Teacher Union Actions in LA and Boston

Union calls for action by its teachers

Members urged to boycott meetings, activities

BY NAUSH BOGHOSSIAN, Staff Writer

Article Last Updated: 01/05/2007 09:19:16 PM PST

In its first major job action amid ongoing contract negotiations, Los Angeles Unified's teachers union on Friday called for its 48,000 members to boycott faculty meetings and unpaid after-school activities.

The boycotts are scheduled to begin at Tuesday's faculty meeting, roughly one month before United Teachers Los Angeles has scheduled a strike-authorization vote.

Union officials said the moves will not affect educational programs or children but are designed to step up pressure on the district to lower class size; give teachers, parents and others more control; and give teachers and health and human service professionals a raise.

Teachers union threatens 1-day strike

Seeks progress in contract talks

By Tracy Jan, Globe Staff | January 7, 2007

The Boston Teachers Union yesterday threatened a one-day strike as early as Feb. 15 to protest a lack of progress in contract negotiations.

In an e-mail sent to the union's 8,000 members, Union president Richard Stutman said it will hold a meeting on Feb. 14 for teachers and others to consider a strike the following day or an alternate day.

Tilden Teacher John Lawhead

Here is a posting from Leonie Haimson’s list followed by Tilden teacher John Lawhead’s excellent analysis.

“See message from John Lawhead of Tilden HS below; John makes lots of excellent observations, among them the generally good performance of the principal (a Leadership Academy graduate!) and the unique nature of this school for ELL students and esp. Haitian Creole students.

“Tilden's recent quality review points out that at the school, for "English language learners...[their] 2005 Regents passing rate was 25.3 percentage points above similar schools and 16.8 percentage points above schools across the City."

“These results, if accurate, are nothing to sneeze at; moreover this quality review had many other positive things to say about the school, and though the Chancellor cited its low graduation rate, there are many high schools in the city have similar rates, according to SED – and the principal never got a real chance to turn this around.

The quality review report is posted here: http://schools.nyc.gov/SchoolQuality/Reports/QRR/18K415.pdf

“One potential danger that John and others might try to keep their eyes on, if the school is indeed phased out, is what will happen to the students still enrolled -- w/ no one taking responsibility for them, there is a real threat that many of them will be discharged and/or drop out, as many of the credits they need to graduate may no longer be offered and they will be barred from taking courses at whatever small schools open up in the building. This apparently has happened before at many of the so-called failing schools that are "restructured" or phased out, and may be one of the reasons that the no. of discharged students have risen over the last few years.

“Also, whether the ELL students will be excluded from the new smaller schools that open up in its place, as has happened elsewhere as well.

“The way the administration manipulates enrollment at schools to make some look good and others bad -- while claiming that principals completely control and are thus accountable for the outcomes at their schools -- is another subject ripe for further investigation.”

Leonie Haimson
Class Size Matters
www.classsizematters.org




Here is some background and observations from inside the school
by John Lawhead

There were rumors and some ominous signs at the start of the school year, but the announcement of our closing still came as a big surprise. It's now clear at least to me that Tilden was selected as a “target” school for phase-out months before the actual announcement. There was a sudden drop in enrollment and that led to a budget reduction of several hundred thousand dollars. There were many cuts, including most of the after-school programs and the school is bracing for deep excessing of teachers in February.

A major factor in the decline in enrollment was the loss of new 9th graders. List notice transfers from the feeder schools fell by half. The principal explained to the UFT consultation committee in mid-October that she believed ninth graders had been steered away from the school. She said she had heard reports of students applying to Tilden as their first choice and being assigned elsewhere. I later confirmed this for myself by asking my students if they knew of anything similar. For instance, a girl in one of my classes mentioned to me that a cousin of hers had put Tilden as first choice but was sent to John Dewey. They both live on East 32nd Street in East Flatbush.

It also seemed apparent to the principal that the high school enrollment office was deliberately sending kids who were long-term absent or could not be tracked down. In October there were nearly 400 out of the building not accounted for. To make matters worse, in September all the families of Tilden's students were sent a letter declaring the school to be “persistently dangerous” and giving them the opportunity to transfer their children. Of the responses sent back about 140 were granted. Families that were not happy with their transfer were told they had to wait until February to return to Tilden.

It would be interesting and useful to have more information about the enrollment process and other schools' experiences. I think the sudden decline in list notice transfers was engineered, not simply a matter of students' preferences, even given the bad publicity Tilden has had because
of gun incidents and its being on the list of Impact schools. Such a drop was much too sudden.

Joel Klein likes to say that students' preferences expressed on high school applications are a sign that the zoned schools are failing. However, this is not public data and so anyone can say anything they want. The fact that 8th graders -- or the counselors who typically complete the form for them -- must name twelve schools before the applications are complete makes a
mockery of the claim that students really get to exercise choice. As the “push-back” against closing Tilden continues to gather steam it's likely that the enrollment drop may become more prominent as an official “explanation.”

And there's obviously a need to have more convincing reasons. One doesn't have to dig very far to see that the decision to close Tilden is not well grounded in publicly available data. You posted results from New York State's 2001 cohort analysis showing Tilden to be in the middle of a pack of other schools with regard to graduation and dropout rates. Almost everything said by the DOE and Region 6 administrators about Tilden could also be said about a dozen or so and in some aspects several dozen city high schools. The closings create drama but what escapes notice by the major media is the stark similarity of a vast number of schools with similar demographic profiles.

The explanations from Region 6 were very vague. According to Superintendent
Jean-Claude Brizard in a letter to parents of December 12 the major problem was that Tilden was “not on track” to meet the city's goal of “raising the city-wide 4-year graduation rate to 70% and the 6-year graduation rate to 80%.” As you know, the claim that New York City is actual anywhere near these levels for graduation is far fetched. The city's graduation figures have been heavily padded (by counting GEDs and not counting an enormous contingent of mysterious transfers) and are way off from what the state's statistics show.

During the faculty meeting of December 11 where the closing was announced I was amazed at the detachment they expressed. Jean-Claude Brizard declared that he wouldn't want to have his daughter attending Tilden. We were supposed to think he would favor a school only because its data and ignore that it was 96 percent black and 20 minutes from any subway line. I asked
Brizard to name a school in NYC with a demographic similar to Tilden that was doing significantly better. He named Transit Tech as a positive comparison. I asked if he could name a school more similiar to us than that one and he declined. According to the schools' report cards (showing figures for 2004-05) , at Transit Tech 15.5 percent of incoming 9th and 10th
graders were overaged. For Tilden it was 50.5 percent. Three percent of Transit Tech's student were classified as recent immigrants compared with 22.9 for Tilden. In other words, the demographic similarities are rather elusive, aside from the bare fact that most of the students are minority. (And one should add it's not likely that Superintendent Brizard's daughter will be going to Transit Tech either.)

The detachment from our reality is no surprise. The attitude from the top administrators is one of blanket condemnation. Mayor Bloomberg has suggested large schools are inherently unmanageable. There's such a indifference toward the specific challenges that schools face and it amounts to disownership. Yet this stands in sharp contrast to the close scrutinity, the walkthroughs and reviews which schools must devote extensive time to preparing for. The Quality School Review which required three days of visits created the illusion that the evaluation would mean something.

I think it's significant that the data was ignored but I wouldn't suggest that schools with worse evaluations should be closed instead of Tilden. Nothing good and a whole lot of damage has come from this targeting and condemnation of high schools. After the publicity of Tilden's positive rating on the School Quality Review, the UFT leadership appears to be coming around to a position that Tilden looks better on paper than they thought. If they decide to defend us that's fine but I'm afraid they will continue to take a 'devil take the hindmost' perspective without
questioning why the wholesale closings are taking place and what the impact is.

