Repeat a lie enough time and maybe it will get over. Anyone whoever has taught in schools know that a teacher's day does not end when the bell rings. So continuing to harp on the number of hours between the first and last bell is misleading.  Teachers put in a tremendous number of hours outside of those bells.  And teachers in urban schools put in more than their fair share helping students and dealing with the multitude of problems our students face from living in poverty.  Teachers are helping students every day after classes.  If Lehigh and the Boston Globe editorial board refuses to acknowledge this they are simply being the mouthpiece for the corporate agenda that do not want to acknowledge the effect that defunding public education has had on our schools.

Don't forget to add taxpayers to the list of losers.  The mayor has a spotty labor management track record. He caved to unions early and we the taxpayers have been paying for it ever since.  City residents should always keep in mind how rich the BTU and other contracts are in wages and perks when you're wondering why it is taking  so long for your street to get plowed, or that pot hole to get to get fixed.  There is plenty of money sloshing around, it just gets misspent and the taxpayer along in this case the students lose.

Having experience as a teacher and admininstrtor in Boston...one of the things missing here is that yes, unions can be an obstacle to excellence...but so can an intrusive district, that strips autonomy from principals and forces schools to rely on dysfunctional systems that slow down the process of educating.  

If the country's experiment with statism has reached the point where even knee-jerk leftist like Lehigh are complaining about public employee unions and the collective bargaining process, then there might be hope for America.

Scott I usually agree with you but this fetishization with charter schools its going reach diminishing returns soon.There is just no magic bullet to student achievement. And hiring people off the street at low wages isn't the answer.Young, energetic know-littles are not the solution. Teach for America "teachers" all want in the union eventually.Thank the stars that we have  unions In this country.I'm going to guess you've never set foot in an urban classroom Scott.Its a different job than teaching in the suburbs.Praise to the teachers, praise the Boston Teachers Union, praise to Richard Stutman. Paul Grogan is a corporatist who wouldn't know how to teach his way out of a paper bag.He's a bad man who couldn't care less about kids. He's an armchair quarterback and a pompous jerk.(I would have preferred the A word).

The problem here is not about negotiating in favor of one side or the other. This situation has arisen because of the emasculation of state budgets by a recession. A quicker resolution and a better outcome for teachers and students would come if the proper investments was available. It isn't so so everybody takes sides depending on whose ox you want to gore. Shortchanging education to any degree halts our forward push to become a more prosperous nation.

Education and health care suffer from the same problem.  Neither can be outsourced to third world/slave labor.  As a result, the perception of cost value in the marketplace is totally skewed.  An iPhone looks like a much better deal than a trip to the doc, or the cost of running a school.  Duh.  It is a better deal because they're built in sweatshops or worse.  This leaves all of the American public blind to the true cost of education.  Unfortunately Scott seems to have fallen prey to this same delusion.  The public wants to buy a first class education system on a fifth class budget.  People don't want to pay taxes, but they want the perfect school.  People don't want to pay insurance premiums, but they want world class health care.  They want the kids to come home from school brilliant at the end of the day.  They want to walk into the doctor and have a magic wand touch them, so they can leave perfectly healthy.  And they don't want to pay for any of it.  Usually I agree with Scott, but he missed the boat on this one.  This is not about unions.  The teachers union is only the messenger on this one.  The message is that there ain't no free lunch.  

Here here. Unions have been fantastic, wonderful institutions to fight for safe working conditions, 40 hour work day, child labor laws. I'm talking about the 1930's and 40's. The modern day Unions are all about bargaining power for outsized salaries and benefits, political power and bankrupting cities and states.

Scot--your argument is sooooo tired. The system worked. Stutman and Menino  reached a fair agreement. Who are you to say that because the school day was not shortened, we are worse off. Many people want the school day extended merely as a means to get something for nothing. Guys like Scot, know it alls like Mr.Grogan, whose salary is $590,000 plus benefits, and Sam Tyler who works for State St. Bank always know best. Just ask them. 

