On hold for good reasons

I continue to blog less than I used to —

NOT because I've become bored with the subject . . .

NOT because I don't have things to say about the coup in NYC education we've witnessed, come to understand, suffered through, and written about for seven or eight years . . .

NOT because I've given up on unionism . . .

and NOT because I have become any less of an activist . . .


It's because I don't have the time, and that's because

HIGH SCHOOL MUSIC TEACHERS
get 50 kids per class 5 times a day.
Total: 250 students to be
accounted for on a daily basis,
whether they show up or not.

The picture up above is what 50 kids looks likes (plus the teacher in the back row). Who cares if it's in India, it's a good visual.

My registers this past week have been fluctuating between 50 and 53 kids as things are getting worked out. When I mentioned this to one of the highest officials in our "pro-active" union (I say that with tongue in cheek), his response was something like: "The principal doesn't have to give you that many kids," as if it were my fault my classes are this large.

Do I have to remind him that the likelihood of any principal in this city putting fewer than 50 kids in a high school music class to improve the quality of education is about zero?

The UFT fails to accept responsibility for this. It's somehow the DoE's fault, or in this case, the principal's, that the numbers are so high. But, who do these union execs think they're kidding? It's they who negotiated this contract, unless they all went to the bathroom when it came time to rethink Article VII.M.2.g. At any rate, no one's ever explained the purpose of putting 50 in a music class, and my gut feeling is that their bottom line is: Shut up. You're lucky you have a position.

So, the glorious summer vacation is Over with a capital O, and I've been bubbling duplicate attendance rosters and marking reams of classwork straight through the morning commute and all my preps, lunch hours, and cafeteria duty, on the subway going home, during happy hour, and halfway through Keith Olbermann. That's when I usually just fall asleep.

I won't bother anyone with the detailed letter I sent the union about these numbers. I've complained about them before, and though Weingarten said she'd look into some "non-contractual relief" for music teachers, nothing was ever done. The official I recently wrote to says he is looking into it, but "nothing" is what will continue to happen as the execs fall in line with pattern bargaining and give away some other hard-fought stuff in our current contract.

So, I was thinking that as long as I'm not posting much these days, I should at least have something here that relates to another issue that's not going away any time soon. ATRs.

You can read the full post on the handbook I wrote for ATR subs over at "Surviving limbo," but here's the manual itself, with a few current changes.

I wish I could say it was no longer needed.

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THE ATR HANDBOOK

[Note: This manual was written mostly for per diem subs.
Even if you've been given full or partial programs, a lot of this still applies.]

Part I: THE MINDSET

1. You are an inconvenience to your administrators and are essentially being tolerated. Do not try to be a goody-goody or get them to like your work, because bottom line, they don't actually want you on their budget.
[NEW COMMENT: Of course, if you're being paid out of central, they probably DO want you, but not enough to take you in properly.]

2. Do what is educationally sound at all times. That's the only way you'll be able to sleep at night.

3. You are a place holder, not a place filler. You are in someone else's room doing what you can with someone else's lesson for someone else's students, a situation which lasts for the duration of that person's absence.

4. Know that you the only person in the building being asked to "wing it," and no ed school ever taught you how. In the wonderworld of BloomKlein, your job specification has just shifted, and whether you like it or not, you're now a Jack-of-All-Trades, particularly in the HSS with all those specialized classes. Either enjoy, or . . .

5. Detach. Students might be cold-hearted, either unwittingly ("Hey, Miss, did you get downgraded or somethin'?") or purposefully ("F— you. You not a real teacher.") They can also be delightful, like the girl at the bus stop who shouted enthusiastically to her friend: "Hey, there's my substitute!" You are neither a sub-order of teacher or fabulous. You are doing your job to the best of your ability under volatile circumstances.


Part II: WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO CARRY WITH YOU

1. Class registers. Oh, how the intruder types love subs, and what a run-around they can give you.

2. Pens, pencils: but get collateral if you lend them, because they'll walk out with them and when they remember to return them, you've moved to another room.

3. Wordfinds, math puzzles, crossword puzzles, scrap paper. There'll be days when the teacher has left you nothing, and when kids are bored enough, some will take whatever you're handing out.

4. Chalk, eraser, dry erase pens. Don't rely on the teacher's supply.

5. List of school phone numbers, like for security, guidance counselors, the program office.


PART III: PROCEDURES

1. Have kids sign in on a separate sheet. Bubbling comes later, at your convenience and when you've had a chance to reflect over the legitimacy of the signatures.

2. Assign work immediately. Better still: write the assignment on the board before they get there and don't even open your mouth. Teens respond better when they're not being told by you to do anything.

3. Announce that you'll help anyone who needs it.

4. Then help a few of them, or at least look at what they're doing over their shoulder. Send a message that you're not just a disinterested bystander. It will convince some of undecided characters to crack a book.

5. Standard behavior for immature classes is to test the sub, and they can be merciless. So, it's now time to annotate that sign-in sheet. Look really serious when you do this, as if the mark you're giving them really means something. Tell one person he gets a check because he's working, another a half-check for not working so hard, or NW for No Work at all. Give your own marks for anything you can think of: being disruptive, intruding (contact Security to remove these kids), breaking school rules (don't contact Security for these because you'll annoy them, but you can write the student up later and let other people handle it).

6. A malicious child can really hurt you, but remember this. There are Chancellor's Regs on abuse to protect the student, but you won't find any regulations for the kind of abuse substitutes are frequently subjected to. In BloomKlein, teachers are abusers, students are . . . well, just kids.

7. Put the room in good order when you leave and the work in a neat pile. It's like wampum: you're trading a bit of effort for a bit of good feeling, and you'll be needing as much of that as you can get.


Part IV: DOCUMENT EVERYTHING, for example:

1. When no assignment has been left for you
2. The kids who enter late
3. When kids sign the attendance sheet, then cut out
4. Dangerous items left around the room (broken glass, formaldehyde, etc.)
5. Ripped books
6. Security not arriving if you've called them
7. An AP or principal walking into the room, for whatever reason
8. A kid's tirade of vulgar, aggressive words. It might get worse before it stops, but it will stop, especially when the rest of the class sees the humor (i.e., the stupidity) of it.


