
with the National Governor’s Association to develop the CCSS, brought
together 135 people for review panels to direct the development of CCSS,
but “few were classroom teachers or current administrators.
Parents
were entirely missing. K–12 educators were mostly brought in after the
fact to tweak and endorse the standards—and lend legitimacy to the
results.”
11
Most importantly student’s performance according to the CCSS will be
measured by standardized testing, as mandated by Race to the Top.
Student test scores are a central component of the “Advance” teacher
evaluation system.
Another integral part of the new evaluation system is the Danielson
framework, an attempt to compartmentalize and break down “those aspects
of a teacher’s responsibilities that have been documented through
empirical studies…these responsibilities seek to define what teachers
should know and be able to do in the exercise of their profession.”
Danielson draws on evidence from a 2009 research study conducted by the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation “which entailed the video capture of
over 23,000 lessons, analyzed according to five observation protocols,
with the results of those analyses (together with other measures)
correlated to value-added measures of student learning.”
12
Specific aspects of teaching are being brought forward by the Ed
Deformers as an across-the-board formula for good teaching, eliminating
the role that skilled educators have in assessing what is needed in
different contexts to serve diverse communities of students.
Taylor’s Second Principle: Separate Conception From Execution
Taylorism’s second principle is what Braverman calls “the separation
of conception from execution.” In Taylor’s words, this “involves the
establishment of many rules, laws, and formulae which replace the
judgment of the individual workman and which can be effectively used
only after having been systematically recorded, indexed, etc.”
13
Therefore, Taylor points out, “all of the planning which under the old
system was done by the workman, as a result of his personal experience,
must of necessity under the new system be done by the management in
accordance with the laws of the science.”
14
Ed Deform is attempting to separate the conception of teachers’ labor
from its execution by providing teachers with new CCSS curricular
materials that are designed to boost the very student CCSS test scores
that will affect teachers’ job ratings.
Conforming to the new curriculum
is presented as a choice based on teachers’ judgment: “Educators who
are interested in aligning their classroom practices to the new
standards should check the EngageNY.org website for the most up-to-date
information on the transition.”
15
Driven by fear of a drop in student test-scores which will have a major
impact on their evaluation rating, teachers are likely to conform to
the suggested curricula. Educators’ labor will therefore follow the Ed
Deformers’ prior conception:
- “NYSED [New York State Education Department]
will be approving and releasing Common Core-aligned curriculum
resources, which will be freely available to teachers throughout the
state. NYSED will also be facilitating curriculum-based professional
development to aid teachers’ implementation of the new standards.”
- “Curriculum modules will include: Year-long
scope and sequence documents, Module framing/overview documents,
Performance tasks (for administration in the middle and at the end of
each module), Lesson plans, Lesson plan supporting materials (class
work, homework, etc.), Formative assessments at the unit level.”16
Further, the EngageNY document “CSS, APPR and DDI Workbook for
Network Teams/Network Team Equivalents,” instructs classroom evaluators
to check that “All teachers use CCSS-aligned interim assessments or
common performance tasks in all courses.” Evaluators are also supposed
to check for CCSS “instructional shifts.” This means we will be
evaluated on specific aspects of instruction while others will be
excluded from consideration. Conformity to the new “scope” and
“sequencing” of instruction can be enforced through the evaluation
system.
17
Taylor’s Third Principle: Dictate Workers’ Tasks
Taylorism’s third principle, summarized by Braverman, is management’s use of its “
monopoly over knowledge to control each step of the labor process and its mode of execution.”
18 According to Taylor, ideally, work “is fully planned out by the management
…and
each [worker] receives in most cases complete written instructions,
describing in detail the task which he is to accomplish, as well as the
means to be used in doing the work
…. This task specifies not only what is to be done, but how it is to be done and the exact time allowed for doing it.”
19
In order for the new teacher evaluation system to help serve this
function, a series of punitive Ed Deforms had to be in place first.