Guys, Here's what the defenders of the BTU and the status quo have to come to grips with: Charters schools are doing a better job for the sasme per pupil amount. (Plus, they are financing their own buildings from that sum, so they really are doing a better job for less.) One big reason is that they have longer days and longer years. Since we get that from charters for the same price that only gets us a 6-6.5 hour day from our traditional school teachers, a taxpayer has to conclude that charters are a great deal. It's become clear we are not going to be able to change the traditional school system. That's a shame, but it is nevertheless a reality. Given that reality, I think every urban district family who wants a charter slot should have one available. Kids are too important to say, well, the union doesn't want more charters or a longer day, so that's that. Scot

With respect Scot, I disagree. Although abuses by union leaders, and selfishness by certain individuals, can bring down the process, ultimately the key to better schools is twofold. First, parents. A parent who does not value education, and does not value manners and the like, will have children who don't want to be in school, and don't care about disrupting things for the rest of the students. If you would expect a teacher to be a surrogate parent then take those children away from their underperforming 'real' parents. Second, authority. The reason private schools and charter schools perform better is that parents (and most of the time their children) want to be there and want to learn. I went to a  Catholic school and had a great education because I wanted it, and so did my parents. We had some troublemakers, and they were expelled. Give public schools more leverage in expelling those who belong in a locked, supervised setting anyway, and you will see improvement.

With regard to connecting student test results to teacher performance, I'm reminded of a segment from the past Pat Whitley/Marjorie Claprood radio show.  Yes, that was a time ago but I believe the issue then has relevance now. They had a math teacher who was then teaching in Lexington, MA at the time of his being on their show.  He also had been a teacher in a lower socio-economic suburb of Boston ( sorry, exact city escapes my memory ) for several years before teaching math in Lexington.  His argument at the time was that while overall test scores for his students was better in Lexington he was the same math teacher as he was in the other community.  He stated emphaticaly that he did not suddenly become better in Lexington.  He proceeded to civilly and respectfully point to the differences in the socio-economice issues between the two communities.  While I feel that student performance must be included in teacher performance, it's the ratio of that factor to several others that must be fairly negotiated.  

I do not think teachers should be alloweddcx to be uniionized -same with any public entity. The arrangement is too perverse and, as has been repeatedly shown, ripe for abuse.

"a painstaking 2009 Harvard-MIT study gave the lie to those oft-repeated rationalizations."

What this study ignores is that the student who won the charter lottery ended up in a class with other charter school students.  These students can be asked to leave if they don't perform, and are far less likely to have special needs than those in the public school.   Their parents value education enough to enroll them, are required to attend meetings, and are stable enough to keep them there.  The student who lost the charter lottery is in a class with students who may have been asked to leave a charter school, whose special needs were deemed better suited to services provided in public school, whose parents didn't put the effort into selecting the best school, might be unwilling to attend meetings or unable to maintain a stable enough family life to even get their child to school very often.  It is hardly valid to compare test scores of students in such completely different class settings.  

Don't forget that the per pupil cost of public schools includes the huge costs of educating severe special needs students, which is not a responsibility of charter schools.

Teachers don't like ineffective and lazy teachers in their schools.  Principals need tools for evaluating them.  But don't forget that in Boston schools last year, many teachers were not evaluated at all in accordance with the the contractual  requirement.  This is an appalling lack of leadership by administration, as they are not even attempting to use what tools they have.  There are so many variables in a classroom that test scores are unlikely to be an accurate measure of teacher quality.

I agree with the general concept of unions getting in the way of reforms that make sense. However, the problem is the teachers union refuses to be 'singled out' from all other public unions in this effort, and on that front I don't blame them. Only when we are willing to insist on the same things for police, fire etc. will you get some cooperation from the teachers union. You think its hard to get rid of a bad teacher? Try getting rid of a bad cop or fireman...impossible. You want a teacher to work an extra 45 mins with no extra pay as proposed? With the police, that is an automatic 4 hrs pay. So by all means fix the damn problem that is public unions, but you will not do so singling out the largely female teachers union just because you think you can.

Mr. Lehigh, you left out a very important fact about charter schools; they do not have to take special education students - and they don't.