Part V: HONE YOUR TECHNIQUES, and SHARE THEM!

Greg Palast's new war

Someone suggested at a meeting a couple of years to sic Greg Palast on BloomKlein and let him do what he does best: connect the dots.

I'm glad to have been alerted now to his Sept. 6th post on "No Child's Behind Left," where he turns his attention to educational malpractice American-style.

Palast's remarks on Title I caught my attention, because when they told us at a faculty meeting last June that all NYC schools were now going to be classified as Title I schools, I couldn't see why. I thought Title I meant low-income, and some schools in the city don't fall into that category.

In fact, the ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) that set up Title I funding in 1965, and re-authorized it every five years up until NCLB (the 2001 re-enacted version), was designed to get some extra money out to schools with a high percentage of students from low-income families.

Federal guidelines allow school boards to set that limit between 35% and 75%. NYC had been setting it at 40%, but it's now been lowered, and now the whole system gets to be Title I.

As I say, I didn't understand why the whole city was going Title I, but here's the dots Palast connects for me:

In this flat, tilted new world, we have to adopt the methods used by emperors of Confucian China: Test for the best, cull the rest.

Of course, not everyone takes the same test. Only "Title 1" schools must test students: working class and poor schools. The wealthiest suburban districts are exempt and all schools where students wear designer blazers. It's true that our President took a test to get into Yale. It had one question: "Was your grandfather, Prescott Bush, a Yale Trustee?" His answer, "Yes," gave him a perfect score. No Child Left offers no "options" for those with the test score Mark of Cain — no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding. Rather, it is the new social Darwinism, the marketplace jungle brought into the classroom. This is educational eugenics: Identify the nation's loser class early on. Trap them, then train them cheap. Someone has to care for the privileged. No society can have winners without lots and lots of losers.

And so we have No Child Left Behind — to provide the new worker drones that will clean the toilets at the Yale Alumni Club, punch the cash registers color-coded for illiterates, and pamper the winner class on the higher floors of the new economic order.

To clarify a bit (though the people who read this post probably wouldn't need any clarification at all), NCLB requires annual standardized testing to all students, but those who get Title I funding must make Adequate Yearly Progress. And here's a very clear definition of AYP (underlining mine):

Every state education agency is required to determine which schools do not meet AYP every year. However, a specific designation by the U.S. Department of Education called "Federal school improvement status" applies only to schools that receive Title I funds. State education agencies are required to determine what larger goals are required of every school as they fail to perform annually.

Title I schools that do not meet AYP for two consecutive years are placed in "School Improvement Status" and must offer alternative school attendance opportunities to students within their schools. If these same schools do not make AYP for three consecutive years, they must offer both alternative school attendance opportunities and opportunities for students to increase their learning outside of school time. If those schools miss AYP for a fourth consecutive year, they are designated as being in "Corrective Action" and must choose among strategies outlined by NCLB. A fifth year of missing AYP results in restructuring planning year when the school is shut down, and then a sixth year of missing AYP requires that the restructuring plan be implemented.

NCLB restructuring options include:

• Chartering: Closing and reopening as a public charter school.
• Reconstitution: Replacing school staff, including the principal, relevant to the failure in the school.
• Contracting: contracting with an outside entity to operate the school.
• State takeovers: turning the school operations over to the state education agency.
• Any Other: engaging in another form of major restructuring that makes fundamental reforms.

The option of extending NCLB-required sanctions to non-Title I schools does exist; however, there is little current research indicating the implementation of this practice.

In other words — let's not bother with chartering, reconstituting, contracting, and taking over schools in the burbs. The teachers in those schools are just fine, everyone's on task doing great. Not that I wish the heavy hand of the BushBama to come down on them like it's been happening here in NYC. It's more like I wish we had the smaller classes (that they refuse to give us) and the freedom to teach (that they refuse to allow) so we can do our job.

With school districts given the Congressional right to decide how they would set Title I eligibility, there's some question as to why the whole city — which is really a conglomeration of many towns and villages — had to all become Title I.

Part of the answer (maybe all of it) lies in that AYP business. The DoE now has free reign not only to test mercilessly, but to restructure, close schools instead of fix them, charterize, and contract out whatever bits suits them — which is what this game is all about.


NCLB hasn't been the only federal passport to EdDeform. In a press release last May 11th, the government announced that NYS was going to get a couple of billion more dollars under the new American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In order to receive those funds, though, the state would have to provide

assurances that it will collect, publish, analyze and act on basic information regarding the quality of classroom teachers, annual student improvements, college readiness, the effectiveness of state standards and assessments, progress on removing charter caps, and interventions in turning around underperforming schools.

The jump from getting more ed dollars to help out low-income populations (1965) to creating national standards of so-called achievement and quality (2001 and later) is complicated and disingenuous.

Patrick McGuinn tries to capture this in his book on ed policy for the past 40 years. As he says in the introduction:

The original ESEA was narrowly targeted (to disadvantaged students), focused on inputs (providing additional resources to schools), and contained few federal mandates. In contrast, NCLB embraces a much broader scope . . . focused on outputs (measuring academic performance) . . .

A review of the book says that McGuinn argues

[NCLB] signaled the clear emergence of a new policy regime that had been building since 1988. No longer do federal policymakers simply focus on ensuring equity for disadvantaged students and monitoring policy inputs . . . Rather, McGuinn sees a fundamentally new regime that now stresses excellence for all students, backed by high-stakes accountability for results. That shift, McGuinn notes, was built by conservatives and liberals who charted a middle path while sidestepping the preferences of key interest groups in their respective coalitions.

I love those middle paths we're charting and have written about them recently (here).

Since it's not possible that all conservatives and liberals in this country are either business people looking for cheap, mildly educated labor or military commanders looking for war fodder, I am wondering what it will take for them to see that ideology without basis doesn't get our disadvantaged kids up and running.

