Thousands join march over school class sizes....

....read a recent headline.

No. This is not in New York City.

Or anywhere in the USA...
.....where teacher unions are more concerned with collaboration on schemes like merit pay and modifying teacher tenure (see one Randi Weingarten speech to the National Press Club on Monday Nov. 17 - we'll be posting these pearls of wisdom later) than in organizing to reduce class size. (Watch them tell us how this is not going to happen with all those billions reserved for bailouts.)

Fred Klonsky had some thoughts about what union leaders are thinking when Ken Swanson, head of the Illinois Education Association referred to Michelle Rhee as "an agent of change" rather than a union buster. "Shouldn't our union leadership be able to tell the difference," Fred asks?

Ok, give up? Why it was in Ireland where they marched to protest budget cuts.

Posted at Norms Notes.

Bowling for Bailouts: Billions for Corps, Nada for Class Size

This article is part of the Ed Notes handout at the Delegate Assembly today and will also appear in The Wave this Friday. Click on the image to read the entire leaflet. Print a copy and share with the people in your school.

“Lobbyists Swarming the Treasury for a helping of the Bailout Pie,” read a headline in a today's NY Times. Where have the education lobbyists been for the past quarter century?

The last time I bought an American car was… hmmm, let’s see now, was it 1980? Nooo. Maybe 1970. No, not then either. My 1970 Toyota Corona Mark II was my first car – $2,700, and that was the top of the line. It didn’t have giant fins like American cars and the doorknobs didn’t fall off the day you got it home.

The American car industry got its ass kicked in the 1970’s as the gas lines got longer (remember those?) by cheaper, more fuel efficient cars coming in from Japan that worked better. What did they do about it? Oh my! Here we go again.

Thomas Friedman in the NY Times has no sympathy for the American auto industry. “Instead of focusing on making money by innovating around fuel efficiency, productivity and design, G.M. threw away too much energy into lobbying and maneuvering to protect its gas guzzlers.” The usual corporate shenanigans where they worry more about buying politicians who will do their bidding than trying to run an efficient company.

Of course, we hear “blame the union” stories. Oh, my all those health care and pension costs G.M. has to pay that are making them hemorrhage $2 billion a month. “Please, spare me the alligator tears,” Friedman writes. “Why did G.M. refuse to lift a finger to support a national health care program…?” Friedman goes on to show how Honda and Toyota are still flourishing building cars in the US and Canada. Are the guys running things incompetent or what? They’re asking for so many billions, my calculator exploded trying to add them up. But, hey, we’re in a financial crisis, aren’t we? So let’s dump more money down the well.

Enough about cars and economics. Let’s talk education. For 25 years since the business-financed “A Nation at Risk” was released, we’ve been told we are in an educational crisis. Whenever we bring up the concept that reducing class size is the key, we have been told it is too expensive. People like NYC Chancellor Joel Klein have said that we first need to guarantee a competent teacher in every classroom. How about assuring a competent manager of car companies? Or banks? (We just handed another $25 billion, making it a total of $150 billion, over to AIG.)

The numbers are astounding when we compare them to what it would cost to assure every kid in America the same class size and educational services enjoyed by kids in the most elite private schools. Another generation of opportunity wasted as we will now see educational budgets cut to the bone while the financial and auto industry and who knows what else will go bowling or bailouts from the very same politicians that have denied the poorest kids the services they need to truly close the achievement gap.

The so-called education quick change artists running so many large school systems – Michael Bloomberg/Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee in DC, Paul Vallas in New Orleans (after messing up Chicago and Philly) – have been telling us we can’t change education by throwing cash at the problem but by changing the culture of the schools. All in the name of closing the achievement gap, which has been termed the civil rights struggle of our times.

Read this to mean – get rid of teachers who won’t be bamboozled into thinking they will close the achievement gap just by working 12-hour days, doing all the dumb assessments, making an astounding number of dumb charts that will look good for visitors but have nothing to do with teaching and learning – with 25% more kids in their class than schools in the suburbs have even though they are dealing with the poorest kids with the most difficult academic problems. Find a kiddie corps of people with zero educational background to train to be principals in a business oriented manner. Hand over a major chunk of schools built and supported by public funding to charter schools run by private interests – the biggest land giveaway since the land rushes in the Midwest in the 19th century.

And oh yeah, and turn urban school systems over to dictatorial mayors while suburban (white) parents actually get to vote for school boards and school budgets. Here’s the real civil rights struggle of our times – give parents in our city the same rights 95% of the parents around the nation have by removing politics from education and getting rid of mayoral control.

Where’s the UFT/AFT?
Reading the “Bailouts” article, you might be wondering where the UFT and AFT has been on this issue. Since Albert Shanker signed onto A Nation at Risk in 1983, our union at the city and national level has tried to accommodate the business community by signing on to so many of their schemes (see merit pay, rating teaches based on test scores, Etc.) This has diverted us from the fight for full funding for a generation. The obscenity of following this policy is all the more obvious today when our schools will be cut while such enormous sums are given away. You can read more about the origins of this policy under Shanker in the review I co-wrote of Kahlenberg’s “Albert Shanker: Tough Liberal” for New Politics. We called it “Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon.” I have copies with me. Just ask on the way out.

Class Size Rises While ATRs Fester and Get Fired

So the NYCDOE "overhires" Teaching Fellows, leaving 130 waiting to be fired on Dec. 5 while failing to use $153 million in state funds to reduce class size. In one third of schools receiving class size reduction funds, class sizes actually increased.

And then there is that other batch of tenured ATRs being used as daily subs instead of using them to cut class size. Comptroller Bill Thompson says he will do an audit. But so what? BloomKlein just ignore the law.

From the Class Size Matter website:
http://www.classsizematters.org/reportmisusing153million.html

NYCDOE Office of Accountability Grows...and Grows...

....AND GROWS (Updated 10:30 AM)

Is Tweed a kudzu mutant?
What the face of EEP ed "reform" really looks like

What's another million that could have gone to the classroom? The "No Excusers" always find excuses not to cut class size. I echo Leonie. Gee, they're going to train 25 teachers to differentiate instruction - WITH 30 KIDS? And of course, teachers who somehow can't manage this will be vilified. Put any private school teacher where people pay $30 grand a year into this situation and check the results. (Talk to some of them and they roll their eyes.)

Want to beat the odds? Try JUST A FEW SCHOOLS with drastically lower class size. That so many apologists for EEP teacher bashing keep raising red herrings is a clear sign that they know we will that is the most effective way to reduce all kinds of gaps – well, maybe not the Grand Canyon, which will be closed before the Tweed credibility gap.

