The point of paragraph 5A was to oppose the “distinctions” or fragmentation of higher ed faculty; it’s the opposite of the “divide and conquer” ethic that is commonplace in higher education. Those distinctions are reinforced by the two-tier faculty apartheid but can be minimized by a baseline of common workplace rights for all faculty. Paragraph 5B says that this solidarity is “the last best hope to restore integrity and public confidence to system of higher education…”

About evaluations, non-tenured faculty should encourage them. Everyone stands to gain from feedback. The absence of evaluations helps to sustain the myth that non-tenured faculty are inferior faculty. But it’s important that an evaluation system be formal and transparent and structured, ideally used to evaluate both tenured and non-tenured faculty. There should be safeguards so that evaluations are above board and objective in nature and, so far as is possible, free of personal bias. To be meaningful, evaluations should consist of more than a single cold visit with snapshot observations.

Best wishes,

Jack Longmate

This question was raised in the early discussions among New Faculty Majority, and two things: We of the New Faculty Majority are powerless to effect change; NFM is not a union but a collection of activists. If change is going to happen, it must be embraced by those who are in a position to effect change, such as faculty unions in those states where they exists, and activists of the contingent faculty movement.

Secondly, the majority of the items listed involve either no cost or nominal one-time cost, and thus there’s obstacle to stop immediate implementation. One goal that I think warrants widespread and universal adoption is a seniority system for contingent faculty–it would cost nothing to establish one, yet seniority systems for adjuncts in the United States are so rare–I understand that Foothills-DeAnza in Cupertino, CA, has one that’s worth looking at, but Vancouver Community College’s is an excellent one to shoot for. It’s listing is public at http://www.vccfa.ca/faqs/seniority.html.

Another low cost or no-cost measure that would be of great benefit would be establishment of a transparent and formalized evaluation system. Far too often, adjuncts are victims of an arbritrary, ad hoc system, whereby evaluators may be self-selected tenure faculty who may possibly have an agenda and, especially if the evaluation consists of a mere snapshot visit to a single class, can present a biased and unfair picture. Evaluations are important for many reasons and should be conducted according to a transparent and formalized system, and it does not necessarily cost to establish one.

I wrote implementatinon of ideas from the Program for Change in the newsletter of TESOL’s Fair Employment Forum Newsletter this past spring. TESOL is a professional association of ESL teachers and the newsletter is at (at “http://karen.stanley.people.cpcc.edu/Docs%20for%20FFE%20page/newsletters/FFENewsletterSpring2011.pdf). To quote a portion of that column:
+++++
“It many places, it is not possible to form or join a union. But there are still essential things that can be done by individual teachers that can promote fair employment conditions whether they are unionized or not. Those strategies are itemized in the Program for Change: 2010-2030, which is intended as a road map for U.S. higher education to overturn the stifling domination of a two-tiered tenured vs. non-tenured system. While the most commonly used excuse to reject ideas for improvement in the teaching workplace is a lack of funds, the strategies listed in the Program for Change are segregated as being (a) no-cost or very low one-time costs, (b) costs, (c) union/association actions, and (d) legislative action. If any one of the goals were enacted, it would bring improvement to the quality of teaching and the professional lives of the teachers affected. A version of the Program for Change: 2010-2030 is viewable at http://newfacultymajority.info/PfC/.

“An example would be teacher evaluations. Often classroom evaluation visits are carried out in an ad hoc manner with an administrator dropping in, sometimes announced. The outcome may be a superficial assessment based on shapshot impressions of the activities observed.

“Management consultant Samuel Culbert in his book Get Rid of the Performance Review (2010) makes a case that has applicability to the ESL classroom. Culbert condemns the standard “performance review,” where a supervisor meets with a subordinate and discusses general performance. The subordinate, anxious to remain in good standing with the boss, willingly complies with the recommendations made in his/her quest to be good employee. But missing from this structure is an honest discussion of what is really happening in the classroom. When teachers find themselves having trouble in being as effective as they know they can be, they are rarely inclined to bring up these issues with their supervisor, perhaps feeling that their supervisor is the last person who they would like to know about the problem.
Evaluations should proceed according to a regularized and scheduled system so that all players understand. The Program for Change distinguishes between summative and formative evaluations, the former being a judgment on whether the individual should remain in his/her job and the latter being feedback intended to help the instructor teach. Oftentimes in many institutions, no distinction is made, which causes unnecessary resistance and consternation in the workplace.

“ESL teachers, whether in a unionized setting or not, whether as part of an independent faculty association or not, could take up the initiative to develop their own evaluation system to provide formative feedback. This can be done by simply arranging to visit each other’s classrooms and then privately sharing impressions, recommendations, and options. In order to work, this does require a level of trust and instructors who see each other as colleagues and not competitors. But all performers stand to benefit from feedback; it is a way to improve the effectiveness of teaching. If teachers themselves instituted a procedure whereby meaningful suggestions could be offered to help teaching, management could very well realize that it is squarely in its best interest to support this initiative. It could decide to waive the need for traditional punitive instructor evaluation reviews, on the ground that they are necessarily snapshots and seldom touch on the essence of an individual teacher’s performance.”
+++++
Jack Longmate (jacklongmate@comcast.net)

Re: right to work states. No matter what you want to do, it’s tough stuff. HB

What about adjuncts in states where there is no union program for them? State with right to work laws and those where it is illegal for adjuncts to organize? Tell them “tough luck, not our problem”?

And yes ~ to both Trota Campos and Greg ~ there are updates, new material, charts that should have be added here or to the New Faculty Majority main page. I put in a request to put it on the blog or somewhere shareable until then.

In the meantime, Greg, what are your ideas for funding plans and localizing P4C? My thoughts, in the current funding climate, would be to look for the most affordable and ones that we could point to as clearly improving teaching as student outcomes. Those may not be the same everywhere, which is why we need more input and discussion