All the Letters Not Fit to Print in the NY Times

Hi Norm,
Very frustrating that the same people who misled the public on student achievement are still calling the shots. Attached are 3 letters I wrote the the Times that they weren't interested in. Perhaps you could put them in the blog.
Matt

Three recent letters that the New York Times did not see its way clear to print.

Responding to “Parents Need to Know,” editorial, Aug. 18, New York Times

Parents and students as well as every New York City taxpayer have every right to be outraged over the Chancellor's handling of the school system. For the past 8 years, the chancellor and mayor have bragged about the spectacular gains of our students under their leadership. In fact, by any objective measurement, our schools are failing to provide even a basic education to a majority of students. You give the impression that the chancellor requested the realignment of the 3rd-8th grade tests. If that were the case, he would not hesitate to heed the results and resign immediately. Billions have been thrown away on 4 rounds of reorganizations, garbage data analysis and smoke and mirrors professional development schemes. The PEP has no right to expect parents to sit quietly while the same people who have bamboozled us for the last 8 years deny any responsibility for failing to create the conditions for a sound education for public school students.

Matthew Frisch


Responding to "Triumph Fades on Racial Gap in City Schools", 8/16/10, New York Times

The numbers indicate that the impact of mayoral control on NY City's public school students has been an equal opportunity failure- basic skills as measured by the 3rd-8th grades state tests have suffered across racial and ethnic groups. Those who started off the neediest are mired there still. This trend is not confined to city schools. Student achievement as measured by the newly invigorated state tests, is stagnant throughout the state. So perhaps we cannot single out the mayor and chancellor. The blame lies with the mind set that expects a quick return on the investment we make in our young people. The system demands instant payback in the form of high test scores. Students, teachers and schools have to be constantly proving themselves. Under this kind of pressure, who has the time or patience to build a strong foundation in the basics when children in other schools might be racing ahead? The result is middle and high schoolers who can't spell or do arithmetic. What's needed is a sensible curriculum and an end to the mind set that puts unrealistic goals and empty slogans ahead of the needs of our students.

Matthew Frisch

Responding to: When 81% Passing Suddenly Becomes 18%, by Sharon Otterman and Robert Gebeloff, Sunday, August 1, 2010, New York Times

An Accountability Moment

Elementary school teachers knew that the rising test scores were illusory. We were forbidden to teach a sensible curriculum and as a result, our students' basic skills in reading and math had, on average, declined. How could they possibly be meeting expectations if they lacked the basics? There was abundant corroboration that the state tests were unreliable. The city's National Assessment of Educational Progress scores were flat while scores on the state tests soared. The percentage of freshmen at CUNY needing remediation has been rising; SAT scores have been falling.

It's time for a thorough accounting of the money that has been thrown to the wind by the mayor and his Department of Education. What is the total cost of the endless reorganizations; the bloated central bureaucracy; the testing and data obsessions that have proven so delusional; the no-bid contracts; the emperor's new clothes professional development schemes?

This is a massive fraud, costing 10s of $millions. Despite constant claims by the mayor and chancellor, our public schools have deteriorated over the 8 years of mayoral control. Could it be that the people who have been cooking the grading books and mismanaging our schools for the last 8 years will continue in the driver's seat? Taxpayers are entitled to a full-scale investigation of the test score fraud. NY City's public school students are entitled to a sensible curriculum and to educational leaders who have a successful track record teaching it.

Matthew Frisch

Matt is a NYC teacher

Stapling NY Times Ed Deformer Brent Staples

Culled from the NYC EdNews Listserve:

Another disappointing Times editorial which shows that Brent Staples lives in a fantasy world, one concocted by Bloomberg and Co. Perhaps instead of saying “Parents Need to Know” he should figure out that he needs to know the truth.

Leonie Haimson

Editorial: Parents Need to Know Published: August 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/opinion/19thu3.html


Did Brent Staples read the front-page story in the New York Times on August 16, with the headline: "Triumph Fades On Racial Gap in City Schools".."A Blow to Bloomberg"..."After Testing Threshold Is Reset, Latinos and Blacks Fall Back." Did he not read the statement by the statistician in the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, who said that there had been no narrowing of the racial achievement gap? Guess not. 

Diane Ravitch

I spoke to Brent Staples of the Times editorial the day after the meeting. He sought me out. I explained that people just wanted to speak on the issue that there were already five public comment sessions, one each for every other item, that the bylaws allowed us to ask for a vote to open the floor, that waiting until the end of the meeting would have meant 2-3 hours, that the accountability office presentation was never on the agenda in the first place and should have been itself approved by a member vote and that even a vote on my motion was illegally denied. We needed to hear from parents who had been told for years their kids were doing well but now weren't and hear what they thought we should do to meet the needs of their kids. I never thought the PEP chair would act so deliberately to suppress the public voice.


Staples said the parents there "did children no favor". Well, I told my sons the next day that the moms who picked up a bullhorn struck a blow for freedom and for the right of every public school family to be heard and that I was grateful to them for their support.


Perhaps we should just get used to the fact that the wealthy publishers of old media are inextricably bound to the mayor and chancellor and will support him regardless of what law or rules he violates.

Patrick Sullivan

Does NY Times' Leonhardt Distort Tennessee Class Size Study?

Why did the article downplay the Project Star Study impact of class size and emphasize the teacher quality issue?

“We don’t really care about test scores. We care about adult outcomes.” - Raj Chetty, Harvard, in today's NY Times, "The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers."

Don' need no stinkin' research
Hmmm. Since I started connecting up former students from over 25 years ago, I've been thinking along the same lines as Chetty. The Ed Deformers constantly say it is all about outcomes - test scores - and we should not bring up inputs - student background, poverty, etc. because they are just excuses.

So the ultimate outcomes are how their adult lives turn out. Will BloomKlein take the blame for students who go through 12 years of their ed deforms and end up in prison? Nahhh, that would be due to their ineffective teachers.

There is some irony in that tonight and over the next few days I am going to see my former student Ernie Silva perform his one man show  (come on down) and expect to run into other former students, all of whom are almost 40 years old. I've been learning lots of things from these recent contacts– things I never got to know as their teacher. (And therein lies a follow-up to this - how much do teachers have a right to know about deep private matters and how much do they need to know to be more effective. But another time.)

One thing I learned - even though some of these students tell me I did have an impact on their lives - the reality is that I had very little impact - certainly when it comes to academics. What some do say is that I may have inspired an interest or they had a wonderful experience (one told me she took her own children on all the trips I took them in the 6th grade), but not anything that would affect outcomes as the ed deformers define it.

Back to Leonhardt.

Did the article distort the case for lower class sizes?

Leonhardt talks about a research project that followed up on the famous Tennessee Star study.

Are children who do well on kindergarten tests destined to do better in life, based on who they are? Or are their teacher and classmates changing them?

The Tennessee experiment, known as Project Star, offered a chance to answer these questions because it randomly assigned students to a kindergarten class. As a result, the classes had fairly similar socioeconomic mixes of students and could be expected to perform similarly on the tests given at the end of kindergarten.

Yet they didn’t. Some classes did far better than others. The differences were too big to be explained by randomness. (Similarly, when the researchers looked at entering and exiting test scores in first, second and third grades, they found that some classes made much more progress than others.)

Since my brain can't bear looking at these studies, I have to rely on people whose brains can (see one Leonie Haimson) and I am told that the Star Study found that the effectiveness of the teachers was very much influenced by the size of the classes. So, here comes the fun part as Leonhardt continues:

Class size — which was the impetus of Project Star — evidently played some role. Classes with 13 to 17 students did better than classes with 22 to 25. 