Tweed sure is reducing bureaucracy
Oh, and if you want to apply for a job in the Accountability Office, see the jobs available below. Wouldn't you just love to be a "Summative Assessments Product Manager"?


From Leonie Haimson to NYC EDNEWS Listserve:

Just as we’re struggling with overcrowded classes with insufficient resources, and a large number of District family advocates laid off, the Accountability office is continues to grow like a cancer that won’t stop.

Remember how there was supposedly a hiring freeze at Tweed to save money?

Newest finding: there’s a new ten person team at DOE, costing a million dollars, headed by a “director of knowledge management” in the Accountability office. Meanwhile, Jim Liebman is still heading the office while ostensibly full time teaching at Columbia. Wonder if he’s getting paid twice.

One of the projects they’re in charge of will supposedly “show teachers at 25 middle schools how to tailor their lessons for each student.”

How about beginning by cutting their class sizes? With classes of 30 or more, and a teaching load of up to 150 students, it’s a bit difficult to individualize instruction for every student.

Of course, that’s advice they refuse to listen to even though it doesn’t cost them a penny.

$1M SCHOOL 'THINK' LINK
By YOAV GONEN, Education Reporter, NY Post
September 11, 2008

The Department of Education is assembling a million-dollar team charged with getting schools to learn from one another how best to educate their students, The Post has learned.

The 10-person team will have a budget of more than $1 million and will be headed by a "director of knowledge management." The initiative will create a computerized "warehouse" that will allow schools to share ideas about organization, scheduling and other aspects of educating kids.

"It's just spreading out knowledge or learning or innovation horizontally from almost 1,500 schools to almost 1,500 other schools," said Jim Liebman, the DOE's chief of accountability. While much of the information-sharing will be done online, schools struggling with similar problems will also form real-life networks.

Education officials are planning to link poorly performing schools with a "beat-the-odds" school that has overcome similar hurdles, and they've started two related two-year pilot programs this year. One will help about 20 schools learn how to pinpoint concepts students are struggling with, and the other will show teachers at 25 middle schools how to tailor their lessons for each student.

Need a job?

Chancellor's Accountability Initiative

Analyst; Research and Policy Support (5182) $46,004 +
NEW YORK, NY, US. - 04/25/2008

Community District Assistant (4821) : $29,804+
New York, NY, US. - 11/05/2007

Community Superintendent (5344) Up to $170,000 Salary
NEW YORK, NY, US. - 06/09/2008

Data Analyst-Consultant (4504) $250.00 - $300.00 per day
NEW YORK, NY, US. - 09/14/2007
__

Deputy Director; Knowledge Management (5412) Salary: $95,000+
NEW YORK, NY, US. - 07/18/2008

Director of School Quality (5373) up to $170,000 Salary Commensurate with Experience
NEW YORK, NY, US. - 07/28/2008

Director; Knowledge Management (5389) ; Salary: $111,000 - $170,000
NEW YORK, NY, US. - 07/09/2008

Implementation Manager, KM Initiatives (5552) $65,120+
NEW YORK, NY, US. - 08/29/2008

Instructional Design Manager, KM Educator Support (5553) $65,120 +
NEW YORK, NY, US. - 08/29/2008

KM Domain Leader for Leadership & Organizational Management (5507) $111,000 - $170,000
NEW YORK, NY, US. - 08/11/2008

KM Domain Leader for Literacy; English Language Arts; & Social Studies (5508) $111,000 - $170,000
NEW YORK, NY, US. - 08/11/2008

KM Domain Leader for Mathematics & Science (5506) $111,000 - $170,000
NEW YORK, NY, US. - 08/08/2008

Senior Achievement Facilitator (2880) Up to $170,000
NEW YORK, NY, US. - 06/19/2008

Senior Analyst; Assessment (5346) $63,301+
NEW YORK, NY, US. - 06/11/2008

Summative Assessments Product Manager (5232) $81,000


UPDATE from Leonie:

More evidence of the unreliability of the school grades in the NY Times today.
Remember IS 89, that as one of the best schools in the country-- the only NYC middle school to do so-- and yet received an "D" ?
Or the "F" given to PS 35 in Staten Island, PS 35 - where more than 95% of students met standards in math and ELA?
Well, PS 8, most visited school in Brooklyn by top DOE officials -- who have repeatedly lauded it as one of the most improved schools in the entire city -- got an "F" in this year's report cards.
Experts say that year to year changes in average test scores at the school level are 34 to 80 percent random. And yet school grades are based 85% on these test scores.
I wrote an oped for the Daily News on this issue last year -- posted here:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/11/07/2007-11-07_why_parents__teachers_should_reject_new_.html

The school grades were devised by Jim Liebman, a man with no expertise in education, testing or statistics, and who is still running the doE Accountability office full time despite also being full time Columbia law prof. He is spending hundreds of millions a year, and the office is still growing in leaps and bounds, despite budget cuts to other areas, including school supplies, special ed transportation, and many District family advocates who have been laid off. Instead, it is the entire Accountability office that deserves an "F" and should be cut, and Liebman and his other top staff should be sent back to school where they belong -- to take a basic course in statistics.

In Brooklyn, Low Grade for a School of Successes

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/education/12school.html?hp

Bailing Out the Fannies & Freddies

Well what can you say about today's bailouts? Didn't McCain say the other day there is TOO MUCH REGULATION? Which planet is he living on? My generation had to read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" in high school, a book about abuses in the meat industry that one shouldn't read before lunch, especially a school lunch. With the corporate de-reg agenda pushed by Republican/business we are heading to the point where I would boil all my meat for 24 hours - which means we will all be eating flanken which my mother used to cook for 2 weeks. Even Ebola was afraid to go near it.

My usual rant on class size
How many times to we have to be told that reducing class size is not cost effective? Skoolboy at 'Wonkette's place raised the issue recently and we hear a few things repeated when class size comes up:

• quality teachers
• what the research shows

and the dreaded

• COST

Matthew Tabor left a comment that included these points:

As a parent who pays the taxes to fund the class size reduction I'm as skeptical as the next person about CSR becoming a full employment act for the UFT. At the same time I know that Tweed has its own agenda, and isn’t always interested in acknowledging the grains of truth that may be contained in its opponents’ claims.

and

...the truth probably lies in the middle. Yet none of the actors in the debate seem interested in finding that middle. Just scoring points against each other, once again leaving parents in the middle.

So hear, hear for real research, like the City appears to be undertaking with the ED Hirsch curriculum in ten schools starting this fall. Let’s stop shouting at each other, get some facts on the table and then have a real debate about the cost implications. [Read his entire comment here.]

