By By Jacqueline Rabe Thomas and Uma Ramiah
The state’s teachers unions may have reached agreement on how their members should be graded weeks ago, but today union leaders came to the state Capitol complex to display buyer’s remorse.
Calling it a “leap of faith,” when they signed on to the historic teacher evaluation framework, Phil Apruzzese, head of the state’s largest teachers union, told Education Committee members that he has second thoughts.
“We run the risk of losing good teachers, of evaluation becoming a ‘gotcha’ practice, and of establishing a culture of fear, rather than collaboration in our schools,” he said, describing the evaluation as “based on shaky factors” and “very subjective.”
The evaluations—which would be based largely on student performance, peer reviews and classroom observations—are the cornerstone of an education agenda proposed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who was a late addition to the list of public-hearing witnesses.
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It’s a shame that teachers are so threatened by evaluations that they will use their union strength against the process.
It’s a shame because as long as they insist upon being unionized and use that strength to avoid review (as well as other things like dance supervision, bus monitoring, lunch room “duty” etc.) they will be thought of, correctly, as subway conductors with masters degrees.
What other profession, with salaries as high as 85-90,000 dollars, is unionized and controls the review process of their “bottom line? What other profession describes annual review of performance as a “gotcha” process?
Unions were once essential to protect a teacher from being fired for unpopular political, sexual, economic and social orientations. Now, since all those orientations are otherwise legally protected, unions, as abused by teachers, serve only to garner teachers the respect and derision they currenty enjoy.