 Duhhh. Evidently - why so begrudgingly, Dave? Leonhardt just tosses away the class size issue, which is what ed deformers always do.

He goes on:

Peers also seem to matter. In classes with a somewhat higher average socioeconomic status, all the students tended to do a little better. 

 Double DUHHHHH!

Now here comes the whammy!

But neither of these factors came close to explaining the variation in class performance. So another cause seemed to be the explanation: teachers.

Leonhardt leaps tall buildings in a single bound. 
 
WHAT? The Starr study showed that class size had an impact on teacher effectivness which in turn had an impact on students. Leonhardt turns the outcome (better teaching) into the effect (it was the teachers themselves). And that is the whole point of the ed deformers: put the onus in teachers.

So, here comes the ed deform mantra – hook, line and sinker:

Mr. Chetty and his colleagues .... estimate that a standout kindergarten teacher is worth about $320,000 a year. That’s the present value of the additional money that a full class of students can expect to earn over their careers. This estimate doesn’t take into account social gains, like better health and less crime.

Wow! What a good guy, saying that a teacher could be worth that much. But only some teachers. Here is the fun part:

They can pay their best teachers more, as Pittsburgh soon will, and give them the support they deserve. Administrators can fire more of their worst teachers, as Michelle Rhee, the Washington schools chancellor, did last week.

Ah, yes. good ole Michelle, their hero. It has nothing to do with the higher salaries of senior teachers. Shame on Leonhardt, an economics writer.

Leonhardt tries to throw this bone so he looks to be fair and  balanced:

Schools can also make sure standardized tests are measuring real student skills and teacher quality, as teachers’ unions have urged.

Sure, "teachers unions" - meaning ed deformer Randi Weinngarten. Does Leonhardt not know about this? Important new study about huge error rates in value-added teacher evaluation

Let Chetty and his colleagues start a study of adult outcomes over the next 20 years in Washington DC, Chicago and NYC and measure Rhee, Duncan and BloomKlein's effectiveness.

NY Times: Proficient, Proshmicient, So What's the Big Deal?

Leonie lays waste to the editorial staffs of the Daily News and NY Times while praising excellent Daily News reporters. But at least the News told the truth while not mentioning the fraud perpetrated by BloomKlein. And didn't the NY Post actually mock the DOE's credit recovery program? When Bloomberg won a third term I told people this may turn out to be a blessing in disguise as he will still be on office when the shit starts hitting the fan. Better duck.

Here are some excerpts from Leonie's post:

What are the chances that now that Bloomberg has successfully won his battle to retain nearly unlimited control over our schools, and is in the midst of his third term, the editors of the News and the Times will apologize to their readers, and admit that the smell they’ve told us was roses was really an artificial chemical, successfully concocted to fool them? Don't hold your breath.

The Daily News editorial board finally gave up today, and admitted that the city’s big gains in state test scores over the Bloomberg era have been a vast mirage, in an editorial called Harsh lesson for N.Y.

In August 2009, when Bloomberg was pressing for extension of mayoral control of the schools and his own re-election, the Times published a credulous story that recounted the steep increase in state test scores without directly quoting any of the skeptics; and also incorrectly used the DOE’s preferred date of 2002 instead of 2003 to claim improvements on the national exams called the NAEPs.


The article omitted any of the abundant evidence that the state exams and their scoring had become easier over time. (See my critique of their August 2009 article, NY Times falls in line with the Bloomberg PR spin control; and the response from Times editor, Ian Trontz: The NY Times response, and my reply. See also Wayne Barrett's take on our critique of the Times.)

When do people like Brent Staples who often writes Times editorials on education start to hang their heads in shame?

Read Leonie's full piece:
Harsh lessons for the editors of the Daily News and NY Times

And Steve Koss' comment:

It is moderately heartening to see the Daily News editorial board finally publicly concede what so many of us have known for so long: the "extraordinary gains" in Math and English Language Arts proficiency of Grade 3 - 8 children in NYC public schools as ostensibly measured by the annual NYS examinations has in fact been nothing but smoke and mirrors. In fact, it has all been a con, a sham, a massive educational fraud. Too bad that it took eight years and a lecture from someone in Albany to discover something that was already well-known, even among the paper's own reporting staff! This isn't some sudden discovery, except apparently to the folks sitting around the Daily News editorial board table.

Yet even the Daily News's editorial concession is shameful, striking the bloodless note of an anonymous, monolithic, Kafkaesque bureaucracy with its "mistakes were made" impersonality. Consider that the NY Daily News has been one of the biggest cheerleaders for mayoral control of NYC's public schools, often arguing the importance of accountability as one of its major justifications. The logic is inescapable, yet the Daily News refuses to follow where it so obviously leads: to the Mayor's office and that of his prime henchman, Joel Klein.

If after eight years, editors at the Daily News are willing to concede that there has been virtually no progress in the city's public education system, then they cannot avoid the logical consequences of their own arguments -- ACCOUNTABILITY.

Time to cut that City Hall cord, guys. Time to man up and call out the folks who've wasted billions and built an entire regime of reporting, incentivizing, school closures, and curriculum manipulation around a mirage. Time to admit that a mayor and schools chancellor who brought us all those incredible test score gains not only brought us nothing, they've done incredible, possibly irreversible harm to the city's children and its educational system as well. Most of all, it's time to face the facts: you (and most NYers) were played.

Steve Koss

Taking Down Steve Brill and Sunday Times Mag

The upcoming Steve Brill hit job on the UFT in the upcoming Sunday Times Mag is causing a stir minutes after being passed around.

One of the amazing things about Leonie Haimson is that she can take a sleazy character like Steve Brill and pull his piece apart just minutes after publication.

Now an interesting thing about Brill was that he met with Brian Jones from GEM (Grassroots Education Movement) and ISO (International Socialist Org). Brian teaches at PS 30 in Harlem which is an Harlem Success Academy invaded school and certainly he has a point of view that is counter to what Brill is pushing. Brill wanted to go to the school but they were smart enough not to let him in to do his hatchet job despite the fact that the DOE tried to lobby for him.

But you will never see a balanced view in a Brill piece. Another badge of shame for the Times.

And by the way, the UFT flails around helplessly while parents like Leonie show some spine. Take this point from the Brill piece:

Next to Mulgrew was his press aide, Richard Riley. “Suppose you decide that Riley is lazy or incompetent,” I asked Mulgrew. “Should you be able to fire him?” “He’s not a teacher,” Mulgrew responded. “And I need to be able to pick my own person for a job like that.” Then he grinned, adding: “I know where you’re going, but you don’t understand. Teachers are just different.”

Why Mulgrew would talk to a hack like Brill is beyond me. Did Mulgrew say more and have Brill leave the rest out? Possibly. Then let's see the UFT be more articulate in defense of the kinds of protections we have and need. By the way, Riley has had numerous stints as UFT press aide in what seems like a revolving door.

Leonie takes down Meryl Tisch: Tisch says the bill was a product of the UFT’s “poison pills” against the charter school industry, which is ridiculous.

God. You just had to see how Mulgrew waxed poetic about how wonderful Tisch was at the Delegate Assembly. Pathetic pandering. He doesn't tell the delegates that Tisch is Bloomberg's next door neighbor and spends Passover with Joel Klein.


Here is Leonie's email to her listserve (and make sure to follow her advice to leave a comment at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Race-t.html?hp


The Sunday Times magazine has posted blatant propaganda in the Sunday NY Times magazine section, in the form of one of the most inaccurate and biased articles I have ever seen. It is written by Steve Brill, who did an unfair piece for the New Yorker on the rubber rooms. It seems as though one can make a pretty decent career now in hack journalism, as long as you attack the UFT.

