ATRs/Seniority Rights: The Fight for All Members' Rights

Guest column

By Angel Gonzalez, Retired UFT Teacher - November 30, 2008

The October Delegate Assembly (DA) resolution calling for a mass Nov.24 rally at the DOE was initiated by ATR Ad-Hoc Committee members who were supported by UFT opposition caucuses (e.g. ICE and TJC) and many other delegates who understand that seniority is a sacrosanct union provision.

The resolution called for a protest to support the ATRS:

"THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the UFT will organize a mass citywide rally to show our unity and strength, calling on the NYC Department of Education to reduce class size and give assigned positions to all teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve who want assignments before any new teachers are hired."

While Randi Weingarten initially signaled tepid approval for this friendly amendment to support the ATRs, she simultaneously threatened to cancel support--and move the body to reject it--if she did not agree with the argument (the motivator) for it as presented by John Powers. The DA did overwhelmingly approve the call for this "Support the ATRs" rally, with Ms. Weingarten's subsequent approval.

Perhaps Ms. Weingarten's reluctance to support such a militant mobilization, initiated at the grass roots, was due to the realization that the source of the ATRs' predicament lay in our last [two] contracts, in which the UFT Executive Board negotiated away seniority transfer rights. For years, the UFT leadership's strategy has been to lobby government officials for "favors" to our members in exchange for an endorsement from our union. This focus on intimacy at the top has
contributed to our leaders' becoming disconnected from our day-to-day reality in the classroom. Depending upon fickle politicians as opposed to the strength and conviction of our members has served to backfire on teachers and the students and families we serve.

The DA is the body that should direct the UFT Executive Board. If this is so, why do so many delegates feel that the Executive Board has to approve our decisions in order for them to be realized? In truly democratic structures, the leadership fulfills the will of the membership—not the other way around. Our DA saw an opportunity to seize the moment and affirm that reducing class size while also allowing our experienced teachers to continue to offer their expertise
benefits students and honors the hard-won rights that our colleagues fought so hard for in years past.

As the Nov. 24 date set for the rally approached, and as rank and file members began to be energized with the feeling that together we were finally fighting back, the UFT Executive Board was quietly negotiating--what can only be characterized as a back-room deal--to temporarily stall the dismantling of seniority and tenure. It is unclear if the motivation for these discussions was to assuage the powerful City Administration who obviously did not approve of an angry
rally exposing the outrage of the ATR fiasco, or to quell the spontaneous mobilization of so many members who felt that they were helping to construct a movement to defend our rights.

Ms. Weingarten's proposal to alter the character of the rally into a silent candle-light vigil would have reduced us to a group of passive mourners, as opposed to a body of professionals rightly proclaiming what belongs to us, while exposing the City's ill-conceived and costly indignation to which it condemns our ATRs. The DA was correct in indentifying the need for a mass rally, and strong member opposition to a "silent vigil" forced the Executive Board to back down.

A week before the rally, further attempts to squelch it materialized in the "deal" brokered by the Executive Board and the City—again only a temporary band-aid on a gaping wound. This agreement encourages, rather than mandates, placement of ATRs with an administration whose
track record has shown unprecedented commitment to eat away at public unions' power. It is tantamount to having the fox watch the chicken coop. The deal was characterized as a resolution to the issue by the UFT leadership, who decided there was no need for a rally after all.

It would appear that the threat of the rally was being utilized by the UFT leadership to maneuver this deal. This is corroborated by the fact that the Union made no genuine efforts to mobilize or organize in any broad way for this event. However, the passion of the members and our just cause began to take on a life of its own, beyond the leadership's control. Teachers are tired of give-backs. We deserve more respect than that.

The final blow to this member-driven initiative was the Executive Board's decision to call for a meeting to celebrate the band-aid "agreement" at Wall Street [UFT] Headquarters, at exactly the same time as the rally! A leadership that truly supported its members' needs and aspirations would have instead supported this rally. A subsequent meeting could have announced the proposed temporary stop-gap measure, with the recognition that serious errors were made in the 2005 negotiations—the framework that set these unfortunate events in motion.

Regardless, the ATR rally started at 4PM, bringing out over 200 spirited members -- thanks to the hard work of the rank and file organizers. Many speakers denounced both the City and the UFT officials who created this situation and allowed it to fester so long.

Although Ms. Weingarten declared that the rally was unnecessary at the 4pm Wall Street "wine and cheese" meeting, she appeared with a bullhorn as the rally was winding down at 6pm (with about 75 people). She gave lukewarm thanks to the organizers, perhaps to assert a certain level of control or to save face, in light of such strong grass roots sentiment regarding what many have defined as a carefully crafted strategy to chip away at tenure .

When Marjorie Stamberg, a key rally organizer, approached the bullhorn to address the crowd, Ms. Weingarten refused to let her speak, chastising her "for what she did." The crowd chanted: "Let Marjorie speak!" forcing Ms. Weingarten to relent. After Marjorie spoke, many members began to chant: "Restore Seniority Transfer Rights Now!"

Clearly frazzled with the dissidence targeted at UFT leadership, the Executive Board's contingent left the rally.

This rally was an excellent beginning in our hard battle ahead to restore our contractual seniority transfer rights, to protect tenure, and to bolster and defend our contract.

