Category Archives: opinion

The Things We Ask Students to Do

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Educators ask a lot of students. Results may vary in terms of what students actually do when asked, and it may be that some teachers actually have rather low expectations for their charges. But by and large in the independent school community teachers are blessed with motivated, high achieving students.

I have sometimes wondered if we educators are willing to ask the same of ourselves as we ask of our students. I would like to say that we do, but I can think of some teachers, those who may operate more on cruise control than passion, may no longer be as rigorous about their own learning as they are about that of their students.

Consider what we typically ask of students:

  • To accept a schedule of four to seven different courses (preparations) each day.
  • To be open to new experiences, take chances, and not be afraid to fail.
  • To collaborate with each other, even those they don’t like.
  • To be continuously evaluated, judged, and graded and then asked to graciously accept this feedback.
  • To build upon their knowledge year after year and embark on a path of lifetime learning, un-learning, and re-learning.
  • To commit to a regular regime of physical fitness or athletics.
  • To commit clubs and other extracurricular activities in addition to academics.
  • To be happy, cheerful, optimistic,and uncomplaining.
  • To be prepared for every class (read material ahead of time, think about it, practice skills). Woe be to students who come to meetings ill-prepared.
  • To be polite at and not gossip about others.
  • To be conscientious and safe digital citizens
  • To accept the decisions of those in authority and always assume good will.
  • To regularly reflect on their learning and build a portfolio of practice.
  • To keep their desks. work areas, personal storage areas clean and tidy.
  • To wait to go to the bathroom.
  • To eat their lunch in 20 minutes.
  • To always be on time.
  • To always tell the truth.
  • To not steal school supplies for their personal use.
  • To stretch yourself by taking challenging classes.

Every adult has had a “do as I say, not as I do” moment. It may have been with your own children, your students, or perhaps both. Hopefully such moments are as instructive for us as we hope that they are for the child. Children will screw up, make mistakes and need forgiveness. Adults will, too. But we fail them if we don’t hold ourselves to higher standards. We are the grownups, they are the kids. Let’s be sure we act like the models we want them to aspire to.

Summer Listening

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At this time of year many schools are recommending, or requiring, teachers to read certain books over the summer months in pursuit of shared professional development experiences including discussions about their reading when school resumes.

You may wish to also suggest some audio podcast episodes to augment these activities. As an avid listener to podcasts, especially those affiliated with National Public Radio, I have been captivated, enthralled, enraged, and engaged by a number of various broadcasts in 2013. I offer up these ten episodes as worthy of your summer listening. Story synopses come from the podcast’s respective websites.

1. The Story

Did You Footnote?

Host Dick Gordon speaks to two college teachers who argue the rise of copy-and-paste plagiarism is a symptom that the traditional essay assignment is dated. Students in college today were “born digital” and have learned to read, write and organize information online. Kenneth Goldsmith, of the University of Pennsylvania, requires his students to plagiarize and to purchase an essay from a paper mill. Cathy Davidson, of Duke University, hasn’t assigned a traditional term paper in five years. She asks her students to write collectively – using the online Google Docs service – and question what they think they know about authorship and originality.

You Say College Loan, I Say No Debt

Host Dick Gordon speaks with two sisters, Briallen Hopper and Johanna Hopper, who have different thoughts about the value of a college education. Briallen has taken out substantial loans and owes tens of thousands of dollars – but she thinks it’s been worth it. Johanna decided not to go to college, and she’s proud to be debt-free.

Education By the Hour

They are called adjunct professors and only paid for their time in the classroom – not for meeting with students, grading papers or to preparing for class. Host Dick Gordon speaks with Adam Davis, an adjunct who taught eight science classes this semester at three different colleges in Pittsburgh. He met recently with the United Steelworkers to talk about unionizing.

Strike Debt

So easy to get, so hard to pay off. With the national average for student debt hovering around $23,000, a group of activists is purchasing student debt from collectors and simply “forgiving it.” The group, known as Rolling Jubilee, call their movement “a bailout of the people by the people.” Host Dick Gords speaks with Rolling Jubilee member Christopher Cassucio, who owes more than $100,000 in student loan debt.

