Worth Noting

Pseudo-Intellectualism takes a look at "A" rated school PS 188M that Joel Klein so raved about when the grades came out. On the school survey, 100% of the teachers said there was little order or discipline maintained at the school and 79% of the teachers said they get little help from the admin in addressing student behavior and discipline problems. But why should these teachers' opinions count for the school grade when we all know that schools in disorder have little real learning going on. My guess is the principal has naked pictures of James Liebman.

Jim Horn at Schools Matter on the Bloomberg-Klein plan to charterize the entire city school system.

NYC Educator looks under every rock and finds the UFT and Green Dot. (And congrats on reaching almost 900 visitors the other day.)

and Gary Babad of GBN News reports on an interview with ARIS officials on the NYC public school parent blog.

Bard's Botstein says "Let 'em eat cake (or meat)"

Bard College President Leon Botstein is being hailed a hero in some quarters for appealing the "C" rating his school (today's NY Times article posted at Norms Notes). There's lots of meat in his comments, though he says his school (the elite) are vegetables and the rest of the vermin are meat. Or something like that.

Some choice nuggets from the NY Times article:

School officials agreed to meet with Bard officials next week. “I appealed to the chancellor in an effort to tell him to remove this year’s assessment so that a better mode of assessment could be put together,” Mr. Botstein said.

Elisaa Gootman writes: educators and parents at.. nontraditional and high-performing... say that while the new rating system, which is driven by standardized test scores, may be a good way to measure whether schools are imparting basic knowledge, it is less useful and even harmful on the higher end of the performance spectrum.
Mr. Botstein said he respected the chancellor’s need to turn around a failing school system, but urged that he not do it at the expense of innovation and excellence.

“You have a system that is broken and that is failing, and they are desperately trying to improve it. But don’t throw the baby out with the bath water,” he said. “There are a couple of places, and we’re one of them, that really do something different and well.
“Not all plants are weeds,” he said, “so why are you spraying insecticide on the whole thing?”

He said of the Regents, “They’re to a lower standard, and we won’t teach to the test.“They’re in a tough bind, and I have a lot of respect for them,” he said.

“Let’s say we’re a vegetarian restaurant and you’re telling me our meat is not good. I’m telling you we don’t serve meat. We’re not in the meat business.”

In Botstein's world, and he knows full well this rating system is a farce for everyone, it is ok to force such a system down everyone else's throat but he wants special treatment. Or he says he has respect for them for political reasons, knowing full well if he criticizes the entire concept of the grading system, Tweed will pull out their dossier on him as they did with Diane Ravitch and send a Wylde attack dog after him. Or suddenly find building problems with the school he wants to open in Queens.

Before we go on with Botstein and Bard, let me reference Eduwonkette who uses her stat stick to give us five reasons the report cards might kindly be called statistical malpractice.

"I've concluded that the people in need of a wake-up call work not at F schools, but at the NYC Department of Education. Undoubtedly, data can and should be used for organizational learning and school improvement. But if we're going to rank and sort schools - an action that has serious consequences for the kids, educators, and parents affected - the Department of Ed's methods should be in line with the standards to which statisticians and quantitative social scientists hold themselves. Needless to say, NYC's report cards are not.

I urge Botstein to go and read the entire wonkette piece and then look us in the eye and tell us how much he respects BloomKlein.

I have a particular interest in Bard's progress. I know and like one of the teachers there so if she ever reads this I am never saying that great education doesn't take place at Bard (but they do have special kids that make great education easy) and of course the fact that Botstein says they don't teach to the test is an important statement.

I just wish he wouldn't say it is ok for everyone else, especially kids who are struggling and do not need a culture of teaching to the test that will only serve to turn them off to school even more. They need the culture Botstein is trying to instill as much if not more than anyone. If Botstein wants a challenge, let him open a school that does not attempt to pick the low-hanging fruit but goes after the most at risk students. Take the most struggling school in the city and turn it around without replacing the kids. Then he would be a hero.

But Botstein's history vis a vis struggling schools is not a good one.

I witnessed Botstein's rape and pillage of IS 126 (taking the entire 4th floor) in Williamsburg (I was the district tech liaison there) where Bard was first located, followed by the hostile takeover of PS 97 on the lower east side, where kids from homeless shelters had the only school that nurtured them ripped out from under them by Bard after they abandoned 126 because they refused to give in to their lebensraum (Bard wanted the 3rd floor too, being perfectly willing to squeeze the middle school students and teachers into closets).

No blame to BloomKlein here, as those deals were Klein predecessor Harold Levy's deal. Maybe that's what's going on.with the "C" rating. The revenge of Tweed on Harold's baby?

Read on for the ugly details
I was in JHS 126 on the day (I think it may have been spring 2000) the Bard deal was announced to much fanfare and press and DOE officials, with Harold Levy leading the charge, inundated the school's auditorium. Word was that a million dollars would be poured into renovating the 4th floor. Teachers were very pissed at the long-time principal, Sheldon Toback, for agreeing to this but he felt this would protect him against his growing critics (he may be the dean of Principals having run the school since the last 60's, but they just got an "F" and that may be the end.) Toback had gone from one of the leading lights as a principal in the 70's to leading a quickly declining school.

The renovation that summer included dividing almost every classroom in two since Bard kids were going to have small class sizes, beautiful new doors for each class, a new computer lab (while the old ones at 126 were falling apart – I know as it was part of my job to help keep them running) and all kinds of other goodies. When probably less than a 100 9th graders arrived in the fall, the disproportion between Bard and the IS 126 grades 7-9 kids (many Polish kids from Greenpoint, including many non-English speakers) now squeezed into 3 floors was clear. There was little mixing between the staffs, with the Bard administrators showing extreme arrogance towards the people at 126.

Naturally, the staff at 126 had tremendous resentment towards Bard, who they (rightly) saw as trying to steel their school out from under them. So relations in the teacher cafeteria were not exactly cordial.

