What Knapp Says
As you may recall, on the same day as the Creative Approach MOU was remanded back to the Board by a Superior Court judge, there was an interview in the Seattle Times with Jonathan Knapp, the new head of the SEA. It was quite a nice profile and had some telling bits. Here's Knapp on change in relationships:
"Simply saying 'no' is no longer an option," said Jonathan Knapp, a shop teacher who crafted the approach as union vice president.
"The climate has changed, and we have to be advocates for public education in a way that 20 years ago we didn't," Knapp said. "And the way that we do that is building relationships, not by confronting people and saying it's our way or the highway."
I agree. Being adversarial is not the way to build relationships and work for better academic outcomes for children. However teacher Robert Murphy fires back:
We've already compromised too much," said Robert Murphy, a Franklin High math teacher who described Knapp's approach as too weak.
Murphy's anger reflects the passion behind a question dividing teachers unions here and across the country: How best to respond to a well-funded national movement demanding greater accountability and other major changes in public education?
It's not like anyone can say there's isn't some kind of movement that seems bent on blaming teachers for all that is wrong in public education. You don't just get this swell of a wave of articles and attacks where teachers are the problem and testing and assessment are the solutions.
Yesterday, there was a more revealing editorial in support of Knapp which has new info and an odd echo from the article.
To his credit, Knapp is building a relationship with Teachers United, the progressive group of teachers who've taken on the union's reflexive opposition to education reform, including charters. The union is also facing pushback over its support of innovative schools intended to be an alternative to charters.
First, Rosenthal's article didn't reference any relationship with the so-called Teachers United group so I'm thinking this comes from Lynne Varner talking to Knapp. Knapp should be applauded for wanting to build relationships with district staff so that when tough negotiations happen, they are looking at each as people. And, he should have his door open to all teachers who teach in SPS.
However, Teachers United is a front group and they are working to undermine what real unions do which is to protect their members as they make sure they uphold best practices and accountability. Teachers United is there to push an ed reform agenda and frankly, I'm not sure how that serves teachers. I hope Knapp is very careful in his dealings with them.
The Times says "paranoid suspicions of union-busting" should be ignored - you mean like what happened in Wisconsin? I sometimes think the Times' editorial staff lives in some bubble-world where they think their readers have no idea what is really happening in the rest of the country.
I will also point out that the SEA should push back on charters. The initiative does NOT allow charter teachers to join the SEA. The initiative does NOT allow charter teachers at different schools to band together as a group and form their own union. Under this initiative, the only thing charter teachers can do is create a charter at their own school. Unions power comes from numbers and this inability to create numbers undermines the whole idea.
The second sentence in the editorial about "pushback" on the Creative Approach MOU, hey, Times it's called the law. It's funny because at one point in the editorial they say the union has to follow the law for teacher-evaluation and yet they don't want to recognize that the CA MOU failed precisely because it didn't follow the law.
The CA MOU can easily go forward if that's what the Board and the SEA want (I leave district staff out because again, this is a Board job).
"Simply saying 'no' is no longer an option," said Jonathan Knapp, a shop teacher who crafted the approach as union vice president.
"The climate has changed, and we have to be advocates for public education in a way that 20 years ago we didn't," Knapp said. "And the way that we do that is building relationships, not by confronting people and saying it's our way or the highway."
I agree. Being adversarial is not the way to build relationships and work for better academic outcomes for children. However teacher Robert Murphy fires back:
We've already compromised too much," said Robert Murphy, a Franklin High math teacher who described Knapp's approach as too weak.
Murphy's anger reflects the passion behind a question dividing teachers unions here and across the country: How best to respond to a well-funded national movement demanding greater accountability and other major changes in public education?
It's not like anyone can say there's isn't some kind of movement that seems bent on blaming teachers for all that is wrong in public education. You don't just get this swell of a wave of articles and attacks where teachers are the problem and testing and assessment are the solutions.
Yesterday, there was a more revealing editorial in support of Knapp which has new info and an odd echo from the article.
To his credit, Knapp is building a relationship with Teachers United, the progressive group of teachers who've taken on the union's reflexive opposition to education reform, including charters. The union is also facing pushback over its support of innovative schools intended to be an alternative to charters.
First, Rosenthal's article didn't reference any relationship with the so-called Teachers United group so I'm thinking this comes from Lynne Varner talking to Knapp. Knapp should be applauded for wanting to build relationships with district staff so that when tough negotiations happen, they are looking at each as people. And, he should have his door open to all teachers who teach in SPS.
