Besides cyclical reading initiatives (and sometimes Math programs) that are pushed by outside interests, the district leadership has not provided ongoing information or resources to those who teach students.

Periodically, a few teachers in pilot schools will receive support in the teaching of writing or history from UC Berkeley, with sustained professional development by invitation only. There have been years when a single educator in Curriculum and Instruction had the responsibility to provide orientation to all new K – 12 teachers in each of these important subjects – Second Language Learning, Science, Social Sciences, Modern Languages, Physical Education, and the Arts.
Teachers have to fend for themselves and depend on their peers to find out what subject and grade level expectations are when they move from position to position. At the schools with small staffs and high turnover, there are few on-site funds of knowledge a new person might tap into.
The community continues to demand teachers that are knowledgable in their subject areas, and also demands that school district leadership and site administrators provide the leadership, resources, and guidance that lead to strong subject area instruction for OUSD students.

When the teachers do not know the content, cannot answer student questions and cannot hold class discussions all of the classroom management, nice person and other great qualities are worth little.

I really wish that teachers had to pass the CSET and CBEST if they change the grades they teach. The teacher would have at least been exposed to the material they are required to teach.

I would like to think that most of my principals would have chosen me, but the reality is that there is a lot of preference given to younger teachers these days. They are young, attractive, energetic, inexpensive and it is presumed they will never ask for a decent contract, never ask for the current contract agreements to be upheld, or disagree with a principal.

The reality is that they won’t stay long either, as they will soon be off to law school or whatever they decide they really wanted to do. Or they will move back to wherever they came from. And while they are fun to be around and well liked by all, they are not as a whole, any better than the average experienced teacher.

I remember how about 15 years ago there was such an outcry (“no fair”) over how all the high scoring schools had all the experienced teachers. Now nearly every school/principal is scrambling to have just the opposite. Amazing!

I do have to agree that the elephant in the room is teacher evaluations and how to have them be meaningful and result in improvement in student achievement. Mutual matching is not the answer to that issue though.

Oakland is doomed and it brings me no pleasure to say that.

Surely, whatever the proposal, it has logistical and substantive shortcomings. Once again, elusive perfection is the enemy of progress – for ‘progressives.’ Go figure.

I’m sure whatever is on offer is no panacea. More likely, it’s a relatively innocuous incremental step – far less controversial than rewarding excellence with pay, firing poor performers or God forbid giving direct attention to a teacher’s contribution to student performance.

No, whatever this mutual match is, it doesn’t get at the heart of the issue – how to improve the performance of individual teachers and the profession as whole. They’ll never get to these third rail issues because they can’t get to the first rail because they’re off the tracks in a ditch.

Meanwhile, they’re competitors have stronger engines, are more agile and see innovation as part of the job.

Guess where the parents will go? Hmmmm?

First of all, it is nonsense to suggest that principals have no say over their staff. In fact, while they may “inherit” a staff when they first arrive at a school, they are largely, and often unilaterally, responsible for selecting new staff. While a school with only new teachers (less than 4 or 5 years in OUSD) might, in theory, lose everyone in a mass layoff scenario, such as almost happened last spring, in most schools, it might be one or two positions out of dozens or even a hundred or more at the big high school.

It is time to stop thinking schools as some sort of franchise setting of OUSD, where the principal is the “boss” of a business. This is why the business model does not work. I worked at one school for 10 years; we had four principals. The average duration of a principalship in OUSD is about 2-3 years. Teachers usually stay at a school much longer than administrators. Or at least they used to, prior to the introduction of these “planned obsolescence” programs, like Teach for America, where the teachers arrive with the intent of leaving 2 years later. One TFA at a school in OUSD left at winter break and did not even finish the semester.

I like the *theory* of “Mutual Matching,” because it sounds like everyone should be active in selecting the school and the new teacher. But, the reality and practice of MM is probably going to play out quite differently if and when it is implemented.