In a truly democratic union, the leadership has faith in and responds to the will of the membership. The "deals" that have been made over the past 30 years to "save" unions have in fact resulted in the dismantling of Trade Unions and workers' rights across this country.

We cannot abide continued UFT complicity with the City's plans, which waste valuable qualified experienced educators--and over $75 million annually--while further diminishing the quality of education that our children deserve. Our communities have the right to know that part of this plan results in experienced and quality educators being replaced with less costly, less experienced teachers, thus impacting negatively on the quality of education for their children.

The lack of information, transparency and open debate in our union denies member input into critical issues about pedagogy and historic union rights. An uninformed membership gives even a well-intentioned leadership free rein to function as it pleases. As the economy worsens, we need to take a strong stand in defense of the rights of teachers and communities, rather than to facilitate the erosion of all that has been built over the years.

From the momentum generated by the ATR Ad-Hoc Committee, we could help to build a democratic movement within the UFT that recognizes that our strength derives from our members' interactions, conversations and mobilizations. Such efforts will require a great deal of work, but the alternative is to passively stand by as we observe the destruction of quality education and ALL of our members' rights.

We need to build the fight for a UFT contract that promotes and defends:
1. Seniority Rights
2. Tenure Rights
3. Smaller Class Size
4. Against All Merit Pay Schemes
5. Against the use of testing to rate teacher performance
6. Quality and Justice - Not Testing
7. No cutbacks
8. No more privatization schemes (Charter Schools and vouchers inclusive)
9. No layoffs and more.

Our current UFT leadership has not indicated its commitment to achieve these goals—it is up to the members to make this happen!

For more about the ATR Rally, the ATR issue, the current UFT-ATR agreement with the City and other comments go to:

http://supportatrs.blogspot.com/ and

http://iceuftblog.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&updated-max=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=50

The Execrable Richard Lee Colvin...

...Feels Urban Kids Don't Deserve to Ride in a Mercedes

Leonie Haimson on the NYC Education News listserve:

See letters below by Jane Hirschmann and David Bloomfield in response to an execrable column in EdWeek last month, in which Gina Burkhardt and Richard Lee Colvin of the Hechinger Center (which is supposed to support balanced journalism on education issues) wrote the following tripe, in sympathy with Joel Klein’s supposed difficulty to tell his side of the story in the media about his incredible successes in our schools.

Seeing Covin's name reminded me of my encounter with him. Richard Lee Colvin is an execrable something or other (there's a better word.) I knew nothing about him at the time but this confirms it. He practically bit my head off (did I detect just a bit of arrogance and condescension?) at the AERA conference last March when he was on a panel with Rotherham, Russo, and the NY Times Jenny Medina (some balance) on journalism and education. (Medina responded to my question about why the voices of classroom teachers are rarely heard in school reform issues by saying they are afraid to talk publicly.)

I dared to suggest that kids in the cities deserved the same class size as kids in the suburbs (I believe Eduwonkette was there too for part of it) And Colvin got real hot and responded that not everyone can ride in a Mercedes – a Pontiac will still get you to your destination (maybe he should have used a different car since it will be defunct any minute.)

Not when the car for urban kids is packed to overflowing while the Mercedes is half empty.

Here's an excerpt from the March 30, '08 post on Ed Notes.

AERAPLANING - Don' Need No Stinkin' Research

...to tell me lower class sizes benefit kids.

I bit the bullet and headed for AERA for the entire day, carrying the 500 page AERA Kahlenberg's "Tough Liberal" and Podair's book on the '68 strike to entertain myself between workshops. As a quasi educator/blogger/reporter/ed commentator I was interested in this mouthful: Disseminating Education Research Through Electronic Media: Advice from E-Journalists.

I was interested in raising some issues related to the coverage of events in NYC, especially by the NY Times which is viewed by so many as biased for BloomKlein but wasn't sure how to raise it. I've actually seen a slightly more nuanced tone in Medina's reporting but there's so much the Times leaves uncovered. I was surprised when she said there were 11 education reporters at the Times.

I wanted to get a few points in regarding the absence of the classroom teacher voice and how class size is addressed in terms of research.

So I made the statement about not needing stinkin' research in the context of the argument the anti-class size reduction people make that we can't lower class size until we have a quality teacher available and that resources would be better spent in recruiting and training better teachers. That reporters repeat that all the time. Less kids = lift all teachers quality is so obvious.

I said, how come the same questions are not raised about the medical field: we don't refuse to put more doctors and nurses in hospitals because some of them will not be high quality. (Did you know how many practicing doctors have not passed their certification boards?) The legal field – do we ban the guys who can't run fast enough to catch up to the ambulance? The financial field? Judges? Politicians? The ones who have the most number of affairs are the lowest quality. Or the highest. Or better yet, take NYC education journalists. Do you see a difference in quality? If you can't keep up with Elizabeth Green, you can't write a story.

Of course this comparison was totally ignored. This is about education, not the rest of the world.

How come the focus on teacher quality to the exclusion of other areas of society? Actually, I got a lot of the answers at Lois Weiner's session on Saturday about the world-wide neo-liberal attack on teachers and their unions (see Lois at the April 15 Teachers Unite forum) but will post on that soon.

What ed journalists do is narrow-casting. Like there was a UFT/coalition rally to restore budget cuts while down the street the fed was coming up with $200 billion and no one made the ironic connection.