I should point out that JHS 126 was once the flagship of District 14 when Supt. (Wild) Bill Rogers, who "taught" there, gave them mucho resources and the ability to steal the best kids from all over the district. When the coup d'etat by which UFT District Rep Mario DeStefano became Superintendent in the late 80's or early 90's and Rogers was deposed, resources shifted to IS 318 where Mario's guy Alan Fierstein (see my recent post in what makes IS 318 a good school here) was ensconced and JHS 126 began a long slow decline as the best kids went to 318 and more and more special ed and problem kids were dumped into the 126. In recent years, PS 132, a local feeder school, went K-8, thus taking away more kids. But some of the remnants from the teaching staff from the good old days still carried the "we're the elite" attitude.

Though the decline in 126 (and don't get me wrong, it was my favorite school to go to, with a wonderful teaching staff which Toback still actively recruited very rigorously) was due in part to the political manipulations by the old school district machine, it had become a self full-filling prophesy and teacher turnover began to rise. People were hoping Toback would retire and new leadership would help restore the luster. Under the first reorganization, the LIS in charge of the school was considered quite good and supportive and there were people actually hoping she would lead the school. But Toback has survived I believe because he can still count on some level of old-style seniority CSA protections and is still clinging on. The "F" grade may doom him and the school.

Back to Bard
As expected, Botstein and Bard began to demand the 3rd floor and finally Toback said "NO" which apparently he had the right to do. Bard then focused its attention on a new location. Besides, Greenpoint is not all that accessible. What of all the renovations on the 4th floor that left almost every single classroom unusable by the full-sized classes at 126? Not Bard's problem.

PS 97 the next target
PS 97 on the lower east side became the new takeover target. My source over there is a former teacher who was working with the school as an employee of Central. A top notch educator who spent most of her career in the classroom, her evaluation of the school can be trusted. She told me in an interview yesterday that it was a school that had an enormous number of kids from local shelters and did an amazing job of nurturing these kids. An example she gave was that since shelters have a rule that people can stay for only 6 months and then be moved to another shelter, often in the Bronx, many parents still brought their kids down to PS 97. She praised the principal and staff as being excellent, given the conditions. As an example of turnover rates, out of 326 children, 197 were new one year.

My friend was in the building when one day she saw a man from central going around with a tape measure. That was the first anyone in the school new they were in danger of being closed Who was that masked man, by the way? No less than Burt Sachs, notorious pre-BloomKlein central board power monger who had a reputation for enormous arrogance, one of the first to go under the BloomKlein takeover - some people early on considered Klein a hero for dumping the likes of Sachs and others - who would a thunk that one day we would wish for the likes of Burt Sachs to be back as Tweedle arrogance make Sachs look like a saint.

UFT to the rescue
But never you worry about Burt. Soon after leaving the DOE, guess who hired him for a full-time position? Randi Weingarten. He's still there doing something that no one knows exactly what it is. But he is valued for his knowledge in gaming the DOE. Maybe he helped work out the brilliant deal on merit pay with the Kleinites.

And Bard? They now occupy the entire old PS 97.

Give Botstein an "A" in hostile takeovers.

The Stealth Contract

special to Education Notes, author wishes to remain anonymous

We need to challenge the union leadership’s maneuvering to prevent discussions of items that they say are already in the contract that the membership voted on. The inclusion of clauses in the contract that are seemingly innocuous and buried in neutral sounding verbiage must be criticized. Any time the union says that it is opening discussions on items, or exploring the possibility, etc., we know that something terrible is down the pike. It is a stealth maneuver that allows them to give up more behind our backs.

What’s happening now is that the Union Leadership is portraying the merit pay proposal as a victory for us. A victory over what? Over the fact that the ambiguous contract language meant that the outcome could have been worse? The worse possibility was certainly hidden from the membership during the contract vote. And, just because the worst case scenario (individual merit pay) hasn’t yet occurred, it doesn’t mean it won’t. As many people have pointed out, school merit pay opens the door to individual merit pay, especially since they are leaving the method of distributing bonuses up to a principal-dominated school committee.

But even if the bonuses were distributed evenly to all UFT members within a school, we must recognize that merit pay is a significant setback for union solidarity and a huge step in the continuous attack on teacher professionalism. In the newly defined verbiage of the federal government and the DOE, “professionalism” has been equated with adherence to their “research based” educational mandates, and their criteria of success, always tied to test scores, and always used to further their political and corporate careers. But from the point of view of teachers, professionalism includes the commitment to do what’s best for the children, the right to make decisions, and to expect the kind of support necessary to succeed. Like other professionals they should be able to make use of their own education, training, talent and experience. The DOE’s carrot (bonuses) and stick (closing of schools) strategies are not only insulting but are bad for public education.

That our Union Leadership has joined the DOE and mayor in furthering an agenda of high stakes testing and its punitive consequences for students and teachers alike is shameful. When they say that this is what the members voted for, they are just proving that their role is to fool us rather than represent our interests.

Survey on School Safety

*Teachers Unite and NESRI invite you to take the survey on school safety!*

You will find the link to the survey at: http://www.teachersunite.net

Documenting the views of NYC public middle and high school teachers will support advocates in their efforts to:

1) learn about the impact of current school safety and discipline policies on education, and

2) explore alternative approaches to discipline that teachers believe are effective.

Please take the survey and forward the link to your colleagues today!

If you can distribute and collect the paper version of the survey to teachers in your school building, please contact me as soon as possible (contact info below).

--
Sally Lee
Executive Director
Teachers Unite
sally@teachersunite.net

Places to go

...and away we go

(updated Thurs. Nov. 8, 8am)

You're not alone. George Schmidt tells us all about the Chicago experience on merit pay and all the other stuff we are seeing here in New York on the ICE blog. Also check out Lisa North's "Drawing a Line in the Sand: Stop making concessions on Vital Education Issues" running right below George's piece.