I see no protection against favoritism and bias. I have seen, in almost every principal I have ever worked with (and at 21+ years of service to OUSD, I have probably had more than a dozen different administrators), and I have seen opportunities go to their special pets, their friends, and in the case of one administrator, members of her family and her church. I also feel that most principals will not hire a teacher who is significantly older than they are. In my current situation, I am probably 17 or 18 years older than my principal, and have twice as much experience as an educator. And I am the only one on the staff who is. Coincidence? I don’t think so. All of the new positions on our staff this year (a full third of the teachers left voluntarily at the end of the spring 2011 semester) were filled by TFAs or teachers with 3 or fewer years of experience, all many years younger than the principal (and several decades younger than me). To be honest, I would like to see some “Mutual Matching” when assigning principals to a school, and making the administrator more beholden to the staff.

I watched the videos on the district MM link, and saw our new Associate Superintendent of Human Resources, talk about teachers (and presumably all employees) as “Human Capital,” which I find demeaning and insulting. She also seems to feel there will be very few “unmatched” teachers. However, I think there will be many, and these will be, by and large, teachers at the higher end of the salary schedule. Although she says that teacher salaries would be subsidized up to the average salary, those of us at the top, make $15k more than the average, so it only really mitigates the financial impact for teachers up to maybe about 10 years of service. It is so strange to work in a district where experience is actually a liability rather than an asset, and where people actually assume experience = incompetence.

It is important to consider that while there are some teachers who might not be “matched” with any school, there are also schools that will also not be matched, so, as Gordon noted above, there will, inevitably, be some folks who are just placed.

And rather than kicking to the curb the teacher who may not be an effective classroom teacher, why not give these often very talented and knowledgeable teachers opportunity to work in curriculum, professional development and assessment. Most have a wealth of information that can ONLY come from years of experience. Yet, I see more and more teachers with three or four years of experience becoming trainers, or being given non-classroom assignments in these areas, where they have such limited experience.

As someone whose position was eliminated due to budget cuts, and who was offered and forced to choose from a short list of positions I would not have chosen voluntarily (or I could have quit, as I am frequently reminded), I can certainly agree that the current system does not work very well. However, as Churchill once said about democracy; “It’s the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

Having given more than 21 years of my life to OUSD, I actually do feel “entitled” to continue working. I have worked damned hard, taken advantage of every opportunity, and been considered by most administrators to be one of the finest teachers in the district, although my current assignment is not one I would have chosen. Because of this, I have applied for many positions for which I would probably be a better “fit,” but, I am guessing that, at least in part due to my salary, which is at the high end of the salary schedule, I have been passed over for far less qualified teachers in term of experience, credentials, knowledge, expertise and recommendations. This reflects the deep-seated inequities built into our current system but I am not sure would be at all mitigated by MM.

There is simply no guarantee that the teacher will be a good fit, or the teacher will want to work at the school. Like most complex relationships in life, the only way to tell is to try the situation out. And I would say that Mutual Matching, if an when it is implemented, will be probably no more likely to produce “matches made in heaven” than the current system.

I also feel that many of the objections to seniority are made by those who do not have it. Teachers do need job protection. Unions exist to protect their rights, including what happens if a school closes or position is eliminated, but the truth is that every protection of teachers’ rights, is also a protector of children’s rights, such as class size, to name the most obvious example. Thirty-two kids per class at the high school level is 160 kids per day. And it is an insane number to deal with. (Just consider, if a teacher spent only 5 minutes per student grading papers, that is over 13 hours. How many times per week can a teacher realistically do that? While it is true that not all 160 kids will turn work in, it is wrong to assume that the non-turned in work does not all take teacher time, such as speaking with the student, tutoring, and/or calling home.) Kids get much less attention than with a more manageable number. Yet if this were not built into the contract, classrooms would soon be standing room only (and I can’t even count the number of times I have not had enough desks or chairs for all students during the first few weeks (18 school days) when they are still “balancing” classes, and I have had 40 or more in the room.)