As
Braverman puts it, an “abrupt psychological wrench” is required to force
workers to accept the transition to task labor. Taylor describes it as
the job of the “gang boss” to “nerve and brace them up to the point of
insisting that the workmen shall carry out the orders exactly as
specified on the instruction cards. This is a difficult task at first,
as the workmen have been accustomed for years to do the details of the
work to suit themselves, and many of them believe they know quite as
much about their business as [their bosses].”
20
One such “abrupt psychological wrench” occurred in 2001, when
thousands of teachers lost their teaching licenses and jobs in the New
York City system because they either did not take or failed the newly
required teacher certification exams. Many had taught for decades and
had regularly received favorable evaluations. Some had Masters degrees
and Doctorates.
One, Regina Powell, had worked nineteen years in the
predominantly African-American low-income neighborhood of East New York,
Brooklyn. “I’ve gotten so many award letters, and accolades from
parents and the Board of Education,” she told the
New York Times.
21
Only 57.9 percent of first-time black test takers, and only 55.1
percent of first-time Latino test takers, passed the new required LAST
(Liberal Arts and Sciences Test).
Meanwhile 90.25 percent of whites
passed it. Failing the test meant loss of new teachers’ conditional
licenses, the relegation of opportunities to substitute teaching, and
lower salaries, fewer benefits, and less seniority.
22
Some teachers who did not pass the National Teachers Examination (NTE)
lost their permanent licenses, seniority, retention rights, and in some
cases tenured jobs, and saw their salaries dramatically reduced.
23
Somewhere between 8,000 and 15,000 may have been demoted or terminated,
or suffered lower pay and other losses according to the Center for
Constitutional Rights.
24
Mayor Bloomberg further shored up his power as Taylorist gang boss,
however, after Mayoral Control was established in 2002. For thirty years
the system had been run by the Board of Education and local school
boards.
Now Bloomberg had the power to appoint the schools chancellor,
set policy, and create budgets. The Panel for Educational Policy was
established with eight out of thirteen members appointed by the mayor.
It never voted against him. This allowed Bloomberg to introduce a
blitzkrieg of Ed Deforms: grading of schools based largely on students’
standardized test scores, co-locating privately managed charters in
spaces used by already-existing public schools, a record number of
school closings, systematic denial of tenure for most new teachers, and a
stunning barrage of other attacks.
This is the polar opposite of the
community-controlled school boards some in the black community had
fought for in the 1960s.
In the words of Diane Ravitch, Bloomberg’s reorganized system was a
“corporate model of tightly centralized, hierarchical, top-down control,
with all decisions made at Tweed [i.e., the NYCDOE headquarters] and
strict supervision of every classroom to make sure the orders flowing
from headquarters were precisely implemented
…. The mayor planned to run the school system like a business, with standard operating procedures across the system.”
25
At one point he enforced a “workshop model” on schools which dictated
“each day’s activities defined in precise order and detail.”
Inevitably, “teachers complained of micromanagement, since they had to
follow the new directives about how to teach even if they had been
successful with different methods.” Supervisors increased “close
scrutiny of bulletin boards in classrooms and hallways,” where unit and
lesson plans had to be posted.
26
Bloomberg later replaced this with an incentive-based method of
control. In 2007 Bloomberg’s NYCDOE began grading schools with A–F
report cards. Schools got an “A” if their students’ scores went up a
certain amount compared to the previous year. At the same time, schools
that started off with high student test scores could easily get a lower
grade the following year, because it was hard for them to register
gains. Conformity to a test-prep curriculum was therefore guaranteed.
Other factors determining schools’ grades, according to the NYCDOE,
include students’ progress in “earning course credits and passing
Regents exams, and annual changes in student attendance.” Absenteeism,
of course, is usually related to issues outside school, such as job and
family responsibilities. Schools that got three “C”s could be shut down.
Closings have been disproportionately imposed on schools in poorer
neighborhoods with the largest percentages of black and Latino students.
