Labour & Pop Culture: AP Bio

Netflix has recently begin carrying A.P Bio. The show follows a misanthropgic former Harvard philosophy professor (Jack Griffin) who is forced to teach advanced placement biology to nerds in Toledo while living in his dead mom’s Jesus-adorned home.

Episode 2 of Season 1 sees Jack in trouble for failing to supervise his students. Jack is forced to choose between a short suspension and fighting the discipline. If he fights the discipline, he remains suspended with pay and has to hang out in “teacher jail” playing cards and such. Niecy Nash (who is hilarious) plays the union rep “Kim”.

There are two interesting aspects of this storyline. The first is that the union rep and the principal (played by Patton Oswald) have a long history and the union rep uses the grievance to get back at the principal  We rarely get into the complex relationships that develop between union and management reps over time and how these relationships colour the handling of grievances and other business. The idea of a grudge shaping decision-making is quite (and perhaps unintentionally) accurate.

The second is that teacher jail is framed as a bit of a ridiculous place where bad people go to kill time on full pay. This plays a bit into the “malingering worker” trope. What is interesting about teacher jail is how at odds it is with how discipline workers in both in Canada and especially in the US. Basically, workplace discipline sees workers as guilty until proven innocent. If they are innocent, they may get some compensation for their lost wages or jobs but few non-unionized workers can afford to fight discipline.

Arrangements where a worker is suspended with pay pending the employer proving discipline (i.e., innocent until proven guilty) are few and far between, even in unionized environments. Yet this seems like the fairest approach, since the burden of proof falls on the employer and the employer imposing sanctions without actually proving the worker did anything works a great unfairness on workers. It is telling that Jack only has access to this kind of approach because he has a union that’s negotiated a solid contract.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Always Brave, Sometimes Kind

I received a recent (2020) novel for Christmas entitled Always Brave, Sometimes Kind that was written by Katie Bickell. The novel is essentially a collection of loosely related short stories that follows a group of people who live in and around Edmonton between 1990 and 2016. All of the characters have what might be described as rough lives, often made worse by the political economy of Alberta.

There are four stories with a clear labour-related element to them. The first story is set against the backdrop of the laundry workers' strike of 1995 and the Klein cuts to the health care and income support systems. Health-care workers struggle to deliver care, the social services system is falling apart (which particularly affects Indigenous characters), and a social worker is laid off.  Overall, an emotionally difficult story to read if you lived through the era.

Later, we meet a social studies teacher who is grappling with the effects of Klein's budget cuts and unfulfilled promises (circa 2002). There is mention of the teacher's strike and frustrations that it left classroom teachers with. I won't spoil the story for you, but he eventually exits the professional and makes ends meet rather creatively. This very much reminds me of my buddy Rob who was an elementary teacher. After getting three layoff notices in successive years and less and less support to deal with increasing classroom challenges, he eventually quit in frustration. The author really captures public-sector despair of the late Klein years.

One of the characters is a camp worker in Fort McMurray who does the long commute back to Sherwood Park (I think). In a pair of related stories, we see the stress that this approach to staffing extraction industries places on marriages and families.

Finally, there is a story set in a hospital where one of the characters encounters one of the many temporary foreign workers recruited to Alberta to work in the service industry during the 2006-2012 period. While the character is not particularly sympathetic to these workers, the author writes the scene in a way that quietly highlights the challenges faced by these workers.

Overall, this was a challenging book to read because of how difficult the lives of the characters were to read about. The author really captures how lower- and middle-class Albertans have struggled, even during boom times, to keep their lives and families together. It wasn't until the last quarter of the book, as the stories start to knit together and multi-generational problems begin to resolve, that started enjoying the book and began to appreciate the gritty earlier stories.  Overall, an interesting window into the recent past.

-- Bob Barnetson

PSE bargaining conference reveals interesting dynamics

I spent last Friday in Calgary at a post-secondary labour relations conference that was organized by the Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations. While the conference covered a wide range of topics flowing from last spring’s decision to move PSE bargaining under the Labour Relations Code, the sessions with the most engagement addressed work stoppages.

Of particular interest was the session on the University of Manitoba’s 2016 work stoppage, which contained a significant amount of practical “how-to” advice. The side conversations—which were mostly about strike-lockout—were also quite interesting.

For example, just before the conference began, the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association posted a bargaining update. It included a high-level summary of February 26 meetings the faculty association had with (unnamed) government representatives. The key take-aways were:

• The government is committed to stable and predictable funding for the Post-Secondary sector, in keeping with its election promises and previous actions: “Past behaviour is the best predictor of future action” one official said.
• The government provides operating funds to the University, we were told, but does not instruct management as to how those funds should be spent or how to bargain with its employees.
• The provincial government would look very unfavourably on any attempt by employers to force employees into concession through job action.

On the first point, we’ll have to wait to see what the budget brings on March 22.

The second point is probably correct in a narrow sense: Boards of Governors are charged with making due with whatever funds they get. Yet, the point about not telling Boards how to spend funds or bargain rings a touch hollow. The government has made it clear to its agencies, boards and commissions that it expects wage freezes.

For example, in November, the Minister of Finance spoke approvingly of wage freezes in the most recent Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) collective agreements in a press conference (while denying he wanted to negotiate in the press):

"That's what my hope is ... that people will see the benefit of long-term job stability and the fact that there are no raises, they'll have their ongoing jobs," he said. "That's what I hope will occur in negotiations throughout the other contracts."

Subsequently, the unions representing nurses and health-science workers have taken zeros as well. Non-unionized government employees have also seen a wage-freeze.

Given this, it is not surprising that at least one PSE institution has disclosed to its faculty association that the government (in a letter dated February 8, 2018) has notified the institution of the government’s expectations for the monetary outcome of the upcoming round of negotiations. The institution declined to provide the letter or summarize its contents, but I think it is fair to assume the crux was “get a wage freeze”.

Indeed, lowering PSE wage settlements was one of the explicit goals of the legislation moving PSE bargaining under the Labour Relations Code, according to government MLA David Shepherd. The evidence suggests Shepherd’s assertion that arbitration leads to higher settlements is largely untrue. For example, from 2012 to 2017, most universities saw (non-compounded) wage settlements totaling between 8.0% and 9.5% (so 1.33% to 1.58% annually). Average annual inflation in Alberta during this period was about 1.3%.

