The UFT Leadership and Fuzzy Contracts...

...honest mistakes, or deliberate deception?

by juliwoo, guest columnist

I've generally given the UFT leadership credit for drawing up each new contract with honest intentions. Maybe they were outfoxed by BloomKlein. Maybe there were too many tactical errors. Maybe they weren't fighting hard enough. But I always assumed the ambiguities in the contract were the result of someone just not paying enough attention. Slip-ups.

Since we have lost so much ground in the past few years, I’m looking at things a little differently and am more unhappy with the fuzzy wording and the misplaced bits of text. With so many legal heads supposedly having worked on this document, I have come to believe that where the text is unclear, the leadership meant it to be so — to confuse members and mask the severity of the givebacks.

After the fact-finding report came out in 2005, much was written about the seniority rights we were going to lose and subsequently did lose. I was pretty oblivious to the chatter, though, feeling no particular threat to my career and assuming ATR neverland was not going to happen to me.

But I was, in fact, excessed last spring, music being the fickle little subject that it is, and after being told by Human Resources that “the days of us finding you [teachers] a job are over,” I looked up “excessing” in the contract. It was at Article 17, which states more than once that excessed teachers would be placed in new jobs.

Then I got all kinds of stuff from the DOE telling me to sign up in the Open Market system, including a massive, condescending document on how we could improve our job hunting — which they wouldn’t have dared to send to their own parents if they had been senior teachers excessed out of their jobs. I sent angry emails to the UFT to find out what was going on and why I was being pushed towards this new hiring system. Didn’t 17B say I’d be placed? I hadn’t even heard of the Open Market before, and hadn’t much looked into the whole transfer thing in general because there hadn't been any need to. I was content enough in my job.

In response to my memos to RW and others, grievance head Howard Solomon asked me to come to 52 Broadway to talk about these issues "from beginning to end.” Adam Ross (legal) was also there. They listened to my gripes and acknowledged there might be a contradiction between a rule or two in 17B which they would perhaps tighten up.

I walked away from that meeting thinking I had done my homework, made my complaint, and was heard.

What a dupe I was! Festering away in another part of the contract that I had not seen was an entirely different scenario for the excessed teacher. In Article 18, “Transfers and Staffing,” there was more on the subject. I was really surprised to see in the middle of 18A that vacancies “will be posted as early as April 15” and “candidates (teachers wishing to transfer and excessed teachers) will apply — ”

Wait a minute. How did that “and excessed teachers” bit get in here? I thought the subject of this article was transfers and staffing. The words “will apply” are rather vague as well. Must they apply? Will they apply only when they want to apply?

Clearly, Solomon and Ross were willing to talk "from beginning to end" about the issues I had brought up in my emails, but they were not at all inclined to point out other parts of the contract they knew I had overlooked, bits that are absolutely crucial to any discussion of what happens to a teacher when he is excessed.

The long and short of this is that these two articles in the contract, on excessing and on transfers, contradict each other entirely.

Rule 4 of Article 17B says that excessed teachers “must be placed in vacancies within the district to the fullest degree possible,” or for certain categories “must be placed in appropriate vacancies within the district or central office or if no such vacancy exists, within the region.”

Rule 6 says that the “central board has the responsibility for placing teachers who are excessed from a school or office and cannot be accommodated.” But an important factor at the very core of teacher placement (or non-placement, as it happens) crops up way down the list of rules, at no. 11 — so far away from 4, 5 and 6 that I missed it at first.

It starts: “Unless a principal denies the placement, an excessed teacher will be placed by the Board . . .” (Note that it again says the Board will do the placing, but that’s not what’s important here.) The mistake I made, and I’m sure many have done this as well, was to trust what the sentence implied, that under normal circumstances excessed senior teachers could expect to get placed by the Board. My second mistake was to brush off the severity of the final sentence, that “the Board will place the excessed teacher who is not so placed in an ATR position.” I had heard, of course, about various people becoming ATRs during the course of the year, but not in great numbers, not like we've been hearing about this summer. I more or less set that ATR possibility aside as a long shot.

With all the legal expertise running this union, are we to believe that these half-truths, set out as they are in various non-contiguous paragraphs and especially under a less than truthful heading (18), are the result of carelessness?

I don’t think so. I think that the UFT leadership has deliberately fogged up this contract, first to obscure the complete sellout of our seniority rights, and then to make it difficult for us to demand they defend our jobs.

We know this chancellor will keep following his businessman’s path towards financial gains for the privateers he’s feeding and losses for the rank and file. He's never been a standard bearer for the public good. We expect him to treat some teachers as collateral: he'll tolerate the cost of paying senior ATRs for a few years until they are weeded out through disillusionment, harassment, or legitimate retirement.