The article blames all our educational problems on the union (as usual); doesn’t mention any of the controversial charter co-locations that are squeezing space from our regular public schools; doesn’t mention any of the charter school financial scandals, or their abuse of student and parent rights, the opposition of the charter school industry to audits, or the hedge fund guys who are driving these policies.

Except for the exception of Michael Mulgrew, he managed to interview only members of the pro-privatization crowd.

He quotes Merryl Tisch who squeals about how awful the Assembly bill that would require parent input into co-locations and would allow the Comptroller to audit the use of public funds at these schools. Tisch says the bill was a product of the UFT’s “poison pills” against the charter school industry, which is ridiculous.

Most blatantly, Brill claims that the students at PS 149 are exactly the same students at the co-located Harlem Success Academy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Race-t.html?hp

Excerpt:

P.S. 149 is rated by the city as doing comparatively well in terms of student achievement and has improved since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took over the city’s schools in 2002 and appointed Joel Klein as chancellor. Nonetheless, its students are performing significantly behind the charter kids on the other side of the wall. To take one representative example, 51 percent of the third-grade students in the public school last year were reading at grade level, 49 percent were reading below grade level and none were reading above. In the charter, 72 percent were at grade level, 5 percent were reading below level and 23 percent were reading above level. In math, the charter third graders tied for top performing school in the state, surpassing such high-end public school districts as Scarsdale. Same building. Same community. Sometimes even the same parents.

Here Brill is parroting Eva Moskowitz, who in NY Magazine claimed that “The children in proximate zoned schools, she insists, “are the same kids we have.”

Really? 20% of the kids at PS 149 are special education students; and 40% of these are the most severely disabled, in self-contained classes. 81% are poor enough to receive free lunch, and 13% are English Language Learners. In 2008 (the latest available data) more than 10% were homeless.

Instead of 81% free lunch, 49% of the students at Harlem Success Academy are poor, a difference of 32 percentage points.

There are only 2% English Language Learners at the charter school; compared to 13% at PS 149 --more than six times as many.

HSA claims to have 16.9% special education students, compared to 20% at PS 149, and of these, few if any are the most severely disabled.

And I can find no mention of how many are homeless, but according to state data, few if any of the 50,000 homeless kids in NYC public schools are enrolled in charters.

The article also ignores the rampant counseling out of high needs students out of the HSA schools; so common as to be widely reported in the press, including in the NY Magazine, which reported the following;

http://nymag.com/news/features/65614/index4.html

At her school alone, the Harlem Success teacher says, at least half a dozen lower-grade children who were eligible for IEPs have been withdrawn this school year. If this account were to reflect a pattern, Moskowitz’s network would be effectively winnowing students before third grade, the year state testing begins. “The easiest and fastest way to improve your test scores,” observes a DoE principal in Brooklyn, “is to get higher-performing students into your school.” And to get the lower-performing students out.

English Language Learners (ELLs) are another group that scores poorly on the state tests—and is grossly underrepresented at Success. The network’s flagship has only ten ELLs, or less than 2 percent of its population, compared to 13 percent at its co-located zoned school. The network enrolls 51 ELLs in all, yet, as of last fall, provided no certified ESL teacher to support them.

This New York magazine article received over 240 comments, many of them by former teachers and parents at HSA, writing about the overwhelming predominance of test prep and the high number of students pushed out or counseled out of the school. The fact that Steven Brill and his editors at the Times didn’t see the need to provide accurate data or a less biased depiction of this issue is not just shocking; it represents journalistic malpractice.

The rapid expansion of charter schools is leading to our public schools becoming more concentrated with high needs students, while taking away valuable funds and space from our public school system, at a time when already their budgets have been slashed to the bone. Do we need more privatization and more profit making off our students? Should the guys who brought our financial system to the ground also be allowed to bring our public education system to the ground?

Go leave a comment now here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Race-t.html?hp

Seniority and Layoffs in The Times

There was an interesting article in the Sunday NY Times on the attack on seniority. In some ways one of the fairer ones I've read in that it presented a variety of points of view by at least quoting Arthur Goldstein on how dangerous it was to give vindictive principals the choice.
See Last Teacher In, First Out? City Has Another Idea.


Here are some key points:

...a New York Times analysis of the city’s own reports on teacher effectiveness suggest that teachers do best after being in the classroom for at least 5 years, though they tend to level off after 10 years.

“You want to keep a rookie who looks good relative to other rookies, even if it’s not that great relative to all other teachers, because they are going to turn into a really good teacher,” said Douglas O. Staiger, an economics professor at Dartmouth who has worked with the city on teacher quality studies. “The question is: Are our current methods good enough at figuring out who those teachers are? I’m not sure where you draw the line on that.”

Arthur Goldstein, the chapter chairman of the teachers’ union at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, said that Mr. Klein and his supporters were trying to pit teachers against one another.

“I understand how they feel — I lost my job four times and nobody ever helped me,” Mr. Goldstein said of the younger teachers. “I don’t have a principal who is crazy now, but I’ve had other principals who would have fired me in a New York minute. It had nothing to do with teaching — things he would take as a personal insult.”

In 2008, New York City began evaluating about 11,500 teachers based on how much their students had improved on standardized state exams.

A Times analysis of the first year of results showed that teachers with 6 to 10 years of experience were more likely to perform well, while teachers with 1 or 2 years’ experience were the least likely.

The analysis could not account for differences in the makeup of the 11,500 classrooms, like how many of them had large numbers of students with learning disabilities.

In essence, the Times' research is saying that the 6-10 year teacher are the ones to keep even if seniority rules were eliminated. Since those are in the mid-range salaries before the heavy longevity increases begin, this "research" gives principals an excuse to dump 2nd decade teachers even if they don't keep the newbies.

It was nice to see reporter Jennifer Medina interview Arthur Goldstein, who makes essential points. In 1975 13 teachers, some who started 6 or 7 years before, were excessed from my school. Most were sent to other schools as seniority bumping went on all over the place. Even out 20 year guidance counselor was sent elsewhere as my district eliminated all of them. But within a short time things evened out and those who actually lost jobs started being recalled. Many left the system but others did come back. Some got recertified in shortage areas. Don't forget that layoffs go by license.

The article talks about the young teachers who are upset at seniority rules and the organization some of them have founded.

Mr. Borock, the Bronx teacher, said that the layoffs would discourage newer graduates from entering the profession. “If you have a number of job opportunities, as many of us did, and you have a nagging feeling in the back of your mind that you could lose this job really quickly,” he asked, “why would anyone want to go into that?”

He joined a group created recently by other young teachers, Educators for Excellence, to lobby against seniority rules, taking on their own union

Let's see now. Mr. Borock has many job opportunities (in this economy? - please tell) and reports are emerging that the founders of Educators for Excellence may be leaving teaching, as 50% of the new teachers do within 5 years. So the idea that newer graduates, many of whom were driven into teaching by the economy anyway, would not do so is interesting. I can't tell you how many young teachers I hear from who are dying to get into the system. Something about health care and maybe even pensions - oh, gosh, these are not things teachers should talk about - that's stuff about "adults" and it's all about the kids.

So Mr. Borock if he's laid off should take all those job opportunities. There are plenty of people waiting to take his place when they start rehiring.

Add on
Chaz has some thoughts on E4E:
The Educators4Excellence Group Is Just A Stooge For Bloomberg & Klein's "Education On The Cheap" Policy

And as usual, South Bronx School has been going wild.