As an ESL teacher I see it as mainly an effort to slash educational services that the neediest kids require. There won't be any replacement of the Haitian Creole bilingual program which students travel from other parts of Brooklyn for. Recently arriving immigrants benefit by learning new subject content and skills in their native language while also learning English for a substantial part of the day. It's also crucial that they have the opportunity to socialize and participate in activities like sports and clubs with "mainstream" students. I'd hate to see them further segregated in a small school only for English Language Learners.

I just want to also mention a couple other reasons why the closing of Tilden was surprising. First, the timing of the announcement and then our new principal. The announcement of which five schools would begin phasing out in September 2007 came on December 11. By this time the deadline for proposals for the new schools to replace the phasing out schools had already passed on December 1. The New Century Initiative for new high schools was once touted as a way to create “community partnerships” for the schools. While New Vision declares that such partnerships are “essential” for effective schools, it's fairly apparent that local partnerships are not being anticipated.

The lack of notice was an outrage for the local politicians, especially the state officeholders like Kevin Parker and Nick Perry. I know Parker has been in the building often and is familiar with the school. I would hope to see the issue of Tilden framed as an indictment of mayor control and the exclusion of community imput from the decisionmaking.

Joel Klein has really offered the big schools only one thing for improvement: newly trained principals (with enhanced powers). That raises the issue of closing a school when a new principal had arrived only the year before and was just beginning to make changes.

Diana Varano is generally well respected, and I find her much more honest and approachable than the typical high school principal. She made efforts to solicit teachers' views about the school and act on them. Some of her initiatives such as expanding elective classes to encompass teachers' suggestions fell by the wayside. But she succeeded in addressing other major concerns, notably the programming of students' schedules which was horrendous in the years before she came.

Naturally, I don't think she's done everything right. I have still have an oversized size that's been grieved for several weeks. But the school is in a budget crisis and it's important that she thinks it's worth saving.

John Lawhead
ESL Teacher
Tilden HS

The Battle of Lafayette - see It's da Norm at the UTP website

Teachers at Lafayette HS, in open revolt over the proposed closing of the school, were joined by parents, students, community members, politicians, and alumni at the barricades. But not the UFT, which was waiting to see which way the wind blew before taking a stand.

Beleaguered principal Jolanta Rohloff and the rest of the administration barricaded themselves in her office..... Go to: http://www.theutp.com/on_the_inside.htm

Inside the UFT Negotiating Committee

From the very beginning we have maintained the 350 member UFT negotiation committee was basically bogus -- the usual gimmick by Unity Caucus to give the appearance of democracy. I met a former chapter leader at recent robotics tournament who is not affiliated with any opposition group and she concurred, saying from the first meeting it was clear Randi Weingarten was manipulating things. She said if there had never been a committee the recent contract would have been no different. Even Jonathan, one of the New Action people said basically the same thing on his blog ("I don’t think we got a better contract because of this mode of negotiating, but I don’t think we did any worse, and the involvement of teachers is a big positive.") He got the first part right.

The following was posted as a comment on the ICE blog and is well worth reading. Would you be shocked to see Unity attack TJC for breaking "non-disclosure" after Weingarten did just that by announcing to the DA how Jeff Kaufman voted.
I bolded the damning statement: "When the Unity position won, Weingarten suggested TJC should no longer be on the Negotiating Committee."

Inside the UFT Negotiating Committee

by Megan Behrent, Peter Lamphere, Kit Wainer

We are three members of Teachers for a Just Contract, who were part of the 300 -member Negotiating Committee. We took part in order to take advantage of whatever opportunities it presented to assure UFT members a “just contract.”

President Randi Weingarten and the UFT leadership have been trying to establish the legitimacy of this new proposed contract by presenting the negotiating process as “more democratic and inclusive than ever,” and the negotiating committee as “mostly rank-and-file members” with “representatives from all school levels, the functional chapters and every union caucus.”

While technically accurate, the picture it suggests of open, democratic discussion with input coming from the grassroots and free give and take among the caucuses, is false.

From the very first meeting, President Weingarten and her ruling Unity caucus absolutely dominated the proceedings. It was not unusual for Weingarten to talk for hours, and to speak at length after each and every person had spoken from the floor. No idea except those that came from members of the dominant Unity caucus was allowed to be given serious consideration.

Here are just two examples of how proposals that came from outside Unity were handled. The first proposal was even adopted later when it was proposed by the Unity leadership.

At the first meeting of the Negotiating Committee in April, Marian Swerdlow of TJC made a motion to reject “any and all givebacks.” Representatives from both New Action and Weingarten’s Unity caucus spoke against this. It was said that this would be “refusing to negotiate” and would violate the Taylor Law. The ludicrousness of this criticism was exposed during the summer when DC 37 negotiated a no givebacks contract and at that point, the UFT negotiating committee did adopt this “illegal” position. However, in April, the threat that this was illegal frightened the independents on the committee into defeating the “no givebacks” resolution. The majority of the Negotiating Committee, as members of the Unity caucus, were required to vote against the resolution, since Weingarten opposed it.

In the fall, Kit Wainer of TJC proposed that the UFT adopt the position that the Department of Education could not dictate educational methods to teachers. President Weingarten prejudiced the discussion by claiming this was an “ideological position,” as if it were any more or less ideological position than any other bargaining demand. As if that were not enough, she again played the “fear card,” claiming illogically that this position could lead to teachers getting disciplined. Again, the independents were frightened and manipulated into voting against a position that was clearly in the interests of UFT members, and of course the Unity majority automatically supported Weingarten’s position.

What is perhaps the UFT leadership’s most outrageous claim about the Negotiating Committee is that no one on the Committee raised the proposal to “win back what we gave back.” Although it has not so far appeared in print, this is being used by Unity members all over the city in what are clearly coordinated “talking points” to discredit TJC’s position that the contract should have restored at least some of what we lost in 2005. Many of the Unity members making this criticism were not even members of the Negotiating Committee.

This Unity criticism of TJC is totally false. At the September 13 meeting of the Negotiating Committee, Peter Lamphere of TJC called for a campaign to restore the givebacks, and argued that this goal would energize and mobilize the union’s membership. Weingarten and other Unity leaders reacted with great hostility. At the October 25 Negotiating Committee meeting, he repeated this call, focusing on eliminating the requirement that teachers work the two days before Labor Day. Weingarten recognized that Lamphere was calling for nothing less than a completely different strategy for the contract campaign, a strategy of mobilizing the membership to fight to restore givebacks and to make gains. She called for an immediate vote by the members of the Negotiating Committee on whether to “stay the course,” or to adopt Lamphere’s strategy. When the Unity position won, Weingarten suggested TJC should no longer be on the Negotiating Committee. In the light of how strongly Weingarten and Unity reacted, it is ludicrous for them now to claim that no one on the Negotiating Committee suggested we should be fighting to restore the givebacks.

One of the reasons that we joined the negotiating committee was out of the hope that it would be a tool for mobilizing our members in a fight for a better contract. The reverse turned out to be the case: this contract has come with even less mobilization than the last one. This is a fact that Mayor Bloomberg even bragged about at the Nov 6th press conference, when he argued that this contract shows how it “doesn’t work to yell and scream.” We in TJC feel the exactly the opposite: that we must organize our members for action to present the credible threat of a strike if we ever want to win a contract that goes beyond the low expectiations of recent concessionary deals. Our members volunteered on two separate occasions for an “action committee,” that was supposed to coordinate mobilization efforts, but after a brief initial meeting in the spring, this committee never convened.

