DOE to Schools: Class Size Go Blah!

The DOE had a press release on reducing class size today. Thank goodness we have Leonie Haimson to decipher the gobboly gook for us.

Okay, what many of us were breathlessly waiting for turned out not to be worth waiting for at all.

There is nothing that Tweed submitted today that resembles a real class size reduction plan, and it clearly does not comply with the state mandate.

Moreover, they appear to think that they can charge $40 million for the interim assessments, including “data inquiry teams” and the Senior Achievement Facilitators (SAFs), to the state-funded contracts for excellence and the CFE funds; this doesn’t fall under any of the categories set out by state law – as even their own summary reveals: http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/ChildrenFirst/CFE/ContractProgramAreas/default.htm

Instead of adding to instructional time, the interim assessments further diminish it.

More real analysis soon, particularly of their totally inadequate class size reduction proposal, or what they are trying to package as such.

Meanwhile for those who are interested, some highly tendentious and debatable documents are here:

http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/ChildrenFirst/CFE/ContractProposal/default.htm

http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/219D42DE-28DB-4531-8935-ED47A53EAC1C/23819/FairStudentFundingandtheContractsforExcellence.pdf

http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/358C31A7-2EC8-43CD-9B40-4838FADC361C/23890/NYCDOEClassSizePlan.pdf

I hope that all of you will come out to the hearings in each borough next week; save the dates and locations that are below. I will supply talking points for those who would like them.

Thanks,
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters

leonie@att.net
www.classsizematters.org
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/

Okay, Leonie, as you know I am not new to this issue, but can you play devils advocate and tell us is there any conceivable reason why the administration would not support a real lower class size initiative. During all my years it was always a goal in our schools and in our district to bring down class size where we could scrape together the funds to do so. So why, what is the reason, that the bloom/klein team don't want to do it. Something so simple that everyone seems to believe would be a real boon to education in NYC there has to be some reason why they don't want to do it.

dorothy

region 6 hs

I get asked this question all the time and I usually refuse to answer on the grounds that I would be speculating.

But between us, I would guess the following: It doesn’t fit their game plan; they don’t care/think it matters much, and they don’t want to have to bother to build enough schools to make it happen throughout the city. They have never been educators so they have no idea how difficult/impossible the job is when you have 28 or more needy students. They believe it’s just a matter of getting the right sort of teacher.

Of course they would never consider depriving their own kids of smaller classes…but you get the idea.

It is no longer a lack of funding. They would just rather spend the money elsewhere – on consultants, ARIS, more testing, data inquiry teams, school achievement facilitators, SSO’s and PSO’s, charter schools, small schools, etc.etc. You get the idea.

And so it’s our job to fight like mad, and to try to make sure that all the CFE funds don’t get wasted.

Leonie

I would add to Leonie's answer to Dorothy that class size reduction has many ramifications: many more schools, many more teachers, and the bureaucratic structure to support it. These are long-term solutions and they are only interested in short-term answers so they can make their political points in the limited time they are in power.

Everyone knows that top suburban schools and elite private schools have low class sizes. But the Bloom/Kleins, Eli Broads, KIPP, Green Dot, etc -- those phony reformers of the public education system -- envision a very different education for the inner city -- and they want to do it on the cheap: use narrow standards and narrow tests to create a narrow level education to prepare whatever kids come out "successfully" for the narrow job market that will be available to them -- a very different job market than available for the graduates of the elite schools where kids get a very different education. Check out blogger jd2718's post on two separate education systems for some good analysis related to the small schools.

A Parable

Joel Klein was challenged by his counterpart in Tokyo to a canoe race between the highest performing schools on standardized tests in their respective school systems. The race would be held on the Hudson River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile.

Klein decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A senior management team from Tweed was formed to recommend appropriate action. Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing.

Feeling a more professional study with statistics was in order, Klein hired the Alvarez and Marsal consulting company, paying $15 million for a second opinion. Their conclusion: too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing, but it would take another $15 million for them to come up with a solution.

Klein gladly paid, telling critics of the high fee that the people at Tweed just didn't have the expertise needed and besides, these critics were just afraid of change and that a victory over the Japanese was essential as a demonstration of the success of his Children First initiative. A&M recommended that the rowing team's management structure be totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager.

Tweed's top management implemented a new performance system that would give the one person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the 'Rowing Team Quality First Program.' The program included after school meetings, new rowing standards and free pens to motivate the rower. Suggestions from the school to get new paddles, canoes, and extra money for practices were rejected on the grounds that "just throwing money at a problem does not lead to a solution."

The next year the Japanese won by two miles.

Klein blamed whatever was left of seniority protection in the teacher contract for the loss and the rower was U-rated for poor performance. All capital investments for new equipment was cancelled and the money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year's racing team would be staffed from a Charter School jointly managed by Green Dot and the UFT.

Thanks to Benna G. and Beth K.

Joel Klein visits scene of the crime

DOE Press release:
Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein speaks at the Brooklyn Latin School's inaugural Founder's Day

Thursday, May 17, 2007 – 11 a.m.

325 Bushwick Avenue @ McKibbin Street (4th Floor) Brooklyn

Brooklyn Latin occupies the 4th flr of PS 147 where I spent 27 years, mostly tucked into a corner on the 4th floor with an entire corridor and 3 classrooms for my use. I should have turned it into a condo since that neighborhood in east Williamsburg is also undergoing gentrification. There will be nothing like having a Latin school in the area.

PS 147 is the school where my former colleague Kathy Blythe was taken out in handcuffs by 5-7 cops and shortly thereafter released after an investigation led the arresting officer to say it was all nonsense. "The principal could have halted it all with just a few words," he told me. But she was seen grinning ear to ear. No wonder. Kathy had almost won an election for chapter leader last June and had been consistently critical of the Principal's policies.

You can read more in our April 10 entry: http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2007/04/tales-from-rubber-room-kathy-blythe.html

Sol Stern and Social Justice

"Admit it! You and Joel Klein are on the same side." Thus spat Sol Stern at me when we ran into each other at the radical math conference a few weeks ago. Sol is the Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow and contributing editor to the right leaning City Journal who writes on education, solidifying his reputation with critics of unions and advocates of vouchers - the idea of offering competition to the public schools. Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice.

In an interview with National Review Online in 2003, Stern said, "I started writing about education in 1994 when my kids were in the New York City public schools and I realized that the teachers' union contract was a big impediment to school improvement." His experience with his kids and the fact that the union contract allowed an incompetent math teacher to transfer into the top-level Stuyvesant from the low-performing Seward Park HS seemed to be enough for Sol to make a general assessment that the contract and it's allowance of a few hundred teachers each year to take seniority transfers was a major cause of the ills of the NYC school system. (Sol has accused me of making some of this up but I've heard him tell this story numerous times.)

One would expect a natural enmity towards Sol from the teachers unions and the UFT in particular. And in the early years of Randi Weingarten's tenure she did attack Sol at various UFT functions as our enemy. And there was some sniping from some of her minions at me for writing favorably about some of Sol's ideas, though I can't seem to remember any of them offhand at this time.

I got to know Sol years ago through Education Notes when asked to be added to my mailing list and we have had a number of battles (friendly) over the years arguing education policy. He is very sharp (and funny) makes one really defend their position and my understanding of my own point of view (that it is more correct that I thought) has benefited from these discussions. I also benefited from the invitation to Sol's book release at the Harvard Club where I got a yummy meal (why wasn't I surprised to find a UFT staffer like Joe Colletti there too?). I did get to ask him a question as to why he wasn't happy that the poor kids at Seward Park HS got to benefit when that math teacher went to Stuyvesant.

I know, I know. Everyone wants to get rid of bad teachers though I don't hear the same enormous outcry about bad doctors or cops, who can actually kill you instead of causing a slight disruption in your knowledge of calculus. And the argument that bad teachers cannot be gotten rid of is part of the principals propaganda machine where they claim that - poor babies - they actually have to document why they want to remove a tenured teacher instead of being able to fire them instantly for reasons like they don't like the color of their tie. Or because they don't bow and scrape before them.

Joel Klein has made many of the same arguments on seniority as Sol. Sadly, UFT president Randi Weingarten seems to agree as she joined Klein in gutting the entire seniority structure that has protected senior teachers.

Ah! Sol, Randi and Joel on the same page. A perfect alignment of the stars. But here it gets complicated. In a perfect ideological world one would expect it to be Joel and Sol vs. Randi. But it turns out to be Randi & Sol vs. Joel. On paper at least. As you know by now, Randi plays every side against the middle and I urge you to follow my golden rule -- watch what she does, not what she says.

It seems that Joel's move to use what Sol calls the progressive curriculum have made Sol and his allies like Diane Ravitch and columnist Andy Wolfe of the right leaning NY Sun big-time critics of Joel. There are other issues, of course, but the attacks on Joel by Sol have driven Randi and Sol into the same camp. Sol even got some nice space in the NY Teacher recently. Nice. Anyone but actual teachers like people in ICE and TJC who represent 20% of the working teachers should be able to get space in our paper.

Thus we come to Sol and the radical math conference. Sol has been writing about social justice in education as it relates to teachers' beliefs and to what extent they might be imposing them on their students. The recent controversy over the Beacon School student trip to Cuba has generated much press in the NY Post and the NY Sun. When a group of NYC teachers decided to hold a math conference (www.RadicalMath.org)
they got a tremendous response from all over the nation and over 400 people registered.

Sol Stern was one of them, obviously looking to upgrade his skills so he could do his own taxes. Knowing full well they were not exactly going to get a fair and balanced viewpoint, the organizers handled Sol with aplomb.

I went to the conference as a volunteer, not a participant. I was a left-leaning teacher and I was open about presenting what I thought on issues to my classes because I felt kids want to know where you stand as a teacher. (I did try to avoid issues of religion though because the kids were involved with churches and I was an atheist, though that didn't stop me from having great holiday decorations going on in my classroom). I also tried to give them both sides but in today's world how does a teacher who is vehemently anti-war give the kids a fair presentation of that idiot - er - I mean - President Bush point of view? I and other volunteers were there to show these teachers some support for their activities.

Sol attended the Powers to the People: Unit Projects for Algebra 2 and Pre-calculus workshop with Erica Litke, a teacher at Lower East Side prep.

In this interactive session, participants will explore mathematics projects from Algebra 2 and Pre-calculus that integrate the curricular objectives of upper level mathematics with real-life social justice themes. With a focus on mathematical modeling, projects will include topics such as linear inequalities, exponential functions and logarithms, and regression analysis of a set of data. Participants will work through the mathematics of the projects, examine student work and brainstorm projects for other topics in the Algebra 2 /Precalculus curriculum.

I spoke to Erica after her workshop and she said Sol asked a few questions. Probably about the logarithms. Or maybe regression analysis. And those linear inequalities - here is a clear case of a teacher using math to influence students, always raising the issue of inequalities.

I ran into Sol after Erica's workshop. That is where he accused me of being aligned with Klein. "Joel Klein has created more schools with social justice themes than any chancellor in history," Sol said. Finally, Joel has done something right. If only he hadn't ripped the school system apart by shoving all these schools into larger ones. Well, one out of two on this one.

Well, people are waiting to see what Sol writes about his experience. Will Erica be condemned for unduly trying to influence her students? Or will Sol decide that he would rather have Erica teaching his children than that teacher who transferred into Stuyvesant?

The right wing attacks on teachers who use social justice themes in their teaching to engage their kids will continue. Instead of being defensive, they are striking back. Sally Lee of Teacher's Unite starts with her letter to the NY Sun followed by a reprint of an article in City Limits about the conference. You can read some of them at my other blog, Norm's Notes.

Where's the Outrage?

Monday night I spoke at the UFT Executive Board meeting, asking, “Where’s your sense of outrage?” as I brought up the incident of the teacher who was arrested, de-arrested and yet is still facing charges by the DOE. Instead of the union getting the information from the police that proves her innocence, she has to do it herself. I compared that to telling Julius Ceaser to reach back, pull out the knife and go carve the turkey for Thanksgiving. (OK, so I was reaching.)

Oh, the UFT will provide representation as they will have a rep with the teacher today as she is questioned by a DOE investigator. And I'm sure he will do a decent job. I'm about to head over to wait outside (as I'm not allowed in) in case the teacher needs some advice. I may also have a reporter with me to interview the teacher.

The assistance the UFT gives basically stops there. The teacher did get a call from Victim Support and she said that is not what she or the rest of the teachers in the school need. They need the union to expose a Leadership Academy principal who has gone after numerous people (supposedly, 7 U-ratings last year in a small elementary school.) Some of the best teachers in the school have left. But the only response of the union is to look at things on a case-by-case basis.

Basically, the UFT provides the least restrictive (for them) support instead of doing the maximum.

How do the teachers at the school feel after the person almost half of them voted for as chapter leader in the last election finds herself in this position? Did the UFT district rep rush over there? Or any other official? Someone came to talk about school safety (this exit or that exit) when the real safety issue is that of people's careers. One teacher told me of (his/her) outrage that when questioned, the UFT official basically urges silence. A militant union would have rushed to the school and give the teachers the support needed to fight back. The principal can get away with this and never have to pay a price.

BloomKlein have a strategy to break the union at the chapter level. The UFT has none other than to hire a bunch of New Action retirees to go into the schools and whistle in the wind.

Measuring Teachers

"If teachers are to be held accountable for the performance of their students, strategies for measuring the impact of their work must be refined or, at least, the uncertainties of these measurements must be taken into account in assessing the impact of teachers and schools on student performance."
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9050/index1.html

The word performance can be viewed narrowly (how kids score the reading and math test) or broadly. Once behavior enters into it - often discounted as an "excuse" but to teachers one of the most important factors - things get very sticky. I do not mean behavior in the sense of "good and bad' but in the wider sense of the resources students bring to the table and the ability of the teacher to work with them in that framework. I had "successes" with kids who did not move higher in reading but moved significantly in their ability to control their emotions, function within the context of a classroom, etc. Can these things be measured?

I taught in a rotation system in elementary school. One year you get the higher performing class, the next you don't. Same school, same families, same teacher, etc. This was not a big school -- 2 or 3 classes on the grade. My measured performance varied vastly depending on which level I taught. In some ways I was better with the struggling kids. There were teachers in my school who were awesome with the top classes but fell apart when they had the bottom classes. We had teachers who were willing to sell their souls to stay out of the bottom classes.

Class size made a difference but the administration in my school in the 70's at least tried to make the lower exponent classes smaller. Most teachers fought to teach the better classes even with the higher class size. Favorites of the principal were often rewarded (violating the contract) with these classes year after year. Or they tried to put the teachers they thought to be the best with the top classes, relegating the lower classes to some sort of triage.

The entire process is so complex, trying to judge teachers on performance is very difficult. In the old days the key thing was if you could control your class. The entire school -- colleagues, admins, parents, etc measured you as a teacher based on that factor alone. When I learned how to do that I felt it was one of the major accomplishments of my life and turned me into a confident teacher. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Dealing with actually teaching them after that became the next hard thing.

I met a top lawyer at a party a few years ago and he entered teaching around the same time I did in the late 60's to stay out of the draft. He couldn't believe I stayed in all these years. He taught in the south Bronx for 2 years and said it was the hardest thing he ever did. He was not referring to the teaching part.

Klein was there too as a teacher escaping the draft at the same time for around 6 months and you never hear him sat a word about that experience. I know what he must have went through. We all did. He knows what it's all about and that is why I consider him such a snake in the way he and others put the main blame for failing schools on teacher competency.

Cerf said as much at the Manhattan Inst luncheon. That is why we have all the phony prof. development. The way I and other generations of teachers learned PD was from the great teachers who worked with us.

Klein & Weingarten: Separated at birth?

Trained as corporate lawyers.

Reached the highest positions in their organizations through appointment by the largesse of a powerful person above them.

Entered education for reasons unrelated to developing a career as a teacher.

Taught full time for only 6 months.

Run autocratic, rigid top-down, patronnage-ridden organizations top heavy with people making six figure salaries a year where personal loyalty is more important than competence.

Believe appearance is more important than reality.

Have in-house public relations staffs at great cost and pay high sums to outside PR agencies. View public relations as primary over trying to solve real problems.

Make at least a quarter of a million dollars a year plus expenses.