James Eterno's fabulous analysis of the winners and losers on 55/25 is being rerun at the ICE website.

Eduwonkette with the stats, ma'am, just the stats on school report cards. It is beyond me how her brain doesn't explode. I know plenty of standard deviants.

Leonie Haimson with a marvelous post on the NYC Public School Parent blog "How School Grading is a Fiasco. Plus some other good stuff.
Under Assault posts a Q&A on the UFT's Q&A on merit pay and comes up with a lot more Q than A. Also with other posts worth checking out.

Old buddy NYC Educator also writes about progress reports and points to the fact that charter schools remain ungraded and today with a follow-up on the love-fest between Green Dot charters and the UFT:

Steve Barr and Randi Weingarten: perfect together.

(photoshopped by DB)


DA Sorrows
Just back from UFT Delegate Assembly and from hanging out in a new bar for the first time for us on Washington St. and Rector. (We'll go back.) We look up and there's Randi on NY 1. We had just heard her talk endlessly at the meeting and here she was again. We couldn't hear the TV but knew what she as saying. She moved the agenda around again today so she got to do her president report and then a motion on the progress reports which was supposed to come after the Question and New Motion period but she had that moved up. When it came to questions the first one was from Unity's Exec Bd member Greg Lundahl, with what looked like a planted question so Randi could extend her pres report without looking so. More of the Q's were Unity/union employees. Randi has taken whatever Shanker/Feldman did in terms of meeting manipulation to new heights. Don't ever say she's not an innovator.

Good PD on Election Day at Aviation HS
Finally, I wanted to mention the great PD I attended at Aviation HS. It was run by robotics coach Mike Koumoulos. Mike is also handling running the FIRST Queens qualifier on Dec. 15.
Teachers from around the city attended to get some training on preparing their teams for the upcoming FIRST LEGO League tournament season. (You can follow events on my Norms Robotics blog.)

Mike did a wonderful job and had everyone relaxed and laughing in addition to providing lots of yummy pastries and teachers were totally involved and sharing info with each other.

The principal, Ms. Taylor came up for a visit and was very gracious and thanked everyone for coming and even offered to reimburse Mike for the pastries (but he got the money from a grant.) One of the very impressive young teachers attending who works at a parochial school will be looking for a job for next fall and I asked Ms. Taylor if she needed a math teacher and she practically hired her on the spot. But she has a contract. Maybe next fall Mike will be getting a co-robotics teacher in the school. Sometimes PD is very fruitful.

Ms. Taylor said the school got an A on the progress report. If I thought they meant anything I would think Aviation would be one school that deserves it. One of my neighbors is looking for a vocational type setting for his kid for next year and I highly recommend he take a look at the school. If only it was not such a big trip from Rockaway but I know Mike and others I know there would take good care of him.

A bunch of teachers from Aviation (I'm told more than 30% of the staff of Aviation are grads) have volunteered to be judges and they were getting some basic training to prepare them. Mike graduated from the school about 10 years ago, so he was training some of his former teachers. His younger brother Greg, an engineer at Con Ed, also graduated from Aviation and Mike recruited him (by threatening not to invite him Thanksgiving) to be the chief judge. (I'm assisting.) So Greg was also training his former teachers. I got a great kick out of Mike & Greg, both in their 20's doing PD for experienced teachers (and having them lap it up.)

Good PD often comes when teachers teach other teachers relevant stuff. Pretty simple eh!

I was hanging with one of the Aviation teachers, who was clearly impressed with the comprehensive thought behind FIRST robotics programs that explore what I would call "cooperative competition." I was excited to be participating and learned a lot from the dialogue we had with each other. I urged coaches to have patience and let the kids fail and get a little frustrated and use that frustration to discover new insights. We're just grazing FIRST concepts here and many schools don't always get the whole point. But enough do to have an impact. There are over 8000 teams world wide involved this year.

School Report Cards - Way to go 318

DB comes through again

IS 318 in Brooklyn didn't get an F but a B. Note the item below from Elizabeth Green's NY Sun article on school report card grades:

John Galvin, the assistant principal at a popular Brooklyn middle, I.S. 318, said his school's leadership met to discuss their new grade, a B, but decided not to make any changes. Moving to an A, he said, would require spending many hours on small improvements, moving students who are already passing tests to get just one or two more questions right on a standardized test.

He said test prep would leave students bored, not stronger learners. "We're not going to give up doing art, music, chess, robotics — all the great programs we have during the day that gifted kids are interested in — just to make sure they get a better or equal score than they got the year before," he said. "We do care about the test, but not enough to sacrifice.

Full article posted at Norms Notes.

Pat D. Teacher and Parent comments on ICE-mail:
Way to go 318! It's a great school with so much to offer their children. Kids and parents knock the doors down to get in. My daughter had the best three years of her school life at this school. She learned to enjoy learning along with the opportunities she was offered in the arts, sports and cultural aspects of life. The staff is very dedicated, receptive to parents and proud of their students. You couldn't ask for a better school environment. These marks don't mean anything but an increase in scores. My school got an A. But so many of the kids are struggling and have a long way to go.

I've had a long-time relationship (I tried to get a job there in 1968) with people at the school and they have always had these great extra programs that attract kids from all over Williamsburg and Greenpoint. People don't fight to get in because of the test scores. The school could get an "F" and it wouldn't make a difference to people in the community. Except that the Tweedle bureaucrats might pressure them to drop things like chess and robotics to get an uptick in scores. They were the first school I got involved in robotics back in 2001 and that coach is now an AP there.

The smart admins, led by Fred Rubino who has spent his entire career there as a teacher and AP, know what people really want as an education for their children. They know that making the school attractive to a wide variety of students by offering great programs ends up raising test scores because they attract kids that do not need as much test prep.

The machine is ALIVE

The long-time now retired principal Alan Fierstein was a product of the local political machine in District 14. The destruction of such machines was one of the major goals of the BloomKlein assault on the schools. I once fought the machine with the original activist group "Another View in District 14" in the early 70's, which evolved into the CSW Caucus which eventually led to ICE. But that's a story for another time.

