{"id":3217,"date":"2011-02-14T16:08:43","date_gmt":"2011-02-14T20:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=3217"},"modified":"2011-02-14T16:37:16","modified_gmt":"2011-02-14T20:37:16","slug":"overinterpreting-the-dc-arbitrators-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=3217","title":{"rendered":"Overinterpreting the DC arbitrator’s ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andy Rotherham comments<\/a> on the 2008 DC teacher firings' arbitration decision<\/a>, and I think that in a way like those who opposed Rhee cheering the ruling, Rotherham overinterprets it as well. Essentially, the arbitrator ruled that the DC Public Schools violated the collective bargaining agreement and the rights of probationary teachers by not presenting teachers with the reasons for each principal's recommendations against continuing employment. The arbitrator said the standard for cause with probationary teachers was much lower than for teachers with permanent status–essentially, a fired probationary teacher would have the burden of proof to demonstrate that the reason was capricious, arbitrary, or discriminatory–but that the district had to provide the documentation so teachers could know why they were let go.<\/p>\n

This is being spun by various parties as Firingdammerung, but this is a procedural grievance rather than something on the merits of whether the teachers in the case were effective or rotten. Rotherham is correct that in many workplaces people are told either no reason for being let go or boilerplate reasons (e.g., "we have decided to go in a different direction"). And if the DC Public Schools had used the second approach, my guess is that there probably wouldn't have been an arbitration victory for the Washington Teachers Union. But the DC schools management created an opportunity for principals to explain why a probationary teacher should be let go and then hid that material from teachers. <\/p>\n

There's some text in the decision that suggests those cheering the arbitration ruling should be a little cautious, and those upset with it a little less dyspeptic. The larger issue for the D.C. public schools is the negotiability of evaluation mechanisms. My university's annual evaluation procedures appear in our collective bargaining agreement, and it's fairly general–an evaluation has to be based on one's assignment (no fair evaluating what you weren't assigned), some other general procedural items, and a structure for faculty in departments to write their own procedures and substantive expectations. While the arbitration decision in the DC case did not give the arbitrator the authority to rule on whether DCPS has to bargain its new IMPACT process, here's a cautionary sentence I came across: "[T]he PPEP [Professional Performance Evaluation Process], like the DCMR [District of Columbia Municipal Regulations], is a unilateral document. Indeed, the PPEP is required to be unilateral by the U.S. Congress" (p. 22). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andy Rotherham comments on the 2008 DC teacher firings' arbitration decision, and I think that in a way like those who opposed Rhee cheering the ruling, Rotherham overinterprets it as well. Essentially, the arbitrator ruled that the DC Public Schools violated the collective bargaining agreement and the rights of probationary teachers by not presenting teachers with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-policy","category-union"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-PT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3217"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3224,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217\/revisions\/3224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}