However, Teachers United is a front group and they are working to undermine what real unions do which is to protect their members as they make sure they uphold best practices and accountability. Teachers United is there to push an ed reform agenda and frankly, I'm not sure how that serves teachers. I hope Knapp is very careful in his dealings with them.
The Times says "paranoid suspicions of union-busting" should be ignored - you mean like what happened in Wisconsin? I sometimes think the Times' editorial staff lives in some bubble-world where they think their readers have no idea what is really happening in the rest of the country.
I will also point out that the SEA should push back on charters. The initiative does NOT allow charter teachers to join the SEA. The initiative does NOT allow charter teachers at different schools to band together as a group and form their own union. Under this initiative, the only thing charter teachers can do is create a charter at their own school. Unions power comes from numbers and this inability to create numbers undermines the whole idea.
The second sentence in the editorial about "pushback" on the Creative Approach MOU, hey, Times it's called the law. It's funny because at one point in the editorial they say the union has to follow the law for teacher-evaluation and yet they don't want to recognize that the CA MOU failed precisely because it didn't follow the law.
The CA MOU can easily go forward if that's what the Board and the SEA want (I leave district staff out because again, this is a Board job).
Comments
Typo, or am I misunderstanding your point? I thought they are there TO push an ed reform agenda ?
Thanks for posting when the ST publishes Ed related articles and editorials. I canceled my subscription last month-couldn't take their editorial stance any longer. I do like to read them, but refuse to pay anymore. (miss the comics though!)
But when only 25% of teachers vote in the union election, I suppose the teachers get what they deserve. At some point they have to break out of their silos and look at the bigger picture for their own good, but for the good of the rest of us too. The rest of us need strong teacher leadership now more than ever to push not just for their own parochial concerns but for a healthier educational ecosystem.
The whole system suffers if the teachers don't care about the bigger, system-wide issues and complacently let both management and union bureaucrats pursue agendas that have little to do with improving the overall health of the system.
Yes, teachers have been getting a bad rap in taking the blame for the poor performance of some students, but one area in which teachers deserve criticism is in being so passive and not caring enough to organize and fight back--or elect union leaders who will.
Teachers are like the rest of the population (Oh, we can't get single payer! This is the best we can do). Think about the friends and relatives we have who proudly say 'Oh, I'm not political", neglecting to consider that their well-being and that of their communities is in fact *political*.
The mistake that many educators make is to refuse to see education as the political struggle that it is, one that is not a simply local concern. All of these struggles are linked.
The idea of actively changing the status quo and agenda is quite scary for some people. Do we vote for Muhs/Hall (*too radical/can't have that) or do we take a Knapp (*it's the Seattle 'consensus' way, got to have a seat at the table as it is already set ).
There are SEA members who are quite status quo -oriented and /or conservative. There are those members who are liberal or progressive; some of these members are quite knowledgeable about law and policy (we do not do what is merely expedient ). Then there are those colleagues in the middle. I am simplifying somewhat. Still this means a balancing act for leadership.
It has been a while since there has been a real alternative to the embedded candidates. Many colleagues find that concept hard to fathom, hard to comprehend. Perhaps the next election will help us take it to the bridge.
I voted for Muhs/Hall. I have colleagues/friends who forgot to vote.
P.S. Fortunately we have SEE, the actual progressive caucus in SEA.
--Old School Music
Good overview of the situation, Old School. Jack, you too. My colleagues are very passive. We need to be more like the California nurses! We need Rose Ann DeMaro!
It's been interesting to me that the reformers who want to run schools like businesses, want to run them like bad businesses. I wonder why. Maybe because they'd rather have a lot of control than a lot of creativity. And so this creates a work environment in which people who like being controlled are happy and people who don't are not. Here's something I ran across today a propos of this theme:
n a marketplace that’s changing faster than ever, the flexibility and creativity of giants like Google – a company where managers are viewed as support for the teams they manage – puts them leagues ahead of competitors with bloated, top-heavy bureaucracies, where every innovation requires a ream of paperwork before seeing the light of day.
...Tom Glocer, former CEO of Thomson Reuters, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a respected advisor to business leaders worldwide, says that smart leaders avoid the temptation to hire automatons – obedient workers with no ideas of their own. Obviously a smooth-running business depends on employee loyalty and competence, but equally important, says Glocer, are “curiosity, willingness to challenge, and honesty to speak truth to power.”Link
Some organizations, for obvious reasons, find it easier to deal with automatons despite what they say about wanting high quality, but you can't have both, art least not in a line of work that is supposed to be about developing young people into competent, confident, independent, free human beings. If teachers don't model those characteristics, how do we expect schools to be a place for those characteristics to be developed n our kids.
