A Blueprint for Teachers to Take Back Ed Reform

by Seung Ok

One of the main pillars by which bloomberg and all other privateers stand on, is fraudulent statistics. If these non pedagogues can achieve results (which we know are fake), then the average citizen could not care less about whiny teachers, closing schools, and union busting.

Right now, in most parents' and voters' eyes, the conversation about improving schools is mainly coming from those that we know are not pedagogues - all the way from Obama down. They see teachers as another interest group looking out for themselves.

In order for us to win this battle against the attack on public education - we need to expose and over-turn the strategies for these false increases in statistics (test scores, graduation rates, remediation in college rates, credit recovery, efficacy of charter schools).

Secondly, we need to be at the forefront of the conversation demanding a superior education for all public school students - lower class sizes, equitable funding compared to suburban schools, new building contstruction, etc. And for that to happen, we need to make inroads with parent groups and organizations.

Lastly, we need to take back our union- so that our UFT president actually promotes policies benefitting our children instead of self serving politics.

How the same practices that led to the economic crisis are being implemented in our schools

Don't miss Leonie Haimson's very important summary of 2 NY Times articles on the financial mess and how the very same principals are being wrongly applied to the so-called "reform"movement in education. Posted at the NYC Public School Parent blog.

The New Know Nothings

I just heard Jonathan Alter rant against teacher unions on Don Imus while praising Bill Gates as a reformer. Alter joins David Brooks, another education Know Nothing in pushing the Joel Klein/Michelle Rhee/Arne Duncan model of "it's all the teachers and their unions fault" model of school reform. Brooks recently wrote his second column pushing his vacant ideas on education.

What's interesting about these Know Nothings is how they refuse to look at places where the anti-union market based "reforms" have had little impact. Arne Duncan brags about how he fired the teachers at low performing schools. How has the Chicago model worked out? (See my recent column about how PS 225 in Rockaway had most of the teachers dumped out in March 2005 and is now being closed.) As a matter of fact, the refusal to look at the record of Chicago 13 years after mayoral control began and where George Schmidt reports the union has been rendered just about helpless, is a major plank in the Know Nothing platform.

Another plank is the refusal to look at all the right to work states where unions barely exist and how education is working out in those places.

Alter never mentions Gates' recent turn around on his support of small schools, a movement that has decimated and de-stabilized so many schools in New York City. Ooops! Let's try another experiment with no data backing it up. The irony, of course, of all these data kings never using data to judge the validity of their "reforms," would be delicious if it wasn't so destructive.

The rants ignore the significant voices of vocal parents in New York who have actually made a firmer stand against BloomKlein than the UFT.

I put a lot of blame for how this is being played out squarely on the teacher unions, who could of/should of been fighting for the kind of education reforms that would work. But they abandoned that fight a generation ago. We expect people like Gates, Alter, Brooks, Klein, etc. to act the way they do. But when the rank and file have to fight a two-front war, their situation is very bad indeed.

As we full well know, the UFT has barely made a stand at all. I won't go into the gory details. You see, the UFT/AFT wants to play "me too – see, we are also reformers." No, not the kind of reformers who call for low class sizes and offering urban kids the same kind of education wealthy kids get. But merit pay, ending union work rules, support for the testing mantra (though making squeaks about how much they are opposed.)

The tragedy is that our union leaders are not Know Nothings. They actually know something about how schools work but have decided to play the political game with the union attackers. "We'll give you some of what you want now and sell it to the members while leaving you loop-holes to get the rest. We will then put on a big act for the members about how awful this is but shrug our shoulders with a 'what can we do' attitude." The key issue: hold on to power.

They want to be a partner with the business community and have a seat at the table. Except for the extreme right wing union attackers, the reformers are perfectly happy to have a UFT/AFT on board as their intermediaries in selling their platform from the inside. The union leaders will get dues no matter what happens to the teachers. And most importantly, they will remain in power.

If a reform movement within the UFT ever got started and attracted masses of rank and filers, watch how quickly the gang running the schools line up with Unity Caucus to keep militants away from union power.

Related
Greg Palast had a great post at Huffington which I posted at Norms Notes. Is the real Gates interest to make sure poor kids are educated in a narrow, test-driven school he would never send his own kids to so he can assure enough data entry clerks?

Is Obama Getting Bad Advice on His Appointments?

Joel Klein is being considered for secretary of education, which would make as much sense for our schools as Michael Brown did for disaster relief.

Has Barack Obama forgotten, Michael "Way to go, Brownie" Brown? Brown was that guy from the Arabian Horse Association appointed by President George W. Bush to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brownie, not knowing the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain from the south end of a horse, let New Orleans drown. Bush's response was to give his buddy Brownie a thumbs up.

We thought Obama would go a very different way. You'd think the studious senator from Illinois would avoid repeating the Bush regime's horror show of unqualified appointments, of picking politicos over professionals. But here we go again. Trial balloons lofted in the Washington Post suggest President-elect Obama is about to select Joel Klein as secretary of education. If not Klein, then draft choice No. 2 is Arne Duncan, Obama's backyard basketball buddy in Chicago.

It's not just Klein's and Duncan's empty credentials that scare me: It's the ill philosophy behind the Bush-brand education theories they promote. "Teach-to-the-test" (which goes under such prepackaged teaching brands as "Success for All") forces teachers to limit classroom time to pounding in rote, low-end skills, easily measured on standardized tests. The transparent purpose is to create the future class of worker-drones. Add in some computer training and -- voila! -- millions trained on the cheap to function, not think. Analytical thinking skills, creative skills, questioning skills will be left to the privileged at the Laboratory School and Phillips Andover Academy.