More interesting was the key high-side outlier: the Mount Royal University Faculty Association negotiated (non-compounded) increases totaling 14.2%. It is notable that MRU is the only university to have had strike-lockout in its contract and to have taken a strike vote (although, there were other factors at play).

The final point made by the government officials was that “the government would look very unfavourably on any attempt by employers to force employees into concession through job action.” I would imagine this is true, politically speaking: alienating a key base of electoral support in the year leading up to an election is likely something the NDs want to avoid.

Whether this has any practical meaning once negotiations start is a difficult question to answer. On the one hand, the officials asserted that the government does not tell PSE Boards how to bargain. So, presumably, an institution can do what it believes necessary (including locking faculty out) during bargaining to achieve whatever goals its has.

On the other hand, the government clearly is directing bargaining outcomes (by setting wage expectations) and has given institutions a way to achieve them (via the power to lock its workers out). Perhaps the government would look dimly on a lockout, but might allow it to happen anyhow.

To be fair, government is large and not monolithic. The government officials the U of L faculty association met with on February 26 may have had no idea about the letter that (presumably) other government officials sent to institutions on February 8 specifying bargaining outcomes.

That said, this whole “who’s on first” routine (wherein the government is not at the table but seems to be calling the shots) is very reminiscent of the problems faced by Alberta’s teachers over the years. Specifically, teachers were forced to officially negotiate with school boards, but (since school boards relied on the province for money) the teachers were really bargaining with the Conservative government.

This very dynamic was discussed explicitly in one of the conference presentations. The similarity between the ATA’s past problems and the current dynamics in PSE bargaining was the topic of significant post-conference discussion.

-- Bob Barnetson

Presentations: Women and labour in Alberta

This weekend, the U of Alberta is hosting the a conference addressing the History of Women’s Political and Social Activism in the Canadian West. One of the panels on Saturday afternoon addresses labour issues:

A: Alberta Women Organizing to Address Labour Issues

Antonella Cortese, Comitato Promotore della ligua Italiana, Edmonton, Alberta; and Trude Aberdeen, Truong Lac Hong Vietnamese Heritage Language School, Edmonton, Alberta
Multiculturalism, activism, and the women of the Alberta Ethnic Language Teachers’ Association (AELTA)

Laurel Halladay, Athabasca University
Women and the Crowsnest Pass Miners’ Strike of 1932

Cynthia Loch-Drake, York University
Pentecostalism and the Unionism and Politics of Meatpacking Seamstress Ethel Wilson in Postwar Alberta: An Exploration

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Speed Up

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is Maria Dunn’s “Speed Up”, a folk song about work in Edmonton’s (now defunct) GWG clothing factory. The Royal Alberta Museum has a brief overview of the history of the factory, one that largely ignores the effect of automation on the workers and only tangentially touches upon the workers’ experiences as immigrants and union members.

By contrast, the Aspen Foundation for Labour Education has built a very interesting curriculum around the GWG experience for social studies teachers. This includes a recording of an hour-long performance that combines video of GWG workers with the Sings of Maria Dunn. https://youtu.be/NvRJ3HCa0N8

“Speed up” is one of the songs from the production. The most interesting part (lyrically) of the song is how the worker understands that the employer is constantly increasing the pace of work:

Now that I’ve gotten good and fast
They’ve upped the ante for my task

Yet the worker accepts this (perhaps because she has no choice) as the price of getting by and building a better future for her children:

Come weekend, it’s another race
Another job, another pace
Each dollar more a saving grace
To bring my family to this place

I’ll tell you how the work went – speedup, speedup, speedup
Not one second was misspent – speedup, speedup, speedup
My fingers nimble, face intent – speedup, speedup, speedup
I’d like to see you try it friend – speedup, speedup, speedup

Now that I’ve gotten good and fast
They’ve upped the ante for my task
Each time I get ahead, they’re back
To raise the bar and stretch the slack

Each extra inch seems like a mile
So bundles take a bit of guile
You snatch the small size with a smile
It’s “head down” for another while

Come weekend, it’s another race – keep up, keep up, keep up
Another job, another pace – keep up, keep up, keep up
Each dollar more a saving grace – keep up, keep up, keep up
To bring my family to this place – keep up, keep up, keep up

My husband, I—we’re healthy, young
Still, who knows what we’re running on
We pass each other the baton
When one comes home, the other’s gone

Sometimes I need a little cry
All I do’s just scraping by
For making friends, there’s little time
It’s “head down” for another while

Each pocket, seam and bottom hem
I’ve sewn for my children
I watch them grow and know for them
It’s worth it all in the end

-- Bob Barnetson

Take your kid to work: Why bother?

My daughter starts junior high this week. A friend was joking with me about working from home and “take your daughter to work day” (usually the first Wednesday in November).

“Daddy, do we have to wear our bathrobes all day? How long do we have to keep yelling at the computer? Here, let me show you how that actually works.” It could be worse, I suppose…

Anyhow…. The idea of take your kid to school is to help students plan “their future career by helping them better understand a profession or workplace environment.” Yet it strikes me how “band-aid-y” the whole undertaking is, given the structure of school.

The K-12 system segregates kids by age, which is completely unlike the “real world” and isolates them from contact with work or mentors (excepting hyper-dangerous early apprenticeship programming). If the point of schooling is to help students prepare for a career (and I’m not sure it is), then one day of following a parent around is unlikely to meaningfully counteract the structure of schooling.

The K-12 system also subjects students to a profound amount of control and surveillance. While surveillance is endemic in the workplace, the hyper-structuring of time no longer exists except in the worst jobs (e.g., fast food). While my job is unusually unstructured, no job that I’ve held (and there have been a lot!) have exhibited anywhere near the degree of arbitrary time blocking we see in school. Again, one day in a workplace can’t teach students to be responsible for their own time.