The Insidious Nature of Green's Sunday Times Article

UPDATED Mar. 8, 12 am with Aaron Pallas comment and you must read Jim Horn's piece at Schools Matter.
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/03/teachers-are-built-non-school-of.html

I learned the most about teaching from other teachers. Duh!

BIGGEST SIN: CLASS SIZE ISSUES OFF THE TABLE

CHECK BIO OF MAIN CHARACTER DOUG LEMOV*.

CAN THIS GUY HOLD DOWN ONE JOB? LIKE ACTUALLY TRY TEACHING ON ONE PLACE FOR A LITTLE WHILE. GIVES YOU A BIT OF PERSPECTIVE, YOU KNOW. I THINK THAT PEOPLE LIKE LEMOV LEAVE TEACHING FULL-TIME BECAUSE THEY DON'T LOVE IT ENOUGH TO STAY.

Forgot test scores, measure the love quotient when you talk about teachers who can teach others.

There's a lot more than teacher methodology underlying Green's article which I talked about yesterday. It seem to look like not standard ed deform stuff by de-emphasizing incentives and firing teachers. But when you dig a little it is ed deform. The Times wouldn't print anything less.

A parent commented on the NYCEdNews list:

I thought the piece was generally valuable in looking at actual classroom practices and considering their relationship to content, and challenging the effectiveness of carrot-and-stick approaches to improved learning. But I was startled that she cited the "value-added" model several times without skepticism, particularly stating that teachers' stats for raising student performance are consistent over time. I thought that statistical argument had been debunked. Diane Ravitch makes a strong case in her new book that studies show that teachers' stats for improving student test scores fluctuate dramatically over time and are not a predictor of future performance.

Of course Green had to ignore the research that shows value-added is unproven because the rest of the thesis laid out doesn't work without it. The article is all about measuring by test scores. My favorite quote "he [Lemov} decided to seek out the best teachers he could find – as defined PARTLY [my emph] by their students' test scores [which can so easily be manipulated]..

Exactly what were the other PARTS than test scores?

A lot of the last part of the article is good touchy, feely stuff - good ideas for teachers to use. And we all can benefit. Talk of the video taping set me to chuckling. I was involved in a program to improve teaching by video taping lessons and cataloguing the kinds of questions I was asking - in 1969.

I learned so much of what is talked about in this article (which offers a blueprint of the high and mighty descending to give actual working teachers "The Word") by seeing experienced WORKING teachers (are there any left) in the context of working in their class - in action. I adapted their stuff to my personality and made a lot of it work. Almost every teacher I ever knew had mastered classroom management - at least 85% of them - or they left, often to become people who end up training other teachers.

What if every so-called great teacher who left to become some guru actually stayed in the classroom and taught for an entire career? Maybe close the achievement gap (that's a joke folks.)

"What makes a good teacher" asks Elizabeth? She asked all the wrong people.

She could have talked teacher quality with teachers in the trenches...

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And the newer generation of teachers: It's Not All Flowers and Sausages

Mrs Mimi said the other day:

WHY ARE WE GIVING POWER TO EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER COME IN CONTACT WITH A SCHOOL OR THOUGHT ABOUT SCHOOL OR SAID THE WORD "SCHOOL" EXCEPT FOR TEACHERS???!?!?!

Riddle me that one.

Perhaps it's because we want them to remain Candidate Numero Uno on the old chopping block when it comes time to passing around some blame. Or keep them in our line of sight so that they are at a arms reach for some extensive finger pointing?

Instead Green spoke to:

Doug Lemov: "after a successful career as a teacher, a principal and a charter school founder."
Successful? Based on what? I love this: Lemov "set out to become a teacher of teachers [because] he was shamefully aware of his own limitations." So he left teaching. Nice.

And Deborah Loewenberg Ball, "an assistant professor who also taught math part time at an East Lansing elementary school and whose classroom was a model for teachers in training."

[Note this comment from Columbia prof Aaron Pallas:
Aaron Pallas said...

Norm,

You're a bit harsh on Deborah Ball, my former colleague at Michigan State. She was a full-time elementary classroom teacher from 1975 to 1988 before and during graduate school -- and continued teaching third and fourth grade mathematics for four years as an assistant professor. Not a dilettante by any stretch of the imagination.

- when people you respect speak, I listen so I take it back. 13 years is a serious amount of time in a classroom. I wonder though how views change in the midst of the ed deform movement. I'll try to say more about what I think it would take to upgrade teaching and also on the accountability question - I always felt my major accountability was to parents and students not bureaucrats.]

What about trying full time teaching, year after year, decade after decade? You gain a certain perspective and context when you talk to teachers. Then talk to us about training teachers.

In my 6 week summer of training to become a teacher in 1967, all my instructors were teachers, assistant principals and principals (in those years supervisors actually had to teach for a long time before rising up) and I learned more from them and my later colleagues than anyone.

What Green has done under the guise of what looks like a more genial approach than Joel Klein's "lets go on a witch hunt" using Lemov's "we can't replace them fast enough, so let's retrain those heathens" is to validate the ed deform model of blame the teachers.

Green's biggest sin: She used the words "reformers" and Michelle Rhee in the same sentence.


Related: South Bronx School blog does some research into Doug Lemov and why Whitney Tilson likes him and as he so often does, takes it over the top.
Whitney Tilson Is In Love With Doug Lemov

*Thanks to SBS for the bio:

.......Founder of School Performance, an Albany-based non-profit that provides diagnostic assessments, performance data analysis, and academic consulting to high performing charter schools. He is a founder and the former principal of the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter School in Boston, regarded as one of the highest performing urban charter schools in the country. After leaving Academy of the Pacific Rim, Mr. Lemov served as the Vice President for Accountability at the State University of New York Charter Schools Institute, the leading authorizer of charters in New York, where he designed and implemented a rigorous school accountability system. He has since served as a consultant to such organizations as KIPP, New Leaders for New Schools, and Building Excellent Schools. Mr. Lemov is a Trustee of the New York Charter Schools Association and of KIPP Tech Valley Charter School. He has a B.A. from Hamilton College, an M.A. from Indiana University, and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.

Let's see. When I was 42 years old, I had taught 17 years of self-contained grades 4-6 classes and one year as a special ed cluster, mostly in one school while getting MA's in Reading instruction and computer science.

Nick Kristof Strikes Again, and Gets It Wrong Again

Updated: Oct 17, 9PM (GO YANKEES!)

The letters in today's Times in response to Kristof's column were unanimously thumbs down, something I've never seen before. I posted them at Norms Notes.
Times Letters Respond to Kristof Column

Here is my original compilation of reactions I posted Friday, with some additional add-0ns from Accountable Talk.


I was going to write about Nicolas Kristof's column in yesterday's Times supporting the education deformers but Steve Koss does it so much better. Not the first time Kristof has ventured into territory he knows nothing about.

Ed Notes covered his previous lame attempts:

Education Notes Online: Updated: Skoolboy Savages Kristof

Feb 19, 2009

And I would usually believe Kristof. But when you actually know something about something and see a guy getting it so wrong, I wonder why I should take anything he writes seriously. Word to the wise: Don't write glowing reports about ...

a ground zero for kristof on education knowledge

Mar 22, 2009

today we have another in a long line of low-level, almost amateurish columns on education in the ny times from nicolas kristof. he can write all the great stuff about darfur or wherever, but when someone can get education so wrong, ...

