Making America Great Again – For White Supremacists: Norm in The Wave

I've been reading too much right wing crap in the Wave, our local

Rockaway paper,  that doesn't get responded to. People are pushing local Republican candidates who must be held accountable for the fundamental beliefs of the party they are representing. No worries, Democrats also have to be held accountable for abandoning unions and the working class. Maybe this week's edition.

Published in The Wave, October 21, 2016

Making America Great Again – For White Supremacists

School Scope

By Norm Scott

I’ve always been bothered by the fact that there was never a mainstream presidential candidate that neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, white supremacist, racist, misogynists could feel comfortable supporting. Now, with Donald Trump as the Republican nominee, finally, our long national nightmare is over.

Now this is not to say that the majority of the 40 percent of the American public that still supports Trump are any of these things, but if I were a Trump supporter I would certainly think about what attracts people who wear white sheets and hoods when they go out to dinner to the candidate they support.

Since the Trump kitty-cat tape was released we have seen some Republican leaders abandoning Trump. I find that funny, given all the other negatives attached to Trump. I mean what’s grabbing a crotch or two - or 10 when you put everything in context? They bring up the past. Didn’t Bill Clinton do a lot of grabbing? They tied up the entire country for a year over impeachment over the blue dress. And they bring up all those Clinton women and how Hillary attacked their credibility. But when women come out of the woodwork Republicans tell us how they are either not credible or “why bring up the past” when they feel perfectly comfortable bringing up 30 years of the Clintons’ past with every single conspiracy “believable.” Hillary murdered people you know. And ate babies. And probably assassinated JFK when she was in high school.

When Hillary’s 30,000 email deletions are brought up we often bring up the millions of emails the Bush administration deleted to cover their war crimes. My Republican friends reply, “Why do you always bring up Bush” who drove this country into the biggest depression since the ‘30s with lies about weapons of mass destruction. Republican “values.”

You see, this is not just about the values, or lack thereof that Trump brings to the table but the general view of people who decide to attach themselves to the Republican Party, which is as far from Abraham Lincoln as we can get. Trump said he would like a Supreme Court judge like the late Antonin Scalia, known as someone who adhered to the original constitution. Remember Hillary’s somewhat dubious claim at the debate that she was referring to Lincoln’s public and private actions in getting the 13th amendment banning slavery enacted? Prior to that the constitution so revered by Scalia counted every black slave as 3/5 of a person for purposes of taxes and representation. Our white supremacist Trump supporters must be hoping for a return to the good old days when America was great and we had a fugitive slave act. The Republican dominated Supreme Court has already weakened the voting rights amendment until a right wing Republican court takes them away.

Republicans generally value the life of an unborn fetus - until the day it is born and then it’s “go screw yourself” especially if you are poor or Black. Read some of the letters in The Wave or other right wing articles. Let’s go back to the good old days where women used coat hangers to abort a fetus. "The poor live off us while the corporate welfare and enormous costs of defense and corporate welfare are good uses of our money." Republican “values.”

Republicans don’t like big government – or any government, especially when it comes to helping the poor. Unless they need the government to bail them out. Let’s get government out of our lives – unless it means taking away a woman’s right to choose or stopping gay marriage. Remember the good old days not all that long ago where it was illegal in many states for a black and white person to get married. Make America great again.

I have a relative who says we have to cut government, clearly thinking of that welfare queen with three kids living high off the land in the projects. When I point out that he works for a defense department major contractor that is almost solely funded by the government he goes silent. Republican “values.”

Republicans like war but not taxes that might pay for the wars they like – or even for keeping the trains running or bridges from falling down. Super Trump supporter, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a paragon of Republicanism, a Mussolini wannabee, couldn’t keep the Jersey trains running on time. Starve the NJ transportation system while keeping the NJ gas tax 30 cents lower than the rest of the nation so he could say he didn’t raise taxes. It took a woman dying in the recent Hoboken train accident to shake this guy loose and pass a gas tax.

Republicans think global warming is a hoax. Gurgle, gurgle as sea levels rise and we set new heat index records every year. Republican “values.”

Trump humps coal, the dirtiest fuel that polluted so many cities for a century and killed thousands of miners with black lung disease. Hey, let every Republican Trump supporter replace the burner in their basements with a coal burning one as a way of showing support for the coal industry.

Trumpism seeps into the pores of American society. According to Slate.com, The Southern Poverty Law Center released a survey of 2,000 K–12 teachers. More than half of them responded “yes” when asked whether they had heard “an increase in uncivil political discourse at [their] school since the 2016 presidential campaign began.” Two-thirds of the surveyed teachers agreed with the statement, “My students have expressed concern about what might happen to them or their families after the election.” One-third observed an increase in anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant sentiment…

As a Bernie Sanders Social Democrat (SD) I am not a big fan of the other party or of their presidential candidate. (By the way, an SD like Bernie is not a communist but a believer in multi-party highly regulated capitalist system with a high degree of government services like the opportunity for free college tuition, which I and my generation enjoyed at Brooklyn College in the ‘60s. But most of us were white.) I was going to vote third party, then moved to “hold my nose and vote for Hillary” and increasingly pro- Hillary as I watch Trumpism and Republican “values” in action. With all her faults, Trump and Republicans are making a candidate with massive faults look like Joan of Arc.

They say all politics is local. I wonder where our Rockaway Republicans stand on Trump and all the related issues to Republican “values.” If you see one of them around ask them.  

Norm blogs about politics and education and whatever weird thoughts come into his head at ednotesonline.com

 http://www.rockawave.com/news/2016-10-21/School_News/Making_America_Great_Again__For_White_Supremacists.html

Has The WAVE Moved To The Right?

My column in this week's Rockaway's Wave

http://www.rockawave.com/news/2016-10-07/School_News/Has_The_Wave_Moved_To_The_Right.html

Oct. 7, 2016

Has The Wave Moved To The Right?

School Scope

By Norm Scott

A recent letter by Mike Scandiffio to The Wave, “Enough is Enough” asked “Could your paper get any more right wing?” Mike talked about the constant ferry whining, contempt for an ultra-liberal mayor, a lovefest with Republican State Assembly candidate Alan Zwirn, with a front page headline every time Alan farts. Mike points out the situation this nation was left in eight years ago with a looming 1930’s like great depression, two raging wars – with the war in Iraq based on lies , and a massive deficit instigated by the George Bush tax cuts which soon led to over 10 percent unemployment (it is now under five percent). Need I point out Bush was a Republican? Take a look at the value of your 401-k at the end of the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations (and even the first Bush admin in 1992) and also of the stock market and tell me what has worked better for business. Estimates are that if Trump wins the market will drop 12 percent and 3 million jobs will be lost. Republicans like Alan Zwirn should be pressed on the extent of his belief in fundamental Republican principles.

Rational people know that despite the often awful and corrupt government we often have, the alternatives are worse. Republicans are antiunion and anti-worker, believe in cutting taxes and government, and have absolute faith in the private, profit-making sector, which is often avaricious and corrupt and will do anything to make a buck even if on the backs of its workers and consumers. They rail about over-regulation, even cutting the FTC to the bone. Remember the scandals of the early 1900s when little was regulated and it took a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, to reign in the monopolies and strengthen regulations that often protect us. Are there areas when this goes too far? Sure. Let’s look at them and fix them instead of railing against all regulations. Like do we need any food and drug regulation or just leave things to private hands – like let’s raise the price of life-saving drugs enormously.