Finally, while I have lots of teacher friends and quite like teachers, I’m skeptical that we should rely on teachers (who mostly made one career choice at age 22) to help students either make a career choice or develop job-search skills. As a group, they are profoundly unqualified to speak about the realities of work and working.

The point of this was not to bash teachers or the school system, both of which do a good job of teaching literacy, numeracy and the knowledge of science and society necessary to be an engaged system. Instead, the point is to question what real value students derive from a one-off exposure to a random (although, I suspect, skewed towards white-collar) job? It seems to be more about generating positive media photo-ops than any real educational outcomes.

-- Bob Barnetson

Friday Tunes: Teacher, Teacher

There are lots of songs about jobs. Today’s installment of labour themes in popular culture is one of my favourite songs from the 1980s: .38 Special’s Teacher, Teacher (from the 1984 soundtrack to Teachers and co-written by Bryan Adams, of all people).

Written from the perspective of a high-school student, it highlights the role teachers play in opening students’ eyes—even if some of the enlightenment comes later and only after some experience (“Just when I thought I finally learned my lesson well/There was more to this than meets the eye”).

It also canvasses the insecurity of young people transitioning into the labour market (“Am I ready for the real world? Will I pass the test?/You know it's a jungle out there”). And picking up on some of the themes from the movie, it also has a bit of cynicism (”But the joke's on those who believe the system's fair”). I have a hard time knowing if this song is intended to be upbeat or quite angst-ridden—perhaps it's both.




Just when I thought I finally learned my lesson well
There was more to this than meets the eye
And for all the things you taught me, only time will tell
If I'll be able to survive, oh yeah

Teacher, teacher can you teach me?
Can you tell me all I need to know?
Teacher, teacher can you reach me?
Or will I fall when you let me go? Oh, no

Am I ready for the real world? Will I pass the test?
You know it's a jungle out there
Ain't nothin' gonna stop me, I won't be second best
But the joke's on those who believe the system's fair, oh yeah

Teacher, teacher can you teach me?
Can you tell me if I'm right or wrong?
Teacher, teacher can you reach me?
I wanna know what's goin' on, oh yeah

So the years go on and on but nothing's lost or won
What you learn is soon forgotten
They take the best years of your life
Try to tell you wrong from right
But you walk away with nothing, oh oh

Teacher, teacher can you teach me?
Can you tell me all I need to know?
Teacher, teacher can you reach me?
Or will I fall when you let me go?

Teacher, teacher can you teach me?
Can you tell me if I'm right or wrong?
Teacher, teacher can you reach me?
I wanna know what's goin' on, oh

Teacher, teacher, can you teach me?
Teacher, teacher, can you reach me?
Teacher, teacher, can you teach me?
Teacher, teacher, oh yeah

Teacher, teacher can you teach me?
Teach me

-- Bob

Barnetson

Teachers, social work and workload

Teachers are often derided for their (allegedly) short working days and long vacations. These accusations have been repeatedly refuted. For example, a 2013 study found teachers in Alberta spent on average 41.3 hour per week working in school and an additional 13.9 hours per week working at home (that is, on average, 55.2 hours per week). Suddenly, two months of summer vacation seems a lot more reasonable.

This past weekend, the Guardian ran a piece about the working conditions of teachers. This teacher (in the UK) discussed the social issues she must cope with in her classroom (e.g., children under significant emotional strain, children who have been sexually abused) and how these affect her ability to meet national performance standards. In effect she spends much of her class room time on social work.

As I was pushing through the pre-holiday marking pile, I was thinking back to some of my own teachers and what they (unintentionally) taught me about teaching. Mr. Constable (who taught me English, Literature and History over the years) was a bit unconventional. For example, in grade-12 Literature, he returned a paper I submitted in grade-11 English. I recall my mother (herself a teacher) saying he must be a very patient marker… . But he also put up with a bad reading of Shakespeare (including me in drag as Lady MacBeth and a lot of fake blood) and history term papers that veered into speculative fiction.

Yet, when I face a paper that misses the mark or completely ignores the instructions, I often find myself thinking back to his very engaging style of teaching and lenient marking. “It’s often the first time through the material for the students,” he explained, “so you have to give them some latitude. The good ones refine their ideas that way.” I keep trying to remember that.

-- Bob Barnetson

Protect AU from the call centre?

The Canadian Union of Public Employees has launched a new website for those who wish to express their dismay with Athabasca University's efforts to displace the tutor model of instruction with a call centre. You can visit Protect Learning at AU by click the link and filling out a digital postcard.

-- Bob Barnetson

Athabasca moves forward on call centre model

I’ve had several questions from students about Athabasca University’s undergraduate instructional model following a recent article (including several follow-on letters that are not available online) in the Athabasca Advocate. In short, AU appears to be about to replace the tutor model to a call-centre model. Here is the low down as far as I can tell.

Athabasca currently offers undergraduate courses using two models: the tutor model and the call centre model (sometimes called the student support centre model).

1. Tutor Model: Students are assigned an individual academic, sometimes a full-time faculty member and sometimes a part-time tutor. Students use the course materials (e.g., an online study guide that replaces traditional lectures plus textbooks and other readings) and then interact with the academic as needed (e.g., asking questions, discussing material, clarifying assignments) and the academic also marks the students’ assignments.
2. Call centre model: Students get the same course materials but send queries to a call centre. The support staff in the call centre try to filter out so-called administrative questions and then generate tickets (i.e., service requests) that get sent an academic expert to answer. Academic experts can be full-time faculty or part-time tutors. Academic experts also do marking.

The most obvious difference between the two models is the level of student access to academics. The tutor model offers reasonably direct access by phone or email and the academic can also initiate contact with a student who is struggling or lagging. By contrast, the call centre model requires students to go through the call centre and academic experts cannot initiate contact with students.

Proponents of the call centre say there is little difference in student satisfaction or outcomes. Of course, most of this research is done by proponents of the call centre model and not everyone agrees with their conclusions. A recent survey by the Athabasca University Students’ Union shows widespread resistance to the call centre model among students. 