Before I let you get to Koss, I want to list the hackisms, platitudes and recycled nonsense used by Kristof, stuff that came directly from a Joel Klein press release.

cowed by teachers’ unions, Democrats have too often resisted reform and stood by as generations of disadvantaged children have been cemented into an underclass by third-rate schools...it’s difficult to improve failing schools when you can’t create alternatives such as charter schools and can’t remove inept or abusive teachers...But there’s mounting evidence that even in such failing schools, the individual teacher makes a vast difference.Research has underscored that what matters most in education — more than class size or spending or anything — is access to good teachers. A study found that if black students had four straight years of teachers from the top 25 percent of most effective teachers, the black-white testing gap would vanish in four years...This is the central front in the war on poverty, the civil rights issue of our time. Half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, isn’t it time to end our “separate but equal” school systems?

These ed deformer supporters love to talk about the research - often proven tainted by people with a dog in the race - call it Hoxbyisms. Do they ever mention the gold standard Tennessee study on class size? To talk about teacher quality out of the context of class size and general school conditions is like blaming crime on the quality of the police or fires on the quality if firemen. They just wouldn't dare.

Kristof should check out the separate but unequal charter schools vs the public schools they are implanted in.


Nick Kristof Strikes Again, and Gets It Wrong Again
by Steve Koss (posted to the NYC Education News Listserve)

I can think of few journalistic practices more damaging and wrongheaded than the reporter who helicopters into a complex problem for a few days, sniffs around a bit without really understanding the context in which he or she is observing, and then drops an "expert opinion" editorial on the matter. No one in my recent memory appears more prone to this, and more badly misled, than the NY Times's periodic editorial contributor, Nick Kristof, particularly with regard to education.

Back in 2002, Mr. Kristof dropped himself in on some schools in Shanghai and then wrote a ridiculous column on China's "super kids" whose schooling and intelligence were apparently going to bury the U.S. competitively in the future. He could not have gotten the Chinese education system more wrong in 750 words than he did at that time; reading his 2002 column today (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/22/opinion/22KRIS.html is still an embarrassment for anyone who really understands what's going on in the Chinese education system.

Now, Mr. Kristof has inserted himself into education once again, and just as foolishly, with his latest contribution to the NY Times. In an October 15th piece oddly entitled "Democrats and Education" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/opinion/15kristof.html), Mr. Kristof elects to beat on that favorite old dead horse of education critics, that the problem with US education is bad teachers and their unions who simply won't let schools get rid of them. In his article, he talks about NYC's system where "failed teachers" are sent at full pay to "rubber rooms," clearly not understanding that the purpose of such centers is to hold teachers against whom potentially serious allegations of misconduct (such as, for example, sexual misconduct or verbal or physical abuse of students) have been made while their cases are being investigated. Whatever one may think of rubber rooms, they are not holding pens for teachers who have merely been judged incompetent.

Of course, Mr. Kristof trots out a couple horror stories about bad teachers to "prove" his point, and there's certainly no argument here that abusive teachers who degrade their students or show up drunk do not belong in classrooms. As his column progresses, he slyly manages to conflate the clearly unacceptable behavior of his "horror stories" with the term "ineffective teachers," as though the U.S. education system is suffering from an epidemic of school-based child abuse. Ineffective and drunk (or telling a failed suicide that next time the student should cut his wrists more deeply) are not equal.

Anyway, these horror stories are old news, and Mr. Kristof writes as though he just discovered this issue. Beyond making it easier to remove such "ineffective" teachers, what are his solutions? Two of them are more charter schools and "objective measurement to see who is effective." Of course, while calling for better teachers with better compensation, he conveniently ignores the fact that under NCLB, teachers of all stripes and levels of ability are being hamstrung by precisely those types of measurement systems, all of which begin with state-defined standardized exams which place enormous pressure on school administrators and teachers to show ever-improving results. The damage these exams are doing to real education is incalculable, since they distort both teaching and curricula by narrowing content, detracting from coverage of other subject areas, and focusing on test-taking rather than education as an exploration and learning experience.

In his closing, Mr. Kristof writes, "I’m hoping the unions will come round and cooperate with evidence-based reforms, using their political clout to push to raise teachers’ salaries rather than to protect ineffective teachers," as if this is the essential either/or choice. It's merely another false dichotomy -- the two items have nothing to do with one another.

More charter schools, more "objective" measurement of teachers' value added based on standardized exams, less intrusion from the teachers' unions -- this is what Mr. Kristof wants the Democrats to be doing. Sadly, President Obama (through his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan) appears to be working from Mr. Kristof's playbook, acting more like a conservative Republican than the Democratic reformer for whom we thought we had voted

Steve Koss

Related: From Accountable Talk

Kristoff, Revisited.

I've written a number of posts on Nicholas Kristof's off the wall views on education. See here, here, and here, for example.

I thought I was going to have to do it again after reading Kristof's latest diatribe in today's Op-ed section of the Times, but Thoughts on Education Policy saved me the effort. Well worth a read.

Attention Drawn to Overcrowding at Francis Lewis a Tribute to Chapter Leader, REVISED

Updated, Sept. 30, 10AM
Since my column was due today for Friday's edition of The Wave, the Rockaway community newspaper, I rewrote this piece with that audience in mind. It should be easier to follow.


The NY Times Continues to Tilt Toward BloomKlein on Education

When Arthur Goldstein, an ESL teacher with almost a quarter century experience, took the giant step of running for chapter leader at Francis Lewis HS in Queens, one of the largest and most overcrowded schools in the city with 4600 students and 300 union members, he promised to focus his attention on the severe overcrowding at the school.

Goldstein has had first hand experience, having to teach in a dilapidated trailer for years. He has drawn attention to the shameful record of Tweed (for new readers, the headquarters, full of dungeons and dragons, of the NYC Department of Education) and the Bloomberg administration in short changing schools with good reputations like Francis Lewis through editorials at the Gotham Schools blog and the Daily News. Tuesday’s front page article in the NY Times focused on the situation at Francis Lewis. But as usual, the Times only told half the story. Or less.

Goldstein, in a recent Daily News editorial (My school is bursting with students, and Tweed is to blame), clearly places the blame where it is due.

His article closes with: ….the experts at Tweed are like doctors who diagnose a disease, then inject the patient with more toxins just to make certain they're right. No one can criticize their diagnostic skills. But if anyone's due a malpractice suit, it's the Department of Education.

The usual NY Times tilt towards the BloomKlein administration on education made no mention of the trailers or any of the dilapidated conditions of the school. Nor did it tie in with the Bloomberg claims to educational excellence and the ridiculous attacks on Bill Thompson over the conditions in the schools when Thompson held the almost powerless position as head of the old Board of Education in the 90’s. (If they want to play that game, speaking of conditions, I bet Francis Lewis was not nearly as overcrowded when Bill Thompson headed the Board of Education).

The Times' article had nary a mention of the conditions Goldstein describes, nor does it mention Goldstein who has used his bully pulpit as UFT chapter leader so effectively. My goodness, the union rep fighting as much for the safety of kids as for teachers? And to the usual charge that the union is only concerned with jobs, doesn’t Goldstein’s campaign to reduce the overcrowding mean less staff? Would reporting that the actions of the union teachers at Francis Lewis in standing up to BloomKlein on a situation that is dangerous for kids counter the anti-teacher and anti-teacher union propaganda that is so rampant? The Times doesn’t want to go there as it executes the Times Tilt toward BloomKlein.

I once challenged the Times reporter who wrote the article at a symposium that the rank and file teacher point of view is rarely presented (union bureaucrats don’t count). Her response was that teachers are afraid to talk, which I found pretty funny. There is not one quote from a teacher in her article, only from students, the principal and a school secretary. Yet there are over 200 teachers at the school, more than a few I have encountered who have no fear. Certainly Arthur Goldstein is one.