In 2014, Mayor De Blasio took office and is promising that there will
be a moratorium on school closings. Closings that were already set in
motion under Bloomberg are still proceeding at this point.
The “Advance” Evaluation System: Towards a Taylorist Slide Rule for Teaching
After June some time, New York teachers will receive a score of 0 to
100, to sum up our performance for the year. Under the old evaluation
system, we were rated “Unsatisfactory”/”Satisfactory.” Now we will be
ranked “Highly Effective,” “Effective,” “Developing,” or “Ineffective”.
It is the intention of the state that around 10 percent of teachers
should fall into the Ineffective category.
27
First teachers will be scored on two “Measures of Student Learning.”
The first of these “value-added growth scores,” worth 20 percent of our
overall score, will be based on our students’ state test scores. The
second measure, worth another 20 percent, is called “Growth on Local
Assessments.” Back in September, in each school a committee made up of
UFT members and people appointed by the principal had to choose this
measure from a menu. The decision will be made in the same way annually,
going forward. The menu options for the “Local Components” for
2013–2014 were limited to:
- Using the same state test scores as the other 20 percent.
- Selecting from a number of other standardized tests created by vendors such as Scantron.
- Selecting prefabricated “performance-based
assessments.” These were essentially standardized tests with no
similarity to genuine performance based assessments that a teacher might
develop to suit their specific educational context or school community.
Rather than choosing a different measure, it was easier for many
school communities to use the state test scores as their local measure.
That way, teachers could focus on preparing students to score well on
one measure, rather than teaching them how to score points on, what were
essentially, a whole other set of additional standardized tests.
According to state guidelines, teachers who are rated “ineffective”
on this 40 percent (20 percent state tests plus 20 percent “local
measures of student learning”) “must be rated ineffective overall.”
28
Therefore, 40 percent equals 100 percent. A host of studies confirm
that the equations used for “value added measures” of teacher
performance produce wildly varying results from year to year. Anecdotal
evidence and obvious logic suggest that student test scores are affected
by a wide variety of changing factors that cannot be reduced to teacher
effort or competency.
Up until now, students have not been required to take statewide
high-stakes tests for every grade. Also, some of us teach subjects and
grades where standardized tests are not yet in place.
The state plans to
introduce high-stakes testing for every grade, starting with new
English Regents for ninth and tenth graders, tests for middle schoolers
in Social Studies and Science, and “progress monitoring” for K–3 this
year.
29 Assessments for other areas are being developed.
The other 60 percent of teachers’ evaluations are called “Measures of
Teacher Performance.”
Thirty-one percent are based on classroom
observations by administrators using the “Danielson” rubric. Twenty nine
percent will be based on other measures, like “Artifacts” from the
classroom (samples of teachers comments on students work, sample lesson
plans, etc.), evidence of planning, and other factors.
When Taylor tried to break down the highly complex work of skilled mechanics, Braverman describes how he:
worked with twelve variables, including the hardness of the metal,
the material of the cutting tool, the thickness of the shaving, the
shape of the cutting tool, the use of a coolant during cutting, the
depth of the cut, the frequency of regrinding cutting tools as they
became dulled, the lip and clearance angles of the tool, the smoothness
of cutting or absence of chatter, the diameter of the stock being
turned, the pressure of the chip or shaving on the cutting surface of
the tool, and the speeds, feeds, and pulling power of the machine….
Twelve variables, each subject to a large number of choices, will yield
in their possible combinations and permutations astronomical figures,
as Taylor soon realized…. Nothing daunted, Taylor set out to gather into management’s hands all the basic information bearing on these processes….
The data were systematized, correlated, and reduced to practical form
in the shape of what he called a “slide rule” which would determine the
optimum combination of choices for each step in the machining process.
