UESF News Dennis Kelly serves as Lowell High School's building representative for
the union of the school's teachers and educational paraprofessionals (United
Educators of San Francisco), so when the English teacher says "Every teacher
and school employee is entitled to additional pay," we are not surprised. But
when he cites this belief as an argument for his Lowell colleagues to forego
a bonus they've recently qualified for, well, that's news!
The reward in question is the Schoolsite Employee Performance Bonus. The
award, given for the first time this year, goes to the staff of public
schools recording a prescribed improvement in their Academic Performance
Index (API). The API derives from the school's results on the Stanford 9
tests that all California public schools must administer under the STAR
(Standardized Testing and Reporting) Program. (In case you or your kids
haven't been around the schools lately, all of this is the result of the
school reform bill the Legislature passed in 1999.)
"This action places labor at the front of this issue. Public power and public
utilities have become a necessary benefit for working people," states Dennis Kelly,
UESF Secretary who chairs the Law and Legislative Committee
of the Labor Council.
Although Lowell achieved the second-highest API in the state the first
time around, its students still managed to improve their score and qualify
the school's staff -- everyone from the janitors to the principal -- for a
$591.32 bonus, as well as an equal amount for school wide use.
Winning academic honors is certainly not a new thing for Lowell, long the
city's most highly rated public high school, but an award paying the staff
for the students' test scores is. So, eight members of the school's Union
Building Committee (UBC) decided to look a gift horse in the mouth and found
"a wrong-headed attempt to sneak 'merit pay' into the school system," that
rewards them for being "fortunate enough to work with the most committed and
dedicated students."
Spanish teacher Sandra Mack finds the whole process "distasteful -- a
political test not an educational test. It's not diagnostic. Teachers get
nothing back." History teacher Ken Tray laments the fact that "Testing deems
schools failures when they deal with students with immense difficulties. I
just don't think I necessarily became a better teacher when I came here from
Mark Twain High School."
The group suggests donating all or part of the bonuses to a college
scholarship fund for students from other city schools not receiving any bonus
money. Since the school year was just about over by the time this
scholarship plan came together, no one knows how many people will sign on,
but it appears Lowell's principal will be one of them.
Since improvement over past performance triggers the Schoolsite Employee
Performance Bonus, schools starting out with lower scores ought to have just
as good a chance of qualifying for it as the schools on top, but the first
awards didn't work out that way. San Francisco's three bonus-winning high
schools were among the top five scorers the prior year, and the three winning
middle schools were in the top four. But at least this means that when Ken
Tray claims, "the problem is that what's being treated as a crisis of
education is really a crisis of poverty,"he can't be accused of sour grapes.
Certainly, if we have been experiencing an education crisis, it doesn't
seem to have greatly affected the overall economy, but as the income gap in
American society has expanded, it is the nation's public schools that are
expected to bridge it. And the simple fact is that, if anything, teachers at
the "failing" schools generally have the harder jobs than their counterparts
in the more academically advanced schools. So, congratulations to the Lowell
teachers who are willing to inject a note of realism into the school reform
discussion -- even though it costs them money.
Tom Gallagher is a member of the Executive Board of the United Educators
of San Francisco.
See:
Lowell teachers reject bonus
By Tom Gallagher --From the July 12, 2001 San Francisco Examiner
Teachers rejecting test score bonuses: Hundreds donate 'bribe' in protest
, S.F. Chronicle, 7/30/01
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