A New Font for an Old Problem

As Christian Boer tried to adapt to his dyslexia, he knew he was seeing letters differently than other people. As he grew older, he began to experiment with the actual form and shapes of the letters, and recently created a font that is more readable for those with dyslexia. No more mixing up the h with the n.

2. TED Radio Hour

Unstoppable Learning

Learning is an integral part of human nature. But why do we — as adults — assume learning must be taught, tested and reinforced? Why do we put so much effort into making kids think and act like us? In this hour, TED speakers explore the ways babies and children learn, from the womb to the playground to the Web.

Do We Need Humans?

We’ve been promised a future where robots will be our friends, and technology will make life’s daily chores as easy as flipping a switch. But are we ready for how those innovations will change us as humans? In this episode, TED speakers consider the promises and perils of our relationship with technology.

3. On The Media

The Privacy Show

A special hour on privacy – license plate readers, national security letters, surveilling yourself so the government doesn’t have to, and OTM producer Sarah Abdurrahman on just how much we misunderstand our privacy online.

4. This American Life

Harper High School, Parts 1 and Part 2

The American Life spent five months at Harper High School in Chicago, where last year alone 29 current and recent students were shot. 29! They went to get a sense of what it means to live in the midst of all this gun violence, how teens and adults navigate a world of funerals and Homecoming dances.

2-1 is new 1-1

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Back in 2011( previous post: Apple 2, Education) I ventured that the adoption of iPads by schools represented a new phase in Apple’s plans for the education market:

If schools think that having an iPad program will be sufficient to meet any 1-1 goals they may hold for themselves, they are sadly mistaken. Instead, they represent the vanguard of a new 2-1 movement, in which students will have two devices: a touch-screen device that has wonderful e-reading capabilities, Internet connectivity, and a wide array of tools, AND a laptop computer.

The widespread adoption of iPads in schools that have never had a laptop or BYOD program of any type suggests that I may be wrong, but I stand by my prediction. While a huge amount of development has gone into creating iPad applications for schools, there are a number of immutable facts about the iPad that make it an incomplete solution:

  1. the iPad is, and will continue to be, a highly personal device. It is not meant for long-term sharing with others.
  2. the iPad is a consumer device, and education is a secondary market for Apple. Discounts on Apple products are small for all except the largest players in the education market, and Apple’s continual re-organization and downsizing of their education division suggests that the situation is not going to improve.
  3. the result of this is that iPad using educators are continually discussing “work-arounds;” strategies for managing devices that are not designed for enterprise control, and purchasing and deploying applications through an e-commerce system that focuses on individual and not corporate accounts.
  4. form factor. Anyone who is serious about word processing on an iPad adds an external keyboard to it. Need a larger screen? Additional expense for dual monitors. iPad is great for reading and applications that benefit from touch interface, but it’s terrible at jobs that require different means of input or more screen size.
  5. walled garden. Apple’s ecosystem of iOS applications is much more constrained than that of Macintosh. Applications must be purchased through iTunes, where they are first subjected to Apple’s terms and conditions. Don’t like that? Jailbreak your iPad and void your warranty.

I know few adult iPad users that do not also have a computer. Why is that? Because computers can do things that iPads can’t do and sometimes, they can do the same things that iPads can do only better. But why then do they have an iPad at all? Because the iPad can do some things better than a computer. In short, to have a more complete set of tools you need more than one device.

iPads have a place in all of K-12 education, and can serve as a great introductory device for elementary school students and as a complementary tool for middle and high school students. But schools who plan on an iPad (or any other tablet) as a sole device for all of K-12 are mistaken. Few adults in a school use it as their only device and we should not expect students to either.

The same reasoning that led schools to decide that they wanted to go 1-1 with an iPad program (accessibility, communication, problem solving, collaboration, and so forth) hold true for laptops. So forward-looking administrators should set expectations within their school communities that the new model is 2-1, perhaps even 3-1 if you count smartphones. 1-1 is the start, not the destination.

