The UFT and Mayoral Control

The issue mayoral control has come up on the nyceducation news listserve, one of the leading parent blogs in NYC (which by the way just added Debbie Meier along with Diane Ravitch) following a thread on the future of mayoral control. I was pointing out the role I expect the UFT to take in the debate to people who weer thinking I am just casting blame on the UFT and think we should move beyond that. Graphic by David Bellel.

It is not a question of trying to pin blame but to explore history so people are aware when it is repeated. And it will be repeated. The UFT has rejected all attempts by some of us to draw some line in the sand on mayoral control. The attempt will be to pin the problem on the particular mayor not the system and the UFT also expects to be able to put its own mayor into power - ie. Bill Thompson, so why kill the potential golden goose?

The UFT is the gorilla in the room and no matter what is said, no matter how many governance task forces there and how often they meet (they will be holding borough meetings soon) the history of the UFT points towards supporting some form of mayoral control.

The task force report will look great on paper - it will catalogue all the evils of mayoral control but the UFT will not use its muscle to force serious changes. But those actions and inactions will be hidden so they can claim they are for whatever. A very similar situation with the UFT task force on testing last year - they issued a decent report in May and then go on to in effect support the advancement of high stakes testing in their actions - see merit pay.

Why go through a sham when policy has already been decided? To be able to go on record that
Some feel they were ignorant of what was happening in Chicago - not so. This is their policy.

The danger to politicians and parent groups is that everyone is afraid to offend the gorilla. So no real alternatives can emerge from any strong advocacy group as long as the UFT is viewed as a possible ally. Only when people are free from that allegiance, can they act.

Otherwise, the play will play out with a pre-written script.

My goal is to keep pointing out the signposts so people can recognize where the train is going and hopefully get off in time.

On Leonie's question as to what will replace it - and that we don't want to go back to the old system - I feel the kids got better services and the parents had a place to go and knew who to call. The procedure was bulky and ineffective in so many ways - but if you study some history you will find the UFT played a role in setting that up back in the late 60's - I won't go into the gory details. But there can be a better way to put some local control into effect and we shouldn't just throw out the baby with the bath water on this because a distorted system didn't work. Undistort it.

We had mayoral control in essence before the late 60's and many thought it wasn't working then. Centralized control over a system this large is the problem, even with oversights.

But this is a discussion that should begin taking place now. If people are waiting for the UFT task force and get sucked up into the UFT game waiting for something to emerge it will be a black hole.

My original post:
People sure could have anticipated the excesses of mayoral control from the stories coming out of Chicago where Mayor Daly and Paul Vallas were 5 years ahead of NY in their shenanigans.

The NYTimes had quotes from Debbie Meier in the fall of 2002 warning about this.

Ed Notes was printing warnings from George Schmidt and raising the issue with the UFT from 2001 on.
It should have been obvious: if you turn education into a total political entity then they will take the test score route to "success" because they are so easy to manipulate.

The UFT which supposedly represents educators was a key player and could have thrown enough roadblocks into the process to force some "thinking it all through." But then again the UFT itself is not really run by educators but by politicians.

In case you wonder why I and others have such strong feelings about the UFT on so many issues.

An Ugly Thread on the UFT and Class Size

“To its [the UFT's] credit, the city is already taking some smart steps. Its small "lead teacher" program and its new performance pay initiative, both developed with the United Federation of Teachers, will provide bigger paychecks and new career paths to successful teachers in poor schools. That will give those teachers new reasons to stay in the Bronx and Brooklyn rather than move out to Westchester or Long Island.”

Robert Gordon in the Daily News praising the UFT after trashing parents who support class size reduction.

Of course to me it all falls into place. It is no accident Gordon lauded the UFT/company union which will be supporting his wife's boss for president.

Gordon is married to Hillary Clinton's domestic advisor.

Robert Gordon attacks class size and praises the UFT - he full well knows they have much higher priorities than class size.

I've always said the UFT was playing a game on class size.

The AFT and NYSUT already endorsed Clinton and the UFT will follow. Randi will become pres of the AFT and use that platform to try to elect Clinton if she's still in the game.

Klein could become Sect of Ed in a Clinton admin.

Oh, the ties that bind!

Follow the thread below between Leonie and Patrick Sullivan from the NYC Education News listserve.

Leonie Haimson posts:

Hilary Clinton’s domestic policy director, Catherine Brown, is married to Robert Gordon, yes, Robert Gordon, the infamous designer of FSF and current attack dog of the DOE against the “obsession” with class size reduction, as he put it in his oped in the Daily News yesterday.

(For more on the education staff and advisers of the various candidates see: http://thisweekineducation.wikispaces.com/campaign08)

If you want to hear about how Brown and Gordon met and fell in love, here’s a revealing account of his quick-witted charm from the NY Observer:

http://www.nyobserver.com/node/39650

“Ms. Brown, a slender, blond outdoorsy type with a warm smile, mentioned that she’d just bought a ski condo in Park City, Utah. “That’s very grown-up of you,” Mr. Gordon said. “I didn’t realize you were that mature.”

“Is it that obvious?” Ms. Brown quipped.
“It’s a good thing,” he said. “Being immature at this stage of life.”

Patrick Sullivan comments:
I met with Gordon toward the end of his (full time) tenure at DOE.

When I voted against Fair Student Funding at the May PEP, Klein asked me to talk to Robert Gordon.

I told him I was coming in and wanted an explanation as to why two thirds of D4 ( East Harlem) schools were getting hold harmless and why 7 of 8 schools on the SURR/SINI list would get nothing as well.

Despite the fact that he had the question in advance, he said, "gee, looks like the schools in D4 are smaller and maybe that's why". Sticking the schools with a radically different budgeting methodology without understanding or concern for the impact on the ground is irresponsible, to say the least. For many of these people, our schools and our kids are one giant sandbox to try out the latest academic fad. And no need to test on one District, just go crazy and do it to 1.1 million kids. Gordon represents the worst of that bunch. Now he's safely in his think tank.

That day I kept asking what they would offer these schools, the only answer I ever got from Tweed was "accountability"

Leonie follows with:

But he’s not safely in his think tank; he’s still working as an adviser to DOE, writing attacks on class size in the Daily News (which I’m sure he was paid handsomely for), distorting the research by referring to those “giants” in the field of education like McKinsey and the Parthenon Group, and married to Hilary Clinton’s top policy adviser.

No doubt his inside the Beltway perspective will risk poisoning who ever becomes the next president.

And what is he? Just another arrogant lawyer.

Perhaps his being married to Clinton’s top policy adviser led him to express his animus on parents instead of the UFT.

Parent Josh Karan responded to Gordon with a letter to the Daily News:
Robert Gordon's pitting of improving the teaching corps against reduction of class size is like asking which eye you would rather have -- your right or your left. Like stereoscopic vision, they work together. Reducing class size will help even the best teachers reach their students more directly, and will help retain teachers, who find the workload impossible. In middle or high school --- where Mr. Gordon wrongfully claims there is no evidence for the efficacy of reduced class size -- how can a teacher review & critique even weekly writing assignments for a
hundred and fifty students, the number commonly taught by NYC teachers? Just giving a paltry 10 minutes to each would require 5 hours every day outside the classroom in addition to regular lesson planning. I am sure that Mr. Gordon does not put in those kind of hours, nor do the teachers in elite schools with classes of 15, where intensive development of students ability to write is indeed possible because teachers work with so many fewer students. He is right,
however, that providing equal education would cost a boatload, which is why the rich & powerful who don't pay their fair share of taxes reserve such education for their own. As a society, the consequence is well stated in the bumper sticker "If you think education is
expensive, try ignorance".