There is one last point we want to make. We participated in the Negotiating Committee despite our reservations over the “secrecy provision” in the “Negotiating Committee Membership Agreement” we had to sign. We had to promise information would “not be disclosed during negotiations.” Since negotiations are now concluded, this part of the agreement is no longer in effect. We also agreed to a “confidential relationship” with other members of the committee. Having watched President Weingarten and other Unity leaders reveal in public meetings (most conspicuously Weingarten at the November 8 Delegate Assembly) how various opposition members of the Negotiating Committee spoke and voted in its meetings, we must conclude that this confidentiality agreement is likewise no longer in effect. Nevertheless, the only names we have used are our own and President Weingarten’s.

Can Joel be totally oblivious to the oncoming Tsunami?
Thanks to http://dbellel.blogspot.com/ for the photo.

What Randi Weingarten said about Lafayette High School

"It is no secret that there have been problems at Lafayette, so its closing is not surprising. We are working with the DOE to create a redesigned school - and potentially two new schools - that parents will want to send their children to and where educators will want to teach."

The UFT goes right along with:
Closing of the large high schools instead of calling for the problems to be fixed by whatever means necessary which might actually include “ horrors“ spending whatever funds it would take to provide personnel, lower class sizes, etc.

The UFT ignores the fact that:
The closing of the schools is one ploy to get half of the teachers out, arguing they have to change the culture of the school instead of fixing what's wrong. That means getting new students and teachers and administrators.

The UFT Sits by while:
Teachers are blamed for failing schools. If they tried to fix schools that are broken, then the teachers and students stay.




What the DOE did at Lafayette was take a school in trouble and put in a Leadership Academy principal who came with the attitude that the problem was the teachers. On her first day in the building (Summer '05), she threatened a rain of U ratings as a way to fix the problem. Teachers came under immediate attack by Rohloff when school started that September. There should have been an immediate response from the UFT.

Randi Weingarten promised the staff an article would appear in the NY Teacher. Instead of an article defending the teachers they get stabbed in the back, a sign that Weingarten was aware of the fact that the school and 4 others would be closed. The fact that this information was carefully released by the DOE immediatley after 90% of the members ratified a contract extension that will assure at least 50% of the teachers in the affected schools will have to pound the pavement looking for jobs with the possibility they will end up as substitute teachers. Do you smell collusion?

What did Weingarten know and when did she know it?

The Unity "club" in the school claim we are distorting the facts and in fact Weingarten and other UFT officials gave the school support.

The proof is in the pudding. We often say "watch what the UFT does, not what it says." In this case what Weingarten said for a change reinforces what she did: Cooperate in the closing of large high schools.

So let us repeat those words again: "It is no secret that there have been problems at Lafayette, so its closing is not surprising. We are working with the DOE to create a redesigned school - and potentially two new schools - that parents will want to send their children to and where educators will want to teach."

Et tu, Randi?

Unity Spins and Grins: A History Lesson

NYC Educator has posted a proposal for a petition calling for divisions to elect their own VP's instead of at-large. Here is an explanation of the history of the change.

There is a debate going on at the NYC Educator blog in UFT democracy, or lack thereof. Since 1994 Unity caucus amended the constitution to eliminate the direct election of divisional vice-presidents -- e.g. Academic HS, Vocational H.S., Middle Schools, Elementary Schools--by constituents of each division and instead had these Vice Presidents elected on an at-large basis by the entire membership, including retirees.

A Unity spinner on the blogs actually claimed this is a good thing, ("The notion that the executive branch should be elected together, in order to provide a minimal unity for governing, is hardly an anti-democratic one.") even trying to compare this to having the US President and VP come from the same party. Naturally he distorted the facts of what really happened to make his case, which NYC Educator trashed in his response.

I asked former Manhattan HS district rep Bruce Markens what occurred while his memory is still intact. (Bruce's long tenure as the lone non-Unity Dist. Rep. despite constant attempts by Unity to defeat him was one of Weingarten's motivations in ending the election of DR's.)

In the mid-80's the opposition was still a coalition called NAC (New Action Coalition, a combo of 3 caucuses with a piece of the name from each one -- some of the founders of ICE were with the Coalition of NYC School Workers).

Mike Shulman won the 1985 election for HS VP by 94 votes over the Unity incumbent George Altomare, one of the founders of the UFT. This sent shock waves throughout Unity and they got Alomare to challenge the election claiming improprieties, a joke since the Unity machine ran the elections.

Naturally, the election committee upheld the protest and they refused to seat Shulman. They finally agreed on an arbitrator and his report called for a new election. This time, without a slate headed by Shanker at the top, Shulman got 62% of the vote. He was not allowed to take his place on the AdCom until Jan/Feb 2006.

With the next election coming in 1987, Unity dumped Altomare and recruited John Soldini from SI (where they could get the large HS vote out for him) to run against Shulman and Unity geared up all forces for the ‘87 election. Schulman almost won again, losing to Soldini by only 21 votes.

He lost again in '89 and by 110 votes in '91 election. But in that election, NAC also won the junior high ex bd seats, giving them 13, the most they ever had. Their JHS VP candidate also lost by about 150 votes. With the opposition seemingly getting stronger, Unity clearly had to do something to keep the wolves at bay.

Their opportunity came after the '93 election when inexplicably, New Action lost the high schools and junior high schools, giving the opposition no voice on the ex bd.

Unity formed a task force to "improve" the election process. It had no specific mandate to deal with the issue of changing the divisional vps to be elected on an at large basis.

At an ex bd meeting in early Jan. '94 they sprung the " improvement" - taking all divisional elections of VP's out of the divisional and making them at-large. A few days after, they sprung it at the Jan. DA, (historically one of the least attended of the year). There also just happened to be a snowstorm that day (Did Unity rig the weather?) guaranteeing an even lower attendance of non-Unity people.

But Unity assured a quorum would be there to make the act legal by threatening Unity Caucus members with the loss of their part-time union jobs and banishment from the slate, which assured a free trip to the AFT and NYSUT conventions. Thus, Unity was able to steamroller through the "improvement" in the election process.

In our so-called democratic union the Unity way, you can change the consitution without having to get membership approval.

But even if they had gone that route, the Unity machine would have spun this “improvement” to the members in some fashion. Without an effective opposition to oppose it (the inability of New Action even at that time to put up a semblance of a fight is indicative of some level of ineffectiveness) the members are helpless against the machinations of Unity. One more argument for the building of an effective opposition to Unity as opposed to the phony bogus opposition New Action has become with all their leaders on the UFT/Unity payroll.

Counter Attack! - The Wave, Dec. 29, 2006

by Norman Scott

Last time I wrote (“The Empire Strikes Back”) about the very favorable NY Times article on Region 5 Superintendent Kathleen Cashin that pointed to the very high results in Region 5 compared to the rest of the city while Cashin did things counter to the Tweedles. Our take was that the article was a sign that the old BOE people are lining up behind Cashin for a possible coup d’etat when BloomKlein are out of office. You knew the gang at Tweed could not have been happy. Hidden behind the faint words of praise given her by Kleinites in the article were clearly words of damnation and unhappiness. Eschewing Leadership Academy principals, empowerment zone schools, Teacher College “progressive’ curriculum, having good relations with the UFT hierarchy (giving them space for 2 charter schools) and other transgressions of Tweed orthodoxy, Cashin emerged as a sort of counter hero, though many teachers in Region 5 read the article with a “humph,” thinking about Cashin’s top-down management and even questioning whether the “growth” in Region 5 scores was legitimate.