Scot; While it may be true that the new BTU agreement does not include longer work days,I don't think that it is fair to characterize the new agreement as one sided. The BTU conceded a new evaluation policy (under pressure of a stricter one being imposed on them). That was the big issue for critics in the past. Let's see how ths plays out over this contract term. The union was able to wrangle more social workers, nurses, and other support staff in exchange for the new evaluation program. I'm just wondering how many charter schools need the same level of social workers and psych. personnel. I have mentioned it before, but my impression is that studies have shown that longer days don't always mean better results. I don't know how old your kids are, but in my town, many high school students are up until 11:00 or 12:00 finishing homework, now. If we add to the school day, they will have to quit sports (or other activities), just to squeeze in the work. On top of that, extra help for struggling students is offered after school, what happens to that? Do they fall further behind? Finally, comparing Chicago to Boston may not be fair. I believe that Boston is one of the highest performing urban school districts (and Chicago one of the lowest). If this is true, then shouldn't Boston teachers be the highest compensated (or so say all of the people who demand stricter evaluations).

Soory for the OT post, but I know Scot will never make a correction and tthis study has been a key source for many of his recent columns:

The Tax Policy Center authors—Samuel Brown, William Gale and Adam Looney, the last a former Obama Administration economist—concluded that Mr. Romney's tax plan was "mathematically impossible" and therefore to avoid increasing the deficit he would have to dip into the lower-income brackets for more revenue.

But it turns out the authors made selective and speculative assumptions and even invented tax details that Mr. Romney has never endorsed. In a follow-up paper on August 16, they conceded that they were merely looking at "the broad implications" of Mr. Romney's reform.

Later in August, Harvard economist and Romney adviser Martin Feldstein published his own calculations in these pages. He concluded, "Since broadening the tax base would produce enough revenue to pay for cutting everyone's tax rates, it is clear that the proposed Romney cuts wouldn't require any middle-class tax increase, nor would they produce a net windfall for high-income taxpayers. The Tax Policy Center and others are wrong to claim otherwise."

In still another walkback, Messrs. Brown, Gale and Looney concede again that "both Feldstein and we use stylized reforms that could not be implemented in practice" and that the whole debate "over what is or isn't possible"—er, the debate they started—"distracts from the more important question of what the Romney plan actually is."

Egged on by the likes of the Tax Policy Center, the media are demanding an absurd level of detail from Mr. Romney that no candidate in history has ever been required to offer. (What will you do about the tax treatment of municipal bond interest?) Meanwhile, Mr. Obama is awarded with a get-out-of-policy-jail-free card for his budget that proposes to take on debt indefinitely until the economy crashes. A middle-class tax increase is far more likely—we'd say a certainty—under Mr. Obama's plan than it is under Mr. Romney's.

BeGolf:

Here, I think you omit the key detail of Marty Feldstein's study: In making his assertion that Mitt's plan is achievable, he was looking at the totality of deductions down to the $100,000 income level. The Tax Policy Center, in its study, said Romney couldn't accomplish his goals without hitting families making under $250,000 and even $200,000. I've asked the Romney campaign several times if it is Mitt's intent to eliminate deductions for those making $100,000 or more. They haven't answered that question. But if it is, don't you think they should say so? I'm not sure how people would react if they were told it is indeed Romney's plan to close deductions for those making, saqy, $125,000 or $150,000, but if that is the plan, shouldn't he say so?

Scot

Guys,

Just to clear up a couple of things: The Harvard-MIT study compared kids who had won a spot in a charter with kids who had applied but had not. In other words, the same type of kids, same type of parent, with one group randomly selected, in effect, for charters, and the others (in effect), randomly assigned to BPS traditional schools. (That controls for things like parental involvement, socioeconomic background, &tc. It's about as good a study as is possible in policy evaluation. It just compared the two groups of kids -- those who won a charter spot and those who did not -- and their scores in different educational environments. It showed large gains for the charter kids. They essentially went from a Boston public school achievement level to a Brookline public school achievement level. Such a study doesn't allow one to say that the difference is special ed kids or english language learners, or any other differences.  Because it's randomized, it has controlled for all that.

Now, people can argue all they want over charters better educate kids, but I think commonsense tells us that if you spent an extra 1.5 to 2 hours a day in school, you will learn more than if you only have a shorter day.