Electoral hardware: another arm of the privatization monster

With all the talk of privatization of the public school system, it's easy to lose sight of all the other ways corporations are changing the way our government operates.

Naomi Klein spoke a couple of years ago about the "faulty logic of the Bush administration's vision of a hollowed-out government run everywhere possible by private contractors":

According to this radical vision, contractors treat the state as an ATM, withdrawing massive contracts to perform core functions like securing borders and interrogating prisoners, and making deposits in the form of campaign contributions. As President Bush's former budget director, Mitch Daniels, put it: "The general idea — that the business of government is not to provide services but to make sure that they are provided — seems self-evident to me."

It's happening with our electoral system as well.

Some watchdog groups are examining the machines NY and other state governments are being persuaded to purchase. They're scared, and they're calling for people to get involved.

The message I received from one of these groups invites you to learn more about the ramifications of turning over our electoral system to contractors and their optical scanning technology:

Our state expects a deficit this year over $2 billion.
In 3 years our expected deficit is $18 billion.

In spite of this, we are moving ahead to privatize our elections with expensive paper ballots and optical scanners (vote-counting computers).

New York counties have already objected to proper security for the paper ballots and scanners because security is too expensive.

There are two sessions being offered:

Sat., Sept. 12, 12:30-4 PM, 28 E. 35th St. between Park and Madison Aves in Manhattan
Saturday, Sept. 26, 1:30-4:30, 40 E. 35 St. between Park and Madison Aves in Manhattan

Anyone can attend, just RSVP via email or phone (Teresa Hommel, 212 228-3803) and include your phone number.

More info at these links: Legislative Memo , 186 Failures of optical scanners, and WheresThePaper.org

Neoliberalconservatism

Obama's "Race to the Top" initiative, which is like a sledgehammer whacking ed deform deeper into public policy, is the conflation of at least three philosophies, if not more.


Neoliberalism. The first of these definitions sounds tame, the second like a hungry beast:

"a political orientation originating in the 1960s; blends liberal political views with an emphasis on economic growth"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

"The policies of privatization, austerity, and trade liberalization dictated to dependent countries by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as a condition for approval of investment, loans, and debt relief." (6)
www2.truman.edu/~marc/resources/terms.html

Neoconservatism. The first makes you feel uncomfortable, the second is terrifying.

"A right wing political movement that opposes liberalism in political, economic and social fields."
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/neoconservatism

"Neocons - Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that emerged in the United States of America, and which supports using American economic and military power to bring liberalism, democracy, and human rights to other countries."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocons

Liberalism. A virtual potpourri of economic and social elements, such as:

The quality of being liberal; Any political movement founded on the autonomy and personal freedom of the individual, progress and reform, and government by law with the consent of the governed; An economic theory in favour of laissez faire and the free market
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/liberalism

"broad, large-minded, tolerant"
"having political or social views favoring reform and progress"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu

And all this doesn't seem strange anymore, because since Obama's been in office, he's morphed.

Gone are the autonomy, personal freedom, broadmindedness and tolerance.

Being fixed in stone is an opposition to all that – plus privatization and an imperialistic federal government that dictates policy to the states. (Who needs State Ed Depts anymore, come to think of it.)

Much to think about, but it feels like a tsunami.

Cartoon credits:
Neo-liberalism: azlanmclennan.com
Neoconservatism: pissedonpolitics.com
Liberal: cafebabel.com
The New Yorker, which I'm very angry with for the Steven Brill article

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Since this blog is on hold while there's much to do at the school level against the threats to NYC public education, I'm leaving this reminder of the kind of battle we're in.

Danny Weil's essay in Counterpunch, from whence these two paragraphs:

Neoliberalism, Charter Schools and the Chicago Model
Obama and Duncan's Education Policy:
Like Bush's, Only Worse

. . . What the Obama administration is doing, in tandem with the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, is part and parcel of typical neo-liberal policy making: wielding federal stimulus funds as a financial weapon to force all states to increase the amount of charter schools they host as well as force those states that do not have them to pass legislation authorizing them. Through financial arm-twisting at a time of disastrous economic crisis, the Obama administration plans to use the power of the federal government to create a much larger national market for charter school providers, be they for profit or non-profit, virtual charters, EMOs or single operators.

This is deeply troubling, for many states which do not want charter schools or have found the experiment to be less than adequate and in fact damaging to kids and funding, for traditional public schools will now be forced to choose stimulus money over policy, a form of economic extortion and increased federal and corporate control over decision making, especially at a time when many of these states are literally financial insolvent. This is another example of how disaster politics operates, only this time the disaster is not a natural disaster but an economic disaster that threatens public policies.

Is anyone feeling like I am that we've been ripped off by this presidency?

Wearing the right shoes

Frank Rich in the NY Times last Sunday got it exactly right when he said there's a "sinking sensation that the American game is rigged," that the system is in hock to lobbyists and the very, very rich.

I take this very much to heart. In fact, I am way past that "sinking" sensation and know to the bone how entirely rigged this American game is.

The editorial boards of the largest NY papers are caught up in the same sphere of influence, and they've pretty much abandoned the notion of unbiased reporting. A disappointment, but no surprise anymore.

Fortunately, the gap in reportage is being filled by some tireless activists, which means as long as you own a computer, you'll never be more than an hour or two away from the latest education news. These people connect the dots, provide links to other scholarship and muckraking, and tell you when it's time to take direct action.

My warmest and most heartfelt thanks for doing this for us goes to Ednotes (Norm Scott), NYC Educator (NYC Educator), and NYC Public School Parents (Leonie Haimson), a virtual dream team of bloggers. There's also the indefatiguable GothamSchools produced by The Open Planning Project.

I will not include in this list what should have been there all along: Edwize and the NY Teacher, the ethically challenged arms of the UFT/Unity Caucus.

As for myself, I've learned this summer that I've got to come off the computer and spend my non-teaching time in civic protest. There's no other way I'll be able to feel comfortable in my own shoes.

Looking for Michael B.