Would the Evildoers at Tweed strike back? Emails came in asking if it was true that Cashin and almost all the R5 Lis’s would be out by Feb. 1, the only question being whether Cashin was going to be moved up or be let out to pasture. Or none of the above. You know the old saying. There is the right way. There is the wrong way. And there is the DOE way.

Cashin would seem to be protected. Part of former Chancellor (1978-1983) Frank Macchiarola’s political sphere of influence, the former principal of PS 193 in Brooklyn’s District 22 had strong backing from Macciarola when she became Superintendent of Brownsville’s District 23. Despite being out of office for over 2 decades, Macchiarola still has some influence and may have played a role in Cashin’s appointment as Region 5 Superintendent when BloomKlein executed its bloody coop.

BloomKlein had a major goal of dismantling the local political/educational machines in the former districts while undermining UFT influence, which had been so tied into those machines. And they seemed to do just that — with a vengeance. But politicians who had been so involved and had benefited to such an extent, mostly from patronage from the old system, didn’t easily disappear and many of the machines are still intact just lurking until BloomKlein disappear into the vapor from which they appeared. They are joined by the UFT leadership, which plots right along with them.

Even with the onslaught, many from the old guard with political influence managed to land on their feet in the BloomKlein administration after they came out of shock, though thee was some district reshuffling in their version of musical chairs where those with the least influence were left standing after each round.

After I posted the column on my blog a retired teacher began a correspondence. “You wrote an excellent article referring to the Times article. I don't understand why there aren't more folks talking about what crap the teacher's college reading and writing workshop approach is and how much it is costing.” He goes on: “More on the Cashin fall out: Whitney Tilson, a big macha with Teach For America shills for Klein on his blog at edreform.blogspot.com.”

It is interesting to read the criticisms of Cashin from a Klein shill, who gives any credit for Region 5 improvements to Klein, not to Cashin. Note my cryptic comments in brackets.

"I've done some due diligence [HACK JOB] on Kathleen Cashin and she has indeed made improvements -- but the real story is much more nuanced than this article makes it out to be. The performance of her district, while better than before, hardly calls for hosannas. It outperformed other districts, but not dramatically in most cases, and the high school graduation rate is below most others (which the NYT story didn't mention). This district is not doing well by any objective standard — it's just gone from being truly awful to merely lousy.

“I don't buy the argument put forth in the article that her district's improvements are entirely due to her — and especially due to her bucking of the new system. Klein has implemented big changes over many years that are beginning to move the needle in the right direction across the city — if I recall correctly [NOT], in both NY state and national data, NYC showed more improvement [PHONY GRAD RATES, ETC.] than all other large cities in the state and nearly all nationwide — so why wouldn't Cashin's district be benefiting as well?

“More importantly, it's critical to understand how Cashin has achieved the gains we've seen in her district. Generally speaking, there are two approaches to reforming big, broken systems, whether we're talking about General Motors, the old Soviet Union or the NYC public school system: you can either keep the existing system in place, but wring incremental improvements out of it by exercising extreme command-and-control, or do the opposite and try to reform the broken system by changing incentives, setting up accountability systems and pushing power and control down to the local level. [PUT DOWN THE COOL-AID, WHITNEY. THE OLD HIGHLY CENTRALIZED SOVIET SYSTEM HAD MORE LOCAL CONTROL THAN KLEIN ALLOWS.]

“Cashin is a classic example of the former, whereas Klein has adopted the latter. [MORE COOL-AID] Turning to Cashin, according to a friend who's in the know, she is ‘a total control freak’ and runs her district with an iron fist. If a principal tries to buck her in any way, she fires and blackballs him/her. Cashin's educational pedagogy has merit, however, so imposing it on a district that had no sound educational approach at all yielded some incremental improvements, as noted in the NYT article.

“There are severe limits to Cashin's approach. Fundamentally, the system and the biggest problems within it — lack of human talent [SURE, THERE WERE NO GOOD TEACHERS BEFORE KLEIN] and motivation [THREATS, INTIMIDATION] — haven't changed at all. So, my prediction is that Cashin's district will not show much if any incremental improvement and will remain merely lousy — unless Klein's reforms kick in. [WORDS OF DOOM FOR CASHIN?]

“Klein's approach is, at its core, the exact opposite -- and is, obviously, the one I think has the most long-term promise. But it also has real risks -- trying to reform a deeply entrenched broken system in the face of massive resistance (not to mention mostly hostile media coverage [HOSTILE? HE MUST ONLY BE READING THE WAVE]) is really hard and messy [THEY’LL FIND OUT THE REAL MESS KLEIN LEFT ONE DAY], as noted above. If too much autonomy is pushed down the school level before the accountability and motivational systems and human talent [REPLACE TEACHERS EVERY 3 YEARS] are in place, the results would be disastrous. That's why I like Klein's incremental approach with Empowerment Schools… [BLAH! BLAH! BLAH!]

Tilson goes on to tell stories coming out of Teach for America teachers about how horrible the system is with kids roaming the halls all over the place. The Tilson Klein vs. Cashin debate is a straw man, there being no choice, both being top-down centrally managed, though from a different location.

My retired teacher friend defended Cashin on Tilson’s blog:
“Maybe part of the reason is a curriculum that is mostly smoke, mirrors and jargon that makes absolutely no connection to kids, especially middle schoolers. If Cashin is "a total control freak" and runs her district with an “iron fist," what do you think Neutron Jack Welch taught all the newbie principals at the Leadership Academy? There is plenty of talent in the NYC school system and it is not restricted to charter schools — (who by the way play with a rigged deck because they can skim quality students).

“To say that Cashin's way is inferior to Klein's just doesn't wash. Klein has NO WAY. There is no thought with going from the regional plan to empowerment. The only thought is that the old way is not working. (For this I give him credit). The sad part is that great damage is being done with a literacy program that makes very little connection to the majority of kids in the system. It is heavy on structure with no content. Without engaging content you lose the interest of the kids-especially the middle schoolers who are failing at ever increasing rates. These are the kids who are roaming the halls of your Teach For America folks' halls. I get the impression from the Times' article that Cashin relies on content and methodology that has proven effective, especially in her districts

"For a guy who is a financial whiz has it ever occurred to you how much the city is getting ripped off by Columbia Teacher's College and how much teaching time is being lost to send people there for training?”

Get those daisy petals out. Cashin-Klein-Cashin-Klein-Cashin-Klein. Having had some “issues” with Cashin in the past, here I find myself in the position of almost defending her system of education, which I worked under in District 14 and grew to despise, an indication of how BloomKlein have alienated just about anyone who was ever been truly involved with teaching. I’ve always been for maximum teacher power and input in making educational decisions.

I’m trying not to gag over the fact that Cashin vs. Klein might be our choices of how schools should be run. That my union, the UFT, plays in this “no power for teachers” game sends me searching for a giant bottle of Pepto.

On Closing Large High Schools

From Leonie Haimson listserve:

The Comptroller has received several calls from other elected officials concerned about the closings of these schools. We are interested in finding out if anyone can tell me if the DOE did any outreach at all to parents or the effected communities prior to making this decision….and if they have any plans do so now with respect to the next steps they will take re: the creation of new schools/programs at these site.

Comments from Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters on Dec. 12:

The pattern that we have repeatedly seen of closing failing large high schools down and opening up new small schools in their place sounds good; but in the end, it often hurts rather than helps our neediest students, leading to even higher discharge and dropout rates.

For example, Tilden HS has 300 special ed students and at least 300 ELL students, many of them sent there originally because other large high schools nearby were closed in recent years, like Bushwick, Prospect Park, Wingate and others.