Alphie Kohn has a piece in The Nation which I also posted at Norms Notes.

Beware School 'Reformers'

For Republicans education "reform" typically includes support for vouchers and other forms of privatization. But groups with names like Democrats for Education Reform--along with many mainstream publications--are disconcertingly allied with conservatives in just about every other respect.

Sadly, all but one of the people reportedly being considered for Education secretary are reformers only in this Orwellian sense of the word.

Duncan and Klein, along with virulently antiprogressive DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, are celebrated by politicians and pundits. Darling-Hammond, meanwhile, tends to be the choice of people who understand how children learn. Consider her wry comment that introduces this article: it's impossible to imagine a comparable insight coming from any of the spreadsheet-oriented, pump-up-the-scores "reformers" (or, for that matter, from any previous Education secretary). Darling-Hammond knows how all the talk of "rigor" and "raising the bar" has produced sterile, scripted curriculums that have been imposed disproportionately on children of color. Her viewpoint is that of an educator, not a corporate manager.

Imagine--an educator running the Education Department.

For more research-based pieces, check Leonie Haimson's consistent defense of reforms that will work at the NYC Public Parents blog. Leonie's stake is that she has a child in the NYC schools. In this piece Leonie punches holes in the entire Bill Gates rationale.

No evidence of improved outcomes at NYC's small schools

And of course the work done by Eduwonkette to debunk the Know Nothings. And then there's the ongoing discussion between Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch at Bridging Differences.

You see, the new Know Nothings want to know nothing about all this evidence of opposition that goes way beyond teachers.

Previous Ed Notes articles on another David Brooks column in July.

David Brooks and the Status Quo at the NY Times

Responding to David Brooks

Michael Fiorillo Challenges David Brooks

Back to School Week at The Howler

There is no one with a more sensible approach to education debate over "reform" than Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler. That's because Somerby started teaching 5th grade in Baltimore in 1969. I identify because I started teaching 4th grade in Brooklyn in Feb. 1969 (after a year and a half as an ATR - being used as a sub/handyman in the same school, not a bad way to learn the ropes.)

Elementary school teachers who spend all year and 6 hours a day with the same group of kids, getting so see most parents on a regular basis and being part of the community their kids live in, often have the most insightful perspective on ed reform. Somerby writes on a number of subjects, but his edcuation insights do not get enough attention. I wish he had direct links to the ed stuff.

This week he has a 4 part series (part 4 to come) that focuses on the gushing press about Michelle Rhee.

Jesus rose from the dead in three days—and under Rhee, “test scores soared.” This tale—of Rhee’s miracle cure—is told wherever her cult is sold. Plainly, Jay believes it’s true. At THE HOWLER, we pretty much don’t.

Part 1: http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh112108.shtml
Part 2: http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh112408.shtml
Part 3: http://www.dailyhowler.com/.
(This link will change to http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh112608.shtml) when it goes into the archives
Part 4: To come

One more example of how Howler looks at the ed world.

In a way, you can’t blame Hiatt for that sort of talk; it’s the type of chatter that’s routinely churned by “educational experts.” But Hiatt is being fatuous when he says that “every student can learn, write and do math” (whatever so vague an assurance might mean)—and he builds a straw man when he goes on to say that “their ability to do so should be measured.” (Few oppose sensible measurement.) Duh! The question isn’t whether “every student can learn;” the question is how much various students can learn, at what point in their public schooling. The larger question is what sorts of changes in instructional practice might help these students achieve these goals. Meanwhile, the desire to rush to the question of who’s “at fault” merely extends the problem. But Hiatt makes it clear, at the start of his piece, that fault and blame are driving his vision. He opens with an anecdote designed to show that Rhee is high-minded and good—while an unnamed principal is an uncaring villain. He then cranks out this standard text—although, within the Insider Press, churning such text is real easy:

HIATT: Rhee offers the ultimate in no-excuses leadership. She has taken on one of the worst public school systems in the nation and has pledged to turn it into one of the best within a decade. The usual excuses made for such schools—that they cannot possibly do better because their students are poor, or come from broken families, or haven't been read to, or are surrounded by crime—Rhee does not accept. She has seen such students learn, Rhee explains, in her own classroom in Baltimore in the early 1990s, and in many other schools since.

Just as he drives a framework of “fault” and blame, Hiatt builds a framework in which people are looking for “excuses.” (It can’t be that they’re offering “explanations,” or describing real problems and obstacles.) Of course, it’s easy for pundits to say that we shouldn’t “accept...the usual excuses” about the progress of deserving students who may enter kindergarten far behind their middle-class peers. But those students’ achievements won’t increase just because Hiatt enjoys talking tough—because he churns familiar bromides as a replacement for thought.

The Real Face of Ed Reform in NYC - Oops! or EEPs!

Want to see the real face of the "reform" movement in NYC? Try reading through some of these pieces without gagging. I'm not sure what's worse. What BloomKlein are doing or the happy face the UFT is putting on things.

The Full Horror of the ATR Situation in NYC
There's probably no issue that illustrates the BloomKlein commitment to pushing their ideology over education than the ATR (Absentee Teacher Reserve) situation. The open market concept, which the UFT has signed onto, has created a chaotic situation with every man and woman and school for themselves. Why hire 4000 new teachers when you have a reserve of over 1000 experienced teachers waiting for work? IDEOLOGY! That the UFT concurs - don't get me started.

Start off by reading Jamaica HS chapter leader James Eterno's account on the ICE blog of the conditions at his school, where there are overcrowded classes while Absentee Teacher Reserves are kept out of classrooms. James reviews the wonderful news the mouthpiece of the UFT, the NY Teacher, is reporting on the opening of the schools.