It’s Time to Nationalize Private Schools

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colbert_the_word_share_the_wealthHere’s some things most Americans can agree on:

  1. America’s public schools are in crisis. The status quo is unacceptable. We need a new approach.
  2. The divide between the rich and the poor, even the rich and the middle class is alarming and is unsustainable. Again, the status quo is unacceptable. (Except perhaps for the plutocrats who are the 1%.)

And so it is that I offer a simple solution that work on both fronts. To take a page from the leftist playbook of South American dictators and strike a blow for better education and the excess of privilege. For the elites of this country to stop their hand-wringing and angst about the state of public education while sending their own progeny for private education. For educators across America to clasp hands in solidarity in the name of all children of this nation and strike a blow for educational quality and equality that has not been heard since the clanging of one room school house bells echoed across the prairies of the Midwest, since the schoolmarms in our great towns and cities rescued children from the streets and factories to earn and learn a better future.

It’s time to nationalize the public schools.

Think of it! An immediate infusion of billions of dollars of facilities (most in far better shape than many public schools), faculty and administrators who (according to private school recruiting materials) are reputed to be the best in the nation, the brightest and best students (otherwise they wouldn’t be in private schools), and avenues to billions of dollars from parents who want only the best for their kids.

Conservatives, who have been hostile towards the U.S. Department of Education and seeking the privitization of schools will need to be brought along with such out-of-the box thinking. But surely even they can understand that hard times call for hard decisions. And who wants to be branded as anti-education?

Liberals might chafe at the sudden infusion of large numbers of non-unionized teachers into our schools. But doesn’t the fact that both ends of the political spectrum will find something that they don’t like about this proposal suggest that we’re on to something? That we’re in the sweet spot of political moderation that America so desperately yearns for?

Stay with me here, if only for a thought experiment. What exactly is the “value add” of private schools in general, and elite private schools in particular, whose students enroll from already privileged backgrounds of home with pre-school programs, countless books at home, nannies,  international travel, and summer and after school tutors? Are these children “at risk”?

In medicine and in law, the toughest cases are handled by the best doctors. Why can’t we do the same in education? Take our best teachers in our best facilities and have them work with children who are education’s “toughest cases?” Let these children be in classrooms of fifteen or fewer students, with faculty who all possess Masters or Doctors degrees, in places of learning that lack for little, where the food is nutritious, the parent education abundant, the building safe, clean, and kempt. Let those children who are least at risk, whose parents are most engaged, go forth as examples of scholarly pursuit and excellence who make no excuses for their success in and out of the classroom.

I guy can dream, can’t he?

 

 

Left to Their Own Devices

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Marjorie Scroggy was grading student essay in her classroom during a free period, when Rita from the IT department showed up. “Hi Mrs. S.,” lilted Rita. “I’m here to upgrade your technology.”

“What is it now?” sighed Mrs. Scoggy. “Can’t you see I’m in the middle of something? Can this wait until later? You always come at the most inopportune time. And it seems like we just had some of these so-called upgrades last semester, and I haven’t learned how to use those yet.”

“Sorry, Mrs. S. This is a required upgrade. Security-related, I’m told. It should just take a couple of minutes. But I will need to take your Faber 7.6 from you for  a sec.”

“But that’s what I’m using grade these papers, dear. Can’t you take my older Faber?”

“Sorry again, but this upgrade can only be installed on a version 7 system. All your other Fabers are 6.0 or older.”

“Well, if you say so, Rita” said Mrs. Scroggy. “But hold on. How about if you leave it to me? I can do a simple upgrade, I’m sure. I’ve seen you do it lots of time.”

“No can do, and you know that Mrs. S. We’ve had this conversation before. You don’t have the correct permissions to install updates. And it’s not just you. None of the teachers do. That’s IT policy.”

I know you’re only doing your job, dear,” said Mrs. Scroggy. “I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble for me. Okay. Go ahead.”