Why? As we know from recent reports from the CCHS, Immigration Coalition and NY Lawyers for Public Interest, most of the ELL and special ed students will be excluded from whatever new small schools are formed in their place.

When a school is being phased out, no one cares about the students who still go there – they no longer count in terms of any accountability system. This may be one of the reasons we’ve seen a steady increase in discharged students over the last four years. In many cases, these students are denied the classes they need to graduate, even if these same courses are being given at the small schools opening up in the same building.

If they don’t manage to graduate in the few years that their original school continues to exist – and many won’t – most of the lowest-performing students will be discharged to “alternative” or GED programs, or transferred to other large high schools. These schools in turn will likely become even more overcrowded than before – and in many cases, destabilized.

In either case, many of the students at the schools that are were announced today as closing will likely end up as dropout statistics, or even worse, if “discharged” they will be expunged from existence, and not even counted as dropouts.

Today I spoke to a teacher at Tilden HS, one of the schools being closed down; he told me that school has never been given the resources or programs it needed to improve. He has many ELL classes that have 30 students or more – classes that should be no larger than 20.

Four of these five schools also had principals who graduated from the Leadership Academy. What this shows is that leadership alone does not help, unless classroom conditions are also addressed.
Until this administration has a plan to improve opportunities for all our students, including providing them smaller classes no matter where they go to school, we will continue on in this cycle of failure, far into the future.

A Primer on Mayoral Control

by John Elfrank, chapter leader, Murray Bergtraum HS

In NYC it has been a corporate-style takeover. An extreme historical analogy would be that of Pol Pot (the genocide of Cambodia, that tried to wipe the slate clean and start the Zero Year), where there were mass firings in the Board of Ed (new DOE). The belief being; if you were part of the old system, you had nothing to offer. Historical/institutional memory counted for nothing.

continued at http://laborslessons.blogspot.com/

Where’s Waldo – er– the Union at Far Rock?

With the recent announcement that 5 schools would be closing, 3 of them large high schools in south Brooklyn, I thought this story of how the UFT operates in relation to these closings would be of interest. Ed. Notes and ICE have been opposed to these closings, calling for the resources to be placed into the schools to fix what is broken. The breaking up of large schools into smaller schools is a gimmick that just moves teachers and children around as chess pieces and serves to further destabilize other large schools as students, especially ESL, special ed and ultimately discipline problems, are forced into them. It also destroys what is often strong UFT chapters. Now add the disastrous provision from the '05 contract that teachers from these schools who do not find jobs will end up as subs and the new '06 provision that after a year as a sub these ATR's will be offered an "incentive" to leave. How fast can you say Guantanamo?

Below is a note printed in the April '05 edition of Education Notes from Michael, a 3rd year teacher at Far Rockaway back in 2005 when they announced the closing of their school.

Michael invited me to attend a union meeting at Far Rock after school right after the announcement as an ICE rep. I followed all school procedures in checking in and was sent to the auditorium where the meeting was to take place after a faculty conference. The school administration passed by me as they left and not a word was said or asked as to who I was. (You'll see why this is important later.)

Ray Tureskin the Unity CL spoke at first and after finishing said it was my turn and left. I talked about how the UFT went along with all the closings without raising a ruckus about fixing what is wrong with the school in the first place and that closing schools was mostly about getting rid of the teachers. If the UFT actively opposed the closing and aligned with parents and the community something could be done. I was there about 15 minutes.
Michael was U-rated at the end of the year and forced out of teaching, mainly because he did not remain quiet and raised educational issues in the school. He received a letter in his file for inviting me to the meeting. That letter was used as part of his U-rating hearing. There was not a peep from the union at that outrage as Unity takes the position that only they should be able to walk into schools and lay their propaganda on people and I would not be surprised if the UFT did not play some role in getting the admin to use this against Michael. Unity will use any tactic to punnish people for flirting with the opposition.

Michael is now happily living in Israel. He called me from there not long ago to talk about the farce of how the union represented him at his hearing when he came back for a visit this past summer.

Michael's frustration and outrage at the way the union deals with school closings is expressed below.

Where’s Waldo – er– the union at Far Rock?

Apr. 4. 2005: Today our 100 minutes professional development was interrupted for a staff meeting in the auditorium for the Region 5 LIS to tell us the school had officially been put on the reorganization track under a “Fast Track” title...though no one truly knows what this means. As usual the rhetoric was that the Region and everyone really cares for us at Far Rockaway(HS) and now it is the “big, bad state” that has come in to ruin and reorg and mess this whole mess up even worse....

MORE appalling was the union meeting after this brief interruption by [UFT Queens HS Dist. Rep, now head of the Queens borough office] Rona Freiser and another person claiming the DOE doesn’t know anything and blah blah blah about our rights and how they are here for us....Before I opened MY big mouth a seasoned teacher asked what the union had done for us....and where they had been and what about the past year and what about now....needless to say Rona got a tad bit defensive and had the NERVE to say she has been at our school a b’zillion times....(last time I saw her was the very beginning of last year (Sept/Oct 2003!!!)....I said loudly “I never see you!!”...she wasn’t pleased .....another colleague said we have felt abandoned....and I reiterated my plea for some help.....and questioned Randi’s absence (“Where’s Randi?...as in “Where’s Waldo”?)....we have been wondering where she has been the past 2 years.....not this week....last she was at Far Rock....she posed for a photo op and said that her and Joel Kelin were working together to make Far Rock a safer place......hmmpphhh...the union reps were trying to make us feel as if we owed Randi and them a thank you for provision 18-G allowing for some type of rights when a school is reorg’d in the city.....THATS THEIR JOB!!!!....

Welll....since I had asked these “reps” or whatever they should be called...about supporting us with press releases, ads in local papers, and some media exposure(if you aren't aware the states concept is to do away with the staff--at least 50%--at Far Rock.....where the new staff is coming from is beyond us all)......Rona Freiser responded “The Mayor has control of all the papers”.....I mean the audacity and idiocy to insult my intelligence--and as if they can’t get something printed either locally or regionally or nationally.....really!!!!!....hold a press conference, be proactive...anything!!!

We need parents attention and even a bit of support and she dismissed the parents of Far Rock as ever possibly voicing concern or support over losing such #’s of staff at our school....however to give up with no attempt is like me saying my kids can't read, so why bother.. "

A sidelight to this story is that Rona threw a fit for my daring to print this and even whined to some ICE Queens chapter leaders about it. Tough. Rona has been part of the UFT coverup of the actions of Principal Grace Zwillenberg at John Admas HS in Queens as the UFT seems more concerned about protecting her than the teachers she has harassed. I will write soon about the role Rona played in stealing an election from an ICE person as chapter leader at Forest Hills HS.

peter the cat comments from Seattle

peter the cat comments (on "The Empire Strikes Back" post below and raises an interesting point:

How do we fashion a grass roots/cross-coalition resitance movement of anti-Kleinites/anti-Bloombergians from the ranks of the dissatisfied/disgruntled/very, very angry and disgusted teachers/scholars/activists/parents/students/community organizations, etc. which CAN AND MUST BE an active and present SHOW of force (peaceably assembled) with a clear message against the surreptious privatization of the NYC public school system. Less blogging, more organizing, but how? Any ideas? (Battle in Seattle, but peacefully. Can we recruit some Seattle(ians?)?

peter the cat,
Send us any help you can from Seattle but keep Bill Gates (and the rain), whose tinkering has led to all sorts of problems in the schools.

Your question is right on but you leave out the union aspect. Right now we can only focus on the UFT where we can reach out to people. That has not been all that easy as angry teachers want more instant solutions and this is a long race. Part of what Ed Notes and ICE tries to do is provide people with the information they need if they decide to get activated. While doing that we try to make alliances with all the groups we can, union and non-union.