I guess I get ticked off how class size costs are always put on the table as employment for the UFT while ignoring the larger issue of how much money is wasted in this society in the corporate welfare system. Hey, then try it in a right to work state if you are all so hot and bothered by the union.

Let's try some research, not that I think we need it but we want to make people comfortable.
So let's say we hire scads of teachers - I mean take the 10 most failing schools and literally double the staffs. Inundate the schools with services no matter what the cost. Just throw cash at them. Hey, rename the schools "Fannie and Freddie" if that will make you feel better.
Say you get some teacher clunkers in the batch. So what? Find something useful they can do in the school if their strongest suit is not teaching.

What can it cost to do this with 10 schools? I even suggested this to Chris Cerf at a Manhattan Institute meeting to try it with one school when he said it's been proven throwing cash at the problem doesn't solve it. I said, "You NEVER throw cash. Why not try it with Tilden HS in Brooklyn instead of closing it"?

Skoolboy in his post threw down the gauntlet challenging the DOE to do an experiment on reducing class size. I left this comment:

I'm glad to see you revisit the class size issue but I'm afraid your gauntlet will lie in the gutter untouched by the hands of a Tweed official.

The NYC DOE had many opportunities over the last 6 years to do a study of class size. For instance, instead of closing so many large schools, why didn't they try to reduce class size in one or two schools as a control and compare the impact to other schools?

The answer is class size reduction is not part of the fabric of the ed reform movement. It is much easier - and cheaper - to blame ed failures on lack of quality teaching.

When there's a need for more police, firemen, soldiers, doctors - is the quality issue raised? We know that "qualifications" in the medical field are never related to performance and hospitals in need scrounge for doctors where they can get them as long as they are certified. In these fields people actually die if mistakes are made.

The quality teacher before class size issue is a red herring to support an ideological, not an educational solution, that accomplishes the political goals of privatizing many elements of the public schools while diminishing the impact teacher unions might have. (I say might because of the role the AFT/UFT plays in supporting so much of this ideology.)

BloomKlein Model in the Land of Oz

I received an email from Trevor Cobbold, a parent activist, who is based in Canberra, Australia's capital and is involved with Save Our Schools Canberra.

He wrote an article for the Canberra Times addressing the situation in New York in terms of school reporting:

Ideology win in school reporting

The Rudd Government's ''education revolution'' is looking more and more like an extension of the Howard government's school policies. All the same elements are there choice and competition, reliance on markets, and now public reporting of school results.

The model for the new school reporting scheme comes direct from New York. Julia Gillard has been enthusing about the New York system ever since her audience with the New York schools chancellor, Joe Klein. She says she is ''inspired'' and ''impressed'' by Klein's model.

If Gillard had looked more closely, she would have seen major flaws.

The New York system produces unreliable and misleading comparisons of school performance and student progress. It is incoherent, can be used to produce league table,fails to compare like with like and is statistically flawed.

He goes on to cite Diane Ravitch and Jennifer Jennings (Eduwonkette) and concludes with:

Australia and Finland are two of the highest-achieving countries in the world in school outcomes according to the PISA surveys conducted by the OECD. Neither country got there by reporting school results.

Why the Rudd Government is choosing to emulate the reporting policies of much lower-performing countries such as the United States and United Kingdom can be explained only as a triumph of ideology over evidence.

Read the entire piece here.

Trevor also sent this blog site for reference.

http://www.futuredforum.blogspot.com/

I have disagreements on an article he wrote on class size at Save Our Schools where he talks about cost effectiveness and teacher quality as excuses not to jump into class size reduction across the board. While praising the STAR project, he also cites research on teacher quality, which no one seems to be able to define:

There is evidence that improving teacher quality contributes more to increasing student outcomes than class size reductions. Recent studies by Doug Harris and David Plank at Michigan State University and by Dylan Wiliam, Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, show larger improvements from increasing teacher ability and skills than by class size reductions.

Too many researchers have agendas based on where their funding is coming from and the TQ people have a lot more money than advocates for class size. I find it interesting that the "quality" issue is not raised when it comes to putting more police on the street to reduce crime or firemen on the job to cut down fires or doctors in emergency rooms.

I have to ask him what he thinks about all those Aussies Klein hired (at up to $1000 a day) to run around schools in NYC as consultants.


Personal Aussie Note
We visited Canberra in the early 90's to attend the Scherr scion's Bar Mitzvah. We had to smuggle in the yarmulkes - apparently it's tough to get them engraved in Canberra but I did manage to get them through customs despite the yarmulke sniffing dogs. The Scherrs, now living in Perth/Freemantle, stayed with us for 3 weeks last summer (and we're still talking.) Their son Sam is now 30 and a founding member of Capital City, a rock band in Australia. Dan Scherr, a native of the TenEyk housing project in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, keeps me informed of ed events in Western Australia.

Class Size and Charter Schools in NYC

Here are comments from 2 posts by Leonie Haimson on the NYCEducation News listserve.

Here is [my question/comment on charter schools] – posted on the NY times website yesterday. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/answers-about-charter-schools/

(You can easily look up the funding your own school received last year on the DOE website, divide by the enrollment and check if your school got more or less than the $11,000 per student received by NYC charter schools last year.)

Question: Mr. Merriman says that charter schools are seriously hampered by receiving less funding, but according to DOE budget documents they received more than $11,000 per student this past year, and are projected to receive $12,500 per student next.

Meanwhile, the school that my child attends receives about $7400 per student. Mr. Merriman also argues that charter schools don’t receive any funding for facilities — but why should they need to when the administration gives them prime real estate in our existing public school buildings, at the same time taking away valuable classroom and cluster spaces from the students at the existing public school?

Moreover, as mentioned above, charter schools have the most valuable advantage of all — the ability to cap enrollment and class size at any level they want.

My question is this: who pays for custodial services, lunch, and transportation services at charter schools that share buildings with traditional public schools? Does the DOE charge the charter schools extra for this, or is this also provided free of charge?

thanks for the info in advance,

— Posted by leonie haimson

Harvard reclaims No. 1 from Princeton in latest U.S. News list and guess why?

Excerpt: So how did Harvard edge past its Ivy League rival? A comparison of last year's numbers points to one category where it moved ahead of Princeton — average class size. Harvard reports the percentage of students in classes under 20 students rose from 69% to 75% since last year's report, while the percentage in classes bigger than 50 fell from 13% to 9%.

Asked whether Harvard had made a particular effort to reduce class sizes, Mitchell said: "We have worked and will continue to work very hard to enhance the academic experience for undergraduate students." Since 2000, he said, Harvard has added 86 freshman seminars (which have fewer than 12 students), and more than 100 tenure-track faculty, while its student body size has stayed about the same.