The machine went under cover under BloomKlein and I don't care much for the current boss, but it still controls many of the schools. I know all the players - the good, the bad and the ugly.

I've been writing lately that things were better pre-BloomKlein (and was shocked to actually read Diane Ravitch say something along those lines.) In my last few years in the system I worked at the district level in instructional tech support and saw almost all the schools close up. You know what? There was a hell of a lot more good than ugly.

Alan Fierstein is a prime example of someone who I originally viewed as a hack - the gym teacher/coach becoming a school leader type, but grew to respect him. He never said he knew about teaching reading or math but trusted people who did know how to do these things. Fierstein called me every year to ask if I had any kids for him (we weren't a feeder) and I would get as many kids as I could into 318 to keep them out of the local middle school catastrophe we fed into.

One time, one of the smartest kids we every had (one of the 3 Asian kids in our school) and a member of my robotics club, was accepted at the top middle school in District 32/Bushwick due to the intervention of someone who got her a waiver. When Al heard he put on a full-court press and come September the kid was at 318 and had a great 2 years there, going on to Stuyvesant.

When we were distributing lit during the 2005 contract vote in the Bronx, we went to eat on Arthur Ave. As we walked into the restaurant, from the back came the distinctive voice of, "Oh, oh, the restaurant just got painted red." Al was never subtle. He invited us to join him and his wife and we had a blast, though my buddies felt they were sitting with the enemy – Al is not shy about talking about the union, which, ironically, made him principal. Al waxed, as poetic as Al could get, about some of the current ed policies. If you run into him don't get him started. Al passed the school into Fred's hands, so they've has consistent leadership for over 30 years.

There are other schools in District 14 that currently have good leadership that came out of that machine. Many of the principals were chapter leaders because the UFT District rep who became the district superintendent, the legendary Mario DeStefano (who died of cancer in the mid 90's) was the boss. One of my battles with the machine was how a union-run machine could be so willing to violate teachers' rights. Over time, Mario and I worked things out (he was not very happy when I became a chapter leader,) but that's another story for another time. There are too many another stories.

That these machine principals still exist in Tweedledom, with pretty high marks from my teacher buddies, is a sign that they are mostly not running their schools into the ground and also that the shadow machine still is in operation, just waiting for BloomKlein to exit. (One school that I won't finger, has the perfect principal and AP, both former teachers there. Someone in the Tweed bureaucracy got something right.) Though I can point to some machine-created horror stories (the first school I taught at has a machine-made decimator as principal and the chapter leader has started working with ICE because the union is so inept,) generally my contacts say they prefer a machine principal to someone out of the Leadership Academy, or one of the other Tweed attack dogs.

The two schools I was based at for over 30 years have gone over to the enemy and the long-time staffs have been, or are in the process, of being decimated. The true impact of BloomKlein in so many schools - massive instability at the ground level.

Tweedles often believe that in the corporate world one shouldn't supervise the people you once worked with (we heard this about Joe Girardi's becoming Yankee manager) and they have often applied this to the NYC school system, to disastrous effects in many places where a popular and competent former teacher is passed over for some hack.

IS 318 is a prime example of a school community where complex relationships forged over many years between parents, teachers and their former colleagues who they have come to trust as their administrators, can make a school work. It is a lesson that hopefully the successors of BloomKlein, who are simply not interested in lessons that will really improve schools, will learn.

With mayoral control authorization coming up again, people should not throw out the idea of an improved local community control that existed pre-BloomKlein. Sure, there will be political machines and patronage (does anyone think there's no patronage through mayoral control?) But with oversight, a system could be put in place that could work.

Of course, with the UFT having always backed centralized systems, as epitomized by mayoral control, the very idea is impossible.

Read the fabulous review of IS 318 in Inside Schools.

Kudos to Teachers at PS 196X Who Reject Merit Pay

Kudos to the gang at PS 196x and to the Lucy and Yoav from the Post for reporting the story. And for going to ICE'ers James Eterno and Lisa North for comments. Kudos to them too for speaking publicly. (Check out more from Lisa and James on the ICE blog.) Make sure to read ICE'er Michael Fiorillo's (yeah, kudos to him) amazing post on this blog from a few days ago on merit pay. (just scroll down.) Oh, and with these 3 founding members of ICE doing their thing it reminds me that ICE turned 4 years old on Halloween. Kudos and Happy Birthday to all the gang at ICE who keep plugging no matter what. And kudos to Jan, parent from Dist 2 for her great comment of support her teachers and the principal at her child's school as it relates to the school progress report. The outrage of some of these grades ties in with the crazy way merit pay will be distributed.

And kudos to eduwonkette for writing this today: "Five years ago, Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article called "The Talent Myth" questioning the management zeitgeist that the NYC Department of Education has swallowed wholesale...."
One thing leads to another and guess which company is the model? It starts with an E and ends with bankruptcy and dissolution on desolation road, or on the road to desolation.

Teachers at PS 196X Reject Merit Pay
From NY Post:
By LUCY CARNE and YOAV GONEN

November 5, 2007 -- Teachers at a Bronx elementary school gave a surprising response to a bonus plan that would pay them roughly $3,000 each for schoolwide student gains: Thanks, but no thanks.

Even without knowing if their school will be selected for the controversial program, more than 30 teachers at PS 196 voted preliminarily to reject it - largely because of its emphasis on
student test scores.

"I'm trying to move away from test scores being the be-all, end-all," said a PS 196 teacher. "I'd rather impress upon them the importance of a well-rounded education."

Mayor Bloomberg and United Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten announced the bonus plan with much fanfare Oct. 17 in conjunction with a pension agreement relished by the teachers union. Many saw the bonus plan as a trade-off, and as a step toward an individual merit-pay plan sought by Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

The bonus plan calls for teachers at 200 of the lowest-performing schools to divvy up $20 million in private funds for improving student performance. Individual teacher payment will be determined by a four-person committee at each school.

