Branding

It's that time of year, folks, and over at Ednotes you'll see a bunch of questions someone's asked about U-ratings.

The comments are informative, as are some other responses Scott got in private emails. (Not everyone, it seems, wants to explain their personal experiences publicly.)

The first one quotes from two documents listed by Untamed Teacher as five items all of us should have on hand:

1) Rating Pedagogical Staff Members [pdf here]

2) Teaching for the 21st Century [pdf here]

3) Principal Performance Review [maybe they're referring to this Reg]

4) The Appeal Process [pdf of the Reg here]

5) Teachers' Guide to Serving in the NYC Public Schools [until I find this one, here's a link to the DoE website for teacher guides, regs, and manuals]

The person says that your salary freezes when you get a U. The manual is not all that clear (see p.13 of the pdf), but I've heard people say just the steps freeze, not the longevity increments at 10, 13, 15, 18, 20, and 22 years. Once you start getting S's again, your step increments continue from where they had left off.

In the same document, I love the first bullet point in the section "Writing Formal Observation Reports" (p.20 of the pdf), where it says that "a major objective of a written report is that it be effective in improving teaching without reducing morale." Heck, all this time I've been thinking the ONLY major goal of a written report was to improve teaching without reducing morale. I wonder what the other objectives are?

Tangentially, we're all suffering from this cookie-cutter evaluation system, whether our observations are deemed satisfactory or not. Once Klein decided that principals were incapable of writing their own evaluations from scratch (!), we lost the ability to see in print just how unqualified so many administrators are in executing their own tasks. That's a bias in their favor, and the UFT should have made much more of a fuss about these template evaluations.


Someone also sent in an excerpt from a 2007 revision of a DoE supervisory publication pp.53-4 of the pdf). It describes the "informal" observation thus:


Other answers Scott received in private emails include the following colorful submissions, the first from a CL:

The UFT Boro Office needs to contacted immediately and the DR should be notified that teacher wants to appeal.....yes it applies to tenured teachers. . . .

I have truly lost all hope that teachers in this situation will actually be helped but teacher has to at least attempt to get UFT to fight for him.

Ideas that might help in the future....Teachers should keep detailed logs everytime a supervisor comes in....and they should ask for a follow up face to face meeting...take notes and follow up w/ an email detailing what transpired at follow up face to face meeting and end email with "if there is anything I left out, kindly respond and let me know"......this can help to prevent admins from piling on the bullshit at the end of the year.

The more I work under this horrible system the more I realize that we need to be proactive rather than reactive. For example, if teacher had communication logs with parents/guidance counsellors/admins etc....detailing how teacher has expressed concern for "Johnny's" inability to stay "engaged" or complete tasks etc....it sure wouldn't hurt that teacher's case when the U rating appeal comes around.

i advise the teachers in my school to make cover-your-ass written communication a part of their daily routine. For those teachers who think they can lay low and hope that the mean admin won't target them....they are fooling themselves....it's just the opposite....be a thorn....request meetings, discuss concerns about children ...involve all support staff....request IST's and have your own lesson plans in order...make it as difficult as possible for them to portray you in a negative light at a U rating appeal.

If your teacher has an "s" formal ob and a bunch of "U" informals....when was the teacher advised of U on informals....if he was advised of U each time and waited til now....he was not proactive and it'll be more difficult for him during the appeal. Did admin give any support or suggestions after giving U informals?

From another CL:

Here's some answers to some of your questions:

#1--Is it a waste of time? To be honest with you, over the past 7-8 years I have had about 20 people get a U rating. (I am a CL in an elementary school). I am pretty sure almost all of them didn't go anywhere. The only one that got satisfaction was a probationer who, in her third year got a U rating based on one letter to file (corporal punishment which was unsubstantiated). She hired her own lawyer and eventually won. After that year though, she didn't work for the DOE. When she won her case, she got back pay and was awarded reinstatement and everything about the corp. punish. had to be pulled from the system and her file. She never returned because she was moving to Florida. The CP was she pinned a note to a child's shirt, a 2nd grader, which was folded so the writing on the note was not even showing, so he would remember to give it to the parent. The parent saw the note and told the teacher thank you. A few days later, the principal trumped up charges about corporal punishment.

#2--I've been told that probationers should file the appeal but they have less of a leg to stand on. I would make sure that the probation was not discontinued.

#3--Believe or not my principal usually writes on top of the observation INFORMAL OBSERVATION when it is informal. Otherwise there really isn't a way to tell.

#5--Salary freezes--The chapter leaders handbook, under "Due process/ratings/summons" pg 96, Consequences of a U-rating. The first statement reads: "A pedagogue who has not reached the maximum pay step may be denied salary increments for one year."

And from a former CL:

I'm not longer a chapter leader as of June 2005, I transferred to another school, but I still keep notes in a binder. The following is an excerpt of a form letter I had for u-rated staff.

The consequences of a U rating is as follows according to the 2003 edition of the Chapter Leader Handbook.

If you have not reached maximum salary, you may be denied a salary increment for one year.

You may be denied another license based on this rating.

If you are probationary, you may be denied tenure,

You can be transferred to another school with your permission, or you can remain at your current school.

The receipt of a U rating may result in the person being required to take two courses designated by the principal, appropriate to the reason for the rating.

If this one is actually quoted from the CL manual, I strongly object to its use of the word "may." I don't know in what universe you'd find a U-rated teacher getting an expected salary increment these days.

To be fair, someone who contacted Scott did say that the appeals in their experience were nearly always successful. I don't know about that . . .

I left a comment of my own over on Ednotes. If you have anything to contribute to this thread, please jump in. Post a comment here or there, or send either of us an email (at normsco@gmail.com or UnderAssault@earthlink.net).

We're definitely all in this together.

Will the real fighters for our schools please stand up!

Congratulations to Bill Hargraves and all the GEM people who walked out of the umpteenth fake charter school hearing "hosted" by the DoE's these past few years.