So Harvard reduces class size for the highest achieving students in the country, including creating more seminars with fewer than 12 students; but somehow this administration can claim – with a straight face – that it doesn’t matter if some of our most disadvantaged NYC public school students continue to suffer in classes of 34.

How’s that for a double standard?

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iUunRem0s3dCln7_7jnuHGcfNg9wD92N7QVO7

Leonie Haimson

Which Comes First- Class Size Reduction or Teacher Quality?

There has been no more persistent theme of Ed Notes throughout our 12 years that teacher quality or effectiveness or whatever they are calling it today is affected by the number of children in a class. Of course to the "outcome" oriented gang, the sole judge is the test score, ignoring about 75% of what teachers do, from nurturing the whole child to scrubbing dirty desks.

Here's a nice video at AfterEd TV with Leonie Haimson, the NY Sun's Elizabeth Green, Columbia's Doug Ready (make sure to check out Leonie's comment if you hit the link.)

They talk about the study in California that showed that despite having to hire 3 times as many teachers due to class size reduction, the "quality" of all these teachers hired was about the same. But what do they mean by quality? Again it comes down to scores and I don't believe that is the relevant factor. Maybe we should use "number of kids that contact the teacher over a 5 year period after they graduate." It's as good a judge as any other factor. Lots more with Ready making some great points. I was at his presentation at Columbia a few months ago and his research is dynamite -it blows up the regressive ed reformers who push gimmicks like merit pay and ignore the class size issue.

The Education Sector's Biased Survey

Check that apple for worms

Last week the Education Sector held a pat themselves on the back event ( Teacher Voice: How Teachers See the Teacher Quality Debate) in Washington where they supposedly heard the voice of the classroom teacher as they released the results of their survey of a thousand teachers.

Our posting on the event led to Andrew Rotherham calling us a crazy and challenging us to read the report and listen to the event. The EdNotes gnomes have been busy poring over the audio and the report itself and we'll be posting some analysis over a period of time. Here is some preliminary stuff.

A few days before the event, the Justice Not Tests group here in NYC that has been organizing to get schools to reject merit pay held a conference call with one of the three teachers appearing at the event to review some of the ideas the Ed Sector is pushing. We didn't expect the actual voices of the teachers to get much play at the event and from what we hear they didn't. (I still haven't listened but I'm stocking up on liquor to get me through the 2 hours.)

Our view of the entire exercise is that it is insidious - designed to use the natural range of opinions of teachers to make the case that teachers ultimately want the kinds of reforms being pushed by the Ed Sector and to win over those that don't – designed to show that many teachers really want market-based concepts but their voices are being stifled by their unions.

Note the title of title of the report: Waiting to be Won Over.

Won over to what? Why the Ed Sector point of view of course.

Teacher quality is important, class size - nil
In Ed Sectorville, teacher quality matters more than lower class size. Of course they never asked the obvious question as to where teachers stand on this issue. I posted a follow-up piece on this issue here.

The focus on removing teachers is practically pathological. Here is a result based on one of the tenets of the Ed Sector type reforms:

Still, according to these survey results, most unions do not appear to be engaged in efforts to deal with ineffective teachers. Only 17 percent of teachers say that the union in their district “leads efforts to identify ineffective teachers and retrain them.”

Somehow, "good" unions - like their buddies in the UFT - are associated with taking part in removing teachers rather than defending them.

As a whole, teachers today are what political analysts might describe as “in play”and waiting to be won over by one side or another. Despite frustrations with schools, school districts, their unions, and a number of aspects of the job in general, teachers are not sold on any one reform agenda. They want change but are a skeptical audience. For instance, nearly half of teachers surveyed say that they personally know a teacher who is ineffective and should not be in the classroom. But, although teachers want something done about low-performing colleagues, they are leery of proposals to substantially change how teachers can be dismissed. [my bold]

So nearly half the teachers know of a teacher who should not be in the classroom. I've met as many bad principals as bad teachers. Did they ask how many know of a principal who should not be running a school? Who helpless teachers have to endure? Who have some political angels protecting them? Who cultivate bad teachers as spies? Next time try asking what teachers think about having them elect their principals. (It's done in many places in Europe.)

One of the things we discussed during our conference call was the idea of removing bad teachers. I asked all the participants in the call what percentage of people they have worked with they consider bad teachers. We all agreed on a rough number - about 5%. This included tenured and untenured. We agreed that many are still there because administrators either find them useful or just don't have the will to remove them. 5% - and this is a consistent figure I get from most teachers – becomes the end-all and be-all of the entire Ed Sector reform movement. I claim that no matter what you do there will be 5% "bad"- in all professions (maybe more in the Ed pundit field). Where are the calls to remove bad doctors, who can actually kill people, another question that should have been asked as a control? I bet more than 50% will say they know of at least one bad doctor. And lawyers? And education pundits who did not teach?

The amount of focus on removing bad teachers as the solution to the problems in education is dangerous. Look at the south in right to work states where the lack of a union and no tenure would seem to make it easy to remove anyone. Education is no better and in fact worse.

Three in four public school teachers (76 percent) agree that, “Too many veteran teachers who are burned out stay because they do not want to walk away from the benefits and service time they have accrued.” And this view resonates with majorities of teachers whether they are newcomers to the profession (80 percent) or veterans (68 percent).

What does "too many" mean? Of course the follow-up can become – let's cut these benefits to "improve" education? But there was no joy in Ed Sectorville on this point:

Educators and policymakers frequently discuss ways to attract and retain high-quality teachers. One idea getting attention these days is to swap some of the benefits teachers enjoy later in their careers for more money in the early years. The survey finds teachers are protective of their pensions, and the vast majority of teachers overall do not like the idea of raising starting salaries in exchange for fewer retirement benefits.

Class size not a factor in Ed Sectorville
On attracting and retaining teachers, there are seven options. There is no hint of attracting and retaining people with low class sizes, which many of my private school teacher friends point to as a reason never to teach in a public school. Many teachers who leave cite class size as the single most important factor. Hey! Why bring up a topic that is off bounds in your world of ed reform?

The only mention of class size:
Fifty-five percent of teachers overall say the union in their district “negotiates to keep class size down in the district.”

On how unions can improve teaching? Again, lowering class size was not an option.

There was even less joy in Ed Sectorville at this result:

Most teachers see the teachers union as vital to their profession. When asked how they think of teachers unions or associations, 54 percent of teachers responded that they are “absolutely essential.” This is an increase of 8 percentage points from 46 percent in 2003.
...most teachers do not think that union presence hinders the reputation of the profession. Just 21 percent of teachers agree that, “Teachers would have more prestige if collective bargaining and lifetime tenure were eliminated.”

We see this movement towards unions as a result of the imposition of they very market-based concepts the Ed Sector is pushing. I bet the figures on NYC would be considerably higher on the essential need for a union except for the fact that many teachers feel the UFT lines up way too often on the Ed Sector side of the fence.

I can't wait for the 2011 biased survey. A sign I need to get a life.

The questions, results and audio can be downloaded from the Education Sector. Or email me and I'll send you the pdfs.

Rotherham Poses Teacher Quality vs, Class Size - Again

Andy is at it again over at Eduwonk.

Small classes are not a silver bullet and research pretty clearly indicates that it's a much weaker -- and more expensive -- strategy than some others, like improving teacher effectiveness. That's especially true where there are a dearth of qualified applicants for teaching jobs so reducing class size merely exacerbates quality problems. The research and evidence base here is pretty clear and it is what it is, so contra what a lot of the advocates it's not something that you get to agree or disagree with any more than you can agree or disagree with gravity. The bottom line is that teacher quality matters more.

I followed Andy's advice (when he called me crazy) and checked and rechecked that teacher survey looking for a question that would ask teachers how they viewed the teacher quality vs. class size reduction. Maybe I missed - it didn't seem to be asked. One would think, given the nature of this post, that question would be fundamental. But he is not really interested in what teachers think about this issue because the answer is obvious. That teacher quality across the board (except maybe the 5% edge) would improve across the board.

And it would be nice to see links to the research that "proves" teacher quality matters more than class size reduction.

It is also interesting that the cost argument is used when it comes to class size reduction, the real reason teacher quality is the hot new thing in rejecting calls for a serious investment in education equal to say, Bear Sterns bailouts or wars.

A recent presentation at Columbia U about the Tennessee study on class size impact also took some aspects of teacher quality into account and came up with the opposite conclusion.

The "research" on teacher quality - based on what factors, by the way - as is the teacher survey – it's about a political agenda, not education reform. How disappointing to the Education Sector that the onslaught going on against teachers due to the "reforms" being pushed by them has resulted in teachers feeling a greater need for a union.

We'll expound more on how the survey was designed to seek out making inroads into the teaching corps to push this agenda.

AERAPLANING - Don' Need No Stinkin' Research

...to tell me lower class sizes benefit kids.

On Tuesday, after De-Kleining Joel Klein, I headed over to the Sheraton with Sol Stern to pick up a press pass (I left out in that post that Sol was mad at me for repeating something he said in an email) for AERA (American Education Research Association) which supposedly has 16,000 people attending. I was thinking of hanging around for Diane Ravitch's presentation later that afternoon, but headed for a movie and then home to do get in some late-afternoon gardening. Reading Eduwonkette's report on Diane's presentation made me sorry I didn't stay. I wonder if 'Wonkette was wearing her mask? (How about an Eduwonkette scavenger hunt?)

Thursday, I bit the bullet and headed for AERA for the entire day, carrying the 500 page AERA guide, Kahlenberg's "Tough Liberal" and Podair's book on the '68 strike to entertain myself between workshops. As a quasi educator/blogger/reporter/ed commentator I was interested in this mouthful: Disseminating Education Research Through Electronic Media: Advice from E-Journalists.

The participants were: ed commentators and bloggers Alexander Russo (This Week in Education), Andrew Rotherham (the Ed Sector and Eduwonk), the more traditional educational journalist, Jennifer Medina from the NY Times, and Richard Colvin of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Eduwonkette asked me to cover this for her and I sent stuff over for her AERA quotes of the day. There wasn't a food fight between Rotherham and Russo – that will go on at their blogs. Is the day coming when you can throw a pie in someone's face through the computer screen?

I was interested in raising some issues related to the coverage of events in NYC, especially by the NY Times which is viewed by so many as biased for BloomKlein but wasn't sure how to raise it. I've actually seen a slightly more nuanced tone in Medina's reporting but there's so much the Times leaves uncovered. I was surprised when she said there were 11 education reporters at the Times.

You can read about the serious aspects of the session in terms of researchers and journalists (the E and traditional kind) at their blogs.
Russo reports on the session here.
Rotherham's account is here.
Moderator Paul Allen Baker's report here.

I wanted to get a few points in regarding the absence of the classroom teacher voice and how class size is addressed in terms of research.

So I made the statement about not needing stinkin' research in the context of the argument the anti-class size reduction people make that we can't lower class size until we have a quality teacher available and that resources would be better spent in recruiting and training better teachers. That reporters repeat that all the time. Less kids = lift all teachers quality is so obvious.

I said, how come the same questions are not raised about the medical field: we don't refuse to put more doctors and nurses in hospitals because some of them will not be high quality. (Did you know how many practicing doctors have not passed their certification boards?) The legal field – do we ban the guys who can't run fast enough to catch up to the ambulance? The financial field?Hoo , ha! Judges? Politicians? The ones who have the most number of affairs are the lowest quality. Or the highest. Or better yet, take NYC education journalists. Do you see a difference in quality? If you can't keep up with Elizabeth Green, you can't write a story.

Of course this comparison was totally ignored. This is about education, not the rest of the world.

How come the focus on teacher quality to the exclusion of other areas of society. Actually, I got a lot of the answers at Lois Weiner's session on Saturday about the world-wide neo-liberal attack on teachers and their unions (see Lois at the April 15 Teachers Unite forum) but will post on that soon.

What ed journalist do is narrow-casting. Like there was a UFT/coalition rally to restore budget cuts while down the street the fed was coming up with $200 billion and no one made the ironic connection.

Or report that class size research is inconclusive and ignore the fact that parents spend #30,000 for private school and parents in rich areas like Scarsdale pay so much for small class sizes.

I got a rather heated response from Richard Colvin (did I detect a note of hostility when I ran into him in the press room later?), who said just because people in Scarsdale drive a Mercedes, it doesn't mean we all have to when cheaper alternatives are available - that the best uses of resources in resource-starved urban schools may not be to reduce class size. He didn't quite say that the better use was to recruit quality teachers, but he may have been thinking it.

I didn't get a chance to say it but I guess urban kids never get to ride in the Mercedes unless they do the drug thing. What I would have said: How about giving kids in a few places the Mercedes just to see if it works. Like, instead of closing down one high school and loading it up with multiple small schools (sure, that's certainly more cost effective), try doubling the staff for a few years and see what impact that had. Why don't class size researchers suggest that as a test? Or ed reporters? Like I said, narrow casting.