But the union was given an escape hatch that some members seem to be savoring: 55 percent of teachers at each school must vote to participate in the plan.

"The whole concept is an insult that you're not working hard unless we throw 3,000 bucks at you," said James Eterno, a longtime social-studies teacher at Jamaica HS in Queens.

Eterno added that he wouldn't be surprised to see at least some schools reject an invitation to the program, which is expected to double to 400 schools next year.

Department of Education spokeswoman Debra Wexler said the list of eligible schools is still being worked on but officials "are completely confident that educators will want to be part of a program that rewards excellence."

Even Weingarten acknowledged that the program, despite relying too heavily on test scores, was better received than she had expected.

"For now, what we did was include enough checks and balances that this is something where the school staff has equal power with the principal to decide to go into this process and decide how the money gets distributed," she said.

Whether schools ultimately accept or refuse offers for the bonus pay, wary teachers maintain that aligning teacher rewards with student scores sets a bad precedent.

"I think it lowers the standard of what good education is," said Lisa North, a literacy coach at PS 3 in Brooklyn.

Grading Public Schools by Jan, parent in Dist. 2

It is outrageous to me that our city's hard-working educators are being subjected to this narrow grading system. How humiliating! How reductive! Chancellor Klein has no idea how to work with or respect professional educators. My son's middle school received a C, and according to the DOE website, a school that receives a “C” 3 years in a row is subject to “consequences.”

This grade does not match my experience of the school in any respect. The school’s principal is stellar -- gifted and visionary. The teachers as well are smart, concerned, and committed; they bring a vibrancy and enthusiasm to a curriculum increasingly threatened to be overcome by test prep. The team of teachers from each grade meets regularly to discuss curriculum and individual students; if a student is falling behind, they are alerted immediately and work together to bring that student back. I am so angry that the chancellor is subjecting these hard-working educators to a meaningless and demoralizing grade.

The DOE’s miserly focus on assessment, their non-stop testing and grading, is deadening to our children – and now the DOE has found a way to demoralize our principals and teachers in the bargain. All the children in our city deserve the opportunity to experience a love of learning, the chance to be engaged in vibrant learning communities, and our educators deserve support.

My grade for the DOE? A resounding F. Unfortunately, I fear that their actions will now resound throughout the system, and it is our schools and children who will feel the “consequences” of this grade.

-- Jan, School District 2 Manhattan

TAGNYC has been gathering feedback

UPDATED: Materials have been circulating calling for an action at Tweed on Nov. 26 the evening of the monthly PEP meeting. Right now we have sketchy information. We'll post more when we know more.

The following is a note from TAGNYC with comments on the meeting Randi held with RR denizens on Oct. 30. We wrote a previous report on that meeting here - ed notes

Teachers:

TAGNYC has been gathering feedback on the October 30^th meeting between UFT staff and persons currently in the Reassignment Centers. Very few of the responses have been positive. A couple of people who spoke to us expressed the sentiment that Randi was now trying to address the conditions of the Reassignment Centers and that her Ten Points is evidence of this new commitment. Here is a direct quote from a person who drew encouragement from the meeting:

“As negligent as she has been in the past, I think she is showing a greater level of concern now.”

TAGNYC can not agree. Our position: The UFT leadership is analogous to the farmer who shuts the barn door after the horses escape or to the fire department that arrives to hose down a building’s burning embers. No amount of theatrics on the part of Randi Weingarten could quell the constant muttering of the crowd: “Where have they been all this time?” Where was the UFT and Randi’s concern when the damage was being done? That is the question that should have been addressed. Where were most of the district reps and most of the chapter leaders when Bloomberg-Klein’s unethical principals and assistant principals were harassing teachers and using u-ratings to intimidate and force out senior/experienced teachers? TAGNYC holds that the consensus ‘on the street’ is that Randi is no longer silent because her lambs are no longer silent. “Fired up--won’t take no more”- a rallying union cry that has caught up with the UFT leadership.

What follows are comments made by individuals who attended the meeting with some TAG commentary.

• Why was not a copy of the Ten Points handed out? People tried to copy them down from the PowerPoint but there was not enough time. (Possibly not to have a paper record?)
• Most of the Ten Points came from the brainstorming of people in the Reassignment Centers. How is Randi planning to make "her" Ten Points happen?
• Randi got the message loud and clear that her people were not doing their work (of representing the members).
• A member of the audience called out “If you can’t do anything, why are we here?’ Randi heard this comment.
• A reply of Randi’s: “That’s why I’m here. I need to hear.” (Brings up the main question- Why weren’t you hearing for the past many years? Isn’t that the role of a union leader?)
• There were no surprises. However experiencing it was really depressing. I’m glad I did not go alone.
• The UFT staff looked visibly upset when Randi told us “...we would be here until all questions are answered.” They kept talking among themselves and looking at their watches. A member of the audience had to keep asking "Can you please be quiet."
• She’s not going far enough. She has to do something before people are removed from the school. (That’s when the chapter leaders and district reps could earn their stipends and salaries.)
• Why is enforcing due process such a big deal when Article 21 of the contract repeats the state law? Why doesn’t the union just enforce the contract? Some of the Ten Points are contractual.

The next meeting will be on November 15th to address the issue of the ATRs. Affected TAG members please ask: Where was the union and how did you let this happen without a fight?

TAGNYC

http://teacheradvocacygrpnyc.blogspot.com/

Suggestion from Michael Fiorillo on ICE-mail:

In regard to David Pakter's plan to demonstrate at Tweed, I think it might be helpful if the Rubber Room teachers did a borough by borough survey to see if the detainees have been put there disproportionately by Leadership Academy principals. If this were to pan out, it would make for a much more effective attack against Klein and the regime, since it would be hard for them to counteract the logical inference that this a policy developed by Tweed and implemented by its minions.