His machinists thenceforth were required to work in accordance with
instructions derived from these experimental data, rather than from
their own knowledge, experience, or tradition.30
The Danielson rubric is an, albeit limited, attempt at a kind of
“slide rule” to measure teacher’s performance based on four “Domains”:
1a. Demonstrating Knowledge of Content
and Pedagogy1b. Demonstrating Knowledge of Students1c. Setting
Instructional Outcomes1d. Demonstrating Knowledge of Resources
1e. Designing Coherent Instruction
1f. Designing Student Assessments |
2a. Creating an Environment of Respect and Rapport2b. Establishing a
Culture for Learning2c. Managing Classroom Procedures2d. Managing
Student Behavior
2e. Organizing Physical Space |
| 3a. Communicating
With Students3b. Using Questioning and Discussion Techniques3c. Engaging
Students in Learning3d. Using Assessment in Instruction
3e. Demonstrating Flexibility and Responsiveness |
4a. Reflecting on Teaching4b. Maintaining Accurate Records4c.
Communicating with Families4d. Participating in a Professional Community
4e Growing and Developing Professionally
4f Showing Professionalism |
Teachers receive a score for each of these twenty-two components,
where 1 = ineffective, 2 = developing, 3 = effective, and 4 = highly
effective. To give just one example, under “Creating an Environment of
Respect and Rapport,” evaluators will look for “Body language indicative
of warmth and caring shown by teacher and students” and even “Physical
proximity.”
31
Some of this violates our contract. In an effort to get out of paying
municipal workers raises Bloomberg has left the new mayor, De Blasio,
with all fifty-two municipal union contracts unresolved. The UFT has not
had a new contract since 2009.
However, in New York, because of state
law, we are still covered by our old contract, which states that “The
organization, format, notation and other physical aspects of the lesson
plan are appropriately within the discretion of each teacher. A
principal or supervisor may suggest, but not require, a particular
format or organization, except as part of a program to improve
deficiencies of teachers who receive U-ratings or formal warnings.”
However, Danielson calls upon evaluators to rate lesson plans, and to
judge how well a lesson plan “indicates correspondence between
assessments and instruction.” This has led many principals to require
particular lesson plan formats from teachers and to assess teachers on
how well their written plans conform to suggested curriculum for state
tests. The NCYDOE asserts that the imposition of the new evaluation by
New York State Commissioner King renders the contract language on lesson
plans obsolete, while the union disagrees.
As of this writing, the UFT
and Education Department are in arbitration over this.
Starting next year student surveys of teacher performance will also
count as a percentage of our evaluations. I am part of MORE (Movement of
Rank and File Educators), a caucus within the UFT. MORE has objected
that student evaluations of teachers, if included as part of teachers’
official job ratings, will encourage “grade-inflation and a lack of
discipline.” Making students official evaluators of teachers in this way
“poisons the relationships between teachers and students, who now in
addition to their test scores bear even more responsibility for the
future of their teachers’ careers.”
With these changes, as MORE has put it, teaching may “be reduced to a series of mechanical steps
….
Even the most skilled and veteran teacher, one whose experience informs
their teaching style, will be forced to ignore their professional
judgment when it conflicts with a supposedly ‘objective’ observation
rubric.
’” The new system will “pressure teachers to enforce a more narrow, lock-step curriculum.”
32
Diane Ravitch observes that the evaluation system “will certainly
produce an intense focus on teaching to the tests. It will also
profoundly demoralize teachers, as they realize that they have lost
their professional autonomy and will be measured according to precise
behaviors and actions that have nothing to do with their own definition
of good teaching.” She goes on to say, “Evaluators will come armed with
elaborate rubrics identifying precisely what teachers must do and how
they must act, if they want to be successful.” Furthermore, school
districts will have to “hire thousands of independent evaluators, as
well as create much additional paperwork for principals. Already
stressed school budgets will be squeezed further to meet the pact’s
demands for monitoring and reporting.”