Or report that class size research is inconclusive and ignore the fact that parents spend $30,000 for private school and parents in rich areas like Scarsdale pay so much for small class sizes.

I got a rather heated response from Richard Colvin (did I detect a note of hostility when I ran into him in the press room later?), who said just because people in Scarsdale drive a Mercedes, it doesn't mean we all have to when cheaper alternatives are available - that the best uses of resources in resource-starved urban schools may not be to reduce class size. He didn't quite say that the better use was to recruit quality teachers, but he may have been thinking it.

I didn't get a chance to say it but I guess urban kids never get to ride in the Mercedes unless they do the drug thing. What I would have said: How about giving kids in a few places the Mercedes just to see if it works. Like, instead of closing down one high school and loading it up with multiple small schools (sure, that's certainly more cost effective), try doubling the staff for a few years and see what impact that had. Why don't class size researchers suggest that as a test? Or ed reporters? Like I said, narrow casting.

Here are the letters of objection to the outrageous claim that BloomKlein have been unfairly treated by the press.

Jane Hirschmann

To the Editor:

We are shocked that Gina Burkhardt, the president of Learning Point Associates, and Richard Lee Colvin, the director of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media (an organization whose mission is “to promote fair, accurate, and insightful coverage of education”), would encourage a journalistic approach to education reporting that fosters one-sided, and no doubt self-congratulatory, talking points ("Telling the Story of School Reform," Commentary, Oct. 29, 2008). Yes, superintendents should be allowed to tell their stories to the press. But journalists owe the public a comprehensive and critical analysis of those stories. Unfortunately, the authors appear to have forsaken that caveat.

Furthermore, for them to support New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein in his assertion that he hasn’t been able to tell his story successfully because “other people” have used “very sophisticated media machines” is shameful, not to mention an unexamined acceptance of Mr. Klein’s story. The New York City Department of Education’s public relations office is legendary both for its effectiveness and its size, which Mr. Klein has increased under his tenure. Moreover, the chancellor has attempted to employ intimidation techniques to silence his critics, who include education historian and Education Week blogger Diane Ravitch.

In this hostile atmosphere, principals and teachers will not talk to the press out of fear of reprisal, since those who have been brave enough to do so have been humiliated and threatened.

As we all know, there are at least two sides to every story. For the sake of our schools, I urge education journalists to ignore Ms. Burkhardt and Mr. Colvin’s advice and examine all of them, so that we may truly have “fair, accurate, and insightful coverage.”

Jane Hirschmann

Time Out From Testing

New York, N.Y.

David Bloomfield

To the Editor:

I laughed in disbelief at “Telling the Story of School Reform.” The description of New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein bemoaning a supposedly inadequate communications strategy is ludicrous. The city’s education department has spent millions, and funneled millions more in private dollars, in a ceaseless media campaign to buy public support for its supposed reforms, backed by suspect data that many observers—including Education Week bloggers Jennifer Booher-Jennings ("eduwonkette") and Diane Ravitch—have debunked. It has successfully spun press reports, allegedly spied on opponents (including Ms. Ravitch), and recently killed a negative New York Daily News story, according to reports, by interceding with its publisher after editorial approval.

Please spare us the crocodile tears. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have brought Orwellian tactics to public discourse over New York City’s schools. If districts are to tell stories of reform, they should be true and responsible to public, rather than political, interests.

David C. Bloomfield

Program Head, Educational Leadership

City University of New York Brooklyn College

Colvin's "Telling the Story of School Reform," is posted at Norms Notes.

Is the UFT "A Union of Professionals?"

UFT leaders like to play make believe by trying to give the impression that we are a union of professionals. A profession is controlled by the members. But in NYC the UFT has assisted Joel Klein in the process of de-professionalizing and de-skilling teachers, who have less control than ever over what goes on in their classrooms.

I never looked at teaching as a profession. Though we used to be able to make a lot more basic decisions in our classes, most of us had little or not say in the curriculum or the materials we could use. Until 1979 I still had a lot of freedom. But that year we got a new principal who was a testing freak (she figured that if the raised our scores drastically she could become a Superintendent). There went the remnants of our freedom. I fought the testing wars with her for the rest of my career but gave up the ghost by leaving the self-contained classroom to become a computer teacher for my last 10 years in the school. But ever there we had friction as she wanted me to use the lab for test prep instead of teaching word processing (who measures that?)

There is a direct correlation between the standards and accountability movement that the UFT has so supported since the early 80's and the disappearance of whatever element of professionalism we used to have.

Witness the initial imposition by Joel Klein of the Diana Lam so-called progressive education system modeled on Teachers College, a program that was the core of District 2 (most of lower Manhattan) and then District 15 (Park Slope and Sunset Park in Brooklyn.) I was in District 14 (Greenpoint/Williamsburg) where we had the opposite program, a more rigid method of teaching, which we also didn't have a say in either, but at least they left us alone - mostly. The methods used were brutal and many teachers who could not adapt quickly were attacked by administrators. Some teachers "adapted" by faking it.

If we were a union of professionals, we would have played a role in these basic decisions.

The other point of attack has been the use of instant teachers in the Teaching Fellow and Teach for America program, many of whom leave after their two year commitment. The attacks on career teachers, a basic tenet of a profession, were inherent in the acceptance of this approach.