I use the term loosely. You can't even tell who's running this thing, as parent-activist Bill Hargraves points out in the video.

Hargraves: This is a public hearing, right?

Answer (off camera): Right.

Hargraves: Who am I speaking to? It seems to me like we're just speaking to each other.

And describing how a hearing is normally run says:

Whoever's representing the DoE, the charter faction, or the public faction, is here [pointing to the space up front], and not mixed in the crowd, so at least we know who we are talking to.

Those remarks at least get the DoE people to come out of hiding. Why one of them was standing way up there in the back of the auditorium is beyond me, but no matter. They could have been at the deli on the corner for all the difference it makes to the outcome of this hearing, or any other hearing in this nasty business.

No minutes are ever taken at these meetings. They're only for show.


The second link (under the video screen) takes you to Norm's Notes, where you can read a couple of letters concerning the illegality of this particular charter school expansion. Not-in-the-mayor's-back-pocket PEP member Patrick Sullivan writes:

As the Manhattan member of the city school board ("Panel for Educational Policy") I can assure you that none of the legally mandated process for such a significant change in utilization of a public school building was followed in this case.

He then puts the DoE's morality and law-breaking squarely on the table:

[The state ed] law was implemented to protect public school students from the very type of encroachment now being attempted by HSA. Instead of washing their hands of the very real issues facing Manhattan public schools in co-location situations, I suggest the trustees begin to more seriously consider their moral and legal obligations to help all our students.

Bravo to both these leaders, and of course to the president of the Parent Assn at PS 375, Rose Jimenez. Their tenacity on these issues is becoming a national treasure.

---

Anatomy of a Walkout at Hearing Over HSA 3 Charter Expansion in Public Space

Harlem activist Bill Hargraves points out the shoddy methods in how the DOE runs a so-called public hearing and then leads a walkout.



For background info see:

Mosaic Prep/HSA Charter Invasion Follow-up

Toast

It's been eight years since I got trained as a chapter leader, and for the past six of them I've started wondering right about now whether my position will be cut in September.

It's no secret I'm a music teacher, and this chancellor has done many things to undermine non-core subjects for as long as he's been in office.

Back in 2003 he sacrificed them to make more room for reading and math. Then came the small schools movement, when more and more of our jobs were lost in the shuffle.

BloomKlein now says it's a question of budget, though lots of people are catching onto the fact that these guys have no problem spending big bucks on highly paid consultants, no-bid contracts, PR, and other corporate accouterments. What we have here is ideology and sociopathy, not high teacher costs.

Throughout this whole sad history of denying kids state-mandated access to life-enhancing subjects, NYC principals have always found it easy to excess teacher activists holding these jobs. Even with a great deal of seniority, your position is toast when there's only one or two of you in the building.


So here it is June, and once again I'm hearing that my principal is planning to do away with the music program at my school for next year. If I can believe the elevator gossip, it's actually already been done.

Only one thing surprises me this time: that a high school of our size, in a city with such musical talent, and in a borough that gave birth to not one but two musical genres (Italian-American doo-wop in the late 50s and hip-hop in the 70s) will probably have no full-time music teacher. They might, of course, ask other people to teach a class or two in my place. There's always an F-status person, an AP, or someone they think can wing it out of license one period a day just to make sure kids get what they need on paper to graduate.

Under this contract, as before, I'll still have my "job," whether it'll be subbing, deaning, or clerical assistance (I know, they're not supposed to give teachers clerical stuff). Needless to say that if they do start laying people off, it's unlikely the cuts will reach up to my veteran years. I'd end up bouncing someone with less seniority, even if the position is on the opposite end of a subway map.


One of the main things I'm curious about is what they'll do with a teacher like me whose position is being closed but who has more than 20 years' appointed service. The contract doesn't allow us to be excessed:

Art.XVII.B Rule 10. Teachers at all levels who have served 20 years or longer on regular appointment shall not be excessed except for those in neighboring schools who are excessed to staff a newly organized school.

but it's obvious that two legalities butt up against each other — this rule that you can't be excessed and the ed laws placing limits on the number of classes you can teach out of license. I'd have thought some arbitration decision has already determined what's to be done with us, but no UFT person I've ever asked knows of any, even borough and special reps. In fact, all I'm hearing about is people being forced to teach lots more classes out of license than the law allows. Poor kids, poor teachers.

Of course the DoE could have us sub every day like an ATR and call us something else, like "teacher without a program." But they're supposed to give us something "comparable" to our regular program. What does "comparable" mean? Does it mean comparable to my subject, or comparable to teaching in general?

If I read Rule 10 correctly, my principal could for all I know be calling around to see what new schools in the neighborhood need a music teacher.

And it goes without saying, they could also start playing some pretty nasty games, like U's, harassment, and charges of one kind or another. Principals have not only been given the green light on all of these, but training on how to do it and legal teams to back them up. Being reassigned puts unwanted personnel off the school's payroll in 60 days, I think. Neat.


So, I've decided to write about events as they unfold, because what happens in my case may be of interest to others in the same position. It should read like a Dickens novel, serialized and all.

For the record, at the present time I have no reason to believe I will be getting a U-rating, nor do I know of any charges against me for wrongdoing or incompetence.

I am, however, grieving a whole lot of irregularities in our recent SBOs, Circ. 6-R procedures and preference sheets, because the CL has been derelict in his duties, complicit, or self-serving. Grievances don't make anyone popular with a principal, but heck, someone has to file them when they come at us like a mack truck.


If mine starts messing with me now, wouldn't that be a coincidence.

Pakter case dismissed !

Just to increase what will be wide circulation, I'll post this while rushing to school and put the rest of it up later.

The "rest of it" contains the specific dismissed charges and what amounts to the absurdity of the DoE's position towards Pakter and many other educators in New York City classrooms.

UPDATE: Ednotes has posted the full text, so if you want to read more than these extracts, go here.

FURTHER UPDATE: For chapter one of the sequel, see Ednotes here.

