Educational Malpractice at Tweed

Tweed's head of accountability James Liebman and his massive staff may just account for the entire $18 billion deficit about to hit New York State. But he slogs on. Data Mining? Another corporate imposition on the schools. Give experienced teachers 5 minutes with a kid and we'll do more mining than the failed $80 billion ARIS system.

Leonie Haimson sent these links:

From Information Week:
Click here to read Can Data Mining Save America's Schools?

For those who see education's rush to data analysis as a bad thing, as just a more individualized way to "teach to the test," Liebman has little patience. "This process is no more 'teaching to the test' than a doctor diagnosing and then treating a patient for a bacterial infection of the kidney is 'treating to the test,'" says Liebman, who's also a law professor at Columbia University. Teachers will consider the data along with everything else they observe and change their "treatment" if the student continues to struggle. "This is what professionals do," he says.

EDUCATIONAL MALPRACTICE?
WHY SCHOOL PROGRESS REPORTS DESERVE AN 'F'
By Aaron Pallas and Jennifer L. Jennings
Skoolboy and Eduwonkette respond at The West Side Spirit.

(Excerpts)
Basing a treatment plan on one unreliable health indicator would be malpractice if a doctor did it. Why should we tolerate this from the Department of Education?
....
...no educational test can provide a perfectly accurate reading of a student’s performance. Changes in student performance within a particular school on a test from one year to the next may be due to random error, or “statistical noise,” rather than genuine change. It takes a lot more information—either about a larger number of students or about performance across more years—to sort out real gains from illusions.

The Department of Education has chosen to ignore this complexity.

This would not be so alarming if the progress reports were treated as just one of several forms of information about the well-being of particular public schools, such as the school’s status under the federal No Child Left Behind law, or the annual Quality Reviews that the department conducts for each school. But the progress reports—based primarily on a very inconsistent measure of how a school is performing—are the centerpiece of the department’s accountability system.

Big Bucks at Tweed Can Lead to Becoming Next UFT President

See the list of 36 NYCDOE Tweed officials who make over $180,000 a year at Norms Notes here.

But they must be worth it. Klein says they could be making 2-3 times as much in the private sector. Maybe become the head of the UFT where they could make $350 grand.

And poor Klein. The DOE PR people actually made the point he hadn't received a raise in 5 years. Poor guy. Making a 100 grand less than Weingarten. I have an idea. Weingarten will be leaving soon and the BloomKlein reign is coming to an end. Klein is a lawyer with a similar background and he could use a raise. Let's start a campaign for

Joel Klein for UFT President!

Another angle emerges from the debate on NYC Educator on how the UFT blog Edwize defended James Liebman after his recent performance at the City Council hearings and his insightful comments in Samuel Freedman's column this week. NYC says:

First, "Maisie" wrote a piece about how Mr. Liebman was "smart and decent," and incredibly, defended him by explaining he was just following orders. I can recall cases where that defense proved ineffective. Most recently, they got a student to write for them, putting forth the preposterous suggestion that our supposed unwillingness to compromise was somehow setting back the issue of class size.

"Maisie" is NY Teacher reporter Maisie Macadoo, who doesn't write a word that is not checked by Randi Weingarten. My guess is that the UFT is laying the groundwork to hire Liebman after he leaves the DOE late this spring. Maybe Chief Accountability Office of the UFT.

See the GBN (satire as always) report on Liebman's consults with parents:

...the firing of a popular principal, Isaiah Wallace of MS 422 in Brooklyn, was actually the result of a consultation with a large number of people who overwhelmingly felt that he should be canned. At a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden, Chancellor Joel Klein consulted with a capacity crowd of nearly 19,000 people, many of them parents. He heard the clear consensus of this group as they chanted in unison, “Fire Isaiah”. The Chancellor realized that the group could only have been referring to Mr. Wallace, because his school had received an F on the recent school Progress Report. A source at the DOE confirmed to GBN News the authenticity of this document, and maintained that it proves Mr. Liebman had been telling the truth when he asserted that thousands of parents were consulted by the DOE. However, the source refused to confirm or deny that the DOE plans to soon replace the district CDEC’s with local movie theater audiences.

Liebman's experience in obfuscation and confusion at Tweed makes him the perfect candidate to explain how the UFT actually is a democratic institution.

But, hey, he's another lawyer. If Klein doesn't want to be UFT President, how about

Jim Liebman for UFT President.

Speaking of which, check out Richard Steier's in-depth interview with "Sister Randi" in The Chief,
http://www.thechief-leader.com/news/2007/1221/Razzle_Dazzle/ also posted at Norms Notes.

Jim Liebman in Sam Freedman Column Raises Eyebrows

It seems like Sam Freedman is doing a series on the idiocy of the BloomKlein era. In the NY Times today. Freedman describes an incredibly dangerous middle school that received an "A." How is that possible when we all know that in schools like this teaching and learning is extremely difficult?