Now, I'm not taking a position vis a vis these people entering teaching (it was the way I came in in 1967.) I think it takes at least 3 years to become a proficient teacher no matter how you come in, though people with some background in student teaching have less ground to cover. Instead of calling for a paid apprentice program which would professionalize teaching, the UFT has gone along with the instant teacher schemes. (The Teaching Fellows idea came from Harold Levy, Klein's predecessor.)

The UFT supported the elimination of 1000 teachers who did not pass the teaching test but who had taught for years and were rated Satisfactory for their teaching while supporting people who had no experience and 6 weeks of training, but who did pass the test. What does that tell you about how they view professionalism?

The UFT view of professionalism is as narrow as you could get:

More money for teachers (not a bad thing but in our case, tied to longer days and school years, which is easy - and given the tremendous amount of increased responsibilities heaped on teachers - money for blood.)

The other plank of professionalism is a seat at the table for union leaders.

As to fighting for the right of classroom teachers to control what they do on the job, nada.

The idea as to whether to put money into massive accountability schemes and ignore class size is made by politicians, not educators. the UFT has gone along all along, paying lip service to class size for three decades (you'll notice the million dollar campaigns with petitions, etc has disappeared from the UFT's lexicon.)

That the UFT tries to call this a Union of Professionals is a joke.

Their idea is to give the union leaders a seat at the table while the rank and file gain little. The UFT can only gain this seat at the table by agreeing to be partners in the so-called reform movement based on standards and accountability. We know that the latter means "blame the teacher."

The UFT/AFT has been part of the public relations mantra used by Klein and Rhee that teacher quality is the most important element.

The first time I heard Randi talk about teacher quality, I immediately emailed her that she was walking into a trap. (At that time I actually thought she might be well-intentioned - silly me.)

That is why unless power within the union is shifted from the top, teachers will be given the illusion they are professionals but treated as drones.

The union has played this role: not as a strong advocate for teachers but as an intermediary between the so-called political reformers and the rank and file teachers, selling them mayoral control, merit pay, getting them to sign on to one way accountability (we don't want to make excuses, do we?)

Thus, teachers should not view themselves as professionals but as much a part of the working class as construction workers and teamsters.

In these times, that is exactly the type of union leadership teachers need. The type that will say, "Take yur stinkin' accountability and yur phony test driven curriculum and bury them in yur black robes."

My point is proved by these droppings from the Little Red Book of UFT high school VP and blogger in residence, Leo Casey from a post on a listserve.

We have had rather substantive critiques of the school progress reports and on their over reliance on test scores, but we are also political realists who take stock of developments in the real political world, and not just our ideal positions

While some think that there should be no differentiation for pay among teachers other than seniority and educational credentials, we do not believe that there is some special merit in such an industrial, proletarian view of teaching, and are quite willing to support the development of a teaching profession that allows for the development of different roles with special expertise, and provide additional financial remuneration for them.

Leo loves to use words like "proletarian." Sorry Leo. Your policies have made teachers more part of the proletarian proletariat than ever. I have a lot more droppings from Leo to report on. You can read the entire raw thread from the arn listserve on Norms Notes. But watch where you step.

Ragging on the Gag Order

Some people think there is a hint of legitimacy in the UFT position - theoretically. That it is in a union's interests to keep certain information from leaking to the bosses or press. In 40 years of attending Delegate Assemblies, Executive Board meetings and countless other UFT functions, there is nary a time that much of anything in this category has come up. (Talking about strikes given Taylor Law penalties is certainly something to keep under cover.)

As Jeff Kaufman points out at ICE, the union always can go into Executive session. Randi has said that numerous times with me in the room and has often publicly has asked me to keep info confidential so she won't have to clear the room. I always complied and will continue to do so. And she full-well knows that, which only makes her demagoguery last Monday ("Norman, put down that camera" as a way to rile up the Unity troops, who were the majority of people in the room) so manipulative. She tries to direct the finger of blame in case something does leak out (often from her- and this actually happened after she once hinted I was leaking to the NY Post and it was clear she did it).

We have a union that is interested in keeping info from flowing to the rank and file. The gag is an attempt to maintain Unity's monopoly on access to the members, similar to their attempt to keep critical info out of teacher mailboxes. When you are faced with despotism and demagoguery, the appropriate response is to fight fire with fire.

Randi is trying to paint this as protecting rank and filers from having the words and images up on the web that can come back to haunt them. Like ATRs and rubber room people or chapter leaders being critical of their school leadership. I absolutely concur with that point. Rank and filers who speak up at meetings should be protected. And at no time have I ever violated that.

But we are talking about UFT leadership and the positions they take. Last Monday I caught Randi in an out and out contradiction between what she said at the info meeting at 52 Broadway (this is not the time to make noise, a less than subtle dig at the rally) and what she said an hour later to the demonstrators at Tweed (the noise you made led to the ATR agreement.) Should I suppress the video of District 19 rep Alan Weinstein cursing and threatening me for taping him leaving the meeting? Weinstein probably makes $120,000 or more a year paid from our dues. Any person on the payroll of the UFT is fair game.