Commentary from a variety of people on ICE mail:

"Do We Live In A Police State?" asks teacher A:

Teacher B: Most decidedly YES!

It strikes me as strange that we, as teachers, sat back for so long and allowed ( yes, allowed) all of these things to happen to us. Piece by piece, little by little, we have turned our destinies over to those (Bloomburger, FrankenKlein and Swinegarten) that are seeking greater political careers for themselves and even greater personal power. Do we not see the Bear directly coming at us?

Sure, I've heard all kinds of reasoning for why we have allowed ourselves to be led like sheep to the slaughter ( time in, pensions, age, etc). True enough, but WHEN will those blinders come off, and teachers take control of their own destiny? We have let ourselves be treated as less than professional, and now we see the results.

Rallies, etc., are great for publicity, but, after the dust settles, what will have been accomplished? It's time for teachers to rally together, and form our own professional association, and PAC's.

Teacher C:

Definitely. And it's time to write letters to members of the City Council and other public officials. It is time to learn how to be effective activists, and not rush blindly and emotionally into anything.

The opposition is extremely clear headed and relaxed. If this were a game of chess, we are fast approaching check. We're not there yet though. There's still some time, but not much.

The message that must get out of the Rubber Room is "If it can happen to us, it can happen to you." Every in-service member needs to be aware of that possibility.

A CONTRACTUAL LANDMINE

Updated with additional material on merit pay, Sunday AM

A CONTRACTUAL LANDMINE
By Michael Fiorillo

Like a land mine buried and forgotten but still active, merit pay exploded in the faces of UFT members attending the October 17th Delegates Assembly. Jamming the membership with a deal that was embedded in the discredited 2005 contract, President Randi Weingarten welcomed the delegates and chapter leaders with an agreement that pits schools and UFT members against each other. In so doing, she once again showed by her actions that she agrees with the use of high stakes test scores for judging school success, and has helped further the privatization and corporate control of our public schools, and the weakening of the union.

INSTITUTIONALIZING HIGH STAKES TESTS

Despite the PR spin and semantic contortions, this agreement will further entrench test scores as the basis for judging student, teacher and school success. They may claim that other benchmarks will be factored in, but the reality is that those who are setting the agenda for education are only interested in what can be counted, measured and controlled in their interests. And it will be an all-powerful executive, free of any checks and balances, that will define what is worth measuring, and how. The end result will be the removal of all programs, methods and individuals that do not further the testing/control/punishment regime. Randi Weingarten makes eloquent noises about the distortions and injustices created by this, but her actions demonstrate her basic support for it.

AN INVITATION TO CHEAT

Financial incentives for increased test scores will inevitably lead to cheating and gaming the tests. Just as corporate executives, through stock options, were given incentives to manipulate their companies' accounting, principals and schools will now be further tempted manipulate who takes the tests and how they are scored. While many, if not most, schools will try to resist these temptations, it is a statistical certainty that others will, and be rewarded for it. The resulting scandals are predictable, and will be used to intimidate and discredit teachers further.

DIVISIVE ACROSS THE BOARD

Although pitched as a way for school staff to collaborate, this program will pit schools and teachers against each other. This has been the Mayor's intention all along. The fantasy that cooperation will magically appear in schools that do not currently enjoy it is typical of the market fundamentalism that governs urban education today, which cannot imagine that people are motivated by anything other than greed or fear. This program will worsen the epidemic of schools screening and cherry picking students based on how they'll make their test scores look, and will diminish services for ELL's, special ed and other high needs students. It will be divisive within communities, creating a two-tier educational system modeled after the two-tier labor markets that corporate America is imposing across the nation. Within schools, it will enable unscrupulous principals to pit UFT members against each other.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK?

For generations, unions have struggled to institutionalize the practice of equal pay for equal work. They've done this for ethical and practical reasons: because it's the right thing to do, and because employers have always tried to use divide and conquer schemes to destroy the cohesion and solidarity of their employees. This is simply another version of that timeless game. Distrust and resentment within and among schools will be the inevitable result, with non-participating schools and those that "fail" to meet the benchmarks essentially being told that they don't "count."

A PROFESSIONAL INSULT

Perhaps the worst quality of this plan is the professionally and personally insulting message that without merit pay, teachers and other educators will withhold their best efforts. While all educators need to make (more) money, they are motivated by things that transcend marks on a ledger. Bloomberg, Klein and the other privateers who've targeted public education cannot conceive of this, but the disgrace and danger is that our own union president shares their blindness and values.

SCARE TACTICS AND POLITICAL MANIPULATION

The timing and manner in which this came about reek of an underhanded deal between the mayor and Randi Weingarten. Consider: the language leading to merit pay was quietly embedded in the controversial 2005 contract, only to be sprung on the DA without any real debate or opportunity to bring it back to the chapters for discussion. Consider: in the weeks leading up to the DA being presented with this fait accompli, RANDI WEINGARTEDN WAS SOUNDING THE ALARM ABOUT INDIVIDUAL MERIT PAY IN A RE-AUTHORIZED NCLB WHILE SHE WAS SIMULTANEOUSLY NEGOTIATING THIS DEAL IN SECRET. She now claims that this "closes the door" on individual merit pay, a transparent falsehood, since any federal law would trump this agreement. Either she was exaggerating the likelihood of individual merit pay to prime the members for a deal she was secretly negotiating, or she negotiated a deal that will become moot. Either way, the membership has been bamboozled.

WHERE TO NOW?

This episode once again raises questions about the values, direction and tactics of the UFT leadership. Members must ask themselves what kind of system they want to work in, and what kind of union is to represent them. Will it be a two-tier, de facto privatized system with rewards and punishments based on invalid, arbitrary, divisive and politically-motivated criteria, enabled by a union leadership that agrees with the fetish for numbers, numbers numbers? Or will there be a membership that recognizes and fights for public education as a foundation of our democracy, and its union as a guardian of that democracy within and outside the schools? The time to begin that discussion is now.