Summertime for me usually means reading Tom Stoppard, but let’s face it: There’s nothing like Shakespeare to help you understand the mind of a despot.

I’m talking about Richard III, though I’m sure anyone who knows me probably thought I meant Michael Bloomberg.

When Al Pacino came out with his documentary Looking for Richard in 1996, he had spent four years poking around the soul of that hideous king. The film is fascinating if you’re looking for insights into the psychology of New York's ruling class.


Take the remark Vanessa Redgrave makes in the film, that "those in power have total contempt for everything they promise, everything they pledge,” and then review the list of Bloomberg statements about running for a 3rd term:

"The people themselves have twice explicitly voted for term limits. We cannot ignore their will. They want the openness new faces bring. And they will get it. We will not go back.” (2002)

“I would oppose any change in the law that a legislative body tries to make.” (2002)

“There’s no organization that I know that would put somebody in charge for a long period of time. You always want turnover and change. Eight years is great. You learn for four years. You can do for four years." (2002)

"I think it would be an absolute disgrace to go around the public will." (2005)

"I always thought term limits were a good idea. I am not trying to overturn term limits." (2008) [credit to www.youreadisgrace.com]

Contempt, yes. There's also the greasing. For example, the Independence Party — “Asked if the mayor had pledged a specific amount of money to support the party this year, Salit was understandably coy. The mayor had assured them that ‘ample resources will be brought to bear,’ she said with a smile. In Bloomberg talk, this is always a seven-figure number.” Or the people who find real estate projects a piece of cake these days — look at image 2 in this link when it zips by, which shows how they're planning to build 4 big towers in the Coney Island acreage that’ll block the sun for the next 200 years.


Barbara Everett, a Shakespeare scholar Pacino interviews in the film, suggests that "Everybody may have a price, but for a lot of people there is a fundamental decency. It takes quite a long time for them to reach that point. The action of the play, the sense of exciting movement, is Richard's finding the point" — or in real time, the moment the pandering and corruption stops.

Bloomberg may be getting his kicks from straddling the line between legal and illegal, moral and immoral. He certainly doesn’t need the cash.

Richard, Everett continues, is "bound to be left alone, because nobody can love the king beyond the degree of their own egoism, or perhaps their own goodness. There’s going to be a point.”

Well, New Yorkers are sure waiting a long time for that point, the one when enough legislators and council members break away from the mayor’s contemptible grip to vote for something relating to public education that makes sense. It hasn't happened up in Albany, and it's not happening down here either. A few perhaps, but not enough of them.


Says Richard when Buckingham asks him to make good on his promises:

"I’m not in the giving vein."

Neither is Bloomberg. He’s locked out parents and educators for eight years, and if he’s handing them a few crumbs this past week, it’s because he was forced to. He wants that third term.


Al’s producer, Michael Hadge, suggests Richard is a man who in the end “knows that he does not have his own humanity. That he’s lost it, that he has let the pursuit of power totally corrupt him, and that he is alienated from his own body and his own self.”

To my mind, so is Bloomberg, else how could he as a Jew compare anything going on in the Senate these days to the failed policy of appeasing the Nazis. That’s losing your own self big time in my book.


At the end of the play, King Richard comes to terms with his self-loathing, and he doesn’t hide behind a cloak of insanity when he openly convicts himself in Act V, scene iii:

"Alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself.
I am a villain.
Every tale condemns me for a villain.
And if I die, no soul shall pity me.
Nay, wherefore should they?"

I think Bloomberg’s not there yet, because he’s still an arrogant son of a bitch. But as Everett says about Richard, "Although he’s frightfully clever, he’s at the same time like a kind of boar who has subsumed into himself all these frightful animal images. And all the rest have got to do is hunt the boar, and that’s what they do. And they get him."

We’ll never be able to “get” Bloomberg for the crimes he’s already committed against half a generation of NYC school children. But we can get him OUT, for as Richmond puts it:

"England hath long been mad and scarred herself." (V, v)

Not one shred less than New York, methinks, when scoundrels rule and people beflower the paths they tread.

Now for some levity . . .

. . . while New York slugs it out with a mayor we were never meant to have.

A NEW FILM: "A blogger turned stand-up comic, an obsessive political gadfly and a high-school math teacher compete against each other and arch rival incumbent Michael Bloomberg for the post of New York City mayor."

Click to see the trailer.

And this, about saving Coney Island from robber barons.








Click on Dick
(below)
for an important
video message!

Obama's double-take

If you haven't seen this video clip on Obama's July 16th speech at the NAACP, here it is:

"And let me say this. If Al Sharpton, Mike Bloomberg, and Newt Gingrich can agree that we need to solve the education problem, then that's something all of America can agree we can solve. [clap, clap, clap]

"Those guys came into my office . . . [pause for irony] . . . just sitting in the Oval Office, I kept on doing a double-take.
[mimics his own disbelief, laughter, clap, clap, clap]

"But that's a sign of progress . . .

Progress?

I would like to say Obama doesn't get it, but he's way too smart. With both feet planted square in the neocon agenda, he and his Secretary buddy Arne "Non-Educator" Duncan have been working overtime on creating a feeding frenzy for public monies.

The cash is going to charters without a doubt, even though nobody says what the big deal is with these schools. The only thing I can tell is that they get to keep the class size down and pick their students. That doesn't cut it with the masses, the people whose dreams were once tied up with putting this president into the White House.

Sharpton, Gingrich and Bloomberg — not an educator among them. Just a trio of dissemblers with a nose for power and cash.

President Obama, I agree with you it's weird to see these guys sitting around the Oval Office, but what I can't get is why the heck were you in there with them?

Welcome to Lilliput

NYC Educator brought up the word "liar" in a recent post, and I agree:
It's time to go there.

A few minutes after I got the latest flyer from the Bloomberg campaign, I found myself driving up the FDR and doing what the man in the movie Network told us to do. I rolled down the window and yelled out:

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

Boy, did it feel good.

There is so much lying these days, and absolutely nobody should be taking it anymore. Particularly people who send their kids to public schools.