President Reagan termed government as the problem, not the solution, a concept revered by the current Republican Party. Ruth Graves addressed this issue in a Sept. 23 letter “We Need Government.” Let’s take basic Republican views local. Build it Back is a disaster with bad stories every week. Are there any successes? Or does the local press only report the disasters? Remember under the last year of Bloomberg not one dime was spent on Build it Back.

And the darn ferry. And the railway corridor. And the A-train. Every issue we hear complaints about government. We had 20 years of Republican mayors in Giuliani and Bloomberg. Constant complaints on how Rockaway was ignored by both of them and no ferry until we had a disaster four years ago and had no means of transportation for a long time. Yes, de Blasio took it away (while the Staten Island Ferry continues to be subsidized). But he is putting it back permanently – not only here but all over the city with a master plan to use our waterways and we will still be paying the normal transit fare. The mayor finally put skin in the game with a massive city subsidy to keep fares low. Instead we hear whining about the boats being too small or the wrong contractor, complaints that the ferry ride will be one hour, 10 minutes longer than the old ferry. I never saw the trip be less than an hour after the Brooklyn stop was added.

Don’t get me wrong. As a Bernie Sanders-type social democrat, I assail both parties. But we shouldn’t fall into the Republican trap that will leave us at the mercy of the privatizing of public services. Need I mention ad infinitum the growing charter school scandals, for which both parties are responsible?

More next time.

School Scope: Education and Local Politics – Why I Am Not voting

All politics is local - or so they say. There is a local State Assembly race between a Republican former teacher and a Democratic former Paraprofessional and PTA president, the daughter of our former State Assembleywoman who "retired" and is now in the cushy job of Queens County clerk. Here is my Wave column for this week - I don't even have a 3rd party choice.

School Scope: Education and Local Politics – Why I Am Not voting

By Norm Scott

With the departure of Phil Goldfeder, Rockaway is faced with a choice between a Democrat (Stacey Pheffer Amato) and a Republican (Alan Zwirn) for State Assembly. While Phil is a lawyer, both Amato and Zwirn worked for the NYC school system, Zwirn as a teacher, Amato as a paraprofessional. So we expect there to be some focus on educational issues in their campaigns.

Zwirn did announce he was holding a rally at John Adams HS “to call attention to NYC’s floundering school system.” I wouldn’t expect anything less than an attack on the public school system from a Republican. After all, the Republican party has been all about the dismantling and privatizing the school system, led by its national candidate Donald Trump who has attacked teachers and their unions and calls for a voucher system which would leave public schools with only the kids no private school or charter school want. The article in the Wave last week had Zwirn’s views on education but so much was left out.

Charter school shill Governor Cuomo and the State Assembly voted to force the Mayor to give space to charters or pay for space if they rent. Charters toss kids they don’t want back into the public schools through a variety of ways. They brag about their scores – which of  course will be higher once you rid the schools of low-scoring kids. If we track the most “successful” charters we see a big drop in the number of students as they progress through the grades. Most of these schools don’t accept students to fill these spots so they can keep their scores high.  

Cuomo and many people who send their kids to non-public schools favor an education income tax credit. I have no problem if people want to send their kids to non-public schools but not on my back. Hey, I might want to hire a private sanitation carting company instead of using our publicly supported sanitation department. People would laugh if I asked for a tax credit. What next? Charter fire and police? After all if you believe in competition, why not privatize everything?

What about teachers being rated based on how their students score on one or two big tests, a system that has been proven faulty where in one class a teacher can be rated the best and in another class, the worst?

Both the Republican and Democratic Party have been awful on many educational issues, both parties signing off on an agenda of phony education reform (deform). Though I liked Phil Goldfeder personally, I found his views on education issues regressive and if he ran this time I would not have voted for him based on those views alone. I also like Alan Zwirn, who I bet will not denounce Trump’s views on education (I don’t know Amato). How anyone who spent their life as a teacher can take Trump seriously is beyond me. I don’t expect Amato to denounce Cuomo for his attack on educators. So I’m suspecting that I will not be voting for either of the choices for Phil’s replacement but I’m open to being surprised.

Norm in The Wave: The Education Tax Credit Bill Endorses Public Theft

Submitted for publication in the May 22, 2015 edition - I may have missed deadline so it might be in next week. www.rockawave.com

The Education Tax Credit Bill Endorses Public Theft
By Norm Scott

I wasn’t going to write something this week but am so agitated by the outrage of the  proposal to give people who send their kids to private and religious school a giveaway of public funds that could actually be used to support public schools I was driven out of bed. I am especially pissed at our elected officials who support this bill who send their own kids to private or religious schools and thus stand to gain financially from this bill. The are the very same people who when challenged, repeat the false mantra “I support public schools” while doing the exact opposite. I include support for charter schools in my condemnation of our elected betrayers of the public schools. Let’s apply this logic. I don’t like the days my sanitation is collected. Give me a tax credit to hire a private carting firm. You’d laugh – and you should laugh at the tax credit idea, which will sound a death knell to public school for all but the poor.

My friend Harris Lirtzman sent this letter to his State Assemblyman:

"Dear ______. 

Isn’t possible that the Legislature has already done sufficient and irreparable damage to the public education system that if the Assembly agrees to the Governor’s and State Senate’s proposal for tax credits and more charter schools that we might just as well close our public school systems? I’m aware of the horrific statement that some member made that has been used to label all Democratic Assembly members as part of a laughable crew of Keystone Kop legislators--that you're all members of the Heavy Hearts Club for botching the original round of education 'reform' agenda proposed by the Governor. Please stop with the damage you’ve already done. Please do not, in any, way, shape or manner give in to the Senate's and Governor’s demands for the tax break and expanded charter cap. Just adjourn and go home before you all do any more damage to public education this session.”

NYSUT, the state teachers union,  is running 10 days of ads on Cuomo's Private School Tax Credit Program. From Capitol Confidential:

A tax credit to incentivize donations to education is being knocked by the state teachers union as “a shell game allowing corporations and the super rich to divert tax dollars to elite private schools.” In a new radio ad, New York State United Teachers is challenging a renewed push by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to get an Education Investment Tax Credit passed before the end of the legislative session. The union contends the credit, as proposed by the governor, is a giveaway to the rich that will benefit only private schools. The 60-second ad features Mr. Moneybags, a fictional fat cat who says the credit is “a scheme designed to favor us ‘zillionaires’ and our exclusive schools.” “So let me get this straight: The rich will get millions of dollars in tax breaks, cutting the resources that could go to all kids?” a narrator asks incredulously.

And the ACLU has jumped into the fray:

“The governor and the Catholic archbishop are joining forces to push taxpayer money for parochial schools. Not in New York, right? Wrong. Just this week, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Cardinal Timothy Dolan toured the state to push their top legislative priority – enormous tax credits to people and corporations that give money to private and religious schools. Tell them NO WAY! New Yorkers will not accept this brazen attempt to transfer precious public tax dollars to private and religious schools. With just five weeks to go in the legislative session, the governor and the Catholic Church are pulling out all the stops to get their tax credit scheme passed. New Yorkers of all stripes need to come together and push back. Tell lawmakers they can't steal money from New York’s public school students to fund private and religious schools. Funding for public schools has been slashed for years and our kids are the ones who are getting hurt. New York's public schools can't afford this financial hit ... and neither can our Constitution. Government funding of religious schools violates the separation of church and state. Contact Governor Cuomo and legislative leaders — tell them to protect free public education in New York and say no to public assistance to private and parochial schools.”