UFT Once Again Joins Happy Talk on School System

The same story is being played out all over the city where ATR's are kept out of classrooms while colleagues teach overcrowded classes.

At Lafayette high school:
There are 18 atrs at Lafayette HS plus 2 counselors and 3 paras w/o regular assignments.

At Tilden HS:
There are over 20+ ATR's at Tilden HS. All teaching duties have been taken away from us. The classes are crowded and an extra class was given to a health teacher on a per session basis. Our office was taken away and made into a book room just to make us feel uncomfortable and the locks were also changed. They told us we could move into another office which already had four teachers in it and was too small too begin with. We keep hearing that we be out of the school by Friday (9/19 and sent to another school as an ATR and ATR's from another school will take our place. Whose brilliant plan is this? And what is the UFT doing about this? They told me to go on the Mass Market Transfer. Brilliant!

A commenter said: These stories are insane.

Yoav Gonen in the NY Post confirms the dire ATR situation.


I can't locate the story about 38 kindergarten kids in a Staten Island classroom. And how about throwing standardized tests at those 5 year olds? Just collateral damage in the EEP reform movement.


It is almost impossible to keep up with the enormous body of work the prolific Leonie Haimson produces. One day, when someone writes the history of the BloomKlein stewardship of the NYC school system, if they don't shrink away in horror, will find some of this stuff incredibly useful. I'm including excerpts from each piece but make sure to click on the links for the full stories at Norm's Notes to get all the gory details.

BRONX SCHOOL CHILDREN 'LOST' IN THE SYSTEM

Congrats to Bronx BP Carrion for speaking the truth. Despite the widespread attempt to make it seem like there were few problems this year, the problems of overcrowding, lack of placements, and poor transportation appear rampant. According to his new report,

“...we have seen that there is a systemic problem in the way that the Department of Education approaches, and plans for the new school year. A systemic problem that has not gone away despite all the changes the Department has undertaken; a problem that if allowed to persist,will continue to leave countless New York families out in the cold, waiting for their children to receive the quality education they have been promised, and deserve."

Regents and State Ed demand real accountability from NYC DOE on Class Size!

Today, the State Education Department and the Regents announced that despite being provided with millions of dollars in additional state aid last year, dollars that should have been used to reduce class size, in nearly 54% of NYC schools, class sizes and/or student-teacher ratio increased. In seventy NYC schools that received $100,000 or more to specifically reduce class size, both class size and student-teacher ratio increased. Those seventy schools alone account for nearly $20 million in wasted funds.

Leonie Haimson Questions Jim Dwyer on F Grade at PS 8

Does this school report card have important information about the school, or is it merely an artifact of an absurd evaluation system?

The latter. In addition to all the other statistical problems – basing 85% of the grade on the results of two high stakes exams, with the gains/losses up to 80% random -- the tests themselves are not “equated” or aligned to make the sort of cross year comparisons that Liebman uses them for.

Check out eduwonkette – actually today’s EdWeek commentator is Aaron Pallas, prof. of sociology at Columbia Univ, named Skoolboy: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/eduwonkette/2008/09/let_the_spin_begin

Common Sense, Rational Education Reform

REVISED & UPDATED

What lies between the Joel Klein/Al Sharpton Education Equality Project (market based, narrow outcome oriented, punish schools and teachers) and the Bigger Bolder approach (schools can't do it alone without significant investment in support services)?

Does "Common Sense Educational Reforms" led by New York based Class Size Matters' Leonie Haimson and Julie Woestehoff's Chicago-based "Parents United for Responsible Education" (PURE) offer a 3rd way? (See the Common Sense blog.)

(Read Leonie Haimson's post at NYC Public School Parents, which fine tunes the CS position.)

Elizabeth Green of the NY Sun reports:

The parents criticize both groups. They dismiss Mr. Klein's as offering only a beefed-up version of President Bush's unpopular No Child Left Behind law. Mr. Klein's prescriptions are "NCLB on steroids," the parents' letter says.

They also reject charter schools, which are embraced by Mr. Klein and his supporters as a means of giving opportunities to poor children. The Common Sense group says charter schools actually further exacerbate income disparities by admitting only children who can do well at their schools and leaving the rest to flounder.

Admission at charter schools is regulated by strict lotteries in New York, but the parents argue that only the savvy students apply to them, and they say that the schools encourage more troubled students to leave.

The parents' statement also criticizes the Broader, Bolder Agenda's argument that schools alone cannot end the achievement gap.

"We cannot and we should not give up on schools being able to make a really transformational differencee in kids' lives," Ms. Haimson said.

Read Green's full story here. See the letter CSER has written to Obama and McCain here (after Green's piece.)


Will CSER become the third person between EEP and BB? (Okay, it's a stretch - Orson Welles forgive me.)

Is this part of a movement for rational educational reform that will unite parents with progressive teachers who have seen their union drift into limbo between competing reform movements? (NYC Educator promoted it as did Ed Notes - I think I signed it.)

The UFT will jump on board - why not? It won't cost them anything but in terms of actually doing something about reform, don't expect much. After all, in addition to the BB, they also signed on to many of the aspects of the EEP - longer days, evaluations of schools based on narrow agendas, various merit pay schemes, charter schools and whatever crap is thrown against the wall and shows signs of sticking. Most of these concepts are criticized by CSER.

Bigger, Bolder does not claim schools cannot be improved at all and also seems to sign on to some of the accountability themes of EEP, though calling for an expansion beyond narrow test scores of how schools are held accountable. Bigger, Bolder's main themes are:

• Continue to pursue school improvement efforts (with a big component being reducing class size.
• Increase investment in developmentally appropriate and high-quality early childhood, pre-school, and kindergarten education.