This is part of what David Pakter has sent around:

In a crushing blow to New York City's Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who had sought for years to have Mr. Pakter fired, the Hearing Officer dismissed such preposterous charges against the Educator of Medical Illustration as the charge he had brought a plant to school, allegedly without getting official permission and awarding fashion watches to high achieving students, something Pakter had been doing for three decades.

He was also charged with giving a gift to a school aide and showing the film, "El Mariachi" by Robert Rodriguez, an Internationally known Director, to one of his High School classes. The film has been the recipient of a multitude of Cinematic Awards around the world and launched the career of Robert Rodriguez.

The charge that Mr. Pakter stopped reporting to a small, windowless, so-called "Rubber Room" after years of being ordered reassigned to such punitive assignments, where Teachers just sit all day, was not considered in today's verdict.

Mr. Pakter was a Lead Plaintiff in a Federal Lawsuit to shut down these teacher "Gulags" which New York City has announced will cease to exist after this school year ends.

These so-called "reassignment centers" were widely seen as a means to punish Teachers as well as instill fear in those who spoke out and reported wrongdoing as well as corruption and unethical behavior within the 23 Billion dollar NYC schools system.

The charge that Mr. Pakter had allegedly tried to influence a Dept of Education employee to furnish him with a printout of his personal work history on an expedited basis was also not considered in today's decision.

---

Mr. Pakter has already filed a $ 10,000,000 (Ten Million) NOTICE OF CLAIM against the NEW YORK POST newspaper as well as the NYC Dept of Education for the publication of false, libelous, defamatory, slanderous statements".

Both the NEW YORK POST newspaper as well as the NYC Dept of Education have been served with papers to appear in NY State Supreme Court on June 16, at 80 Centre Street, Manhattan, Room 328, at 9:30 A.M. before State Supreme Court Judge, the Hon. Cynthia Kern.

---

Please Note: The fact that the DOE would certainly deny that any, or all of these charges do not violate any of my Constitutional and/or First Amendment rights, (which is to be totally expected), does not make such an assertion and/or position true. It is only by challenging established customs and perceptions of what does and does not violate the Laws of the Land, that "old" laws are struck down, and new Laws and new legal precedents- established.

David Pakter

On-again, off-again layoffs

With the Daily News reporting today that Bloomberg is putting layoffs back on the table, the appropriate reaction amongst normal people should be: Let us know when you've finished playing games.

Bloomberg's saying that additional cuts forced him to do it:

Just two days after he backed off threats to send out pink slips to educators, Bloomberg blamed a $600 million cut from Washington for putting teacher layoffs back on the table.

In fact, what Bloomberg's ready to put back on the table may never have actually been taken off. We don't know what deals he's making or which way he's taking this city. And the same is true for Mulgrew. Last time I heard, the both of them were planning some trips together:

While we have reached no agreement on the next contract, the Mayor and I have agreed to go together to Albany and Washington in the near future to lobby for new resources to prevent devastating budget cuts to our schools, our classrooms, and the communities we serve.

Still making that trip, guys?

Bloomberg's announcement earlier this week to prevent teacher salaries from going up now seems like a ploy to get good press. There's nothing like freezing the wages of those highly paid do-nothing teachers to get some cred on the street, especially with those who read the daily rags. Bloomberg knew all along he couldn't do any of that without first fighting it out with union at the negotiating table.

Sadly, there is nowhere to turn for the "truth" of what's going on. The way the system works, with an an oligarchic ruling class, a dictatorial mayor, a lawbreaking chancellor and an undemocratic union, we're just so much flotsam and jetsam.

Tell me when it's all over, and I'll figure out how to get by.

We got mail

Below is an email we got from Klein a couple of days ago when they changed their minds about laying some of us off. He's telling us how we're not going to get raises for a couple of years.

Klein doesn't need to be talking to us, since nobody likes him much or trusts him. Teachers don't take kindly to the smarmy explanations of bosses posing as protectors of children.

He should be talking to Mulgrew, and they both should be talking to the UFT's negotiating committee.

But, I guess a one-way email to a huge number of employees he's never really considered his "colleagues" is easier than sitting down at a table and discussing the really basic issues we face doing our job: money, working conditions, and the delivery of instruction.

Reading Klein's email, it occurred to me that the mayor can do all the "determining" he wants in the privacy of his own mansion. Unfortunately, that's not the way contracts work.

As for not "laying off a single teacher" for a year, I'm surprised he even toyed with the idea. The man was hired to push teachers out of the system, and I gotta hand it to him, he's done pretty well. Swamping us with non-instructional activities like teaching to the test and data doo-doo is not much fun. Nor is marginalizing increasing numbers of us out of permanent placements and harassing a slew of others into retiring sooner than intended. Was there ever any need to fiddle around with laying off people? I don't think so.

That remark about not being able to "do without 4,400 of our teachers" is a nice touch, but he'd love to lose 4, 400 of us — the higher paid ones. Then he can make room for lots more interns he can order around at lower cost, and has even been paying a company to recruit them. This issue is one of the major deceptions of his trash-and-burn chancellorship.

I won't call the man delusional or demented when he thinks he can actually identify the "best" teachers amongst us. Just political. No doubt talent counts, but where, whom, how many, and under what circumstances you teach makes a heck of a lot of difference. Klein doesn't care about those things anyway. What constitutes "best" for this chancellor is just plain cheap, malleable, and decidedly untenured.

I never thought I'd end spend the last years of my professional life working for such a bottom-feeder.

---

Dear Colleagues,

Earlier today, Mayor Bloomberg announced that no teachers will be laid off for the coming school year. Given vast proposed reductions in education funding from the state, we were on course as recently as last week to have to lay off 4,400 teachers citywide.

While the state legislature has been unable to pass a budget for this year, the Governor’s proposal would send $500 million less to New York City schools than last year. On top of those cuts, we have increasing costs—like pensions—that actually leave us short by more than $750 million.