Before I go on, I want to mention my favorite whipping crew at the UFT, which only got involved when Goldstein, who ran with the Independent Community of Educators (ICE) in the last UFT election and will be running with them again in this year’s election, started agitating. (Full disclosure: I am also a member of ICE.) Francis Lewis has been under the control of Unity Caucus, which has ruled the UFT for 45 years, for decades and some of the Unity supporters did what they could to stop Goldstein from getting elected as chapter leader.

Getting back to the Times as whipping boy, the article made no mention of the insane conditions teachers must work under, focusing only on student travails. TILT

Goldstein has written that Francis Lewis was built to hold 1800 students instead of the Times’ figure of 2400, allowing Tweed to claim, "You see, the school is not even at 200% capacity." TILT

The Times’ article bias toward the DOE line is further revealed here:

Not far from Francis Lewis, two schools with lesser reputations, Jamaica and John Bowne High Schools, are below capacity. But education officials, wary of alienating middle-class parents, have been reluctant to shift students to even out the load.

The Times did not ask the DOE why these schools have lesser reputations and are underutilized. In fact, John Bowne is at capacity, but the DOE plays games with the numbers.

Jamaica HS is a different story altogether. Chapter leader James Eterno, who is running for UFT president on the ICE/TJC slate against Unity Caucus' Michael Mulgrew, has written repeatedly about the intentional policies of Tweed in trying to force Jamaica's closing so it could be prime meat for future charter schools, even steering kids who want to attend away. James Eterno wrote a powerful letter to the State Education Commissioner pointing to the educational apartheid BloomKlein were perpetuating at Jamaica HS. (Read James' letter at the ICE blog: Letter to State Ed Commissioner: Stop Academic Apartheid)

The Times didn’t do any digging at all, just accepting the DOE line, as evidenced here:

Education officials say they are creating more schools that could eventually absorb some of the demand. Elizabeth Sciabarra, the director of the Department of Education’s office of enrollment, said that Francis Lewis had done a "pretty terrific job" of dealing with the overcrowding but that she could not say how many more students it could handle. "You have people who deliberately choose that school and live in the neighborhood because of that," she said, adding that the city had never capped enrollment at a high school. "Once you start to put a cap on, then where do you send those kids? I don’t see how we would be able to do that in a way that would be fair."

The Times neglected to ask Sciabarra why Tweed doesn't pour enough resources into Jamaica and Bowne to make them attractive enough so kids will want to go there. (For those who think that wouldn't work, look up the 1970's case of Mark Twain MS in Coney Island which went from worst to best in a blink, with pretty much the same teaching staff.)

The Times also neglected to read Arthur Goldstein's powerful piece at Gotham Schools, A Tale of Two Queens High Schools, where he compared the Jamaica and Francis Lewis situation and points to the Tweed complicity in turning people away from Jamaica. This is an important piece and example of real journalistic excellence.

For the times to make no connection to the Eterno and Goldstein pieces amounts to journalistic malpractice that rivals Tweed's educational malpractice. But then again, the Times and BloomKlein are on the same side.

TILT

Related
The Arthur Goldstein article at Gotham

A Tale of Two Queens High Schools

by Arthur Goldstein

Imagine there are two high schools in the same borough. One school can’t enroll enough kids to stay open, and the other is filled to 250% of capacity. What would you do? It might seem logical to even out the population of both schools, but that is not how New York City operates.

I’m in one of the most overcrowded schools in the city, Francis Lewis High School. Our building is designed for 1,800 kids, and last year we were up to 4,450. This year we hit 4,700, and the sky’s the limit. Where the extra kids will go I have no idea. I teach in a trailer out back, and you wouldn’t use it to house your dog if you had a choice.

In the trailers, you never can tell if there will be heat on cold days or AC on hot ones (and don’t buy a used car from anyone who tells you tin keeps you cool). The bathrooms are an abomination. Though school trailers are all the rage in New York City, you never see them on the news. If I didn’t visit one every working day of my life, I probably wouldn’t believe they existed.

On the other hand, James Eterno, chapter leader at Jamaica High School, has a completely different problem. Not enough kids are enrolling in his school. Could we help one another? That way, if, God forbid, there were ever a fire or something, perhaps more of us could make it out alive. How did things get to this point?

It’s complicated. Longtime teachers know that a lot of incidents routinely go unreported. The Bloomberg administration, early on, declared all incidents would be reported, and some administrators took those words to heart — as did those at Jamaica. The consequences are highly unlikely to encourage other administrators to do the same.

The city labeled Jamaica a “priority” school, and then an “impact” school. Ultimately, the state labeled the school “persistently dangerous.” Under NCLB, this triggered a letter home to all Jamaica parents, offering them an opportunity to transfer their kids to another school. Understandably, the school population dropped precipitously. Was Jamaica persistently dangerous, or was it just reporting more incidents than its neighbors?

Administration then began to move in the opposite direction. This resulted in the disastrous policy (by no means unique to Jamaica) of not allowing staff to call 911 without administrative approval. This was widely covered in the media, and likely resulted in even lower enrollment at Jamaica.

The DoE’s position was that Jamaica needed surveillance cameras, police, and metal detectors to improve. Eterno felt it would’ve benefited more from additional counselors, teachers, and social workers. But that was not to be the case. In fact, in 2008 Jamaica had over a dozen teachers, excessed due to declining enrollment, sitting in the school day after day, sometimes working as subs.

Why couldn’t these teachers have been used to decrease class sizes, and consequently give more attention to kids at Jamaica? The answer may be that the DoE had other plans for the space created by the exodus of local kids.

In 2008, Queens Collegiate, a school co-sponsored by the College Board, was placed in what used to be the social studies wing of Jamaica High. Jamaica’s social studies department was banished to an office in which they shared a single electrical outlet. Meanwhile, according to Eterno, Queens Collegiate rooms got paint, computers, smartboards, and everything else private-public ventures are entitled to in Mayor Bloomberg’s New York.

Additional schools create additional levels of administration and eat up classroom space, worsening overcrowding. Eterno asks, “Wouldn’t it be a better idea to fix a place like Jamaica?” At overcrowded Francis Lewis High School, I wonder the same thing. Why couldn’t the free space in Jamaica be used to help us, rather than a privately-sponsored school? Why doesn’t the city invest in technology, magnet programs, and better conditions to draw kids to Jamaica?

In fact, why don’t they offer prospective Jamaica students lower class sizes (which parents declared their number one priority on a DoE-sponsored survey)? Hasn’t Mayor Bloomberg accepted hundreds of millions of CFE lawsuit funds for that very purpose? Isn’t fixing schools for our kids, whether or not they win charter lotteries, whether or not they’re accepted into elite schools, worth a try?

Eterno says of the DoE, “If they perceive you as troubled, they don’t throw you a lifeline. They seem to say, ‘Good, you’re drowning. We hope you go under.’” But is that attitude unique to Jamaica? It doesn’t appear so. Our school is just a variation on a theme. They perceive us as successful, and seem to want to overcrowd us until we reach a breaking point — which is nothing short of inevitable.

It’s sort of a Catch 22 — struggle and you’re in danger of closing, but excel and you’re packed to the rafters and beyond. Why not give Lewis kids a real incentive to attend Jamaica, or any nearby school for that matter? Any time it felt like it, this administration could wake up and help me and James Eterno.

More importantly, it could help the thousands of kids we serve.

Ever Wonder About NY Times Coverage of Education? Check Personal Link Between Klein and Middelhoff, Times Board Member

Middelhoff, Joel Klein's former boss, laughing at the joke of a NYC School system he helped bring about through his promotion of Joel Klein.

AT COUNTERPUNCH

Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter!