For all Weingarten's pretty words, she has really broken faith with us. Ingratiating herself into corporate and governmental playgrounds kept her from doing the job we've been paying her to do, which is to keep blocking these deplorable attacks on our core benefits and not stand down.

When a union president, who is herself a lawyer and supported by an entire legal team, is capable of writing succinct, fail-safe text and then chooses not to do it, we demand to know why.


Editors Note to juliwoo:
We don't need them to tell us why?
UFT staff director's Jeff Zahler's own words from the UFT weekly update.


"Underscoring the need for genuine collaboration, Weingarten made a joint appearance that morning with Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Eliot Spitzer, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Council of School Supervisors and Administrators Ernest Logan at PS 53 in the Bronx."

The UFT/Unity caucus leadership function like the French Vichy government in WWII. They ought to serve Vichyssoise at Exec. Bd. meetings.

UFT Suppresses Report Critical of Test

"I'm shocked, shocked to find that testing is going on in here!"
- Captain Randi Renault*

I don't know nothin' 'bout testin' - Prissy Weingarten**

It takes me a lot of time to convince people that the UFT leadership are collaborationists with Bloomberg/Klein, Broad, Gates, NCLB, etc. because people listen to what Randi Weingarten says instead of watching what she does. Elizabeth Green in the NY Sun has further exploded the myth of the BloomKlein miracle on rising test scores. (Full article is also on Norm's Notes). The UFT had a smoking gun against the people who have hammered teachers into submission and chose not to use it.

Since this study was commissioned by the UFT and written in March, 2006, a year and a half ago and would still be suppressed if not for the efforts of Green, the following quote from Randi Weingarten is oh, so telling, especially in the light of our post on this very issue this past week.

"In an interview yesterday, Ms. Weingarten said she chose not to publicize the study out of concerns that doing so would make her appear "anti-test." She also said the study could not be considered comprehensive because her researchers are not psychometricians and lack access to some specific data about the test."

So nice to be ahead of the curve.

Randi Weingarten's lame excuse that she does not want to be looked at as anti-testing, the very issue her members have been screaming about for many years. The overwhelming majority of teachers have been dying to see the sham of the high scores exposed. All of us critics of NCLB and the other mumbo jumbo are not anti-test, but anti- high stakes test and also anti tests being used for political reasons. That the UFT did such a study is great, but not to use effectively politically makes it a waste. Maybe Randi was hoping it would show the tests were not easy so she could try to claim it was due to the efforts of teachers. Remember she said that when the 4th grade scores went up but what about the corollary when the 8th grade scores were bad. A careless and slippery slope she is on.

Even the above argument is simplistic. The UFT is the father and mother of the standards/testing/charter school movement and philosophically supports all the ills no matter what they say. when the 2nd UFT task force on testing issued what was a pretty good critique, that was just the end of it. No action top back it up. Just a way to deflect internal criticism that they were doing nothing. "See, we created a committee and issue a report. That was enough."

But when they held a smoking gun all along, they didn't use it or even discuss it with their own committee. There's the democratic process inaction for you.

Let me repeat a section of what I wrote on the Ed Notes blog earlier in the week (read the full post here).


"The UFT will never explode any testing myths because they want to play both sides against the middle, claiming high scores are due to teachers, not the other machinations that rank and file teachers know are going on.

When tests were being marked a few years ago during mid-winter break, calls and emails started coming in to our Ed Notes call-in center (based in my kitchen) that the rubric being passed down from the state ed dept was a total joke and supervisors were telling teachers to jump levels when they could. I sent around an email to my press list and immediately started getting responses from reporters.

Even the NY Times called, the reporter wanting me to give names. I suggested a visit to a testing center to interview people and the reporter was shocked. To his credit, former NY Post reporter Dave Andreatta was ready to come out to Rockaway but teachers involved seemed to be getting cold feet over possible repercussions.

Calls started coming into UFT HQ to such an extent, Randi Weingarten went over to the Region 8 marking center to check it out. Naturally, she found nothing wrong and the UFT PR machine's response killed the activity.

The UFT covering up for BloomKlein and the state ed dept? How shocking!


For today's youts with no movie memory:
* Claude Rains upon finding out there's gambling going on at Humphrey Bogart's Rick's in "Casablanca."
** Butterfly McQueen's Prissy in "Gone with the Wind"

Transfers Lead to Teacher Turmoil

Meredith Kolodner's article on District 79 in The Chief can be viewed at Norms' Notes.

The UFT negotiated with Tweed and they did not follow through in good faith. Gee Wiz! Why are we not surprised? What else could they have done? Maybe expend some political capital? I don't know enough to say.

Some interesting quotes on the UFT role (emphasis is mine):

The UFT negotiated a hiring process with the city that included specific criteria by which hiring decisions would be made. Those criteria included attendance records, job performance and licensing, and varied by position.