Michael Fiorillo is the Chapter Leader at Newcomers High School in Queens and a founding member of the Independent Community of Educators.


Merit bonuses elude top teachers
WARNING from Susan Ohanian:
Read this at your own risk. It is likely to make anyone who cares about teacher professionalism ill.

By Rachel Simmonsen
Palm Beach Post 2007-11-02

Of about 400 Martin County teachers and administrators awarded bonuses recently, one name was conspicuously absent: Carol Matthews O'Connor, the district's teacher of the year.

Fewer than half of the teachers of the year at the district's 22 schools earned a bonus under STAR (Special Teachers Are Rewarded), a controversial merit pay plan that was approved reluctantly last school year by the school board and teachers union.

"I'm just as disappointed as those who didn't get the money," school board member David Anderson said.

"I don't even know where to begin," teachers union chief Jeanette Phillips said of the program's faults.

Full article posted at Susan's web site here and at Palm Beach Post here.

Million Dollar Diane

Great work by Sal Maglie, as usual

UFT's Leo Casey Wants Open, Lively Debate

Guess what? He won't find it at UFT Delegate Assemblies or Executive Board meetings or just about anywhere in the UFT. Here's what he wrote on Edwize about Kathryn Wylde's assault on Diane Ravitch:

"Education policy thrives in a vigorous, dynamic public sphere where ideas and initiatives — new and old, good and bad, half-baked and well-formulated — are subjected to open, lively debate and contestation. What is essential in this sphere is that it is the policies, not the persons advocating them, which are the center of debate."

Nice to know the red-baiting attack on Kit Wainer by Unity Caucus in the elections was not personal. Or Casey's attempt to brand an entire opposition Caucus as Nazi sympathizers because of the colors used on their web site.

Casey goes on to say, "It seems that for some, markets should rule all education — except for the free marketplace of ideas. There, their monopoly must go unquestioned and uncriticized."

If you've read this blog you see how the UFT leadership attempts to suppress debate on a consistent basis. Don't believe me? Check anyone who is not in Unity Caucus to tell you how much open, lively debate and contestation there was at the October Delegate Assembly over the merit pay deal as Unity Caucus faithful hooted and hollered to close debate as soon as they could. How they rejected attempts by delegates to go back to their schools to discuss the issue before voting. You see, in the UFT open lively debate consists of springing something on the delegates without any advance notice on the agenda even after months of discussion with the DOE, taking an hour to have the president present it, "allowing" less than a half hour to talk about it before voting.

Or how when Jeff Kaufman rose to amend an ATR resolution there were immediate calls from Unity that he did not have the right, followed by about a hundred violations of Robert's Rules by Randi Weingarten as she constantly interjected herself while Jeff attempted to talk.

Wylde unfairly called Ravitch hypocritical. Call Casey and the rest of the UFT hierarchy hyper-hypocritical.

Free marketplace of ideas indeed!

Kathryn Wylde Goes Wild on Ravitch - Tweed Hit Job

Wylde photo lifted from the eduwonkette blog which has excellent commentary on this issue. Also check out the brilliant Halloween parade of ed stars.


UPDATE Nov. 1

See Leonie Haimson and NY Sun article below showing Wylde's NY Post article aided by Tweed - thanks to reporting by one of our favorite reporters, Elizabeth Green. Yo, Wyldewoman, who's the one without integrity now? And to David Cantor, Tweed head of public relations: want to see a good file? Check out Bloomberg's file on sexual harrassment. Finally! Holy crap - I'm on the same side as Randi Weingarten and Sol Stern on this one. Gotta get my head x-rayed.

Bloomberg hack & flack Kathryn Wylde, one of those dilettantes dabbling in educational policy as president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, went wild in a vicious attack on Ravitch’s integrity for her daring to say the union bested BloomKlein. The wild Wylde writes, “When it comes to public education in NYC [Ravitch is] no longer a source we can rely on for fair-minded commentary.” Wylde wrote this in the NY Post, that paragon of fair-minded commentary.

While I agree with Wylde that this was not a win for the union, her attack on Ravitch is a sign of how critics of Ravitch’s stature are getting under the BloomKlein skin. And while I often disagree with Ravitch, I have absolutely no doubt about her integrity and indeed, have increasing respect for her for her stand on BloomKlein.

UPDATE from Leonie Haimson and NY Sun below

1. Yesterday, the NY Post published an oped by Kathy Wylde, head of the NYC Partnership, which claims to represent all the business interests in this city. The oped was a blistering, personal attack on Diane Ravitch.

Diane is a personal hero of mine. She’s the top expert in the country on the history of the NYC public schools, and a relentless critic of this administration’s wrong-headed education policies, whether that be holding back kids on the basis of their test scores, to the new merit pay proposals that will pay principals, kids, and now teachers for higher test scores at schools.

Diane has also been a big proponent of the need to reduce class size, and the right of parents and the public at large to be involved in the decision making process when it comes to our schools, which puts her at odds with this administration.

Today’s NY Sun reveals that this oped -- ostensibly written by Wylde – originated at Tweed. (See below article.)

Apparently, their highly paid PR department spent days researching in a file on her – to try to show that she had switched positions on a number of issues to use in an attempt to label her as hypocritical.

Yet if anyone is hypocritical, it is really the Mayor and the Chancellor, who refuse to reduce class size, and instead are trying to squeeze out better test scores by bribing principals and teachers and students. All their efforts are turning our schools into the sort of joyless establishments that they would never consider sending their own children to.

Clearly, the administration has decided that they cannot stand any dissent but are now using Wylde and the NYC Partnership as their attack dogs. It’s becoming like the Nixon White House with their enemy lists -- and our taxpayer money is paying for this!

Here is a link to yesterday’s NY Post oped, attacking Diane : http://www.nypost.com/seven/10302007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/hypocritical_critic.htm

The NY Sun article is below.