Meetings should be taped and made available to the members. I'll tell you what, let Unity Caucus put forth a series of reforms that will establish a democratic union that will allow the free flow of information. That proverbial snowball is already melting.

ICE reports on the UFT attempt to stop the info flow:

Paranoid UFT Leadership Attempts To Silence Opposition By Proposing Inept Gag Order Over Union Meetings

Just like our sweetheart agreements with the DOE, the resolution, unsurprisingly, provides no penalties for violating its provisions.

When a Union becomes nothing more than a self-serving public relations operation, it ceases to care about free speech or other rights of its members. We must protect our precious rights and demonstrate to our misguided, paranoid leadership that they work for us…not the other way around.

Besides, Jeff seems to be saying it violates the Landrum-Griffin Act.

ICE will be discussing the issue at this Friday's meeting. Maybe everyone should come with cameras and create an I am Spartacus moment.

UFT Responds to Ed Notes Taping of ATR Info Session With Gag Order

This resolution is squarely aimed at trying to suppress some of the video I took of the embarrassing spectacle of the UFT leadership undermining the ATR rally on November 24.

Will delegates and chapter leaders no longer be allowed to give reports to their staffs?

Go to a UFT Executive Board meeting or a Delegate Assembly and look for "free and open debate"? Democratic deliberations? They have to be kidding.

And whose permission are they talking about? Will the NY Teacher ask each and every person at a meeting if it is ok to disseminate their information?

This resolution is no different from all the other resolutions at the DA. Just unenforceable words.

My taping parts of the gathering in the UFT ATR info session last Monday created absolute panic on the part of Randi Weingarten. Weingarten has always attempted to paint opposition points of view as a 5th column when in fact the biggest leaker is Weingarten. In all of the years I have been around the UFT incidents of information leaving the union meetings via videotape have been few and far between. She pulled the same stuff at the October meeting by giving the impression that Elizabeth Green had infiltrated the meeting (a lie.)

Make no mistake about it. This resolution has noting to do with the chapter leaders, delegates and members but with the leadership attempt to keep their own "speaking out of 2 sides of their mouths" words from getting out to the members. The Unity mob is ready to pass any restriction on democracy. This is only the beginning. Still to come: Why not add that any union member who puts info out to media or blogs should be tossed from the union? In fact Randi even mentioned the blogs in her attack on me at that meeting and I challenged her by saying, "Next you'll tell us we can't write about what you say." She didn't respond.

In order to enforce this will they have security guards confiscate all cell phones at these meetings?

They know full well the contrast between the images of the wine and cheese guzzling Unity crowd and the people in the cold at Tweed will be very embarrassing. And so it will be.

Here is the resolution Unity Caucus will present to Monday night's UFT Exec. Bd meeting.

Motion: To recommend to the executive board and delegate assembly the following resolution on the Confidentiality of Union Meetings:

WHEREAS, it is essential that UFT chapter leaders, delegates and members have the full confidence that they can speak honestly and frankly in union meetings without fear that their words and their images will be reproduced in the news media or on the Internet without their knowledge or permission; and

WHEREAS, without such meetings and the free and open debate among union members that they allow, the democratic deliberations of the UFT are diminished and the ability of the union to learn and represent the views of its school-based leadership and members is undermined; and

WHEREAS, in recent weeks UFT member meetings have been surreptitiously recorded and transmitted to the news media, reporters have been invited to attend union meetings without identifying themselves, and video cameras have been brought into such meetings for the purpose of recording the proceedings – all without the consent of those present at the meetings; and

WHEREAS, there are ample opportunities for those who wish to speak to the news media and make their views known publicly to do so outside of union meetings; therefore be it

RESOLVED, that this Delegate Assembly affirm the vital principle that our union be able to hold union meetings, without outside news media present and without the proceedings being recorded and disseminated in public forums, in order to encourage the widest possible freedom of communication and deliberation among union members and leaders; and be it further

RESOLVED, that this Delegate Assembly call upon all in its ranks to respect the right of their fellow members to meet and deliberate in union meetings, secure in the knowledge that their words and their images will not be transmitted or reproduced without their permission.

Teaching An Old Dog – Arf

by Norman Scott
From the Wave, Nov. 28, 2008, www.rockawave.cok

A clue that your brain is still functioning despite years of stuffing it full of unidentified flying objects is when you find yourself still learning lots of stuff, especially when it is from a range of people from the early 20’s to the 80’s. I’ve had to have my skull raised to hold all the incoming info, especially over the last few weeks. Here are just a few of the things I have learned recently.

I have been working with a group of retirees who produce a TV show for Manhattan Neighborhood Network, public access. Active Aging focuses on older people who have continued to work with a passion or have retired, only to take on tasks that are in many ways more challenging than their original jobs. We did a story on a tour bus guide in her late 70’s, an 80+ furrier in Greenpoint, and a 90-something woman still teaching yoga. So I suggested Howie Schwach, the esteemed managing editor of the Wave, for a story. Howie spent his career as a teacher and wrote the School Scope column and other features for the Wave. (I started buying the Wave just to read Howie’s stuff, a nice irony when I took over the column.) When the opportunity came, Howie leaped out of the Board of Ed and into the fire full-time. “I was told not all that much happens in Rockaway in June 2001,” Howie told us. Three months later – 9/11. And two months after that, the Wave was the epicenter of international coverage of the plane crash.