A committee composed of DOE and UFT officials made decisions about whether Teachers who applied met the criteria, although Mr. Mulgrew advised any Teacher who believed the process was unfair to file a grievance.

She has some interesting quotes from Jeff Kaufman:


Some Teachers did not want to take a chance with the District 79 process and found jobs in other parts of the city. "I went crazy looking for a job," said Jeff Kauffman, who taught at District 79 Second Opportunity School and this week will start at a high school in Brooklyn. "I didn't trust how it would all work." The hiring process was supposed to commence after July 4, but the interviews didn't begin until August. Some Teachers, who say they were committed to staying in District 79, were interviewed as late as last week. When they were turned down, it left them little time to seek other jobs.

Mr. Kauffman said that he is happy with his new placement, preferring it to his old school where he said most of the staff had ongoing problems with the administrators. But he said he was concerned that all of the changes, coming as late as they did, would have an adverse impact on District 79 students.

"These kids don't need another disincentive to not come to school," he said. "They see a disorganized classroom and school, and they're gone."

I'm sure we'll be hearing more from Jeff on this issue. And good luck to him in his new school. The teachers (and students) at Rikers sorely miss him. Now that he is no longer on the UFT Executive Board to raise these issues, we can expect a lower level of activity. But then that is what Unity Caucus wanted as a result of the UFT elections. They got what they wished for. NYC teachers will be the worse for it.

The UFT handed Joel Klein a loaded gun...

... and takes credit when he uses only three of the bullets.

ATR's - Absentee Teacher Reserves. People who have no regular position so they have to work as day-to-day subs.

That was the way I spent my first year and a half teaching. I had come out of a program that guaranteed us jobs but they over hired. Not a bad gig for a newbie in that I could try to correct the daily mess I was making without long-term consequences.

But for people who are experienced teachers? A career-ender.

And Joel Klein has stated he wishes he could fire them but he can't.

Why? Because there is a contract provision that he can't.

"Bravo" sing the Unity hacks. "Look at what a wonderful job we did. In the old days they would have no job {no, they would have bumped someone with less seniority}. Kudos to us. Now they have no paperwork. Or the responsibilities that regular teachers have. {pat yourselves on the back}. Look at it as a vacation." Guess Unity hacks have not tried being day-to-day subs for a while. Maybe they all should take a stab at it.

Think they could have gotten the 2005 contract passed if they didn't at least do that much? Even Joel Klein knew that much (and he wanted that contract passed so bad.) He has other ways to get these teachers out -- the other 3 bullets.

Blogger jd2718 has a nice piece on an ATR in his school. Here is an excerpt:

Maybe she is happy doing nothing and collecting? Too insulting to answer. But I’ll answer anyway. Absolutely not. This is a teacher. She wants to teach.

Many ATRs are from large high schools that are being phased out (even one Chapter Leader is ATR) where dozens have been left without work.

Many others are D79 teachers. District 79 “reorganized” this Spring, closing centers such as GED and schools for pregnant teens. Several hundred teachers were left without work(?), (and not by seniority?) That’s how that woman got to my school, where we don’t need an ATR. She wants to work, she can work.

The UFT protected her pay. That’s a start. Now we need to protect her dignity.

I would have been just a little bit stronger on the last statement. Like - the UFT helped Klein put the knife in her back, making barely a peep when District 79 was reorganized. (See Jeff Kaufman's post on the ICE blog "UFT To Members: Seniority is No Longer An Issue Because We Eviscerated It"). Asking the UFT to protect her dignity is like Caeser asking Brutus to make sure to wipe the blood off the knife when he's done.

The Carnival is up and running this week

.... at The Education Wonks

Check out Teaching Fellow Jose Vilson's post in this
Excerpt:
New York City teacher Jose Vilson takes issue with a recent Village Voice article that equated the first year's service of many City teachers with those from the classic movie "Blackboard Jungle."

Comments on NY Times Lovefest

...with BloomKlein

Joel Klein has been doing a media blitz, even saying he wants to remain beyond Bloomberg’s term in office to finish the job of driving the entire NYC school system into oblivion so it could be “rescued” by privateers. (Thousands of teachers had to be talked down from their roofs upon hearing this news.)

Boy, all you have to do is write a critical piece about the NY Times and it gets noticed. In particular the comparison of the coverage of education to the way the Times covered the weapons of mass destruction story in Iraq.

Vera Pavone, a former NYC teacher and school secretary, responded with this comment, but it deserves a post all its own.

I should point out that everyone who knows Vera and Leonie agree that these are two of the most respected, clearheaded people they know. Just to emphasize the point that critics of the NY Times are not just coming from fringeville (as a certain ed reporter from the Times once characterized me.)