So it is not clear exactly how different Common Sense is from Bigger, Bolder?

Philissa and Kelly at Gotham Schools called the school wars between EEP and BB a "false choice." Kelly raised the common sense concept:

As a policymaker evaluating schools, it makes no sense to ignore context. Set a high bar for everyone, of course - but recognize that it will take a lot more resources for some schools to achieve that than for others. If you don’t provide those resources - I’m talking small classes, rigorous, proven curriculum, recruitment, development, and retention of the best teachers, and it’s all going to take money - then you’re just setting up schools to fail.

And as a society, it makes no sense to put the whole burden on schools. I will know that our nation really wants to leave no child behind when I see a complete package of funded legislation that takes on health care (physical and mental), housing, environmental justice, early childhood education, and a host of other issues that affect the development and opportunities of our kids. “Our schools are failing,” is nothing but an excuse when the rest is left unaddressed.

To me, it looks like common sense: no excuses schools in a no excuses society.

I believe that most teachers who see the full consequences of how education in urban areas is given short shrift compared to places they send their own children to school do not take an approach to their jobs that things are hopeless. Teachers see real progress in many kids every day and put out their best. The real accountability they feel is to their students.

What they do see is the shame of what could be. What could be if only they didn't have 5 classes with over 30 kids in each, etc. (You know the drill.) There are kids who just don't make progress and they don't know what to do about it in the context of the resources they have at hand. Frustration, yes. But give up? No. The job becomes just too much heavy lifting when you do that. But when you add this market based competitive accountability thing to the equation then a job that was manageable to live with can become oppressive as the years go by.

What many, if not most, teachers who don't leave end up doing is finding ways to get out of doing a full schedule (comp time, dean, etc) or a gig that is less intensive teaching wise - there are a hell of a lot of non-classroom or part-time stuff that could be used to reduce class size. (We'll get into this aspect another time.) Finding teachers who do the blood and guts full schedule teaching for a very long time will be an increasingly rare thing.

My problem with one way accountability - hold teachers, schools, kids responsible while the people who hold the keys to the money escape - is that the fight for proper allocation of resources to close the equality gap between wealthy and poor schools gets lost in distraction over issues like teacher quality and accountability. Spend a fortune on monitoring, weeding out (isn't it cheaper to just find other useful things for people to do if there's a feeling they are not the best teachers), etc. instead of funneling all money into the classroom.

More from Kelly

How could two-way accountability actually work? If a school fails, but other services aren’t in place, schools are underfunded, and so forth, should the school still be held accountable? How could parents and educators in that school hold the government accountable for doing its part?

Let’s move beyond the “false choice” and explore what two-way accountability could look like in practice. Anyone?

I've been wrestling with Kelly's challenge and cannot see how 2-way accountability can work without a mass movement. Such a mass movement can never get moving with a progressive teachers union that bridges the gap between various elements and organizes and mobilizes its membership. That is why I have put a lot of my energies over the past 40 years into trying to spark a movement for progressive change in the UFT (with little success, I might add.) The UFT has bought into one way accountability and only pays lip service to holding political forces accountable - just look at their endorsement list (Pataki and worse.)

Class size is the bell weather issue that defines the separation of quality schools and the work Leonie has done for the past decade has been a focal point in the call for 2 way accountability. She has become one of the most vocal parent leaders in the city and beyond while attracting a lot of support from progressive teachers (as opposed to the UFT which also supports her - but you know the view from the anti-union right wing- they are only interested in class size so they can add members and dues.)

Parents organizations are difficult to sustain as they are mostly in the struggle for the years their kids spend in schools. Can create a movement without allying very strongly with teachers, who unless they are the new "peace corps" temporary teachers, are in it for decades and even if looked at from narrow self-interest, still have enormous incentives to see schools work well? That is why class size is such a unifying issue for all.

Gary Stager in his article in Good Magazine "School Wars" says, "Politicians, billionaires, and mavericks all want to fix public schools. They won’t. Parents will." Okay, I don't agree that parents will - alone. But these points focuses on the lack of accountability when it comes to the funders of the EEP approach are worth closing with:

Traditionally, corporate philanthropy in education consisted of a speaker on career day or sponsorship of a softball team. I’m all for generosity, but I’m also for accountability. And I wonder, to whom are the Gateses and the Broads of the world accountable? They were not elected or even appointed, but their money is changing the ways public schools operate. They may do this for altruistic reasons, but what is a citizen’s recourse if their ideology harms children? And, worse, what happens if a billionaire finally throws up his or her hands and publicly exclaims, “Even I can’t fix the public schools”? Our schools may not be able to survive the sudden cash withdrawal—or the backlash.

One way to navigate this new era of “giving” is by asking a simple question: Would these folks send their own children or grandchildren to their “reinvented” schools? Is a steady diet of memorization, work sheets, and testing the sort of education the children they love receive? Of course not. If affluent children enjoy beautiful campuses, arts programs, interesting literature, modern technology, field trips, carefree recess, and teachers who know them, I suggest that we create such schools for all children. What’s good for the sons and daughters of the billionaires should be good enough the rest of the children, too.

Democrats: All On Board in Attack on Teacher Unions

Revised 8/26, 11:30 pm- for The Wave, School Scope column to be published Friday, Aug. 29.

We've been pointing out that when it comes to the ed reform movement, Democrats have not been all that far away from the Republican agenda. Joel Klein, Joe Williams, Al Sharpton, Cory Booker and the rest of the Educational Equality Project gang are Democratic Party (I won't call them democratic because they are in favor of dictatorship over the schools of poor minority kids while white suburban parents get to vote on school boards and budgets.)