Let’s not leave out the Jewish school lobby either. Believe it or not, there is also a bill up to force us to pay for security for any religious school that requests it. Just imagine how much more money will be drained from public school to private school interests?

Why not make up your own religion and get on the gravy train? The religion of Norm. I just wish I had some kids to use to get my mitts on some of those tax credits. Any chance for a bill giving my a tax credit for sending my cats to obedience school?

Norm spouts his venom daily on ednotesonline.org

Norm in The Wave: On Rockaway Branch Lines and Ferries: Poor, Neglected A Train

Published Friday May 15, 2015 at http://www.rockawave.com/node/208762?pk_campaign=Newsletter

On Rockaway Branch Lines and Ferries

School Scope

By Norm Scott

NORMAN SCOTT

Taking a break from education issues, I wanted to get something off my chest regarding reporting on transportation issues by the Rockaway press and also the politicians.

In my last conversation with Phil Goldfeder, I harangued him for talking about ferries and branch lines but ignoring discussion on improving the A train. He promised he would. I may have missed it but so far haven’t noticed.

Constant talk about getting the MTA to put millions of dollars it claims it does not have into a dream of a project to rebuild a portion of rail so people in Rockaway can get into Manhattan in 45 minutes (tops) instead of an hour (or more). The same goes for the late, lamented ferry. With the stop in Brooklyn the trip to Wall Street took 50 minutes and sometimes longer. To 34th Street, even longer. And if you wanted to go after rush hour, it was a no go. Same with late at night. Don’t get me wrong. It was a nice option and it would be good to have a ferry that runs all day and into the late evening, but without heavy subsidies from a city that looks at Rockaway as if it were in Outer Mongolia, I don’t expect much.

Howie Schwach reported with this story on his web site (www.onrockaway.com): “The A train remains the major commuter mode of travel from Rockaway to Manhattan. A recent study said that Rockaway residents have second longest travel commute in the city.” Howie points out that the average time for a Rockaway commute – 46.9 minutes – is far off the reality. More like an hour or more and if you are coming from Mott Avenue or Rockaway Park and using the shuttle (a few direct A trains run to and fro during rush hour) it could take much longer if you add waiting time. The last time I took a midday subway from Rockaway Park, I waited at Broad Channel for almost a half hour for an A to come. And then there was that long slog through Brooklyn. Another mid-day trip was a bit better – the shuttle left within a few minutes and the A came within 7 minutes. Still. (I remember when Anthony Weiner was running for mayor he put an idea of a third track on the table.)

The shuttle is a real issue for people in Rockaway Park. Personally, we drive to Newkirk Plaza in Brooklyn and take the Q or B. Some people drive to Broad Channel or Howard Beach to skip the shuttle.

Last summer we took the 9:30 a.m. ferry – the last one in the morning – to 34th Street for a matinee. On the way back we decided to take an A from 42nd Street downtown to Wall Street to get the ferry. But lo and behold, after a very short wait, a rare A to Rockaway Park showed up and we decided to take it all the way back to 108th to pick up our car at the ferry dock. It took an hour. I tried to think about ways to cut some time off this trip. I was looking at the map as we headed into the area where the A splits off from Lefferts Boulevard and noticed how easy it would be for them to get the shuttle instead of us. There are only three stops between Rockaway Boulevard and Lefferts and the same three stops between Broad Channel and Rockaway Park. Given the much longer commute, why shouldn’t Rockaway Park (149th to the 80s) and include Breezy Point too – get a direct A train? To me a simple fix costing little or nothing.

Looking at the map, you can see what almost looks like a detour at Euclid Avenue as it makes a wide loop that includes six stops before looping back to Howard Beach. Draw a direct line from Euclid to Howard Beach – imagine a connection between them cutting out that loop. How much time would that save? Of course the very idea of adding a short cut between those stations looks like lunacy. But any more lunacy than the unicorn-like search for the Rockaway Branch Line?

For people at the other end of Rockaway – Mott Avenue, the commute includes six Rockaway stops, three more than those in Rockaway Park. All told, there are 23 additional stops between Broad Channel before hitting Fulton Street in Manhattan (if you’re going to Washington Heights at the other end of the A, better leave the day before). Are there ways to speed up this trip without building entire branch lines? I bet there are. That is the question I would ask our politicians and the Rockaway press to answer rather than chasing after unicorns.

Norm still avoids the shuttle but doesn’t avoid blogging at ednotesonline.org.

Norm in The Wave: Opt Out and Politicians as Cuomo Declares “scores are ‘meaningless’ in terms of students' grades”

Published Friday, May 1, 2015 at www.rockawave.com


Opt Out and Politicians as Cuomo Declares “scores are ‘meaningless’ in terms of students' grades”

By Norm Scott

Times Union columnist Fred LeBrun wrote: “Thanks to Cuomo's thuggish war on teachers and his scant regard for the considerable collateral damage it's causing public education in this state, New York has become a national leader in the opt-out movement. Parents across the state have held their children out of third- through eighth-grade standardized state tests that are ostensibly designed to show student progress but in reality show not much of anything with reliability amid much anguish and anxiety. Except that they can be used to rank, rate and fire teachers, which is what the governor is really after.” http://bit.ly/1DOB7HY

I read all the local Rockaway papers and websites and notice our local politicians often write regular articles. I also notice that they barely, if ever, mention issues related to education – one of the hottest items on the national and local agenda. What are they afraid of? Being held accountable for the positions they take and the votes they cast, unlike the accountability they all seem to want teachers to be held to? Next time you run into a local pol, ask them where they stand on opt out and whether they will support bills in Albany backing parent choice to opt out? (One local pol told me he was in favor of “choice” when it came to charter schools. Does he support “choice” on all the other issues?)

The opt out of the tests movement has been receiving national attention as parents on the left and right are in revolt. Common core has been dragged down with the tests. The right doesn’t like federal interference in local control of education – especially in some states that want to keep teaching that the earth is flat. Until recently, the left, worried about education in Mississippi, was for federal intervention, which used to be benign. But seeing the malignant impact on schools of policies that go back to the Clinton/Bush/Obama administrations, the left has turned. My attitude is “screw Mississippi, I have to deal with New York.”

The other day I was at a party and some guy, who used to teach physics, asked me what was wrong with the common core and standards since they seemed reasonable to him. Oh, let me count the ways – from inappropriate content for younger children, and especially children who are learning disabled, to an enormous overload in testing and test prep time, to the use to rate teachers based on faulty mathematical algorisms. Since he was a long-time teacher, I asked him if he taught any differently before common core? Were the pre-common core NY State standards, which were amongst the strongest in the nation, somehow deficient that we needed Bill Gates to come in and fix them? He ended up agreeing with me. I post loads of great – and often funny – opt out videos, including this Bald Piano Man parody: https://youtu.be/D066lb9fbQA.

