On Boycotts on Paperwork

In ref to yesterday's post on paperwork and lack of UFT response:

I received some email saying a boycott wouldn't work.

I am not saying do this just anywhere. The UFT should look for the most vulnerable principal who is forcing this down peoples' throats. Hold meetings with the staff to prepare them. Have a strategy in place to respond if people are harassed. Make a big deal of it. Create a confrontation with the DOE in every forum. Press conf etc. By focusing on one school - it is like a magnifying glass. Expand to the district if this is widespread.

There needs to be some creative thinking at the UFT. But if there is not we have to do it ourselves.

Ed Notes and maybe ICE might set up a task force to address these issues. Get case studies school by school. Let's target the most abusive principals and expose the lack of UFT action at the district level. Embarrass the Dist rep and borough office.

We are DROWNING in paperwork, UFT Reacts With DUH!!! Ed Notes Says, "BOYCOTT!!"

There are endless examples of how the UFT leadership talks out of twelve sides of its mouth at the same time. If you go to them with a complaint they often refer to some law suit (remember the senior teachers, class size, and now the closing schools law suits along with numerous others I can't remember). Here some mid-level functionary used the same tactic in regards to paperwork. The screams of anguish coming from many teachers, in particular, elementary school teachers, needs to reach a crescendo before there will be action.

Here is an illustration of how the UFT operates on so many planes. The frustration grows. ICE and Ed Notes only have the power to expose. We could try to bring up another paperwork reduction reso at the DA - if you can even get into the Mulgrew locked meeting and get the floor during the new motion period. But what would be the point? Can you embarrass them into actually doing something - like a boycott of useless paperwork, something that if every teacher were told to refuse might actually have an impact?

Why not try a boycott, even in one district? But the UFT would have to stand firm for each and every teacher who might come under attack. On second thought.....


Not long ago, I received this email from a Chapter Leader in District 24:

Norm, The staff is totally demoralized here. The principal has decreed that everyone should have detailed lesson plans, strategy lessons, and guided reading lessons for every single lesson(as a suggestion but you can get a U if you don't have it). Who can I go to with this? The [UFT] District Rep is of no help. Changes her story on what is acceptable, what is not. I have nothing to stand on. She was here with the borough rep, who had the audacity to say to an entire grade that she doesn't see fear on their faces, therefore things can't be bad.

The principal said that block plan books with just the teaching point are not acceptable. The Dist rep said contract doesn't allow this one day, next day said "You can't just write the teaching point." When I asked for specifics she fumbled, said to write what the activity is. I said the teaching point is the activity. We cannot teach anymore there's no time left if you're going to do every bit of paperwork that they want. And you had better do it, because that's what they look at: DATA They are DATA crazy. DATA that you "collect" to get the paperwork done. DATA drives instruction, yes, out the door. What to do? Can you get someone to bring it up at the DA?


Here is another email sent to ICE a year ago:

We are DROWNING in paperwork. "Data collection" to be specific.

It's special ed : Ieps, report cards, assessment rubrics, project logs, homework logs, log logs , BFAs and the mother lode of all paperwork sinkholes: Alternative Assessment porfolios. I'd conservatively estimate that the job is, at this point, 10% pedagogy and 90% clerical.

The contract says this: "Committees composed equally of representatives of the Board ( sic) and the Union shall be established at the central, district and division levels to review and reduce unnecessary paperwork required of employees." (P.52)

Here's my question: where are said committees? Do they even exist? Can I participate in one?

UFT phone person says it should be addressed via chapter consultation committee. Is this true?

Bad news for us if it is 'cause we don't have one, far as I know and we don't even have chapter meetings.


ICE members responded with JW doing some research:
From JW's Email #15

The Paperwork Overload campaign. The union built a "paperwork committee" into the 2006 contract, in Art. VIII on Educational Reform:

I. Reduction of Paperwork

1. Committees composed equally of representatives of the Board and the Union shall be established at the central, district and division levels to review and reduce unnecessary paperwork required of employees. Any proposed additional paperwork shall be reviewed by the appropriate level committee and such committee may make recommendations to the Chancellor, community superintendent or division head as appropriate. The Board shall not act unreasonably on the committee’s recommendations.

then made a big deal about it in the spring of 2007 with a survey, and pushed it again in a DA resolution a year later (Jan 08). Nothing has come of any of this that I can see. In fact, at my school they're trying to turn some of the teachers into scribes, demanding that they to transfer attendance data into a separate file, probably for Quality Review purposes and for zero added value in the teaching of our kids. We are already taking student attendance probably twice: on the bubble sheets and for our own personal records. If we have HS homerooms, we do it a third time. If I were asked for this third (in some cases fourth) version, I would just turn over xeroxes of my attendance records and ask them to find someone else to extract the data — or pay me per session.

PS: I know teachers are caving on these demands all over town. The union has stopped making solidarity a priority, and we all suffer for it.

The story continues with this report back the other day from the person who emailed ICE with the steps taken and the UFT response:

I decided to approach the issue as a "special education complaint" and entered the essential info the space reserved for that purpose on www.uft.org.

Got good instant feedback from the assistant ("liason"?) to the DR who forwarded it to the the then interim DR who also sent good feedback with promises that there WAS a committee that dealt with the city on paperwork reduction issues, that it DID meet regularly and he'd see to it that my 17 pages of sample redundant paperwork were forwarded to the right people.

DR has left, replaced by an (*appointed*, I understand) permanent replacement.

