Elementary teachers failed the test of common sense
Parents may think report cards are a rite of spring, but they would be wrong. There is no right to report cards.
By working to rule, and rewriting the rules, teachers are teaching us a lesson: Report cards can be withdrawn at will — with full pay.
For students, it is instructive: Never mind all those exhortations to do your best, pull up your socks, hunker down, study hard.
Marks don’t matter. Achievement goes unnoted. Adversity remains unremarked.
That’s the moral of the latest labour dispute pitting public school teachers against parents and students. A mere three years after the last spat, teachers are yet again toying with us.
In 2012, members of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) refused to completely fill out report cards. Parents had to contact the principal to glimpse the teachers’ work — albeit incomplete and unsatisfactory.
In 2015, the sabotage is more strategic. Now, teachers are refusing to input any part of the four-page final report card into computerized databases, clinging to the legal (if legalistic) fiction that they need only transmit the information to the principal on paper. The union has instructed members to delete any marks they might have already inputted.
So here we are in the digital age, teachers having long advocated for more computers and tablets in the classroom, and their union insists that inputting data into databases isn’t part of their job anymore. Even though it is.
Coming from ETFO, the sophistry is as exasperating as it is execrable.
They always talk a good game about extracurricular activities being strictly voluntary for teachers; now they deem report cards an optional extra.
In fairness, let’s allow ETFO leader Sam Hammond to have his say on this. I sent him a text Friday — inputting the keystrokes personally — so let’s evaluate what he had to say:
[Editor’s note: Two paragraphs missing.]
Hammond makes interesting points. Sorry I couldn’t convey them — his gripes got me going about my own working conditions and frustrations: Lack of prep time for my columns, too few sick days, too many edicts from editors, peremptory performance reviews.
Time for my own work-to-rule column with full pay. My terms of employment don’t specify that I must enter my prose into the Star’s computer system, so I’ve decided to transmit part of my column by phone, just like the old days.
[Editor’s note: Martin, the Star no longer has a rewrite desk that takes dictation on deadline.]
Is it reasonable for teachers to do a data dump on school boards and expect principals to input the keystrokes for them — knowing that students will suffer in the end? Here’s what Hammond says about that:
[Editor’s note: Columnist still working to rule.]
To summarize: ETFO’s grievances trump students’ grades.
Hammond insists his work-to-rule campaign is motivated by morality, not money — “about our members’ working conditions and students’ learning conditions.” But punishing students seems an unproductive way to promote learning.
ETFO says it walked away from the central bargaining table a month ago in a dispute over class sizes — a talking point crafted to appeal to parents. In fact, the government has not asked to dilute the current cap that limits classes to 23 students in Grades 1 to 3.
True, some school boards are seeking flexibility on older, more restrictive language on class sizes at the local level to harmonize with provincial funding levels. When these so-called “strips” weren’t taken off the table as demanded, ETFO broke off talks — and blocked report cards.
Sounds valiant, except that the union has also declined to withdraw its own non-starters — notably a pay increase of more than 2 per cent a year, plus cost-of-living increases. Obstinacy works both ways, and it behooves Hammond to stop pretending it’s not about money as long as his union keeps demanding more. Both sides know they’re not going to get what they want, but it’s unclear why the rest of us have to pay the price for their theatrics.
Earlier this year, it looked like ETFO would make its work-to-rule campaign work in its favour: Hammond announced a boycott of standardized EQAO testing and administrative tasks — a more proportionate protest that would hurt students far less in the short term.
But as the end of term loomed, the union smelled blood and opted to inflict more pain — supposedly for students’ gain. By targeting report cards, elementary teachers have failed the test of common sense.
Collective bargaining can be a blood sport. That doesn’t mean both sides need to be bloody-minded about it. Martin Regg Cohn’s Ontario politics column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn