Showing posts with label Bob Turner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bob Turner. Show all posts

Friday, December 9, 2011

Norm in The Wave: The Big Lie(s)

The Big Lie(s) and Where Bob Turner Stands
by Norm Scott
Dec. 9, 2011

Well over a decade ago they were branded as radical education reformers looking to change the way education is delivered. They were embraced by both those on the right who had been attacking public schools as a monopoly and liberals on the left who had become frustrated at the lack of progress. As an experienced educator I know from day one that they were tossing around a load of crap - no real reforms but a political ideology based on making changes that would in the long run reduce the costs of education, mainly from the largest source - the labor factor - ergo, teacher salaries. I could never manage to even use the term "reformer" and indeed started using quotes around the word until I came up with the term "education deformer" because that is what they were doing - deforming education.

The mantra of the Education Deformer
Did you know that the reason almost a quarter of the children in this nation are poor is because we have a lousy educational system? And why do we have a lousy educational system? Because we have lousy schools. And why to we have lousy schools? Because we have lousy teachers. Research shows we are told - though the actual research is rarely sited - that the biggest in school factor is not high class sizes or the principal or the number of children struggling with academics or family problems or the lack of resources provided by the people running the system – but the teacher. And didn't you know that the reason we have so many lousy teachers is because the teacher unions prevent the removal of so-called lousy teachers. But, oh, we really do love most of our teachers but if only we could remove those few bad apples. And in order to do that we have to eliminate the unions - or at the very least take away their collective bargaining rights and maybe even their ability to recruit new members (wink, wink: so we can weaken the ability of the only organize any opposition to turning the billions of dollars of public school funding over to private hands).

And we need school choice (charters) since only competition and free enterprise can work. Hey, maybe we can do the same with the police and fire departments - set up competing agencies in some higher crime and higher fire neighborhoods - so that when there is a fire people can decide whether to call 911 or 912.

Of course the only way we can accomplish any of the above is by turning over entire school systems into the hands of one person – usually the mayor – and thus removing any vestige of democratic governing or control over the billions of dollars that go into the education budget. Even better if he happens to be a billionaire who can buy the press, politicians (see Christine Quinn, et al.), and many local community organizations that might put up opposition.

And there's another big lie. That the above is a Republican attack on the public education when in fact just about every Democratic politician, led by the Commander-in-Chief and his Education Secretary attack dog, Arne Duncan who was appointed after 7 years of failure leading the Chicago school system down the road to failure following the very same ed deform policies. Did Obama, who has out-Bushed Bush on ed deform, live in Chicago, which led the way with ed deform starting in 1994, with blinders on? My answer is NOT. In fact, Obama has proven himself to be corporate all the way in so many ways that the charges he is a socialist is absurd.

So where does our local Congressman Bob Turner stand on ed deform? As I pointed out in my Nov. 25 column, Turner is a free enterprise guy. You know the type. If Eva Moskowitz' Success Charter spends $1.5 million in advertising – $1300 per child they manage to recruit and then complain that the public money they get and the free space in pubic schools is not enough – while the local public school may not even have a working copy machine – that is the free enterprise system. When the day comes that the most capable students are lured out of the local public school, leaving an underfinanced hulk with struggling students and the poorest parents, thus leading to that school being closed and parents having only a Moskowitz-run school to go to – unless they are special ed or from non-English speaking families which Eva doesn't take into her schools – there is the free enterprise system at work for you with a privately controlled monopoly replacing the supposed monopoly that had been under public control.

And speaking of Turner, he wrote a piece in The Nov. 18 edition of The Wave extolling his support for veterans. Paul Krugman wrote a column in the Times on November 13 about a proposal from Mitt Romney (whom Turner will support if he is the Republican nominee) to privatize the Veteran's Health Administration (VHA) by offering vouchers.

Krugman writes:
American health care is remarkably diverse. In terms of how care is paid for and delivered, many of us effectively live in Canada, some live in Switzerland, some live in Britain, and some live in the unregulated market of conservative dreams. One result of this diversity is that we have plenty of home-grown evidence about what works and what doesn’t. Naturally, then, politicians — Republicans in particular — are determined to scrap what works and promote what doesn’t. And that brings me to Mitt Romney’s latest really bad idea, unveiled on Veterans Day: to partially privatize the Veterans Health Administration (V.H.A.). What Mr. Romney and everyone else should know is that the V.H.A. is a huge policy success story, which offers important lessons for future health reform. Many people still have an image of veterans’ health care based on the terrible state of the system two decades ago. Under the Clinton administration, however, the V.H.A. was overhauled, and achieved a remarkable combination of rising quality and successful cost control. Multiple surveys have found the V.H.A. providing better care than most Americans receive, even as the agency has held cost increases well below those facing Medicare and private insurers. Furthermore, the V.H.A. has led the way in cost-saving innovation, especially the use of electronic medical records.