New DR doesn't respond to emails apparently but in a conversation came back with a quickfire account of how bringing it to a committee really wasn't necessary 'cause the UFT had a suit pending in the courts as we spoke that would deal with this problem.

Searched the net. No mention of any suit, that I could find, anyway. Wrote back to DR. Silence. That was about 1 1/2 mos ago.

So basically the union's had me jumping thru hoops for over a year and have nothing to show for it other than MORE PAPERWORK THAN EVER and a long chain of forwarded email correspondence that establishes that I've been dutifully following this up thru appropriate channels for over a year.

So.... I'm back to square one, asking ICE for advice on my next move.

We are DROWNING in Paperwork

"Data collection" to be specific.

From the ICE Listserve - (I'm keeping the sender anon.)

It's special ed : Ieps, report cards, assessment rubrics, project logs, homework logs, log logs , BFAs and the motherlode of all paperwork sinkholes: Alternative Assessment porfolios.

I'd conservatively estimate that the job is, at this point, 10% pedagogy and 90% clerical.

The contract says this: "Committees composed equally of representatives of the Board ( sic) and the Union shall be established at the central, district and division levels to review and reduce unnecessary paperwork required of employees." (P.52)

Here's my question: where are said committees? Do they even exist? Can I participate in one?

UFT phone person says it should be addressed via chapter consultation committee. Is this true? Bad news for us if it is 'cause we don't have one, far as I know and we don't even have chapter meetings.

So... what do you suggest? Any help appreciated.

I responded:

As we've seen time and again, the UFT addresses the problem - and I use this term lightly - with words and no action.

This is an important issue for ICE to take up. There is no solution for one school but must be addressed on a wide basis. The problem is the UFT just plays footsie. Sure file a grievance if something is in the contract. But imagine what would happen if the union started organizing a boycott of some of the worst of these paperwork abuses and started a campaign for public support and also made a commitment to rigorously defend any teacher punished.

Don't hold your breath when we have a sell out union.
But that doesn't mean ice can't start creating pressure.

Anon responds:

I'm thinking along these lines as well. First things first: I'm trying to get my CL to tell me where these committees are and how I participate in them. So far - ignored two emails on the topic.

I think merely clamoring for the contract to be implemented re. paperwork is a good first step from the staff's POV. ( I.e. without filing an explicit grievance) It communicates disgruntlement to an echo chamber-type environment where the supervisory staff leaves the building at the same time as the teaching staff. They talk only to each other and have the staff cowed with the implicit threat of requiring even more paperwork. Meanwhile they couldn't care less what actually goes on in the classroom, in terms of *learning*. A more emotionally detached group I've not encountered in my [many] years but "I'll leave that to Dr. Freud along with the rest of it." Point is, I don't think they want a grievance and MAY respond to..... lets say, "persuasion".

More comments from ICE-mail:

LP says:

I was in an elementary school this week. I could not believe the assessment process that teachers are going through. They must administer, 1-1, a series of assessments, 3 times a year in ela. Then enter the results on a computer. They are not given any time to do it. Teaching time is severely cut, and management really can become an issue (this teacher has good management but I cannot imagine it in the class of a new teacher). This teacher, who is normally so smooth, gentle, easy going - was a wreck. I could not get a minute to talk to her. If it helped - well then, maybe it should be done. But I asked another teacher if she really had time to use the results of these assessments to help kids. She laughed. In addition, professional development is on how to assess, how to enter - that dreaded word - data - into the system, not on how to meet the needs of kids who are struggling. I sit here imagining all of the teachers of this city, entering any old data that they want... would anyone even know????

L says:

This is a big issue in most schools. It got a lot worse with the quality reviews. Every teacher MUST have an assessment binder now....NO ONE knows what exactly they want in it. Some principals go way over board with it. Why have a binder when you can just have folders for different student work and assessments? The new thing this year is that teachers are required to come up with individual goals for every student. The students are suppose to know their individual goal.

G says:

My principal hired a company to keep track of all data in glossy , professionally prepared booklets at a very high cost. Not sure exactly how much but I'm trying to find out. Here is some of what they say:

Schools work with us because they believe that the only way to improve student performance is to make instruction more effective. The only way to provide more effective instruction is to have data drive what is taught. It is only what students actually learn that matters; teaching methods, curriculum maps, pacing calendars and formal observations do not matter if students are not learning. In the business world if you want to improve something you must first be able to measure it.

The teachers have to collect and give all data to the administration every few months. And not only do the teachers have to write learning goals for the kids, the students have been hounded to write their own learning goals.Try asking a 2nd grader with a learning disability what their learning goals are?

The UFT Response? Do [another] survey.
You see, it gives people the impression you are doing something.

We are hearing from some districts and networks that some principals are asking teachers to set written, individualized goals for every student several times throughout the year. In some cases, the student goals must be rewritten each semester, every six weeks, or every month. They seem to be the result of both the changes that were initiated this year in the Quality Review, and training principals have received in their networks.

In order to effectively pursue this issue, we need a sense of how widespread this is, and we need that information quickly in order to avoid timeliness issues.

Can we quickly survey chapter leaders, perhaps by email, with the following questions?

1. To your knowledge are all or some of your teachers being mandated to set individualized written goals for all or most of their students?
2. Is this practice new this year?
3. Have teachers been given extra time to do this?

We would need this information by Wednesday, February, 4th.

For our documentation we need every district representative to respond with names of the schools that are impacted by goal setting.

Thank you

Aminda Gentile

One more issue: when are teachers to enter the data on computers? During the day on their "free" time? And if they could, how available are computers? Teachers are often left with no option but to put hours of useless work into data input at home.