Across the front of that flyer there's this bold announcement: "New York's newspapers say: Mike Bloomberg is making PROGRESS in our schools." A nice trick when you think about it, to use quotes from a bunch of newspapers instead of facts.

Inside, a heading quotes from the Daily News: "New York public school students are achieving at unprecedented levels." Well, that's a lie right there — unless you take it to mean that literacy and math competence in our schools have reached an unprecedented low.

Then there are four big-print highlights of the mayor's "strong, independent leadership" and more newspaper quotes to back them:

GREATER ACCOUNTABILITY . . .

MORE PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT. . .

STANDING UP TO THE BUREAUCRACY . . .

HIGHER TEST SCORES AND GRADUATION RATES . . .

All lies. Flaming, outrageous, hugely expensive prevarications of a billionaire pol who has quite frankly crossed the line.

It's clear that the mainstream papers print what the Bloomberg pressroom sends them, because you can't publish something like this:

"Mr. Bloomberg has created clear lines of authority in this once-chaotic system and cut back a spreading bureaucracy that defied previous mayors. Judging by test scores, the city's students are benefiting." (the NY Times, Sept. 08)

without someone failing to check the facts and do some analysis.


Fortunately there are muckrakers and sharp-sighted eagles picking up the slack where the ostriches, sloths, and varmints at city newsdesks renege, and there are sites like this to remind you to re-read their posts.

For Bloomberg's claim about "GREATER ACCOUNTABILITY", read how Seung Ok and Steve Koss debunk Press Secretary David Cantor's claptrap on regents scoring over at Ednotes and Leonie Haimson's latest post on the resignation of the DoE's Chief Accountability officer, James Liebman ("the man had no qualifications for the job"). Eduwonkette did a whole week of posts on school report cards when they first came out (she covered strategy, flubs, theory and problems), and you can both laugh and cry at Celia Oyler's pop quiz on the same topic.

For his claim about "MORE PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT", see James Eterno's post on how parents had to fight to get a decision-making role at local schools after Klein marginalized them with a 2007 regulation. Then check out this G.E.M. post (earlier ones also) for stories of parents fighting back against BloomKlein's school closings and doing things specifically without their involvement.

For his claim about "STANDING UP TO THE BUREAUCRACY", that's baloney to start with. See Elizabeth Green in Gotham Schools for a frightening account of the three reorganizations of the system to date. How much more fiddling around with bureaucracy can the city take, or pay for?

And for his claim about "HIGHER TEST SCORES and GRADUATION RATES", there's tons on this already. Two good reads come to mind: Diane Ravitch's important testimony at the NYS Assembly on both these topics last February, and NYC Educator "Just the Facts." In fact, you can get a whole lot of other links about grad rates if you read Chaz's post, like he suggests in the comments.

I'm at the stage where rolling down a car window is not going to be nearly enough. It has to be louder, bigger, and pack a big punch.

But until all that comes together, I'll just keep thinking of Gulliver and how a whole lot of little people doing their thing can eventually bring a big guy down.

Barron and the art of protest

For more on this demonstration, see the David Mark Greaves report "Parents Demand Voice in Education System."


If you were lucky enough to attend the rally at Tweed two days ago against BloomKlein malfeasance and thuggery, you would have been reminded of something we don't always see these days. People power.

About half an hour into event, Councilman Charles Barron led the crowd right up the steps to take the place back. Of course he stopped at the doors, and of course we all wished he'd barge right on in. Not this time, but we're getting there.

The sunsetted Department of Education did a miserable job of serving the people in spite of Bloomberg's cash-flow hype, and most know in their bones that the new so-called Board of Education is illegal.

It's clear there's no shortage of great speakers at any of the rallies these days. Some of the parents, teachers, and council people who've taken the mic have really been able to put our profound disgust into spine-tingling speech. [For more on our profound disgust, read Polo Colon here.]

Too bad, of course, that NONE of these speakers are Weingarten's people, and that's a fact. The staff she sends out to monitor these events all hover around the back edges in their Sunday best looking fairly muzzled — when they're not hob-nobbing with Tweedies, that is.

Thanks to NYCteachers.com, there's a video of part of the protest.

And here's a transcription of the text, because honestly, it's time we learn to start sounding like this to everyone who'll listen. So, practice up.

There’s no way on God’s earth can you get into the 21st century if you’re not teaching science,
if you’re not teaching computers, [someone yelled out History],
if you’re not teaching about the green economy,
if you’re not teaching about economics,
if you’re not teaching about leadership,
if you’re not teaching about the culture and the rich history of the African community,
if you’re not talking about the Latino community and their rich culture and their rich history.

So, we gotta say: We want a culturally relevant curriculum.
We want a curriculum— not some businessmen getting in a room and saying one-size curriculum fits all.

We say: You failed us, Mayor. You failed us, Chancellor.
And we come to make citizens’ arrests, because they are illegally ... illegally ... occupying this building.

THE MAYOR MUST GO!
THE MAYOR MUST GO!
THE MAYOR MUST GO!
THE CHANCELLOR MUST GO!
THE CHANCELLOR MUST GO!
THE CHANCELLOR MUST GO!

Finally, on this day, on this day ...

We the People ... [WE THE PEOPLE] ...
declare ... [DECLARE] ...
this Board of Education ... [THIS BOARD OF EDUCATION] ...
now belongs to the people ... [NOW BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE] ...
now belongs to the parents ... [NOW BELONGS TO THE PARENTS] ...
now belongs to the children ... [NOW BELONGS TO THE CHILDREN] ...
now belongs to the teachers that want to teach ... [NOW BELONGS TO THE TEACHERS THAT WANT TO TEACH] ...
And we support student unions.

So that’s the declaration we make here today.

This struggle will continue.
They’re not going to take our education system from us. We’re taking it back.

We will be back again, and again, and again
until they are gone.

Thank you very much.

Thank YOU, Councilman Barron. The pleasure hearing you speak was all ours.

Scott the pol

Scott Stringer is sinking us.