The response from the ed deform community at all levels – government, DOE, press, astroturf orgs, and even the UFT – has been a vicious assault on the 200,000 (and growing) opt outers, including threats of withholding funding from schools with high opt out numbers. (By the way, even with 4000 opt outers here in the city, there are few reports of parents opting out in Rockaway or in District 27 – wait till next year.) Deformers have been trying to kill the movement through divide and conquer. Offers to exempt the “good” schools, delay teacher evaluation (causing a split between Regent Head Meryl Tisch and Cuomo, whose major goal has been to slam the teachers. The enormous donations to him have come from the anti-teacher coalitions who don’t give a fig about the kids.

Cuomo, in this Capital Education report, exposed his true aims:
“Governor Andrew Cuomo on Friday said parents who have chosen to have their children ‘opt out’ of taking this month’s state exams don’t understand that the scores are ‘meaningless’ in terms of students' grades. ‘That’s their option,’ Cuomo, referring to parents who have participated in the unprecedented boycott of state exams, told reporters after an Association for a Better New York breakfast in Manhattan. ‘What I don’t think has been adequately communicated is, we passed a law that stops the use of the grades on the test for the student. So the grades are meaningless to the student.’” http://capi.tl/1JChI1q

There you go, ed deform in a nutshell: It’s not really about the kids. Let’s put them through months of misery so we can fire teachers more easily. Really, folks, wouldn’t it be cheaper to just offer tenured teachers a buyout and stop all this nonsense?

See Norm blog about how he solved a common core 8th grade math example: Where I Check the Condition of My Cognition by Doing some Algebra. http://tinyurl.com/of7v6j8. And he even shows his work.

Norm in The Wave this week: Opt-out, robotics, running for chapter leader Plus Rockway Theatre Co.

Published Friday, March 13, 2015, www.rockawave.com.

Useful Information – Or Not
By Norm Scott

Someone told me they actually understood my last column – for once. I wish I can remember what it was about. So for this week I have accumulated a batch of useful information – or not.

The Testing Opt-Out movement grows
Not long ago the very idea of opting kids out of the yearly tests was frightening to parents, teachers and especially principals and the higher ups beyond them. But nationwide, parents, seeing the negative impact on kids as young as 7 and 8 of testing, have started pulling their kids from the tests. In NY State, the movement began on Long Island where 30,000 people opted out last year and that tinyurl.com/knmwrk6. A Long Island forum a few days later featuring my friend Jia Lee is at tinyurl.com/mbla2tn.

number is expected to grow this year by leaps and bounds through the growth of opt-out rallies and forums. Here in NYC there is more repression and fear but I have been working with an amazing group of parents from Change the Stakes, which has been in the forefront of the opt-out here in the city. I taped a wonderful forum at a school in Brooklyn which included 2 principals (one from Long Island and one from Brooklyn, a NYC teacher and a parent from the Bronx. Video at

There is somewhat of a war going on, and as often does, race enters into it. The leaders and profiteers of the testing movement, the instrument used to undermine the public school system, have begun a concerted attack on opt-outers as being white, middle class liberals who are soft on their own kids. Some in the black community, where young kids are even more damaged by tests through their sorting and branding mechanism, have fallen for this line. But Change the Stakes and other groups have been making small inroads into these communities with information on how their kids are damaged when they are told they have to prepare for the SATs when they are in grades 1-3 and even kindergarten. Check the CTS web site for more info: https: changethestakes.wordpress.com. And you can order a NYC Opt-Out tee-shirt at www.booster.com/nycoptout . I just ordered mine.

Howie Schwach remembers former District 27 Superintendent Beverly Hall
Hall, who was considered the mastermind behind the massive Atlanta test cheating scandal, died recently. Former Wave editor and columnist Schwach, who preceded me at School Scope, was the reason I began to read the Wave due to his coverage of education issues, wrote about Hall’s history in our district in the early 90s at his web site: www.onrockaway.com/page-16.html. And note that the Atlanta testing scandal is a tip of the iceberg and it is only due to the lack of vigilance and cover-ups that we haven’t seen the same story here in NYC. A good lesson for people who think the testing culture is good for kids and education in general.

Robotics
This weekend I’ll be at the Javits Convention Center all day on Saturday, March 14 for the NYCFIRST Robotics events (admission is FREE). This is my 13th year working with NYCFIRST with the FIRST LEGO League (ages 9-14). I manage the pit area where the 80 teams, many from NYC public and private schools, with some home schooled too, display their research projects and work on programming their robots. In the morning, teams meet with judges to discuss their work and after noon compete on 8x4 game boards with their robots made out of LEGO and programed to complete a bunch of tasks related to this year’s theme as described in this promo: What is the future of learning? FLL teams will find the answers. In the 2014 FLL WORLD CLASS℠ Challenge, over 265,000 children from 80 countries will redesign how we gather knowledge and skills in the 21st century. Teams will teach adults about the ways that kids need and want to learn. Get ready for a whole new class – FLL WORLD CLASS! - See more at: www.firstlegoleague.org/challenge/2014. There is also a 3-day high school tournament (Friday-Sunday), known as FIRST Robotics Challenge (FRC) where teams come from not only the metropolitan area but from other parts of the nation and even the world. Six robots (3 against 3) on a giant field with a complex formula of shifting team alliances – where your former competitors become your allies. And a Junior FLL (ages 6-9) exhibition in the morning.

Hey, bud, are you interested in running for chapter leader at your school?
MORE, the caucus opposing the Mike Mulgrew-led UFT Unity Caucus, is offering workshops and advice. There is one this weekend on Saturday but also MORE reps will meet with candidates to share advice and support. Contact more@morecaucusnyc.org.

Norm blogs daily at ednotesonline.org. You don’t have to wait for Norm’s column to not understand what he writes.

Here is my short piece from last week (Mar. 6) on the RTC teen production of Legally Blonde, Jr.

Memo from the RTC: Legally Blonde is So Good it Should Be Illegal

By Norm Scott

It was opening night at the Rockaway Theatre Company and I expected jitters and a few flubs but saw a perfectly smooth running show as if it were the hundredth performance of “Legally Blonde, Jr., The Musical”. After all, the entire cast is made of up of teens and maybe even a few tweens. Aren’t any of these kids nervous? How come they can remember complex lines while I have to look at the page if I have to remember more than 3 words? How did the sets get changed between scenes without a glitch? How can so many kids (34 of them) sing and dance and perform with such aplomb in front of their parents, families and friends?

Of course they did not do all this by themselves. A few adults from the RTC Teen Workshop, led by Peggy Press, have been working with them since September (when it was actually warm). Such smiles of satisfaction from directors Susan Corning and John Gilleece, the choral and musical directors Jodee Timpone and Richard Louis-Pierre and choreographer Gabrielle Mangano. And oh those looks on the faces of the parents to see their children do so well in a full-fledged Broadway-like production.

There are still a few performances this weekend: Evenings March 6, 7 at 7PM and a matinees Sunday Mar. 8 at 2PM. Call the hotline at 718-374-6400.

Norm in The Wave: Oh, Sweet Suspensions, Wherefore Art Thou?

This School Scope column appeared in the Feb. 27 edition, www.rockawave.com. I ran into a lady at the Rockaway Theatre Company Friday night who said she finally understood something I wrote. A guy in the gym tells me every time I see him how he doesn't understand anything I write, so I'm getting somewhere.

