[etni] Mr Asa-els response
- From: Sharon Tzur <sharontzu5@xxxxxxx>
- To: etni <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 15:33:00 +0200
Below is Mr. Asa-els' response to my letter together with my comments. (My
comments are below).
Dear Sharon
The teachers were presented with a serious reform plan, and rejected it.
Your union's alternative "plan", which you hail, is but a poorly disguised
attempt to gain everything and concede nothing. To say that I myself am
calling the Dovrat reform " a dead horse," and should therefore altogether
endorse Ran Erez's, is to say that the thief and his victim might as well
partner, because the victim has anyhow been dispossessed.
The fact is that your union refuses to empower principals to define and reward
excellence, and that contradicts the most basic principles of sound management.
A properly empowered principal will provide his teachers with proper work
space, because his school's success, and therefore his career, will benefit
from this. I urge you tour the private sector and get your own impression of
this dynamic.
As for vacations, the fact is teachers get much more vacation time than the
rest of the salaried population, not to mention the self-employed. And you'd
me amazed to see how routinely work in other industries invades one's
afternoons, evenings, and midnights too.
I say this with great pain, as a parent to students and as a member in a family
laden with hard working and dedicated teachers, many of whom suffer from the
system's refusal to adopt the most basic principles of meritocracy. Had the
Dovrat Report been adopted, teachers would once again be respected, as people
whose income rises according to their dedication, quality and output.
Sincerely
Amotz Asa-El
My response
Asa El-
The teachers were presented with a serious reform plan, and rejected it.
me - The issue on the table at present is not the Dovrat plan. That would merit
a whole other discussion. So are you trying to say is that now that teachers
have rejected the Dovrat plan, they should be punished and accept whatever
offer is make to them, even if this offer will not lead to a better educational
system?
Asa-El
Your union's alternative "plan", which you hail, is but a poorly disguised
attempt to gain everything and concede nothing.
Me
The union plan for reform, “Oz U’Tmurah” adopts some of the
ideas you favor – teachers spending more hours in school in return for higher
salaries (which is conceding something). However, I argued that teachers cannot
teach effectively if they have too many frontal hours to teach and too many
students. You did not address this issue. Why not compare the workload of a
teacher in Israel to the workload in other countries – in terms of the number
of pupils we teach, the number of classes we teach, the number of hours we
teach frontally, and the number of days we teach in the year. Why not compare
our teaching our to those of our colleagues in university?
Asa-el
To say that I myself am calling the Dovrat reform " a dead horse," and
should therefore altogether endorse Ran Erez's, is to say that the thief and
his victim might as well partner, because the victim has anyhow been
dispossessed.
me-
First, as to the insult implied in your metaphor. Rejecting the Dovrat Plan (a
plan which, in my opinion, did not address the major ills facing our school
system… but that is another issue) does not make a person a thief of a
criminal. Criticism of the Dovrat plan came not only from teachers but from
many experts in the field of education.
I am not saying that you should automatically endorse Ran Erez and/or his plan.
I am saying that you should address the issues now being raised by the union:
teachers’ salaries, classroom size, and the returning to the students of
teaching hours that have been cut. You have stated that you agree with Dovrat’s
recommendation of capping class size to 35 students per class. Are you now
taking a stand against that idea merely because it is being forwarded by Ran
Erez?
Asa-el
The fact is that your union refuses to empower principals to define and reward
excellence, and that contradicts the most basic principles of sound management.
A properly empowered principal will provide his teachers with proper work
space, because his school's success, and therefore his career, will benefit
from this. I urge you tour the private sector and get your own impression of
this dynamic.
Me -
There is nothing currently keeping principals from providing teachers with
better work condition – and yet, in my school, there are currently two
computers available for teacher use (and we share them with the sherut li-umi
girls) and no quiet workspace whatsoever. This is the norm in most schools. The
principal did build four small corners in a room adjoining the teacher’s room
for that purpose, but it quickly became an area for teacher/student and
teacher/parent conferences (being that there was no other place for that
function). Conditions for teachers always seem to get last priority (and even I
admit that when there are not enough classrooms to serve the needs of the
school, rooms for teachers takes second place). I do all my work for school on
my own computer at home, which I bought with my own money. Ditto for ink,
paper, printer, and tape recorder – including a double cassette tape which I
need to make recordings for L.D students, and tons of books for my professional
advancement. I even know of schools which ration out the number of markers that
teachers are given.
Most principals have no career aspirations beyond being a principal. I’m sure
they all try to do a good job. However, they are just human beings, and can
only stretch resources so far.