Proponents of the tutor model have a number of concerns about the call centre. This student’s comments outline many of the concerns:

Currently I am in a business class and when I called twice into the call center for assistance, no reply was given for a week. By the time I had received a response I had forgotten why I had called in the first place and had to search my papers for a prompt to remind me with an annoyed Athabasca University representative waiting impatiently on the phone. Even still, when the call ended I had forgotten other questions I had intended to ask and had to call back.

One example is not conclusive evidence of a problem by any means. But there are lots of similar stories about the technology of the call centre impeding learning.

So why use call centre technology then?

Cost is the main reason. After experimentation in the 1990s, the Faculty of Business adopted the call centre for all of its undergraduate courses about 10 years ago. Under the tutor model, the teaching cost in the Faculty of Business was about $1.5m. The call centre “saved” about $700k, although it is not clear whether that accounts for the additional costs associated with operating the call centre (I’m working from memory—I’d be happy for documentation if anyone has it).

Of course, “cost savings” is just a euphemism for “reduced tutors’ wages”. Under the tutor system, tutors get a fixed amount of money per month to teach a class plus piece-rate pay for marking. Under the call centre model, the tutors get paid by the minute for teaching plus piece-rate pay for marking.

Proponents of the call centre say the call centre is more efficient: academic experts don’t spend time answering “administrative” questions. In my experience, the number of purely administrative questions I get from students is negligible.

Those administrative questions I do get often open the door to academic discussions. For example, when a student asks “what is the format of the final exam?” (a seemingly administrative question), that is an opportunity for me to probe their readiness for the exam (e.g., “so, are you comfortable with concepts like the commodification of labour?”). The call centre model obstructs teachable moments like that.

I’ve taught in both models and, while this will likely anger some of my colleagues, my experience is that the call centre model is a lousy way to teach and learn. There is less interaction between students and academics (70-80% less according to call centre proponents!). The teaching is almost always reactive--no teaching happens unless a student calls and successfully gets past the call centre (only 20-30% of the time!). And there is often a lag between a question and a response. Much like any call centre experience (e.g., trying to resolve an issue on your cable bill), it is a frustrating experience. And this frustration means students don’t call—which saves the university money!

It is also a lousy way to work. The university grinds tutor wages by disputing the minute-by-minute time sheets they must submit. Some activities—like ongoing professional development—is not compensable. And the entire process is alienating for Athabasca’s tutors who are being treated as disposable workers.

Until recently, the call centre was limited to the Faculty of Business (plus a small number of other courses). Then, in the spring of 2012, the then-VPA quietly announced that the call centre would be rolled out across all courses starting in September in order to save $1 million.  

This decision was never presented to the university’s General Faculties Council because it was an “administrative” rather than an “academic” decision. We’d obviously call bullshit if a health bureaucrat overruled a doctor’s treatment decision to save some cash on the patient's back and this is no really different. Clearly cost-driven and quite fundamental pedagogical change was (and is) afoot with no academic oversight.

Academics resisted this change and it stalled. Presently the issue is languishing in a subcommittee of a subcommittee of General Faculties Council. 

Yet, at the same time, the Faculty of Science and Technology is apparently implementing the call centre so it looks like our current university administrators remain hell-bent on implementation in order to resolve the university’s financial woes. 

While academics continue to push back, it is unlikely academics alone will be successful in preserving the tutor model. Frankly, only students have that kind of power.

One of the most troubling unknowns about AU’s intent to move wholesale to the call centre model is whether other universities will continue to accept Athabasca University courses for transfer. This is important because somewhere around 25% of Athabasca course registration (~19,000) are by “visiting” students—students who pick up 1-3 courses to help them complete a degree elsewhere. Another 36% of registrations (~27,000) are non-program students—many of whom will take their AU courses to another institution for credit at some point (i.e., they are undeclared visiting students).

Currently, Faculty of Business courses seem to transfer well enough. But I suspect academics at receiving institutions have no idea that these courses are “taught” via the call centre model. That will no longer be the case if all courses AU are taught via the call centre.

While the government of Alberta may be able to pressurize Alberta institutions into recognizing call-centre courses, only about a third of visiting students are from Alberta. Another a third of visiting students come from Ontario and the government of Ontario has no reason to pressure its institutions to accept call centre courses.

As 50% of Athabasca’s revenue comes from tuition, any enrollment losses among visiting students are devastating. Ontario’s recent announcement that it is setting up its own online consortium may well make Ontario school less likely to accept AU credits, especially if AU gives those institutions the perfect pretext by making the credits look dodgy “degree-mill” credits earned from a call centre.

-- Bob Barnetson

Edit: A number of people have asked me how they can express their concerns about the call centre model.

AU’s Board of Governors has the power to stop the call centre and you may wish to email the Board Chair (Barry Walker) via the University Secretary (Carol Lund): caroll@athabascau.ca .

My own experience dealing with the Board is that they are more likely to respond to you if you copy your email to the Athabasca University Students Union (ausu@ausu.org) and perhaps the Minister of Advanced Education (Dave Hancock): edmonton.whitemud@assembly.ab.ca .

For those of you who prefer to tweet, here are some useful hashtags: #abpse #AthaU @DaveHancockMLA

For those of you who are old-school, you could also write a letter to the editor of the Athabasca Advocate: vannand@athabasca.greatwest.ca .

I'd be happy to receive copies of your messages at bob.barnetson@shaw.ca or @bobbarnetson .

Low-stakes student testing still has negative effects

It appears changes are coming to Alberta’s provincial achievement tests. Instead of assessing learning at the end of grades 3, 6 and 9, there is talk of testing at the beginning of each year (and perhaps every year) to identify each student’s strengths and weaknesses. Given the low cost of machine-marked tests, there is also discussion of retesting at the end of the year to see what gains have been made (cue ritualistic chanting of “accountability and transparency, uber alles!”).

On the surface, this sounds pretty reasonable. Yet it is worthwhile considering what kind of impact this approach would likely have on teachers and instruction. The government is saying that it has no interest in linking testing results to pay (so-called high-stakes testing).

That sounds levelheaded.

But my sense of Alberta’s Conservatives is that they will say virtually anything to get what they want and then conveniently forget their promises. And, even if Education Minister Jeff Johnson is earnest in his promise, governments have a hard time resisting the temptation to exploit the surveillance opportunities that come with any new technology.

