Ed Notes Online: Peter and the Star Catcher

Showing posts with label Peter and the Star Catcher. Show all posts

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Wild Day: Deb Meier, Meeting Nancy Carlson Paige, A 3020a Hearing, Hanging With Peter Pan

Yesterday is so far away but I've got to get it all down before it fades.

We started working on our new film, working title, "High Stakes Testing: The Inconvenient Truth" and I had to race into the city early in order to catch up with one of my heroes, Deb Meier for an interview. I won't give you the entire history but I tried an open classroom for parts of 2 years (1970-72) and it was somewhat of a disaster. I heard of an amazing teacher who was doing wonderful work and always wanted to meet her but didn't actually do that until about 5 years ago. Deb's blogging with Diane Ravitch, two people who at one time were coming at things from opposite directions, has given vitality to the battle against ed deformers and their influence has made them giants. Talk to Deb and you get a wonderful sensibility about children and how they learn. Deb's latest post to Diane is: 'Soft Science' & Less Certainty

Deb was in town for the day for a meeting at a CUNY building on 31st St. We had to find a spot for the interview and it was so noisy we went up the meeting to look for a space. The first person to greet us was Nancy Carlson Paige, a noted educator battling ed deform, who got some great publicity when she and brought her son Matt Damon to SOS in Washington last July. Deb introduced me to her as one of the people who made TITBWFS and I was walking on air the rest of the day after Nancy started telling people how much she liked it. I called Julie afterwards to tell her. Her response: "you should have gotten an interview with Nancy." I thought of it but she was anxious to get the meeting going and I'm just too shy to ask but having her in our film would have been great.

As the mother of a major actor, she did give my flimsy equipment a look but Deb and I found an office for the 10 minute interview. Just listening to her energizes me. Here is the link: http://youtu.be/owi2SKa4EA.

Or watch it here.

I may have an interview with Diane Ravitch next week. Now all I have to do is lure Susan Ohanian away from Vermont.

3020a
After that I headed over to B&H for some fun shopping and I blew a load. My wife was meeting me at 2PM for a matinee and I had a few hours so I headed downtown for the first day of a 3020a hearing (I'm heading back today.) It is absolutely astounding to attend one of these where the teacher is clearly an excellent teacher by every possible judgement but is being persecuted for a statement in facebook. Whether that was good or bad judgement, the DOE lawyer objected to every possible piece of evidence that show what a good teacher she is by saying, "Irrelevant. We are only interested in the facebook incident." Proof that the DOE is willing to waste thousands of dollars to fire what even they would acknowledge is a good teacher. Another wrinkle is that she is African-American and the 3rd African-American woman the principal has gone after: the real civil rights issue of our time.

The room was packed with supporters and even students who supported the teacher, including Christine Rubio who was fired for facebook comments but won her case in court.
You can read more about the case at The Assailed Teacher: The Joke of 3020a
"The process has become so biased that real courts of law are overturning more 3020a decisions than ever before. It happened in the case of Christine Rubino, whose case Betsy Combier describes in her latest post." Betsy is always there for people and has a lot of fans.

I fear that the persecution of teachers will lead to the loss of people like Assailed Teacher: read the collateral damage in this post: Teacher in Crisis.

I have notes and will try to do a longer piece tonight.

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The lunch break came just in time for me to make the matinee "Peter and the Star Catcher" an absolutely hysterical prequel to Peter Pan. The best line from the future Captain Hook: You made your bed, Pan.

Then is was off to 5Napkin Burger on 9th Ave (I needed 6 napkins to coral that burger.) After dinner I had the option to head over to CUNY for the Change the Stakes meeting where parents are discussing opting out of the test: check the great GEM blog that covers this issue.
Change the Stakes | Take a Stand Against High Stakes Testing: Our Children Are More Than Test Scores!

But this old guy had enough for the day.

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"A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/cory-booker-clear-and-present-threat-public-education

History of the UFT Pre-Weingarten Years

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

This chapter looks interesting:

Class struggles: The UFT story, part 3

“The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.

Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

Of course for another view, check out the review at New Politics of the Kahlenberg Bio on Shanker by Vera Pavone and me: Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon

Effective Union Organizing

A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:
http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/
I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

You can sign up for this free series at :
http://act.bcfed.ca/online-campaigning-for-union-activists/

You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

Ex-Harlem Success Teacher Comments on Eva the Diva

Ex-HSA Teacher has left a new comment on your post "Fear and Loathing at Evil's Harlem Success Empire ...":

I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

Davis Guggenheim Compared to Riefenstahl

“Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

Timothy Tyson
Professor of African American Studies and History
Duke University

How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

Even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and others around the nation are arguing for experienced teachers to be laid off regardless of seniority, every single study shows teaching experience matters. In fact, the only two observable factors that have been found consistently to lead to higher student achievement are class size and teacher experience, so that it’s ironic that these same individuals are trying to undermine both.
- Leonie Haimson on Parents Across America web site

Full article with charts here.

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

According to a press release issued by the Gates Foundation, the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, these three have entered a ground-breaking partnership to evaluate teachers utilizing the drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A bird-size device floats up to 400 feet above a classroom and instantly beams live video of teachers in action to agents at desks at Teacher Quality Inspection Stations established by the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

More at Substance

The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.
Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/12/on-growing-use-of-corporate-test.html

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

The US Is Facing a Weimar Moment

Published on Sunday, March 15, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings — though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

Jen Johnson, CTU, Local 1 in Substance

Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

SEE MY VIDEO ON HARLEM SUCCESS RALLY 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEp7rg_L5JI

Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."

Ed Notes Extended

Thursday, April 5, 2012