Josh Karan
District 6 Washington Heights
The district which initiated the Campaign For Fiscal Equity lawsuit

Weingarten and Thompson Embarrassed

From the Daily News:

Teachers Union President Randi Weingarten suffered an embarrassing moment when she revealed that an affordable housing project for educators in the Bronx was being built with nonunion labor.

Even more embarrassing?

The man who stood beside her in October to announce the project, city Controller William Thompson, could have warned her about the problem.

His office was aware during negotiations that the developer refused to promise to hire only union workers, sources said.

The snafu was a big headache for Weingarten, now the head of the city's largest municipal union, who had to tell the union's pension fund to sell off $28 million in bonds being used to finance the low-cost apartments.

Unions for the building trades even threatened to put the famous inflatable rat outside the United Federation of Teachers headquarters, sources said.

Spokesmen for Thompson - a probable contender for mayor - and Weingarten, his longtime friend and ally, declined comment.

No matter what the level of embarrassment, the UFT will support Thompson for mayor, something that has been in the works for 8 years. And along with that comes continued support for mayoral control of the schools.

Is New Action Really a Caucus?

In the 1999 and 2001 UFT elections, New Action leader Michael Shulman received over 11,400 votes against Randi Weingarten in the UFT elections. PAC, another opposition caucus received 1300 votes. That's around 13,000 voting against Unity. That was the last election New Action ran a full slate. (I posted a reprint of an excellent piece by TJC's Marian Swerdlow that Ed Notes printed in April 2001 over at Norm's Notes at this link.)

New Action gave up being an opposition to join in a United Front with Unity. The result? Their votes shrunk almost in half by the next election in 2004 when ICE/TJC wrested the high school Exec bd from them.

By the 2007 election, New Action's vote from teachers in the schools was around 1600.With retirees (many of whom are not aware of the sell-out) their vote came to around 3500, a [someone do the math] drop from when they opposed Unity.

So how did that United Front work out for them? Actually, not bad. While having little support in the schools, New Action members serve on committees, they have jobs and offices at the UFT and run around pretending to be an independent caucus.

We wanted to inform the delegates of the situation since New Action distributes their pretend caucus leaflets at the DA. Ed Notes Print edition distributed at the UFT Delegate Assembly on Dec. 12, 2007

Why am I bothering to spend so much time on a group headed for obscurity? With Weingarten, New Action's guardian angel set to leave the scene, we want to hasten their move towards oblivion, as their existence confuses the members and is a road block in the formation of a true opposition. In 1991 New Action actually got 31% of the vote. 16 years later, it's 9%. ICE/TJC's 20% in '07 is a building block for a future opposition.

Note: A New Action executive board member on Weds. called this a hatchet job and tried to compare what they are doing at Executive Board meetings with ICE/TJC. "How many resolutions did you get passed," he asked? Meaning: you couldn't get the 83 out of 89 Unity EB members to support your resolutions while we can through our sucking up to Weingarten. Duhhh! Read on!


The Numbers Tell the Story
Let’s look at New Action’s vote totals on its own as compared with ICE/TJC and Unity in the 2007 UFT elections. (Slate votes only).

High Schools
Unity: 2,183 (57.7%)
ICE/TJC: 1,524 (36%)
New Action: 521 (12.3%)

Number of high school seats on Exec Bd:
Unity: 3 New Action: 3 ICE/TJC: 0

Huh! ICE/TJC triples New Action’s vote and gets NO seats. Assume some of new Action’s votes (in all divisions) came from people who had voted New Action for 20 years when they were the major opposition, didn’t know about the sell-out and were confused. A swing of around 300 votes would have given ICE/TJC all 6 seats.

Democracy INACTION.

High Schools: Total Ballots 19,799
4,568 voted (23%, down from a 31% return in 2004)

The drop of 8% in HS significant. But it gets worse in middle schools where 12,841 ballots were sent and only 2,384 (18.6%) voted, down from the 27.6% who voted in 2004.
Here are the dismal totals.

Unity: 1,499 (67.6%) ICE/TJC: 444 (20%)
New Action: 273 (12.3%)
Elementary schools:
Mailed: 36,912
Returned: 8,904 (24.1%). 34.3% voted in 2004.
Unity: 6252 (76.7)
ICE/TJC: 1337 (16.4%)
New Action: 562 (6.9%)

Results from Elem + MS + HS:
Unity: 9,934 68%
ICE/TJC: 3,305 22.6%
New Action: 1,356 9.3%

Think about it. Less than 10,000 classroom teachers out of 70,000 voted for Unity as a slate. Dismal indeed. Weingarten’s totals are higher with the addition of the New Action votes but even with the addition of the non-slate votes, probably less than 15,000 in all.

To the overwhelming majority of classroom teachers, the union is insignificant. New Action, which at one time got over 10,000 votes, is irrelevant, even with its 8 bonus seats from Unity to be the house opposition.

Six years ago, in Dec. 2001, Ed Notes wrote:

Unity’s biggest fear is that New Action will fade into obscurity and a real opposition might blossom. Unity needs a non-threatening opposition to claim “we are a democratic union.” What better opposition than New Action, growing steadily weaker and less effective? By breathing life into New Action, the union leadership can give them an air of legitimacy as the “loyal” opposition. New Action is perfectly happy to occupy the position. As long as they play this role for Unity, there is little chance of seeing a serious opposition take hold. If New Action didn’t exist, Unity would have to invent them.

Ah, how time flies. Six years later, New Action is handing out leaflets talking about how 8 New Action members were elected to the UFT Executive Board in the UFT elections in March 2007. Unity holds the other 81 and ICE/TJC hold no seats on the Ex Bd.

Ed Notes is making a return appearance at the DA to fill in the missing information.

New Action received an automatic 5 seats from their candidates that also ran on Randi Weingarten’s Unity slate.

The other 3 seats came from running with Unity on the high school level, where they split the 6 seats with Unity. ICE/TJC had wrested these seats from New Action in the 2004 election when Unity didn’t run any candidates in a deal with New Action to have them not run a candidate against Weingarten. This led to the foundation of ICE and the reincarnation of TJC as a caucus active in UFT elections. The 6 ICE/TJC Ex Bd member were such a thorn in Unity’s side, they made sure not to allow New Action to run on their own against ICE/TJC.

What has NA they done with the seats? While their leaflets try to give the impression they are taking action at the Executive Board, they have endorsed every single policy advocated by Unity and have played the role of rubber stamp. (Come to an Ex Bd meeting and see New Action Inaction.) Their last leaflet contained not one word about the UFT’s endorsement of the merit pay scheme even though many New Action members are opposed. The same top-down mentality exists in New Action as in Unity. True birds of a feather.


Sometimes I'm amazed at the predictive powers of Ed Notes.

From the May 2001 edition:
New Action Goes CURR
The non-Unity active membership has declared New Action a CURR (Caucus Under Registration Review). In dropping from 31% to 21% of the vote in 10 years ( a 32% decline) New Action has clearly failed to meet the standards. If there is no improvement in the next election, New Action will be closed and reorganized into a debating society.