Mrs. Scoggy hands Rita her Faber 7.6. Rita took it from her and gently laid it on one of the student desks, knelt it front of it, carefully removed the synthetic rubber from the end of the barrel and placed it on the desk. She then tilted the barrel until a small, perfectly round piece of graphite slipped out, which she then set aside. Next, she produced a small, clear plastic shell labeled Faber8.0, took off its top, and removed a replacement piece of graphite which, to the untrained eye, looked identical to the one she had just had just removed. Rita then slipped the new graphite piece into the barrel, replaced the synthetic rubber stopper, and handed the instrument back to Mrs. Scroggy.”

“There you go, Mrs. S. Faber 8.0 at your service,” said Rita.

“Thanks, I guess” she replied. “Now I can get back to my papers. But what’s this upgrade supposed to do for me that the pervious version could not?”

“I’m not really sure, Mrs. S. I’m sure they’ll go over it with you and the other teachers at a meeting or something. But you know how it is, there’s never enough professional development time. I’ll see what I can find out. Maybe there’s some documentation back in the office. I’ll send you anything I find.”

Rita packed up her things and left classroom as Mrs. Scroggy turned to the next paper on her desk. She only got as far as the second sentence before she saw it: a split infinitive. She brings her Faber 8.0 to bear on the problem, and–nothing happens. She tries again;  still nothing. She puts her head in in her hands. She feels a headache coming on. Since she can’t write IT a note, she pushes back from her desk and starts a trek to their offices. It’s going to be a long day.

To hear some IT managers talk, you would think that their users, their constituents, their customers if you will can’t be trusted to even change the lead in s mechanical pencil, let alone take responsibility for maintaining a complicated device like a computer. Giving adults administrator privileges on their electronic devices would lead to chaos in the form of un-patched operating systems, out-of-date virus definitions, the installation of unapproved software applications, and disk space filled with personal photos, movies, and music. The road to IT hell is paved with good intentions and ridden upon by idiotic motorists who should have taken then bus. Responsible coffee drinkers trust professional baristas and not their sleep-deprived partners to brew their morning cup of joe.

Such IT departments fear based and control oriented, spinning worst possible scenarios as likely rather than exceptional; when the shit hits the fan, it will be their ass on the line, and all fingers will point at them. Like flight controllers who guide planes during take-off and landing they may not be piloting the craft, but they share a deep responsibility to see it liftoff and land safely. Given this, they want as much control as possible.

If K-12 schools were dealing with jets or national secrets I might forgive them such zeal, but thank goodness they are not. Yes, schools deal with sensitive and confidential information that should and must be kept secure, and networks and computers should be properly maintained. But schools are foremost places of learning and teaching and the role of IT is to facilitate rather than to encumber these ends. Given the role that technology plays in the lives of teachers and students it therefore makes sense that IT departments provide a safe haven in which its users to become self-sufficient, confident managers of digital devices. Yes, some users may screw up their computers. Some may inadvertently download a computer virus. And I can practically guarantee that many users will store personal data on their computers. But I also know that if you treat people with respect and given them responsibility that the vast majority will demonstrate that they deserve your trust , including Mrs. Scroggy.

 

How Technology Reveals Bad Teachers

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In January of 2011 I wrote about how technology has altered the pursuit and management of knowledge in all academic disciplines and “that there is virtually nothing happening in academia that does not use technology to great effect in research, publication, creative expression, and collaboration.” I went on call for teachers to embrace responsible and creative uses of technology and not simply bolt it on to a new engine. Having said that, I failed to recognize that the next logical step is to examine the use of technology by classroom teachers as a means of illuminating effective teaching. Conversely, the ineffective use of technology can identify teachers who may need additional professional development, performance improvement plans or, perhaps to even be fired.

New technologies often reflect the practices of the technology they displace. The first cars were dubbed “horseless carriages” after the horse drawn buggies they replaced. The first television shows were stage shows filmed with a fixed camera and broadcast to the audience. Transparency projectors replaced hand written notations on blackboards, and PowerPoint presentations were (and arguably still are) a simple change of format from transparencies to the computer.

