Entry: Rights and Common Sense: Not Always the Same Thing Saturday, April 29, 2006



My district union rep visited our school yesterday. One thing she said really stuck in my mind. It was an argument about transfers. Basically, to paraphrase a reasonably complicated issue, the city wants the power to move teachers from school to school, while the union wants teachers to be able to stay where they want. (This is a gross oversimplification on both sides, but for our purposes, a sufficient explanation.)

While I don't want an unlimited forced transfer system, the point of this post is not to firmly take a stand on this issue, but rather to complain about some shoddy argumentation being done on my behalf. The union frames this as a matter of rights. Teachers have the right to stay in their school, teachers have the right to control their work environment, etc. This type of argumentation is symptomatic of a broader strain in American political discourse, in which everything and anything becomes more appealing if it's framed as a right.

This is not only illogical, but it's also damaging to the broader purpose of contesting this issue. Simply, not everything we want is a right. Rights are a limited, although cohesive, system of protections created in order to provide people with a minimum of protections. I'm all for expansive systems of rights. I'm all for workers having better protections, but not everything can possibly fit in this category. In fact, any system of rights at all consistent with the American legal conception of the concept would seem more likely to include a protection on behalf of employers, in order to allow them to allocate human capital in the way they deem most efficient, than to protect the rights of workers to stay exactly where they are.

That doesn't mean that there aren't good reasons to dislike an unlimited transfer system. It just means that a rights claim is not sufficient grounds upon which to contest the advent of such a system. Here are better arguments against such a system:

1. Workers don't like having their autonomy limited any more than is neccessary. Unhappy workers tend to do a worse job. Forcing transfers, which limits autonomy in the most basic areas of a worker's daily life is likely to create a disgruntled workforce.

2. The mere possibility of a forced transfer severely inconveniences teachers, especially in regards to things like family planning, and makes it less likely that teachers stay teachers for very long.

3. The DOE is much less qualified to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of specific teachers than principals, or other co-workers, who see these teachers on a day-to-day basis, and so any theoretical structural benefits in human capital allocation are likely to be mitigated by simple stupid decisions.

Like I said, I don't really want a system of forced transfers. But when the UFT advances a line of reasoning that is not only logically flawed on face, but also fails to address the real heart of the issue, it does its members and our students a significant disservice.

   4 comments

Dave Casey
October 24, 2006   02:11 PM PDT
 
Teachers who teach for a long time in the New York City school system cost a lot of money in both salary and benefits. If you force more of them out before they get longevity raises, you save a lot of money. Don't you think that the current administration really sees all teachers as being interchangeable? They won't come out and say this but there's some evidence of this commodification of education.

One teacher's as good as another. So let's get more new ones and get the older ones out. They are the ones that get more salary, know the rights the contracts confer on employees.

I see this trend in the extended days. More hours=better education. There's no attention paid to the energy required to take on what is, de facto, another class. However, from my personal experience, there are diminishing returns from this type of policy, especially in the case of moving experienced teachers off the payroll. But then, again, I suspect many in the current administration (both federal and city) would like to see education by and large privatized and this push to extend hours and take away teacher autonomy are steps in this direction.
Ruth Wells
April 25, 2007   08:31 PM PDT
 
It's amazing how little common sense there is in schools anymore. Teachers have to devote so much energy just to survive in a system that treats them like money grubbing scum. Sad.
Name
October 3, 2007   11:18 AM PDT
 
I completely agree that teachers should have the right to stay where they are and should have some control over their work environment. I think that is crazy that the schools are actually wanting to take that kind of control!
Karen
October 30, 2007   10:50 AM PDT
 
After two years teaching in private schools, I obtained my teaching license and was hired as a teacher in a large school system.

One month into the school year, I received notice that several teachers, including myself, would be transferred to another school as a result of student enrollment fluctuations. I was given two weeks notice of the move. I had just signed a lease on a new townhouse. The new school was about 15 miles from the former one, and I was assigned to a different grade and subject.

When I had to make the decision to stay in the teaching profession or change careers at the end of the school year, this jolting experience was a factor in my decision to leave the teaching profession altogether.

I wish the schools would treat teachers (even new ones in the district) as professionals and not like cogs in the wheel of a machine.

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