I say this all the time about politicians and union leaders: watch what they do, not what they say.
Norm blogs at: http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/

Friday, November 25, 2011

The Wave - Bob Turner Don't Know Much 'bout History

School Scope The Wave - www.rockawave.com - Nov. 25, 2011

by Norm Scott

I read amusing excerpts in last week's Wave from our newly minted Congressman's swearing in speech on November 13 at Queens Metropolitan HS where he declared "free enterprise, not 'capitalism [Huh?],' is what our economic system is built on ... a free enterprise system is built on ‘intellectual capital’ and ‘sweat equity.’ It is intellectual capital, people have to have an idea and belief that something will work and can work and they can prosper." Well, whatever Turner wants to call it, whether we are talking about a free and unregulated enterprise system of crony capitalism or the privatization of the public school system, we have a mess.

It's too bad Turner was at Queens Metro on a Sunday. If he had been there on a school day he would have found that the free enterprise school system instigated by WalBlackBloomKlein offers up fairly brand new school where kids had no regular schedules, were left in a gym "class" – taught by Chancellor Walcott's daughter no less - where they didn't get gym, a physics class "taught" by an unqualified special ed teacher, and no chemistry at all after the teacher quit in October. The principal actually did have an idea for a school that on paper seemed to offer a lot of good ideas. The only problem was that she was a grad of the Leadership Academy, the Tweed training ground for future principals ¬without a clue – with many people coming from Turner's vaunted "free enterprise" system without knowledge on how to organize or run a school. Of course, after Walcott and his minions ignored the problem for months - especial knocks to Queens HS Superintendent Juan Mendez (who was so arrogant at the Beach Channel school closing hearing last year) and network leader Gillian Smith – they finally responded – once the story hit the press. (I'm just scratching the surface here - read more on my blog). Free enterprisers sure know what is important.

The oft-mysterious network management system - Turner's vaunted free enterprise system run amuck – deserves to come under scrutiny. A retired teacher left this comment on my blog: "The role of the network organizations MUST be investigated! New Visions, one of the biggest of the Children First networks, also runs charter schools in NYC and advertises constantly for new teachers with no credentials in a program that looks just like Teach for America. This is a clear conflict of interest. I taught at a small school in a poor minority neighborhood and even though students were without mandated classes or teachers (don't get me started on how the special ed kids were shafted) nothing was done to correct the situation. The school is still being run by a totally incompetent Leadership Academy principal with little teaching and no administrative experience. He was backed totally by New Visions."

The school is in the old Jefferson HS – my Alma Mata – that was closed down to make way for four schools some of which - those that have not been able to cream the best kids – have been doing as badly or worse than the old Jefferson. But in Turner's world of free enterprise we now pay four principals instead of one.

And how about Far Rockaway, another closed school (where we are paying 5 or 6 principals) where students at Frederick Douglas Academy VI have been complaining about not having an English teacher for 3 months? There are only 1200 unassigned teachers floating around the city called ATRs who were bumped from their own schools that closed but why hire a real teacher that you actually have to pay? Instead students are being taught English through a computer learning program called "iLearn", part of a massively expensive plot to eliminate teachers. When students have a question, they are told to "Google it." Rename the program "iLearnButNotOften."

The Daily News reported that 75 seniors "have been warehoused in a bunk class with a different substitute each week and no coherent lesson plan...For weeks, students begged administrators at the C-rated school for a steady instructor, but their request was denied — until Friday, when they protested and refused to go to class until their demands were met."

Replacing real teachers with computers is right up Bob Turner's free enterprise system alley. The computer programs are enormously expensive - and profitable - see one Rupert Murdoch who bought a company called "Wireless Generation" after Joel Klein as chancellor created enormous opportunities for the company – before being hired by Murdoch at $4 million a year. Free enterprise for the 1% but not free for us.

The Frederick Douglas students learned their most important lesson when after an hour after their protest, school administrators, who had been ignoring their complaints, met with a delegation and agreed to hire an English teacher.

Were the students inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, which we are beginning to see is having a more wide-ranging impact than on one square block in lower Manhattan? I'm betting they were. Make sure to see the full 8-minute video of the pepper spraying incident at U of California at Davis where the students shouted at the police in unison, "Shame on you" and "You can go." And the police actually looked shamed and left. How nice to see high school students in our neighborhood learning to use their power of numbers to accomplish something on a smaller scale. We hope to see them broaden their local concerns and join with students around the city who are beginning to stir – as are parents and teachers – against Bloomberg's dictatorship over the schools.

All you have to do is read the short list of headlines Howie Schwach printed in last week's "The Rockaway Beat" with cheating from the school level to the NY State Ed Department running rampant (there can be bonuses for results in the world of free enterprise) as we see the results of Bob Turner's favored competitive and punitive free enterprise system imposed on the school system. Hey, Bob, don't you just love it when people with an idea - and with access to the right people – figure out how they can prosper?

Norm will continue his parsing of Bob Turner in his Dec. 9th column. If you can't wait, he blogs at http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com.