After 27 months of contentious negotiations, the Boston Teachers Union and the School Department finally struck a tentative agreement early Wednesday morning that should usher in a more rigorous system of judging teacher performance and that provides extra help for teachers who need it.
The agreement came together at about 2:30 a.m., 11 hours after the two sides sat down together for the first time since talks broke off almost a month ago. The gathering was a last-ditch attempt to work out an agreement before having the state Department of Labor Relations recommend its own resolution to the stalemate.
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After 27 months of holding onto what was best for the children of Boston and not the thousands of teachers who spend their money and educate their own children outside the city, the mayor caves in to Richard Stutman's old school thuggery? No positive way to spin this bad news for the district's 56,000 students and their families who live and pay taxes in Boston.
Thuggery - that's what unions have. It's why the Mayor won't be able to achieve the level of school reform he said he wants (and what's needed).
Why is negotiation "thuggery"? The people who actually do the work and know what is going on should have no say in their contract or how things are run? Let the Big Boss make all the decisions? I can't see how anyone with a heart and a soul would want that.
Every person deserves a fair paycheck, just grounds for removal from his/her job, health insurance and old age pension and that person owes his/her employer a service comenserate with those rewards - and i think this contract does both. I wish more business would do that for their employees
Teachers are correct in being wary of new evaluation procedures. A 40 year teacher, who finally retired because working under substandard principals and superintendents who knew little of education terribly depressed me. Teaching in a system which values teaching students how to take tests instead of how to think, how to learn, and about their world, was depressing.
I have seen and still see many good, even gifted teachers coming home depressed each day because the administrators in their schools are more interested in test scores than in students discovering the joys of investigation, and love of learning.
These are the administrators who evaluate.
How frightening.
Respectfully,
Now, maybe, the City can reach an agreement with the police who have been without a contract just as long. The firefighters get paid $15,0000 more a year than the cops, unheard of in any big city.
Samuel Tyler has committed what Catholics call “the sin of omission!” He fails to mention that the charter schools cherry pick and have selected populations! These charter schools do not have the ELL’s or the SPED students found in the traditional public schools. They are really classists segregation academies paid for with public taxpayer dollars. In the Boston Public Schools “Portfolio of Schools” there are 75 traditional schools, and 61 in-district charter, pilot, Horace Mann, Innovation and exam schools. Many of these schools have an extended day, where teachers are exploited, and are not compensated fairly for the work that they do. Charters have a high turnover of students and charter teachers are often not certified.
Let’s take a look at the Edward Brooke’s Charter School, supported by Paul Grogan, President of The Boston Foundation, who is represented by Samuel Tyler, President of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau! Brooke Charter’s attrition rate is well over 50%. Out of the 47 students who started in 5th grade, and 60 students who started in K, only 17 students remained to take the 8th grade MCAS! Where did the other 30, 5th grade students disappear too? Brooke’s Out-of-School Suspension RATE of 20.3%! What's that about! I supposed it has improved since 2010, when Brooke’s Out-of-School Suspension rate was 26.9%! The BPS suspension rate is only 5.7%, and in the whole state of Massachusetts, it’s only 5.6%! Brooke’s Truancy Rate is 14.9%! BPS is only 1.8%, beating the state average of 2.5%! Only 42.9% of Brooke’s Teachers are teaching in their subject area! In BPS 97.5% are teaching in their subject area! Seventeen students isn’t really a class, it’s a tutoring group! Even though Brooke claims to have a “4,000 student wait list” it does not “backfill” those empty seats!
If Sam Tyler really wants the children of BPS Schools to have an extended day, I would suggest he get the large non-profits (not to be confused with charity) organizations, and the private colleges and universities in the city to pay their fair share for municipal services. If they picked up their fair share, as Mayor Menino and I, and other residents of Boston, have requested, then municipal workers and BPS Teachers could be paid fairly. The BPS could be funded appropriately, and could afford an academic extended day and after school enrichment programs. Look, the Museum of Art, worth 282,450,999.00 was asked to pay $259,473.00, the MFA has paid only $28,055.00 to date! The Boston Conservatory worth 23,099,000.00, was asked to pay only $6,285.00 for FY2012, and has paid $0 to date! Sam Tyler needs to get the corporations, large “non-profits” and universities he represents to step up and pay their fair share!
http://bostinno.com/2012/08/14/massachusetts-based-brooke-charter-schools-receives-1-5-million-to-close-the-achievement-gap/
http://www.cityofboston.gov/assessing/pilotprogram.asp
http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/search/label/*Massachusetts
Has Sam Tyler or Paul Grogan ever said anything positive about Boston Public Schools, its students, or the teachers who put their literal blood, sweat, and tears into their classrooms? I wonder if they have stock in a publishing company called Pearson. Have they any actual teaching experience? - they seem to be such experts. I challenge Tyler or Grogan to teach in a BPS school, actually go in and take over a classroom. But wait...they couldn't because they lack any QUALIFICATION!