Oh, Sweet Suspensions, Wherefore Art Thou?

By Norm Scott

“City planning significant changes to school discipline rules to cut down on suspending students,” proclaimed a headline in the Feb. 16 edition of The Daily News, resulting in yet another hail of attacks on the liberal policies of Mayor de Blasio and schools chancellor Carmen Farina for hastening the end of western civilization. The critics just love those charter schools in the city which suspended students at almost three times the rate of the public schools during the 2011-12 school year, the last year for which public data is available. 11 charter schools suspended more than 30 percent of their students according to Chalkbeat, the education blog. Given all that has been going on about race recently, it should be no surprise that discipline and suspension rates have also become hot racially tinged topics. The News reported, “Stats for the 2013-2014 school year show roughly 90% of 53,000 suspensions in city schools involved black or Hispanic kids.” On the other side, people raise the issue of whether these numbers represent racial bias.

Now, as a teacher, I was opposed to suspensions and harsh discipline, feeling that having to resort to them was an admission of failure on my part. Or an admission of failure to the administration. As an outspoken teacher, I never wanted to give my supervisors and edge on me by asking them for assistance. And if one of my kids got suspended, what do I do when he (most suspensions are boys) returned from a number of days out of school or my classroom? I preferred to deal with things in on my own.

Things can get pretty ridiculous in this debate. An editorial slamming the policy stated, “Principals will now have to get written approval from Department of Education headquarters before suspending a kindergarten-to-third-grade student, or a student in any grade who commits one of the most common infractions: insubordination.” I taught in elementary schools for 30 years and yes there was some bad behavior by kids in k-3 grades but suspend kids that age? A school can’t manage to figure out some alternative? If a child has serious emotional issues then they need help, not suspension. I never taught high school where some students may be more threatening if they engage in serious misbehavior and containing them in the school might be a problem. But there are answers for schools willing to explore alternatives to suspension. Restorative justice (RJ) programs where students must face and take responsibilities for their actions in front of a peer pressure group have been having enormous positive impacts on schools where discipline was an issue and have resulted in some remarkable transformations. Wary educators without direct knowledge of these programs fear they may be just a cover up for another failed onslaught in the blame the teacher game over the past 15 years.

My friend who teaches at a high school in Brooklyn was one such skeptic. Now he has the entire school involved in restorative justice programs. He reports, “I visited a few schools, one a 300 student school that had 150 suspensions (some students suspended multiple times). They dropped to 63 suspensions after they initiated a new disciplinary program in 2012/13. Now in the second year of implementation they have had only 2 principal's suspensions.” These are hard facts pointing to the success of RJ programs. He told me about mediation programs where “two students, who engaged in a verbal or physical fight, meet in a room, sit across from each other, and each one has a student representative  trained in meditation. Both students tell their side of the stories, the objective being to get both sides to understand the other, discuss calmly how they could have handled the situation differently and come to a compromise agreement on what will happen now. Most mediations end in the two students hugging and becoming friends.” If a school with a rational administration – not always easy to find – wants a shot at solving the suspension issue, then giving restorative justice a shot is the way to go.

Norm restores himself daily at his blog, ednotesonline.org.

Teaching and Policing: Showdown and Slowdown - Norm in The Wave

Published Friday, Jan. 16, 2015 at www.rockawave.com

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Teaching  and Policing:  Showdown and Slowdown

By Norm Scott

For the two decades of the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations, there was no group of public employees more vilified and disrespected than teachers, often with overwhelming approval of the press and politicians and with much of the public going along – though polls did show that public school parents overwhelmingly supported the teachers at the schools their children went to. My friend Arthur Goldstein, the chapter leader at Francis Lewis HS, one of the most well-read and respected bloggers, wrote:   

“[I]t's perfectly fine to vilify teachers, to stereotype us based on shoddy evidence, and to deprive us of due process based on a handful of sensationalized cases. We should trust in the good graces of folks like Mike Bloomberg and Dennis Walcott, and we should disregard the fact that they are fanatical ideologues with no regard for evidence or truth. Is this because teaching is a profession dominated by women? Is it because time and time again our union leadership has compromised with folks like Bloomberg, embracing mayoral control, charter schools, colocations, two-tier due process, and things that looked very much like merit pay? Is it because the job of educating our children must always take second place to the importance of enriching the likes of Pearson, Eva Moskowitz and Rupert Murdoch? ... Why is there one standard for police, and a very different one for teachers? Why is it so widely accepted by the media?” http://nyceducator.com/2015/01/the-police-and-teachers.html

So, imagine a scenario at a high school graduation where Bloomberg or NYCDOE Chancellors, the universally despised Joel Klein or almost equally despicable Dennis Walcott, were the invited speakers and during the ceremony, masses of teachers turned their backs. Or a student tragically dies and at the funeral teachers turned their backs? Oh, the fallout, especially from the Murdoch press: FOX News, NY Post and Wall Street Journal. And there would have been repercussions beyond the press. Teachers who were identified might expect a drop-in observation and an ineffective rating for “embarrassing the school.”

Norm in The Wave - Teaching and Policing

One of the first things I learned as a new teacher was not to let a child run out of the room. “What if they ran out of the building and into the street and got hit by a car,” was the mantra? So when that happened some teachers tried to restrain the children..
 
Are police facing their own version of VAM? This is the first in a series of columns for The Wave exploring the areas where teaching and policing intersect.

Published Dec. 19, 2014

http://www.rockawave.com/node/201568?pk_campaign=Newsletter

Teaching and Policing

School Scope

By Norm Scott

Norman Scott

With the issues facing the police nationally and here in New York City, I began to think about the amount of policing I had to do as a teacher. From my earliest days, it was clear that a successful teacher was often defined as being able to control the kids and keep order in the classroom, in the halls, in the lunchroom, in the auditorium, and especially on class trips, which I took often, mostly on the subways and through the streets of Manhattan where keeping the kids in order was a primary matter.
Minimal teacher competence was judged on the ability to keep order. In some schools, that was the sole criterion and a few teachers focused on that aspect to the exclusion of so much else that goes into teaching. My school, in one of the toughest, high poverty areas of Brooklyn, also had a very large contingent of special needs children with emotional issues, many of them volatile. Thus, there were times when even teachers with good control might face situations where children were recalcitrant in following directions or showing respect towards the authorities in the school.
Thinking about the Eric Garner story and how he reacted to the attempt to arrest him reminded me of many incidents I faced as a teacher. “I’m taking you to the dean;” with a response “I’m not going.” Sometimes we called a supervisor. But, what if they weren’t available? I reviewed what went through my mind at these times, often anger and frustration, along with fears that my authority would be undermined if I didn’t take immediate action, especially when I was a young and inexperienced teacher. Saving face and maybe a bit too much testosterone at times made me take actions I came to regret, especially when I put my hands on a student, which immediately made things worse. Luckily I learned from my mistakes and evolved more effective tactics.
Special needs teachers I worked with taught me invaluable lessons. If someone is acting out with anger and irrationality, there are a whole range of reasons for those reactions and even without knowing the reason, a teacher must have an understanding and try to deal with the situation in a rational manner, with an eye towards consequences. That is not easy in the heat of the moment but try to imagine the outcomes for a teacher or group of teachers.
One of the first things I learned as a new teacher was not to let a child run out of the room. “What if they ran out of the building and into the street and got hit by a car,” was the mantra? So when that happened some teachers tried to restrain the children. Or if not possible, call the office. Before the witch hunts began against teachers under Bloomberg, a teacher had some room if they tried restraint. A former colleague of mine who covered other teachers during their preps was covering a class with an emotionally disturbed child who was supposed to get counseling during that period but the counselor never showed up. The girl ran out of the room twice and returned. When she tried it the third time the teacher grabbed her and sat her into a seat, in the process pulling a button off and grazing her cheek with the side of her finger nail, leaving a slight red mark. The principal, who hated that teacher, incited the parent to file charges and shortly after, five cops came to the school to arrest the teacher who was taken out in handcuffs and spent half the night in the precinct before being released. The case was dropped by the police, but not by the Department of Education, which put the teacher in the rubber room for years and brought her up for a 3020a dismissal hearing, which I attended. She was suspended for a year without pay. Stories like that sends chills down the spine of teachers, some of whom have faced charges for yelling at kids, now known as “verbal abuse.”
I’m not totally trying to equate the jobs police on the street do with teacher policing functions but there are some similarities in the process of how things can escalate, as they did in the Garner situation. Now with calls for police to face more scrutiny for their actions, they may face some of the same type of issues teachers have been facing – like attempts to use Compstat data to measure the performance of individual police. Recently there have been reports on the number of “resisting arrests” or lawsuits some cops have against them and that might lead to a measurement system one day, along the lines with the Value-Added Model evaluation being used for teachers. Police are also undergoing retraining.
I’ll explore some of these issues next time.

