On Monday, May 11th, 25 Kaplan ESL teachers in Toronto boldly stood up for themselves and commenced a strike action, one that would end up lasting 4 weeks. The main issue at hand was internal "performance matrix", which teachers and members of their union (Unifor Local 40) claimed was being used by management to randomly and unpredictably lay-off experienced and highly-skilled teachers in favor of shorter-term contract teachers with nearly identical student survey results.
English language arts (ELA) teacher and test preparation instructor Brad Bartholomew, 45, said:
“People with 10 to 15 years of experience are being laid off, instead of people who were hired in the last year,”
“Our employers recognize they have full rights to use progressive discipline in line with performance evaluation. They say this restricts them too much. That’s completely untrue, there’s no reason why they can’t manage us based on performance. In fact, we want to be managed on performance. We just don’t want it to be the sole basis for arbitrary dismissal.
“We want to be better teachers and deliver quality classes to students. But you could be a good performer in the bottom third of teachers and be arbitrarily laid off."
Management's rhetoric of "not wanting to be restricted too much" is something they repeat like a broken record, and as any Kaplan teacher knows is just a poor justification they use when they want to make decisions that decimate their employee's livelihoods in order to raise quarterly earnings a few points or even a few fractions of a point. To paraphrase another part of their response: "We only want to make sure that the students have the highest quality teachers possible."
Anyone who has worked for Kaplan knows how hollow statements like these are. Teachers are judged, above all else, on student surveys given at the end of their time at Kaplan. These surveys however are given in English to non-native English speakers - and anyone with any sense of logic knows that a survey is as much of a popularity contest as it is an assessment with how much they've actually learned. A student may give a negative review to an amazing teacher who helped he or she improve their English tremendously, but perhaps the teacher had to be strict with the student and make them do things like (god forbid) put away their smartphones during class, or perhaps push them to work harder not only for their own benefit, but to keep their laziness from infecting the rest of the class. Or in some cases, a student may be upset at management or some other aspect of the school that's completely out of the teacher's hands, and reacts by giving poor marks across the board. In other words, negative survey results may stem from some form of resentment a student has against the teacher or the school itself, but is not an actual reflection of the quality of the education he or she received.
Another aspect of the "perfomance matrix" which defies all logic and common sense is that what separates a "quality" teacher from a "poorly performing teacher" is completely relative to the other teachers in the school. According to Unifor:
"Kaplan (is) now using the clause to dismiss long-serving employees with high approval ratings. Six members of staff have been dismissed in the past 12 to 18 months. The union claims that a 0.1 per cent difference in performance evaluation scores could cause a junior employee to be retained over a senior member of staff with more than 10 years experience."
Even if the surveys and "performance matrix" were an accurate judge of a teacher's ability to do what they're paid to do, teach, who's to say that the 25 teachers in Toronto aren't the best ESL teachers in the world? But since logically not all can be equally "the best", simply being one tenth of a point behind another colleague can put an amazing teacher on the chopping block. By that reasoning, Kaplan very well may have dismissed 6 of the finest ESL teachers to be found in the past 12-18 months. Also by that methodology, Kaplan can hire the worst ESL teachers in the world, but hey if the top 2/3 of the worst get higher survey scores than the bottom 1/3, they can tout the top performers as great teachers.
The truth of the matter is, however, is that Kaplan doesn't like to have experienced staff members because they make more money than a new hire because of annual raises. This not only goes for teachers, but for management as well. The other reason for this game they play is just a tool used to scare people into performing as they believe their jobs could vanish at any moment - as opposed to simply rewarding good performance with fair compensation for their good work.
In the end however, through their courageous actions, they managed to make the company meet their demands. After 4 weeks of work stoppage, the teachers of Toronto voted to accept a tentative agreement which Unifor says includes annual wage increases, vacation enhancements, and key improvements to language on job security they were fighting for.
Going out on strike is a bold action, an action fraught with pitfalls and uncertainty. However their decision to stand up and stand together after feeling pushed around for long enough are truly inspirational, and shows what can be achieved through solidarity.
- Teachers for a Better Kaplan
Sources:
- This writer who has all too much experience being in the employment of Kaplan Intl. Centers.
