Yesterday’s announced compromise on teacher evaluations between teachers unions and New York State is a win for teachers, although many don’t see it that way. The deal, which makes students’ test scores count for 40% of a teacher’s effectiveness rating, marks the first time that test data will influence teachers’ ratings or job security.

The concept of tying teacher evaluations to test scores – an idea endorsed so emphatically by President Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan that it’s a prerequisite for states’ applications for the Race to the Top billions – is moving with the momentum of a bullet train. As trains go, you’re either onboard, on the sidelines or getting run over.

At the risk of being further castigated for obstructionism, teachers needed to climb on that train. And they did.

Teacher evaluations were long overdue for an overhaul. Last year, fewer than 2% of New York City teachers were rated “unsatisfactory.” You can practically count on one hand the number of city teachers fired for incompetence over the past two years. That’s crazy, and it reflects poorly on all teachers to have such a softball system in place. There is dead weight in the system and, via speedy due process, it needs to go.

It’s a loser to argue against accountability. Since the current system for evaluations was indefensible, the blame inevitably fell – fairly or not – on teachers for appearing to protect their own interests over all else. The unions should have been out in front of this, and they’ve endured major collateral damage for not being more proactive.

It’s like federal immigration reform. Something urgently needed to happen on a federal level, and when Congress didn’t act, other groups moved to fill the void with their own alternatives, and we ended up with something as troubling as Arizona’s radical show-me-your-papers law.

Similar over-the-top reprisals went flying here. Teachers unions’ sluggish approach to reforming evaluations abetted a tidal wave of anti-teacher rhetoric. Mainstream voices have joined the teacher-scapegoating frenzy. When Time Magazine put Washington, D.C., Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee on its cover, it celebrated her “crusade against bad teachers.” A  piece in The New Yorker this year prominently featured the sensationally fury-laced quote: “\[American Federation of Teachers President\] Randi Weingarten would protect a dead body in the classroom.” Many top education officials – like Rhee and New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein – appear ready to sell their kidneys if only they could make pesky teachers unions disappear.

In New York City, frequent clashes between City Hall and the United Federation of Teachers on everything from the $80 million ARIS data-crunching computer to a school-grading system have contributed to a perceived dichotomy between “reformers” and the “status quo.” Teachers, every time, are cast as the sorry status quo defenders.

This perception works against improving education. Teachers aren’t the bad guys. Disproportionate airtime for rubber rooms and bad teachers puts all teachers on the defensive as a default. It paints them all with suspicion when they ought to be getting respect. A raft of merit pay proposals based on test scores belies a misguided assumption that teachers just aren’t trying hard enough. Educators are drowned out by tough-talking “reformers” when they attempt a nuanced argument that testing is okay, but the ever-increasing focus on a reductive high-stakes testing regime is overboard and counterproductive.

Thriving school systems – like Finland’s – put a premium on teachers’ input. In America, we’re attacking our educators, imposing mechanistic testing regimes and hemorrhaging a lot of good people from the profession. Most teachers put in long hours under taxing conditions for uninspiring pay – and they do good work. Some make miracles. To prepare the next generation of 21st century citizens, they are under ever-broadening demands. We need respected, competent, well-supported teachers – badly.

We also need good teachers unions. For our massive system to work as productively as possible, we need a strong advocate for the on-the-ground workforce that serves 50 million American pupils. Teachers’ and students’ interests are the same: conditions that foster excellence for all, high-quality instruction, a comprehensive curriculum, personalized support and equity in opportunity.

These crucial needs won’t be sufficiently addressed in a corporate-style privatized system. Hopefully, New York’s teacher evaluation agreement will defang some of the anti-union attacks and repair teachers’ collective image. Recent deals to end rubber rooms and expedite processes for removing bad teachers also deserve praise.

Do unions need to back off of some of their most inflexible positions? Yes, and it is happening. Do critics of teachers unions need to cool their jets? Yes. Now.

Dan Brown is a teacher and the author of “The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle.”

Opinion of Daily NEws, May, 12, 2010

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