Norm blogs — with little restraint — at ednotesonline.org. 

For Educators, Public School Parents, and Public Workers, Cuomo and Astorino Are No Choice - Norm in The Wave

I just submitted this for Friday (Oct. 31) publication but may have missed deadline.


School Scope
For Educators, Public School Parents, and Public Workers, Cuomo and Astorino Are No Choice

By Norm Scott

Go Green. That’s my vote is for Howie Hawkins for Governor and Brian Jones for Lt. Governor. And anyone who is a public worker or union member should join me. Both the Republican and Democratic Parties have abandoned the working people of this nation and in this state, a major cause of the growing inequality that will lead to disastrous consequences rivaling The Great Depression. A consumer economy cannot be maintained by the 1% of the 1%. It is time for a 3rd party.

I wasn’t going to write this week about the election but Cuomo’s dastardly attack on public schools, teachers and the union on the eve of the election just went to far. Parent activist Leonie Haimson commented: Cuomo redoubles his intention to expand charters, break up the “one of the only remaining public monopolies” of the public school system (really? What about police, fire and other govt. services?), develop more “rigorous” evaluations for teachers. He also condescendingly claims that parental opposition to the flawed Common Core standards, curriculum and exams was because teachers got “ the parents upset last year about this entire Common Core agenda.”

I find it interesting that my colleagues on other public unions seem perfectly fine with attacks on the teachers and see no threat to themselves. Imagine if competitive “charter”-like options were offered to people who wanted options on the services of police, sanitation and fire.

The UFT’s behind the scenes support for Cuomo for their so-called little stool at the table is pathetic. The right-wing Astorino is no option. My UFT caucus, MORE, has endorsed Hawkins/Jones (who is a founding member of MORE). I’m going Green and urge all public workers and people who support them to join me.

Oh, and Happy Halloween. If you see a guy painted Green, it will be me.

Norm will be blogging in costume at ednotesonline.com.

The Wave - Memo From the RTC: Gypsy Update - They Call me Mr. Goldstone

Published in The Wave, Friday, June 20, 2014
(www.rockawave.com).

Memo From the RTC: Gypsy Update - They Call me Mr. Goldstone

By Norm Scott

I’m a process person – fascinated by the nuts and bolts that go into just about anything. I have a “how is it made” mentality. So getting beyond the surface of the dynamic productions at the RTC is quite a treat. At that rehearsal they were blocking a long scene and I don’t come in until the end, so I saw how the sausage is made when I attended a rehearsal last week of the Rockaway Theatre Company’s production of “Gypsy” opening July 18 and running for three weekends (plus a Thursday). Not being much of a theater person, but having seen “Gypsy” revivals on Broadway, I am still surprised when a song pops up at rehearsal that I’m familiar with. The most famous is "Everything's Coming up Roses" – with the memorable and overwhelming Ethel Merman voice belting it out. So I’m sitting at rehearsal when up pops this famous song to close Act 1. And Louisa Boyaggi, playing the lead – Rose - the Ethel Merman role - just lets it all go and we’re all sitting there in awe,  just wowed. And everyone suddenly breaks into spontaneous applause when she is done. And this is freak’n rehearsal in front of about 20 people – who have been involved in the play. Jeez, Louise(a), I got goose bumps. Still do when I think about it.

I’m learning lots of new theater words, like, “blocking.” I have a tiny part but had to be there to be “blocked” – how I enter the scene, where I stand in relation to others, etc. This process takes a lot of time and thought and working out kinks. When we see a play as a finished product we don’t appreciate the “choreography” that goes into making sure people don’t end up crashing into each other as they enter or exit a scene or as they careen around the stage. My turn came. Director Susan Corning gave me instructions. I play Mr. Goldstone, a booking agent for a chain of theaters. My job is to be led in, put into a chair and sit and look stone-faced while people sing, dance and hand me stuff. I don’t have to say a thing. My wife wants me to play Mr. Goldstone at home.

Wikipedia says: “Gypsy has been referred to as the greatest American musical by numerous critics and writers, among them Ben Brantley ("what may be the greatest of all American musicals...") and Frank Rich. Rich wrote that " Gypsy is nothing if not Broadway's own brassy, unlikely answer to 'King Lear.'" Theater critic Clive Barnes wrote that " 'Gypsy' is one of the best of musicals..." and described the character of Rose as "one of the few truly complex characters in the American musical.... It is frequently considered one of the crowning achievements of the mid-20th century's conventional musical theatre art form, often called the "book musical".

The 1959 play, starring Ethel Merman as “Rose”, the penultimate stage mom (with revivals starring amongst others, Angela Landsbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters, Patti Lupone with Rosalind Russell in the film version) is based on the memoirs of her daughter, Gypsy Rose Lee, who turned striptease into an art form (played in the RTC production by one if our faves, Kim Simek – I can’t wait to attend the striptease rehearsals). Just look at that list above of actresses playing Rose, one of the giant female leads in Broadway history. There were even rumors that Streisand was going to star in another film version, but that never came about. And here in Rockaway we have our own Louisa Boyaggi who can stand toe to toe with many of them.

Gypsy Preview at Fort Tilden Art Fair, June 29

The Wave reported there will be previews of Gypsy plus more RTC activities as part of this gala event, maybe some even outdoors.  I’ll leave it to our fearless leader, Susan Jasper, to elaborate in an email she sent: “The National Park Service has decided to make Fort Tilden more accessible to the public. They, along with the Rockaway Artists Alliance have secured a grant from the Museum of Modern Art for a big fair and Arts show on the grounds of Fort Tilden where our Theater is located and we have been invited to participate. There will be food vendors, entertainment, etc. for the public to enjoy. We will be doing mini- shows in our theater that day. We would like to present the “Brotherhood of Man” number from “How to Succeed…”.  I need to know who can join us for this very important gig. If you have plans – BREAK THEM.  You are all essential!  If you are … in a foreign country or foreign state…COME HOME IMMEDIATELY.”  Susan wouldn’t hesitate to call an astronaut down from space. And he would come. Or wouldn’t dare not to.