33
The new evaluation system also feeds into the dynamic described by
Braverman where “a structure is given to all labor processes that at its
extremes polarizes those whose time is infinitely valuable and those
whose time is worth almost nothing. This might even be called the
general law of the capitalist division of labor.”
34
Under the new evaluation system, top scorers will be ranked from “Model
teachers,” up to “Teacher leaders,” to the highest grade “Master
Teacher.” Model Teachers may be asked to “model lessons for other
teachers.” Master Teachers may have an “increased role in school
improvement programs, curriculum development, inquiry teams, etc”; may
be asked to “Mentor/coach developing or ineffective teachers”; and may
be “Trained to assess teacher performance using new evaluation tools” or
to “Provide formative or, if agreed, summative assessments of peers.”
35 This divides teachers by creating what are essentially new layers of management among them.
As for those whose “time is worth nothing,” the Ed Deformers have not
just made it harder for teachers to win appeals of unsatisfactory
ratings, but they have also created a floating “Absent Teacher Reserve”
made up of excessed teachers. Any teacher can appeal their rating and
take it to the chancellor. Under the new evaluation system 13 percent of
all the ineffective ratings system-wide can be appealed to a neutral
body. These 13 percent will be chosen by the UFT, and will only be
appealed if harassment or other factors outside job performance have
played a role.
36
Also, under the old system, teachers who were rated with a “U” could
decide whether or not have an outside evaluator examine their
performance as part of appealing their “U” rating. These evaluators were
known to generally uphold “U” ratings, but teachers could simply choose
not to include this evaluation process as part of their appeal. This
kept the burden of proving teacher incompetence on the DOE. Under the
new system, outside evaluators are mandatory for teachers rated
“ineffective” two years in a row. Therefore, the burden has been shifted
more onto teacher, to prove they are not incompetent.
Furthermore, before 2005 excessed teachers had the right to be placed
in a vacancy within the same district based on seniority within their
license area. Our 2005 contract ended the right of teachers to transfer
and gave principals the power to decide which teachers may transfer into
their schools. Subsequently, when schools are closed, many staff
members get thrown into the “Absent Teacher Reserve.” Members of this
literal reserve army of labor rotate from school to school weekly to
cover classes of absent teachers. These teachers are treated as
unskilled help. Changes in the structure of school funding under
Bloomberg also incentivized principals to hire newer teachers who are
lower on the pay scale, instead of veteran teachers with seniority.
New technology is also part of the Taylorist drive to dictate
teachers’ tasks. As Jeff Faux of the Economic Policy Institute sees it:
“These ‘data-driven’ investors are not so much interested in students’
scores, as in the opportunities to cut costs by using online technology.
Ironically, while reformers insist their goal is to develop more
skilled teachers, a goal of their financier allies is to get rid of
them. The central question, says education entrepreneur John Katzman is
‘How do we use technology so that we require fewer qualified teachers?
’”37
A great deal of educational “philanthropy” flows from sources such as
the Gates Foundation that are connected to corporations that profit as
states adopt new standardized curricular materials and assessment
systems, most of which are tied to computer technology.
38
Marx describes how capitalist firms seeking to increase productivity
are driven to replace what he called direct “living labor” (labor
performed by the worker) with “dead labor” (labor embodied in new
machinery produced previously—in this case workers who made the hardware
and software involved in computerized curriculum and tests). Braverman
elaborated how scientific-technical innovation under capitalism does not
seek neutral efficiency, but is designed to overwhelm and dominate
workers, to enforce a series of simplified tasks, in order to
“incorporate ever smaller quantities of labor time into ever greater
quantities of product.”
Technology is used to “cheapen the worker by
decreasing [her/his] training and enlarging [her/his] output.”39
Along these lines, Diane Ravitch predicts that the next wave of
deform is “online learning. We will hear that lessons can be delivered
at less cost and with greater efficiency through online instruction. We
will hear that teachers cost too much, that their pensions and
healthcare are a public burden. We will be told that virtual schools can
accomplish more while permitting a reduction of 30 percent or more in
the teaching force.”