I wrote him this morning out of disgust, particularly after taking a look at his website and learning he no longer needed the services of the clearest thinking man on Klein's PEP, Patrick Sullivan.

In my letter, I basically asked him what about mayoral control so pleased him these past 7 years.

As far as I could tell, it's been:

• chaotic (three reorganizations of the heirarchy in 7 years, busing fiasco,etc.),

• faked (manipulated test scores, an inscrutable school grading system, etc.).

• non-transparent (no-bid contracts, hidden liaisons with corporations, etc.),

• dictatorial (shutting parents and educators out of decision-making, the firings at the PEP meeting a couple of years ago over the tests, etc.), and at times

• irregular or unlawful (appointed an uncertified and non-educator chancellor who needed a waiver, broke up the districts into regions without court approval, etc.).

The borough president is not elected to do a mayor's bidding, which is what checks and balances are all about, and since we haven't had any checks and balances for the past seven years on mayoral dictates, Manhattan expects Stringer to start showing some muscle.

A full-out rejection of this mayor's irregularities, arrogance and downright incompetence running our schools would be a good start. Insisting that long-term educators get to make the important decisions should be another priority. At least they know in their bones that parent input counts.

What Stringer thinks about education can be read on his website. In light of his decision to continue backing mayoral control (a position he's taken all along, according to Lisa Donlon), I am concerned that he's become deaf to his own words:

However, there is widespread discontent with the councils and, in 2006, the Borough President released a report [Parents Dismissed] showing that the CECs have not received the support and training the DOE is supposed to provide in order to allow them to be effective.

He's also taken away our best shot for keeping the DoE clean. Failing to re-instate a real advocate for public education on the newly constituted board, we now get his general counsel (Jimmy Yan). What did tossing Sullivan get him? The public really wants to know.

Here's the part of Stringer's position paper that shows how well Bloomberg's PR machine achieved its primary goal, getting elected officials to believe the fabrications and not bother themselves with with due diligence.

New York City’s public school system has seen some improvement in recent years: in certain grades student achievement on standardized reading and math tests has posted notable gains; a modest gain in the high school graduation rate has been achieved; there is an ambitious capital plan that seeks to address overcrowding and facility deterioration; the number of gifted and talented and bilingual programs has increased; and additional accountability measures have been put in place.

Despite this progress . . .

. . . The chancellor has called tackling this achievement gap the major impetus behind new accountability and assessment measures and the most recent re-organization of the system.

In fact, the test score gains and graduation rates have all been debunked, overcrowding is worse than ever (they're still using trailers for classrooms), and there's no sign of a single instrument of accountability or assessment that doesn't leak like a sieve.

If as Stringer says "far too many students lack the most basic skills in reading and math" and "70,000 students each year do not graduate on time," keeping the BloomKlein edifice in place makes no sense. Unless you've sold out for something bigger.

It remains to be seen whether these changes in structure and funding will help close student achievement gaps. Likewise, it remains to be seen if the City’s new pilot program to pay parents and students for improved standardized test scores and good attendance will improve student performance.

If Stringer needs more time to see that this mayoral control thing isn't working, then Manhattan will definitely need to cut him loose.

The Age of Enlightenment on its way out

There’s not a lot of agreement on what it means to be “enlightened,” but for starters we could look at back to the middle of the 18th century.

That would be a couple of decades before a handful of truly enlightened souls cobbled together a declaration of independence, and about 150 years before these united states committed to an education system funded by the public purse (1870).

Voltaire, according to some, thought the appeal of the new way of thinking boiled down to seven social and intellectual phenomena:

— the autonomy of reason
— perfectibility and progress
— confidence in the ability to discover causality
— principles governing nature, man and society
— assault on authority
— cosmopolitan solidarity of enlightened intellectuals, and
— a disgust with nationalism.

(Gerhard Rempel, Western New England College)

I could argue that the corporatist siege squeezing the moral life out of this country, perpetrated by heavily lobbied facilitators at every level of government, has maneuvered us in totally the opposite direction. We’ve abandoned all of Voltaire’s phenomena.

The Age of Enlightenment is well on its way out, and the ignorance, social chaos and repression of the Middle Ages are making a big comeback.

The campaign against Reason is spearheaded here in New York City by the mayor and his five-star general Joel Klein. They command a whole army of hastily trained-up staff sergeants from the Leadership Academy and a slew of corporate players bidding for pieces of the education pie.

BloomKlein campaigns best when the rest of us are overworked, apathetic or comatose. Shuffling things around under the guise of reform, they’ve come up with ill-conceived reorganizations, a perverted school grading system, falsified testing analyses, and some very strange notions of quality education.

These are the fabrications of an unenlightened oligarchy.

They don’t seek to understand or fix the underlying problems of the system — like overstuffed classrooms, too few experienced certified teachers, not enough school buildings, arts and phys ed programs, or services for special needs. They don’t listen to educators or parents, they intentionally place blame where it doesn’t belong, and they show little respect laws that get in their way.

Thumped for half a generation at least, we’ve learned how to keep taking it on the chin. We're becoming un-enlightened.

Across the country, being educated, articulate, and rational in thought has somehow become a bad thing. We’re still reeling from a federal administration that put nationalism at an all-time high and the ability to reason at an all-time low.


Nevertheless, the reasoning people among us are forever confident in the ability to discover causality, so we should be able to think this one through:

Oligarchs grab power when society allows them to. Enlightened people need to get out in the streets and stop them.

That’s what they did two hundred years ago, and that’s what they need to do now.



Just like what they've already been doing:

at P.S. 57 in Manhattan . . .
at P.S. 160 in the Bronx . . .
at IS 218 in East New York . . .
at IS 278 in Brooklyn . . .
At Bethel Church in Harlem . . .

The inimitable

If you liked Norm Scott does Les Mis, you'll love this one.


It's a video clip of Norm doing his thing outside yesterday's Delegate Assembly, I'd say about an hour before Weingarten resigned.




