Month: March 2016

vxprof1954@icloud.com

More work needed toward workplace equality

National Women’s History Month 2016 draws to a close. After centuries of wives being regarded as chattel, social justice for women has been on the rise since the mid-19th century’s passage of the Married Women’s Property Act in a number of American states.

Faded into the role of obscure metaphorical allusion is “the rule of thumb” which, according to English jurisprudence, granted husbands the right to chastise their spouses with a stick no more broad than his thumb. 

In 1920, the power of women grew by leaps and bounds with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States establishing universal suffrage. The fundamental civil right of all citizens to vote has forever reshaped the American political landscape. 

Dr. King would affirm decades later that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” One satisfactory benchmark for parity between the sexes remains untested: abolishing male-centric policies in the workplace around compensation and advancement. As Michael Moore proposed in “Where to Invade Next”, following Iceland’s lead and electing more women to representative bodies would be a good first step. 

We still need the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. Despite the passage of the landmark Lilly Ledbetter Act, bending the arc of moral justice toward “equal pay for equal work” remains an as yet unachieved dream.

It is well-documented that female nurse practitioners still earn 11 percent less than their male counterparts. For decades, female physician assistants, likewise, have noted discrepancies with the income of male colleagues. It is tragic enough that women have historically found themselves disadvantaged wherever they compete directly with men.

For the so-called “pink collar careers” like teaching, professions typically staffed predominantly by women, it is unconscionable that starting salaries now frequently fail to support families, or even to service the debt acquired while pursuing the mandated credentials. 

Women, indeed, have come a long way; the work, however, is still in progress.

 

[The original version of the Commentary appeared in the now defunct Prince George’s Gazette on March 27, 2014.]

vxprof1954@icloud.com

Professional Traumatic Stress Disorder: aka “Burnout”

The age of political correctness saw Shakespeare chastised posthumously for sardonically recommending in Henry VI a very radical initial step for improving society. “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Never meant to be taken seriously, this jest was likely meant to inspire laughter among the groundlings and noblemen alike.

Today, certain ideologues of education reform quite seriously stipulate the first step toward improving Public Education. They shout, “Get rid of bad teachers!” Unfortunately, too many people nod their heads in assent to what seems, at first blush, to be a relatively benign proposition. Who could oppose ridding schools of ineffective instructors?

Clearly, however, people are no longer breaking down the doors of the schoolhouse to become teachers. Quite the contrary, school systems are struggling mightily to fill teaching positions. It is well chronicled, now, that the majority of those few who run the gauntlet of travails in the schoolhouse seek other venues for their talent within five years of decorating their first classroom. We are more successful at driving dynamic teachers out of the profession than those who perform marginally. Inadequate compensation and benefits, interminable labor, mounting responsibilities, declining resources and erroneously attributed blame all contribute to this trend.

Furthermore, were we successful in dismissing every teacher of marginal competence, from what unknown pool of talent do you suppose their replacements might be drawn? Occasionally, the “devil” you know is preferable to the “devil” you have yet to meet.

These are but the first challenges posed by making teachers the scapegoats for our nation’s errant education policies. The questionable hypothesis that teachers, themselves, are solely to blame for lack of productivity in their workplaces remains an unproven assertion trumpeted by ideologues seeking to distract the general public from the real drags on student achievement.

Human beings have a penchant for blaming victims for the misfortunes they endure. Has anyone not perused the account of some crime and wondered what the victim was thinking while wandering in that neighborhood at that time of night? Does a victim’s momentary lapse of reason somehow excuse a criminal act? How many of us have participated in discussions of infamous incidents that ended by questioning the intelligence – or sanity – of the victim?

So, it should come as no surprise that blame for our educational woes should land at the feet of classroom teachers. Politicians often ask labor leaders when they will take a stand on the removal of incompetent educators from the ranks of classroom teachers.

A simple question deserves a simple response. 

  • Such a stand will only be viable when simple survival in the classroom no longer requires universal application of superhuman effort on a timescale that wears down even the most committed advocate for Public Education.

Rocket science is not involved. 

Our society must wage the war on ignorance the same way it wages war on the battlefield. We must place a well-equipped, overwhelming force at the point of attack and commit logistical support until the objective is attained. A military leader knows that a 10-1 ratio is likely necessary against an entrenched adversary. 

Would you question an army’s competence in fighting hordes of barbarians if it were limited to engaging the enemy with peashooters and slingshots during a campaign that lasted many decades? Would you label as incompetent the wounded foot-soldiers?

Dismissing every teacher who eventually raises the white flag of surrender will not improve Public Education. Furnishing every teacher with a reasonable caseload, adequate resources and appropriate time will…. 

Few events are more heart-rending than knowing a once-upon-a-time innovative and dynamic teacher and overhearing one of his students say to a classmate, “You know, Mr. Bartleby just don’t teach.”