Which brings us back to the central point here: Charters are providing that longer day (and longer year) for the same per pupil expenditure that only gets us a shorter day in the traditional BPS schools.

Scot

Begolf?

RedSox:

The extra school time that comes from a longer day and year is obviously the biggest difference between charters and traditional schools. Over the course of even a traditional school year, if you attend a longer-day charter, it's like going to school for an extra 50-55 days each year. So it defies commonsense to contend that that's not the big reason for higher achievement.

But just for the fun of it, let's suppose you are right and the big reason is the like-minded students and the charter atmosphere. There are thousands of other students who would like to be in charters. By your own lights, if those students could be there,  they would do better. That being the case, shouldn't we have more charters?

Scot

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-reply-from-martin-feldstein.html - his reply.

The final objection is to my use of the $100,000 level to show that the middle class (i.e., those below $100,000 AGI) would experience no tax increases. The $100,000 level corresponds to 21 percent of all taxable returns and a significantly smaller fraction of all households.  I think it is very reasonable to say that people in that high-income group are not the “middle class.” The TPC focus on those with AGI over $200,000 limits that group to the top 4 million taxpayers who are three percent of all returns and five percent of all taxable returns

Is the whole Middle East and Africa on fire? Wow.

Another fine mess ollie

From Egan-Jones, which downgraded the US for the first time ever last July, two weeks ahead of S&P: "Up, up, and away - the FED's QE3 will stoke the stock market and commodity prices, but in our opinion will hurt the US economy and, by extension, credit quality. Issuing additional currency and depressing interest rates via the purchasing of MBS does little to raise the real GDP of the US, but does reduce the value of the dollar (because of the increase in money supply), and in turn increase the cost of commodities (see the recent rise in the prices of energy, gold, and other commodities). The increased cost of commodities will pressure profitability of businesses, and increase the costs of consumers thereby reducing consumer purchasing power. Hence, in our opinion QE3 will be detrimental to credit quality for the US.

Does society (or the state or city) feel that a longer school day is so important for students that they are prepared to pay teachers more their time? The NY Times just carried a study showing teachers are still not paid as well as other professionals are. How many extra hours do you feel teachers should work at school without extra pay? Please clarify and be specific. When I taught, my work continued at home, and that went for weekends too. Of course there will be no unions in the charters. Will be interesting to see how charter teachers can make a career of it, support their families and send their kids to college. Magic I guess. Our best public schools in Massachusetts are unionized, and it is union teachers who have made our schools the most highly ranked in the country--that is, if you feel student standardized test scores provide valid rankings. No, not all charters do better than public schools--about 20% do, most do about the same, and 20% do worse. Scott, can we just say that you don't like unions and call it a day.

Local Observer:

Four points:

1. BTU teachers are already very well paid.

2. The BTU gets more money every year. Although I think they will have one year without a raise in this contract, they generally always get yearly raises in addition to their automatic step increases. And there's more $$$ if they want to take courses. And longevity awards for older teachers. That's not the way it works in the private economy.

3. The BPS (school department) was willing to give them more for teaching an extra 45 minutes; BPS offered a stipend; BTU demanded a set hourly rate.

4. Charter schools deliver more time than BPS was looking for from the BTU -- and at the same per pupil rate that the BTU gets for one of the shortest urban days in the nation.

My conclusion is that we need more charter schools.

Scot

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/germany-opines-obamas-middle-east-policy-ruins

Scott, my question remains, would you support a similar approach to wring more productivity out of all public employee who are unionized?  By that I mean, would you be in favor of private FF companies to replace current public unionized ones? They already exist and generally cost about 52% of the equiv public version to do the same job.  I'm trying to figure out if its a teacher/female thing with you, or all unions.

Second, would you be willing to work 20% more hours for 5% more pay at your job?

While you are right about the set increases etc, you leave out the fact that the high end for a teacher is much lower than the equiv high end for a similarly educated person in the private sector.  How little can you expect someone with a masters degree and 10 years experience to work for?  In MA a starting toll collector makes more than a starting teacher with a masters.  Hmmm.  A first year cop makes about 140% of a first year teacher.  Hmmm. 