But let’s say annual pre- and post-testing is on the up-and-up and teachers and parents get info on student performance at the beginning and end of the year. What effect is that going to have on instruction?

Even without explicit pay incentives, teachers are going feel pressured to ensure their students (as a group) get high scores. The pressure will come from parents who will use the tests as the desiderata for determining who the “good” teachers are and which schools are “good” (no doubt egged on by Fraser-Institute rankings of schools).

The pressure will also come from principals (and perhaps peers) who will use the test scores to inform their assessment of teacher performance. Even with no explicit consequences, hearing one’s boss or colleague say “boy, it looks like you had a tough year this year” is something no worker wants to hear. It means a loss of status and credibility and all the intangible benefits those things entail for workers. It also means fear of future consequence if one’s scores don’t improve.

In essence, the existence of a testing technology that makes workers “transparent” to their boss (google panopticon for a fuller discussion) and strips performance of context (which is the purpose of quantification) creates the negative effects most often associated with high-stakes testing. These effects are pretty well established:

• Teachers will teach to the test. Maybe emphasizing tested content is a good thing. My guess is that it will make for a less diverse curriculum that emphasizes easily testable material (e.g., calculation, definition, association) moreso than creative application of knowledge.
• Teachers will teach test taking. Taking a test is a learned skill. Good teachers will teach students how to game tests. Yeah, the government can control for that to some degree. But the bigger issue is that gaming tests a skill with limited (and frankly negative social) utility outside of the school system.
• Teachers will triage students: The biggest gains over the year will come from those students who enter the year in the middle of the pack. High scorers simply have few gains to make. And low-scorers require a lot of effort to see test gains (or have other challenges that make gains unlikely). So teachers will (quite rationally) spend most of their effort maximizing the gains for average students.

This list of behaviours isn’t meant to demonize teachers (who are generally hard working and lovely people). It is simply meant to identify the behaviours that this kind of testing rewards—even without explicit employment consequences.

Over time, this kind of testing will also serve a sorting function among teachers (“Griffindor!”). To the degree that teacher performance varies due to effort and other factors, some teachers will eventually amass records of better and worse performance. Teachers with better records will then be able to use these records to acquire “better” jobs (i.e., jobs at schools where there are fewer students who struggle) because principals will (if only informally and perhaps on the QT) use test scores as a selection criterion.

The effect of this sorting is that “good” schools will get the better teachers while “bad” school will get worse teachers, creating a vicious cycle. Obviously there are counterbalancing factors in hiring (e.g., some good teachers will relish a challenge, the flow of teachers is and can be constrained in many ways).

But why create a system that naturally produces bad classroom and system-wide effects? Why create a system where the public must rely upon teachers and principals to act contrary to their own interests to avoid those effects?

Now there may well be some value in testing. It might well inform teachers’ practice. Although how much slack the average teacher has in his or her workload to address individual weaknesses is a fair question to ask. It is also fair to ask whether teachers really need standardized tests to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses?

A second value of testing is that it will make it easier to hold teachers to account for student progress. There are lots of issue with this, the most obvious being that learning outcomes are not often or fully within the control of the teacher. And, of course, suddenly we’ve drifted towards high-stakes (for teachers) testing haven’t we?

I certainly appreciate the public’s appetite for better information about their children’s progress. But could that not be remedied via incremental change—such as more quantitative report cards and replacing the tedious and uninformative “student demonstrations of learning” with parent-teacher conferences?

-- Bob Barnetson

Johnson picks a(nother) fight with the ATA

A couple of years back, the Government of Alberta launched the High School Flexibility Enhancement Pilot Project. The idea was to see if it was possible to de-link course credit and instructional time. Basically, could students earn credit without the 25-hours of mandatory face-to-face instruction per course credit currently required?

The summary report of the pilot quotes Minister of Education Jeff Johnson framing this change as:

…what we talked about in Inspiring Education and where we want to go in the province in terms of instilling critical competencies in kids as opposed to having them just regurgitate content and memorize content. And so, that’s going to require a change to our system; it’s going to require a change to how we teach; the curriculum we teach. It’s going to require having curriculum that’s simpler and less prescriptive and allows teachers and local communities to plan learning experiences; where we bring in experts from the community and experts from around the globe even because no longer in the future is it envisioned that the teachers are always going to be the same. And they necessarily won’t be the sage on the stage or the repository of all the knowledge and content. (p.2)

The list of positive and negative changes observed during the pilot are listed on page 15 of the document. They tell a mixed tale. General measures of student retention went up but exam scores went down. Quality of teaching and education measures generally went down. But the government has decided to go forward. Hmmm….

While the project is pitched as seeking flexibility, student-centredness and reducing infrastructure demand (i.e., new schools), it also has human resource implications. For example, teachers will be expected to teach differently and use outside “experts”.

Yesterday, Minister of Education Jeff Johnson suggested that one barrier to progress on this initiative is the "stringent" rules pushed for by the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) to cap instructional hours and allow only ATA members to instruct students.

It is true that the ATA (acting as a union) negotiates instructional caps. But it does so with the government, either directly (as in this past round) or indirectly (via school boards, which are essentially proxies for the government). So implicitly blaming the ATA for a situation co-produced between the ATA and the government is misleading.

It is also true that, to teach a K-12 student, one needs to be certified by the ATA (acting as a professional regulatory body). But this arrangement flows from legislation, something the government controls. During the most recent round of bargaining, the government gave the ATA a “comfort letter” which basically says the government wouldn’t alter the regulatory function of the ATA. Again, this was a co-produced outcome, mostly reflecting choices the government has made over time that regulating who teaches children is a good thing.

For its part, the ATA notes it has been largely cut out of the design of this program. And, of course, the ATA’s job is to maintain professional and contractual standards, not help the government end-run them.

So why is Johnson blaming the ATA?

Well, Johnson did a poor job of handling ATA negotiations this spring and the premier had to bail him out. And Johnson has been taking fire for class sizes topping 40 students flowing from the government’s budget cuts this spring. Perhaps this is payback for the ATA’s efforts (on behalf of their members) for decent working conditions. And perhaps he is looking to scape-goat the ATA in order to hang onto his cabinet seat following this coming weekend’s Conservative leadership review.