40
New York State is a “Governing State” in the Partnership for the
Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers (PARCC), which is
developing computer-based CCSS tests. As part of its participation in
the state’s Race to the Top agreement, New York City also agreed to add
up to one hundred schools to the city’s “Innovation Zone” (or “I-Zone”),
through which schools are experimenting with online learning and
instruction among other technology-based techniques. The Race to the Top
application also allocated funding to support as many as a dozen new
online schools.
It is apparent that the efforts I am describing are aimed primarily
at controlling teachers’ labor, which points to the practical
limitations of actually replacing it with computers. Of course schools
should adopt the latest technology. My own school, City-As-School High
School, is in the I-zone and students and teachers have benefitted from
the use of technology. In the hands of a skilled educator, technology
can be a powerful tool. The question is not whether technology will be
used, but how it will be used system-wide and for what.
41
Conclusion: Our Working Conditions Are Our Students’ Learning Conditions
Unfortunately, UFT President Michael Mulgrew and the union’s current
leadership have focused on negotiating details while accepting Ed
Deform’s premise that the art of teaching can be broken down,
quantified, and standardized. President Mulgrew and the leadership of
the dominant UNITY caucus within the UFT:
- Argue that the Danielson system is “professional
and fair and is designed to help teachers improve their skills
throughout their careers.”42
- Assure us that some aspects of the evaluation system will be addressed in contract negotiations.
- Assert that the NYCDOE is only interpreting
Danielson as calling for evaluation of teachers based on lesson plans.
Mulgrew and the UNITY leadership claim that this is not so. They are
also backing targeted grievances on this issue.
- Support the use of high-stakes tests and value
added measure junk science as a legitimate factor in teacher
evaluations. (They argue that it takes some power away from principals
by providing “multiple measures” for evaluating teachers.)
- Support the CCSS.
- Support Mayoral Control.
- Signed on to New York State’s Race to the Top application, with all of its Ed Deform requirements.
My caucus, MORE, was formed in the spring of 2012 by teachers
concerned about the lack of democracy and rank-and-file participation in
the union, about declining working conditions, and the leadership’s
complicity in Ed Deform. We have pointed out, “A child who starts
Kindergarten under this new regime will have been tested hundreds of
times by the time they graduate from high school. Their curriculum will
be little more than a regimen of test-taking strategies aimed at getting
them to fill in what private testing companies consider the ‘correct’
bubble. The full learning experience that includes critical thinking,
reasoning, researching, abstraction and civic engagement will be lost.”
43
In addition to informing teachers in our UFT chapters about issues of
importance; holding meetings, forums, get togethers, and protests
around problems such as the evaluation system, the spread of
standardized testing, abusive administrators, and the disappearance of
black and Latino educators; and providing mutual aid and support for
teachers where the current leadership has fallen short, MORE is working
with parents and students.
In our newsletter and petitions (stuffed in
teachers’ mailboxes across the city in September and again in January),
at an October rally outside the union’s Delegate’s Assembly, and in
resolutions we have introduced to the UFT, we have highlighted the
common ground students and teachers share in opposing high-stakes
testing and the evaluation system. On February 1, 2014 MORE teamed up
with other grassroots organizations including Teachers Unite, Change the
Stakes, and the NYC Student Union to hold a conference called “MORE
than a score: Talking Back to Testing.” We attracted more than 150
parents, teachers, administrators, and students.
Workshops covered
topics such as “High Stakes Testing 101,” “Stopping the Test-Fueled
School to Prison Pipeline,” and “Portfolio Based Assessments in Our
Schools.” One MORE-led session addressed ongoing efforts to secure a new
union contract through drawing rank-and-file UFT members into dialogue
and action. In April 2014, a small number of MORE members and other
teachers organized with coworkers in their schools to take a stand as
“teachers of conscience” and have refused to administer some tests. They
are making a very public statement against the standardization of
education and the accompanying degradation of our labor.