I'm with you on fixing the union problem.  But you seem perhaps to simply have a problem with teachers.  I'd love to see if you have it in you to go after the others (read:  Men).

rioters swarmed over the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia, tore down the American flag and replaced it with the black flag of al Qaeda: I

RedSox,

In a word, yes. I've long advocated CDS (competitive service delivery), which would let private firms bid for jobs done by city agencies and win the work if they could do it more efficiently and meet quality metrics. I think public payrolls should be about performing necessary governmental functions at a fair and reasonable cost,  not one that is inflated by a lack of competition.

And I was a big opponent of the over-the-top raise award the firefighters got a few years ago and urged the council to reject it. (That got me fireworks set off outside my house at 3 a.m.) And I've long argued that police details are a huge waste of taxpayers money. So I do think I'm consistent on these issues.

And as for myself, I know journalism may be a little different because print is under pressure, but we are all working a lot harder than we were five or 10 years ago, and we know it's not realistic to expect automatic annual raises.

I do think, with teachers, one has to pro rate the salary for the part of the years they don't work. I'm not saying it is not a reasonably challenging job, at least when done well, but it's also one that affords you more vacation than the average person gets. And that provides strong benefits.

Scot

RedSox:

One more thing: I'm also against the Project Labor Agreements, which let unions shut out competition from non-union construction firms.

Fair enough.  I can live with consistency.  I agree with you for the most part, just feel like teachers are singled out because the job is more measurable, and more important, than most other public jobs, and quite honestly because its a female dominated profession that doesn't engage in the same tactics that would be used by some other public unions if the same changes were proposed. 

As for vacation time, fwiw, they end up getting about the same time off as the typical public employee, and slighty less than the typical FF.   Yup, slightly less when you figure it out.   But certainly more all around than the typical private sector employee for sure.

redsoxrule2000

"quite honestly because it's a female dominated profession" What kind of nonsense is that? You just set females back forty years. 

  Unions are obligated to defend the 10 percent who do not deserve their jobs along with the other 90 percent.

Guys,

For anyone interested, here's a link to the Boston Foundation study:

http://www.tbf.org/uploadedFiles/tbforg/Utility_Navigation/Multimedia_Library/Reports/InformingTheDebate_Final.pdf

Scot

Guys,

For anyone interested, here's a link to the Boston Foundation study:

http://www.tbf.org/uploadedFiles/tbforg/Utility_Navigation/Multimedia_Library/Reports/InformingTheDebate_Final.pdf

Scot

Guys,

For anyone interested, here's a link to the Boston Foundation study:

http://www.tbf.org/uploadedFiles/tbforg/Utility_Navigation/Multimedia_Library/Reports/InformingTheDebate_Final.pdf

Scot

Guys,

For anyone interested, here's a link to the Boston Foundation study:

http://www.tbf.org/uploadedFiles/tbforg/Utility_Navigation/Multimedia_Library/Reports/InformingTheDebate_Final.pdf

Scot

Guys,

For anyone interested, here's a link to the Boston Foundation study:

http://www.tbf.org/uploadedFiles/tbforg/Utility_Navigation/Multimedia_Library/Reports/InformingTheDebate_Final.pdf

Scot

Guys,

For anyone interested, here's a link to the Boston Foundation study:

http://www.tbf.org/uploadedFiles/tbforg/Utility_Navigation/Multimedia_Library/Reports/InformingTheDebate_Final.pdf

Scot

I hate to be the one to burst your bubble but did you ever wonder why charter schools have a much higher teacher turnover rate than their public school counterparts?  Are you aware that most charter school teachers attempt to form their own teacher unions within the first five years?  Do you know that the majority of "charter schools" are run by for-profit corporations?

After you digested that information you may want to remember that Boston schools were once filled with relatives and friends of Boston School committee members before the teachers unionized.  Prior to unionization, teachers could be replaced without cause, often to make rooom for the brother in law of a local politician!  Academic freedom was nonexistent in the classroom.  Classroooms were overcrowded with forty plus students and teachers were making subsistence level wages.  Is it any wonder that teachers don't want to give up what they've earned?