-NOTE - We will be reprising some of our performances at the theater in Fort Tilden on Sunday, June 29th throughout the day as that day is the opening of a major summer arts initiative at Fort Tilden with a free concert by Pattie Smith, who owns a home in Rockaway.

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Hey, wanna come see a play?

Memo from the RTC: Time to Start Mooning Over Buffalo

Published in The Wave, May 2, 2014

Memo from the RTC: Time to Start Mooning Over Buffalo

By Norm Scott

I walked into a rehearsal of the Rockaway Theatre Company’s upcoming production of the very funny “Moon Over Buffalo,” a play that I, a theater ignoramus, had never heard of before even though Carol Burnett got rave reviews when it opened on Broadway 20 years ago. There on the stage were Kim Simek and Steve Ryan doing a love scene – take after take after take. Directors Leslie Ross and Alan Rosenfeld called for a more passionate kiss – maybe a little more groping and  tangling of limbs. “Let’s try it again.” Boy, this acting stuff sure looks like fun – from a distance. Watching the details of choreographing a comic love scene – which lasts at most maybe a minute - is like taking a cold shower.

When I heard the RTC was doing this play by Ken Ludwig, the only non-musical production the RTC is doing this year, I rolled my eyes. A play set backstage at a seedy theater in Buffalo? In 1953? Give me a break. Steve Ryan urged me to read the play. “It is very funny,” he told me. And so I did. And so it is. I laughed out loud a number of times – getting funny looks from my wife.

The basic story is that a famous and aging acting couple on the downside of their careers, Charlotte and George Hay,  are doing reparatory theater in Buffalo. One day they do “Cyrano” and the next Noel Coward’s “Private Lives.” Even I know enough about the theater to get the message that these plays can’t be more different – and if somehow an actor should get confused about which play is being performed – say due to an over abundance of vodka – well, you get the idea – and should be breaking into a smile – if not laughing out loud – at the thought of the comic implications.

But there is so much more. A deaf and daffy mother, a daughter trying to juggle two boyfriends, a pregnant mistress, lots of mistaken identities and comic lines flying around like a swarm of bees. The RTC did another play by Ludwig, “Lend Me a Tenor,” which was also very funny.

The lead role of Charlotte is played by one of our favorite RTC stalwarts, Jodee Timpone, who is well-known to the PS 114 community for the theater work she did with the children. I did a short video interview with Jodee before rehearsal the other day. Watch it and try to stay away from the play. https://vimeo.com/93136473

Ludwig plays call for lots of doors (there are 5) and exquisite timing for them to work. (One of my task in constructing the set was to install all the door knobs – so if a door doesn’t work correctly blame me). The RTC crew always make it happen the way it should, so I am looking forward to the opening on May 9 followed by other 8PM performances on May 10, 16, 17, 23 and 24. Sunday matinees: May 11, 18 at 2PM, with the May 11 Mother’s Day special $10 bargain – a great treat for moms.

Norm in The Wave: High Stakes Testing Opt-Out Movement Takes Off

Published Friday, April 18, 2014 www.rockawave.com


High Stakes Testing Opt-Out Movement Takes Off
By Norm Scott

Stories of numerous parents in the city and around the state who have begun a revolt against high stakes testing by having their children refuse to take the tests have recently broken into the mainstream media. Even school principals in Brooklyn and Manhattan have led post-ELA test rallies outside their schools over the impropriety of many of the tests based on the common core curriculum. Quite an achievement by organized groups of parents and progressive teachers who just a year ago were being deemed “oddballs.”

Yes, we are in the midst of the high stakes testing season and the education wars keep heating up between the real reformers who want to make schools inviting spaces for children, teachers and parents and the corporate style ed deformers who are trying to turn the nations schools into a mini-me of the corporate model. High stakes tests and the common core nationally imposed curriculum have become the battle ground. The corporate mentality feeds on “data” and with few economic resources to fight against the billions on the other side, real reformers are using the opt-out movement as a “deny them the data” campaign.

The more than a decade old battle has morphed as many parents of younger children have seen how the focus on tests damage their children psychologically and educationally as schools focus more and more time on test prep. Once the tests are over (in a few weeks) everyone breathes a sigh of relief. The change of atmosphere in schools is palpable. Trips, projects, more interesting curriculum become more common. But there is also a cost as the sense of the school year being over is felt in early May. Teachers start disappearing to be sent to other schools to mark the exams, the results of which are not known until the summer, thus becoming useless as a tool for the teachers to use to improve their current students’ learning.

A word of explanation. I am not talking about removing standardized tests from the equation, but to de-emphasize them in the use as a one snapshot a year of a child’s learning to make judgments about them, their schools and their teachers. And I am not talking about the kinds of tests high school kids take to get into colleges where there can be intense pressure. I am talking about subjecting 8-year olds to the same kinds of pressure we used to reserve for 17-year olds high school kids (and increasingly people are thinking we should not be doing that to them either.)

A few years ago I was part of a group of teachers and parents who founded ChangeTheStakes.org (CTS) to inform parents around the city of the impact high stakes testing was having on their childrens’ education. CTS has put out a series of materials to support parents who want to opt their children out the tests by addressing issues of whether their child will be promoted or get into the middle school of their choice if they don’t take the test (new rules protect these children from retaliatory actions). Also on the agenda has been is what the children will be doing while the others are taking the test. Some school systems require those children to “sit and stare” in the same classrooms – do nothing. There has been a revolt against those policies with calls on schools to provide meaningful activities.

There is still time to opt out of this year’s math tests. If you are a potential opt-out parent you can contact CTS at changethestakes@gmail.com or check out the website.

Teachers are also beginning to take a stand. Some NYC teachers at the Earth School on the Lower East Side have formed a group called “Teachers of Conscience” and have refused to give the tests. teachersofconscience.wordpress.com.

Teacher asks for help for research project at Channel View
Were you a resident of the Rockaways during WW II, or served in WW II? Would you consider being interviewed about your experiences? We are seeking individuals to share their memories of life during WW II. Channel View School for Research’s 8th grade students are exploring life during wartime and the impact it had on the Rockaway residents. We are also investigating the imprint Fort Tilden has left on the peninsula and are petitioning the National Park Service to consider why it is worth preserving. Please contact Annette Malloy at (718)634-1970, or AMalloy@schools.nyc.gov if you are interested.

Norm in The Wave: A New Educational Landscape

A New Educational Landscape
By Norm Scott

My major problem in writing about education in this space recently? EIO – Education Information Overload. So many education issues, so little time – and space in this column to cover them. The most obvious change in the educational landscape has been a new mayor and chancellor, the Bill de Blasio/Carmen Farina team. Farina held just about every type job in her 40 plus years in the system. The most impressive? Spending a major chunk of her career actually teaching before starting her rise, thus giving heart to experienced teachers who have been denigrated by corporate education reformers (actually education deformers) who have declared the teaching profession dead over the past 12 years. Deformers have pushed the line you can substitute for experience with people with 6 weeks training. You know, get a little training, spend a few years so you can declare yourself an “expert” in education and go into educational leadership or policy. One of Farina’s first acts? Declaring that to become a principal one must be in the system for seven years. That alone issues a signal to educators that the Mickey Mouse games of the BloomKleinCott years may be over.