New York Times Director Probed for "Breach of Trust"

To the Sulzberger family that controls the New York Times he has been the ultimate Good German. High-flying Thomas Middelhoff took New York by storm, buying Random House for Bertelsmann, invited onto the NYT board, a member of its compensation committee. Read Eamonn Fingleton’s exclusive on how Middelhoff has crashed to earth and how the NYT has buried the story.

Who is Thomas Middelhoff? He hired Joel Klein at Bertelsmann and when Middelhoff was forced out in a scandal, with his protector gone, Klein was thrown the NYC schools as a lifeline and we ended up stuck with him.

If anyone tracks down the article send it along.

From Wicki on Middelhoff:
On June 5, 2009 several media reported that the German justice minister Brigitte Zypries had recommended that the state prosecution service look into allegations of fraud against Middelhoff, based on the fact that he and his wife allegedly held shares of an investment fund, which bought real estate from Arcandor and then leasebacked it to for unusually high rental fees. [3

In Wake of Bankruptcy, a German Executive Faces Two Inquiries‎

On another front, check out this article, especially for those people who think removing Joel Klein or Mike Bloomberg would set things right in education in NYC. The key to the nationwide onslaught has been the governance issue as a first step so as much public insight could be removed as possible.

Thus the key is to forget all the attacks on what went on in pre mayoral control years and figure out some way to design a system to take power over education away from these forces. Even if there were millions in the streets against them these forces would desperately cling on - (Clingons?). Expect them to point machine guns at the crowds.

And to return to a popular theme: the only organized force that was capable of resistance were the NEA and AFT/UFT. They didn't and they won't. Thus, the battle for public education must also include internal battles within the urban union locals to force a change in policy.

Neoliberalism, Charter Schools and the Chicago Model
Obama and Duncan's Education Policy:
Like Bush's, Only Worse

By DANNY WEIL

at http://counterpunch.org/weil08242009.html

I'm Practically Orgasmic

Earlier I wrote that criticism NY Times education coverage makes me hot –The NY Times Should Just Stop Trying to Cover Education.

As I suggested, they shouldn't waste time trying to cover education. Maybe use the resources on food. Or moon rocks.

The Times responded to Leonie and she then deliciously takes them to pieces.

Read all about it at Leonie's blog

The NY Times response, and my reply

The NY Times Should Just Stop Trying to Cover Education

I'll admit it. I actually get hot when someone takes down the NY Times on the way it covers education. Today, Leonie did the deed over at the NYC Parents blog.

Today’s New York Times article on the Bloomberg/Klein record on test scores is incomplete, biased, and in some cases inaccurate.

The Times biased? Shocking. They're still looking for those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq they reported on in such depth.

Leonie has 5 examples,which you can read with a little click:
NY Times falls in line with the Bloomberg PR spin control

Related:
Mike Antonnucci* reports in EIA on the NEA branch using Randi Redux arguments to sell merit pay to the members: What Happens in Tulsa, Stays in Tulsa. and has some comments on the Greg Toppo USAToday article on charters which caused Rotherham to freak: Tempest in a Toppo.

* Never forget that Mike has a dog in the race and looks to make unions the bad guys. But he also covers things none of the press does, particularly you know who.

NY Times damns the entire Calif. school system -- and gets it dead wrong

Caroline Grannan slams NY Times at the Examiner as she goes after the current Sunday magazine article about the California gubernatorial race, which states:

"Test scores in (California) public schools are plummeting” – in the reporter’s voice, without attribution or elaboration.

Caroline says that all indications are that California test scores have been moving upward (not that we give any credence to any testing results in the age of testing steroids. She says:

It’s an ongoing issue to public education advocates who view ourselves as resisters against efforts to “run schools like a business” that the privatization faction insists on portraying our schools in a far worse light than they deserve. Why would the Times leap into that with a flat-out inaccuracy – stated in an authoritative tone implying that no backup is even needed for such an obvious truth?

Now I love this one:

And speaking of troubled institutions, does the Times staff not realize that its survival is as fragile as the California economy? Sorry to repeat myself, but here's my message, again, to my colleagues in the press: Your existence is fragile. Your credibility is what you have left. Please try to take care of it.

Sorry Caroline, I wouldn't expect much credibility from the paper of record on weapons of mass destruction and BloomKlein are wonderful.

A Ground Zero for Kristof on Education Knowledge

Update: A Teacher Responds to Latest Kristof Ed Column posted at Norm's Notes.

One of the major problems with the poor quality of American journalism is the lack of quality journalists. Perhaps they should get merit pay or demerit pay based on the quality of the columns they produce. Today we have another in a long line of low-level, almost amateurish columns on education in the NY Times from Nicolas Kristof. He can write all the great stuff about Darfur or wherever, but when someone can get education so wrong, I can't stomach anything he writes.

Queens HS chapter leader and member of ICE Michael Fiorillo responds.

Hello All,

I've never been a fan of Kristof: there's often more than a whiff of moral vanity in his tone that turns me off. But this column shows him to be a fool or a knave.

Parroting the corporate ed reform talking point that nothing - not low birth weight, poor pre-natal care, poor nutrition, personal or family medical conditions, unstable family and housing situations, unemployment and on the furthest end of the spectrum substance abuse and incarceration - matters except effective teachers for student success, he writes,

"One study suggests that if black kids could get teachers from the(teaching) profession's most effective quartile for four years in a row, the achievement gap would disappear."

Do these people actually believe this nonsense?

How exactly is this panacea supposed to be implemented?

Fire every teacher below the 75 quartile, and move all the kids into the top producers's classrooms?

Keep firing the "low-performers" and just keep hiring TFA missionaries until you've reached 100% of your staff functioning in the 75 percentile or above?

Isn't there a problem with the math here?

Please also notice the extreme patronization - a key feature of the outlook, rhetoric and "pedagogy" of corporate ed reformers - in Kristof's language: why is it "black kids," who are singled out?

This elision of other poor children who also suffer from the "achievement gap" (also a term of art developed to pile drive the premises of the debate into unfriendly terrain for teachers and their unions, walling off discussion of other factors that influence school "performance") reveals the targeting of African-American communities for internal competition for diminishing resources among charter and public schools. This is now happening across the city, as Bloomberg's minions bus in charter school parents to public hearings to support mayoral control and the real estate grabs that are a part of it.

What these people are doing is despicable, creating a separate and unequal system in the name of racial justice.

Best,
Michael Fiorillo

Kristof's column: Education’s Ground Zero

NY Times Takes Sides on New York's School Chancellor

...want to Guess Which Side the Times is on?

NY Times reporter Elissa Gootman has been subject to criticism from parent leaders in NYC after her kiss face article on Joel Klein, Taking Sides on New York’s School Chancellor.

Patrick Sullivan, the lone voice representing parent interests on the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP), that joke of a board of education, said:

I spoke to Elissa Gootman for some time about this article. And while I did say I felt Klein was "sincere", it was solely in the context of he is sincere in believing his mission is fixing the system for low income families. I also said his policies were wrong, his implementation consistently poor, his contention that he's empowered to make all decisions on behalf of our chilren appalling and many other criticisms that didn't make it into the article. She had an idea about how to paint Klein and clearly picked bits and pieces to paint that picture.

She had also wanted to contrast Klein as an ideologue against Bloomberg as pragmatist. I made it clear to her that was not in any way a valid view. There is an effort now to dismiss the problems of schools governance as simply a question of Klein's style or about the person running the system, not about the governance structure. We need to keep the focus on the failings of the structure that allows parents to be systematically and completely shut out of our childrens education.

Leonie Haimson, a parent who has been one of the most vocal critics of Joel Klein and Michael Bloomberg to the extent that officials feel it necessary to monitor her comments and respond.