While many technologies are ultimately transformative their initial incarnations may not be. As you think about how technology is being used in the classrooms in your school, do you see a Model-T auto, a black and white episode of the Jack Benny Show, and fifty shades of transparencies that have not substantively changes in decades, or do you see fresh, even revolutionary uses of technology that are truly transformative?

Technology  reveals much about how teachers approach teaching and manage their classrooms. For example:

  • Are teachers using technology to “stand and deliver” with the majority of information flow coming from the teacher to the students? What is the real added value of technology in such a class? As for students, their use of technology in such teacher-centric classrooms is often limited to note-taking.
  • Are students using technology to perform electronic seat work such as worksheets or drill and practice games? Worksheets are a hell of a lot cheaper than iPads.
  • Are students off-task, texting one another, checking social media sites, and so on. (Chances are they are also off-task in poorly managed analog classrooms)
  • Does the teacher struggle to get the technology up and running and freak out when it fails? Chances are that they may be disorganized and fretful in other aspects of their teaching such as when textbooks change, the forget a lesson plan at home, or a fire drill interrupts the class period.
  • Even so-called “flipped” classrooms are often simple adaptations of the staid lecture model which values the one-way regurgitation of content via the teachers voice to students, often increasing students’ out-of-school workload. A dull lecture is still a dull lecture and truly gifted lecturers are, in my experience, quite rare.
  • Assessment is probably the most resistant artifact of old teaching models. Technology has made few inroads here. The College Board allows languages students to submit MP3 recordings of the oral portion of the AP foreign language exams (with strict, convoluted security measures attached.) This is an adaptation of their old tape recordings method.  It was big news when the state of Oregon allowed students to use spellcheck in testing situations. (see Driving Nails with a Hammer). But relatively few school are allowing open-computer examinations. (see Why Teachers Don’t Trust Students). It’s like telling students that it is fine to use technology for everything except when it matters.
If you want to find really good teaching, find people who are doing really creative things with technology. Want to find mediocre teaching? Look for adaptive rather than transformative uses of technology.

 

Plagiarize This!

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Have you ever felt like you are fighting a losing battle? It seems to me that many educators feel that way when it comes to student plagiarism. There are so many resources for students to find online and, with a few keystrokes and click of the mouse, they can copy something from a web page and claim it as their own. Teachers feel powerless to determine original authorship.

But what technology giveth, it can taketh away.  And so it is that teachers can use any one of a number of web sites and services that can hold a student’s paper up to the light of billions of comparative Internet searches, looking for plagiarized passages. Like a forensic police officer on CSI, they can turn up the bits of evidence that can prove your guilt.

But going to such ends seem to me to be inconsistent with the values we claim to be trying to instill in children. Values such as honesty and trust. It sticks in my craw the same way as the attitude of  ”guilty until proven innocent” does.

The Internet has changed many thing but no so much our attitudes about plagiarism. I don’t know if this is right or wrong, but at the very least, I believe we should examine our attitudes about copying in the light of contemporary scholarship and creative activity, with a dash of historical context.

  1. In the area of fine arts the idea of copying the masters was encouraged, and indeed some of them (such as Van Gogh) unabashedly based their paintings and drawings on the work of others, while contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol found inspiration and lucre in copying Campbell’s Tomato Soup can.
  2. In literature, notables such as T.S. Elliott, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and H.G. Wells plagiarized. More recently, plagiarism scandals erupted over some of the work of Jayson Blair (NY Times) and Fareed Zakaria (CNN).
  3. Within music, modern technology has enabled a whole means of creative expression that uses “sampling,” the copying of portions of someone else’s recording to re-use it in your own work. This use is seen as entirely legitimate.
  4. The idea of plagiarism is, in some respects, a product of the Western mind. Collectivist societies are more likely to identify thoughts and ideas as belonging to a group rather than to an individual.1
  5. It could be argued that in some areas of inquiry, such as history, it is practically impossible to not plagiarize.  In an online essay entitled “Plagiarism, Technology, and our Changing World,”  Evea Dayan recounts the story of historian Stephen B. Oates who was accused of plagiarizing portions of his Lincoln biography, With Malice Towards None. The accusation of a noted historian and the brouhaha within the academic community surrounding it led to a great deal of soul-searching, including the conclusion that “Many [historians]… while objecting to Oates use of verbatim copying-took the opportunity this event provided to point out that much of history is appropriation.”
For the sake of argument, let’s agree that technology may require us to rethink plagiarism. What can or should be done?
One idea is to teach students how to meaningfully, creatively, and thoughtfully appropriate the content of others.  This is what’s behind a college course offered by University of Pennsylvania professor and award-winning poet Kenneth Goldsmith, whose course “Uncreative Writing” is described as follows:

