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.

Hundreds of teachers excessed in District 79

NYC teacher Marjorie Stamberg sent in this message to ICE-mail on the massacre of teachers in District 79, which services some of the most at-risk students in NYC.
We are always interested in the response, or lack of such, by the UFT. Marjorie does a nice job of pointing them out. Just another example of how the UFT does a great imitation of a company union and more proof of our thesis that...

THE UFT IS AN URBAN MYTH

Here are some excepts from Marjorie. You are urged to read her entire post at Norm's Notes.

When school starts Thursday, there will be hundreds of GED, ESL and other teachers "excessed" from their jobs in District 79. I am sending this out to alert teachers and educational groups throughout NYCDOE, CUNY and the New York area who need to know of this outrageous attack on NYC teachers.

In the D79 "reorganization", many terms of the final agreement which the union signed off on June 29, have been violated by the DOE, and have gone unchallenged by the union. In fact, the UFT leadership has never provided to the teachers effected the actual text of this agreement.

So what has been the UFT's leadership's response? The UFT has told teachers to individually appeal and grieve if they feel they were unjustly rejected in the interview process! If they win their appeal, they will be reinstated in the "next reorganization" of D79, which could be as late as 2008. And what is this "next reorganization", about which we know nothing? This issue is not about individual appeals. This is a collective massacre of teachers' jobs!

Marjorie Stamberg
ESL teacher, GED-Plus
D79

Kill NCLB

Updated

What has No Child Left Behind meant to your school/student/child? The ability to teach relevant curriculum? True educators know the entire underpinnings are wrong. It is time to stop politicians from deciding on educational policy. Unfortunately, groups like the UFT and the AFT, which should be leading a fight to stop any renewal of NCLB, are playing footsie with Democratic politicians who just want to tinker.








http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_cartoons.html
Hundreds more cartoons available.

It is time to KILL NCLB.

ATR's: What's Next?

..... there’s a clause in the contract especially for you.

If you are an ATR, fill out our info form here: http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2007/08/excessed-and-atrs-want-to-meet.html

NOTE: The author of this post has posted an important revision - see comment 9

11. Voluntary Severance For Personnel Excessed More Than One Year
The DOE may offer excessed personnel who have not secured a regular assignment after at least one year of being excessed, a voluntary severance program in an amount to be negotiated by the parties. If the parties are unable to reach agreement on the amount of the severance payment, the dispute will be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the contractual grievance and arbitration procedure. Such a severance program, if offered, will be offered to all personnel who have been in excess for more than one year. In exchange for receipt of such severance, an excessed person shall submit an irrevocable resignation or notice of retirement.
(www.uft.org/member/contra.../moa/moa_nov06/)

To a lot of us, a "voluntary severance program” means Boss offers Worker cash for his resignation, which he accepts or declines. But that's not what this is saying, and it's so lawyer clever. If Worker doesn’t agree to leave, he’s still given the boot, regardless of that “for show” arbitration stage they’ve shoved in between “You’re outa here” and “Bye-bye.”

This is the end of the line for anyone who's landed up as an ATR for a year - be the person good, boring, talented, workaholic, brilliant, sluggish, helpful, above average or below, maligned, ordinary, wrinkled, bi-focaled, bleached blond or tattooed.

It’s not been determined yet whether this severance program will be offered, but Randi Weingarten has to tell us right now:

Why she thought this was good for us (especially when so many of us landed in ATR positions through no particular fault of our own),
What we got in return that's equal to our careers,
Whether it's going to happen at all, and
What kind of money it involves.

Because some of us have to plan the rest of our lives.

That's not to say we didn't already try to do this already.

By choosing the NYC public school system to work in, we knew the classes would be huge and the pay less than the suburbs, but at least we’d get to really teach and really make a difference in kids’ lives, be free from administrative abuse as long as we did our job, and what was that other thing? Oh, yes, and have tenure.

The above was sent to Ed Notes Online by a newly minted ATR - Absentee Teacher Reserve for the uninitiated, a category of teacher established by recent contracts signed by the UFT which effectively ended seniority rules, allowing principals to hire newer (and cheaper) teachers while senior teachers are forced to be day-to-day subs. The UFT sold the idea that "isn't it wonderful to be an ATR - no paperwork and they can only send you to a few other schools but aren't you lucky, you can stay in the district" while downplaying what increasingly looks like a non-voluntary severance program. And even if the DOE doesn't use that clause, they can "counsel" people out of the system by assigning them the worst classes and giving them U-ratings for incompetence.

Untamed Teacher...