My partner in NorMark Productions, Mark Rosenhaft, and I shot an interview with Howie and showed it to the Active Aging people, who loved it. Many of the people involved are themselves retired from the industry, so we were working with real pros. Rita Satz, former Today Show/New Channel 4 producer (mostly for Consumer reporter Betty Furness) was very excited to be working on a Rockaway story because she used to come out here all the time as a child and met her future husband on the beach when she was 14. (She is now 84.) Rita looked at the footage and wrote a script for Mark and I to follow in editing. The skill with which she did this so clarified the entire process of creating a piece for TV, that I am going to try some of it on my own.

When the rest of the Active Aging crew saw the B-role footage (another expression I learned) of the beach, boardwalk, the open spaces, they said, “More. More Rockaway stories.” So I told them of my work as a videographer with the Rockaway Theatre Company and about retired teachers John Gilleece (Artistic Director) and Susan Jasper (Producer). A crew that included Rita and John S., a retired ABC director came out to do the story. Joan Arkin, who ran a Parisian fashion house in New York, joined them. Joan did the interviews and is producing the segment. (Both Joan and John are in their 70’s and seem busier than ever.)

It was dress rehearsal, the night before the opening of Rockaway Café ‘08, known in RTC lore as “Hell Night” and it was very kind of John and Susan to give us the time amidst the chaos of the band practicing and masses of kids and adults getting sound checks and making final adjustments. We watched and taped the dress rehearsal and these sophisticated Manhattanites were absolutely charmed. Joan proclaimed, “I want to move to Rockaway and get involved in this theater.” “Come on down,” John told her.


I don’t only learn from people senior to me. Last year I wrote about how much I learned in the improvisational acting class I took with RTC mainstay Frank Caiati, a 22-year-old college student. Frank, now 23, has graduated and is teaching a more structured acting class at the RTC. With much trepidation, since I can’t remember where I put my keys let alone memorize lines,
I decided to dip my toe in the water once again. “Why,” I ask myself, since I have no intention of doing any acting? I think it comes from a sense that parts of the personality I developed as a teacher for 35 years has been shrinking and I wanted to recapture it.

So far, in three weeks of class, I have had enormous insights into acting and the entire theater scene. Frank is not just a great actor but also a great director (he may be directing a play next season at the RTC.) Getting up on stage with the lights in your eyes and your fellow classmates in the audience is a very different experience than speaking in front of large audiences, which I often do at union meetings. “Think of a wall between you and the audience,” is one of the things he tells us. Frank has managed to make those of us who have not acted before (about half the class) feel extremely comfortable. We’ve learned how to work our way into a character as Frank prods us with questions that are beyond the script. After our first class I went to see the great English/French actress Kristen Scott Thomas in I’ve Loved You So Long (don’t miss it) and found myself applying the insights I learned from Frank into her amazing performance. So not only am I doing things I never thought I would but am also getting a richer experience as an audience due to Frank's coaching. How does someone so young know so much?

This week I learned something else at the RTC. An “all hands on deck” call went out to assist with replacing the covers on the 240 seats at the theater. An assembly line was set up with a crew removing the seats, another getting the old covers off and a third putting on the new covers. I was part of the middle crew. Have you seen under the cover of a 70 year old seat full of stuffing and horsehair? Cough, cough. I was working with Frank, RTC choreographer and actress Catherine Leib and Nancy Sturgis, who has starred in so many RTC productions. Nancy was joined by her husband and kids. Janna Sturgis recently starred in Annie. At the RTC, I learned, everyone is expected to pitch in. And they do.

I learned lots of other stuff recently. About how the UFT can try to dampen a rally for ATRs, the 1400 hundred teachers without assignments. And how Randi Weingarten gets very nervous when you try to videotape her. How there are people who try to tell us none of what’s happened is really George Bush’s fault. And how the people who were bashing Obama for his supposed terrorist connections are deciding whether they want their crow barbecued or broiled.

Read all about it daily at Norm’s blog: http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/
Look for Norm’s political column, Politically Unstable, appearing occasionally in The Wave.
Norm’s email: normsco@gmail.com

Back to School Week at The Howler

There is no one with a more sensible approach to education debate over "reform" than Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler. That's because Somerby started teaching 5th grade in Baltimore in 1969. I identify because I started teaching 4th grade in Brooklyn in Feb. 1969 (after a year and a half as an ATR - being used as a sub/handyman in the same school, not a bad way to learn the ropes.)

Elementary school teachers who spend all year and 6 hours a day with the same group of kids, getting so see most parents on a regular basis and being part of the community their kids live in, often have the most insightful perspective on ed reform. Somerby writes on a number of subjects, but his edcuation insights do not get enough attention. I wish he had direct links to the ed stuff.

This week he has a 4 part series (part 4 to come) that focuses on the gushing press about Michelle Rhee.

Jesus rose from the dead in three days—and under Rhee, “test scores soared.” This tale—of Rhee’s miracle cure—is told wherever her cult is sold. Plainly, Jay believes it’s true. At THE HOWLER, we pretty much don’t.

Part 1: http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh112108.shtml
Part 2: http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh112408.shtml
Part 3: http://www.dailyhowler.com/.
(This link will change to http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh112608.shtml) when it goes into the archives
Part 4: To come

One more example of how Howler looks at the ed world.