I do NOT want to see a mass layoff of first /second / third year teachers each year. But it is no less wrong to lay off more experienced teachers who may have deeply invested in OUSD. The trouble is that we are fighting over the crumbs of a crumbling and inequitable system, instead of challenging the system to change and create a system where teachers can serve students (not clients) and their families in an environment that stimulates effective teaching and active learning.

And finally, a few other matters worth addressing in this general context: what is the definition of a great teacher, or even a reasonably good one? (And how many of the teacher-bashers on this blog would last long in a classroom? And how many excel at their jobs?). I think there are many ways to be a good teacher, and even good teachers have bad days; maybe bad weeks, sometimes bad years. It is hard to be consistently excellent, five shows a day, five days a week, 180 days per year (at the secondary level). The insistence on only “great” teachers, as opposed to good or even competent ones,, and all this nonsense about “value added” teaching really does very little to help improve the lives of students, who themselves also play a part in their own academic success.

Teachers should not be criticized, as I have seen in this very blog, for example, for leaving when the dismissal bell rings. How do you know where I am going? Maybe to pick up my own children. Maybe to the gym, so I can maintain my health. Maybe to a work-related meeting off-site. Maybe to sit in a café, rather than my windowless classroom, to grade papers and plan in more pleasant environment. Or maybe just to have a moment to myself. The idea, in general, that teachers who even presume to have a life beyond the classroom, are somehow lazy or unproductive or don’t care is an idea that needs to be thoroughly discredited. And the idea that our work day is only 6 hours long, also ridiculous. I literally put in 30 hours a week OUTSIDE the classroom, as well as working through lunch most days. (Maybe once a month, I actually do something for myself during lunch, but usually… I don’t have time!). Contrary to what some believe, it is simply untrue that after the first few years, there is little to do outside instruction. For one thing, I do not know many teachers who wind up with the same assignment, class, content area, grade, year after year. Expectations change. Standards change. Technology changes. The district changes its mind about “scorecards,” and “dashboards,” and promotion requirements, ad nauseam, all the time. The job is simply endlessly, relentlessly demanding.

It is a very complex job. It takes years to learn, and even then, challenges will come up in new and unexpected ways. Mutual Matching will not guarantee the perfect teacher nor the perfect school to work in. It will, however, undermine seniority, and create more and more schools with all or mostly less experienced teachers.

How about this headline: “OUSD Releases All Experienced Teachers and Replaces Them With Beginners.” Because that is the way things are going.

http://www.aei.org/events/2011/06/08/special-interest-teachers-unions-and-american-education-event/

Decades of the same lack of performance has exposed most of the union arguments as questionable. The district hierarchy is not any better, being too big, cumbersome,expensive, and possibly unnecessarily overstaffed.

Responses to the three preceding comments.
To Turanga_Teach (#33): Perfectly put! I completely agree that the mutual matching is a distraction from the real issues that have to be addressed if we’re really serious about quality schools for every student. As “Wiley” says in comment #11, mutual matching is a manifestation of scapegoating “bad teachers” for the root problems in public education.
To Wiley (#32): I sure hope that the “buzz” you heard was wrong, the buzz “that OEA leadership might be overeager to agree with some type of pilot inspite [sic] of what was expressed” by OEA members at its recent forum. In fact, no teacher I’ve talked with even knew about the first pilot OEA supposedly agred to last fall, which, according to one of its involuntary participants, was extraordinarily demeaning. The first they heard about it was in the Chronicle’s article on mutual matching a few days ago.
To J.R. (#34): Your claim that “the union drags their feet kicking and screaming opposing every single measure of reform” could not be more wrong! OEA has consistently called for the “systemic change” you say, is needed. They’ve expressed it at countless school board meeting, rallies, fliers, in bargaining, etc., for nearly a decade now. Go to OEA’s website, oaklandea.org and click on the “Create Success” link near the top of the list on the right. It takes you to a list of “ten proven ways to ensure student success.” That’s OEA’s vision for fundamental change. But that vision hasn’t received any of the media attention given to mutual matching and other phony reforms. Maybe that’s because it’s just the opinion of “bad teachers,” as opposed to the wisdom of education experts like Bill Gates and Eli Broad.