A Double Standard and Dubious Ethics in Determining Quality Teaching

Case Narrative

Superintendent Bold’s charge to Ms. Gray when she accepted the offer of the principal’s position at Friendly Middle School was deceptively simple:

Enforce consistent and high expectations of the teachers. Prioritize student achievement. Reward the teachers who are teaching well, and let the teachers who are not adding appropriate value know that it’s time to move on.

To be honest, Principal Former had been glad to retire early at the end of the previous school year. Throughout the 5 years he had been in charge at Friendly, Former had fostered a collaborative working environment that relegated “busy work” tasks—particularly those concerning administrative paperwork—to “when you have time.” This had set Superintendent Bold and Former on a collision path.

Principal Gray took Bold’s encouragement to tighten up the administration seriously. She instantly initiated a sign-out system for keys—along with a sign-in and sign-out system for teachers as well as staff. In addition, parking spaces were assigned by alphabetical order of surname. This created consternation, as all the established teachers had their own preferred spots depending on proximity to the multiple exterior doors to the building and/or when they arrived at school (the early bird gets the worm).

However, the greatest reaction was to Gray’s focus on enhancing the learning environment of Friendly. She demanded that lesson plans were to be turned in by all teachers on a weekly basis (for each upcoming week) to facilitate both (a) the regular classroom walkthroughs that Gray and Ms. Moore (her assistant principal) conducted and (b) the expectation that any substitute teachers would be actively involved in delivering instruction, not just “crowd control.” Large single sheets of yellow cardboard were printed up with spaces for lesson outlines. Each teacher was required to pick up one card for each class he or she taught on Monday morning when signing-in. These cards were to be filled out with the lesson plan outlines for the subsequent week and deposited in a tray that was prominently placed beside the sign-out clipboard before leaving on the following Friday afternoon.

Principal Gray held herself accountable for taking these lesson plan outlines very seriously. She intended to use them as validation to Superintendent Bold that she was committed to enhancing the learning environment. She reviewed them all before leaving on Friday and assigned walkthroughs for the next week to herself and Ms. Moore (space on the back of the sheets provided a place to record notes on each walkthrough that was conducted). She bought new file cabinets, and tasked her secretary, at the end of each week, with filing that week’s yellow cards in a separate file for each teacher.

Murmurs of rampant micro-management that reached central office were well received. Superintendent Bold rejoiced that in Principal Gray she had found someone who would see to it that educational accountability was the norm at Friendly Middle School.

Ms. Jones was a creative and enthusiastic teacher, but her administrative skills did not match her pedagogical skills. Time and again she missed deadlines for turning in her lesson plans. She had taught at Friendly during Principal Former’s tenure and regarded turning in lesson plans as far less important than actually planning and teaching exemplary lessons. Unfortunately, Jones tended to be forgetful of a few other administrative deadlines.

The tipping point for Principal Gray came when Jones missed a crucial aimsweb testing deadline that Gray had talked about with her at length. As a result of Jones’s missing this deadline, Friendly Middle School students who should have been involved in the aimsweb testing cycle would now not be tested. Superintendent Bold was livid, and icily referred to “dishevelment.” Principal Gray—she who was characterized as a micro-manager—was both angry and felt personally betrayed that this should have happened on her watch. Gray shuddered when she thought of what the papers were going to say when the absence of results for students from Friendly became apparent.

Jones’s end-of-year teaching evaluation was approaching, and she was concerned that she would be unfairly judged if Principal Gray conducted the classroom observation. Jones asked for a minute to speak to Gray, who was still angry over Jones’s error. Jones forthrightly made her request that Principal Gray not conduct her classroom observation because of Gray’s “bias.” Clearly, there was a lack of respect on both sides, and Jones heightened the tension by denigrating Gray’s leadership.