Ed Notes archives on merit pay- 2001

In 2000/2001, I had tried to bring a resolution at the Delegate Assembly calling for the UFT to reject all forms of merit pay. Suddenly, after years of being able to get the floor Weingarten avoided calling on me for months.

It was the way she handled this issue – by refusing to have an open discussion in the union – along with her support for mayoral control that led me to lose faith in her as a union leader and ultimately took me from trying to convince her to move the UFT in a more progressive direction (I had naively thought she would take the union in a positive direction up to that point) to putting me in opposition mode, leading to the formation of ICE in November 2003.

I posted 3 articles Ed Notes ran in April 2001 on merit pay on the Norm's Notes blog here.
ICE original core members Paul Baizerman and Vera Pavone wrote the first two.

The third, "Weingarten Heads AFT Task Force Recommending Merit Pay" includes excerpts from the Feb. 12 edition of Education Week : AFT To Urge Locals To Consider New Pay Strategies. Weingarten sent an email to Ed Notes saying this was a very mild version of merit pay and sent me the report. There is no mild version of merit pay.

Ed Note: Make sure to check out the post below this where teachers sent in their arguments against merit pay for their schools and one teacher outlines how his school rejected the plan.

Is Your School Voting on Merit Pay?

Teachers discuss merit pay in their schools:

Dear Colleagues,
The elementary school where I teach in Brooklyn was just told that we are being offered the option of playing the merit pay game. Apparently some schools rejected it and we were on the second round list. We were given less than a week before we have to vote! I am looking for any advice on how to organize/educate my fellow teachers so that we vote it down. So, if your school was offered the merit pay deal, and especially if you are at one of the schools that rejected it, please write back with ideas, theories or comments. It feels like we are being kept purposely in the dark about what other teachers and schools are thinking/doing about this issue. Thanks,

Response #1
Our school, Bushwick Community H.S., rejected the bonus pay program. It was a long staff discussion, where we came to consensus that we didn't want to offer any perceived support to this idea through our participation. The discussion was not so much about whether or not the program is a good idea for schools (we pretty much all agreed that it is not), but whether it was worth giving up the money to make a protest that will just be symbolic as DOE/UFT pushes this program through regardless. In the end, we agreed that the arguments against this program are strong and principled enough that we couldn't pass them over.

The main arguments we discussed were:

-The program implies that we do not bring our full effort to our jobs, and only money will motivate our work. As teachers, we are thoroughly insulted by that suggestion.

-Singling out schools with marginalized students for such "combat" pay speaks to a bigoted mindset. Of course the schools can use more support, but offering it to teachers suggests the hardship is located with them as they "deal with" students who are cast into deficit-model roles of "problem children".

-There are much more effective and direct methods of using money to improve schools. Any "bonus" money should be going into such programs at the direction of the school community.

-The program utilizes reductionist measures of education which will be easy to manipulate, and the DOE will be able to paint any picture it would like of how merit pay works in order to justify expanding this program to a larger scale in the future.

-We do not trust the DOE and their intentions for schools, the UFT, and standardized testing with this program. From experience, we do not believe they have the best interests of teachers and students in mind, and we will not be bought into jumping on board with their latest initiative.

Also, here are two letters to the editor we wrote to the NY Sun after they did an article on the program and framed it as teacher support for merit pay-

-"As reported in "Weingarten Sees Support for Merit Pay", we teachers at Bushwick Community H.S. will not be participating in the bonus pay program. It is a misguided step in educational policy, and we refuse to give it further momentum by joining. The premise of the program- that we have not been giving our full efforts toward students’ success and we will now step up to our job only because money is dangled before us- is downright insulting. It is a clumsy analysis of public education to believe that the complex challenges facing schools boil down to teachers waiting to have their motivation purchased. If the Department of Education is serious about serving the high-needs schools identified for this program, these available funds should go directly into educational initiatives developed by each school community striving to meet those needs everyday, not into some contest for bonus pay."

-"In response to the article "Weingarten Sees Support For Merit Pay," my colleagues and I turned down the proposal because it was insulting and ridiculous. Implicit in the offer are the underlying beliefs that: 1) teachers are currently not trying to do their best and 2) teachers are only interested in their paychecks. Our priority as teachers has always been, and continues to be, the education and success of our students. Our dedication is to our work. To accept this offer would imply our values were otherwise.

The "success" of the program is a foregone conclusion and a farce. A year from now, undoubtedly, many schools will be lauded for having met the benchmarks. Bloomberg and Klein will trumpet the success of this pilot program. In fact, these schools would have achieved the exact same improvement without the bonuses. If there is a school that wouldn't have improved were it not for cash incentives, that's shameful."

Hope this helps. Good luck to you in discussing this with your colleagues. All the best,

Response 2
Our school was offered the "bonus" plan, but since we are in D75 we still do not have the criteria for it's implementation. We were supposed to vote last week, but since we have no idea what we are voting on, the union said we could hold off.

This only after being hounded about voting and us protesting about it. Our union officials wanted us to vote, but believe it or not, even our principal was against voting. Now we are being told that we should have criteria next week.

Besides the ideas that it is against what we as a union should stand for and that they think we do not work as hard as we can to make sure our students get an education

If you receive 3,000 it works out to a before tax income of an extra 115 dollars per pay period or about 17 dollars per day of school. Before taxes! How much more work can/should you do for that. Remember, It will be a Lump Sum sometime in October of 2008. Remember how much money we actually received in the last lump sum payment/bribe we got. Please do not fall for the "we will get it back at refund time" ploy. I would rather not give the state and federal goverments my money interest free for any amount of time.

It is by nature designed NOT to distribute money evenly, since one person could hold up the process and force a compromise, and the agreement does not EXPLICITLY SAY who the principal can choose as their other member, they can blame that person for the inequal disbursement. You CANNOT promise an equal distribution.

UFT people who work at your school part-time are eligible for a "bonus" but bring nothing to the table. for example: 10 full time uft members work at PSxxx along with 2 part time uft members. the bonus pool is still only 30,000 dollars and you have to find a way to evenly divide among ALL the 12 uft members. So already you have two scenarios in which everyone will not receive the ballyhooed 3,000 dollars.

It is also a management tool. Who do you think will be to blame for those schools that do not make their goals? Klein, Randi, your principal, or you.

Lastly, although the more I write the angrier I get.
If you reach 99.99% of your goal you will receive 50% of the money, (however you disperse it) If you reach 74.99% of your goal you get 0% of the money.

Discussion on Merit Pay
NYCoRE’s Justice Not Just Tests Working Group will be meeting on Monday, December 17.

At this meeting we will be discussing the bonus/merit pay issue, and planning our next move.
Our group has spent a couple of weeks thinking about and researching this contentious issue.
We are discussing questions such as:

Will merit pay pit teachers against each other?
How will it effect special education and ELL students?
Will it promote cheating among teacher?
Will test prep become even more of a priority?

Please join us and bring your own questions, ideas and information. forward this message widely. For more information, contact info@nycore. org

Jim Liebman's Bad Day

Even the NY Times got into the spirit.
Get the full report on Jim's Bad Day at http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/
Graphic by DB

Teach For America Chews Up, Spits Out Another Ethnic-Studies Major

I found an interesting link to a discussion of TFA at Brown University and posted 7 reasons Bil Johnson doesn't like TFA at Norms Notes.