In a way, you can’t blame Hiatt for that sort of talk; it’s the type of chatter that’s routinely churned by “educational experts.” But Hiatt is being fatuous when he says that “every student can learn, write and do math” (whatever so vague an assurance might mean)—and he builds a straw man when he goes on to say that “their ability to do so should be measured.” (Few oppose sensible measurement.) Duh! The question isn’t whether “every student can learn;” the question is how much various students can learn, at what point in their public schooling. The larger question is what sorts of changes in instructional practice might help these students achieve these goals. Meanwhile, the desire to rush to the question of who’s “at fault” merely extends the problem. But Hiatt makes it clear, at the start of his piece, that fault and blame are driving his vision. He opens with an anecdote designed to show that Rhee is high-minded and good—while an unnamed principal is an uncaring villain. He then cranks out this standard text—although, within the Insider Press, churning such text is real easy:

HIATT: Rhee offers the ultimate in no-excuses leadership. She has taken on one of the worst public school systems in the nation and has pledged to turn it into one of the best within a decade. The usual excuses made for such schools—that they cannot possibly do better because their students are poor, or come from broken families, or haven't been read to, or are surrounded by crime—Rhee does not accept. She has seen such students learn, Rhee explains, in her own classroom in Baltimore in the early 1990s, and in many other schools since.

Just as he drives a framework of “fault” and blame, Hiatt builds a framework in which people are looking for “excuses.” (It can’t be that they’re offering “explanations,” or describing real problems and obstacles.) Of course, it’s easy for pundits to say that we shouldn’t “accept...the usual excuses” about the progress of deserving students who may enter kindergarten far behind their middle-class peers. But those students’ achievements won’t increase just because Hiatt enjoys talking tough—because he churns familiar bromides as a replacement for thought.

Aussie News: "Rubbish" To Klein School Reforms

The Melbourne newspaper, The Age, reports on Joel Klein's visit this week. Australia's Ed Minister Julia Gillard Agrees with Rupert Murdoch, who possibly wants to be the Aussie Bill Gates, who has criticised Australia's schools. The first stage of the corporate takeover of education is to undermine public confidence in the schools. A Nation At Risk started the ball rolling in the US 25 years ago. (UFT/AFT President Al Shanker's signing off on it also started the ball rolling on teacher union complicity in the corporate attack.)

This article punches some big holes in the entire scheme. Here's an excerpt:

The only qualification that Murdoch has to judge our schools is that he owns about 70 per cent of capital city daily newspaper circulation. When billionaire media magnates speak, the rest of us listen.

The same cannot be said for the other American citizen, New York schools chancellor Joel Klein, who Gillard has brought to Australia, "impressed" by his education reforms, especially school league tables, which had produced "remarkable outcomes".

Rubbish. Internet comments on the test results show the improvement in school performance measurement comes from manipulating the tests by prepping students. Klein also makes claims about the results that cannot be supported by any fair analysis. Statisticians [Eduwonkette] who have examined the results say they can be explained by random error.

Klein, a corporate lawyer and political apparatchik, is here to spruik the virtues of Gillard's wacky plan to publish a rating system for schools. Critics point out that the system, based on experience in Britain and the US, "names and shames" poorly performing schools whose output is predictable based on socio-economic background and lack of funding.

The scheme's great political virtue is that it allows governments without any real commitment to raising the standard of poorer schools to appear to be doing something.

The entire piece.

A NY Times City Room blog piece on Klein's visit is here.

Graphic by David

The Rally at Tweed Video: Part 2

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8472301528763563153&hl=en
(Thanks to David B.)

NEW: Lots of good photos by John Lawhead at the ICE web site: http://www.ice-uft.org

It is clear that the UFT's actions around the rally created a level of anti-Unity caucus sentiment that almost matched the feelings against Tweed.

There's going to be more to come with some video I have from the UFT info meeting occurring at the same time, the meander up Broadway, mostly by the Unity hardcore, and the meeting of the two groups at Tweed.

On the way, Randi came over and suggested I turn over the tape to her because "people are upset" over my taping. She tried to make it seem the ATRs were upset over appearing on You-tube (in fact I had no intention of doing that and told her so). The extreme hostility of Unity (you will see that when I put up the video) was due to the fact that I was documenting their sell-out of the rally.

What was interesting was the level of arrogance Randi and Unity, which includes the entire UFT staff, have when they are in a room overwhelmingly dominated by them as it was at 52 Broadway (and is at Delegate Assemblies). Randi's open attack on me ("Norman, put down that camera") and the screams of outrage by the Unity throng was reminiscent of the same kind of attack she made on former NY Sun Reporter Elizabeth Green (now at Gotham Schools) at the October DA. But creating bogus enemies is a common tactic of dictators as a way of keeping their own supporters (there are enough honest Unity people who see the disaster the state of the union is in) pumped up with perceived threats from within.

It was a different ballgame when they got to Tweed, surrounded by demonstrators who had grown hostile by their absence and were particularly inflamed when they heard there were UFT staffers across the street directing people away from the rally over to the union. Some of them heckled Randi when she spoke, something she is clearly not used to.