A typical anti-union cartoon

The Bigger, Bolder approach would seem more in line with traditional values of the Party but as Phylissa Cramer and Kelly Vaughan have been pointing out at Gotham Schools, they may not be all that different. Are the EEP and Bigger, Bolder approaches all that far apart? Both call for accountability. But what does that mean? Where is the accountability on the part of politicians and the business community?

Kelly writes:

And as a society, it makes no sense to put the whole burden on schools. I will know that our nation really wants to leave no child behind when I see a complete package of funded legislation that takes on health care (physical and mental), housing, environmental justice, early childhood education, and a host of other issues that affect the development and opportunities of our kids. “Our schools are failing,” is nothing but an excuse when the rest is left unaddressed.

To me, it looks like common sense: no excuses schools in a no excuses society.

Let’s move beyond the “false choice” and explore what two-way accountability could look like in practice. Anyone?

When Randi Weingarten jumps on the one-way accountability bandwagon - "Yes, we do want to be accountable" - we know we are in trouble. I've been asking Randi for a decade, "Accountable for what and to whom?" Listen, I jumped on her from the day she first uttered her support for mayoral control in 2001 when I knew from the Chicago experience that the only answers politicians will have is to blame teachers and their union.

What I want my union leader to say is: We have always been accountable to our children and to our parents and to our principals. But to some federal, state and city government that raises itself above accountability? No way!

So yesterday she had a golden opportunity in her speech at the Democratic convention to make an important point for teachers. Naturally, she failed the test.

Chapter leader Lisa North commented on ICE-mail:

Wow, Randi's speech basically said nothing about education except that public education is important and too must testing is not a good idea. It seemed very weak.

Lisa, I didn't expect anything more. Like did you hear her mention class size and the studies that support it? Did you hear her call for full funding of education instead of wars and bailouts? Did you hear her call them on No Excuses - on their part?

Randi has always tried to play both sides against the middle by bending over backwards to try to show she is a reasonable union leader and "progressive" in a willingness to give up teachers.
To be perfectly fair, she is just following the trail blazed by Al Shanker back in the early 80's when he jumped on board the same bandwagon. (plug- plug - get a pdf of our review of the Kahlenberg book on Shanker.)

But what good as it done the AFT/UFT as they still keep coming under attack? Thus, read yesterday''s Michelle O'Neill report at Ed Week

Union Tensions at DNC

The education event that followed the NEA luncheon showed the growing tensions within the Democratic Party over school reform, and the role of teachers’ unions.

Though it’s no surprise an event sponsored by the Democrats for Education Reform would have a slight anti-union message; many of the speakers at the event took several shots at unions during the press conference announcing the Education Equality Project in June.

Today, the sentiment was strong and persistent at standing-room-only, three-hour forum called Ed Challenge for Change. In fact, some of the big-city mayors who participated predicted that had such a forum been held four years ago, a mere five souls would have showed.

Here at the Denver Art Museum, Democratic mayors from Newark, N.J., Washington D.C., and Denver joined education reform darlings including New York City’s Joel Klein and Washington D.C.’s Michelle Rhee. The group was referred to as the “misfits” of the Democratic Party by DFER's Joe Williams, a nod to their willingness to speak up against the influence of teachers’ unions, which have formed the backbone of the party.

The educators, along with the Rev. Al Sharpton, kicked off the event with a nearly hour-long press conference to tout the event. There, Rhee (who left early to catch a flight home; D.C. schools open on Monday), took the Democrats to task, saying the party is “supposed to be the party that looks out for poor and minority kids,” when that’s not actually happening.

The anti-union sentiment spilled over into policy forums that followed. The fight against the teachers’ unions and other special interests is a “battle at the heart of the Democratic Party,” said Newark Mayor Cory Booker. “As Democrats, we have been wrong on education. It’s time to get right.”

Even former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, who has tried to avoid controversy in his position as the ED in ’08 leader, earned some murmurs from the audience when he said that reformers cannot be “wedded to someone else’s union rules and that politicians, practically speaking, need to work with unions even thought they are “wedded to the past.”

See more reports at Slate and Dana Goldstein at The American Prospect who says:

if ...teachers... embrace the Democrats for Education Reform agenda -- giving up tenure in exchange for higher starting salaries and merit pay tied to student achievement -- the unions will have to get with the program. If they don't, they'll risk becoming irrelevant to their own members.


Unions are already becoming irrlevant (how many vote in elections?) to their own members for the opposite reasons: capitulation to the BloomKlein Educational Equality Project agenda. Unfortunately, Randi Weingarten will not resist the "advice" Dana Goldstein offers and will continue to lead the teacher union movement into oblivion.

Michael Fiorillo Challenges David Brooks

In this post to ICE-mail, Michael Fiorillo (Chapter Leader at Newcomers HS in Queens) takes a crack at today's op ed ("The Biggest Issue") by NY Times columnist David Brooks, who channels the corporate ed reform agenda when he addresses education reform issues. Ed Notes criticized Brooks back in June when he wrote a ridiculous piece supporting the Klein/Sharpton/Rhee vision of ed reform, as did NYC Educator.

Michael ties economic forces to educational ones and ties up the concept of runaway corporations who avoid taxes and high labor costs.

I would add the irony of the Brookses and other ed reformers pointing to teacher union contracts and tenure as the culprit.

Yes, close the achievement gap by all means, but make sure jobs in teaching and other sectors are as low paid as possible by shutting down unions' ability to fight for their members.

I don't have the exact numbers but I remember hearing that only 27% of the jobs in the next decade will require a college degree. The corporate world is rushing to support the market forces ed reform movement to close the achievement gap just enough to provide workers who can operate a cash register.