There was also a link to the usual funny stuff in The Onion, which hits just the right note.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30911

WARNING: THIS IS SATIRE

NEW YORK—Teach For America, a national program that recruits recent college graduates to teach in low-income rural and urban communities, has devoured another ethnic-studies major, 24-year-old Andy Cuellen reported Tuesday.

Cuellen stands in front of the elementary school where he used to teach.

"Look, the world is a miserable place," said Cuellen, a Dartmouth graduate who quit the TFA program Monday morning. "All people—even children—are just nasty animals trying to secure their share of the food supply. I don't care how poor or how rich you are, that's just a fact. I'm sorry, but I have better things to do than zoo-keep for peanuts."

Just one of the 12,000 young people TFA has burned through since 1990, Cuellen was given five weeks of training the summer before he took over a classroom at P.S. 83 in the South Bronx last September.

"I walked into that school actually thinking I could make a difference," said Cuellen, who taught an overflowing class of disadvantaged 8-year-olds. "It was trial by fire. But after five months spent in a stuffy, dark room where the chalkboard fell off the wall every two days, corralling screaming kids into broken desks, I'm burnt to a crisp."

Cuellen said his TFA experience "taught him a lot about hopelessness."

"The cities are fucked. The suburbs are fucked. The whole country is fucked," Cuellen said. "And there's not a goddamned thing you or anyone can do about it. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something. Or trying to get you to teach kids math."

According to Dartmouth literature, as a member of the ethnic-studies department, Cuellen learned "to empower students of color to move beyond being objects of study toward being subjects of their own social realities, with voices of their own."

Teach For America executive director Theo Anderson called ethnic-studies departments "a prime source of fodder."

"Oh, I'd say we burn through a hundred or so ethnic-studies majors each year," said Anderson, pointing to a series of charts showing the college-major breakdown of TFA corps members. "They tend to last a little longer than women's studies majors and art-therapy students, but Cuellen got mashed to a pulp pretty quickly. It usually takes ethnic-studies majors another year to realize that they're wasting their precious youth on a Sisyphean endeavor."

Continued Anderson: "Of course, we don't worry about it too much. Every year, there's a fresh crop to throw in the grinder. As we speak, scores of apple-cheeked students are hearing about TFA for the first time."

According to Anderson, a small portion of these students will lose interest after hearing horror stories from program alumni.

"But the majority of them will march on like cattle to the slaughter, thinking that pure determination and hope can change young lives," Anderson said. "I can hear their footsteps now, marching toward our offices like lemmings to a cliff. And believe me, we're ready for 'em."

Cuellen said he applied to TFA in search of a "character-building experience."

"I knew that teaching in a severely under-funded inner-city school would be challenging, but I wanted to get out into the real world," Cuellen said. "Well, breaking up fistfights between 8-year-olds all day long, I got a real ugly view of reality. Do you want to know reality? Look at a dog lying dead in the gutter. That's reality."

Although Cuellen quit the program early, his mother said he was with TFA long enough for it "to crack open his bones and suck out the marrow inside."

"Andy is a ghost," Beverly Cuellen said. "Those [TFA] people beat the idealism out of him, then they stomped on him while he lay there gasping for air."

TFA regional coordinator Sandra Richman said it is common to blame the TFA employees for the organization's high plow-through rate.

"Should I have said something to wake those kids up sooner?" Richman said, crushing out her seventh cigarette. "Probably. But listen, no one can tell you that you can't make a difference. It's something you have to figure out for yourself."

"You can only do so much," Richman added. "After a couple years of trying to teach our applicants about how difficult and depressing their lives will inevitably be—no matter what they choose to do for money—I just got burnt out. In the end, you've gotta resign yourself to failure and move on with your life."

Randi Weingarten's Greatest Skill

NYC Educator reports on a NY Sun article today that "one of the city's oldest independent educational watchdog groups - the Educational Priorities Panel - is closing because Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have created an environment where criticism of their educational policies is not tolerated."

The Sun has a quote from Randi Weingarten:
The president of the teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said EPP's dissolution is a punishment for speaking plainly. Reports from the group have objected to the Department of Education's new per-student funding formula, criticized its move to empower school principals as treating them too much like private contractors, and characterized claims that the city is pushing more money into classrooms as overstated. "They actually spoke truth to power, and I think they got hurt for it," Ms. Weingarten, said.

Prompting NYC to comment:
There's something ironic and sad about Randi Weingarten discussing "speaking truth to power." Isn't that supposed to be her job, at least somewhat?

and Reality-based educator to say:
No - her job is to receive kisses and hugs from Big Brother Bloomberg after conceding days, time, grievance/seniority/Circular 6R rights, merit pay, and a half dozen other work protections.

Leading to some of my thoughts about Randi's true role as a union leader:
RW has gotten away with saying one thing and doing another for 10 years. Being so closely involved since she even before she became UFT Pres., it is so obvious to me. But looking back I realize I was also snowed for a long time and believed what she was saying - I have lots of emails saying how she agreed with me and I initially felt, like, hey, people in power are actually listening. It took old naive me about 4-5 years to "get it." I was even accused by the quasi opposition, New Action, of being funded by Weingarten - Oh, Ironies of Ironies!

People who denigrate her skills as a union leader are missing the point that that is her greatest skill. Our definition of a union leader is different the people at the top. She was chosen to lead not because of her skills in defending the membership but because of her ability to misdirect, deflect and mislead the members. She has proven to be a master.

As to the motivation behind it all: the UFT with its philosophy of the place unions hold in society, is not capable of leading a militant fight, so the option is to do what RW does.

Reading the Kahlenberg book on Al Shanker - though it is totally endorsing his philosophy, still exposes the underbelly if you read through the lines. ICE is going to hold a meeting during Xmas break on the roots of UFT policy from shanker to RW and beyond to try to start untangling these root so people can see more clearly what is going on.

NY Times Buries Winerip

Mike, we miss ya

Mike Winerip, one of our favorite commentators on education, is back in the NY Times today laying waste to the No Excuses argument, something anyone who spends 10 minutes in the classroom understands.

Does that mean we stop teaching? No. But we understand that we must fight for the resources necessary to close the achievement gap, not do ed reform on the cheap or throw money at data management rather than classroom management.

But guess where what should be a front page piece because it exposes the sham of NCLB and the entire business-based ed reform movement and, in particular, the entire program of BloomKlein, is buried? In the regional "parenting" section which most people in the city environs do not even receive. Another shameful sucking up to BloomKlein by the paper of illicit record. Winerip starts his piece with:

THE federal No Child Left Behind law of 2002 rates schools based on how students perform on state standardized tests, and if too many children score poorly, the school is judged as failing.

But how much is really the school’s fault?

A new study by the Educational Testing Service — which develops and administers more than 50 million standardized tests annually, including the SAT — concludes that an awful lot of those low scores can be explained by factors that have nothing to do with schools. The study, “The Family: America’s Smallest School,” suggests that a lot of the failure has to do with what takes place in the home, the level of poverty and government’s inadequate support for programs that could make a difference, like high-quality day care and paid maternity leave.