Teachers teach the neediest of our kids.  They often spend their own money for supplies, food and, sometimes, clothing for their students.  Granted there is a small percentage of clunkers in our schools, but the vast majority of our teachers work very hard and dedicate themselves to their students.

From the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) study in 2009:

"Some charters do better; the majority do the same or worse. CREDO also moved beyond individual student performance to examine the overall performance of charter schools across multiple subject areas. They found that while some charter schools do better than the traditional public schools that fed them, the majority do the same or worse. Almost one-fifth of charters (17 percent) performed significantly better (at the 95 percent confidence level) than the traditional public school. However, an even larger group of charters (37 percent) performed significantly worse in terms of reading and math. The remainder (46 percent) did not do significantly better or worse."

The BTU is an easy target for so-called educational reformers. Grogan and Tyler opine that Boston could not go as far as it should. Scott also takes a shot at the Union. Legislative intiatives are the answer, these reformers claim. They may be right. A legislative initiative to eliminate the property tax exemption of the non-profits would be a big educational reform. This would provide the City with a steady stream of revenue in the public school budget, and save taxpying families some real money. Such a legislative initiative could help fund real improvements of the kind the editorial staff called for, in the regular district schools, such as after school enrichhment programs.

Part 2 of 2

     In June of 2011, Dr. Johnson closed the Hyde Park Education Complex.  She moved “CASH” across town to the Cleveland School building, and dispersed students from the Engineering School and Social Justice to other BPS schools. Students were not supposed to be sent to underperforming turnaround schools.  Dr. Johnson and "her team" thought she could send these students into the empty pilot school seats.  That's when she found out that pilot and charter schools don’t have to "Backfill" in grades 10, 11, and 12!  Filling those empty seats would "change their community!"  The suspected deal Dr. Johnson made with these BPS cherry pickers was that they would accept students from Engineering and Social Justice High Schools, only if they had a B+ average and not 1 behavior problem!   

     Barbara Fields of the Black Educators Alliance of Massachusetts (BEAM), asked at the September, 2011 BPS School Committee meeting, for a breakdown of where the students from these closed schools went.  I would like to know the GPA's of those students selected to go to BPS "pilot and in-district charter schools" and I would like to know how many students were "counseled out" during the school year.  BEAM and I are still waiting for the answers! Maybe you could pull out that Press Pass and find out for us?     

Part 1 of 2

     Good news Scott!  You might not have heard, Boston Public Schools is the Number 1 urban school system in the United States! That was accomplished by the hard work of Boston Public School Teachers!  Massachusetts is the Number 1 school system in the United States!  If Massachusetts were a sovereign nation, we would be Number 3 in the world!  WOW! 

     I think you must not have all the facts.  Have you noticed, as I have, that in those communities that do not have exam schools, pilot, in-district charter schools, and now “innovation” schools, like the BPS, always make AYP?  Have you ever heard of schools in Lexington and Wellesley not making AYP?  No!  There is a reason for this, and it not that kids in those communities are smarter, or that their teachers are newer, better, innovative, creative, younger and cheaper TFA or BTR teachers!  It’s that all of the student populations, in communities that are making AYP, are in “heterogeneous” schools, unlike the Boston Public Schools.

     The BPS "Portfolio of Schools" (BPS words not mine) is comprised of 128 schools, 75 are traditional schools that take everyone, the BPS "other" schools, which include 3 exam schools, 21 pilot schools, 5 in-district charter schools, and 4 "innovation" schools, get to cherry pick students!  Now, segregation is when you impose the separation of a race or class of people from others or from a main body or group.  That is what is happening in the BPS.  Only this time the segregation is happening to SPED students, ELL students, and students found "not to be the right fit" for the schools philosophy (read behavior problems).  These BPS "other" schools will tell you that students are chosen by "lottery," but they don’t tell you that the price of a lottery ticket is an 11 page application.  These BPS "other" public schools, counsel out students, and send them back to BPS traditional schools, if "they are not the right fit!"   Here is a little BPS secret, these BPS "other" schools do not have to "BACKFILL" empty seats.   

Now if all BPS students were returned to traditional BPS public schools we would be making AYP.  It's time for the state and federal government to stop judging individual schools and start judging school systems!