Thus, when the achievement gap is closed - of course, only when every school is a KIPP school and we rotate a new teacher corps through TFA every 2 years - we will have, as Michael points out, a nation of educated cab drivers.

I can see the day when American college grads are driving cabs - in bangladesh.

Hello All,

This op-ed by Brooks is a well-condensed example of the ideological points that are driving corporate school "reform." According to this model, education drives economic development, and apparently there is no relationship between investment and economic conditions. I would suggest that anyone who believes that education is the primary factor in economic development take a few taxi rides in NYC and get into a conversation with their driver. Ask them about their backgrounds, and you will be astonished at how many highly educated people - engineers, architects,doctors etc. - are driving cabs. However, they still had to immigrate here: why? According to Brooks and his ilk, they and the nations they come from should be prospering. But they're not; they're driving cabs in NYC.

The reason is that, while their levels of educational achievement may be high, in their countries there has been no corresponding level of investment that would supply them with gainful employment. This is what the corporate reform crowd refuses to acknowledge: ironically, these "business model" characters refuse to admit to the relationship between supply (educated workers) and demand (investment in industries and jobs that pay middle-class wages or better). These folks believe - or at least the more ignorant/gullible/opportunistic among them - that education magically translates into improved living standards. Obviously, it's an important factor, and as a teacher I won't let these characters trap me into contending that it isn't. However, we're fooling ourselves if we think that investment patterns - among other factors - are not a major factor influencing economic conditions.

For the past generation-and-a-half, the US has been de-industrializing, allowing domestic production in some industries - basic steel, for example - to collapse, shipping others - auto - overseas or to non-union environments in the US. Along with this de-industrialization has gone the extreme income polarization we experience now. It's entirely predictable, since Bureau of Labor Statistics show the country increasingly polarized between high paying jobs in FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) and poverty-level jobs in services such as retail, restaurants, etc. For a generation, these have essentially been the only two sectors where jobs have grown.

Not so long ago, it was possible to lead a relatively secure life with a high-school diploma and a unionized job in manufacturing or transportation. Those jobs are gone now, and even the income premium that college grads have enjoyed is now declining. As teachers fighting the privatization of the schools, we must throw this back in the faces of these sons-of-bitches. They have the audacity to simultaneously ship the productive capacity of this country overseas- literally in many cases, where they disassemble entire factories and send them to China, Vietnam, etc. - and then blame teachers for the resulting decline in living standards.

I personally think that, with the accelerating collapse of the neoliberal economic model, we will have a opening to make this argument. Let's be ready.

Best,
Michael Fiorillo

Sean Ahern added this comment:
Well said! remember the Coleman report? There was a time, before Ravitch et al brokered the Nation At Risk, when the economic condition of students and their families was broadly acknowledged to be the singe most determining factor in student achievement. That said some accounting should be made: How have we fallen so far? and How may the people regroup? How may we as teachers contribute to this in our schools in conjunction with the students, parents and communities we serve?

Rhee, Klein, Kopp, Feinberg in the land of the KKK...

... and by association, Al Sharpton too, in this incisive post by A Voice over at Chancellor's New Clothes over these speakers at the conservative, and possibly racist, American Enterprise Institute. Irony #1 amongst many: Sharpton's role in the attacks by the black community on the Korean grocers in Brooklyn in the 90's.

Educational Reform Wars

UPDATED:

The recent online debate between Diane Ravitch and her old buddy Chester Finn has drawn attention to the Klein/Rhee/Sharpton/Ed in 08 narrow vision of ed reform (get rid of tenure and all will be well) and the broader, bolder approach of Rothstein/ et al. Ravitch has joined in with the latter.

Check out these posts on the 2 visions of ed reform from Fred Klonsky at Prea Prez here and here.

Klonsky ends with:

To me there is great value of the emergence of these two clearly defined and clearly different visions. Some, even in our own union movement want to straddle the fence. But this will be hard to do. People will be asking,

Which side are you on?

Readers of Ed Notes will note that in our view, the UFT/AFT has not only tried to straddle the fence but has one foot in the Klein camp. How else to judge their actions in Chicago, New York, and now Washington in signing on to many of the narrow vision schemes like merit pay, extended days, signing on to "we'll help get rid of bad teachers" without strengthening protections for the rest?

After I posted this, I came across this particularly unfair piece from Alexander Russo on the contract negotiations in Washington, where you can take anything out of context. I guess we know which side Russo is on. My comment:

Of course Nightline focused on vending machines instead of negotiating sessions on things like class size. Not to say that if things like basic conditions for teachers weren't negotiated, Rhee would have them using outhouses for bathrooms. Also note who funds Nightline and JohnMerrow: Broad and Gates and all the othe players on the Rhee/Joel Klein team.

With DC's union chief George Parker about to set a dangerous precedent by giving away the store to Rhee, watch the actions of new AFT president Weingarten: silence, fence-straddling or outright support. But don't look for broader, bolder leadership.


Note: Commenting on the Prea Prez blog seems to require one to log on with a word press account, which I don't have. So if you can't comment there, leave one here.

And on a personal note, I recently realized that I met Klonsky's daughter at NYCORE meetings a few years ago. Sometimes it seems there's 2 degrees of separation between educational activists.

Jonathan Alter on KIPP: Distortions, Misprepresentations and Outright Lies

This was sent out by Leonie Haimson to the NYC Education Listserve:

Jonathan Alter blusters in a column in Newsweek about what Obama should do to reform our schools:

Here is the response of Caroline Grannam, a SF parent and blogger who is one of the few people to independently assess KIPP’s claims:

In the current Newsweek, columnist Jonathan Alter earnestly claims that 12,800 alumni of KIPP schools have gone on to college. Here's what Alter wrote: At the 60 KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools, more than 80 percent of 16,000 randomly selected low-income students go to college, four times the national average for poor kids. The actual number, according to KIPP itself, is 447.