The UFT leadership, meanwhile, has focused its criticism on the lack
of Common Core curricular materials that teachers would need to fully
prepare students to improve their test scores. Michael Mulgrew and other
UFT heads have called for a moratorium on consequences of test scores
for teachers until these curricular materials are provided, along with
professional development on how to use these materials to help students
raise scores on the new tests. They have also voiced opposition to the
new K–2 standardized tests.
I am sure that the only hope for slowing down Ed Deform lays in
critical rank-and-file participation inside UFT structures combined with
organizing that brings together teachers, students, and parents within
and across school communities. There is also the possibility of uniting
with other working people—both public workers and those who depend on
public services—regarding the introduction of market-style Taylorist
deforms across public services.
The recent formation of Public Workers
United, a cross-union, rank-and-file grouping in New York City, suggests
that finding common ground along these lines is possible. The permanent
elimination of the Taylorist impulse in education, however, will only
come with transition to a fundamentally different political economy.
Notes
- ↩
John Bellamy Foster describes this as: “Leadership in the twenty-first
century corporate school reform movement—even preempting the role of
government in this respect—has come from four big philanthropic
foundations, headed by leading representatives of monopoly-finance,
information and retail capital: (1) The Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation, (2) the Walton Family Foundation, (3) the Eli and Edythe
Broad Foundation, and (4) the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation.” See
Foster, “The Education and the Structural Crisis of Capital: The U.S.
Case,” Monthly Review 63, no. 3 (July-August 2011): 6–37.
- ↩ Change The Stakes, “The Truth About High-Stakes Testing in New York City Public Schools,” http://changethestakes.files.wordpress.com.
- ↩ Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage, 1977), 644.
- ↩ Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System (Philadelphia: Basic Books, 2010), 62.
- ↩ Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998), 45.
- ↩ Ibid, 57.
- ↩ Ibid, 59.
- ↩ Cited in ibid, 77–78.
- ↩ Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, 81.
- ↩ New York State, “Race to the Top Application: Phase II,” June 10, 2010, 93, http://www2.ed.gov.
- ↩ The Editors of Rethinking Schools, ”The Trouble with the Common Core,” Rethinking Schools 27, no.4 (Summer 2013), http://rethinkingschools.org.
- ↩ Charlotte Danielson, The Framework for Teaching (Princeton: New Jersey, 2013), 4.
- ↩ Cited in Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, 77-78.
- ↩ Ibid, 79.
- ↩ EngageNY, “Changes to the State Standards, Curricula, and Assessments,” April 22, 2013, 2, http://engageny.org.
- ↩ Ibid, 6.
- ↩ EngageNY, “CSS, APPR and DDI Workbook for Network Teams/Network Team Equivalents,” 3, http://engageny.org.
- ↩ Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, 82.
- ↩ Cited in ibid, 82.
- ↩ Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, 83; Taylor is cited on the same page.
- ↩ Katherine Zoepf, “City Hall Rally Protests Policy Of Firing Uncertified Teachers,” New York Times, August 28, 2003, http://nytimes.com.
- ↩ Nate Raymond, “NYC Discriminated Against Black, Latino Teachers: Court,” Reuters, December 5, 2012.
- ↩ Center for Constitutional Rights, “Gulino v. The Board of Education of the City of New York and the New York State Education Department,” http://ccrjustice.org.
- ↩
Finally, in December 2012, a U.S. judge ruled that the Board of
Education had discriminated against black and Latino teachers by
requiring them to pass a standardized test that wasn’t properly
validated to become licensed, in violation of violation of Title VII of
the Civil Rights Act. Unfortunately, the decision did not directly
affect the newer version of the LAST that has been in place since 2000
(Raymond, “NYC Discriminated Against Black, Latino Teachers”). All the
teachers in the class covered by the case had masters degrees, had
passed content specialty exams, had completed required course work, and
had received only satisfactory evaluations while working as city
teachers, some for up to fifteen years (Center for Constitutional
Rights, “Gulino v. The Board of Education of the City of New York and
the New York State Education Department”).