It’s clear that long-cherished notions of creativity are under attack, eroded by file-sharing, media culture, widespread sampling, and digital replication. How does writing respond to this new environment? This workshop will rise to that challenge by employing strategies of appropriation, replication, plagiarism, piracy, sampling, plundering, as compositional methods. Along the way, we’ll trace the rich history of forgery, frauds, hoaxes, avatars, and impersonations spanning the arts, with a particular emphasis on how they employ language. We’ll see how the modernist notions of chance, procedure, repetition, and the aesthetics of boredom dovetail with popular culture to usurp conventional notions of time, place, and identity, all as expressed linguistically.

What this does not say, but is made clear by Goldsmith in a fascinating interview titled “Did You Footnote?” on NPR’s The Story, is that as students are required to create works made up entirely from that of other people! This same podcast episode also features Professor Cathy N. Davidson of Duke, whose asks her students to work collectively and no-one person assumes responsibility for the finished work. It is owned by the group. Goodbye traditional, individually authored term paper.
At the end of the day I think that educators do a disservice to themselves and their students when they think and talk about plagiarism in absolute, right versus wrong terms. The truth is that like so much in life, reality is more nuanced and gray areas the norm. While it’s true that we tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior, intent needs to be part of the discussion. I think you will find that students and teachers will benefit from the conversation. Technology challenges to “think different” – about everything.

 

Here’s the Did You Footnote? podcast.

  1. See  this study of Indonesian students How different are we? understanding and managing plagiarism between east and west  and this an A Different Perspective on Plagiarism, both of which delve into the differences between Eastern and Western thinking about plagiarism ↩

De-Facebook

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I live about a mile and a half from Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, CA. They are literally my neighbors. The value of my home has increased due to what local realtors call the “Facebook bump,” and while I’m not planning on selling anytime soon, due to Facebook’s proximity I enjoy the fantasy of greater net worth.

Through Facebook I have reconnected with long-lost friends and family, supported various social movements, products, and companies. I regularly post my comments about happenings in the world, link to favorite stories and videos I’ve found, and post photos.

I don’t play Facebook games, nor do I use Facebook login credentials with any other sites. I have very tight security controls within Facebook.

And yet I often wonder about the value proposition of Facebook. While I don’t pay directly to use it, there are significant indirect costs associated with allowing myself to be their product. Facebook uses information about me to target advertising that I do not want to see, sells my information to others that I do not want them to have, and (so it seems) is constantly in hot water with US and European regulatory agencies about various privacy breaches. (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook for a recounting of these issues).

I recognize that Facebook is not alone among companies that have been criticized for violating customer privacy. Sony, Craig’s List, Google, and Apple–all companies whose products or services I use–have also made major errors. (See http://goo.gl/X3cTY).

But for some reason, I am more forgiving of these other companies than I am of Facebook. In the case of Apple, I am a dedicated Mac and iOS device user, so  the value proposition is different. Google also offers me great value through core software services such as email, documents, calendaring, address book, photo editing and sharing, and of course, search.

Facebook offers me no such core functionality or benefits. Its value proposition is different, and in my view increasingly weighted towards the company and less towards its customers (aka products).