It turns out that that 80% figure was derived from calculating the matriculation rates at only two KIPP schools.

Alter also omits to mention the self-selection process involved in applying to KIPP, well as the rigorous interview process the school uses that discourages less motivated students from enrolling, including making them promise to attend school six days a week and most of the working day. Nor the high attrition rates, with some schools losing 50 percent of their students over three years.

Yet Alter continues to spin wildly:

[Obama] …hasn't been direct enough about reforming NCLB so that it revolves around clear measurements of classroom-teacher effectiveness. Research shows that this is the only variable (not class size or school size) that can close the achievement gap. Give poor kids from broken homes the best teachers, and most learn. Period.

Where is the research base for this? Don’t bother to ask, as there is none.

We don’t even know how to identify potentially effective teachers, not to mention how to make them more effective once they’ve been hired. Aside from treating them like professionals, giving them a smaller class and persuading them to stick around in the profession longer.

More from Alter:

To get there, Obama should hold a summit of all 50 governors and move them toward national standards and better recruitment, training and evaluation of teachers. He should advocate using Title I federal funding as a lever to encourage "thin contracts" free of the insane work rules and bias toward seniority, as offered by the brilliant new superintendent in Washington, D.C., Michelle Rhee. He should offer federal money for salary increases, but make them conditional on differential pay (paying teachers based on performance and willingness to work in underserved schools, which surveys show many teachers favor) and on support for the elimination of tenure.

What? Surveys, including this one from Education Sector, which generally favors such proposals, show that teachers overwhelmingly oppose basing salaries on performance (read test scores.): “…one in three teachers (34 percent) favors giving financial incentives to teachers whose kids routinely score higher than similar students on standardized tests. Most teachers today (64 percent) oppose the idea, up 8 percentage points from the 56 percent who opposed it in 2003.”

Nevertheless, Alter continues in this vein:

And the next time he addresses them, he should tell the unions they must change their focus from job security and the protection of ineffective teachers to higher pay and true accountability for performance—or face extinction.

Good luck with that one. I’m sure the NEA and the AFT are quaking in their boots.

As Grannam points out about Alter’s error in reporting the number of KIPP students that have gone to college that could also be applied to his false claims about teacher surveys and class size:

It's ironic that Alter made that rather significant error in a column mostly devoted to blasting and blaming teachers for troubled schools and calling for getting rid of problem teachers, along with eliminating tenure and increasing "accountability" for teachers. I wonder how he feels about more accountability for journalists.

In case you’re interested, Alter lives in Montclair NJ, where no doubt the class sizes are small, and teacher tenure reigns supreme, along with high salaries, and performance pay is nowhere in sight.

But in a school district like NYC, with lots of immigrant and poor students, it doesn’t matter what overcrowding exists or what class sizes they are crammed into. All will be well and teachers will magically be able to reach all thirty plus kids per class, as long as the people in charge crack the whip loud and hard enough and can threaten them with losing their jobs if they don’t deliver.

A sure fire formula for success if ever I’ve heard it.

Comments? Write to webeditors@newsweek.com; copy to jalter@newsweek.com

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
classsizematters@gmail.com
www.classsizematters.org
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/

Responding to David Brooks

Posted at: http://susanohanian.org/show_letters.html?id=977

Also see the ednotes' post on the Brooks column.

Dear Mr. David Brooks:
From Joseph Lucido, Educators and Parents Against Test Abuse/CalCARE
Submitted to New York Times but not published (06/18/2008)

Dear Mr. Brooks,

I read your column with regards to public schools and Obama's perspective of education. Over the last seven years, as a teacher, I have seen and experienced the tyrannical, abusive, and destructive side of standardized tests. I teach at a very high performing school, where at one time students came to school with passion for learning. That passion was instilled by their parents and myself. As time has progressed, what I have seen is the degeneration of critical thinking skills, an increase in impatience and discipline problems, and a loss in the internal desire to learn by many of my students. I am a VERY good teacher. I research, apply, and restructure lessons to best suit my pupils. However, they are so tired and beaten down by the myriad of tests that they are crushed by the end of the year. It is NOT MY CHOICE that allows this. It is the ridiculous NCLB law that has guaranteed nothing but misery for them. You stated, "Most importantly, accountability has to be rigorous and relentless.
No Child Left Behind has its problems, but it has ushered in a data revolution, and hard data is the prerequisite for change."

The "hard data" as it stands means very little, and the "relentless" beatings on children are unconscionable. The ultimate failure of your argument is that you believe TEST SCORES TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT CHILDREN KNOW AND ARE ABLE TO DO. You are wrong.

No evidence has ever been produced that shows using standardized tests increases learning. In fact, the opposite is true. Since the inception of NCLB, numerous studies out of the Univ. of Chicago, Rice University, and even the US Dept. of Education (Reading First debacle) have shown that the testing-mired NCLB has had ADVERSE effects on students. Katy Haycock, Roy Romer, and anyone else connected with the Ed in 08 campaign have designs, not on helping kids, but profiting from kids. The facade of defeating "the status quo" of unions for the "children's sake" is pure hogwash. Testing abuse is destroying our public school system, and Susan Neuman's latest comments about NCLB are only the tip of the iceberg of revelation about the profiteering that has resulted from it.

I find it obscene that you support "thorny" accountability practices from those whom you view as successful in a businessman's eyes, yet when it comes to business no doubt you support similar tycoons who have taken huge sums of money, yet have not "performed." In yesterday's AP story, CEO pay chugs up in '07 despite economy it states, "Last year was rocky for the economy and the stock market, making it a useful test of a concept called pay for performance--a term companies use to sell shareholders on the idea CEOs are being paid based on how well the company does...but the AP analysis found that CEO pay rose and fell regardless of the direction of a company's stock price or profits."