In order to save the jobs of thousands of teachers, the Mayor determined that UFT and CSA members will have to forego two percent salary increases for the next two years. This move will save the City $400 million and, as a result, allow us to avoid laying off a single teacher for the coming school year. The Department’s central staff will not receive any similar increases.

I know that giving up raises is not easy. You and your families are facing tough times too. But I believe tough times also call for shared sacrifice. Last year, school budgets were cut by 4.9 percent, and this year they will be cut by another four percent. Central administrative budgets have been cut by nearly 20 percent in the past two years, including a reduction of nearly 550 staff positions. Next year, Central offices will take an additional cut of nearly $40 million with another five percent cut in positions.

Moreover, we still expect to lose at least 2,000 teachers next year through attrition because we simply won’t be able to afford to fill every vacancy.

I believe deeply that as educators of our children, your work is securing the future of our City. We simply cannot do without 4,400 of our teachers. You and your principals are making a significant sacrifice, and I appreciate your commitment. I look forward to working together to get our schools and our students through these tough times.

While avoiding layoffs goes a long way toward protecting our schools from the worst effects of the state’s insufficient funding, it doesn’t solve all of our budget problems. We still face a huge deficit, which compels us to find savings in our schools. And because we don’t know what the future holds, I will continue to fight for a more rational layoff system that allows us to protect our best teachers no matter how long they’ve been in our system.

Yet at a time when the City—indeed, the entire country—is being forced to make do with less, this plan allows us to retain what’s most important to our students: the resourceful, inspiring, hard-working teachers who are making a real difference in their lives.

Sincerely,

Joel I. Klein
Chancellor

Raw assessment

What's the helmsman doing?

This absolutely glorious Sunday morning has been nearly ruined for me by a UFT post I just read that the charter school legislation passed by Albany this week addresses "most of the UFT's key concerns."

I kid you not. That's the title of the UFT post:

Albany passes charter school legislation that addresses most of UFT's key concerns

What Mulgrew seems to be happy about is this: "We changed the conversation about charter schools." Changing the conversation, though, isn't what I thought we've been paying the union to do.

A couple of things they think this bill accomplished:

— how the state could make sure they're open to the neediest children,

— how to ensure real parent voice,

— how to get more oversight in charter school ops,

— and how to limit profiteering.

First of all, it eludes none of us that the number of charters will now go up, so they needn't bother trying to tell us there'll be a new limit on their number. Big deal.

And no one believes for a second that there will be adequate oversight of the charters with this bill or limits to the role of profiteers in charter operations. Just look at the article Why the Charter Cap Bill Should Not Become Law posted on Gotham last Tuesday before the vote, in which Leonie Haimson and Mona Davids wrote:

Unlike the bill earlier passed by the Assembly, this bill would bar the State Comptroller from auditing the books of charter schools, despite the financial scandals that have erupted in New York and throughout the country regarding conflicts-of-interest, self-dealing and misuse of public funds. It would continue to allow for-profit management companies to try to make a buck off our children, despite the cuts that are decimating school budgets.

They also put a big quantifier on how much parent voice there'd be:

And it would deny parents from having any say in where these schools are located, intensifying bitter battles that already are ripping communities apart and leading to more overcrowding and the loss of critical cluster spaces and libraries.

They identify other objectionable stuff in the new bill as well.

Thanks go to Norm for drawing attention to Jackie Bennett's analysis of high attrition rates in charter schools. (It was posted on Unity tool Edwize.org, which nobody much reads.) It turns out attrition is much higher in charters, even the high-performing ones, when you compare them with public schools.


At least Mulgrew knows that Race to the Top funds can't be used to fix class size. The money is to be used for new projects, so unless more lawbreaking takes place (like moving around designated funds from one place to another as they always do), we in the public schools are still in the same boat as before. Sinking.

He needs to be reminded with megaphones in both ears that lauding a new charter bill doesn't do much for the UFT. Nor does running charters of their own, by the way.

Playing ball with the politicians on this one doesn't get our senior teachers back into classrooms and out of ATR and RR limbo. Nor does it reduce DoE lawbreaking, stop special ed violations, put an end to teacher-bashing, oust the unqualified and poorly trained supervisors that harass us, or raise the political clout of our union.

What it does is lower our faith in this union and unionism altogether.

Will someone please get down to business and throw us a lifeboat.

---

Postscript: Norm caught this ball and is running bases over at Ednotes.

Getting closer!

Someone just wrote me that Paterson's incentive bill just passed the legislature.

Here's the message posted by the NYS Office of the Governor, which is two steps forward for some of us.

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Governor David A. Paterson Announces Passage of Early Retirement Incentive Legislation

ALBANY, NY (05/28/2010) Governor David A. Paterson today announced that the Legislature has passed his bill authorizing an early retirement incentive . . .

More on Brill's "poop" in the NY Times

Sometime before the publication of his piece in the New Yorker last August (on which I posted a lengthy rebuttal by Joy Hochstadt here), pseudo-journalist Steven Brill paid a visit to the Chapel St. rubber room where Philip Nobile has been reassigned for the past three years.

Nobile has given me permission to post his report on some exchanges he had with Brill at that time.

---

Steve Brill, Part 2
New Yorker Hatchet Man Extends Act to the Times

Brill, oh boy, is back on the education beat with "The Teachers’ Union’s Last Stand” in this week’s New York Times Magazine. When asked last winter if he was working on a sequel to his New Yorker article on rubber room (“Worst in Class,” Aug. 31), he replied via email, “Nope. Something slightly related but different.”

But there was no difference in tone, slant, and accuracy in his twin blasts. He has poisoned the issue of teacher unions as assiduously as allegedly problematic teachers.

What the city and country needs is an Anti-Brill who will contest the ex cathedra claim that bad teachers and their unions that love them are the bogeymen of the achievement gap and dispute the notion that hardcore, top-down, you're fired accountability is the sole solution, as if schools alone can overcome the crushing social pathologies that stall learning among some minorities.