Follow the trials and tribulations of a teacher who, after 20 years of teaching gets her first unsatisfactory observation, followed by a U-rating for the year. From a Leadership Academy principal - naturally.

Administrators count on teachers bowing their heads and hiding in shame. And of course the UFT says SHHHHH! File a grievance. Quietly. Don't make a political fight out of it. Shhhhhhhh!!

But this teacher won't go meekly.
"Somewhere else in Bloomberg's New York City Department of Education there is another teacher who has received or is about to receive a negative letter and is heading for an unsatisfactory rating at the end of this year just like I am. But no one will ever hear of it, because it all takes place behind closed doors and in secrecy. As soon as a teacher gets one of these letters, she feels ashamed. She wants to hide it from everyone. She quietly endures one letter after another--until one day she just disappears. "Whatever happened to good old Mary?" People shrug their shoulders and quickly change the subject. "This won't happen to me. I am going to make this a very public shaming, shunning, or what-ever-you-want-to-call-it. This isn't going to happen in some little dark corner of Bloomberg-land. So, if you want to see the step by step destruction of a very long, and, I think, very proud teaching career, then come for visit."

http://untamedteacher.blogspot.com/

Rating BloomKlein: The True Picture

Posted on ICE-mail, Aug. 24, 2007. The identity of the author is being kept secret due to the police state mentality that exists in the NYC school system.

Once again, school starts next week.

It's been a wonderful summer- catching up on my sleep, seeing family and friends, having good times at the beach and other summery activities.

I actually feel HUMAN again! The past two summers, I worked summer school, found it to be a terrible experience ( hot overcrowded classrooms, little supplies, administrators that did not give the students or teachers much support), so that's something I won't be doing again.

Now, about this year- Am I ACTUALLY looking forward to returning? I DEFINITELY have mixed feelings, given my DOE experience ( now going into my fifth year).


From what I've seen of the DOE, it is one bloated and unorganized bureaucracy. Never mind that Bloomberg and Klein seem to feel that they are doing a good job. Being in the trenches, I know they are NOT. How easy to deceive oneself, when the heads of the organization
are not doing the daily work that we as teachers do. Witness the grades that the Chancellor has received on the News 1 poll. Apparently, he and the Mayor are the ONLY ones that feel they are doing a good job. Is THIS any way to run an educational system??? I think not....

Will this be another year of NO textbooks, no supplies, poor or little direction from the administrators? Not to mention the endless paperwork that seems to be the norm with the DOE. Are there appropriate disciplinary procedures set in place for students that I will not be able to control in the classroom, for whatever reasons? Sure, I can set the structure and tone of the classroom, but, realistically there is just so much that I can do with classes that have thirty five students or more.... Each with their own unique personality and issues that they are bringing into the classroom from outside of the school walls.

In addition, in my time with the DOE, I have seen how teachers AND students alike are treated so poorly by the administrators ( myself included- I'm a Lafayette High survivor- 'nuff said). Aren't we supposed to be PROFESSIONALS? As I write this, I am thinking of the many stories I have heard from my colleagues that are now ATR's, can't get jobs through the Open Market System, are being harassed by their respective administrators, if they still have a position in
the school they are working in. How about those that I know that are in rubber rooms, not knowing WHY they are in there? So far, in spite of my travails, I still have managed to keep working. This is no cause for celebration- the other shoe could drop at any time!

My question to myself and others- WHY are we willing to put up with this harassment? I remember a day when Principals, teachers, students, and staff actually WERE working together, and school was a place for learning and activities ( admittedly, this is what I remember from growing up on Long Island, NOT the city). Still, shouldn't there be some sense of esprit d' corps in the schools? How did the situation in NYC schools degenerate to this US vs. THEM mentality? Sad for everyone, mostly for the students to have to live with these shenanigans.

Anyway, I'm just venting- In my case, I'm going to see how this year plays out. If it's just more of the same, my mind will be made up to leave the NYC/DOE system. It's not worth the constant aggravation. This is NOT why I wanted to be a teacher- to play CYA games with
administrators and my colleagues. I was hoping to be able to make a contribution to society, and give back by teaching.

Sadly, the reality of working for the DOE/NYC and the ideals are incongruous. What a pity for our society.

Klein's New Digs and Charlie Rose (updated)

Being Chancellor is nice work if you can get it.
http://www.abovethelaw.com/2007/08/lawyerly_lairs_joel_klein_nico.php#more

"He and his wife Nicole Seligman, a Sony executive vice president (and an ex-lawyer for both Oliver North and Bill Clinton) have paid $1.7 million for their second apartment at 95-year-old 565 Park Avenue."