SCOTT on WEINGARTEN'S AFT SELL-OUT TOUR

Crime down, PR up

Over at GEM this week it was predicted that Bloomberg would quickly try to burnish his image once a report called The New Marketplace got published on Wednesday. The New School study showed that the larger high schools have not fared well during Tweed’s slash-and-burn strategy to create more and more small schools.

As it turns out, Bloomberg obliged and did mount a press conference at one of the big high schools: Truman — way up in the north Bronx. Accompanied by some very high-profile people, including Commissioner Kelly, the chancellor, UFT prez Randi Weingarten and her heir-apparent Michael Mulgrew, the mayor felt a strong urge to talk about the drop of crime in the city’s public schools.

I guess he chose Truman because it was one of the two large HSS cited favorably in the report under the heading “Leadership and Stability Matter”:

Some other large high schools managed to handle the side effects of school closings and growing numbers of new students without severe disruptions. Those with strong, stable leadership and a solid core of high-achieving students have been especially successful in coping with sharply higher enrollments. . . And when enrollment boomed at Harry S. Truman High School, there was initially a steep decline in attendance and graduation rates, but the school managed to rebound.

At some point during the conference, Bloomberg referred to a number of handouts graphing the decline in "major" crimes (burglary, grand larceny, and grand larceny auto) and "violent" crimes (homicide, rape, robbery, felony assault, misdemeanor assault, and sex offenses) in schools.

When a reporter asked why anyone should believe the numbers, Bloomberg apparently shot back something like: “Are you saying I’m lying?”

To which I'd have responded: “Duh!”


First, everyone knows there’s underreporting of incidents, by teachers and administrators. In the “gotcha” climate wrought by Tweed, no one likes to report incidents unless you have to — for insurance purposes. Sometimes it’s a matter of sullying the school’s image or your own. After all, if an incident happened while you were around to see it, maybe you weren't doing something right. I don’t know whether principal’s bonuses are affected by the number of incidents they report, but they may be. There’s also a question of being afraid to make a false statement (Did I really see that?), and in some cases fear, retaliation, and/or blowback.

Let it be known that both the UFT and the DoE use the word “incident” for a broad range of negative behaviors. Included in the union’s list are: “assaults, classroom disruptions, threats, and violent or dangerous behavior.” The official DoE Incident Report gives the following definitions on page 2:

In both lists, classroom disruption and misbehaving are as much “incidents” as are assaults and violent behavior, and that’s weird. Remind me to file an incident report next time Johnny tells me to f... off when I tell him to stop pawing a girl and get to class.

It’s actually a little confusing to match Bloomberg's graphs with the comment made by Criminal Justice Coordinator Feinblatt in the press release:

Thanks to the collaboration between the Department of Education and the police, we have reduced the behaviors that disrupt our classrooms and hallways and prevent our students from concentrating and learning.

Someone really has to explain what the "behaviors that disrupt our classrooms and hallways” have to do with homicide, rape and other violent crimes — or, in fact, with the NYPD at all.

Behavior is controlled by good security leadership (which Truman has, I understand), adequate space to place kids while they calm down or serve suspensions, and most importantly, enough staff — aides, agents, and teachers on patrol — to do the job, inside the classroom and out in the common areas. Not all schools have all three, and they may very well suffer for it. For Bloomberg to leave teachers out of the security equation is strange. The press conference was by invitation only and it was reported only two teachers were in the room. That’s interesting, and distressing.


Getting back to the reporter’s question on the credibility of Bloomberg’s numbers, there’s this:

Massaging data to support a favorable school governance record has been a trademark of Klein’s chancellorship. In fact, it’s what the Tweed PR team actually do best.

Look how they've already manipulated test scores, school grading, and graduation rates — statistics that congressmen and city council members seem to accept without question regardless how frequently their conclusions have been shot down by ed analysts like Jennifer Jennings (aka Eduwonkette) and Fred Smith, historians like Ravitch and Meier , and brainy activist parents like Leonie Haimson (Class Size Matters).

Thank you, Mr. or Ms Reporter, for asking Bloomberg that question about believing his numbers. Maybe it made them think twice about broadcasting the conference all over the news.

And maybe the press is just not buying this stuff anymore. Fingers crossed.


Which brings me to Randi Weingarten, who once again greeted the mayor with a kiss.


Does that mean the new contract’s already in the bag?

Woof, woof!

A parent recently contacted a couple of us to express a serious concern — one that I remember having when my own kids were attending public schools, here in NYC and in the suburbs.

She wrote:

I support your goals of supporting neighborhood schools, smaller class sizes and reducing high stakes testing.

Unfortunately, I disagree with you about teacher seniority. Our Principal is unable to replace a teacher who is ineffective simply because this teacher has seniority. This is not good for our schools or our children.

Here is how I answered this sticky question — given the circumstances teachers we're in dealing with this mayor, his thug of a chancellor, and our let's-play-dead union prez.

Dear Mrs. Parent,

I write to you as a long-time teacher in the school system.

In any profession, there are workers who are less "good" at their job than others, and in the private sector they can be fired at will.

But, in teaching and other civil service jobs, there are two ways already in place for terminating someone. There's a probationary period, 3 years for teachers, during which time administrators evaluate whether tenure should be granted. The teacher can be easily terminated once a principal decides he or she has little chance of success at the job.

If over time a teacher develops a questionable performance record, an principal can file 3020-a charges and the case goes up for review. Educators can also be hauled off to jail when the situation requires it, hopefully in the rarest of cases.

In a climate of union-bashing and corporate models of public school management, which we have here in New York for a decade, administrators are disregarding their contractual responsibilities and using instead some rather harsh techniques to remove not individual teachers, but categories of them from their budgets. These include:

— teachers who are competent in many or even all ways but who disagree with them,

— senior teachers, who cost way more then newer teachers. The situation is made worse for veterans because of the chancellor's decision to give principals more control over their budgets. Expensive teachers take a bigger chunk out of the budget, so principals think twice how many of them they want to keep around.

— unionists and activists, and

— whistleblowers.