Please write a letter to the NY post in defense of Diane and her courage and integrity in speaking up for our kids, when so many others have been cowed into submission. letters@nypost.com

You can also write a letter to the NY Sun – decrying the city’s efforts to smear her, and the way our taxpayer money has been used in this effort: editor@nysun.com

2. The administration’s dishonesty was also in evidence in their attempt to obscure the fact that on their own parent survey, class size came out as the number one concern of parents from throughout the city. As recounted in articles in the NY Times, Post, and on our blog, the Mayor actually claimed that “enrichment” came out over two to one over class size, whereas smaller classes were chosen by 24% of parents, compared to enrichment at 19%.

Steve Koss, PTA pres. at the Manhattan Center for science and math HS and former CEC member, has just written a devasting expose on our parent blog – showing that parents at nearly 50% of our general ed public schools opted for smaller class sizes over all other nine options – as did parents at more than 55% of our failing schools – many of which continue to have classes of 30 or more.

There’s a lot more fascinating detail in his analysis --check it out at

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2007/10/parent-survey-results-more-spin-spin.html

But first, read the piece in the NY Sun below, and then write a letter to the Post and/or the Sun in support of Diane.

We need people like Diane, strong enough to stand up to the bullies in this administration, more than ever before.

leonie@att.net

www.classsizematters.org

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/

Feud 'Twixt Wylde, Ravich Laid to City's Machinations

BY ELIZABETH GREEN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 31, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article

A scathing opinion piece deriding a prominent critic of Mayor Bloomberg's education policies was generated with the help of city officials, sources said yesterday.

The article, written by the president of the Partnership for New York City, Kathryn Wylde, and published in yesterday's New York Post, accuses Diane Ravitch of opposing the Bloomberg administration irrationally, despite formerly supporting the policies it has implemented, perhaps because of a personal grudge. It concludes that Ms. Ravitch is "no longer a source we can rely on for fair-minded commentary."

Ms. Ravitch yesterday said the piece plainly originated from the city's Education Department, calling it a "paid hit job" meant to silence all critics of the Bloomberg administration. "They're trying to intimidate me, and they're trying to silence me, and I'm not going to be silenced," Ms. Ravitch said.

Ms. Wylde said the idea for the piece was her own, but that she wrote it with the help of a research file composed by the Education Department that chronicles Ms. Ravitch's policy positions over the years. The seven-page document, titled "Diane Ravitch: Then and Now," tallies quotations by Ms. Ravitch on nearly a dozen topics, comparing comments she made in the 1990s to statements in recent years.

A spokesman for the department, David Cantor, defended the decision to make a file on Ms. Ravitch. "She's the most influential educational commentator probably in the United States. If she is typically either distorting what we're doing, or if she is reversing long-held opinions in order to attack us — that's an indication that there's something more there than fair-minded observation," Mr. Cantor said.

A former education aide to President George H.W. Bush who has written numerous books on American education, including the definitive history of the New York City schools, Ms. Ravitch was a strong supporter of Mayor Bloomberg's move to take control of the public system but has since ridiculed many of his education efforts.

Ms. Wylde's article accuses her of abandoning former support for more than a handful of policies, including merit-based pay for teachers; increased autonomy for principals; standardized testing as a way to set high expectations for achievement, and even the belief that every child is capable of academic success — all points that appeared in "Diane Ravitch: Then and Now." The reversals, Ms. Wylde writes, "seem more tied to her unhappiness with the personalities in the Bloomberg administration than its policies."

Ms. Ravitch condemned the characterization of "an odd Ravitch turnaround," saying it is grounded in misunderstanding.

The moment her disagreements with Mr. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein, emerged, she said, exemplifies the point. She had indeed long argued for setting a single standard curriculum in the schools, but when Mr. Klein implemented a new reading curriculum around the idea of "balanced literacy," Ms. Ravitch said she balked. Balanced literacy is a method of teaching that mixes phonics and other approaches, but Ms. Ravitch said she had never meant to advocate for a standardized pedagogy. What she wanted, she said, was a single curriculum mandating, for instance, when to teach American history.

Ms. Ravitch said her support for standardized testing has not wavered, either, though she has sniffed at Mr. Klein's emphasis on tests. She said that is because she has lost confidence in the ability of local and state governments to administer fair and reliable tests — the temptation to let political interests affect results is too strong. She said she still supports a national test.

Ms. Ravitch said her most serious concern with the Bloomberg administration is the way it responds to dissent. She said that many educators who are professionally reliant on support from the city, through grants or contracts, fear voicing any differing opinions.

"It's a very sad situation, when people don't feel free to speak their mind," she said.

"The Legislature eliminated the independent board; they eliminated the community boards, and now the mayor and the chancellor are trying to shut down all independent critics," she added. "That's dangerous to democracy."

Ms. Wylde disputed that characterization, citing the city's recent agreements with the teachers and principals unions over merit-based pay as evidence of its ability to cooperate with critics.

She said she and city officials have mulled their frustration with Ms. Ravitch for years, but she said the Bloomberg administration did not ask her to write the article. She said she decided to write it herself after Ms. Ravitch published an opinion piece criticizing a program to bring merit-based pay to public schools — a plan that Ms. Wylde's Partnership is partially financing. She said the attack was reminiscent of other critiques Ms. Ravitch has made against programs supported by the Partnership, which Ms. Wylde said she also felt were unfair.

"The largest fund-raising we have undertaken are in public education," she said. "It's damaging to those projects, to our fund-raising efforts."

The president of the teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said Ms. Wylde's article offended her. "Anybody worth his or her salt in education has been both criticized and praised by Diane Ravitch," Ms. Weingarten said. "That voice should not be silenced."

Another critic of Mr. Bloomberg's education policies, the Manhattan Institute fellow Sol Stern, said: "It's been clear for a while that City Hall and the DOE want to cut off all serious debate about their education policies. But they've never stooped so low as to try to delegitimize the country's leading historian of education."