“My blood started to boil when I read the article, especially because it shows the Times and their lackey reporters continuing to give credibility to the big lies:

1. "He [Klein] has sought to break what he regarded as a vise grip by the teachers' union on work rules”;
“Can't experienced reporters Herszenhorn and Medina find anyone (union leaders, teachers, other people in the educational community) who can explain how work rules actually benefit students and the educational environment?

2. "To divide large failing schools into small schools" and "to put traditional public schools into competition with charter schools"
“Couldn't H & M read their own publication to find out all the questions that have been raised about small schools and charter schools actually being more successful: getting a higher achieving pool of students and eliminating students with special needs; getting a disproportionate share of resources; forcing the larger, traditional schools to be even more overcrowded and receiving those students who have the least chance of succeeding.

3. "To end what he viewed as a monopoly by the mostly white, middle and upper middle class on good public education services"
“Do H & M really believe that Klein and Bloomberg are the champions of the non-white, non-middle class children just as the Bush administration and NCLB really want to equalize educational opportunity nationwide? Has their investigative reporting shown that quality educational services exist only in white, middle and upper middle class public schools? Do they believe that test scores tell the whole story? Even if it's true that on average teachers in higher achieving schools have more "credentials", this doesn't explain why so many highly skilled, educated, talented, and hardworking teachers don't produce higher test scores in failing schools. Both H & M have been writing about education for some time now and should be able to recognize that "good public education services" have to be suited to the needs of the students, something that is very rare now for any of our students, rich or poor, white or non-white.

“And did I miss it, or did they forget to mention class size?”

The United Federation of Teaches Announces...

... the UFT will take a wide stance on all issues.

Ten reasons to distrust the new accountability system

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erin Einhorn Explodes the Myth of High Math Scores

Updated

Ed watchers in NYC consider Erin Einhorn of the Daily News one of the best of the breed of ed reporters. Today's stories on the high math scores being due to an easier test in 2005 (remember the election for mayor?) and the possibility that NY State Ed commish Richard Mills just might be complicit in political machinations is the highlight of the day. As usual, some great chit-chat on Leonie Haimson's NYC Education listserv (if you are not there, you are square.) We'll get some of their great stuff up later in an update to this post.

Hmmm, NY Times, where are you on any of these types of stories? Maybe they can't make nice charts like these.

Ed Notes has long called for Mills' resignation and for some total revamping of the NY state ed dept, including getting rid of the politically tainted Board of regents. Let's look as other states to see what they do, including elections for these positions.

The UFT will never explode any testing myths because they want to play both sides against the middle, claiming high scores are due to teachers, not the other machinations that rank and file teachers know are going on.

When tests were being marked a few years ago during mid-winter break, calls and emails started coming in to our Ed Notes call-in center (based in my kitchen) that the rubric being passed down from the state ed dept was a total joke and supervisors were telling teachers to jump levels when they could. I sent around an email to my press list and immediately started getting responses from reporters.

Even the NY Times called, the reporter wanting me to give names. I suggested a visit to a testing center to interview people and the reporter was shocked. To his credit, former NY Post reporter Dave Andreatta was ready to come out to Rockaway but teachers involved seemed to be getting cold feet over possible repercussions.

Calls started coming into UFT HQ to such an extent, Randi Weingarten went over to the Region 8 marking center to check it out. Naturally, she found nothing wrong and the UFT PR machine's response killed the activity.


The UFT covering up for BloomKlein and the state ed dept? How shocking!

Update:
Posted on NYCEducation News listserv by mathman180:

Late or not, thanks to Erin Einhorn for getting into mass media print a practice and pattern that those of us with strong mathematical background have long suspected. The ridiculous demands of NCLB and the relentless Bloomberg/Klein emphasis on metrics and measurement for every conceivable aspect of education have made this sort of testing puffery inevitable. Can anyone possibly think that the success of 38 US states in meeting NCLB criteria for increasing test scores while staying level or declining on NAEP exams (our only truly standardized, national, non-politicized metric) is not related to the exact same behaviors? Can anyone possibly think that testing companies like McGraw-Hill don't want high pass rates and increasing scores in order to protect their contracts with NYS SED and NYC DOE?

If the p-values of each year's exams (or all the questions on those exams) are indeed publicly available or obtainable through FOIA, it would be a logical next step for the Daily News to get them and publish them all. This is as good a proxy as we will have for interyear comparability of NYS or NYC exams, and these statistics will shed important (and likely disturbing) light on the Bloomberg/Klein claims of score increases due to their policies. Perhaps the p-value scores will even reveal that there has been a modest "real" increase in test scores, given the amount of time teachers are diverting away from other subject areas and activities.