The E.T.S. researchers took four variables that are beyond the control of schools: The percentage of children living with one parent; the percentage of eighth graders absent from school at least three times a month; the percentage of children 5 or younger whose parents read to them daily, and the percentage of eighth graders who watch five or more hours of TV a day. Using just those four variables, the researchers were able to predict each state’s results on the federal eighth-grade reading test with impressive accuracy.

I want to reiterate that even with these issues, I have a firm belief they all can be overcome. Give us the resources. I kid in pre-k is already 2 years behind? What would it take? A one-on-one person every day for a year? Then do it. Did you see Jim Liebman say that it would take 15 in a class, the level of private schools, for class size reduction to make a difference and that is too expensive. When this country suddenly needs trillions to fight wars the money magically appears?

Don't come saying it can be done by changing low expectations. Educators who want to reform the system the right way do have low expectations: about the ability of the system to give them the tools they can really use to close the achievement gap.

The entire article is posted at Norms Notes at this link.

The last time I saw Winerip was at the Monday Night Massacre on the Ides of March, 2004 when Bloomberg fired members of the PEP who were against the 3rd grade retention policy. His voice at this crucial time has been missed.

It seems the NY Times education agenda will keep it that way.

Ed Note:
Eduwonkette has done some great work with good links and some interesting comments at this link.

How Teach for America Eats It's Young

Transmission from someone going through TFA Hell!

"Teach for America use cliches, like Be a Leader. But when a TFA teacher is under attack in their school by unsupportive supervisors or supervisors who resent having a TFA person in their school and they try to take a stand, TFA officials will not lift a finger. They are so anti-union they refuse to even sit in the same room with anyone from the union!"

One teacher under constant attack by a vicious supervisor asked for a copy of the contract that teacher signed with Teach for America and the DOE-Teach for America contract but was denied.

There is no training for the political realities they will face or how to navigate around these realities, thus leaving them to walk into a minefield, considering the way some schools are run. When the school admins provide no help for a new teacher as required by both contracts and law, TFA will not support the teacher. After all, they are interested in making sure they maintain future access to the schools and don't want any hint that their people are troublemakers.

The attitude is, "You are being sent to the Congo. Suck it up. You are closing the achievement gap – all it takes is your hard work and a 'No excuses' philosophy.' Put in your 2 years, get out and do something with your lives. Heavens forbid, it should not be teaching."

They are told urban myths about the dregs of teachers they will find in the schools, like, "A teacher killed and ate an entire class of kids and with tenure protecting him, it took 12 years to fire him." The union is bad, bad, bad.

Sure, they will find dregs, often protected not by the union, but by principals, some of whom feel that even dregs working at a quarter speed might be more capable at dealing with children than TFAs with little training who would replace the dregs if the principal got rid of them.

"Teach for America is a cult," said our source.

Union Leadership Promotes New Action - 12/2001

While glancing through a back issue of Ed Notes, this item popped up from the December 2001 edition.

When [former UFT Staff Director] Tom Pappas said “We have a 2 party system in our union” at the last DA, a lot of people had to suppress a laugh. We assume Pappas was referring to New Action as the party of the 2nd part.

But exactly where has the 2nd part been? Now that NA has been lured into a United Front with the leadership as a show of unity until we have a contract NA has been completely silenced. Smiles had to be suppressed by Unity Caucus people, since they have little respect for NA and consider them opportunists. NA has put out little literature since the United Front.

Unity’s biggest fear is that NA will fade into obscurity and a real opposition might blossom. Unity needs an opposition to claim we are a democratic union. What better opposition than New Action, growing steadily weaker and less effective? Much of their support comes from being perceived as the only opposition game in town. But many of their supporters are disgruntled with New Action’s collaboration with Unity. They are also unhappy with the autocratic way the United Front policy was decided.

By breathing life into NA, the union leadership can give them an air of legitimacy as the “loyal” opposition. NA is perfectly happy to occupy the position. As long as they play this role for Unity, there is little chance of seeing a serious opposition take hold. If NA didn’t exist, Unity would have to invent them.

Unity and New Action make nice

Ed Note:
It took two more years of New Action's canoodling with Unity Caucus before The Independent Community of Educators (ICE) came into existence in November 2003 and Teachers for a Just Contract (TJC) became more active as an opposition. In the 2007 election, New Action received only 9% of the vote, coming in last, behind the ICE/TJC slate, especially in the high schools where they doubled New Action's totals. The high schools had been a particular strength for New Action for 20 years.

But our prediction about Weingarten breathing life into new Action in 2001 came true in 2007 when their special arrangement handed New Action 8 seats on the Executive Board while ICE/TJC have none. The New Action EB reps have totally supported Unity on every single issue without a note of criticism. New Action goes to Delegate Assemblies with leaflets that totally support Unity and try to pretend they are a legitimate opposition.

Bloomberg and Weingarten to Tie The Knot -2/02

With the hot video of Bloomberg's roast of Weingarten at her 50th birthday bash floating around - see NYC Educator) some people seemed surprised at the cozy relationship.

But Ed Notes was on the case with this article in February 2002.

Photo from NY Times (not photoshopped other to sharpen the image.)

In an attempt to forge an alliance that would result in a fast track towards a new teachers’ contract, UFT President Randi Weingarten and Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced their engagement. Shocked members of the press bombarded the happy couple with questions. “I know he’s short,” said Weingarten. “But I’m shorter.” “Michael and Randi have had a wonderful relationship for a long time,” said a UFT spokesperson. “She was even his date at a dinner a few years ago. And the sweater gift---that was the clincher.” As part of the engagement agreement, the Mayor’s 22 year old daughter Emma will become the new Chancellor. It was also announced that the UFT & Bloomberg, LP will merge into a new firm to be called BLUFT.

The couple will live in the fancy penthouse digs atop the new UFT headquarters near Ground Zero, enabling both to walk to work. “Michael won’t have to take the subway anymore,” said Randi. The expected savings on the train pass have graciously been donated by Bloomberg towards the new contract.

In December 2001 we had this article:

UFT Endorses Bloomberg
Barely an hour after he had officially won the Mayoralty election, an emergency session of the UFT Delegate Assembly was called to endorse Michael Bloomberg, The ex post facto endorsement came at 1 AM on Nov. 7 It is considered somewhat unusual, though not unprecedented in the UFT, to endorse a candidate after he had already won the election.
There were immediate results. Randi Weingarten was one of the thousands added to the Bloomberg Transition Team.

A member of the union hierarchy defended the move. “Our leaders know exactly what they are doing. It was brilliant to endorse three losing candidates in a row. That was their strategy all along. Witness the fact that with every loss, all the other candidates came panting after our endorsement like dogs in heat. With only Michael left in the race, sadly, we had no choice but to endorse a winner. We are so excited at the potential of this political strategy, we plan on endorsing only losers in the future. The political clout of the UFT is greater than ever.”

The 35 people present at the DA voted almost unanimously in favor of the Bloomberg endorsement as “opposition caucus New Action delegates made rousing speeches supporting the leadership. An attempted quorum call (over 500 delegates must be present to transact business) was compared by Weingarten to recent terrorist acts. As the quorum caller was hauled from the room, Unity Caucus delegates cursed and shouted their outrage that the quorum caller was being divisive and undemocratic. Weingarten then apologized for her statements, saying, ““We are all under a lot of pressure.” New Action delegates made more rousing speeches supporting the leadership.