I tried to do my part by engaging Brill in a dialogue. As a rubber roomer myself with a background in journalism (we were both staff writers at New York magazine), I was perfectly situated to examine his prejudices. I offered my services to The Teacher, but executive editor Deidre McFadyen, probably on the advice of Mulgrew, did not reply. Brill was more courteous, but to my surprise this sumo of the printed word refused to go a few rounds with one of his unnamed victims.

Herewith our too brief exchange from last September:

Me: As you can imagine, your story is of great concern to us rubber room folks. I'm planning to write a reaction piece. Can we set up an interview?

Brill: Why don’t you write your piece and then I can react?

Me: The piece is about you and your article, not textual analysis. Need to talk to you, journalist-to-subject, as you were to us in the rubber room with the same courtesies. It will be an interesting exercise for both of us — a worst teacher in New York engages his New Yorker critic. Readers are bound to be enlightened and entertained as we advance the discussion of the swiftboating of inner city teachers. Forgive me for saying so, this is a teachable moment and you must be game.

Brill: [no response]

Me: Are we on?

Brill: For what? Your last email said you had already decided the merits of your case.

Me: I don't understand your point. Since I haven't interviewed you yet, there is no "case." My story is when you came to our rubber room. We assumed your good faith. I expect you to return the favor.

If you are reacting, perhaps overreacting, to my use of the word "swiftboating," you of course know that the term was not applied to your piece, but rather to a media trend. Surely, you won't deny that the New Yorker's cover headline "Worst in class," describing hundreds of teachers yet to be tried for alleged misconduct, rubs up against the genre.

I repeat my claim that a dialogue of sorts between you and me will sharpen the discussion on education reform. Can this project be more irresistible to a guy like you?

Lunch at Michael's?

Brill: [no response]

Me: Have you decided to observe the journalist's code and grant me an interview? If I may say so, it does not behoove the founder of Brill's Content to say no . . .

I did not hear from Brill again until months later. However, I brought up his destructive New Yorker article with UFT Staff Director LeRoy Barr during his semi-annual pilgrimage to Brooklyn’s Chapel St. TRC on February 8. I gave him some serious gas about the union's utter PR failure re rubber rooms.

Specifically, I complained that the UFT had zero response to Brill except for a feckless letter-to-the-editor by Mulgrew. Consequently, the intelligentsia, our natural constituency, has fallen for Brill's DOE slant. Barr deflected my criticism by hyping a forthcoming but undefined publicity pushback. He said that we would be “happy” that the union had pooled its resources for this game-changing moment. Unknown to us then, Mulgrew was secretly negotiating the end of TRCs with the DOE.

Still in denial, Barr shifted the blame from the UFT to us for talking and giving the press the chance to spin. True, some anonymous rats in our room gifted the Post with uncomplimentary quotes about Alan Rosenfeld and his alleged double-dipping on the job. The other day SCI investigators visited us seeking dirt on another alleged double-dipper previously exposed in the Post. Hearing that I was no friend of the subject, they interviewed me. I told them that even if I had something on a brother or sister, I wouldn’t tell them because we’ve got enough trouble just being in the room.

I sent Barr a draft of this post, promising to quote his feedback. In keeping with the UFT’s un-solidarity with the least of the brethren, he had no comment.

Finally, I forgot to inquire whether Brill’s sequel was commissioned by the New Yorker.

Brill: Sorry. Never talk about that stuff.

Me: Or talk to me about your previous piece. We the condemned spoke to you, but you stonewalled me in return. This was conduct unbecoming a journalist, if you don't mind my saying so.

---

(Note: Brill's Content was a media watchdog publication he used to published. It's now defunct. See here for my comments on Brill's piece in the NY Times this past weekend, and here for what South Bronx had to say.)

Do we really need the NY Times?

Not if it's comfortable for them to publish Steven Brill's kind of biased zealotry against public education.

Check out the opening paragraph of his piece in today's Magazine section:

MICHAEL MULGREW is an affable former Brooklyn vocational-high-school teacher who took over last year as head of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers when his predecessor, Randi Weingarten, moved to Washington to run the national American Federation of Teachers. Over breakfast in March, we talked about a movement spreading across the country to hold public-school teachers accountable by compensating, promoting or even removing them according to the results they produce in class, as measured in part by student test scores. Mulgrew’s 165-page union contract takes the opposite approach. It not only specifies everything that teachers will do and will not do during a six-hour-57 ½-minute workday but also requires that teachers be paid based on how long they have been on the job. Once they’ve been teaching for three years and judged satisfactory in a process that invariably judges all but a few of them satisfactory, they are ensured lifetime tenure.

Brill may have had breakfast with Mulgrew in March like he says, but there are some serious untruths in these first five sentences.

1. "Mulgrew's 165-page union contract."

First of all, there is no single union contract. There are at least nine separate agreements for each title in this union. The teacher contract and its additions does reach to 165 pages, but the guidance counselor's contract, for example, goes only to 75. The Memorandum of Agreement signed in Oct 2005 and to extend until Oct 07 modified the many agreements that had expired in May of 2003. The next Memorandum of Agreement was signed in Nov 2006, and extended all of these contracts in a similar fashion until Oct 09. We are now working without a renegotiated contract, and Mulgrew has gone to impasse over the DoE's new demands.

In any case, none of these agreements are Mulgrew's, because it was Weingarten who negotiated them. They were undoubtedly grooming Mulgrew to replace her over the past few years, but he did not determine the direction of these expired contracts. His job now is to defend the ones we're forced to live with until the new one is signed, and to make sure we get one we can live with next time round.

2. The contract "specifies everything that teachers will do and will not do during a six-hour-57 1/2-minute workday."

Bull. I'd say roughly 30% of our working day is dealing with problems that are nowhere near specified in the contract, particularly in times like these when we're filling in for the DoE's shortfalls.