(hope the html tags work)
Bingo, Jack! I am not sure they WANT to run them like bad businesses. I just think that the people who make the trade-offs necessary to rise to the top are often actually pretty bad managers/leaders. Their visions for school management is a place as badly run as their businesses are run (worse, really, since the "business" paradigm doesn't carry over to the collaborative, cooperative nature of education).
"Maybe because they'd rather have a lot of control than a lot of creativity."
I think many of them confuse control with leadership. They don't understand empowerment, and they are more afraid of making a mistake than they are interested in actually advancing the products or services that their companies are built around. They "reward" people whose styles (and substance) are sufficiently noncontroversial and nonconfrontational that they will never "get in trouble" for them. So yes -- no Sam Adams, Jeffersons, Edisons, etc. for these guys.
"Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire?" Not likely! That is not the sort of thing that is encouraged by control freaks. I concede that some incredible teachers can withstand this -- but it takes a heavy toll. And when it goes on year after year, only to get worse when your seasoned principal vanishes and you get some newbie who knows 1/10th as much as you do about teaching your subject -- and who is supervised by someone who knows 1/100th of what you know -- it doesn't surprise me that some teachers decide that life is simply too short.
Oh, so true. I watched Charlie Rose interview Kurt Eichenwald a couple of nights ago and he basically said Microsoft had lost its creativity and its top-down management style was limiting to its employees. Not a very complimentary interview for Steve Balmer or the corporate culture there. Employees are unhappy and the company seems to have lost its way in the tech world. So why is everyone listening to Gates? He's so yesterday. :)
Eichenwald said Balmer has this way of stacking people: best, next best, above average, average and horrible. (Those might not be the exact labels but close.) If you have five excellent employees working together, one has to be in the "horrible" position. So people end up sabotaging one another. Isn't that a really smart way to inspire and motivate excellence? It is all about control.
Let them eat tests
Humorous and true take on the education industry.
BTW, I watch MSNBC online while I putter. The right is trying to get rid of planned parenthood and every other ad is a Cyalis commercial. Barefoot, poor and pregnant. Is that where we're headedd?
n...
When you read the stories of leadership at more enlightened companies -- there is none (or much less) of this failed strategy. Managing and leading well is actually very hard work, and takes a high degree of social intelligence. As we have seen from our own SSD, any fool can manage badly.
Business cultures have been tweaking since the sixties. Many companies began opening up their offices into complexes and open spaces that tried to emphasize play and physical time-outs. The button-down culture Eichenwald describes at Microsoft seems to me a step backwards.
I'm not sure what Bill and Melinda Gates think they have to offer education. I really don't.
n...
Education side? Not too many victories or successes. You'd think they'd get a clue but they exist in an echo chamber.
Teach with Joy Please
A union should support its members but they also have to honor the profession they represent and NOT keep people who are either not capable or burned out in the profession especially when it's a sensitive job like teaching.
Now that the article is published, it is interesting to see how I was quoted and how it was used. Apparently, the only way to "compromise" is to do it Jonathan's way, and those who have different ideas on how to compromise are just hard liners saying no to everything, protecting our jobs over the kids ... and it seems almost inferred that we're spending all day doing crosswords instead of working !?
I've only been teaching for 7 years. The people I know would do anything on Monday to help our kids do better on Tuesday. What we had to help our kids from MGJ and what we get from the lackeys of Bill Gates in the ed "reform" camp are: lots of big shots with fancy degrees, lots of fancy power points with big edu-babble jargon, lots of 6 figure a year salaries, and lots of smoke and mirrors for the kids.
Given the local and national potpourri of Gates' funded Astro - Turfs, I'm sure the slick marketing of reform-du-jour privateers will continue. (Look up the number of employees and the salaries of PFL, CRPE, LEV, SFC, NCTQ, TFA, DFER, A+Washington,...)
Fortuneately Seattle has many community watch dogs working to craft the compromises all community members need to make so that our community investement known as 'Public Education' stays out of the hands of privateers and stays focused on education for our kids. (See the blogs Seattle Schools Community Forum and Seattle Education.)
Sometimes what I believe fits with some other 60 or 85% or whatever % of math teachers or teachers or Seattleites or Red Sox fans or ... and sometimes it doesn't. Isn't that life?