Rocking The Rock

These back to back columns appeared in The Wave in April 2005 as a response to the reorganization of Far Rockway HS. It obviously was a failure if they are closing it now. Who was responsible if not the DOE? Why are they allowed to get away with blaming everyone and everything but themselves? They are always talking about "no excuses" [read eduwonkette this week exploding that myth] yet they are the biggest excuse-makers there are.

School Scope Column
by Norman Scott
April 2005

As reported on page one of last week’s Wave, Far Rockaway HS has been put on a fast track to be reorganized by September which could lead to the creation of four mini-schools, including a vocational ed track, and the replacement of up to 50% of the teachers. Teachers who want to stay will have to apply for jobs. You know the story – if it’s a failing school it’s got to be the fault of the teachers. Their resistance to change must be the reason the school is perceived as failing; probably not willing enough to drink the Workshop model Kool-aid.

There is no word as to whether Region 5 Superintendent Kathleen Cashin or anyone else on her staff will in any way be held responsible for anything that went on at the school. (Is Far Rock really in Region 5?) Phyllis Marino, the Local Instructional Supervisor for the school, apparently bears no responsibility. (Exactly what does she do again?) She did get the honor of interrupting the “extremely important” 100-minute staff development time on April 4 to make the announcement. The attitude at the Region is, “Who, me? We are only responsible for schools considered successful— clearly due to our leadership where teachers barely played a role. But in failing schools, aha, we have nothing to do with them. It’s got to be the fault of the teachers, so let’s just get rid of them and things will be just fine.”

Yeah! The A train is just backed up with teachers trying to get into the school. As a Far Rockaway teacher emails, “Many people are looking to leave.... and an exodus only serves (it seems in the near future) to hurt Far Rock. We have trouble getting subs and have often had vacancies open for MONTHS, not weeks, mind you. A Guidance Counselor position (a coveted job most places) was open for 9 MONTHS... but the teachers are the problem, I s'pose...”

Here are some basic questions. Did the Region 5 management and Phyllis Marino, the LIS, know there were problems at the school or did they have to wait for the state report to tell them? If they did not know then maybe 50% of them should be replaced instead of the teachers. If they knew and did nothing, 100% of them should be replaced. After all, what stopped them from coming up with a plan to redesign the school to make improvements before the state report was issued? If they couldn’t do anything up to this point, what makes anyone think they can do it now? Their answer will probably be: we needed the state report to be issued before we could move because without it we couldn’t remove all those pesky teachers without considering seniority. You mean the Region 5 bigwigs couldn’t come up with the idea for four schools in a building with the vocational ed track before the state report was issued? The real question is: Was there any attempt to place more resources into the school to improve it before the state report?

Far Rock was declared an Impact School last year, one of the dirty dozen most violent schools and the place was inundated with police. Chancellor Klein and UFT President Randi Weingarten came to the school to celebrate the event. The school had reached the point of needing police because there just weren’t enough teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, etc. to meet the needs of the school community. When there was crime on the streets, the city threw police at the problem. When there is educational crime in the schools they never seem to think throwing teachers at the problem is a solution. It is interesting that both Klein, the “educational” leader of the schools and Weingarten, the “educational” leader of the teachers union, rarely seem to make this point.

Some people think the whole redesign process is a sham to get rid of seniority and get rid of kids who will be pushed into the few large comprehensive high schools left, as they will be sent riding the subways searching for a high school, joined by their teachers.

Let’s not pretend that Far Rock is a school without problems. As one teacher said when I visited there recently, “Exactly what are we saving?” Some people do think that Far Rock could be saved with an infusion of resources and teacher input instead of imposing a top-down model that will still end up failing in the endless shell game of school shuffling. (See David Herzenhorn’s article in the NY Times on Apr. 18 on how the wonders at Region 5 helped reorganize Thomas Jefferson HS (my alma mata) so that now four schools are failing instead of one.)

I was asked to come to the school by a teacher as a representative of ICE (Independent Community of Educators), a UFT caucus critical of the Unity Caucus/UFT leadership, because teachers are extremely frustrated with the process and the response of the UFT. The following stream of consciousness email to me from the teacher best expresses this frustration:

Where’s Waldo – er – the union at Far Rock?
Apr. 4:

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

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

Well.... since I had asked these “reps” or whatever they should be called...about supporting us with press releases, ads in local papers, and some media exposure)... they responded “The Mayor has control of all the papers”... I mean the audacity to insult my intelligence--- as if they can’t get something printed either locally or regionally or nationally...really!!!!!.... Hold a press conference, be proactive...anything!!!

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

That the anger seems as much directed at the union as at the DOE is a product of the ineffectiveness of the UFT Chapter at Far Rock. I’ll go into the minimal role the UFT plays at the chapter, borough and central level in schools undergoing reorganization in a follow-up column. I’ll also comment on the reaction of UFT reps when the comments above were published in Education Notes, the newsletter I distribute at the UFT Delegate Assembly and online. I offered to tell their side of the story for this article but the only comment was that they came to the school to tell teachers their rights. Ahhh! That’s the point. They come with no sense of fighting back. After teachers are told they must all reapply for their jobs that’s like telling a man on the gallows he has a choice of a slipknot or a square knot. The UFT playing defense, as usual.

More important is the constant harassment the teacher has undergone in the last two weeks after inviting me to the school to talk to a group of teachers about the way the union has been dealing with the issues facing Far Rock. He has been called for disciplinary meetings with principal Denise Hallett at least three times. I’ll report on details of these surreal meetings in my next column titled “Entering the twilight zone.”

Part 2
Entering the twilight zone
The teacher asks me to come to the school to speak to a group of teachers on Monday, April 11 after the faculty conference. He puts out a leaflet that day asking people to stay after the conference. I tell him I do not have any real solutions but would talk about how UFT policy aids and abets a process that blames teachers.

I arrive while the faculty conference is going on. I sign in, go through the metal detector and the security guard directs me to the auditorium. I sit outside at a desk waiting for the conference to end. At least ten people pass by. People barely look at me. The meeting ends and a number of people file out. Again, I am not noticed.

UFT chapter leader Ray Taruskin, who is a member of Unity Caucus and has to tow the official UFT line, is asked to say a few words. I remain outside so as not to interrupt Ray, but finally enter. People are starting to leave. Ray said, “I’ll leave now and let Norm and [the teacher] talk.”

About 25 teachers are left and we talk about how the UFT isn’t proactive and doesn’t really fight any of these reorganization schemes, in essence surreptitiously giving up seniority as it does in the SBO process in so many schools. Basically, the UFT takes the role of “We’re here to tell you your rights.” After teachers are told they must all reapply for their jobs that’s like telling a man on the gallows he has a choice of a slipknot or a square knot.

Two days later, the teacher receives a letter calling him to principal Denise Hallett’s office. He is facing disciplinary action for violating school safety procedures for inviting me into the school and is told to bring a union rep. Hallet claims that I was sent to a certain room and wandered around the school instead. Since the only wandering I did was going from the sign-in desk to the auditorium, this is clearly a trumped up charge. Didn’t practically the entire staff, including possibly Hallett herself, see me sitting there? Did Ray Taruskin violate safety procedures when he asked Rona Freiser and Harilyn Fritz to the school? Do teachers at a school have the basic democratic right to invite a speaker from an official UFT caucus with another point of view than Unity? Apparently not, according to Hallett.