The biggest and most time-consuming task is classroom management, which is becoming increasingly more difficult as class size grows unchecked and students are not getting the services they need. You won't find a word about that in any contract. Who does Brill think attends to the children when special ed violations place them with you instead of with someone else? Who does he think buys supplies on their own time when schools don't provide them, or moves furniture, cleans up, and does their own tech support when other staff are unavailable and/or unwilling? Who performs the multiple layers of attendance-taking and paperwork required by the DoE, which has been escalating these tasks in their orgiastic glee over data and accountability? And where does it say in any contract that you have to teach a subject you don't know anything about, because that's what happens all too often these days. We end up frequently enough teaching out of license.

3. "requires that teachers be paid based on how long they have been on the job".
A half-truth, as everyone knows. Educators are also paid on how many credits and/or degrees they have above a BA.

And I'll quibble as well with the word "teachers," because not all the people standing in front of NYC classes have really earned that title. The darker truth is that the State Ed Dept has been coerced into minimizing the requirements in order to attract more grad students, particularly TFA types who enter so many NYC classrooms with a BA and a few weeks of ed prep over the summer. Way too many people intern for a couple of years as educators while they go through the stages of full certification, including getting their MA. Some don't even bother to complete it and leave after a couple of years for different kinds of jobs. (See this link for the four main kinds of teaching certificates you can hold in New York — provisional, professional, provisional and permanent — and a host of others for unique circumstances, e.g., transitional, supplementary.)

4. "that invariably judges all but a few of them satisfactory."

First of all, more than "a few" people are denied tenure, and some have are asked to prove themselves for longer than three years.

If someone whom the DoE has placed in the job as principal has decided a person is good enough at his job for tenure, then one can only blame that principal for granting tenure to a person who hasn't earned it. That's true even under the present teacher evaluation system.

I am also getting the feeling that Brill confuses "satisfactory" performance with "excellence," which is never prescribed by law for teaching or any civil service job.

5. "they are ensured lifetime tenure."

An outright lie. No one in this contract or any earlier one has ever been ensured lifetime tenure. There are ed laws that can remove you from the classroom for incompetence and crimes. You can also lose your job for whistleblowing and truthtelling, even for things you never did at all. And as much as we'd like not to think about it, the Legislature can indeed change the tenure laws. So there is no assurance, as Brill says, of a lifetime job.


Brill's essay is patently a work of political propaganda, and why the Times printed it is beyond me.

But that's a rhetorical question and I don't really need an answer. I've just canceled my subscription to the paper, as many already have done well before now.

PS: I've written about Brill before, in this post.

Getting our ducks in a row . . . or not

I don't have tell anyone that when Bloomberg threatens to lay off 4,419 teachers, we all want to know what our longevity looks like in print.

Unfortunately, that's not going to happen, and it's not because the DoE isn't publishing seniority lists this year, because they are. They've put out two since last spring. Garbage, both times.

When the whacked up list came out in the fall term, word had it that the DoE was "working on it." Software was being changed, and data was coming out gobbledygook.

Looking at the document we had at our school, I thought some of the stats seemed to be okay. But the order was all wrong, and a ton of vets were inexplicably listed as having just six years' service under their belts.

So we waited all winter for the new version, which the principal made available last week. Again it was one big mess.

I was angry enough back in the fall when this arrogant, corrupt, spendthrift and non-accountable Department of Education couldn't spit out a proper list that would allow us to check our longevity stats. In this of all years, every one of us working members needs to be able to check that the DoE's calculation of our seniority and years-in match our own idea of our career service.

I brought up the problem of the junk lists with UFT managers more than once this year, and their apathetic response made me distinctly uncomfortable. But, I figured we had time and the new spring lists would clear the picture up.

So now it's May, and the principals are already telling staff where they're intending to cut positions. The union I'm sorry to say still has its head in the clouds, in the sand, and who knows where else. If anyone can show me any discussion of the problematical lists on the UFT website, I'll revise this post in a nanosecond.

You'll find things over there like this April 10th post explaining excessing and tenure —

Excessing follows reverse systemwide seniority order. . . . If you have any questions, ask your chapter leader to check the School Excessing Seniority List or call your UFT borough office.

The person who wrote that invitation is obviously uninformed. No such list exists at the present time.

One of the two UFT high-ups I wrote to about the problem this week expressed frustration and anger tantamount to my own. The other didn't bother to answer my email.

The difference between me and them is I guess this. I believe there is much more to this than software and programming issues.

I believe the Department of Education is putting the whole system into chaos so people can't navigate it or figure out where they stand. They've done it with massive re-organizations, and they've done it with pupil attendance lists. They've manipulated data, test scores, and graduation rates like there's no tomorrow. Absolutely nothing in the system is reliable, accurate, or sound.

The DoE is playing one big joke on us all, and the union is keeping up its part in whatever bargains they're making with the city by just looking the other way.

Representation without consultation

That's one of the themes in Philip Nobile's critique of the new rubber room agreement posted yesterday on the ICE blog.

A chapter leader and teacher of social studies, Nobile was reassigned to a TRC in retaliation for whistleblowing on Regents irregularities. He takes Mulgrew to task for failing to consult with TRC residents before coming up with this arrangement to expedite things and get people out of there. They are, after all, "the casualties of this bureaucratic Bay of Pigs."

Despite all the folderol over the new arrangement, a fair number of us remain unimpressed. As Nobile says:

"Despite the apocalyptic publicity in the tabloids, TRCs were never the real issue. Rather they are the rear end product of the DOE’s discipline system that can reassign a ham sandwich."

A good read, this post, particular for seven hard questions he challenges Mulgrew to answer.

Goldstein on Gates

While some of us have been taking on Albany and Wall Street this past week, Arthur Goldstein has been aiming at a whole other target over at Gotham.

Bill Gates — for whom we don't have to look very far for appropriate metaphors.

GOLDSTEIN: "I don’t trust him, and I don’t think he knows much about education, despite the millions he throws around imposing his pet projects on us."