Rotherham pointed to the USA Today article on class size on Monday which made an interesting observation:

Small classes work for children, but that's less because of how teachers teach than because of what students feel they can do: Get more face time with their teacher, for instance, or work in small groups with classmates... researchers closely watched students' behaviors in 10-second intervals throughout class periods and found that in smaller classes in both elementary and high school, students stayed more focused and misbehaved less. They also had more direct interactions with teachers and worked more in small groups rather than by themselves.

Duhhh! That's the point. Reducing class size from, say 30 to 20 may not lead to drastic change in teaching styles (again, what exactly are they doing in the private schools and the rich suburban districts with their lower class size - it would have been interesting if reporters and researchers reported on that) but why is that the crucial thing at this point. The USA article stated, "teachers didn't necessarily take advantage of the smaller classes, often teaching as if in front of a larger group." Of course idiot anti-teacher propagandists who claim to be teachers turn that statement into this: "The solution is not to reduce class size and thus have to hire more bad teachers, but to keep classes big, within reason, and to focus more on hiring and training good teachers."

Typical sophistry from the right wing - turning "teachers who still teach to large groups" into "bad" teachers. Like if it were a given that class sizes would be under 20, teachers would be trained to work in that environment instead of training to manage a herd.

The other point I made was how the voices of classroom teachers, the actual people who have to implement all this crap, never seem to be heard in these debates. I could almost hear a collective regurgitation at the mention of "classroom teachers." Rotherham's comment was that his survey of 1000 teachers show they are not much aware of policy issues. So what? Guess he isn't reading some of amazing NYC Teacher blogs out there.

Medina said something about 6 people talking to each other. Maybe so, but each of these 6 people work in a school and talk to people at the job. So for each blogger and their commenters, there is a multiplier effect.

But most egregiously, she said she'd love to talk to teachers but they don't want to talk to the press. Hmmm! Maybe not about an expose at their school, but about policy? I know so many people who won't keep their mouths shut. If there are any teachers out there who have gotten a request from an ed reporter at the NY Times for an opinion on DOE policy, please let me know.

I bet some in this crowd, as much of society, gag at the idea of hearing teacher voices. Read Frank McCourt's wonderful Teacher Man for a view of how low down society looks at teachers. He spent 30 years in the classroom but it took writing a best seller to be heard.

At least he taught high school. When I told the crowd I taught elementary school, you might as well have read the bubbles over their heads saying, "Those that can do, those that can't teach, especially elementary school."

Quality Teachers vs. Small Class Size

All you need to control this crowd is a quality teacher.
The so-called Education reformers always pose demands for lower class sizes in terms of, "We will need so many more teachers and so many of them will be of lower quality, the impact of lower class sizes will be negated."

Of course, they always start off with the usual (say this out loud with your lips pursed):

Teacher quality is the single most important determiner of a child's education.

Ugh! Like either you're a quality teacher or you're not. No recognition of the impact on quality by conditions like class size, kids with problems, etc.

Unfortunately, the leadership of the UFT/AFT axis and most politicians have bought into this, which naturally leads to the "let's blame the teacher" and "It's all about professional development" and ultimately to a deskilling of teachers -- let's make teaching teacher proof - and what better way that teach to tests?

Two articles are worth taking a look at, both based on studies in England. "How Much Do Smaller Class Sizes Improve Teaching" here and Ed Week's "Teaching Quality Matters" .

There will always be a bell curve in any job.
Maybe we should not hold elections until we are sure all politicians are superior?
Or fight fires until all firemen are tops?
Close hospitals till all doctors are high quality?
Close down the legal system unless you can get Clarence Darrow?
Quality Lawyers? Quality Judges? - give me a break?
Or not put police on the street until we measure their effectiveness? They get credit in NYC for cutting crime by putting lots of police (did they measure their quality beforehand?) on the street.
So how come everyone is focused on quality teachers?
Because it's an excuse to do ed reform on the cheap.

Many teachers do struggle with things like control due to large classes. Many are well intentioned but the job is overwhelming. And there are superior people who can handle it all but we will never get all teachers to be superior - not with merit pay or no matter how much they are paid.

What strikes me is that the cost is always raised by people who didn't blink when enormous money appeared miraculously to fight a war. Imagine how demands for the same amount would be met as throwing good money away if a war on education neglect were declared.

A parent wrote on the nyceducation listserve:

I am not an educator, but a parent. I have had three children go through the public education system from Pre-K to High School. I can attest on a personal level smaller classes provide a better learning environment. The article cites the teachers we have as all being superior, or according to them we should get rid of the less than superior teachers and have the superior teachers teach to classes of 50 or 100. Since they are so good they can do that. Rather, in our current system, we have some superior, some good and some mediocre teachers. So baring the idea that we can just do away with the mediocre teachers, then wouldn't it be better for a mediocre teacher to be teaching to a class of 20 rather than 30. Maybe the less than perfect teacher would find the lower class size conducive to improving their teaching as they could then spend more time with each child. This seems to me like common sense, something sadly lacking in much of this ongoing debate.
Another parent followed with:

The other thing is that large classes cause much higher rates of attrition – so that you end up getting less experienced and less able teachers as a result and most high-needs, overcrowded schools. 50% of teachers said that large classes caused them to leave the profession – and in national surveys they say the best incentive program to attract them to and keep them working at high-needs schools would be small classes.

Raging Debates on KIPP and Class Size...

.... took place during the week off.

The KIPP/charter school discussion, with a KIPP teacher taking part, came about spontaneously at NYC Educator in this post from Reality Based Educator and has already inspired 56 comments.

The class size debate is part of a series of posts at Eduwonkette, where her able assistant Skoolboy, Leonie Haimson and a cast of thousands deep massaged the class size issue.

Check out 2 of the push-button issues on today's ed/pol pallet.

An Ugly Thread on the UFT and Class Size

“To its [the UFT's] credit, the city is already taking some smart steps. Its small "lead teacher" program and its new performance pay initiative, both developed with the United Federation of Teachers, will provide bigger paychecks and new career paths to successful teachers in poor schools. That will give those teachers new reasons to stay in the Bronx and Brooklyn rather than move out to Westchester or Long Island.”

Robert Gordon in the Daily News praising the UFT after trashing parents who support class size reduction.

Of course to me it all falls into place. It is no accident Gordon lauded the UFT/company union which will be supporting his wife's boss for president.

Gordon is married to Hillary Clinton's domestic advisor.

Robert Gordon attacks class size and praises the UFT - he full well knows they have much higher priorities than class size.

I've always said the UFT was playing a game on class size.

The AFT and NYSUT already endorsed Clinton and the UFT will follow. Randi will become pres of the AFT and use that platform to try to elect Clinton if she's still in the game.