When the teacher goes into Hallett’s office, Ray Taruskin is there at Hallett’s request. he says he does not want Taruskin to represent him and wants either me or ICE HS Executive Board member Jeff Kaufman, chapter leader at the school at Rikers Island, who is also a labor lawyer, to represent him. Hallett refuses, saying he only has the right to a rep from the school.

Hallett tries to pin my imaginary wandering in the building on his shoulders. Teacher defends himself, rigorously, but talking to a wall can be exasperating. Teacher takes the letter and writes on it with a magic marker “THIS IS AN ATTEMPT TO INTIMIDATE. IT WILL NOT WORK” and posts it over the time clock. It is removed. He reposts it. He gets another letter ordering him to meet in Hallett’s office on Monday April 18 for possible disciplinary action. He has violated school rules by posting something over the time clock without Hallett’s permission. Have all the notices for births, engagements and upcoming Happy Hours been passed through her hands before posting? No wonder she hasn’t had time to come up with a plan to improve the school.

This meeting consists of Hallett, Taruskin and a special guest. Phylllis Marino, the LIS, has taken time out of her busy schedule to attend a meeting over the issue of posting something over the time clock. Shouldn’t she be busy writing a plan to improve the school? But this is obviously more important. Again teacher is denied a union rep of his choice.

He is shown a list of school rules affirming permission is supposed to be asked before posting an item over the time clock. The list also says permission must be received before material is placed in teacher mail boxes, a clear violation of long-standing procedures (Baizerman vs. Board of Education.) Is a visit from the Civil Liberties Union in Hallett’s future?

Marino brands teacher’s posting the letter as acting unprofessional. He requests her to give him a definition of professional. She can’t seem to come up with an answer other than to say that children come into the room where the time clock is located. Michael points to the list of rules that say, “No children are allowed in that room.” Marino goes “humph – they are monitors.” Teacher facetiously says, “A rule it a rule.”

At this point we should digress to point out that back in October Teacher was parking his car and slightly tapped the luxury car parked behind him. As he got out there was a woman he did not know sitting in the car. She called to him and chewed him out for tapping her car. “I am the Local Superintendent and am going to tell the principal on you,” she said. Thus Teacher’s introduction to her LISNESS, Phyllis Marino.

Two hours after the meeting there is another letter in Teacher’s mailbox calling him for another meeting with Hallett regarding a charge he spoke abusively to a child. We will report on that meeting in the future.

Teacher should be commended for standing up for his rights, rare in a young, third year, untenured teacher. As one teacher told me, “He’s a nice boy; he really cares.” But Teacher is clearly being set up for a U-rating. Does anyone in Far Rockaway High School think this teacher is an unsatisfactory teacher? No. Teacher is a royal pain in the ass to the administration and will be drummed out of the school and possibly teaching for inviting a guest speaker from ICE to a union meeting, tapping the car of a LIS, putting a note over the time clock, complaining about how he was treated as the wrestling coach (as reported in The Wave last fall) and other “political” charges that have nothing to do with his performance as a teacher.

The fact that he is charged with verbal abuse just two hours after the April 11 meeting is a joke and I will bet that every single teacher in the history of the NYC school system has done no different. These charges are used every day to harass teachers who do not meet the approval of their supervisors. Teacher is the poster boy for why teachers need tenure and the protection of a strong union contract. If Teacher had bowed and scraped, pleaded for mercy and shown humility the charges would disappear. For those looking to interview at Far Rock, these are the kinds of ideal teachers Marino, Cashin, Hallett and the DOE are looking for. Maybe applicants should enter crawling in on their knees. This Teacher has chosen a different course.

PostScript, Dec. 2007
Teacher was u-rated and forced from the NYC school system. He moved abroad but returned for his U-rating joke of a hearing before going back. He called me from Israel a while back to say hello and reaffirm his feelings that the UFT was a bigger joke than the DOE.

Leonie on grades and closing schools

NOTE: Before you read Leonie's piece she sent in an email to her listserve, check the updated post from earlier in the day on the closing of EBC/ENY HS for Public Safety and Law.

Leonie writes:
* Some important events are happening next week, including on Monday, December 5, starting at 9:30 AM, City Council hearings on the new school grades.

Please come if you can; in any event, please sign our petition, calling for a halt to the new school grades and for redirecting the effort, time and resources they’re putting into more testing of our kids, and more grading of our schools, into reducing class size and building more schools instead. And leave comments on the petition – I will incorporate some of the best ones in my testimony. http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/schoolgradenoclasssizeyes

* Also on Tuesday evening, there will be a forum on the new school grades and high stakes testing, hosted by Central Park East I and II. I will be among the speakers, as well as Debbie Meier and others. If you’ve never heard Debbie, or even if you have, you really should come!

Where: 106 St., between Park and Madison, (take the #6 to 103rd or 110th St.)

When: Tues. Dec. 11 from 6-8 PM.

· The issue of the school grades has become even more urgent, since Tweed announced yesterday that six schools will be closed, based primarily on their “D” or “F” grades. The list of schools to be closed is here. Here is what it says on the DOE website about the “consequences” of getting a low grade:

Schools that receive an overall grade of D or F will be subject to school improvement measures and target setting and, if no progress is made over time, possible leadership change (subject to contractual obligations), restructuring, or closure. The same is true for schools receiving a C for three years in a row. Decisions about the consequences a school will face will be based on:

* Whether the school’s Progress Report grade is an F, D, or C (for several years running);
* The school’s Quality Review score of Well Developed, Proficient, or Undeveloped; and,
* Whether the school’s Progress Report grade or Quality Review score has improved or declined recently.

Over time, school organizations receiving an overall grade of F are likely to be closed.

Doesn’t seem like they waited this long. Meanwhile, there were 50 schools that earned F’s, and 100 that received D’s. So how were these particular six schools chosen?

According to Garth Harries from DOE who spoke to the NY Times, “We certainly started asking the question of all D and F schools in the system, but other layers of information quickly were brought to bear.” Like what? He doesn’t say.

This is just the beginning --14 and 20 schools are expected to close this year. As the NY Sun points out, closing twenty schools is not unusual for NYC, but usually the ones slated to closure have been on the state or federal failing list for several years.

While there are over 300 NYC schools on the state or federal SURR or SINI (failing) schools, several of the schools that were just announced are not among them, but instead, are schools in good standing -- even if they received Ds or Fs from DOE, including PS 79 in D10, PS 101 in D4, and the Academy of Environmental Sciences. PS 79 and PS 101 also received “Proficient” on their quality reviews

Why should one trust the state or federal failing list more than the grades given out by DOE this fall? Because most of the schools on these lists have demonstrated low levels of achievement for many years, whereas the DOE grades were based primarily on one year’s rise or fall in test scores, which in turn, was compared to the gains made by “peer” schools, many of which had more selective admission policies and/or very different populations. This means the grades are statistically unreliable and in some cases, laughable.

While the example of several excellent schools have been highlighted that got Ds or Fs, including Center School in D3, IS 89 in D2, PS 35 in Staten Island, and Muscota in D6, there were also many terrible schools that got high grades.

