Thursday, June 21, 2012

Another Loss for the UFT and Teachers

Before the ink is even dry on the bill, the UFT is going out of its way to frame today's teacher evaluation disclosure agreement as a win. It is nothing of the sort. It is a total loss.

Let's remember how this all happened. The UFT agreed to a "pilot" program to evaluate teachers solely on test scores, with the stipulation that these rankings would not be released. Joel Klein promised to fight against the release of these scores should they be FOILed. They were, and he didn't. Simply put, he lied to teachers yet again, and actually fought for the scores to be released to the papers, which they eventually were.

And what did the UFT gain from giving this to the DOE? A new contract? The same 4% raise that was given to other unions without having evaluations made public? No, all they got was a lot of teachers' names in the papers, and a lot of humiliation for a lot of people.

Remember, no other union has their evaluations published. Now, we will. The UFT will claim that only parents will get to see this info, but there is nothing to stop parents from sharing and publishing this information themselves. This will lead to more teachers being vilified due to faulty evaluations with a margin of error of more than 80%.

The UFT should have pitched it thusly: We played ball once, and we got crucified when the TDRs got published, so we are NOT going to allow it to happen again. Teachers will agree to allow our evaluations to be made available to parents as soon as police evaluations are made public to all citizens in a precinct--in fact, as soon as ALL evaluations are made public, including the mayor, governor, and all of their staff.

Instead, our union has once again agreed to allow its members to be humiliated and targeted. Again, no other union has its evaluations made public in this way. Only the UFT could suffer a loss that no other union has, and still tell its members that it scored a victory.

4 comments:

Pogue said...

 We keep giving and giving and giving.  I've never seen such a weak group of union leaders in all my time.

Follow the Money said...

Send a message to our Union leaders - sign here:  http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-the-public-shaming-and-unjust-firing-of-teachers

Norm said...

Organize. Nothing will change until we have a Chicago style leadership. They tossed the sell-out bums out. We can too. But first we must build it before they will come. Help build the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE). Do you really have a choice?

bookworm said...

 Hahahahahaha!! Yeah, my privacy is protected until some bs group somewhere gets parents to report the scores of the teachers in each school. Then they can be posted everywhere - may as well put our home addresses, car make/model/plate number, and tell where our spouses work and where our kids go to school so my 6th grader can be asked by the press, "How does it feel to have the worst teacher in the city for your mom?"

I only hope that the slander suits come fast and furious after the witch hunts begin.

F*** you, UFT.