Marietta English and her band of self-righteous professional protesters should stop shouting and return to educating. The president of the Baltimore Teachers Union and her very small group of co-complainers want the new CEO of the city?s public schools, Andres Alonso, to step down.
His sin? He wants teachers to transfer 45 minutes of individual planning time per week to collaborative meetings with other teachers and school principals.
Very few argue that the reform would be bad for students. Most know that more collaborative time means more time to assess how to teach problem students or reach school-testing goals or to fine-tune curriculum ? all of which are proven ways to benefit individual students and schools.
Teachers say they are salaried professionals, so why not just add that nine minutes to the work day the way other professionals have as workloads in the U.S. increase?
However, this petty debate really is not about nine minutes a day of planning time. If it were, the union would not be fighting so hard. It?s about who should control accountability. For too long, the union has held the attitude that everything is out of teachers? control because city students are too poor or their parents are not involved or schools don?t have enough money. Those are legitimate concerns, but they do not absolve teachers and schools from the need to improve graduation rates and instill children with basic knowledge necessary to thrive after school.
The union knows that if it lets this reform pass, more will follow that make it more and more difficult to hide or reward incompetence. Instead of fighting that process, the union should embrace it. The vast majority of teachers already do if the poor turnout at protests can attest to the lack of support for union leadership.
Let?s loudly applaud Alonso for staying focused on making Baltimore City schools better for its students. As he said, “I was not brought here to make decisions about what is good for adults.”
While an arbitration panel must decide the fate of the planning time, union leaders must realize in the next round that compromise is not “giving in” when it means better teachers, curriculum and graduation rates for city students. If teachers want to picket something, the rank and file should protest the incompetence of its leaders.