Because there are over 1400 schools in NY and Unity Caucus actively works to keep alternate points of view out of the schools, the web and blogging will hopefully be part of the organizing as a way to reach people and also to hash out and clarify issues. But the real struggles take place in the schools where progressive anti-Unity Caucus people have to battle the forces of BloomKlein and the Unity hacks. (Not all anti-Unity people consider themselves progressive and we need to see how to build alliances.)

NYC Educator who has used his blog to great effect in a very short time while also getting more active with the union at his school is a great example of people who have activated themselves, almost building an online virtual caucus.

We need to get you to move to New York and join us.

Ed. Notes Has No (Great) Expectations

While rummaging through the Feb. '02 edition of Ed Notes I came across this article. The Exec Bd meeting referred to probably took place in Jan. '02 and Randi Weingarten was hinting that someone was leaking info from the meetings to the NY Post, looking at me while she said it. If anyone was leaking it was surely her people, if not she herself. This was a very short time after Bloomberg was elected and the honeymoon was still on, which by the way I still think never really ended no matter what has been said. A great cartoon if you just change the location and author. (Any photoshop experts out there who want to take a shot?)

At a recent Ex. Bd. meeting, Randi Weingarten made some comments regarding Ed. Notes. She seemed to feel that Ed. Notes was holding her to certain [unattainable?] standards. Or perhaps she assumed the laptop computer being used by the Ed. Notes reporter had a direct link to the NY Post.

Weingarten should be assured that Ed. Notes holds her to no standards.
We know that there will never be changes in the Taylor Law, no matter how many of our endorsed candidates get elected.
We have no expectations that she will deliver a contract with anything of substance other than money.
She will continue the tradition of her predecessors of promoting a contract that has been basically unchanged in over 30 years.
We don’t expect her to address the horrendous working conditions, the demoralization of teachers (Will a big raise really solve THAT problem?), the large class sizes, the negative impact of testing, etc., etc., etc.
We do not expect her to try to find long-term solutions to the many problems that teachers and schools face.
We do expect her to continue to put the bulk of our union’s energy into short term crisis management and into the political arena.
By the way: the Ed. Notes reporter was playing Solitaire on the laptop and wasn’t even listening. We’ve heard it all before.

Ed Notes Reprint Feb. 02

Bloomberg and Weingarten to Tie The Knot

In an attempt to forge an alliance that would result in a fast track towards a new teachers’ contract, UFT President Randi Weingarten and Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced their engagement. Shocked members of the press bombarded the happy couple with questions. “I know he’s short,” said Weingarten. “But I’m shorter.” “Michael and Randi have had a wonderful relationship for a long time,” said a UFT spokesperson. “She was even his date at a dinner a few years ago. And the sweater gift---that was the clincher.” As part of the engagement agreement, the Mayor’s 22 year old daughter Emma will become the new Chancellor. It was also announced that the UFT & Bloomberg, LP will merge into a new firm to be called BLUFT.
The couple will live in the fancy penthouse digs atop the new UFT headquarters near Ground Zero, enabling both to walk to work. “Michael won’t have to take the subway anymore,” said Randi. The expected savings on the train pass have graciously been donated by Bloomberg towards the new contract.

Education Notes reprint, Feb. 2002. Photo is new, created by blogger: http://dbellel.blogspot.com/

NEW READING TEST REVEALED

Some words that will appear on this year’s reading tests.
Start preparing your children now!

Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon.
Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent
Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightie.
Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
Gargoyle (n.), an olive-flavored mouthwash.
Flatulence (n.) the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you.
Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions.
Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts.
Pokemon (n), A Jamaican proctologist.

reprinted from Education Notes, Feb. 2002 (because I'm too lazy to look for new stuff.)
None of the above are in any way the creation of the editor, just old stuff off the internet.

Tilden H.S. Refuses to Go Quietly Into That Dark Night

(From Flatbush Life)

By Michèle De Meglio

Community residents are putting up a fight to stop the city from closing Samuel J. Tilden High School. The school is one of five that the city Department of Education (DOE) said it would phase out and replace with several small schools but locals don’t want the plan to move forward. A small group of activists, parents and students gathered at the school this week to protest the restructuring and the DOE’s decision not to ask community members if they think Tilden should stay open or become the site of three or four small schools.

“It’s unfair to our community that we didn’t have a voice and we didn’t have a say in this,” said Tiffany Tucker, founder of Redemption Inc., a non-profit organization offering after-school programs to local students which organized the protest with the James E. Davis Stop Violence Foundation (JEDSVF).

Read the rest:


http://www.flatbushlife.com/site/tab4.cfm?newsid=17622402&BRD=2384&PAG=461&dept_id=552850&rfi=6

The Rubber Room—The Department of Education’s Black Hole

by Benjamin Zibit, Freelance journalist
New York City, August 2006

The Pentagon has Guantanamo Bay. New York City’s Department of Education has 25 Chapel Street. And 333 Seventh Avenue, 1 Fordham Plaza, 175 Ocean Terrace, Queens Plaza North, and a host of other smaller locales.

25 Chapel Street, a tall, brown and tan brick building behind basketball courts on Tillary Street in downtown Brooklyn, is actually a new home among the Department of Education’s detention centers for teachers and administrators under investigation and pulled from their schools. The common name for these centers, known well to almost every teacher on the Department of Education’s payroll, is the ‘rubber room.’ On the tenth floor of this behemoth of a building near the Manhattan Bridge sit over one hundred teachers, principals and support staff, ordered out of their schools by the Division of Human Resources for infractions ranging from minor arrests to serious charges of sexual abuse, dereliction of duty, or inappropriate behavior in the classroom or school.

The rubber room at 25 Chapel Street measures approximately 120 feet by 30 feet. There are tables, with chairs grouped around them. There are mattresses to lie on. There is a portable stove and a microwave. There is air conditioning, although at times, according to D., one former resident of the rubber room, the lights and air conditioning have been known to go out and hours can pass before the electrical problem is fixed. Sometimes arguments break out. Sometimes rubber room residents go AWOL—they just disappear.

The rubber room is not a prison, not in the ordinary sense. It is not windowless. There is an administrator assigned to monitor it. He usually sits by the door, reminding people to clock in each morning.

Teachers and staff assigned there by the Department of Education’s Bureau of Inquiry and Investigations arrive by 8:20 am, and clock out at the end of their day, 2:50pm, unless starting time at the school they once worked at had them working on ‘late schedule.’ The day at the typical rubber room ends before 4:00pm. Summer vacation spells relief for the sojourners there. Rubber room residents get summer vacation, too, just as regular teachers do.

But there is one difference: the average stay in a rubber room for a re-assigned teacher or principal is from one to two years. People have been there for much longer. Cases generally take approximately a year to resolve. At the end of summer vacation, rubber room residents and staff report back to a Regional Operations Center, where each rubber room may be found. At the Staten Island rubber room, according to an administrator there, there were 117 people in attendance in mid-June. Keith Kalb, press spokesman for the Department of Education, when reached on July 17, 2006, quoted a figure of about 570 reassigned staff in all the DOE’s rubber rooms. Carol Gerstl, a spokeswoman for Randi Weingarten, UFT President, confirmed this number. However, Ms. Gerstl admitted that 570, a number that “sounds right,” depends on DOE data, rather than an independent union assessment. S., who arrived at the rubber room at 25 Chapel Street in February 2006, told this reporter in late June that he believed there were over 800 DOE staff in rubber rooms around the city and personally attested to the fact that five or six new attendees come in to 25 Chapel Street every week.

