ROMER BACKS DOWN ON SURVEY UNIONS HIT PAPERWORK, MOTIVES.

Byline: Sonia Giordani Staff Writer

LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer backed away Wednesday from a fight with teacher and administrator unions by canceling the start of a key element in his program to improve classroom instruction.

Romer had planned to launch a controversial study this month to gauge the quality of classroom assignments across the Los Angeles Unified School District. Union leaders said the survey would have created too much paperwork for their members, and they feared it was a backdoor way of evaluating faculty performance.

The survey was scheduled to go out this month to teachers of English and language arts in fourth, seventh and 10th grades as part of Romer's plan to assess and compare the quality of instruction. But he backed down after the unions directed their members to refuse to participate.

``The success of this was dependent upon cooperation from the teachers and the administrators, and if they're all up in arms about it, then it's not a good way to start a cooperative effort,'' said Romer.

Romer said he will need the support of teachers and administrators as the district embarks on an ambitious plan to reform secondary education and particularly to boost literacy in the upper grades. Under one program, all teachers in middle and high schools - from math instructors to science teachers - will be required to incorporate reading lessons into their classes.

Romer said he plans to work closely with United Teachers Los Angeles and Associated Administrators of Los Angeles groups to address concerns about the survey so that he can proceed with it in the spring.

``This is not worth all the energy,'' Romer said. ``I want to keep our eyes on the more central issue of reform.''

Research assistants were scheduled to meet with principals to get an overview of the survey and how the data collection would work. Some area principals were surprised by calls to cancel the appointments.

``Next thing we knew, they pulled back,'' one local principal said.

Teachers would have been asked to submit sample writing assignments along with four examples of student work. The teachers also would have been required to give detailed explanations of the grading criteria, the origin of an assignment and their expectations from the students.

United Teachers Los Angeles President Day Higuchi said the survey isn't a bad idea.

``It's just that our members are in this profession to teach, and this sort of thing gives them less time to do that because there's a huge amount of paperwork that has to get done,'' Higuchi said.

In recent years, teachers and principals have been bogged down with more and more paperwork from various agencies trying create accountability in the education system, he said.

``Before there were all these layers of bureaucracy and paperwork. Now there are all the layers of bureaucracy - plus all the layers of reform,'' he said.

The UTLA issued a one-page bulletin to its members, calling the assessment and survey ill-advised and telling them not to implement it until further notified.

``Our members are more than overloaded with activities that take time away from what they entered teaching to do - teach,'' states the memo sent out last week.

Administrators followed suit Monday with a memo to principals that told them not to order their teachers to do the assessment and suggested that the whole exercise was a sneaky way of evaluating the instructional leadership of teachers and principals at the schools.

``Teachers were asked to evaluate the principal as to the climate and culture of the school, without any documentation. It was just a 'warm feeling' criteria,'' the Associated Administrators memo states. ``This evaluation tool also hit teachers hard. They had to provide samples of classroom work that would be evaluated by college professors.''

Board President Caprice Young said the survey was not meant to evaluate the teachers and administrators but rather to ensure that the quality and caliber of student assignments is rigorous and in line from school to school.

``We can't have positive student outcomes without a strong curriculum,'' she said.

Romer said he put the highest priority on accommodating the concerns of teachers and administrators.

``When we start down a road that has some flaw in it, I'm going to listen to you,'' said Romer. ``That's a very important message to send to the groups - that we need your input, and sometimes you're right and we're not.''