The concept of pay for performance is abused even in the business world! And that's just based on numerical figures of sales and such. How much more will children be corrosively affected by the continued use of numbers and percentiles to determine their value in our society? We need to come up with something better than this. Our creativity as a nation is being lost to useless deciles and meaningless "data."

I am all for the American Dream, but your ideas of how to get us there won't cut it. We need to look at other forms of evaluating teachers by IN CLASS observation. Students need science and engineering centered portfolios, emotional intelligence development, and group centered mastery evaluations that are judged by credentialed teaching experts, not politicians or businessmen (you know, you don't call a plumber to do a surgeon's job). It is in this way that students will truly be ready for society.

Sincerely,

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.

Are Merrow Reports on PBS Fair and Balanced?

Reports on Paul Vallas - the uber Klein - check the state of the Chicago and Philly and now New Orleans schools as he goes on his path of destruction of public education.

And Klein Klone Michelle Rhee who may actually face push back from a union (as Andres Alonso is finding in Baltimore) and school boards. But maybe not.

Are the Merrow reports and podcasts fair and balanced? He's based in NYC. When will he take on the BloomKlein story or is that too delicate in that he might have to actually hear the voices on these listserves?

At the bottom of his emails:
Funding for our podcasts is provided by the Annenberg, William & Flora Hewlett, Bill & Melinda Gates and Wallace Foundations.

Ooops! Guess not!

The story on Michele Rhee a few weeks ago was so narrow - like the issue is merely about the right to fire people without due process or to close schools. There are much bigger issues here that go beyond Washington. The use of the term "failing" schools is an excuse for the Eli Broads and Bill Gates' to be part of a private takeover of urban schools. Basically, urban parents and teachers are being put under the dictatorship of one person while suburban get to control their schools.

Hey BUB!
Merrow advertises the videos on you tube using the expression "bloated and unresponsive bureaucracies." How ironic when that is exactly what Joel Klein and ultimately Michelle Rhee will create. While we always have BUBs - and many private corps do too - (ie. Microsoft compared to Google) what BUB often means is that true educators are saying "NO" to gimmicky reforms.

The Rhee report left out all the connections between the assault on parents and teachers going on in urban centers by Joel Klein, Andres Alonso, Rhee, Paul Vallas. Why not look at the results of this phony "reform" movement in Chicago which has had 13 years of it where Vallas played a major role? How did Vallas ultimately do there? In Philly? Now New Orleans?

Where are the stories of the St. Louis schools system after the A&M consultants came in? Now they too are in New Orleans after taking away a king's ransom from New York.

I'm sure without even knowing anything about Washington that Rhee has used high priced consultants and funneled money to all kinds of profiteers and privateers while cutting schools - bet she used consultants to tell her which ones to cut. Maybe even A&M.

There's a major story here in NYC that the national press, in it's fantasy of the phony reform movement wants to ignore. It is about the immense failures of Bloomberg and Klein. And the cover ups, etc. Why not try to get info on exactly what they spend on consultants, etc.? The Kremlin was easier.

I am posting at Norm's Notes a recent Merrow podcast announcement and a selection of examples from the voices of teachers and parents in NYC that illustrate the absolute either out and out incompetence of Tweed or even worse, a bloated and unresponsive bureaucracy.

Eduwonk in Amazing Discovery

Eduwonk Discovers Culprit Obstructing Ed Reform

Finding the key to the obstruction to finding solutions to education problems in this country has eluded educators and researchers and makers of Ed policy forever. Thus, they were delighted to learn that blogger Eduwonk has found the Holy Grail by identifying the single component responsible – a shadowy group going under the alias of “The Status Quo.”

That one single group, albeit with a phalanx of supporters branded by Eduwonk as “Apologists for The Status Quo” (APSQUO’s), could obstruct attempts to turn children into commodities, shocked and surprised Ed reformers.

For years, people heard rumors of secretive "Quo" using nefarious influence to trash attempts to remake education into the image of Microsoft. That Eduwonk has finally proven existence of The Quo will rank with the discovery of the elusive Boson, Nuon and Boron. The simplicity of Eduwonk’s insight is legendary as he has exposed the APSQUO’s dangerous henchmen and women apologizing and protecting "The Quo" from attack.

Ednotes has followed up on Eduwonk's groundbreaking research and found the dangerous conspiracy has existed for a century in New York City, initially led by "Status Quo the FIRST," ruling the roost from the late 19th century through the late 60’s, when his son, "SQII took over and ruled for the next 35 years, when forces led by "The BloomKleins" deposed him and replaced him with his figurehead son, Status Quo the Turd.

Eduwonk has been so won over by the Turd, that he has become a big fan and in fact has joined a group known as “Apologists for Regressive Educationally Ass-phicsiating Reform" (A-REAR’s). A-REAR has captured control of the entire Ed press in the United States.

A shadowy group of partisan pro-children fighters has sprung up, based mostly in New York City, composed of parents, teachers and students who are fighting A-REAR, forming their own group called Progressive Ed Reformers (PER). They have been joined by bloggers such as NYC Educator, Eduwonkette, NYCPublicSchoolParents, and Ednotesonline.

The UFT blog Edwize often pretends to be with PER but is really an undercover agent for A-REAR.

Eduwonkette reports there won't be blood.
We beg to disagree
Let there be a flood.

NOTE: Eduwonkette and Eduwonk make up for Valentine's Day over at psuedointellectualism.