Mr. Bartleby might be trying to hang on a few more years for the benefit of the worst retirement plan in the country following three decades of grossly inadequate compensation. Mr. Bartleby has likely corrected more than 500,000 papers submitted by nearly 5,000 students during a successful career prior to the onset of health problems. Unfortunately, he can no longer tolerate the interminable sessions of paper grading and lesson planning into the wee morning hours. Does this mean he has nothing left to contribute?

The word spreads that Mr. Bartleby is no longer “chewing the leather”. People begin to notice his less-than-stringent adherence to school policies. Next year might mean being assigned the most challenging classes and the most onerous non-teaching duties in the hope of compelling him to move on or accept the meager benefit of partial retirement.

Is it any wonder why Mr. Bartleby might choose to follow the lead of Herman Melville’s famous scrivener and say “I would prefer not to…”

Often merely exhausted by the unrealistic expectations of the modern classroom, the education profession is diminished when the Mr. Bartleby’s of this world are needlessly driven from its ranks.

Most of us would accept as axiomatic the admonition of Paul Tsongas that, “No one on his deathbed ever said, I wish I had spent more time on my business.” Yet, it is presumed that teachers will commit whatever time is necessary, with alacrity mind you, to educate however many students the community chooses to squeeze into classrooms. It is also assumed that, as primary recompense for their never-ending altruistic endeavor, teachers will experience paroxysms of satisfaction while basking in the sparkling of a learner’s eyes.

Most teachers selflessly contribute countless hours to their craft while feigning cheerful acceptance of the delayed gratification lifestyle. Any measurable success in the classroom currently demands such personal sacrifice.

Today, devoting anything less than the totality-of-being to the profession carries with it the implied threat of being labeled “incompetent” or “unworthy“.

Teaching is exceedingly difficult even for those blessed with good fortune and robust health. When life delivers serious difficulties – as life is wont to do on occasion – even paragons of virtue eventually succumb. Who among us is blessed with infinite stamina?

Do we want elevate the professional practice of all teachers? Do we want to see improved academic performance for students? Assign all educators a workload that is manageable in something approaching a normal work day…

Further Reading:

[The original version of this Viewpoint appeared in the now defunct Prince George’s Journal on January 9, 2002. ]

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Experience Matters for Educators, too!

vxprof1954@icloud.com

Help children reach their potential

[The original version of the Commentary appeared in the now defunct Prince George’s Gazette on May 22, 2014. ]

vxprof1954@icloud.com

Checks on the power of big money?

Corporations, institutions that serve the interests of the financial elite, have been accorded “personhood” by the judiciary.  Unions, however, institutions that serve the interests of the multitudes, hear the tolling of the bells for the basic right to associate and bargain collectively over the terms and conditions of employment. It appears the nation has forgotten an essential part of Abraham Lincoln’s First Annual Message, “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

In case it has escaped your attention, the monolithic “power” frequently ascribed to organized labor is a hoax perpetrated by the investor class who uses immense wealth to fund legislation and litigation that will seriously limit the rights of labor. In the 1950’s just less than half of the American workforce was organized; today the number is around 11% and those are mostly public sector employees. The decline of earning power in the middle class has matched the decline in union membership. 

Those who own the gold are making the rules, and the first rule is they get to keep all the gold. So, the oligarchy lobbies for cleverly named legislation called “Right to Work” that abolishes collective bargaining and allows employers to pay subsistence wages and cut benefits for those who actually perform the labor. As George Carlin so cogently observed some years ago, “There are no permanent ‘Rights’ in America; there are only temporary ‘privileges’ that can be taken away at any time.”  

Allowing the rug to be pulled out from under organized labor dishonors the memory of those who laid down their lives for the ‘right’ to bargain collectively. 

The Vergara ruling on California’s tenure law is another case in point.

Blaming the well-chronicled disparities in education between affluent and impoverished communities on “teacher tenure” constitutes a classic red herring argument that attempts to distract the public from the well-chronicled issue of poverty-induced stressors on the readiness to learn of children. 

Furthermore, “tenure” for professional educators has never constituted a “guarantee” of employment, but merely a protection against the capricious dismissals that once were rampant in the schoolhouse for causes ranging from nepotism to political dissent.

Ultimately, the potential elimination of due process and just-cause termination for career educators is just as likely to prove harmful to children as we become overly focused on shedding the comparatively few incompetent instructors instead of retaining the overwhelming majority of potentially effective ones.

Taking responsibility for elevating the professional practice of all educators is of paramount importance to teachers if they are to re-establish the respect and prestige of the teaching profession. Teachers’ unions have been grappling with such efforts, successfully, for a number of years. If corporatist reformers focused on the financial bottom line have their way, however, budgetary considerations could soon hold sway over instructional priorities.