"if Hillary Clinton wins the White House, don't be surprised if Joel Klein and Nicole Seligman leave the moneyed precincts of Park Avenue for the less lucrative, but no less powerful, streets of Washington."

Weingarten still earns 100 grand more than Klein. They can all party in Washington, or maybe at cabinet meetings. Check out the "Boy Did You Guys Get It Wrong" post. And she has just a few connections to the Clintons too. More proof that Weingarten and Klein were separated at birth.



Also check out Charlie Rose's suck-up job on Klein. Go there and leave a comment. I left the following comment:
"Outrageous piece of work where a biased one-sided point of view is expressed. As someone who is very familiar with the NYC education scene (http://ednotesonline.com/), seeing this lack of balance makes me question every other report Mr. Rose presents. Mr. Rose should put together a panel of people like Leonie Haimson and Patrick Sullivan, NYC parents who have stood up to Mr. Klein and have exposed the major fault lines in his administration. Klein has lost the confidence of an overwhelming majority of teachers. In the so-called business model for education Klein is pushing, such a performance would lead the end of a CEO's tenure. Mr. Rose should include in his panel rank and file teachers (as opposed to union leaders who are as far away from the classroom as is Mr. Klein) who will provide a balanced picture of the level of devastation that has taken place in the schools under Mr. Klein's tenure.

Monday's PEP: Patrick Sullivan Reports on...

.....Middle Schools Initiative, School Safety & Cell Phone Ban

at the NYC Public School Parent Blog

Let's reform middle school with more Lead Teachers and professional development but ignore recommendations to reduce class size. Of course, that fits into the "it was the teachers fault all along" theme of the BloomKlein administration. Just more of "let's make it look like we're trying to solve the problem rather than actually finding solutions that will work."

Patrick provides a unique perspective as the only truly independent member of the PEP - Panel for Educational Policy (BloomKlein's bogus replacement for the old Board of Education) - who can report from the inside.


NYC Teaching Fellow and author Dan Brown explodes the Joel Klein and his Tweedledee approach in his post "Solving the Middle School Mystery" at the Huffington Post.

Aug. 14, 2007

Why do standardized test scores drop -- sharply, in many cases -- when students hit middle school?

Today, The New York Times reported on NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's answer to the $64,000 question of education:

"Generally speaking, those in elementary school do what you tell them to do. And I think it's also true by the time they get to high school, they don't. It's in those middle years where they transfer from one to another."

He went on to present a maddeningly misguided and half-hearted plan of dedicating $5 million toward 50-performing New York City middle schools.

The mayor of New York City's distillation of our urban education crisis is baffling and offensive. Firstly, how can he be so sure that "what you're telling them to do" is actually in their best interest? Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, NYC elementary schools have fixated on testing, testing, testing. Today's middle school students have lived with counterproductive mania for this their entire scholastic lives.

Urban kids in sixth and seventh grade are hip to the fact that the test preparation craze that has dominated their years in school is actually a superficial, bureaucratic charade that has nothing to do with their own personal futures. An alarming number of sixth graders taught English Language Arts by my wife in the Bronx pointedly told her last January: "The test is over. I'm done." Scores are dropping now because those children have been failed repeatedly since Day One, and their foundation of enduring skills and understandings was never built in the interest of manufacturing short-end bumps on test score graphs.

Rather than making school a nurturing and personal experience, kids, as early as kindergarten, are jammed into overcrowded classrooms, denied support services like fundamental skills tutoring, denied much-needed counseling, and are supervised by administrators more worried about test scores than their real needs. It's no wonder that they "stop doing what you tell them to do," as the mayor says. Bloomberg is blaming the victims here. (And also, who is the "you" that Bloomberg mentions? Does "you" contain the families of the Bronx, for example? It doesn't seem so.)

Students don't spontaneously combust in middle school. When a student's "achievement" on the line graph tumbles, something undetected has been wrong for a long time. Solving the mystery of the middle school decline will require a genuine look at dedicating real resources to truly support every student -- from birth through high school graduation day.

Bloomberg shows little interest in such a difficult, expensive yet crucial undertaking. The New York Times reports:

"But the mayor shied away from adopting the most far-ranging changes recommended in the reports, like significantly reducing class sizes, creating a special middle school academy to train teachers about early adolescence, and removing police officers from city schools to create a more welcoming atmosphere."

How will voiceless public school students get real solutions, not stunts, from their elected leaders?

Dan Brown is a writer and teacher in New York City. His memoir of his first year teaching, The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle, is being released this month by Arcade Publishing.