While I am not ready to completely pull the plug on Facebook, I am ready to put it on life support; to pare back my use to immediate family and one group that consult with. If you are my Facebook friend and notice that I have a smaller level of activity or have disappeared from your Facebook list of friends, please don’t take it personally. It’s not about you, and I think it’s not really about me. It’s about a company that has done little to earn my continuing trust and active participation.

I suspect I am not alone in my misgivings about Facebook. I have no idea what their future holds. I am skeptical of any sort of large-scale Facebook boycott, though increasingly I am reading more about what some call Facebook Fatigue. (go ahead, Google it). What fatigues me are not TMI messages, inane videos, or irrelevant advertising but the constant vigilance required to keep ahead of Facebook’s attempts to roll-back privacy and use my data to their ends. I’ve had it, Facebook. TTFN.

Unions and Independent Schools

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transformationAmerican labor unions are in decline both in terms of their reputation and their membership numbers. Public service unions are in particular under attack as negotiated benefits stress empty government coffers. Private industry workers, the self-employed, retirees, and others whose perks have stagnated or been eliminated through years of assault by American business leaders resent those workers whose  benefits seem superior. Instead of asking “why don’t I have benefits like theirs?” they ask “why do they get something that I don’t?”

Membership in American labor unions is at an all-time low, representing only 11.9% of the workforce, its lowest number in seventy years.1 An article in Alternet posits three reasons for the decline of American unions:

  1. Modern corporations roam the world looking for low labor costs, lax regulations, and weak labor unions. This pits workers and communities against each other in a classic race to the bottom to attract and retain jobs.
  2. Corporations have abandoned the old vertically and horizontally integrated organizational structures, in which companies sought to keep most aspects of production and distribution in-house, in favor of newer core/ring systems in which they perform only core functions while farming out the rest to complex supply chains of contractors and subsidiaries. Workers making the same product, or providing the same service, may be employed by many different employers, making solidarity and collective action difficult.
  3. Corporations divide the remaining in-house workforce into a core group of workers with standard jobs and at least some expectation of long term employment, and a secondary group of contingent workers: part-timers, temps, contract workers, on-call workers, and day laborers usually with sub-standard wages and benefits and little or no job security.[2. The future of work: Where the labor movement is heading. (Aug, 31 2008). 2
While corporate executives may not like unions, and may do whatever they can to discourage their success, unions themselves have not helped their cause. A report from the Pew Research Center indicates that unions have a significant image problem amongst the general American public:

 

Teacher Unions Also in Decline
When it comes to public education, documentary films like Waiting for Superman, Race to Nowhere, The Lottery, and the forthcoming fictional account Won't Back Down portray educators as lazy, rigid, uncaring bureaucrats and teacher unions as protectors of incompetence, impediments to reform, and special interests in the pockets od the Democratic party.3 Competent teachers are, according to such films, the exception rather than the rule.

The nation's largest teacher union, the National Education Association (NEA), reports that its membership is in decline, with a loss of over 100,000 members since 2010. 4

Independent Schools and Teacher Unions

There is no national union for independent school teachers.[5. Teaching in independent schools.] Few independent schools are unionized, and my personal (admittedly limited) experience in discussing teacher unions with independent school faculty and administrators shows that many of them harbor misgivings, even resentments, about the NEA and and the other major union body, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Among them:

