Backed against the wall by recent labor controversies, the United Federation of Teachers has launched a counter-offensive:
The city teachers union is accusing education officials of using a double standard by yanking teachers from classrooms when they're accused of wrongdoing but letting similarly accused principals stay on.
The complaint seems to stem from a single incident in the Bronx where a principal was accused of employing corporal punishment but has not been disciplined.
Two things jump out here. First, why take for granted that managers should be held to the same standards as other employees? Principals--just like movie-theater managers, law firm partners, and vice presidents for national programs and policy at education think tanks--have different duties and responsibilities than the employees they lead. Central administrators, therefore, should have different criteria for evaluating the performance and behavior of principals and teachers. It's not a double standard--it's an entirely different set of standards, and it's a perfectly sensible approach for any hierarchical organization.
On the other hand, in practice, most urban school district central offices seem to do a pretty poor job of overseeing their principals (although some are trying to buck the trend). The UFT may very well be right that the principal in question deserves some kind of punishment. And I suspect (thanks to feedback from an NYC teacher) that there are several teachers in the rubber rooms and on the Absent Teacher Reserve who are there not because they're poor teachers, but because they worked under poor principals who reward loyalty and punish initiative and independent thinking.
In short, the UFT may be wrong to push for teachers and principals to be held to the same standards, but both certainly need to be held to higher standards.