Experienced, well-compensated educators would be no more. After a lifetime of honing their professional practice and enhancing instructional repertoires, career educators could fall prey to “budget axes” and a younger, more compliant workforce. Where will such practices evolve? As always, financially-strapped school districts would be a great guess!

 

[The original version of this “Commentary” first appeared in the now defunct Prince George’s Gazette on July 3, 2014.]

vxprof1954@icloud.com

Seeking social justice for all children

vxprof1954@icloud.com

There’s more than one kind of gender bias in the schools

The celebration of International Women’s Month is at hand. Now that we are more than a decade into the new millennium, it is long past time to join the struggle against what French feminists gleefully labeled the “phallocrats“. Women, most frequently charged with the care and custody of children in divorced households, still only earn 78% of what their male counterparts earn for similar labor. 

It is reported in Labor’s Untold Story by Boyer and Morais that men had difficulty supporting a family on $15 a week in the post Civil War economy. The years 1860-1865 had seen a 43% increase in wages but 116% inflation. 

One is mostly left to imagine the tales of woe and despair experienced by women and children of the same period working 18 hours-a-day at a loom for $3 a week. However, it is known that many thousands died yearly as a result of the unbridled exploitation of the labor force, and countless more were injured and maimed. Hence it should be reverentially recalled that the phrase “Equal Pay for Equal Work” was coined at that time by William H. Sylvis as he attempted to convince his National Labor Union to allow membership for women. 

Lamentably, not only would he never see this simple moral precept come to fruition, a century and half later and women are still waiting for simple economic justice. At the beginning of the 21st century, women have improved by less than “two-bits” from the 59 cents on the dollar they earned a couple decades ago. 

So, what hope is there for teachers? 

This is no idle question. What hope is there for adequate compensation in a profession dominated by an historically exploited class of worker?  It goes straight to the heart of the problem with teacher compensation. Women comprise 75 percent of teachers regionally (90 percent at the elementary level!). It is abundantly clear that this society declines to pay women at a level commensurate with male peers in male-dominated professions with similar requirements for credentials.

To date, the answer to that question has been short and sweet. There is not much hope at all. Ideologues offer the same tired alibis and excuses for not compensating teachers. How many of these have you heard? 

Teachers have it easy. Teachers already earn too much. Teachers only work 40 weeks a year. Teachers only work 7 ½ hours a day. Teachers are only earning “supplemental” incomes, what used to be referred to as “pin money“. Teachers are not here for a career, etc. 

None of these propositions is categorically true. In fact, they border on preposterously false. Still, they do play off popular beliefs and misconceptions about teaching as a profession, not to mention the cavalier attitude that some in this society have toward “women’s work” in general and the general undertow of anti-intellectualism  in American society. 

In his “White Paper Report on Education in 1988, Tom Brokaw said in his summation, “I don’t care who you are or what you do for living, you do not work any harder than a teacher.” Colleagues at the time expressed shock and amazement that someone from outside the profession had recognized this fact. 

Teaching is not an easy line of work and the hours are interminable. The reason new mothers frequently abandon the classroom, when they are able to do so, is that caring for babies virtually precludes being able to devote the countless hours needed for effective lesson-planning and correcting of student work outside the contractual day, nor is the level of financial compensation adequate to justify the hiring of secondary caregivers.

Those unable to take a hiatus – single mothers come to mind -often pay terrible prices in lost time with their children and the financial drain of day care. 

There has been a vast demographic change in recent decades. According to the Brookings Institute Center in “A Region Divided,” roughly 12.7 percent of homes in Prince George’s County were single parent households in 1996, which constituted a 27 percent share of such households in the metropolitan region. In 80 percent of those households the single parent was a woman. Furthermore, the average single father earned $36,364 in 1997 and the average single mother $23,040. 

We do not know how many single parents are teachers, but many of my colleagues are single with children for any variety of reasons. However, we do know that fewer men go into teaching, and inability to support a family on the prevailing wage is one of the justifications frequently cited. So it is not unreasonable to suppose that single mothers are disproportionately hurt by lower salaries for teachers, especially when computations are made for breaks-in-service for child rearing. 

Therefore, as our budgeting season is in full swing, let us realize that teacher compensation is also a feminist issue. This campaign must start with some small battle to be fought, and hopefully won. So what better way could there be to celebrate International Women’s Month than by joining in the struggle to eliminate gender-based inequities in compensation …

Furthermore, let us begin with the professions dominated by women, namely teaching and nursing. It would be good for women. It would be good for children. For if it is true that justice delayed is justice denied, this is justice that is far too long overdue. 

 

[The original “Viewpoint” appeared in the now defunct Prince George’s Journal on March 9, 2000. It has been revised and updated.]