If NYS SED and NYC DOE were truly interested in fair and open reporting, these p-values would be reported every year for every standardized test. Isn't there some way we could get the Education Committee of the NYC Council to demand that they be publicly reported? After all, it's the only fair way for the parents and citizens of NYC to gauge whether Mayoral control is actually raising student achievement.

By the way, anyone interested in learning more about p-values and how they affect standardized testing should find themselves a copy of THE TRUTH ABOUT TESTING by W. James Popham.

Chart above Now online at http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/education/2007/09/04/2007-09-04_daily_news_exam_finds_math_scores_up_whe.html

Happy Birthday to Ya...

.... Education Notes Online - and Pippin and Pinky

Gathering around the watering hole to celebrate a 16th birthday on Labor Day.

Well, it's been about a year that this blog has been operating.
Give or take a few weeks.
320+ posts - diarrhea of the keyboard.
Inspired by the great blog by NYC Educator and his loyal readers.
One of the special things about NYC Educator is that he has the perspective of being a classroom teacher, so his commentary on the ed/political scene is so reality based.
Think I'm jealous?
Naaaaaah!
Well, once in a while I think of doing some subbing just to get a real feel of what's going on.
Naaaaaah!
For a retiree like me, it is easy to waste time blogging.
Take some time out – go to the gym, see a movie.
I admire NYC and other working teachers who blog because they are very busy people who still find time to share their thoughts with us.
The ednotes online blog is a reflection of the efforts of working teachers, people who should really be running the UFT instead of the bureaucrats from Unity Caucus.
Boy, if people like Pissed of Teacher or NYC or Reality based educator or 17 more years or Jeff Kaufman of ICE were in charge, BloomKlein would not be so hotsy totsy.
Check out the people on the links list to see what they are saying.

Coming soon: Ed Notes, ICE - An historical perspective

Another NY Times Puff Piece on Klein

Check today's Times' article written by David Herzenhorn and Jennifer Medina. The vast amount of criticism out there of BloomKlein is basically muted with a mild rebuke from Diane Ravitch (I'm sure she said a lot more. See below.) Note how there's no quote from Weingarten. Since she's really on their side, what can she say? Better nothing than the usual, "There have been some positives and negatives.)

Herzenhorn has not been happy when this blog has characterized the Times coverage as being basically uncritical of the catastrophes visited upon students and teachers and parents by BloomKlein and even sent me a sarcastic email when I claimed Klein was given credit for hiring a "persistent critic" in Martine Guerrier (see our post here), when in fact Martine was the mildest sort of critic, as I pointed out in my response where I asked him to point to one example other than her vote against the 3rd grade retention plan? I never heard from him again.

Since the people running the Times have been totally supportive of BloomKlein. So have the people running the Post, News and Sun, but ironically, we've seen more aggressive reporting on the foibles of BloomKlein by reporters from these papers, though there was nary a word on the Feb 28 rally – which even scared the UFT leadership over the possibility they could not control the planned rally on May 9th – and the aftermath that lead to a deal with the UFT in April which ended up killing the rally. (You can follow all of this by checking the archives from March-May).

How the Times does a piece like they did today without some word from Leonie Haimson is beyond me. The smart reporters in this city are on her listserv and get some picture of the kind of blistering critique of BloomKlein that is out there. For instance, what about questioning experts on whether such a plan of principal power - which is a basic way for BloomKlein to absolve themselves of responsibility - has been tried anywhere and why not try it as an experiment in a small section of schools to see if it works before inundating the entire system? So be it for all the other organizations? Reminds me of the Times' coverage of the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Et tu Judith Miller?

This is the best line:
"Certainly there have been improvements. The dozens of small high schools that have been created in the last 5 years posted an average graduation rate of 73 percent. Still, roughly half of the high school students in the city do not graduate in four years."

That's about it. Their toughest critique.

No questions about how these figures are arrived at. No talk of the lack of special ed or bi-lingual kids. No talk of the creaming. No talk about the kids from closed schools being forced into overcrowded large schools as a way to ensure failure. No questions about why they don't try to fix the large schools. Well. you know the drill.

See Diane Ravitch's full piece posted at Norm's Notes.

An except:
1. NYCDOE gives no list of the 'new, small schools' included in its calculations for the spin release, so...
2. They give percentages, not raw numbers, for their graduation rates: you can't even try to work backwards to see what was included.
3. Most importantly, they gave no numbers for 'still enrolled,' nor for 'discharged.' ...NYCDOE is notorious for mis-reporting dropouts as having enrolled elsewhere, i.e., discharged from a NYCDOE school's rolls.
4. The numbers for graduates who earned local v. Regents diplomas is also critical, and missing. In prior years, local hs diplomas predominated. According to the NYS Court of Appeals' CFE [Campaign for Fiscal Equity] decision, a local diploma resulting from passing RCT [low-level competency examinations] put a kid-depending on the subject—at between the 6th and 9th grade level. This isn't exactly college prep.

