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New York Teachers Protest MicroManaging

Reading, writing - and regulations?

City schoolteachers say they're being swamped by an unprecedented level of micromanagement - rules so nitpicking that some teachers have gotten maps showing where the mandatory classroom rocking chair should go.

"You should start calling us robo-teachers, because we're being programmed - to the minute - how to do every aspect of our jobs," one Queens high school teacher said.

Thousands of teachers are expected to protest their work conditions in a rally today at City Hall - days after Chancellor Joel Klein encouraged them to work in a "culture of trust" with principals.

But some educators say they instead have been saddled with heaps of requirements that stifle creativity.

"The new rules have made it harder, not easier, for teachers to teach and students to learn," Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said yesterday.

School officials said they are not micromanaging teachers and called today's rally a "petty campaign of misinformation."

"Our responsibility is to offer staff in the schools the resources, guidance, and support needed to provide a first-rate education for the city's 1.1 million school children," Klein spokesman Jerry Russo said.

The latest tug of war between teachers and city leaders comes as Klein and his team are struggling to bring centralized control to a system that until now had allowed dozens of reading and math programs, with little regard for whether they got results.

Critics, however, call the rules demoralizing - and inflexible.

"The 'U'-shaped seating arrangement ... is not to be changed for any reason, including test-taking situations," reads one Science Department memo at Herbert H. Lehman High School in the Bronx. "Non-compliance to this practice will be subject to disciplinary action.

High school science teachers in Brooklyn say they're evaluated on whether they keep their "minilessons" under 10-minutes. And checklists are popping up in schools around the city denoting what must be visible in every classroom. Among the musts are school mission statement, daily schedules and skill of the week.





— Joe Williams
Teachers getting out of their rockers to rally
New York Daily News
2003-10-21
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/129065p-115419c.html

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