The UFT, the city teachers’ union, which has been publicly silent on the existence of these rubber rooms for years, is becoming restive and uncomfortable about them. Ms. Weingarten, in a June email, commented that the union is trying to take action on the rubber room situation but added that some members do not want “to vindicate their rights.”

In a corporate environment, where a complicated union contract might be non-existent, rubber rooms would not exist. CEOs and Human Resource Divisions would almost certainly be free to terminate employees accused of malfeasance or more serious crimes quickly and without much fanfare. But the UFT contract with the Department of Education protects employees accused of violations of the Department’s code of behavior. If letters in an employee’s file do not serve to discipline him, then the DOE must send the accused staff member to a rubber room, where, according to the union contract, he is “reassigned to administrative duties, pending the outcome of (an) investigation.”

The union contract with the DOE, put in place on November 16, 2000 and amended by a new contract vote last November, also defines the limits of rubber room confinement. Any ‘reassigned’ employee must be restored to service in his school no more than six months after his removal, unless formal ‘3020-a’ charges have been lodged against him. Section 3020-a of the New York State Education Law permits a school board to bring state charges against tenured employees, with an eye to dismissing teachers and other staff who would otherwise be protected by tenure rules. A three-person jury hears each case, and since September 1994, when the New York State legislature revamped the state’s tenure law, the average time between being charged and receiving a formal hearing dropped to about 192 days. This is just over six months. The majority of detainees in the rubber room stay twice as long. 3020-a charges are not usually filed, as this is an expensive legal procedure, and, as a result, teachers simply languish in the rubber rooms. Many wait just for a DOE hearing to determine whether or not their case should proceed to a higher state level.

Rather than file state charges, the DOE relies on pressure and attrition to weed out employees it does not want. Many residents of DOE rubber rooms are there because of hearsay evidence against them. Apparently, it doesn’t take much to end up at 25 Chapel Street. A student may report an incident involving a suspect teacher to a school’s principal and the next thing the teacher knows, he is reassigned. Teachers do not necessarily have the right to see the specific evidence backing up charges against them. Nor are they usually given the opportunity to confront their accusers in the open, a right guaranteed all criminal defendants by the 6th Amendment to the Constitution.

Since charges brought by an employer against an employee are administrative in nature, unless serious enough to warrant arrest, the Department of Ed may have some wiggle room here, avoiding the Constitutional requirement that any accused person be confronted by the witnesses against him. Until the June 29, 2006 Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld Supreme Court ruling, the Pentagon used a similar argument in its treatment of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo detainees were treated as extra-judicial, administrative detainees. Now, true military courts martial and adherence to the Geneva Convention must be the rule for terrorists held incommunicado in American military detention facilities.

Union contracts seem to fall into a gray area, somewhere between true Bill of Rights protections and labor law. Until late August 2006, there was no complete version of the published contract between the UFT and the Department of Education; both sides simply put out written pronouncements changing the existing contract, with the old contract still technically in force. Now, in early September, a new official contract copy, sent to union members by the UFT, is in the hands of most teachers. The current contract expires on October 12, 2007.

In 2006 DOE teachers face increased chances of disciplinary action, from U-ratings to threats of dismissal. Principals have been known to conclude that allegations against a teacher are true, simply because a teacher fails to respond directly to the charges against him without a lawyer present. This is the fate S. suffered. The accused does have the right to union (UFT) representation, but that doesn’t always stop DOE authorities from writing formal file letters (which can adversely affect a teacher’s rating.) “The reason they put people in the rubber room,” S. says, “is that they’re hoping you’ll quit before it comes to a formal hearing.”

A trip to the rubber room may start with a written accusation against a teacher, a counselor, even a principal, but the story rarely ends there. Once a Department of Education employee is placed on the “Ineligible/Inquiry List,” he descends into the labyrinth of the DOE’s administr ative bureaucracy. Lawrence Becker, the Senior Deputy Executive Director for Human Resources at the DOE, whose office is at 65 Court Street in downtown Brooklyn, sends the accused notification that he has been placed on the Ineligible/Inquiry List. If a serious charge is involved, the Arrest Notification Unit, also at 65 Court, comes into the picture. Finally, the personnel manager at the nearest Regional Operations Center formally instructs the accused where to report. Then the long wait begins.

Sometimes, investigators from the Office of Special Investigations show up at a rubber room or even at a school to interview the accused. Investigators are often former police officers, now working for the DOE. An officer from the Special Commissioner of Investigation’s office interviewed S. According to S., the investigator never read him his rights, never said, “You have the right to remain silent.” “If you know your rights,” S. added, “you can refuse to talk. But the investigators never mention that you might have a representative present.” The investigators work in teams of two. One watches while the other interrogates. There is no tape recorder present and the interrogating officer simply takes notes. S. never received a transcript of these notes.

A teacher, guidance counselor or principal can expect to face long hours of tedium each day at the rubber room. Some reassigned staff don’t mind. While their cases slowly wind through the bureaucratic maze, the DOE pays them and they do not have to face the stress of interacting with students. In some cases, however, tenure in the rubber room resembles a theater of the absurd. One teacher has been in the rubber room awaiting final disposition of her case for two years. Despite many lawsuits against the Department of Education, she is still there. Another man, from the Caribbean basin, has been in rubber rooms for six years. He was formerly a guidance counselor and had a dispute with his principal over his alleged failure to report a case of suspected child abuse. A year or two after his reassignment, he had a DOE hearing and was apparently cleared of wrongdoing. Yet he is still in the rubber room. His physical appearance has deteriorated and no one wants to hire him. Still, contractual limits prevent him from being fired. In fact, according to S., who has spoken with him, this long-time resident of the rubber room doesn’t want to leave.

Keith Kalb, DOE spokesperson, expressed irritation at the seemingly intractable dilemma of the rubber room. “There is a $20 million cost for the rubber room. That’s money that could be spent educating kids,” Kalb said. Kalb also bristled at the description of rubber rooms as detention centers. Instead, he called them “reassignment rooms.” Kalb pointed out that even though the rubber rooms are closed for the summer, summer school staff can still be sent to them. Summer school teachers and other staff accused of misdeeds are fired from their summer jobs, may forfeit their pay (depending on the results of an investigation) and must report to Regional Operations Center rubber rooms in September. Since most summer school teachers are regularly appointed DOE staff during the school year, they may not report back to their assigned school and thus are lost in the system until their cases resolve themselves.

Because (as of June) there were—by its own count—almost 600 Department of Ed employees in rubber rooms, with more apparently coming in each week the schools are open, a new and disturbing trend has emerged. If the DOE would rather simply fire wayward employees and has the power of its state mandate to run the city schools by mayoral authority, then the Department of Education is using a disciplinary system it abhors to keep teachers in line, or out of the classroom. Threats of rubber room confinement or letters in an employee’s file have spread fear throughout the system. Since teachers cannot view accusatory statements made against them, they do not know when they may be summarily removed from the classroom. Students may have unwittingly become power brokers in the struggle between teachers and the DOE, with student safety the reason for removal of unwanted teachers from the classrooms. However, student safety is not necessarily enhanced if teachers work in an atmosphere of fear.

No education system or parent wants dangerous individuals around vulnerable children. But there is no way of knowing now where all the rubber room detentions will lead. The number of detainees in rubber rooms may level off, or it may increase in the coming months. It is hard to justify keeping nearly 600 employees in reassignment centers for months, if not years. DOE spokesperson Kalb claimed that due process rights of reassigned employees are not being violated. But if administrative and labor law continue to guide relations between the DOE and its employees, then civil rights law may end up in the back seat. In the meantime, S. is still waiting for his case to be settled. He would much rather be back in the classroom. But for now and perhaps for months into the future, S. will wait, like hundreds of other DOE employees, in limbo. And in 2006, that is a tough place to be.