But there is some good news for teachers. Klein wants to stay beyond Bloomberg's term of office. You know, in any organization where about 98% of the employees despise the CEO, his administration would be considered a total failure. And the stock price would take a serious hit. Ignore that fact too, NY Times.

Report from Hot Yoga - I survived - barely.

Off to the beach now to give try to stop all my teacher friends from going swimming in deep water.

Substance: Chicago teachers challenge Mayor Daley

It's nice to be in the middle of a breaking story.
This is one of the biggest stories out of Chicago this weekend. Share the access far and wide.
On Friday night, the Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates met and after a tumultuous meeting "approved" a tentative contract.

Or didn't.

The complete and amazing story is now on the Substance website
www.substancenews.net

See the anonymous videos from inside the CTU House of Delegates meeting Friday night and Substance's Al Ramirez's two brilliant videos from after the meeting was over.

You can also blog it at http://www.substancenewsblog.blogspot.com/
or see the blog about the CTU activites at www.district299.com

It's been a busy weekend. Happy Labor Day,

George Schmidt
Editor

Vermont Design for Education

Susan Ohanian Notes:
The good news is that such a document exists. The reality is that it was written in a more hopeful time, 1968. After it was published by the state department of education, 30,000 teachers applied from out of state for 900 jobs. And now we have No Child Left Behind. This is the vision that inspired me to go into teaching eons ago. We must revive it. This is what children deserve--rather than the scholastic boot camp that is the regime in schools today.
Contrast this 31-page Design with the 435-page offal Miller and crew call a draft of NCLB revisions.

Read the entire document at Susan's web site. http://susanohanian.org/show_yahoo.html?id=321

Back to School Blogs

Not being able to give you direct back to school reports, check out the last few posts on NYC Educator and Pissed off Teacher. An excerpt from POT, whose blog should not be missed if you want a veteran (math) teacher's view of what is going on:

How Low Can We Go?????

My AP went on and on today about standards, about how a diploma from our school means more than a diploma from other schools. And then....he passed out multiplication tables for us to copy and distribute to our students to use when we are teaching factoring because learning them is no longer a requirement....Talk about standards??? I didn't think our standards could ever get this low.

We get letters....

You must be out of your goddamned mind.
Your job is not to tell us to cooperate with Klein's little Nazis from the Leadership School. Your job is to PROTECT us from them.

Unfortunately for teachers, you're a gutless, ass-kissing, overpaid sack of excrement. Mike Quill wouldn't piss on you if your heart was on fire and neither would I.

Sorry! That was meant for someone else. Must have accidentally ended up in my in-box. We sent out the Ed Notes crack investigative team and they came up with the answer to what triggered this diatribe. Read it here.

A WONDERFUL NEW SCHOOL YEAR

What is everyone so negative for? I intend to have a great school year. It is such fun to sit in my air conditioned office while all those stupid suckers are sweating and toiling to get their rooms ready. I can't wait to see how many of those old slobs I can get rid of this year and hire new fresh blood and get 2 for the price of one. I'm all geared up to walk in and see how many U's I can give. I can take any lesson plan and find something wrong in it. That's why they pay me the big bucks. Thank you mayor mike for my new pay raise. I just love going back to school. The smell of fresh books and pencils excites me as does the smell of frightened teachers. I can't wait to strut my stuff and walk around with my notebook and pencil writing up those snails. I like seeing them sweat. When I was a teacher many years ago I liked scaring the students but now that is "child abuse". I would never raise my voice to a student, that is so politically incorrect. But I love berating teachers all day. That is why I became a principal. It sucks being a teacher. I love being me. Power to the Empowered. Oh and thank you Randi for making my job an even more delightful one.

Your Newly Empowered and Powerful,

Principal

Posted to feedback, ICE-UFT.org

How Weingarten Helped Undermine Almontaser

“I agree wholeheartedly with your editorial,” – Randi Weingarten letter to the NY Post

"...the campaign against Almontaser was a “high-tech lynching.” – Rabbi Michael Paley, scholar-in-residence at United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York

"If it was a lynching, my union did not string up the rope, but it was the UFT that kicked away the stool." - Steve Quester, UFT chapter leader

The Indypendent has printed an updated version "Teachers’ Union Undermines Arab School" of Steve Quester's piece published on this blog. Steve, a UFT chapter leader in Brooklyn, goes into more detail on the role Randi Weingarten played. I've gotten lots of response on this issue with people arguing back and forth as to whether a school such as the Khalil Gibran school should even exist, from rational points of view like those of Diane Ravitch, to the right wing calling the school a training ground for Bin Laden. (See Sam Freedman's recent column in the NY Times.) Then there were the usual anonymous personal attacks on Steve in comments on his original post.

