Any day now we should be hearing about the number of NYC teachers in the 2005-06 school year who were given "U" ratings for unsatisfactory performance in the classroom. By some accounts, the numbers are expected to be much higher than usual. In the past, only a sliver of the city's 80,000 teachers were rated as unsatisfactory.

This will be interesting to watch. A few years ago, at a summit on fiscal equity in New York State, DNC Chairman Howard "The Scream" Dean gave a speech in which he urged people to back off the teachers unions. The problem, he said, wasn't that the collective bargaining agreements made it hard to fire bad teachers, it was that incompetent principals didn't know how to properly conduct evaluations so that bad teachers could be shown the door and quality would take root.

Others, like NYC Chancellor Joel Klein, have argued that the collective bargaining agreements triggered a long and uncomfortable journey for principals who gave out U ratings, such that they were better off giving crappy teachers "satisfactory" ratings so they could more easily get rid of them and make them some other school's problem. For his part, Klein urged principals not to play that game, to focus on handling evaluations properly.

On the ICE-UFT site linked above, a member of this dissident group of UFT unionists notes:

"No one could seriously argue that there are no unsatisfactory teachers in our system. The issue becomes, as we have said since the new contract was proposed, who decides. When a principal decides to target a teacher our new procedure makes it extremely difficult to prevent disciplinary action and eventual dismissal."

Seems like something both Dean and Klein would like. What I find curious about the debate, however, is the question of who gets to decide whether a teacher is unsatisfactory or not. If not the principal, who should it be? The UFT rep in the building? (Note: My understanding, which may not be entirely accurate, is that the union was rather realistic about this issue in the most recent negotiations.)

This spring I visited many charter schools (not in New York) that were owned and operated by teachers, some of them union members, some not. I'm finishing up a piece on them now. These educators essentially formed worker cooperatives, where classroom teachers literally run the show. This post by Norm Scott (hat tip to NYC Educator) has me thinking of this, along with all the other recent posts in the blogosphere from NYC teachers about how they would never in a million years want want to work the longer school day that is required at some NYC charter schools.

One of the things that struck me about the teacher-run worker cooperative charter schools was how productive their staff meetings were. They had to be. There were no administrators to handle the day-to-day problems/issues/hurdles that pop up in any school. Teachers were free to build a school they knew could work better, but they also had to deal with every piece of dung that hit the fan. Norm Scott's post about teacher-run charters in NYC is important, but we've got thousands of teachers here who seem to be pissed off about having to do potty patrols. How are they going to get sold on the idea that potty patrols would now be the least of their worries once they are running their own schools?

And if you think Eva Moskowitz would work you into the ground, what happens when you are the one responsible not only for your daily lesson plans, but putting the school's multi-million budget together, waking up the custodian from time to time, enforcing the school's discipline code, dealing with the heaploads of paperwork required by the state and city, confronting angry parents who don't always like your on-the-fly decisions, making sure the bus routes work for everyone, recruiting students, interviewing and hiring staff, etc., etc., etc.

To be sure, the teachers I spent time with in these teacher co-ops loved the freedom and they seemed absolutely driven by the desire to prove their ideas would work. I love that kind of chip on the shoulder. But they were also brutally honest about how much work it took. They worked around the clock, had meetings upon meetings. But they owned their school. Literally.

Teacher evaluations were sometimes difficult, because in some cases it meant getting rid of dead-weight teachers that were also your friends and partners. But the success of the schools, they all knew, depended on having a team of committed and successful teachers. The buck stopped with them, as they now had to do the difficult job of evaluating their own talent.

At one school, the teacher-owners actually voted to take a pay cut one year while they were constructing their school building because they felt it would allow them to build an extra lab that they felt was necessary for their students. It turned out they didn't need to take the pay cut, and as owners, they were able to restore their pay later on.

I guess my point is this: Norm Scott's idea about teacher-run schools is something I find very appealing. But when so many teachers seem to think it is a slap in the face to have to work a couple of days before Labor Day, how are they going to handle the massive amount of unpaid work that comes with it all year long?

By the way, I'm fairly certain the people at Education Evolving would be willing to work with any teams of teachers in NYC that want to put these kinds of ideas into action. Their founder, Ted Kolderie, is one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet.

UPDATE: Please see this update on this post.