Klein could become Sect of Ed in a Clinton admin.

Oh, the ties that bind!

Follow the thread below between Leonie and Patrick Sullivan from the NYC Education News listserve.

Leonie Haimson posts:

Hilary Clinton’s domestic policy director, Catherine Brown, is married to Robert Gordon, yes, Robert Gordon, the infamous designer of FSF and current attack dog of the DOE against the “obsession” with class size reduction, as he put it in his oped in the Daily News yesterday.

(For more on the education staff and advisers of the various candidates see: http://thisweekineducation.wikispaces.com/campaign08)

If you want to hear about how Brown and Gordon met and fell in love, here’s a revealing account of his quick-witted charm from the NY Observer:

http://www.nyobserver.com/node/39650

“Ms. Brown, a slender, blond outdoorsy type with a warm smile, mentioned that she’d just bought a ski condo in Park City, Utah. “That’s very grown-up of you,” Mr. Gordon said. “I didn’t realize you were that mature.”

“Is it that obvious?” Ms. Brown quipped.
“It’s a good thing,” he said. “Being immature at this stage of life.”

Patrick Sullivan comments:
I met with Gordon toward the end of his (full time) tenure at DOE.

When I voted against Fair Student Funding at the May PEP, Klein asked me to talk to Robert Gordon.

I told him I was coming in and wanted an explanation as to why two thirds of D4 ( East Harlem) schools were getting hold harmless and why 7 of 8 schools on the SURR/SINI list would get nothing as well.

Despite the fact that he had the question in advance, he said, "gee, looks like the schools in D4 are smaller and maybe that's why". Sticking the schools with a radically different budgeting methodology without understanding or concern for the impact on the ground is irresponsible, to say the least. For many of these people, our schools and our kids are one giant sandbox to try out the latest academic fad. And no need to test on one District, just go crazy and do it to 1.1 million kids. Gordon represents the worst of that bunch. Now he's safely in his think tank.

That day I kept asking what they would offer these schools, the only answer I ever got from Tweed was "accountability"

Leonie follows with:

But he’s not safely in his think tank; he’s still working as an adviser to DOE, writing attacks on class size in the Daily News (which I’m sure he was paid handsomely for), distorting the research by referring to those “giants” in the field of education like McKinsey and the Parthenon Group, and married to Hilary Clinton’s top policy adviser.

No doubt his inside the Beltway perspective will risk poisoning who ever becomes the next president.

And what is he? Just another arrogant lawyer.

Perhaps his being married to Clinton’s top policy adviser led him to express his animus on parents instead of the UFT.

Parent Josh Karan responded to Gordon with a letter to the Daily News:
Robert Gordon's pitting of improving the teaching corps against reduction of class size is like asking which eye you would rather have -- your right or your left. Like stereoscopic vision, they work together. Reducing class size will help even the best teachers reach their students more directly, and will help retain teachers, who find the workload impossible. In middle or high school --- where Mr. Gordon wrongfully claims there is no evidence for the efficacy of reduced class size -- how can a teacher review & critique even weekly writing assignments for a
hundred and fifty students, the number commonly taught by NYC teachers? Just giving a paltry 10 minutes to each would require 5 hours every day outside the classroom in addition to regular lesson planning. I am sure that Mr. Gordon does not put in those kind of hours, nor do the teachers in elite schools with classes of 15, where intensive development of students ability to write is indeed possible because teachers work with so many fewer students. He is right,
however, that providing equal education would cost a boatload, which is why the rich & powerful who don't pay their fair share of taxes reserve such education for their own. As a society, the consequence is well stated in the bumper sticker "If you think education is
expensive, try ignorance".

Josh Karan
District 6 Washington Heights
The district which initiated the Campaign For Fiscal Equity lawsuit

UFT and NYCDOE Announce Agreement on Class size

EdNotesOnline News (EDNON) is reporting that the UFT and the Department of Education have come to an historic agreement on class size "that will be equitable for all, while at the same time putting some well-deserved money into the pockets of teachers," said a UFT spokesperson. "After trying the class size reduction petition gimmick (twice), lots of public relations and all other methods other than trying to negotiate lower class sizes in the contract, something we are philosophically opposed to doing, we have decided to at least use the current spirit of collaboration with Joel Klein and Mayor Bloomberg to make some money.

While not reducing class size across the board, there will be some reductions in certain areas.

Teachers will be allowed to voluntarily accept up to 10 extra children above the UFT contract in each of their classes as long as the number does not climb above 60. For each of those extra children, the teacher will be paid a dollar bonus a day as long as they show up at school.

An average class under the new agreement.

"This will give teachers an incentive to get the kids to come school," said a spokesperson for Tweed. "Those dollars can add up."

Rumors that an alternative plan has been floated to use the gross weight of all the children in the class to calculate bonuses have not been confirmed.

What of teachers who choose not to participate in the program?

"They are losers," said the DOE spokesperson. "They are scum. Clearly people who are not competent to teach. We feel the ability to teach a class of 60 effortlessly is a sign of minimum competency for any of our teachers and the message will go out hard and fast: be ready for a visit from our new multi-million dollar attorneys."

The UFT will hold a candlelight vigil to celebrate the new agreement.

Sullivan and Liebman Jousting Match at PEP

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

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

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

Pensions, Merit Pay, Class Size and Collaboration....

...UFT Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Updated 10/26 pm

James Eterno has written a piece today for the ICE blog on the winners and losers in the pension and merit pay plan, apples and oranges that have been merged by the UFT leaders (call it an appor.) One of the little tidbits James points to is that the original agreement in the horrendous 2005 contract where little bombs were set on pensions and merit pay that meant teachers voted for the future 2007 agreement when that passed the 2005 contract:

With regard to the long term recommendations the 2005 Fact Finders made subject to adequate CFE funding, the parties shall establish a Labor Management Committee to discuss the following issues: a)bonuses, including housing bonuses, for shortage license areas; b) a pilot project for school-wide based performance bonuses for sustained growth in student achievement c) salary differentials at the MA-5 through MA-7 levels; and d) a program for the reduction of class sizes in all grades and divisions. If the parties agree on the terms of any or all of these issues, they may be implemented by the Board using whatever funds may be identified.

Note provision d on class size reduction the one item ignored. Are you surprised? We have claimed all along on issues such as high stakes tests and class size, watch what the UFT does, not what it says. The merit pay plan endorses high stakes testing and the entire agreement shows where the UFT really stands on class size. Actions certainly do speak louder than words.

TJC's Peter Lamphere and Megan Behrent have written a piece on the merit pay issue which I posted at Norm's Notes here.