-- Bob Barnetson

Expanding workers' compensation coverage

Unions representing workers across the country recent released a statement demanding that workers’ compensation coverage be expanded to include all workers in Canada. The Yukon recently expanded workers’ compensation to all workers.

Elsewhere, many workers are excluded (although the exclusions are idiosyncratic by province and territory) from coverage and thus have no (or limited) wage-loss, rehab and medical benefits when they are injured on the job. This transfers injury costs away from employers and onto workers, their families and the taxpayer.

In Alberta, the list of exclusions is wild and varied (see Schedule B here), including farmers, preachers, hookers and some teachers. 

Which kind of reminds me of the beginning of a Randy Travis song about an MVA.

Perhaps this song inspired Alberta's incoherent list of exclusions? That is as plausible as any other explanation I've heard.

-- Bob Barnetson

Outgoing Alberta School Boards Association president rebukes government

The Alberta government's imposition of a teacher wage deal has strained relationships between Alberta school boards and the government. Specifically, many Boards were upset that they were effectively cut out of the bargaining process and are now stuck with collective agreements they did not negotiate.

The outgoing president of the Alberta School Boards Association made a stinging speech at the ASBA spring general meeting this morning (the good stuff is in the first six pages). In it, Jacquie Hansen calls out the Redford government for mishandling teacher collective bargaining for years. For the ASBA to publicly call out the government is unusual and reflects how poorly the government has managed this process.

-- Bob Barnetson

Teachers, province sign deal; will boards resist?

I’ve just finished reading a new book chapter detailing the history of Alberta teacher’s collective bargaining. “Oil and ideology: The transformation of K-12 bargaining in Alberta” (by Kelly Williams-Whitt) appears in Dynamic Negotiations: Teacher labour relations in Canadian elementary and secondary education. 

Williams-Whitt’s analysis suggests that the Klein-era K-12 funding changes (when school boards lost the power to tax) triggered a shift towards province-wide negotiations (both officially and de facto) over the subsequent 15 years. In effect, school boards got squeezed between the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) and the province.  Her analysis leaves off in 2010, just as the ATA, the Alberta School Board’s Association (ASBA) and the government started tripartite negotiations for an agreement to replace the one that expired in August of 2012.

Fast forward through several years of negotiations, threats and tantrums and last night the ATA and province announced they’d signed a memorandum for a four-year deal. It looks like the ATA met with the Premier last Thursday to hash out a deal (which makes Education Minister Jeff Johnson's threat of legislating a contract on March 12 all the odder--was Johnson blowing smoke? Or was he cut out of the negotiation?). It appears the ASBA was not a part of this process, although the framework agreement requires them to sell it to their members(!).

“I can tell you that based on my first look at this latest proposal developed by the ATA and government — without the employer at the table — this agreement will have serious negative impacts on the education we provide in Alberta classrooms and schools,” ASBA Jacque Hansen wrote to her members.

Interestingly, all 62 school boards and ATA locals must ratify this by May 13; if any one ATA local or school board fails to ratify, then the deal falls through and local bargaining resumes.

The deal itself includes three years of zeros, a 2.0% raise in 2015 and a one-time 1.0% payment in 2015 (plus maybe some equalization money for low-end boards—it is hard to parse what the agreement means). There is also a promise by the province to look at teacher workloads, perhaps a nod to a study released by the ATA on work-life balance and attrition in Alberta schools. The government also agrees to retain existing language on instructional limits and there will be an effort to reduce instructional time to 907 hours per year. Local bargaining on some issues will continue.

There is also a letter signed by the Premier and the Minister promising to not do a variety of things. It is a bit hard to determine what is being promised (it is highly legalistic in its phrasing) but it looks like the government is promising not to attack statutory provisions affecting teacher rights and the ATA’s position as bargaining agent. It provides the ATA with a promise of input into any significant changes in the collective bargaining process (although what changes are contemplated are unclear).

The manner in which this deal was negotiated (basically the province and the ATA have foisted a deal on the ASBA) is consistent with the trends identified by Williams-Whitt. Interestingly, whether this memorandum passes ratification and its operational implications (e.g., class size, teacher layoffs) lie largely within the control of ASBA members. School boards have already been directed to reduce administrative expenses by 10% (which some view as micro-management) so there is still room for this deal to go off the rails. 

There is also the possibility that an ATA local won't play ball. One presumes the ATA will work hard to sell the deal, playing up the bits around containing instructional hours. But, from a pocket-book perspective, three years without a cost-of-living adjustment followed by a small adjustment (a third of which is one-time money) and no layoff protection is simply a bad deal. I know I wouldn't vote for something like that if my employer offered it.

-- Bob Barnetson

Teacher bargaining broken?

Education Minister Jeff Johnson continues to stir the pot in teacher bargaining. This morning, the Calgary Herald is reporting that Johnson is describing the current teacher bargaining structure as “broken”. 

The issue seems to be that (1) all 62 ATA locals are in bargaining at the same time, creating the potential for a province-wide strike, and (2) the ATA can (although almost never does) veto locally negotiated deals.

So let’s unpack this a bit.

It is true that all 62 collective ATA collective agreements are up for negotiation, creating the possibility that there could be 62 strikes/lockouts at some point (likely next fall, if negotiations fail). But how did all of these expiry dates come to line up?

Well, several years ago (in an effort to prevent work stoppages), the government signed a five-year deal affecting all locals: basically it bought labour peace. This time around, the government wasn’t interested in labour peace (despite an offer by the ATA to take increases of zero, zero, two and four percent).

So it is Johnson’s government that has created the potential for (and likelihood of) a province-wide work stoppage. Mostly because the province is too broke to buy peace again because the Tories won’t create an adequate tax structure to pay for basic things like edu-ma-cating the young’uns.

It is also true that that ATA can veto local agreements. But it has only done so twice in decades, both times when the negotiated agreement violated the law! A third case saw the local agreement ratified. Wow, how irresponsible the ATA has been!

