Old-timers rewarded, while young punished

Ari J Kaufman

{Article originally appeared as featured op-ed in Los Angeles Daily News, Sunday, November 27, 2005}


As the school year reaches its midpoint, I am reminded of the various reasons why I left the Los Angeles Unified School District for good this past June.

While I met many good colleagues, parents, and, of course, students, during my teaching days, teaching was not the profession I gleaned it to be when I finished college. Then I imagined a challenging but rewarding career that was all about enriching kids' lives, opening up doors of potential and wonder. I was going to change the world, one child at a time.

Reality offered something quite different; something for which I was not at all ready. Two years of post-graduate credential classes cannot remotely prepare you for the onslaught of bureaucracies, bizarre meetings, paperwork and union dominance that engulfs you when you teach in Los Angeles.

Sadly, the profession is so scripted these days that it leaves little room for creativity. The art of education has been hijacked from young, dedicated teachers like me, with salaries at the bottom of the seniority-based pay scale. It's no wonder so many young, intelligent, would-be good educators choose not to go into teaching.

My two years serve as a testament to someone who at least gave it the old "college try" - and was left with little choice but to move on.

My horror stories are too numerous to recall, but a few come to mind that illustrate what sort of professional and educational environment the LAUSD has become.

In a workplace where, after two years, it is virtually impossible to get fired - and steady pay raises come regardless of merit - the result is a predictable decrease in teachers' motivation. The system punishes young and enthusiastic teachers, who get nothing but grief for their innovation, and rewards the old-timers who grow complacent and are happy to simply collect a paycheck for as little work as possible.

Case in point: One Tuesday every three months, my colleagues and I would have a two-hour math planning meeting after school. A UCLA instructor would come in to share tips with us. I loved it, but nine of the other 10 people in the room would eye the clock the entire time. I'd silently muse, "this is their profession, isn't it?" But staying at work until 3:30 p.m.? This was considered traumatic for many.

Likewise, while new teachers like myself would typically come in as early as 7:30, many of the old-timers - the ones who left immediately after the close of class each day - would usually arrive at 8 with the kids. If the principal were to ask a new, probationary teacher like me to come in early for an extra meeting, the answer was always yes - when the boss talks, you listen. But she wouldn't think of asking any such thing of certain veterans. It would have prompted an angry complaint from the union.

All in all, the union seems to exist to protect the unmotivated. The teacher next door to me, a veteran, would take as much as a week off of work at a time, putting her way over 10 "mental health days" for the year. She need not worry, though, as the union had given her 90 extra days off at the bargain cost of only half pay.

While there were some great veteran teachers in my school, they were few and far between. The tenure system, the pay scale and union politics work to encourage mediocrity, often driving new teachers out of the business or, over the long haul, sapping their spirits should they decide to stick around.

With abstruse "pedagogical" programs, probationary teachers (first or second year) in the LAUSD are watched closely. They are required to adhere to proper protocol. In addition to the two math and language arts "coaches," numerous people were in my room to observe me constantly, usually unannounced. They produced write-ups and evaluations, checked my classroom bulletin boards to make sure that all posted papers were from within the last 20 days, and scanned my "rubrics" (grading criteria).

All this, even though students' thrice-yearly grades were ultimately and solely determined by the LAUSD's district-generated assessment scores. All this fussing proved to be much ado about nothing. Meanwhile, administrators rarely, if ever, visited the veteran teachers' rooms on either side of mine. Why should they? The veterans were tenured. Accountability was for the newbies only.

And though I was always taught five or six subjects in elementary school as a student just 15 years ago, these days it is all but forbidden to teach social studies in an LAUSD elementary school. It's not part of the standards. It doesn't show up on the tests. There is no time for it, and no one does it.

Well, I did. I had to "buck the system" now and then. I even created my own exams to test the kids on what I taught them, since history is a passion of mine. But even this little bit of academic rebellion carried its risks. I had dreams of someone from downtown coming into my class one day, a la Olympia Dukakis's character in "Mr. Holland's Opus" and say, "Mr. Kaufman, it has come to my attention that you are teaching the kids social studies!"
It was then that I woke up laughing, and asked what the heck I was doing with my life.

Dealing with all the extremities, most of which seemed unnecessary and made education more complex than needed, I resigned from the LAUSD in the spring of my second year. I don't know if I will ever return to public education, either. Teaching truly was far more hassle, and much less rewarding, than I'd imagined.

Ari Kaufman, a former LAUSD teacher, temporarily lives in South Florida, happily pursuing a career in journalism. He and Aaron Hanscom are co-authors of an upcoming book on educational reform based upon their experiences. You can read Ari's archived work at: http://indeed.blog-city.com