I got a little harsh with Gates myself back in January of last year, when I called him an Ed-Dabbler. So, it shouldn't be any surprise that I agree with Arthur completely, and with the comments people have been posting.

Gates's Measure of Effective Teaching project does smack of big brother and omits inconvenient factors like class size. The UFT's collaboration on this project is misguided, if not downright harmful, and Leonie Haimson is right when she says NYC teachers should boycott the whole darn thing.


No matter how hard anyone tries, Gates's dupes will not come up with any suggestions for good teaching that haven't been around for centuries:

Know your stuff thoroughly

Speak clearly

"Tune in" to the students

Set and hold standards of behavior and scholarship

Mark lots of papers

Call parents, and

Teach from the heart.

Do all this all of the time and you'll really be good at your job. Do anything more than this and you'll be spectacular. But for that, you'll have to have the kind of talent no one can measure, no one can duplicate, and no one can evaluate separately from the group of students in front of you at any given moment.

Because all good teachers know that great teaching is an ephemeral mix of all the talent in the room, not just the teacher's. What each student brings to each class is part of the whole experience, whether he or she has a positive influence on the room or a negative one, whether he's gifted, challenged, introverted, extroverted, healthy, out of sorts, lovelorn, hungry and all the rest.

It is a dull drudge who will follow a rubric designed by a committee paid to come up with something.

Good teaching doesn't change. Only politics does.

The Bronx vs Diaz Sr.

The Bronx UFT took up the fight against Diaz's bill on teacher layoffs with a rally outside the senator's office on Rogers Place. If he had been there, he could have heard this fun chant in support of senior teachers:

GRAY WILL STAY,
THE BILL WILL GO AWAY !

Kind of catchy. I like it.

I also liked what District Rep Annette Carlucci had to say when it was her turn at the mic:

It has been my honor to service 65 high schools in the Bronx.

For them I say to you Sen. Ruben Diaz, Sr. —

SHAME ON YOU for giving up your integrity to become a puppet for the city.

SHAME ON YOU for disrespecting those individuals who chose teaching as a career and have dedicated their lives to education.

SHAME ON YOU for dismissing their knowledge and expertise . . . reducing them to just a dollar sign.

SHAME ON YOU for demeaning their contribution to education and the impact they have on the children of New York City.

There's a better way to save money, and it is not at the expense of our children.

You should have known better, Senator Diaz!
SHAME ON YOU

You go, girl!

Another go at Creationism

I've got to cross-post this new item on Ednotes because there are some stories worth re-telling.

HELL EXPLAINED BY A CHEMISTRY STUDENT

A joke for a rainy Sunday

The newest rotten tomato in town

The new Rubber Room agreement is not all that. A primer on what's wrong with it begins and ends with this list, including most of the comments:

Jeff Kaufman (ICEblog, April 15, 2010): The Rubber Room Deal: Breakthrough or Missed Opportunity

Norm Scott and TAGNYC (Ednotes, April 15, 2010): Watch for the Snarks and Boojums on Rubber Room Agreement

NY City Eye (April 17, 2010): After the rubber room closings: essential procedure rights issues ignored by UFT, media

James Eterno (ICEblog, April 17, 2010): The Rubber Room Agreement: as usual DOE gets the better of the UFT

UPDATE:
Read Norm's take on Mulgrew's presentation at the DA yesterday over at Ednotes.

Entirely disappointing are the tone and content of jd2718's April 15th post — particularly where he says this is "the first pure win I have seen as a UFT member. I look for the flaws, the gaps, the secret trap-doors. There ain’t none here." Folksy, but untrue. Just check out all the comments coming into Chaz's post last Friday to see all the flaws, gaps and secret trap-doors the UFT has allowed while it goes about it's business not really protecting our rights.

(Parenthetically, I don't know why Chaz himself went so far out of his way to congratulate Mulgrew and crew. He admits to being suspicious of the "secret nature of the negotiations, a lack of participation by the elected leaders for the reassigned teachers (liaisons), the past actions of the DOE in ignoring the previous 'rubber room agreement,' the expansion of that awful and abusive 'probably cause' provision, and the DOE's failure to go after Administrators for 'false accusations.'" So why all the hoopla about the agreement being a "victory" and a "major win"?)

Since Kaufman, Scott, TAG, NYC I, and Eterno clarify the negative aspects so well, I'll focus on some of the wording. The full agreement is downloadable here as a PDF. The version on the Public Personnel Law site is easier to search and quote from.

---

The ambiguities of what constitutes misconduct are not clarified any more in this agreement than in the Art.21.G.6 of the contract, to which it refers. In that document, "sexual misconduct" shall include, but is not confined to:

“ . . . the following conduct involving a student or a minor who is not a student: sexual touching, serious or repeated verbal abuse (as defined in Chancellor's Regulations) of a sexual nature, action that could reasonably be interpreted a soliciting a sexual relationship, possession or use of illegal child pornography, and/or actions that would constitute criminal conduct under Article 130 of the Penal Law against a student or minor who is not a student.”

This agreement says that you can have 3020-a charges leveled against you for 60 days once you've been reassigned or suspended, except in cases where you've been removed because of criminal charges or an allegation of sexual or financial misconduct, assault, or tampering of a witness or evidence now under investigation. Truth is that ambiguous wording and/or investigations, hearsay, administrator distortions or administrator tampering with evidence, statements and witnesses (we’ve heard so much about cases of this) – can still all be used to keep you from your job for extended lengths of time.


In the following clause, the fact that the UFT can ask to review the number of these extended cases sounds exactly like the failed paperwork clause in the 2006 contract (Art. 8.I). We’re swamped, and they've forgotten their obligation to get us some relief with this stuff.

“At the end of the first year of this Agreement, and in subsequent years if requested by the UFT, the DOE and the UFT will meet to review the issue of investigations and reassignments extending beyond 60 days and, if there has been a significant increase in the number of such investigations and reassignments, to negotiate ways to address this issue."