  • teacher unions are obstacles to change, protecting the status quo and incompetence.
  • public school teachers are, in general, less skilled and less knowledgeable than their independent school counterparts; despite this difference, the salaries of public school teachers are higher, especially when compared to religious schools.
  • union leadership is subject to corruption and political deal making.
  • the ecosystem of independent schools is significantly different from those of public schools; funding is different, the clientele is different, measures of success are different, curriculum standards are different, and bureaucracy is different.
  • unions are for  ”blue collar” jobs, not professions such as teaching.
While I agree that unions are far from perfect organizations, for independent school teachers to dismiss them out of hand is not in their personal financial or professional interest. Here’s why:
  • The rate of tuition increases that support many independent schools is not sustainable. Patrick Bassett, President of the NAIS, often talks about the challenge to independent schools in making tuition affordable for middle and upper-middle class families. [6. http://www.peje.org/blog/?p=825 ] With tuitions at top-tier independent school hovering around $40,000 per year, with a few approaching $50,000 per year, even rich families are balking at such costs. Some independent schools may price themselves out of a market in areas where quality public school alternatives exist.
  • Revenue pressures will, of course, mainfest themselves in cost-cutting measures. With salaries the largest component of a school’s budget, independent school teachers may find class enrollments increasing, along with the number of classes taught per day and  expectations for extra-curricular work. Some of the very things that may have led them to pursue teaching in independent schools may be threatened, with little recourse available to them.
  • Everyone agrees that the cost of healthcare is rising at an alarming rate, leading employers to seek new ways of trimming theses costs by shifting more of the financial burden to employees.
  • Similarly, schools will examine their other benefit programs such as matching contributions to 403.b retirement plans, sabbatical leave, and professional development.
  • More experienced teachers may find themselves being “nudged out” of schools in favor of younger, and lower cost, educators.
Who is going to give voice to concerns that faculty and staff have about the changing financial environment in independent schools?

And some additional thoughts about unions and independent schools…

Many independent schools are secretive about their salary practices, withholding salary information even from the supervisors of employees. Competitive salary information from national groups such as NAIS are limited to heads of schools and school business officers. The result is a system in which information pertinent to salary negotiations are significantly tilted in favor of school administrators. In a like manner, the dismissal of a school employee is often shrouded in mystery and innuendo. No one wants to violate the privacy of employees or the rights of employers to dismiss for cause, but questions about due process must to be answered with more than a “just trust us” response. Who is going to level the playing field in salary negotiations or assure that employees are protected from arbitrary and capricious discipline, up to and including firing?

Financial pressures in independent schools, coupled with the need to demonstrate curricular leadership, may lead to the expectation for teachers to adopt new practices despite diminished support for professional development activities. Sabbatical programs, educational travel to conferences, released time for course development and collaboration may be compromised. Who is going to protect the ongoing investment in faculty and staff to guarantee that the quality of teaching and learning is maintained?

t may be argued that elite independent schools, with their high tuitions and pressure on endowments to support financial aid to assure a diverse student population, may simply become one more enclave of the so-called 1% of Americans, the super wealthy and (according to many in the Occupy Movement) a morally and ethically bereft group who build profits at the expense of everyone else. Extreme rhetoric aside, Who is going to assure that the resources continue to be available to ensure that student bodies are culturally, racially, and financially diverse?

Needed: A New Model for Education Unions

Independent school teachers are among the smartest and most talented people I know. And it is to them that I issue a challenge to create a new model for collective action and solidarity, a new type of union that avoids the problems associated with traditional teacher unions, enhances their professional status, guards their financial future, ensures that students remain at the core of their mission, and demonstrates common cause with their public school counterparts; a collective that can experiment and model new ways of engagement between school administrators, parents, students, alumni, and other stakeholders for the mutual good of independent schools. It does not have to be a matter of non-union or and NEA/AFT affiliation. There can be a another way.

Now is the time for conversations to begin, before crisis drives people to opposing corners. Now is the time for savvy school administrators  to welcome greater transparency about money (which is what much of this is about) and other policies. Now is the time for faculty to think further ahead than a week or semester, but five, ten, and twenty years down the road.

  1. Greenhouse, S. (Jan, 21 2011). Union membership in u.s. fell to a 70-year low last year. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/22union.html ↩
  2. Retrieved from http://www.alternet.org/story/96979/the_future_of_work:_where_the_labor_movement_is_heading ↩
  3. The anti-teacher union rhetoric has even inspired its own web site, Teacher Unions Exposed, operated by the The Center for Union Facts, PO Box 34507, Washington, DC 20043. Also operating at this address is the Conservative Alliance Foundation. Both of these organizations are run by Berman and Company, which has also mounted campaigns against organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and trial lawyers among others. (Wikipedia citation). ↩
  4. NEA membership decline heralds loss of power and influence. ↩