Not surprisingly, I usually disagree with Providence Journal columnist Bob Kerr.  In his latest column, he addresses the firing of teachers at Central Falls High School.  Basically, the entire column attempts to portray the Central Falls teachers as victims.  Not surprisingly, he left out a few facts.

     Let's start with teachers complaining about having mutual planning time for an hour or two per week, some professional development during the summer, and eating lunch with their students one day per week.  He seemed to forget to mention that the teachers were going to be paid to take part in professional development and planning time.  Central Falls Superintendent Frances Gallo offered $30 per hour, but the Central Falls union insisted on $90 per hour. 

     I think $30 is an excellent hourly wage, but if you think about it, teachers make substantially more than that.  Let's do some math: A teacher who works 6 hours each day for 39 weeks works a total of 1170 hours in a school year.  If they have an annual salary of $70,000, that comes out to almost $60 per hour.  I guess they picked $90 because they see the "extra" work as time-and-a-half.  By the way, I know this is a very rough estimate, but it certainly illustrates the point.

     One more thing: I remember some teachers complaining about having to eat lunch with their students one day each week.  Maybe I'm wrong, but shouldn't these dedicated professionals be thrilled to spend informal time with the students they claim to care about?  The teacher's lounge must be quite a place if they're that angry about leaving one day each week.

     Last but not least, Mr. Kerr takes aim at evaluating teachers by bringing up the horror known as performance reviews.  Teachers take every opportunity to mention their professionalism, yet they don't want to truly be treated like professionals when it doesn't suit them  In most professions, employees have performance reviews at established intervals.   These performance reviews determine whether you keep your job, and the level of compensation you receive.  Public school teachers are completely different.  The longer you stick around, the more you make.

     By the way, I'd just like to mention that I teach kindergarten at a privately owned school.  We used to have biannual performance reviews, where the director would critique our job performance.   I actually suggested an alternate method called a 360 performance view which would have combined reviews from the director, colleagues, and customers (anonymous parent surveys).  I knew I was doing a good job, so I didn't have anything to hide.  How many unionized teachers would make the same suggestion?