In cases of misconduct (as opposed to pedagogy):

“. . . should the DOE not prefer 3020-a charges within 60 days, the employee shall be returned to his/her prior assignment. If an employee is returned to his/her prior assignment, adverse action shall not be taken against the employee solely because of the reassignment. If 3020-a charges are preferred subsequent to the expiration of the 60 day period, the employee may then again be reassigned to an Administrative Office Assignment or an Administrative School Assignment . . .”

I don't really see the purpose of a 60-day limit if they're allowing you to be charged after the 60 days (see sentence 3 above). As to the second sentence, how did the UFT let the DoE con them into that bit about no “adverse action” shall be taken against a reinstated employee. Bad administrators do adverse actions against anyone they want at any time — charges or no charges. There's no check on the unbridled malice and arrogance of some of our administrators, particularly some of the new ones who have got their spurs through the Leadership Academy. And with the gutted grievance system the UFT bought into last contract, there's so little protection left.

Sequential charging and all that business about no adverse actions is the same for incompetence cases, except they've been given 10 days to file charges instead of 60.


Regarding Service of Charges:

“. . . service of notice of the nature of the charges and the actual charges shall be consolidated and served together upon an employee along with specifications and, in incompetence cases, a bill of particulars.”

I can see this helping in those few cases where people have sat in the RRs for weeks and months without knowing the charges against them, but correct me if I’m wrong: I think most people learn fairly soon why they’re being removed from their jobs, so this clause is mostly a big yawn.


Under Timeframe for Hearings, the agreement talks about "limited extensions" for "extraordinary circumstances," but the clause does not say who does the determining that these are warranted, nor what kinds of circumstances might be grounds for extension.

“Education Law 3020-a permits ‘limited extensions’ beyond the 60 days where it is determined that ‘extraordinary circumstances’ warrant. “Extraordinary circumstances’ shall be construed narrowly by hearing officers so that the granting of ‘limited extensions’ allowing hearings to last beyond 60 days is the exception and not the rule.”

People have written elsewhere on the ambiguous nature of “probable cause.” And I really don’t know enough about these areas of presumed or actual criminality to comment. One can only hope that members are not charged for crimes they did not commit.


As is pointed out on the ICE blog, "the DOE will have sixty days after removing someone from a school to charge them, or put them back in school and charge them later, but UFT members only get 15 days to respond (I have been told we don’t even get a NYSUT lawyer until we are charged)."

"Within 10 - 15 days of DOE's receipt of the request for a hearing from an employee charged under Education Law §3020-a, a pre-hearing conference shall be held."

This clause is altogether vague, in that "good and sufficient cause" is not clearly defined. But, if mutual agreement is involved, it is bound to be a place where deals can be cut, deals that may have little or nothing to do with the case at hand:

“Pursuant to CBA Article 21, a hearing officer my be removed prior to the end of his or her one-year term only for good and sufficient cause, which may include failure to comply with this Agreement, upon mutual agreement of the UFT and DOE.”

The word “should” is obviously ambiguous in this next clause, and the phrase “to the maximum extent possible” leaves a lot of wiggle room. The statement is therefore hardly worth the paper it’s written on,

“Disputes relating to document production, witness lists and other procedural issues often consume hearing time and should be dealt with to the maximum extent possible in the pre-hearing conference.

and neither are these in the list on pages 5 and 6:

" . . . to the extent practicable, hearing days shall be fully utilized . . .”
“ . . . Attorneys shall not meet with others . . . for longer than 20 minutes, except in unusual circumstances”
“ . . . Hearing Officers shall ensure that cross-examination is not used by either party as a dilatory tactic . . .”

(Where there’s a will there’s a way. These people can work towards anything they want, delays included.)

“Evidence shall be limited to relevant matters.”

If the DOE finds it inconvenient to produce what you’re asking for in a timely fashion, the clock doesn’t stop:

“A party of the hearing or the hearing officer may request an unedited copy of the relevant transcript if a certified transcript is not available when needed. The unavailablity of a certified transcript shall not excuse adherence to the time limitations for completion of a hearing and issuance of a decision.”

and I don't understand why not.


Equally disturbing is that if the DoE wants to expedite your case, the member no longer has a say, as they did in Art.21.G.3 of the contract. I think that removal of a former right cannot be a good thing, and I don't have enough expertise to know why the UFT gave it up.

“If the DOE decides not to seek a penalty of more than a suspension of 4 weeks or an equivalent fine, the case shall be heard under the expedited procedures . . . without the need for the employee to accept an offer of expedited arbitration.”

As has been said so well in many of the comments on the blogs, adhering to timelines might really interfere with due process and your ability to defend yourself adequately. Here's where the agreement pushes hearing officers to keep it moving:

“The Chancellor and the President will urge the hearing officers to strictly control the hearings and require all parties to the hearing to conform to the timelines provided herein.”

Yes, this post IS on education

The soldier up above is teaching kids American style in Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Maybe Yemen. Wherever.

It's one of the photos a guy named ribeye280 used in video he put together to back up Gil Scott-Heron's protest rap "Work for Peace." That song was released in 1994, but it's not outdated. We're still teaching kids the same way. In fact, compared to other methodologies used in American education, this kind's lasted way longer than most.

It's about that time in the year when I get to talk about whatever I think the kids need to know about the music people have been listening to in the past sixty years. Mostly it means the industry of music-making from Motown to hip-hop, but I'm not going to stint on protest music, because boy, do we still need it.

Gil Scott-Heron, the acknowledged father of political rap, wrote "The Revolution will not be televised" back in 1970 and "Work for peace" 24 years later. He's a good place to start if I want to really educate my students.

Take the refrain:

The military and the monetary,
The military and the monetary,
The military and the monetary,
They get together whenever they think it's necessary.

Durability, that's what I like in my music. Music that stays relevant.

Music that lasts for decades, and speaks to the very core of American values.