- ↩ Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, 73.
- ↩ Ibid, 72–73.
- ↩
See the analysis of the NYS Race to the Top Application, in Carol
Corbett Burris, “Are Half of New York’s Teachers Really ‘Not Effective?”
(guest column for Valerie Strauss’s “The Answer Sheet”), Washington Post blog, December 7, 2011, http://washingtonpost.com/blogs.
- ↩ The University of the State of New York Education Department, “State
of New York Commissioner of Education, In the Matter of the Arbitration
Proceeding Pursuant to Education Law 3012-c(2) (m) – between- NEW YORK
CITY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION–and–UNITED FEDERATION OF
TEACHERS–DETERMINATION AND ORDER–In the Matter of the Arbitration
Proceeding Pursuant to Education Law 3012-c (2)(m) = between – New York
City Department of Education, and Council of School Supervisors &
Administrators,” http://usny.nysed.gov.
- ↩ Ibid; “New York Kids to To Be Put To the ’Tests’,” New York Post, March 20, 2012, http://nypost.com.
- ↩ Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, 76–77.
- ↩ Danielson, The Framework for Teaching, 35.
- ↩ MORE (Movement of Rank and File Educators), “Does Michael Mulgrew Believe That Our Teachers’ Working Conditions Are Our Students’ Learning Conditions?,” February 3, 2013, http://morecaucusnyc.org.
- ↩ Diane Ravitch, “No Student Left Untested,” New York Review of Books, February 21, 2012, http://nybooks.com.
- ↩ Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, 57–58.
- ↩ EngageNY, “Designing Career Ladder Programs for Teachers and Principals,” June 2013, http://engageny.org.
- ↩ Michael Mulgrew, “Mayor Doesn’t Get His Way,” New York Teacher, June 13, 2013, http://uft.org.
- ↩ Jeff Faux, “Education Profiteering: Wall Street’s Next Big Thing?,” Huffington Post, September 28, 2012, http://huffingtonpost.com.
- ↩
At the same time, on a parallel track, traditional for-profit
investments have also advanced. As one consultant put it to private
investors in 2012 who were interested in for-profit education, “You
start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up.”
Investment in for profit education shot up from $13 million in 2005 to
$389 million in 2011. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and other heavy
hitters are getting in on the action. Stephanie Simon, “Privatizing Public Schools: Big Firms Eyeing Profits From U.S. K-12 Market,” Reuters, August 2, 2012, http://in.reuters.com.
- ↩ Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, 118, 81.
- ↩ Ravitch, The Life and Death of the Great American School System, 283.
- ↩
There are also concerns about student privacy. Reuters has reported
that nine states, including New York, planned to give confidential
student data to in-Bloom, Inc., a Gates Foundation-funded corporation,
so that this information could be shared with for-profit vendors.
InBloom, Inc. reported that it “cannot guarantee the security of the
information stored…or that the information will not be intercepted when it is being transmitted” (cited in “Protect Illinois Students’ Privacy,”
http://commercialfreechildhood.org). MORE objected that, “The
consolidation of test and other data, combined with the junk science of
VAM-based evaluations, will make teachers even more vulnerable to
digital surveillance, micromanagement, absurd and wasteful mandates,
harassment and abuse” (“Our Children’s Privacy For Sale,” March 14, 2013, http://morecaucusnyc.org).
- ↩ Michael Mulgrew, “President Mulgrew’s Member Letter On the New Evaluation Plan for Teachers,” June 1, 2013, http://uft.org.
- ↩ MORE (Movement of Rank and File Educators), “Does Michael Mulgrew Believe that Our Teachers’ Working Conditions Are Our Students’ Learning Conditions?,” February 3, 2013, http://morecaucusnyc.org.