Eduwonkette is running a series this week on performance pay from her usual research-based perspective. And 8 year Teach For America's (see, some do stay) Ms Frizzle seems willing to try it based on the fact there's trust in her school. Schools where there's none should probably skip jumping in. Of course, there's no accounting for the high percentage of lunatic, power-hungry principals. In my continuing saga - "The Play's The Thing" posted a few days ago, all incidents are exaggerations based on the reality of my school. And that principal would be one of the better ones today.

On Collaboration
The NY Teacher is covered with the word "collaborate." Now, we haev used that word to brand UFT Leaders as co-conspirators with BloomKlein, Eli Broad, etc in their attacks on public education adn unions. So it nice for them to affirm what we have been saying all along, branding them as today's version of Vichy. And the fact that Vichyssoise will be added to the menu at Executive Board meetings affirms this point.

People have been telling us they are a bit tired of the constant use of the word. So we have decided to assist our buddies at the NY Teacher in an effort to make the paper more interesting.

Synonyms for collaborate:

act as a team coact cofunction collude come together concert concur conspire

cooperate coproduce fraternize get together go partners hook on hook up interface join forces join together participate pool resources team up tie in

work in partnership work together work with

Add one more: sellout

Robots Are Us

While it may appear that writing and organizing in the UFT is my major activity, since I retired 5 years ago I've been even more involved in the NYC robotics community through volunteer activities with NYCFIRST, the local incarnation of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology) which puts on various tournaments for kids from age 6-high school all over the world.

My focus has been the FIRST LEGO League, where teams of kids from age 9-14 build and program robots out of LEGO materials. That makes for an interesting competition with 4th/5th graders competing on the same playing level as 9th graders. (And they do pretty well.) There are over 8000 teams world wide.


A team from a public elementary school at the tournament at Brooklyn Tech last year. The teacher has left after 2 years to start a program at a private school, citing the high class sizes as a reason. (See, I can combine robotics and ed politics.)

We are just completing the registration procedure for this year and at this point have 180 NYC teams from all 5 boroughs, mostly from public schools. We have grown so much that we are running events in each borough in December. All of these events are mostly run by high school kids from the senior robotics teams at Brooklyn Tech, Stuyvesant, Aviation, Lehman and Staten Island Tech, along with their great teacher/coaches.

The top 80 teams will go on to the citywide at Riverside State Park at the end of January. The winning team there may have an opportunity to go to Atlanta for the World Festival, which includes teams from all over the world. I went last year and had a blast. One of the interesting highlights was seeing teams from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordon and Israel interact. And teams from different Chinas - Hong Kong, Taiwan, Shanghai.

A bunch of us from NYC may be going to Japan at the end of April to assist with the Asian Open tournament. Konichiwa.

This Saturday we are holding a kickoff event at Polytechnic U. in downtown Brooklyn from 9-1. Stop by if you are in the area. Or come on down to one of the events in December and think about getting your school involved for the future. You can check it all out at my robotics blog .

Ten reasons to distrust the new accountability system

... now appearing on the NYC Public School Parents Blog

Compiled by Leonie Haimson who also sent along the following back to school greeting to her NYC Education News Listserv:

Welcome back to all of you! I hope you had a great summer and enjoyed the break. I wish I had great news for you, but we are still waiting for a word from the State Education Dept. about whether NYC’s class size reduction proposal will be approved or rejected, even though the final decision was supposed to be announced by Aug. 15.

But the news is not all bad. As mentioned in yesterday’s Times, the state is still arguing with the city over the adequacy of its submission, which failed on at least two grounds: the so-called “Fair student funding” system by which the city allocated the additional state funds did not properly distribute resources to our lowest-performing and overcrowded schools, as the law required; and when it came to class size, there was no “there” there – no real class size reduction plan in the numerous pieces of paper submitted by the city .

Instead, in an exceedingly clumsy fashion, the DOE merely attempted to shoe-horn its existing initiatives– including interim assessments, radical decentralization, and the so-called “fair student funding” system -- into its “Contract for Excellence” proposal.

To their credit, State Education officials heeded the criticisms made by many of you -- the 900 plus parents, teachers, and stakeholders who came out to testify in the middle of the summer – with less than two weeks notice – as well as the letter we faxed to SED with over 200 signatures of parent leaders and advocates, asking them to withhold funding until and unless DOE came up with a real class size plan.

Rather than significantly smaller classes, then, the new school year begins with the DOE’s main priorities intact: a seriously flawed accountability system that is likely to unfairly punish our lowest-performing and most overcrowded schools and put our neediest students at even more risk. (For more on this, see below.)

There will also be a new series of interim standardized tests at all schools, given five to six times a year, which are supposed to help lead to “differentiated instruction” but which will simply take more valuable time – and joy -- out of learning.

If the administration were really interested in creating conditions that would lead to differentiated instruction, they would of course reduce class size – which is a precondition to making individualized learning and teaching possible. Instead, the DOE insists on stubbornly ignoring the research, the priorities of parents and teachers, and now, even the new state law that required them to come up with an actual class size reduction plan, and our classes remain the largest in the state by far.

Rather than bend to the will of the state, the city appears to be stubbornly putting at risk $250 million of valuable CFE funds by refusing to revamp its proposal. Let’s hope the State stands firm.

2. Meanwhile, please let me know as soon what your child’s class sizes are this year – and especially if they are unusually large and/or went up since last year. You should also let me know if your child has a smaller class size – as DOE claims many schools have done with the extra state funds, without disclosing in which schools smaller classes are supposed to occur and what actual reductions are supposed to result.

Also, please let me know if a new school in your building has caused class sizes to swell – as the DOE explicitly promised that it would not allow this to occur in any school this year, as opposed to years past.

Since schools are now free to do pretty much whatever they want in terms of class size – and everything else – except for exceeding the union contractual limits, we need to keep an even closer eye on them than ever before. (Already, I have heard of several cases of schools that are using this new freedom to close at lunch on Wed. for more professional development – which may or may not be legal.)

In case you need to refresh yourself as to the UFT limits and other class size rules, see my website here:

http://www.classsizematters.org/classsizerulesfunding2007-8.html

3. Finally, check out Erin Einhorn’s scoop in the Daily News today about how the 2005 test scores were inflated – just in time for Mayor Bloomberg’s re-election. With 85% of every school’s grade based purely on test scores, and every principal in jeopardy of losing his or her job based on these grades, we need to remind ourselves what an in imperfect instrument test scores are, in providing a complete picture of a school’s quality.

Please remember to let me know what your child’s class size was today – whether good or bad -- and please forward this message to every parent who cares.