You urge me to look at the private sector to get an impression of meritocracy
at work. It seems to me that you have some sort of idealized rose-colored
glasses picture of the private sector. In your view, the secretary who gets the
job is always the one who types most efficiently, and not someone whose
attractiveness flatters the boss’s ego, the candidate who gets the job is
always the one who is most qualified, and not the one who knows the boss from
reserves or who is a third cousin of the boss’s sister, workers in high tech
are not forced to work grueling 12-14 hour days and threatened with dismissal
if they refuse, there are not tens of thousands of competent workers who are
fired after 11 months so that employers will not have pay them any social
benefits. If meritocracy really worked, women would not always be earning
considerably lower salaries than men. If the managers’ concern about providing
decent working conditions for his workers was an overriding concern, cashiers
would not be forced to man 8 hour shifts without being allowed to sit down
(until public outrage put a stop to that practice).
Even if the private sector did present some ideal, you haven’t addressed even
one problem relating to meritocracy in education which I wrote in my letter. It
is a mistake to think that whatever works in the private sector will also work
in the public sector. In the private sector, it is far easier to quantify
success than in education. It is extremely difficult to measure how good a
teacher is? What yardstick should be used?
I’d also like to point out that no where else in the public sector is
meritocracy the principle upon which salaries are based. Are nurses paid
according to “output”? Are doctor’s salaries tied to “quality”? Perhaps doctors
in internal medicine should be paid less than doctors in Ear Nose and Throat
because the former lose more patients per year than the later? How do you
measure the output of a nurse? By the speed in which she distributes the meds?
How do you measure “bedside manner”?
Furthermore, teachers in most countries are paid according to educational
background and years of experience – not my meritocracy (due, not doubt, to the
difficultly of measuring a teacher’s “output”) – and yet Israel is almost at
the bottom of the list in terms of teacher’s salaries – with teachers earning
considerably less than our colleagues in other countries.
I have already stated that I am not against meritocracy, but I think its
implementation in education (and in other fields of public service) is
problematic. Principals already do possess a great deal of power over teachers,
and believe me, principals have a way of making life unpleasant for poor
teachers. In my experience, many poor teachers simply leave because facing the
students becomes so unpleasant for them. There are also teachers who are burnt
out and who want to leave the system; the union has always sought an increase
the number of teachers who are permitted to go on early retirement.
I am all in favor of brainstorming and setting up mechanisms to penalize
teachers who are not doing their job – especially when it comes to aspects of
the job that are quantifiable. For example, teachers’ pay should be docked when
they do not show up for meetings. However, I would not favor giving principals
unbridled freedom to determine teacher’s pay, for reasons that I stated in my
previous letter (reasons that you did not address).
If anyone needs empowering in the school it is the teachers, and
administration, visa vis the students! In the past, a student could not go
from one grade to the next with three or more failures. This is no longer true.
Students are given no reason to work hard as their grades have no meaning
(except for their bagrut grades). Students are not supposed to be given a
school grade for bagrut with less than 70% attendance, but this directive is
totally ignored, and students are given school grades despite attendance
records of less than 50%. After all, the reputation of the school and the
principal is mainly a function of the success rate in the bagrut exams, so
keeping students who have not attended school from taking the bagrut is against
the “interest” of the school. We need to take steps to strengthen the authority
of teachers and administration over the students.
Asa-El
As for vacations, the fact is teachers get much more vacation time than the
rest of the salaried population, not to mention the self-employed. And you'd
me amazed to see how routinely work in other industries invades one's
afternoons, evenings, and midnights too.
me-
I have already conceded that more vacation time is the one main benefit of
being a teacher. However, I also pointed out the hardships of teaching. All in
all, I’d say it balances out. By the way, in most Western Countries, doctors
are known for their short work week and long vacations, and no one begrudges
them those.
Asa-el
I say this with great pain, as a parent to students and as a member in a family
laden with hard working and dedicated teachers, many of whom suffer from the
system's refusal to adopt the most basic principles of meritocracy. Had the
Dovrat Report been adopted, teachers would once again be respected, as people
whose income rises according to their dedication, quality and output.
me-
Again, the issue is not the Dovrat Report. The issue is what to do now. You say
that Dovrat determined that class size should be capped at 35 students per
class. That is one of the union’s 4 demands. Dovrat favored more hours of
learning for students. This is another one of union’s demands. If you concede
that many teachers are dedicated and are quality teachers, then they should
have higher incomes for the work that they do – without demanding that they
increase their workload by 30% in order to get a 25% raise.
We have encountered a great deal of public support for this strike. People
respect that we are standing up not only for our rights, but for the rights of
our students to get a better education. When you write an article that belittle
teachers, citing only the benefits of the profession (again, the vacations..)
without so much as mentioning the difficulties and challenges we face in our
work, then you fortify the public stigma that teachers live on easy street.
When you malign us as a group of workers who are against any all reform just
because we rejected a large part of one particular proposed reform, you present
us as selfish. Fortunately, the public overwhelming supports the teachers’
demands for better salaries, better working conditions, smaller classes, and
more teaching hours for students. And the public understands that teachers care
not only about themselves, but about the future of education.
Sincerely
Amotz Asa-El
Yours,
Sharon Tzur
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