People have assumed that because I published Steve's piece, I support the concept of the school. Actually, I have mixed feelings, probably leaning towards Ravitch's position. My interest lies in the way Bloomberg and Klein and Weingarten, the holy trio, functioned in this situation. While all 3 express support for the school (I hear Leo Casey on Edwize does all sorts of dances on the head of a pin to justify the UFT position) the results of their actions have undermined the school – sort of like that Republican Senator from Idaho explaining his actions.

Here are excerpts from Steve's latest piece:

Before Almontaster was ambushed by the New York Post, KGIA endured months of vitriolic attacks from right-wing websites like Stop the Madrassa, Militant Islam Monitor and Little Green Footballs.

Predictably, the Post, the New York Sun, Fox News and New York State Assembly Member Dov Hikind jumped eagerly into the fray.

The Post submitted questions in advance before the NYC Department of Education (NYC DOE) would agree to let them interview Almontaser. All of the questions were about KGIA. At the end of the interview, the reporter asked offhandedly what “intifada” means.

Almontaser, who is after all an educator, looked up the word in the dictionary, and translated it accurately: “shaking off.” The reporter then told Almontaser that the Yemeni-American organization on whose board she sits shares office space with Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media (AWAAM) and that AWAAM had produced a T-shirt with the words “Intifada NYC.” Almontaser, to her credit, refused to throw the girls from AWAAM under a bus, instead referring to their nonviolent struggle to shake off oppression in their own lives.

The Post quoted her as saying “I understand it is developing a negative connotation due to the uprising in the Palestinian-Israeli areas. I don’t believe the intention is to have any of that kind of [violence] in New York City. I think it’s pretty much an opportunity for girls to express that they are part of New York City society … and shaking off oppression.”

On the same day the article appeared, Almontaser wrote in an e-mail to community supporters, “I was misrepresented and trapped by the reporter. Those were not my exact words, and the words I did use were taken out of context.” Later that day, she released a statement through the NYCDOE that read, “The word ‘intifada’ is completely inappropriate as a T-shirt slogan. I regret suggesting otherwise. By minimizing the word’s historical associations, I implied that I condone violence and threats of violence. That view is anathema to me.”
RANDI WEINGARTEN INTERVENES
On Aug. 7, the Post, without reference to Almontaser’s Aug. 6 statement of regret, ran an editorial asking, “What is she doing with the job in the first place?”

On Aug. 8, the Post published a letter from Randi Weingarten, president of my union, the United Federation of Teachers, in which she wrote, “I agree wholeheartedly with your editorial,” and, “While the city teachers’ union initially took an open-minded approach to this school, both parents and teachers have every right to be concerned about children attending a school run by someone who doesn’t instinctively denounce campaigns or ideas tied to violence.”

In her letter, Weingarten chose to ignore both Almontaser’s Aug. 6 statement and her proven record as a peacemaker. On Aug. 9 the Post quoted Weingarten saying, among other things, “maybe, ultimately, she should not be a principal.” On Aug. 10 Almontaser resigned, perhaps under pressure from Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and/or Mayor Bloomberg.

In her resignation letter, she wrote, “I have spent the past two decades of my life building bridges among people of all faiths — particularly among Muslims and Jews. Unfortunately, a small group of highly misguided individuals has launched a relentless attack on me because of my religion.”

Rabbi Michael Paley, scholar-in-residence at United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York (Paley’s daughter is in charge of enrollment at KGIA), told Jewish Week that the campaign against Almontaser was a “high-tech lynching.”

If it was a lynching, my union did not string up the rope, but it was the UFT that kicked away the stool. I’m at a loss to explain why my union, which continues to support KGIA, piled on when the attacks on the school’s principal were at their shrillest. The union leadership insists that we were acting on our deep commitment to peace and nonviolence, but that’s a strange excuse for joining in a transparently racist and Islamophobic attack. I suspect that Weingarten, sensing which way the wind was blowing on Aug. 7 and 8, decided to play to the basest instincts of some of her rank and file.

The membership of the UFT is middle class and majority white, and many are Jewish. Not all middle-class white Jews lend credence to the Almontaser witch hunt — I’m middle-class, white, and Jewish myself — but Weingarten was counting on many of her members being solidly behind the Post on this issue. She may be right. But I don’t think that she counted on the firestorm of criticism she was to endure after Almontaser’s resignation. Those of us in the UFT and outside of it, who are outraged at the attacks on Almontaser, are not going to just let this matter drop. We will continue to expose the racist consequences of Weingarten’s statements, so that the next time the right-wing media hit squads go after an educator, she’ll think twice before lending them her voice.

Steve Quester is a Brooklyn-based UFT Chapter leader and veteran early childhood educator. For more, see Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (jfrej.org) and Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media (awaam.org).