Jonathan has an outstanding opportunity to persuade others in the union - 75% of the eligible voters didn't vote, despite having 10 days to vote. The dinky bit of bandwidth I have for community involvement after work, outside the classroom, will always be focused on supporting and improving the system which gave me my leg up from welfare.
Privateers focused on creating more 6 figure a year sinecures, while blaming teachers for systemic failures - they're not taking my stuff, they're not taking the union's stuff, they're taking the time and the opportunity of our kids, which means they're robbing the community.
(please forgive typos / gaffes ... I grew up editing on manual typewriters!)
R.Murphy
The union has been pretty unwilling to even discuss or consider some practical changes, like requiring mutual consent before a teacher is stuck in a position just to fulfill a contract, or using something other than seniority to determine layoff order.
As many here have said, there's too little union involvement. To me, that means when the union speaks on behalf of teachers, it's really speaking on behalf of 25% of teachers.
It's great that the folks involved with SEE are encouraging more union involvement among teachers. TU is, too, and while you could call one group an angel and one the devil, disagreement is often good for an organization as big and complex as a school district is, and as long as opposing sides are willing to engage, eventually a conclusion will be reached that works best.
I applaud Jonathan for refusing to block his ears and eyes to any group, and to try to listen to his union members.
TU Teacher
Melissa Westbrook is the last person who should be defining TU. She refused to even sit down and meet with the board. Jonathan Knapp did, probably earning the comment in the Times article.
TU is a group of teachers who advocate for students. That's necessary, because the people currently advocating for students are either parents, whose voices have gone ignored when meeting their needs was inconvenient to the district or in opposition to the union's CBA (teachers in rooms they don't want to be in and taking a year of sick leave to avoid a PIP, the recent and ongoing stupidity of splitting siblings with the boundary changes, start times, ALO, you name it...)or ed advocacy groups. I don't know too many people in ed advocacy who have ever taught in a public school. Some of them are public school parents, some aren't. And because many of them see teachers and unions as the problem, they aren't too interested in listening to teachers when the predominant refrain is, "Pay us more." "It's not our fault, the parents don't care." "It's not schools, it's poverty." Everyone's tired of hearing those things, even me, and I struggle financially, get frustrated with unsupportive parents, and feel I can't overturn poverty on my own now that the societal safety net has been destroyed. But I know I have a better chance at fighting poverty if the teacher next door to me wants to be there and teaches well, and my administrator is a strong and excellent leader. So, I joined TU.
Before TU, the loudest teacher voice in the ed reform debate was the union, but since the union protects the interests of teachers, what about the teachers who thought some of our policies hurt a student's education? What about the teachers (like me) who saw a truly excellent teacher get rif'd and a mediocre teacher put in her place? What about teachers who have to teach their own class and also support the 40 different subs who are in the room next door because the teacher's on a PIP and avoiding nonrenewal of contract? What about teachers who don't think it's fair that those who work hard and teach well sometimes earn a lot less than those who work as little as possible and teach only so-so? Where can those teachers speak out about how stupid those policies are?
At a union meeting? I don't think so. To their union president? Tried that. And there are many teachers who think the union needs to shift on some - not all, but some - things. Being involved with TU allows us to talk about these policies and how they might be improved to protect students and the teachers who serve them, and it allows us to talk about them with other teachers across the state. As well, by forming a group, we have enough clout to get the ears of ed advocacy groups.
We don't all agree on everything. Eide's recent op ed on charters is his voice, not that of TU (we haven't voted on our position on charters yet), but it's a safe place to disagree. To be honest, the union has not been. Maybe that will change.
TU Teacher
Not true. Unions (and I know, because I've been in one sort or another since I was 18)exist to protect their members' safety and livelihood. As union leadership negotiates for the best possible benefits and work conditions, the other side at the negotiating table is vying for "best practices and accountability." It's a give and take.
It's good the union works so hard to get its members good benefits and working conditions, and it's essential they work to get us freedom from unfair treatment, because that ensures people will want to teach and stay in teaching.
Sometimes this blog seems more a vehicle for you to attack people and organizations you personally dislike than something that keeps parents informed. The charter, TFA, TU attacks. Yawn. We know how you feel. Move on, or get it right.
TUT
how many teachers do you represent?
when you have a meeting, how many show up? when you call for action, how many act? when you send out a survey, how many do you send out and how many respond?
while the answers to all of the above for the WEA and SEA are laughable, given the size of the membership, how many people are members of TU?
You missed a key point - for those teachers who disagree with getting in bed with the kinds of disingenuous obfuscation experts leading education 'reform', you forgot to call us defenders of the status quo!
How Many Are United?