Rhoda commented at NYC Educator:
"[Freedman] not only rips the awful report cards, but shows what a hypocrite and truth twister James Liebman is." Rhoda's favorite quote:

The A grade, though, may also have something to do with the fact that the progress reports weigh all safety factors as only 2.5 percent of a school’s total grade, said James S. Liebman, the Education Department’s chief accountability officer. He has said the department decided not to give safety more consideration because statistics on school violence rely on self-reporting and tend to be deceptive. “This is a school that’s doing remarkably well on the progress side, and ‘remarkably’ isn’t a word I use lightly,” said Mr. Liebman. The first part of the article describes how violent and dangerous the school is and how there was a high attrition rate at the school in which 13 of the 16 teachers were in their first year in the 2006-7 school year.

Rhoda says, "Mr. Liebman is a remarkable idiot and remarkable isn't a word I use lightly, either."

There's even a better quote from Liebman. When asked about the not remarkable high rate of teacher turnover, which is common at schools in chaos,

"Mr. Liebman said many teachers flee schools that are in the midst of reform and instilling a “culture of accountability.” He did not address the roles of theft, violence and insults in persuading teachers to leave.

Of course, Liebman did his own fleeing from the "culture of accountability" when parents tried to give him a petition signed by 7000 people after a recent City Council hearing.

The article is also posted at Norms Notes.

Jim Liebman's Bad Day

Even the NY Times got into the spirit.
Get the full report on Jim's Bad Day at http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/
Graphic by DB

Sullivan and Liebman Jousting Match at PEP

Manhattan appointee Patrick Sullivan and Tweed Chief Accountability Officer James Liebman joust at the Panel for Educational Policy meeting in September over the interpretation of parent surveys - do parents want more or less test prep? Were desires for lower class size purposely minimized?

Some of the looks on Patrick's face are priceless as Liebman dissembles.
Are you surprised to see te fog roll in and out as Klein and Liebman talk?
And note Klein's usual attention to his Blackberry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11q3uZtePCE

Bad Teaching Leads to Death Row Says James Liebman in NY Times

Shaping the System That Grades City Schools - New York Times

Guest article submitted by Alice to ICE-mail
Nov. 19, 2007

The November 18, 2007 issue of Ed Notes Online's article, "Hunting Down Bad Teachers" observes that "The nation wide focus on quality teaching is curious when compared to lack of focus on quality of physicians where mistakes lead to people dying."

Apparently, the DOE is attempting to make just that connection by hiring James Liebman, a death row litigation expert,to be the chief accountability officer in rating schools.

The Times writes that Mr. Liebman "...would like to think fewer people might end up on death row had they received a basic education tailored to encouraging their strengths."

Thus, the connection between poor education and death has been made.

This article is filled with propaganda techniques from the folksy, plain folks tone, to the reframing techniques deployed in such statements as these: "We're not measuring kids, we're measuring schools."

I really suggest that everyone read this article several times looking for examples such as these.

If looked at closely, the reasoning is obviously ludicrous.

If read quickly, the subliminal message is "Bad Teaching Leads To Death".

As I've said in a number of posts, it would be suicidal to mount any public campaign without studying propaganda techniques.

George Lakoff, an expert in linguistics, writes in his article "What Orwell Didn't Know About The Brain, The Mind and Language,"

"Probably 98% of your reasoning is unconscious...Thought is structured, in large measure, in terms of 'frames' - brain structures that control mental stimulation and hence reasoning."

Lakoff contends that we think in terms of frames. Such a frame is "Failing schools." The catch is that once the frame is wired into the circuitry of the brain. Lakoff writes, "...the new neural structure cannot just be erased. In other words, if teachers try to negate the concept of "bad teachers, failing schools, etc" using those words, they just reinforce the frame.

Lakoff writes that repeating those words just ..."activates the metaphor and strengthens what you're against." (pgs. 70 -71,) Saying that the schools aren't failing, in other words, reinforces the concept that the schools ARE failing. An example of reframing this concept would be, "The schools aren't failing to provide for students, The DOE is failing to provide for schools."

The DOE has their PR experts and the media. In the above article, they're created an insidious frame equating poor teaching with death row.

Any truths told will be spun. If we don't know what we're doing linguistically, we will just provide ammunition to be used against us.

If we do know what we're doing, we can reframe their propaganda and use it against them.
Above Submitted by Alice

Ed Note:
In an interesting anomaly, John Lawhead, one of the ICE founders and one of the most astute analysts and critics of high stakes testing and just about everything James Liebman has advocated since he's been at the DOE, spent many years as Liebman's administrative Assistant at Columbia before John began his teaching career. John should have spiked the coffee machine with truth serum. Currently an ESL teacher at soon-to-be closed Tilden HS after being being forced out of the closed Bushwick HS, we have to wonder if Liebman is closing every school John teaches at because he's short of help.