Dr. Benjamin Zibit is a freelance reporter and former educator in the New York City Dept. of Ed. He taught for twenty four years in high schools and at CUNY and has a doctorate in the History of Science. Dr. Zibit has written several stories on topical issues in 2005-2006, including pieces on immigration, the bedbug epidemic in New York City, and on the international situation. Dr. Zibit knows several teachers who have been swept into the rubber room system at the DOE and wanted to write on their struggles and the conditions of their confinement. He continues to write on the current difficult situation and hopes the days of the rubber room are numbered.

Contact him at: bzibit@rcn.com

Failed Executive Rescued by Klein

JOEL I. KLEIN ANNOUNCES APPOINTMENT OF CHRISTOPHER CERF AS DEPUTY CHANCELLOR FOR ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGY, HUMAN CAPITAL, AND EXTERNAL AFFAIRS

"Mr. Cerf will assume responsibility for all areas related to human capital, including labor relations, leadership development, and principal and teacher recruitment, training, and support. His responsibilities in the area of external relations include media and communications as well as political affairs."

The Perfect Resume for the DOE - the former, failed CEO of the anti-union Edison. The DOE can truly be a haven for corporate waste. Does Cerf get stock options?

"Mr. Cerf brings extensive experience to his new position. Currently a partner in the Public Private Strategy Group, he advises school districts pursuing comprehensive reform strategies. Previously, Mr. Cerf served for eight years as the President and Chief Operating Officer of Edison Schools, Inc. He earlier served as Associate Counsel to President Clinton and as a partner in two Washington, D.C., law firms. Mr. Cerf is a graduate of Amherst College and Columbia Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review, and served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Prior to attending law school, he spent four years as a high school history teacher in Cincinnati, Ohio. Mr. Cerf graduated from the Broad Urban Superintendents Academy in 2004."

Broad is part of the privatization movement in the schools. He also gave the UFT $1 million for its charter schools. Cerf and Randi have appeared on panels together. Maybe they should have a merger of the DOE, Edison and the UFT.

NEA Attack on anti-NCLB petition - a response

This is an interesting development since the AFT cooperated in developing NCLB. Ed Notes was on the case from the beginning, criticizing Sandra Feldman and Randi Weingarten for being part of a process that could only increase drastically the impact of high stakes testing. The NEA staid on the sidelines and lobbed critiques.

Where is the AFT on the issue? (And to think, the NEA is supposedly more democratic than the AFT. But then again, as the recent NY Sun article pointed out, the UFT's Randi Weingarten will be the next AFT President whenever she wants the job - that ought to solve the democracy problem.) Recently, Weingarten has been making some noise about NCLB, testing, etc. But that may only be the usual noise. She formed a task force, the usual response of politicians to make it seem they are doing something. Of course, she formed a previous task force on testing years ago that disappeared into the jaws of UFT bureacracy. The behind the scenes guy on both was UFT staffer Joe Colletti. If you see him, ask him if they hid the first task force with the weapons of mass destruction.

An Open Letter to the Rank and File Members of the National Education Association

Check out the ICE blog on high stakes testing for the full text of the letter.
http://highstakesonice.blogspot.com/


Please direct all inquiries to Dr. Philip Kovacs, Director of the Educator Roundtable, at www.educatorroundtable.org .

Cartoon courtesy of Susan Ohanian web site.

The Empire Strikes Back – Part 1

by Norman Scott

(From The Wave, Dec. 15, 2006)

The first shot in the school wars circa 2009 was fired in the glowing Dec. 4 NY Times article on Region 5 Superintendent Kathleen Cashin (“the best turnaround artist in town”), a possible precursor to her becoming the first post-Klein chancellor. There’s so much delicious meat in the article, your cholesterol count goes up while you’re reading it.

The reporter, David Herzenhorn emphasized differences between Cashin and the Tweedle Dees and Tweedle Dumbs.
“While Mr. Klein has derided the ‘status quo crowd’ and sought to bring outsiders into the administration, Dr. Cashin is a lifelong city educator. While Mr. Klein wants to free principals from the control of superintendents like her, Dr. Cashin believes even the best principals need an experienced supervisor.
“Where Mr. Klein insists that school administration must be reinvented to reverse generations of failure by generations of educators, Dr. Cashin, a product of the old system, insists she can get results with a clear instructional mission, careful organization and a simple strategy of every educator’s being supported by an educator with more experience.
“…Dr. Cashin stands, in a way, as the antithesis of Mr. Klein’s mission to slash midlevel bureaucracy and let principals sail on their own, a challenge to the notion that changing governance structure is the key to turning around schools.
“She runs her schools in Region 5, with more than 85,000 students, the same way she ran her schools under the old Board of Education and under previous mayors.”

Wow! Is Cashin a candidate to wake up with a couple of horse’s heads in her bed, or what? The article reflected a shift in the position of the Times which had given BloomKlein unabashed support, often underreporting many of the emerging scandals while the Post and the News were getting one scoop after another. But wait! There’s more.
“Dr. Cashin prefers principals who come up through the system over graduates of the chancellor’s Leadership Academy, which has focused on recruiting candidates from other professions. And while Mr. Klein has dealt with the teachers’ union on a war footing, Dr. Cashin has made the union a partner, hiring it to train teachers instead of using outside vendors.”
“Though she uses the citywide math and reading programs in many schools, Dr. Cashin does not believe they are sufficient and customizes them extensively, with an emphasis on writing. She also uses an array of other initiatives of her own choosing or design.”

Holy Cow! Cashin actually tampered with the DOE’s Holy Grail — the curriculum? Maybe a horse head followed by cement shoes.

But she has even gone further to dis Klein. Cashin to her credit has been able to resist the imposition of Leadership Academy grads specially trained to torture teaches and small animals. That action alone must have gotten her on the Tweed enemies list.

To add further insult, only 15 principals joined Klein’s so-called “empowerment” zone where principal’s are supposedly given autonomy to run their own ship, but also putting their heads on the chopping block. It should be called the “disembowelment” zone.

When BloomKlein came along they had to rely on the old guard like Cashin until they could recruit enough people who had never set foot anywhere near a school since they graduated from high school. Now that they have what they consider a critical mass to truly take over the school system from the bottom up, they are into phase 2 which they hope will drive out every remnant of institutional memory.

The Times reported, “since the start of the mayor’s second term, Mr. Klein has pushed to reduce the role of superintendents, giving wider authority to principals in an effort that could lead to consolidation or elimination of the 10 regions. That could potentially leave the regional superintendents without jobs or perhaps filling a new role in which principals choose them to advise groups of schools. They would no longer be supervisors but rather support staff.”

So, the battle is on. For those anti-Kleinites who are beginning to cheer, let’s not get overly excited here. A look under the hood shows that Cashin is still mucho in line with focusing on the bottom line of scores to the exclusion of all else, being for plenty of test practice, gobs of micromanagement and a total top-down management system, policies she followed when Klein was still a whipper snapper nipping at Microsoft’s heals.

Yet, that Cashin would so brazenly be quoted just on the edge of arrogance toward the Tweed crowd given the climate of fear running through the ranks of middle and upper level managers at the DOE, both at the central and regional level, is remarkable, showing some of the cracks between BloomKlein and the old education aristocracy that existed BBK (Before BloomKlein). But no worries, for Cashin’s future, at least. The Times article is a clear sign that the empire is striking back.