Peer Review: Is True Collaboration Teachers Participating in the Hiring and Evaluation of Colleagues? Should School Reform Be “Owned” By School Staffs?

 

Are you aware that New York State Law requires teacher input in tenure decisions?

 

A new Section 3012-b of the Education Law (as added by Chapter 57 of the Laws of 2007) resulted in new standards and procedures for making tenure determinations for teachers in the instructional services employed in school districts and BOCES. The tenure determination process must now include:

• peer review by other teachers, as far as practicable;

The battle over teacher tenure has been on a back burner, now, it is rapidly moving to the fore. In Washington DC Michelle Rhee and the Washington Teacher Union are fully engaged in acrimonious negotiations: the issue: an option whereby teachers would give up tenure for substantial raises.

 

Tenure laws are established by States and range around the nation and vary greatly.

 

From President Obama to Arnie Duncan to Mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein, the question of the dismissal of tenured teachers is alive and well.

 

The national teacher union, the American Federation of Teachers has resurrected a three decades old program: peer review.

 

This is a ticklish issue for teachers, however, it is more commonplace than most teachers realize, even in New York City.

 

In the Spring, 2007, the Department “reorganized” District 79, ended Off Site Education Services and the High School for Pregnant Girls and created GED Plus. The Union and the DOE entered into “impact bargaining” and created a process whereby staff in closing programs reapplied for positions.

 

 …. Contract will apply to one-hundred percent of the bargaining unit positions …

 

A Personnel Committee shall be established, consisting of two Union representatives designated by the UFT President, two representatives designated by the community superintendent for community school district schools or by the Chancellor for schools/programs under his/her jurisdiction, a Principal/or Project Director.

 

 Grievances challenging whether the personnel committee’s decision regarding the qualifications of individual applicants will be granted if the arbitrator finds that there was no “reasonable basis” for the determination.

 

 The GED Plus/Restart/ACCESS personnel committee may require applicants to submit a cover letter or resume explaining how they meet the posted qualifications….. The subcommittees will work according to a single hiring rubric created by the GED Plus/Restart/ACCESS personnel committee. The UFT and BOE will jointly conduct training sessions for members of the five subcommittees on the rubric.

 

Teachers assigned by the union evaluated applicants and made “qualified” and “not qualified” decisions. Applicants found “not qualified” were assigned to the Absent Teacher Reserve.

 

Teachers have participated in the hiring process for new schools on phase out campuses for more than a decade.

 

Have teachers actually evaluated colleagues in lieu of the standard model?

 

Actually, a young, rebellious principal, his UFT Chapter and a creative staff created a “Peer Selection, Support and Evaluation’ plan. The plan, approved by the UFT grew into the SBO Staffing Plan, by 2002 more than half of schools had opted into the plan.

 

A part of the plan that did not emerge was the peer review section of the plan.

 

The Personnel Committee felt that a meaningful evaluation procedure must include two components that are omitted from traditional procedures. The first is a strong component of self-evaluation. Individuals have a greater commitment when they identify their own needs, and their standards are higher when they set their own goals. The other component involves a professional sharing and a peer evaluation that does not exist in the average school due to professional isolation.

 

If we view ourselves as true educators, we must also view ourselves as learners. We are role models for our students. If we model authority, our students will learn to be authoritarian,. If we model self-improvement in an atmosphere of sharing, that’s what our students will learn.

 

That rebellious principal? Eric Nadelstern.

 

In 1990 Peter Senge wrote The Fifth Discipline, a seminal study: think of a workplace as a “learning organization” at which all the participants are part of the process. Senge went on to adopt his theories to the schools,

 

Schools may be the starkest example in modern society of an entire institution modeled after the assembly line. This has dramatically increased educational capability in our time, but it has also created many of the most intractable problems with which students, teachers, and parents struggle to this day. If we want to change schools, it is unlikely to happen until we understand more deeply the core assumptions on which the industrial-age school is based.

 

 

School and District Leadership Teams are embedded in State Education Law and are outgrowths of Senge. Unfortunately the Klein administration abandoned the concept of the school as  learning organization. Klein found the views of William Ouchi  more hospitable to his beliefs.

 

Ouchi, author of Theory Z, about Japanese management wrote Making School Work, envisioning a strongly decentralized system in which the principal has wide ranging authority to make decisions impacting their own schools.

 

Peer review is a heavy lift, for teachers wedded to an long established top down management/evaluation system and a school hierarchy wedded to a principal as CEO model.

 

In their early years teachers accept responsibility for their behavior in the classroom, but, many never evolve beyond. Some accept ownership: they see beyond their own behavior and see the children and their families as part of the classroom community. It is the rare school that evolves into a community. An organism in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. A school in which all staff members participate in the hiring and evaluation of colleagues, a community in which all are dependent on each other.

 

The process of achieving peer review is the same process that produces great schools.