When I say harsh, I refer to the so-called rubber rooms, where not only supposedly poorly performing teachers are sent for months or years until their cases are heard, but many others as well, of the kinds mentioned above. Regardless of the charge, putting a person in a rubber room to wait for a verdict is tantamount to deciding someone is guilty until he or she is proven innocent.

In the old days, if a teacher's judgment were called into question, he or she might be summoned to the principal's office for a "chat." Klein's corporate methodologies place no value on informal chats whatsoever. He has instead given administrators a neat set of tools to demolish the careers of people they don't want to deal with — even before a case is decided in favor or against.

We are finding out that most of the people sent to rubber rooms are at the end of their ordeal returned to a classroom. That is because "competency" is not a finite term, and in the cases mentioned above, it actually had never really been an issue in the first place. Some teachers are asked to pay a fine, which is frequently just a whimsical pay-to-play scheme.

If teachers sent to the rubber room choose to tolerate this "prison" environment from 9 to 3 every day, they'll continue to draw a salary. To some that is a fair exchange. Others resign. But, whatever they choose to do while they wait for their hearing, they endure this situation without actually being proven guilty of the charge against them. Even probable criminals are out on bail and free to continue working.

Some very strong, committed educators, union activists, and civil servants now have their careers in ruins because of Klein's methodologies.

We are not against decertifying people who clearly cannot teach. We seek, however, to establish some safeguards for people who are improperly marginalized by a non-educator chancellor and a union president who is very much a collaborator in the demise of public education, and who makes it clear she is not so willing to defend the contract that she herself negotiated.

For these reasons, we have become activists — not to defend poor quality, but to make sure there are watchdogs in a system that has been so thoroughly contaminated.

Sincerely,

The NY Teacher and agita

What a self- congratulatory, biased, obsfuscatory, and exclusionary rag the NY Teacher is.

In a post I wrote last September, I said I thought it had morphed into some kind of arm of the DoE, with all its Tweed friendly, Tweed collaborative, Tweed duped, and Much Ado About Nothing articles.

I don’t know whether to laugh at some of the things in there or cry.

For example, it’s really funny where Weingarten is talking about getting the cuts reduced and she says “Let’s take a moment to appreciate what we've accomplished so far.” In the very next sentence she says what really “saved the day” was the federal stimulus package. By her own admission, she accomplished little or nothing. It was Washington that came through with some cash.

I love it when she suggests that if adding some non-mayoral appointees to the central board “fails to make it into law” — as surely it will — there would be other ways to curtail Bloomberg’s "dominance." I’m taking this as a joke, and I’m pretty sure she is, too. I mean, she has to say something if she’s going to defend her indefensible position on continuing mayoral control.

What does Weingarten suggest to rein in this mayor? Three things. Give the board members fixed terms — that’s so they can say “Yes, sir! Of course, sir!” for a finite number of months before a new group of flunkies is rotated in. Increase the number of DoE actions that require board approval — as if Joel Klein ever wanted, thought he needed, or asked for approval for the nefarious, sometimes illegal schemes he’s gotten away with. And end “the chancellor’s voting status and automatic chairmanship of the board” — like fish Klein would give that one up. Isn’t she a card?

I also love it when she crows over the test scores:

Almost any way you look at the data, there was good news in the June 1 release of the 2009 statewide math test scores.

Puh-lease. Don’t tell us about test scores being better this year without getting an impartial evaluator to determine whether the newer tests were dumbed down last time round. Absent that teeny-weeny bit of information, what does anyone gain by calling the higher scores “good news” except to score a political point dealing with BloomKlein or give a very transparent tap on the back to math teachers, who might really have had nothing to do with this year’s “improvement” at all.

By the way, you have to wade through to the last paragraph to see the demurral: “Overall, gains in scale scores were much more modest than gains in proficiency.” I guess that’s why Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and State Ed Commissioner Richard Mills “recommended looking at the finer detail of scale scores (students are graded on a scale of 400 to the upper 700s) rather than the simplified level scores (in which students are graded on Levels 1 to 4, and small gains can bump into the next level) for a truer picture.” Not to mention that there are times when Weingarten finds it convenient to downplay test scores, like when she's selling her new ACES network.


I’m not laughing anymore and start flicking through the thing a lot faster, until a “Schedule of Program and Operating Expenses” for the year ending last July 31 catches my eye on page 32.

Payroll last year (and probably every year) was the biggest expense. Between the Borough office and Central, the union spent a cool $29,971,086 on staff salaries, plus an additional $12,648,653 for additional benefits and taxes. Total: $42,619,739.

Way down the list, after the Conventions, Workshops & conferences, Meeting expenses, Travel, Lodging, Negotiations, Legal fees, Consulting fees, Elections & referenda, Chapter Leaders’ stipends, and DoE released time cost, there’s this:

ARBITRATION: $171, 078.

Is that the figure they're saying they spent for a whole year's worth of arbitrations? In this climate of administrator thuggery? The only redress a member has with Step Is and IIs being so reliably unsuccessful is arbitration, and the union paid so little for it? That's weird. If that number included AAA fees for surveys and elections, it would make what they spent on our Step IIIs even less.

With so much union-bashing these days, it’s definitely not funny that Arbitration came to only 0.4% of the UFT staff payroll. That's just not enough money spent on defending members. What’s also not funny is that the amount laid out for Gifts and condolences — $47,396 — is a quarter (27.7%) of the Arbitration amount. What are they buying everyone, mink coats?

There's no clarification of these terms and categories in the chart, so it's obvious no one's really interested in helping us understand what their expenditures really are. For all I know, the amounts listed in Legal fees ($2,712,223) and Consulting fees ($1,131,153) could actually include the costs of defending members. I doubt it, though. I'm told it's the DoE that pays the arbitration costs for 3020-a cases, not the union, and I’ve asked a couple of people what the difference between “Total Expenses” and “Non-Chargeable Expenses” might be, but they don’t know either.

As I said, I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry when I read this stuff.

All I can hear in the background is the kerching!, kerching! of our dues money dropping into murky union coffers, and as the Queen of England says: We are not amused.