The entire piece is posted on Norm's Notes. Also check out Meredith Kolodner's piece in The Chief also posted on Norm's Notes.

George Carlin on Education...

... Dumbing down America.



Testing, standards, NCLB, and all the other crap being shoved down our throats by the Eli Broads, Bill Gateses, Warren Buffets, Joel Kleins, Bloombergs, the Democratic politicians and their allies in the unions (yes, I mean the UFT) etc. are exposed here.

You can't get it more right than George does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KVTfcAyYGg

The Carnival of Education is now open

Hosted this week by Matthew Tabor at:

http://www.matthewktabor.com/2007/08/29/welcome-to-the-134th-carnival-of-education/

What's the Real Difference Marcia Lyles?

Marcia Lyles, Joel Klein's deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, following on the heels of Diana Lam, Carmen Farina (Lyles took over for Farina when she left Region 8) and Andres Alonso (now chief of the Baltimore school system) gave a revealing interview to Jennifer Medina in today's NY Times (posted at Norm's Notes.)

In the interest of full disclosure, I worked in a 2-day a week F-status job for one of Lyles' top assistants during the 2003-04 school year and have many contacts in Region 8, so I have a bit of an inside view of how the region was run under her tenure, plus some knowledge of how she ran District 16 before the age of BloomKlein. I never met her during all that time but she seems to be a very nice lady and no one had anything bad to say about her, so I won't go there at this time. One of the 4 superintendents chosen in the latest reorganization, about 12% of the schools signed up with her, which put her 2nd to Judy Chin's 27%.

Her story is that she went to public schools in Harlem and spent her entire career as a teacher and supervisor in the NYC schools. Long-time observers of the ed/political scene see her (and her predecessors) as figureheads for the MBA types looking for bottom-line narrow test results who are really driving teaching and learning. Lyles almost admits as much when she says:

"When the music changes, so does the dance.”
“I learned all the new steps,” she said. “I just moved with the changes, that’s what you have to do.”

Medina writes:

While some teachers and principals say the Klein administration desperately needs an educator’s voice in a headquarters packed with lawyers and consultants who have little patience for the city’s education establishment, they question whether Ms. Lyles is aggressive enough to be heard.

But the most revealing part of the interview was her own childhood experiences. As a high school student at the dreadful Benjamin Franklin HS she cut school regularly until an aunt found out.

Convinced that the school was too easy, her aunt, who was raising her, forced her to transfer from Benjamin Franklin High School to Jamaica High School, making an hourlong trip to and from Queens near the end of her sophomore year. There, Ms. Lyles was shocked to learn that after being in the top of her class at Franklin, which was largely black and Hispanic, and finding school so easy that she could skip out, she was struggling to keep up at what was then a largely white Jamaica High.

It was her first lesson in the problem that still preoccupies the nation’s largest school system — the racial achievement gap.

Joel Klein (and Bloomberg) have seized on this issue, trying to play the race card by turning it into a civil rights struggle and calling the inability to close this gap "the shame of this nation."

Ironically, Jamaica HS was recently placed in the list of most dangerous schools. Knowing Chapter Leader James Eterno from ICE, I know that picture is misleading. But what has changed at Jamaica from Lyles' student days? Analyzing how that school is turning into what Benjamin Franklin was would provide some interesting data for Aris and the MBA's at Tweed to crunch.

Lyles, who had found school so easy now had to struggle and ended up flourishing.

“I just thought, wow, what’s the difference?” she recalled of Jamaica High. “What’s going on, now I have to play catch up? That’s when I saw about inequity, that’s when I saw about low expectations.”

There it is. She was just a victim of the low expectations by the teachers at Franklin while she somehow escaped the low expectations of teachers at Jamaica. In other words, racism. Next she'll be telling us that if the teachers at Benjamin Franklin had gotten merit pay things would have been different.

What was the impact of the role Lyles' aunt played?
Did the fact that Lyles had an aunt who acted in a way that made the crucial difference in her life play no role at all? Did the fact that she was now in a better learning environment without being surrounded by other students who were struggling make a bit of a difference? Did the fact that the students at Benjamin Franklin clearly needed so many more resources than the white students at Jamaica - more guidance counsellors, lower class sizes, etc. to make up the racial gap mean anything at all? Does she really agree with people like Chris Cerf and Joel Klein that if they had swapped the entire staffs of Jamaica and Franklin at that time things would have been much different?

If Lyles publicly recognized all these issues, that would be an admission that no matter how many times BloomKlein reorganize, or manipulate test scores, things will not change until there is a will to spend the money needed to make a real difference rather than rely on gimmicks. The refusal of BloomKlein to take any of these factors into account and just close down schools while blaming the teachers is the true shame of their administration.

Marcia Lyles won't go there. She has learned to dance to whatever tune is playing.