In fact, 55% of SURR or SINI schools got As or Bs, whereas only 14% got Ds or Fs – not much different from the overall distribution of these grades as a whole.

The News article does the best job in showing how seemingly arbitrary these judgments are: “ At Public School 79 in the Bronx, about 50% of students scored proficient or higher on state math and English exams. And EBC/East New York High School for Public Safety and Law outperforms about a quarter of city high schools in graduation rate, with 48.2% graduating in four years.”

According to the News, while the middle and high schools will be phased out slowly, “Elementary schools on the list will close next year and reopen under new names and changed administrations.”

I suspect that the elementary schools are being closed so that charter schools can be given their buildings next fall. After all, DOE needs to find homes for new charters quickly since the cap was lifted, and it has become more problematic over time to push them into buildings w/ existing schools.

Certainly, there are always alternatives to closing low-performing schools, and the entire theory of improvement is unclear to me. If there is a problem with leadership, the principals could have been replaced; if there was a problem of persistently poor achievement, they could have reduced class size instead – several of these schools had class sizes in some grades of 30 or more. I imagine that if charter schools are put in their place, these schools will be allowed to cap class size at much lower levels. But it appears that the DOE would apparently rather schools fail, and then close them down, rather than help them improve.

Please sign our petition here, calling a halt to the school grading system and asking that the resources and focus on testing and grading be redirected towards reducing class size and expanding the capital plan. Whether your school got an A, a B, or a D or an F – the system is patently unfair, and any school could be unjustly closed on the basis of one year’s test scores alone.

I keep meaning to offer a deconstruction of the Mayor’s comments on class size last week on his radio show—but this will have to wait for a later email.

Thanks

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
leonie@att.net
www.classsizematters.org

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/

Please contribute to Class Size Matters by making a tax-deductible donation now!

Closing Schools, Shucking Responsibility

Updated Thurs Dec. 6 12am

When BloomKlein announce they are closing schools, there are shock waves, part of their "shock and awe" strategy in "reforming" the educational system. But when they close a school they are announcing their failure to fix it, while absolving themselves of responsibility. After all, they control the administrators and most of the teachers who are there. So what will change when they close a school? New admins, new teachers and mostly, new kids. Where will the ones denied entry into the new school go? To the next school to be destabilized?

The response of the UFT was tepid, at best. You see, they agree with the closing of schools. ICE tried to make resolutions calling for the UFT to take a stand on the closing of schools, but nada. You never see any sign of protest. All they say is they will protect the interests of teachers. Ha. ATRdom, here you come.

EBC/ENY HS for Public Safety and Law
EBC has had a rocky history and no one would ever accuse it of being a successful school. A few years back the school was placed on the SURR list, changed principals and worked its way off of the list. Last year it actually made AYP in English and math. The Quality Review showed some deficiencies but they were being addressed. The school received a D on the progress report. But just because the state said it was doing better didn't stop Tweed from closing it.

The school serves about 530 inner city minority youth with an improving graduation rate. They recently restarted the school newspaper and entered a Moot Court competition, for the first time in school history, where they were defeated by Madison High School in what the judges called a very close match. The students are excited about entering the Mock Trial Statewide competition and the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. The climate seemed to be changing as the school started to fulfill its mission, as suggested in the Quality Review.

A major factor in the decision to close the school may be that they are operating in leased space. The building is not maintained by the landlord. The roof is in bad shape. There was a major flood over the summer and one of the boilers is not working, leaving many classrooms so cold that the students called 311 to complain about the lack of heat. The lease expires next year.

To allow a school to exist in these conditions and then close it is part of the fabric of distortions of public education policy by Tweed/DOE/BloomKlein.

If you can't fix what's wrong without closing the school, then you have failed. Yet they get kudos for their failure. When will the press start telling the full story and call the DOE into full accountability for its actions?

Late breaking news:
Far Rockaway HS will close, thus putting pressure on the next target, Beach Channel HS.
I wrote a few column in The Wave when an attempt was made to reorganize Far Rock in 2005 which could have meant new leadership and did mean the replacement of most of the staff. It obviously was a failure if they are closing it now. Who was responsible if not the DOE? Why are they allowed to get away with blaming everyone and everything but themselves?
They are always talking about "no excuses" [read eduwonkette this week exploding that myth] yet they are the biggest excuse-makers there are. Again, SHAME ON THE PRESS IF THEY CONTINUE TO IGNORE THIS SHELL GAME GOING ON.

Francis Lewis HS, already severely overcrowded, recently got 50 over the counter registrations from Jamaica HS, itself a target for closing.

Were you invited? Randi Turns 50 today...

...with a cast of a thousand plus maybe a few more.

A present for Randi from the construction workers.
Click on it to enlarge.

The NY Sun's Elizabeth Greene is reporting (here) that

"A clash between two city unions could erupt today as construction laborers threaten to send thousands of protesters to a 50th birthday celebration for the president of the city teachers union, Randi Weingarten.
"Organizers for the construction laborers said their union, the New York City District Council of Carpenters, is furious over an affordable housing complex for teachers that is being built by non-union laborers.
"Representatives of both unions are meeting now in an effort to avert a protest, Ms. Spicer said. But until an agreement is reached, organizers said, thousands of construction laborers are set to converge onto the site of Ms. Weingarten's birthday party, the headquarters of the United Federation of Teachers.
"Ms. Weingarten said the city comptroller and city housing officials had given a solid promise to trustees of the teacher pension fund that the project would be built by union laborers. She said she realized last week she had been the victim of a 'material misrepresentation.
"After failing to convince the city to renegotiate its contract with the developer, Ms. Weingarten said she had no option but to ask the pension fund to sell the bonds that are paying for the construction. The arrangement would not kill the project, but would take teacher pension money away from it.
"Ms. Spicer criticized Ms. Weingarten for failing to recognize that non-union laborers were building the complex."

Let's see now. The city comptroller is Bill Thompson has been the UFT's unofficial mayoral candidate - think he was a bad boy and tried to fool the UFT or is it possible Randi and Bill were trying to sneak one by? Anthony Weiner could lay down in front of a non-union construction truck being driven by Thompson and the UFT will find a way to support Thompson.

Greene's article also posted at Norms Notes.

Click here for the Flier by Construction Workers Criticizing the UFT (jpeg)

Ira comments on ICE-mail:

It is interesting that on the UFT website she does not make this claim [that union labor had to be used] and in fact seems to be somewhat backing away from it if you read the wording carefully about the 3 pillars--Here's what she says:

From our perspective, development of this project rests on three pillars:

• The creation of housing that would be affordable to educators.
• From the financing standpoint, the investment has to be fiduciary sound.
• Construction labor costs had to be based on prevailing wage.

The way the project was shaped, the Teachers’ Retirement System would purchase $28.2 million 2007 Series D bonds issued by the New York City Housing Development Corporation bearing a market rate of interest to finance the construction and permanent mortgage loans for two residential buildings in the Melrose section of the Bronx that will contain 234 residential units.

Although we have been enthusiastic cheerleaders for the project, neither the UFT nor the TRS is party to its construction.

On Wednesday, November 28, I learned that one of these pillars was violated: the agreement between HDC and the developer does not guarantee prevailing wage.

Note that nowhere does it state that there was an agreement about using union labor!