But let’s not leap onto the Farina bandwagon until we see some signs that she is about action not just words. Take our local Rockaway PS 106 scandal revealed in the – I have to gag before I write it – NY Post a few weeks ago. Farina sent in people to check it out and since then, nothing. Local educators who have been in touch are waiting to see what happens to Principal Marcella Sills and her protector, District 27 Superintendent Michelle Lloyd-Bey, who has been a constant presence in District 27 supporting every initiative of the Bloomberg years with gusto, from the closing of Far Rockaway HS on. If Lloyd-Bey and Sills are standing in September that will send a strong “same-old, same-old” message.

There are so many stories out there of incompetent and even cruel administrators, many of them graduates of the principal training Leadership Academy set up by former Chancellor Joel Klein. (Sills is a graduate.) It will take a lot of housecleaning to bring in people who know how to run a school and treat parents, teachers and students with respect. I’m in “wait and see” mode.

A couple of issues have risen to the surface. The common core, national standards imposed by the Obama administration tied to using test results to rate teachers, an end run around tenure. Open warfare has broken out about these standards. Many parents and teachers around NY State are in open revolt. The useless Board of Regents and the equally decrepit State Education Department have made so many errors around this issue they were forced to hold off on implementation. Early in the year there were celebratory articles in The Wave over the reappointment of our own Geraldine Chapey as a Regent. Talk about useless. Maybe it’s time to actually hold an election to replace a process that puts control of education into the hands of corrupt Albany politicians who choose the Regents.

People on the left opposed the common core/national curriculum for numerous reasons: increased testing, taking away local rights, the lack of real educator input, the knife to the throat implementation, are just a few. One of my reasons to oppose is based on who is pushing it and why – I’ll get into the weeds in a future column.

The corporate deformers, who are making billions on this initiative were never worried about the left. But suddenly the right wing woke up as to what was going on. If you look back over the first 4 years of the Obama administration you never heard Republicans, who savage Obama on just about everything, say one negative word on his education initiatives, especially the anti-teacher focused Race To The Top. Democrats like our slug of a Governor, Cuomo, have also been cheerleaders. But suddenly, the tea party wing and people like Glenn Beck have woken up to exactly what a national curriculum means. Southern states may no longer teach that the South won the Civil War or that dinosaurs used to hang out at the home sapiens camp sites looking for scraps. Now there is a national right wing movement to oppose the federal interference in state rights’ control of education. This has put liberals and the left - or “progressives” in a quandary. Some feel they must support the common core just because of the right wing assault. People in my wing are battling over whether to build alliances with the tea party on this issue. I tend toward the “alliance” wing. I just can’t wait to rally together with Glenn Beckians, which by the way may be happening on May 17 at a planned rally at the headquarters of Pearson, the billion dollar company cleaning up on the common core initiatives.

Norm blogs all too often at ednotesonline.org

Published in print and online Feb. 14, 2014: www.rockawave.com

Norm in The Wave: Three Weeks of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Published January 31, 2014

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Three Weeks of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

By Norm Scott

It’s been a strange three weeks, beginning with the Sunday after New Years Day with a decision to get a quick workout at the gym. Resolution: be more health conscious. A good friend’s health failed over the last year leading to his recent death. At the same time his wife came down with a life-threatening illness (which she is still fighting), a double whammy that has shaken many of us to the core: two of the most vibrant people we know, retired teachers still active on many political fronts, their family struck by the equivalent of a meteor. Only one year ago they held a party to celebrate their 70^th birthdays.

That first Sunday in January was the memorial celebrating a wonderful personal and politically active life, especially in education. He even ran for Congress as a liberal in Staten Island. Expecting to stand for three hours taping the event, a little time at the gym certainly couldn’t hurt. It had rained that morning but it didn’t seem so cold. Boy was I wrong – the dreaded black ice (as many others found out that morning). I didn’t get past the top step before finding myself sprawled out, my back hitting the edges of the brick steps. I staggered into the house, downed a few Advil, found an ice pack. Knowing full well the real agony would come over the next few days, I decided to go. And I’m so glad I was able to attend one of the most moving memorials I’ve seen, film it, and even get to join other speakers saying a few words in his honor. But by the time we got home around 8 PM my I could barely walk. More painkillers and a heating pad that simulates a wet heat hydrocollator gave some relief as we watched the season opening of Downton Abbey. I was definitely more miserable than Lady Mary.

By Tuesday things were worse. My doctor is in Manhattan. I couldn’t bear the subway and it was the coldest day in 20 years – maybe my lifetime. So driving it was - when I finally got seated in the car I was able to bear the pain. Dr. Mark said I landed on my kidney and suggested a CT* scan (my first ever) to check for internal bleeding and gave me valium to relax the muscles. I practically screamed as I lay down in that CT tray and the technician had to help me get out. Kidneys OK, the next day we drove a friend to the doctor which took most of the day. I decided “no more driving” and began the RHP cure - rest, heat and pills. All my education activist activities came to a halt.

By Monday things were getting better when Susan Jasper of the Rockaway Theatre Company called: they need men for the chorus of the upcoming March production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” rehearsal is that night. Oh my aching back, but if you know Susan, like everyone knows Susan, she doesn’t recognize the word “no”. First thing when I got to the theater: Director John Galleace told me and another guy to walk across the stage, notice an extremely pretty young lady and ogle her. My back immediately felt better. Why didn’t my doctor prescribe ogling pretty girls in the first place instead of CT scans? By Friday I was practically scampering across the stage with the rest of the guys in the chorus, most of whom are a third my age. When everyone else’s legs and arms went one way, mine went the other. My aim: try to hide in the back.

Tuesday it snowed and my back passed the shoveling test digging out for a planned few days in Manhattan on the coldest days since the ice age. Dressed in many layers we saw three shows, a movie and had two fabulous dinners. We retuned on Friday for my wife’s very important Mah Jongg game where she got all excited winning a buck and a quarter, which didn’t even cover the cost of one half-fare subway ride. I spent the afternoon tracking down flowers and a card for her birthday. Friday night I survived another rehearsal at the RTC without being laughed out of the theater. My strategy of hiding behind the other guys was working. Sunday, three weeks after the fall, I was back in the gym doing my unique no-sweat workout, thus ending three weeks of some bad and some good. The ugly part will be clear if you happen to see me dancing when RTC’s “How to Succeed…” opens in March. Look for me behind the biggest guys.

Norm still blogs about education every day at ednotesonline.org, though you wouldn’t know it from reading this column. 


 *The radiation doses of CT scans (a series of X-ray images from multiple angles) are 100 to 1,000 times higher than conventional X-rays.... A recent NY times op ed We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer.
If I know this and based on the fact the doctor did a test on my uring that showed no blood cells I might have/should have not taken that CT scan. The attitude of "better be safe than sorry" does prevail and the idea of coming back to the doctor if I had problems in that cold certainly was a factor. Though doctors know the radiation story they too are under a "better be safe than sorry" view as they will face some flack if they don't err on the side of caution.

I know people who have had many CT scans. Be careful out there folks.