While the ATA could potentially step in, veto all 62 agreements and trigger province-wide strikes/lockouts, this is highly unlikely. Unions don’t want strikes. And strikes forced upon members by the union are likely to be unsuccessful.

Interestingly, Johnson’s own behaviour has not been so restrained.

Last week, Jonson called off province-wide negotiations a second time, after the ATA had rejected his latest ultimatum (“I’m breaking up with you, too!”). He now requires all school boards provide signed agreements to him 10 days ahead of ratification. The only reason for this would be for him to informally veto the deal, likely by threatening to replace the school board if they ratified something he found distasteful.

So, just in case you missed the irony, Johnson complains bargaining is broken because the ATA can veto local deals they don’t like (even thought they don’t) but then gives himself the same power. And then, unable to resist the temptation of such power, Johnson has told everyone who will listen (including the school boards) that all “negotiated” agreements must meet contain increases of zero, zero, zero and two per cent.

So let’s recap.

In a rather Orwellian twist, the Minister of Education uses the word “negotiate” to mean “impose”. And then he blames teachers for a bargaining situation his government created. And he suggests the ATA (which has always used its power to veto deals responsibly) is some how putting children’s education at risk when it is, in fact, his own (mis-)adventures in province-wide bargaining and subsequent tantrums and micromanagement of school boards that is causing the problem.

Basically bargaining has turned to bullying. Anyone remember the scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Darth Vader turns to Lando and says “I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further"? Kind of like that, but without the groovy special effects and incest subplot (although I have my fingers crossed on the latter).

In the end, intergalactic bullying didn’t work out for the Empire. Perhaps the Darth Johnson wants to reflect upon that.

-- Bob Barnetson 

Government bargaining directly with teachers?

Minister of Education Jeff Johnson was on the radio this morning, chatting about the ATA’s rejection of his latest offer for a province-wide deal.  One of the more interesting things he said was that the ATA’s positions on instructional caps differ from what he’s “hearing from teachers on the ground”. That is to say, he is suggesting that teachers want something different from their union. Johnson’s knowledge of what teachers want may stem from an email he sent to individual teachers a few weeks back.

This question of who knows best what teachers want raises the issue of just who is negotiating with whom in what is frankly a completely mess. The ATA is the bargaining agent (acting through its various locals). Typically, the union articulates its members’ demands to the employer, generally after a period of (often acrimonious) intra-organizational bargaining among its members. 

The employers are the 62 school boards. That said, the school boards are beholden to the government and apparently have to get the government’s okay on any contract they sign, so the whole process is a bit of a sham. The true employer (luring just off stage) is the provincial government. Periodically, the government jumps back onto the stage, with several attempts to get a province-wide deal. Or by making a province-wide offer or threats of imposing a deal with wage rollbacks and salary freezes (cue olde time villainous music).

This, of course, muddies the waters. The school boards (quite understandably) are happy to sit back and watch while the government pressures the ATA to knuckle under. And local bargaining stalls. Which is, of course, the kind of thing that causes workers to get pissed off and strike—which is the outcome Johnson explicitly says the government does not want. So you’d think he’d want to stop running his mouth.

Coming back to the question of who negotiates with whom, labour laws typically preclude employers from interacting directly with union members. There are two reasons for this. First, employers bargaining directly with union members is an age-old way for employers to undermine the power of the union by playing groups of workers in a bargaining unit off against one another. We certainly see the government attempting to do that here by suggesting that the ATA is not representing what (some of) the teachers want.

Second, allowing the union to voice the demands of its members brings a degree of coherence to the bargaining table: the union can tell the employer what it is going to take to get a deal and the employer can then respond (or not). Johnson (the sometimes employer) purporting to have a kitchen cabinet of teachers “on the ground” telling him what they want is, in fact, creating a situation where no deal will ever be possible.

The reason for this is that it is hard for an employer and a union to come to an agreement they can both get ratified by a majority of their principals. Getting a deal which satisfies everyone (i.e., generates consensus among teachers on the ground) is impossible. If Johnson is now bargaining directly with individual teachers, he’ll have to please both those who want instructional caps and those want smaller classes sizes.

And then he’ll have to please those who will want every Friday off and clothing allowances and extra support staff and monkeys for their science class—the list of member demands is usually pretty incoherent and full of contradictions during the intraorganizational bargaining stage. This is why unions articulate a single position—everybody (including employers) benefits from this.

When unions aren’t allowed to generate a clear bargaining position because the employer is interacting directly with the members, bargaining fails. This basic dynamic explains (for the most part) why we have the collective bargaining laws and structures we do—they work and have an internal logic to them (even though that logic is not necessarily readily apparent).

It is unclear of Johnson doesn’t know what he is doing, or is getting really bad advice, or is intentionally trying to drive local bargaining onto the rocks to justify back-to-work legislation. In any event, if two-and-half-years of province-wide bargaining didn’t come up with a deal, then likely there is no province-wide deal to be had. So Johnson needs to butt out and let the employers sort it out with the locals—this being how collective bargaining works under the laws his government enacted.

-- Bob Barnetson

Minister to teachers: freezes or cuts, your choice

The Calgary Herald is reporting that Education Minister Jeff Johnson has attempted to restart province-wide “negotiations” between teachers, school boards and the province that went off the rails in late 2012.

Those 2012 negotiations saw the teachers offer pay “raises” of zero, zero, one and three percent over four years in exchange for caps on instructional time. The province balked because instructional time caps might affect some small (i.e., rural) school boards negatively.

Now Johnson is shopping around a proposal offering zero, zero, zero and two percent “increases”. Plus there are some one-time payments (i.e., they don’t change long-term compensation) of one percent in each of years three and four.

So basically Johnson’s trying to grind off half of the long-term increases offered by the teachers in exchange for instructional time caps. Oh, and also there is meaningful no cap on teaching time.

Now we’d all like to have our cake (no teacher work stoppages) and eat it too (insanely low raises stretching out into a future where costs will rise and no meaningful cap on instructional time, which would entail a rollback of some contract provisions already won). But we also know that no union is going to recommend such a lousy deal.

