It often looks as though no good deed goes unpunished. The latest example is the threat facing the Toledo Federation of Teachers' peer evaluation program. The program has been widely recognized -- the Rand Corporation called it the best teacher evaluation program in the country. It's been widely copied, in Ohio and elsewhere. And in Toledo, it helped turn around the attitude of a community that had consistently starved its schools. But this week the program could be wiped out by the Ohio legislature.
What's true in other professions is also true in teaching. All newcomers need help in learning the ropes; and some veterans need to relearn them - or be weeded out -- because they're incompetent. Teachers are as aware of these problems as anybody, maybe more aware, but they usually can't do anything about them. School districts can do something, but they are notoriously bad at teacher support and evaluation. And teacher unions often get blamed for the incompetence of people they had no part in hiring or promoting.
In 1981, the Toledo Federation of Teachers offered to take on the problem, and teachers have been involved in teacher evaluations ever since. Here's how the program works. Experienced, excellent teachers evaluate the work of every beginning teacher in the Toledo schools and any senior ( even tenured) teacher who seems to be performing poorly.
The system operates on the assumption that good teachers know good teaching-and also that they have a vested interest in doing something about bad teachers, even getting rid of them if necessary. After all, teachers have to live with the results of other people's bad teaching -the students who don't know anything.
The program offers help to the teachers who need it as well as quality control. New teachers are not just tossed into the classroom to manage as best they can - the way I was and the way plenty of beginning teachers still are. They get observed, advised and helped by experienced practitioners in their field. And if they don't cut the mustard, they aren't retained. This hardly sounds revolutionary, but it is: In most places, renewal for beginning teachers is nearly automatic and tenure usually follows - thus making sure that poor teachers as well as good ones join the permanent faculty. Tenured teachers who are identified as being in trouble got the same kind of intensive help. Peer evaluation teachers work with them to identify and overcome their problems. But if the intervention doesn't work, they, too, are recommended for dismissal.
Why would a teacher union take the lead in teacher quality control? Most people think that a union's role is only to protect its members, not help take responsibility for their performance. But if industrial unions are assuming important roles in quality control and productivity in the shops of General Motors, why shouldn't teacher unions in schools? And if you look at teachers as professionals with a big stake in improving their schools, peer review makes a lot of sense. It puts responsibility for identifying inadequate teaching in the hands of the people who are best qualified to take it, and it gives teachers a measure of control over the standards of their own profession -just like other professionals. It's even simpler than that: Better teachers mean better teaching and better student learning.
Toledo's peer review program has been successfully adapted in Cincinnati and other Ohio school districts and in school districts across the country -- in New York, Florida, California, Minnesota and elsewhere. So it's crazy that, after all this success, the very existence of peer review is threatened because of an old-fashioned provision of Ohio's labor relations law.
Under this law, it seems that having union members assess the performance of other union members -- which is the heart of peer review -- could expose school districts to an unfair labor practice complaint. The problem could be taken care of by amending the law, as the Ohio Federation of Teachers is urging; in fact an amendment is currently before the Ohio Senate for a vote on February 28.
Unfortunately, the Ohio Education Association (OEA), the other teacher organization, strongly opposes the amendment and is putting pressure on Ohio legislators - especially those up for re-election -- to vote it down.
Why is the OEA playing the spoiler? It's hard to tell. The amendment would not make peer review mandatory. It would simply make peer review acceptable under the Ohio labor relations law and allow unions and school districts to negotiate it if they chose. And opposition to peer review is not even unanimous in OEA -- OEA's largest local, in Columbus, supports peer review and has been operating a successful program for several years.
But whatever the reason, a program that solves a serious and longstanding problem is in danger of being destroyed. The Ohio legislature knows how excellent Toledo's peer review program is -- both houses have formally commended it. Will they be willing to resist political pressure and vote for a program that helps encourage good teaching and get rid of bad? People from all over the country who are interested in the future of education will be watching on February 28 to see which way Ohio legislators go.