As she had agreed to do, Principal Gray asked Assistant Principal Moore to conduct Jones’s classroom observation. By then, Gray had made up her mind that Jones had to be pressured into leaving, and she made it clear to Moore that Jones was to be put on an action plan regardless of the outcome of the classroom observation session. Moore felt very conflicted. On one hand, she could follow her first impulse and tell Gray that she was not going to conduct an observation that was just a sham and that if Gray wanted to put Jones on an action plan, she could do it herself. On the other hand, Moore felt intimidated by Gray. She was conscious of the fact that Gray also evaluated her and that Superintendent Bold was a supporter of Gray’s leadership. Moore decided to do as Gray directed, in the “hope” that Jones’s lesson would be a disaster.

In fact, Moore was very impressed with Jones’s lesson and the way it was conducted. Jones held the students’ attention throughout a seamless, exemplary lesson. Naturally, when Moore agreed that the lesson had been exemplary, but still did as Gray directed and put Jones on an action plan, Jones’s cognitive dissonance was palpable. Later, at the copier, Jones vented to her peer, Ms. Adler. Adler shared Jones’s astonishment at being singled out for failing to turn in lesson plans because Adler was just as remiss, but had been treated leniently—even kindly. Neither Adler nor Jones drew attention to the fact that Adler was White.

In the regular mid-week meeting between Principal Gray and Assistant Principal Moore, Moore suggested outright that there was too much of a double standard involved in singling out Jones for an action plan. As a compromise, Moore and Gray decided to settle for a write-up of Jones—a decision conveyed to Jones by Moore.

Incensed, Jones turned in her 30-day notice—much to Gray’s delight. She told Moore of her satisfaction at the departure of a “cancer” from the staff. Meanwhile, Jones made an appointment to discuss the double standard to which she had been subjected with Ms. Agrue, the district’s human relations director.

Principal Gray’s actions make sense to her. She is determined to make a difference—not only because of Superintendent Bold’s expectations, but also because her life’s ambition is to be a school principal who makes a difference. She is focused on carrying out her mission, and what she sees as Jones’s ineptitude is an obstacle in her path.

Please watch the accompanying video (the Double Standard video is available as an online supplement at http://jel.sagepub.com/supplemental), the screenplay of which touches on the key elements of the case to heighten its immediacy.

Teaching Notes

Double Standard was created in spring 2014 by the actors who appear in the accompanying video, as part fulfillment of the requirements for a master’s-level class highlighting ethics in education for future educational administrators.

In using the Double Standard video, it may help to understand that it tells a story by presenting a sequence of related events. There is no plot development in the sense that the director is not intentionally hiding anything to coax the viewer to reach a particular conclusion. Double Standard was produced based on Baldwin’s (1976) provocative distinction between story and plot in film. Of the two, he attests to the primacy of the story. For example, at the outset of his critique of The Birth of a Nation, Baldwin pejoratively remarks on the impossibility of doing justice to the story, because “such story as attempts to make an appearance (is) immediately submerged by the tidal wave of the plot” (Baldwin, 1976, p. 43). As Baldwin summarizes,

A story is impelled by the necessity to reveal: the aim of the story is revelation, which means that a story can have nothing—at least not deliberately—to hide. This also means that a story resolves nothing. The resolution of a story must occur in us, with what we make of the questions with which the story leaves us. (pp. 43-44)

In contrast to the richness of the story, Baldwin (1976) envisages that “a plot, on the other hand, must come to a resolution, prove a point: a plot must answer all the questions which it pretends to pose” (p. 44). The reader may be impressed by a plot, but is unlikely to be changed by it, and the point of engaging students in a case study is surely to engender some sort of change.

Given the above context, the students in the class selected their own groups and developed individual storyboards for cases in which they had been involved or which they had witnessed firsthand. Each group selected one storyboard to develop into a play, collaboratively scripted and cast the play, and rehearsed it in their own time prior to a 2-hr video recording session conducted by the university media unit. There are two suggested ways of implementing this case study, depending on the instructor’s personal preference or time available.

Implementing Double Standard in a Graduate Class