The last five people quoted are all ideological allies or friends of Joel Klein. Throughout the article, there are nine supporters and four (somewhat) critics. Not exactly a balanced article. And unfortunately the reporter [Elissa Gootman], seemed to buy Klein’s line that what he has done has provided more equity and that only middle class parents reject his leadership. I know of few involved parents in any part of the city of any background who support his policies.

I disagree with Leonie here. It isn't only the reporters who buy Klein's line. Even if Gootman were inclined to do the type of investigative reporting that people like Meredith Kolodner of the Daily News or Elizabeth Green of the former NY Sun and now Gotham Schools have done (which I doubt) the NY Times would have no interest in exposing the BloomKlein follies. When the Sun went under and people were discussing whether the Times would hire Green, I knew they wouldn't and even told Green that even if it came about she would never be allowed to cover stories like she did at the Sun.

Thus, it is left to students at the Columbia School of Journalism to investigate the No-Bid contracts of BloomKlein.

My comment on the listserve focused on Patrick's statement, "There is an effort now to dismiss the problems of schools governance as simply a question of Klein's style or about the person running the system, not about the governance structure."

If you read UFT propagandists you see this theme of Klein's style constantly reiterated. How Randi finds Bloomberg easier to work with than Klein and rumors that the UFT will only support mayoral control if Klein goes.

One must ask how a union with national roots can focus on Klein when it full well knows for the past 10 years that a similar scenario was played out in Chicago with Vallas and then Duncan and in other cities with similar problems. San Diego with Bursin and Alvarado and Washington with Rhee and Fenty.

The focus on Klein is a distraction for the real national fight that is necessary to understand what is happening in NYC in a national context. That one of the main forces that is capable of leading a fight to defend public education tends to frame the issue in terms of the personality of Joel Klein, leads one to question which side it is really on.

NY Times Ends Black Out on Class Size - Sort Of

Today's NY Times actually addressed the class size issue. That there is such a lack of unquestioning acceptance of Bloomberg's point of view is of no surprise from the Bloomberg News Service - er - the Times. We hear the "quality teacher vs. class size debate raised whenever the powers that be try to slip slide away. At least the Times does mention the famous Tennessee study, so ignored and intentionally misrepresented by the phony ed reform gang who try to paint teacher quality as digital - you are or you aren't a QT when in fact TQ is a moving target dependent on a number of variables, with class size being one of the keys.

The Accountable Talk blog, run by an actual NYC middle school teacher, takes Bloomberg to task in this post: Accountable Talk: Spot That Fallacy

the mayor presents the situation as an either/or, when it is nothing of the sort. Most Long Island districts, as well as many districts upstate and in Connecticut, have shown that you can have both low class size and pay teachers well. What makes Mr. Bloomberg's utterance a particularly good example is that he has utterly failed to do either one.

Yes, where are the calls in Long Island and Connecticut and Westchester for reduction in union influence and an end to seniority? Where are the calls for asking parents, who actually seem to have a say in who runs their schools, to make a choice between class size and so-called quality teachers?

Class Size Matters' Leonie Haimson's analysis on the NYC PS Parent blog is so cogent, it deserves to be re-posted far and wide. If there's a song to sing, it is "No Body Does It Better" than Leonie. Here's her post from her blog:

Bloomberg administration blames parents for larger classes

See the article in today’s NY Times, Class Size in New York City Schools Rises, but the Impact is Debated, a follow up to the article on Wednesday, Class Size Makes Biggest Jump of Bloomberg Tenure.

Though it is one of those typical “on the one hand this, on the other hand that” pieces– citing research that is either outmoded or easily refuted -- it is important because it is the first in-depth article in our paper of record to have dealt with the issue of class size in at least five years.

Indeed, the Times has had a “black out” on class size through most of the Bloomberg administration – as the former education editor admitted in June of 2006 – though at that point, she promised “to explore the class size issue” soon after -- which has not occurred until now, almost three years later.

This omission has persisted, despite the fact that our public school students continue to suffer from the largest class sizes in the state, smaller classes have consistently been the top priority of NYC parents, and in subway and TV ads, the administration has claimed to be reducing class size while being repeatedly cited for misusing hundreds of millions of dollars of state aid meant for this purpose.

In today’s article, the administration once again tries to evade its own responsibility for failing to reduce class size, despite a state mandate passed in 2007. In the previous Times article, Garth Harries of DOE attempted to blame the economy– even though the state provided an additional $400 million this fall, with $150 million of that targeted for class size reduction. He also attempted to shift the blame onto principals, which Chris Cerf tries again in today’s article, without acknowledging that it is the DOE’s duty to see that these funds are spent appropriately.

But now, even more outrageously, they are trying to blame parents – with Harries actually arguing that large classes are the result of popular schools where parents insist on sending their kids.

As I pointed out to the reporter, the vast majority of children attend their neighborhood zoned elementary and middle schools– and DOE entirely controls the admissions for high schools, so blaming parents for the systemic problem of large classes is entirely unwarranted. Who will they blame next – our kids?

Indeed, at the same time that the administration goes around claiming that mayoral control means accountability, they are quick to shift the blame on everyone else when they fail to create more adequate and equitable learning conditions for our children.

The article also repeats the administration’s canard that there is a trade-off between teacher quality and class size, when the two factors are actually complimentary. Indeed, the main reason we have such a high teacher turnover rate here in NYC is that our teachers so often leave for a new profession or to work in suburban or private schools -- because their excessive class sizes do not provide them with a fair chance to succeed.

In a recent national poll, 97% of teachers responded that reducing class size would be an effective way to improve teacher quality – far above any other strategy, including raising salaries, instituting teacher performance pay, or providing more professional development. Indeed, the only way we will ever obtain a more experienced and effective teaching force here in NYC is by reducing class size.

But the most ridiculous part of the article is the “evidence” offered by the administration that smaller classes don’t matter, by referring to an unpublished (and probably unpublishable) internal DOE study that purported to show that the grades schools received on the “Progress reports” weren’t correlated with smaller classes. No mention is made of the fact that most experts have found that the grades schools receive are mostly random – with almost no correlation from one year to the next -- as an article by the same reporter in the Times pointed out last year.

In contrast, the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the US Department of Education, has concluded that class size reduction is one of only four, evidence-based reforms proven to increase student achievement. (None of the policies that the Bloomberg/Klein administration has introduced are on the list, by the way.)

In fact, the DOE has devised another formula – a “value added” model to evaluate teacher effectiveness, in which class size is included as a “predictor”, the ONLY factor included in the model under the school system’s control. This is an admission that the larger the class, the less a teacher is expected to raise student achievement. All the other factors in the model pertain to characteristics of the students themselves, such as economic status, prior test scores, absences, etc.

See the model here – which includes average class size at both the classroom and school level, showing that both should be taken into account when assessing a teacher’s performance. The DOE also states that the model used “draws on 10 years of city-wide data (test scores, student, teacher, and school characteristics) to predict individual student gains.”

Check out the accompanying FAQ:

Is the DOE’s Value-Added model reliable and valid?

A: A panel of technical experts has approved the DOE’s value-added methodology. The DOE’s model has met recognized standards for demonstrating validity and reliability. Teachers’ value-added scores from the model are positively correlated with both School Progress Report scores and principals’ perceptions of teachers’ effectiveness, as measured by a research study conducted during the pilot of this initiative.

Anyway, please send a letter to the Times at letters@nytimes.com with your name, address and phone number. Let them know what you think – and whether it’s fair to blame parents for the fact that NYC classes have remained the largest in the state, with no significant improvement under this administration.