The institutional culture that once allowed police officers to use their judgment has dissipated.... Asked whether data are fudged, another officer, who prepares his captain for the daily CompStat briefings, says, “there is no way the command can possibly beat last year’s figures without doing so.”
-- John EternoSound familiar to teachers?
Unlike Diane Ravitch, whose cat wakes her up at 5 AM so she can pump out 5 blogs, my cat just sleeps and I don't get up until 6:30, but brimming with blogging ideas. Then I check the NY Times, email and blog roll and hours later have still not blogged. Not only that, I forgot all those brimming ideas.
So I'm trying a morning roundup -- it is already 8:15 and I still have to get to the gym. And play with my cat. So here are some catchup items.
The privatizing of American society Does not stop with education. Aren't teachers being asked to produce quotas of sorts? "here are the test scores we need, go get 'em." The major difference is that the police data reports are not being made public. In fact if Bloomberg is going to argue for TDA's to be public why shouldn't the public getting a ticket or being stopped and frisked have access to the quota report of the cops they are dealing with?
Police face same bad deal as teachers: quotas
Ok, they're not privatizing the police -- yet. Though in Bloombergville the NYPD might as well be privatized, as he himself has bragged he has the NYPD as his own private force. Jamaica HS chapter leader James Eterno's brother John, a retired cop, had an opt-ed in Monday's NY Times, Policing by the Numbers.
THE pervasive use of stop-and-frisk tactics that have deeply alienated racial and ethnic minorities in New York City is only one symptom of a broader dysfunction in the Police Department. The overwhelming pressure on officers to write summonses, make arrests, stop pedestrians and motorists with little or no justification, and downgrade crime reports reflects the deterioration of effective management under Raymond W. Kelly
It is worth heeding what Detective Frank Serpico, testifying on police corruption, told the Knapp Commission in 1971: “The department must realize that an effective, continuing relationship between the police and the public is more important than an impressive arrest record.”Eterno's book, “The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation,” has received good notices. Michael Powell in the Times also did a piece featuring John.
Stop and frisk is becoming a hot item and give credit to Mulgrew and other unions for being part of the silent march on Sunday (Thousands March Silently to Protest Stop-and-Frisk Policies).
One sign of the failure of the ed deform movement has been their own silence on issues like stop and frisk. Ask people in Educators 4 Excellence why they have been silent on stop and frisk. It is fine to support Bloomberg in every single racist policy.
Just about every teen male of color will testify to being stopped for no reason. I know that from my best former students. Would white middle class parents accept what black middle class parents fear every day about their children?
ICE's Jeff Kaufman, a former cop, is very aware of the intersection of policing and education and has straddled both worlds. He and John Eterno have been doing workshops for youths around the city on how to handle themselves during a stop and frisk.
Prison privatization too
NY Times slams beyond sleaze Christie on prison privatization in 3 major articles about his ties to people who run half-way houses in Jersey that look like horror factories. Almost too disgusting to read.
Christie just shocked: Gov. Christie calls for better inspections of halfway houses in wake of newspaper reportPart three: A Volatile Mix Fuels a Murder
As financial pressures grow, officials are using vast halfway houses as dumping grounds, The New York Times found. At Delaney Hall in Newark, low-level offenders are thrown together with violent ones.
Privatization: Testing industry and common core too
Yes, just about every aspect of the ed deform agenda calls for privatization.
Yong Zhao was our guest speaker and I have some great video of him (here and here).
Here he deals with the common core which I wrote about yesterday (Common Core Ills).
The wonder drug has been invented, manufactured, packaged, and shipped. Doctors and nurses are being trained to administer the drug properly. Companies and consultants are offering products and services to help with the proper administering of this wonder drug. A national effort is underway to develop tools to monitor the improvement of the patients. The media are flooded with enthusiastic endorsement and euphoric predictions.
This cure-all wonder drug is the Common Core...
Common Sense Vs. Common Core: How to Minimize the Damages of the Common Core
OK. Gotta go play with cat, plant some plants, get ready to head into the city for lunch with 2 of my favorite retirees who were active in the union opposing Unity -- a great chance to catch up --- and we're going to the Triangle Shirt Fire exhibit at FIT afterwards and then onto the MORE steering committee meeting. Did I forget something? Oh, the gym. Drat.======================
The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.
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