Johnson has “sweetened” the offer by saying, if the teachers don’t sign before the budget drops on March 7, then he’ll legislate this and hinting maybe there will be salary rollbacks and/or layoffs:

“I must stress these incentives – both financial and the membership of the Exceptions Committee – will not be carried over if we need to reach a deal after the provincial budget is tabled.”

Also:

The minister writes that his proposal means teachers will remain the best paid in any Canadian province, and “prevent the possibility of salary rollbacks.”

He adds: “I also want to minimize as much as possible reductions in teaching staff.”

"Well, sign me up!" say the teachers. Oh no, wait, they are actually giving the minister advice about sex and travel. Lip reading is indeed a tricky business. Fortunately, the sign language helped.

There is, of course, no real reason why this deal wouldn’t be available to teachers after March 7 (the budget will be the same regardless), except that the Tories are trying to stop what is looking like it will be a(nother) ugly fight in a spring where they have been battered on a daily basis. Attempting to bully the union just drives the membership together to resist and will eventually result in work-to-rule campaigns and/or work stoppages.

It will also undermine the personal support the premier derives from parents and teachers that won her the leadership. It is unclear if the Tories don’t understand this. Or, more interestingly, perhaps some of them do understand the impact this is having on the Premier’s “base” and are pushing this agenda intentionally.

-- Bob Barnetson

Legislating teacher contracts only “if the kids are affected”?

Education Minister Jeff Johnson noted in an interview with the Calgary Herald that he would consider legislating teacher contracts only as a last resort.

“It obviously would be a last resort, something that we don’t want to do,” he said of a legislated contract. “We would only really look at this seriously if we felt kids would be impacted.”

It is useful to examine Johnson’s assertion that strikes impact children (negatively, one presumes). There is a modest but conflicting literature addressing the effect of work stoppages on student achievement (Lytle and Yanoff, 1973; Brison and Smith, 1978; Caldwell and Moskalski, 1981; Caldwell and Jeffreys, 1983; Crisci and Lulow, 1985; Wilkinson, 1989). Zirkel (1992) provides a thorough analysis of the Canadian and American literature to approximately 1990. His conclusions are:

1. studies addressing the impact of strikes on student attitudes towards school are too remote and flawed to draw meaningful inferences from, 
2. it is not possible to draw conclusions regarding the effect of strikes on student attendance and drop-out rates because the data is too thin and results too mixed, and 
3. the most charitable interpretation of the data on how strikes affect student achievement is that they have a partial and short-lived effect. 

More recently, Thornicroft (1994) comparison of Ohio districts and Zwerling’s (2008) comparison of Pennsylvania districts found no relationship between work stoppages and student achievement. In Canada, Baker (2011) and Johnson (2011) studied Ontario strikes in the late 1990s and early 2000s to identify how labour disruption affects elementary school performance.

Examining 11 strikes between 1998/99 and 2005/06, Baker found reductions in grade 6 mathematics scores among schools that experienced strikes of 10 days, with the primary impact being in the year the strike occurred. Examining 15 strikes and 20 work-to-rule campaigns between 1998/99 and 2003/04, Johnson found labour disruptions were associated small reductions in grade 3 reading and mathematics assessment results. Longer strikes were associated with reductions in grade 6 mathematics results, with the effect concentrated at schools with lower socioeconomic status. Neither Johnson nor Baker addresses the effect of strikes on long-term student achievement.

The upshot is that there is some (but not very much) evidence that strikes and lockouts have a (very) small negative impact on (a small number) of students and that affects tends to be short-term. I’m told that (unpublished) government analysis of the 2002 Alberta teacher strike basically came to this conclusion.

So much for Johnson’s “oh, think of the children!” rationale.

The real impact of a teacher strike is that is messes up childcare arrangements. This was certainly the message I heard from parents during the 2007 strike in Parkland County (I was with the government then and got to take angry phone calls from parents—good times…). The political fallout from strike-triggered childcare woes is what the government is really concerned about, especially since the government already turned down a wage-freeze offer from the teachers and its prospects for legislating teachers back to work are limited.

The government would do well to remember then-Chief Justice Allan Wachowich’s 2002 admonishment that decisions about what justifies abrogating the collective bargaining rights of workers “should be informed and reasonable, not whimsical, speculating or political.”

-- Bob Barnetson

Johnson muses legislating Alberta teacher contracts

As predicted, the Alberta government is now publicly mooting legislating public-sector contracts, at least for teachers. According to Metro News, Education Minister Jeff Johnson has queried school boards about whether they’d prefer if the province legislated a teacher contract rather than engage in 62 local negotiations.

Not surprisingly, some Boards would be happy to have the province resolve bargaining for them.

Johnson’s press secretary Kim Capstick said Sunday the ministry had received “mixed” support among boards questioned about a legislated deal, with some openly advocating for the move as a way to remove any threat of labour unrest.

This willingness by some Boards to let the province “negotiate” may reflect that the province already controls school board budgets. School boards must then negotiate without really any flexibility in what they can offer. And when the poop hits the fan, the school board ends up wearing at least some of it. Why not hand that off to the province if money is tight?

Local negotiations started again in late autumn after province-wide talks broke down when the Minister declined the teachers’ offer of two years of salary freezes.  Strange that the government would take a pass on a pretty good deal freely offered and then start musing about legislating a much more politically costly deal only months later. This seemingly about-face is, however, consistent with the crisis-management approach the Redford government appears to have adopted.

And, of course, we don’t know what kind of deal Johnson might legislate. Ontario froze teacher salaries in September. Since Johnson turned down a wage-freeze in the fall and the province’s financial woes appear to have gotten worse in the interim, legislation might include a wage rollback.

It is an open question whether a legislated deal would survive constitutional challenge. If the freedom of association protections of the charter protect the right to some form of meaningful collective bargaining, legislating deals in lieu of bargaining will require Alberta to meet some stringent tests for the legislation to stand.

Of course Johnson could just be trying to soften up teachers (and other public-sector workers) to accept freezes or small rollbacks voluntarily. My sense is that there is still no appetite in the public-sector for such cuts.

-- Bob Barnetson