Rather than put up my raw tape (a lot of shaky stuff due to the Unity harassment and attempt to block me from filming) David and I will edit both tapes into a 10-minute more watchable piece with excerpts from some of the speeches and a contrast to the wine and cheese munchers at 52 Broadway while the people at Tweed were out in the cold for hours.

If It's Good For Obama's Kids....

A Place to Respond says:

[Obama] seems to see only dimly if at all how deceptively Orwellian the big-business driven standards and accountability movement is.

Do you think Obama's kids will be tested to death? Would Obama want Michelle Rhee, who he praised, as a Superintendent for his kids? Or Joel Klein?

She links to Gary Stager's superb piece.

The only times I've heard Obama speak about education, he has called for merit pay, increased accountability, praised D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee (check out this fine article about her) In other words, President-Elect Obama (unless I am proven wrong) believes the same BS that drove NCLB and many of the other bad ideas oppressing children and teachers.

Here is an idea for President-Elect Obama...

The $29,000 per year Sidwell Friends School is a fine learning environment and institution with a proud history of excellence. His daughters will be very happy there.

President and First Lady Obama should study everything done at Sidwell Friends School and copy it in every school across America. If it's good enough for his daughters, it's good enough for the children they are leaving behind.

Video of the Rally at Tweed, Part 1

Update:

"This is union-busting of the WORST kind. It came from union management."
- Under Assault (see more and links below)


The UFT didn't show at 4:30. Or at 5. Or at 5:30.

So they held a rally on their own. You know something? It looked like they were having a much better time than the people who went to the information session at 52 Broadway, which is where I was in an attempt to get some video. (I'll be putting up my commentary of my adventures in the world of Unity Caucusville in the next day or two.) John Powers was the MC and lots of real people got to speak. Most of the people who have been active in the critical wing of the UFT seem to have been there --- parteeee. When Randi and crew arrived around 6, she was heckled. The gang from Unity was practically out numbered. Some of us continued the party in a cafe up the block after the rally.



Twenty six minutes of raw footage, thanks to David B.

Also, see a brief slideshow of the rally with part of Marjorie's speech.


UPDATE:
People who think the ATR agreement was a win for the UFT are missing a point about why many principals, especially those with little ed background, don't want to hire experienced teachers who can see through the bull of the ed jargon and just might tell the emperor he has no clothes. There is enough insecurity around to make them prefer a newbie who they know won't have the knowledge to look askance at some of the programs they are putting in.

I would bet a lot less ATRs get jobs than people think. After a year, watch the DOE and press go after those who didn't and the howl to drive them out of the system will resound. Thus, in some ways this is a long-term investment by the DOE and why I don't consider this a win for the UFT.

These thought are echoed by Pissed Off who confronted Unity Caucus suits at her school who were telling the teachers how good they had it.

I asked the union lackey about ATRs. He said, they just got a great deal from the DOE. Smart principals will hire them in a minute. I reminded him of the fact that principals do not like experienced teachers, that they don't like teachers that think and have minds of their owns. Years ago, principals hid vacancies whenever they could. No one wanted a veteran teacher who would not jump when told to. He said smart principals did not think like that. I said the smart ones were few and far between. He just kept talking about the one smart principal he used to work for.

Under Assault tells us about

Four kinds of tenure, but who's counting

For those who think Weingarten's ATR agreement with the DoE on the tenure issue has helped the profession much, think again.

UA goes on to talk about the rally.

Oh, yes. Did I tell you that Weingarten sabotaged her own rally yesterday? Well, it really wasn't her rally, because it's obvious she collaborated with Klein to diminish seniority rights. This rally was forced upon her when the Delegate Assembly voted for it some weeks ago. She must not have gotten her signals out to her Unity people quickly enough to stifle it, so it got voted in by accident and she had to go along with it.

She begged the organizers to call it off. Didn't work.

She scheduled an "informational" meeting for ATRs at the UFT HQ a half hour before the rally was supposed to start — two subway stops away, mind you.

She had people at the City Hall station telling people making their way to the rally to go down to the UFT instead.

And she served them wine and cheese down there, when — for solidarity's sake — they should have really been at Tweed.

And of course she kept the meeting running for a couple of hours, so there was no way anyone was going to get to Tweed to hear the enraged protests going on over there.

This is union-busting of the WORST kind. It came from union management.

Teacher Unions and the UAW

Why Teachers Have an Interest in the Survival of the US Auto Industry

GUEST EDITORIAL

By Michael Fiorillo, Chapter Leader, Newcomers High School

The fate of the US auto industry, and particularly General Motors, has been much in the news lately. The pitiful performance of auto executives appearing before Congress with their begging cups, the morality play of their flying in private corporate jets to Washington to plead for taxpayer assistance, has become a rallying cry for people who are appalled at the long lines of executives seeking corporate welfare. People are rightfully upset that incompetence and dishonesty in business are being tolerated, if not rewarded, by their tax dollars. Oddly, though, most of the anger and calls for discipline have been directed at Detroit, rather than the banking and securities industry. What are some of the deeper reasons and assumptions behind this, and what are the implications for teachers?

This may seem like a strange topic to bring up on a blog that mostly concerns itself with educational issues. But in fact the fate of unionized teachers is now closely intertwined with the fate of the UAW. The reason is that, just as anti-union forces are calling for letting GM go bankrupt – which would lead to the nullification of contracts between the Big Three and the UAW – emerging fiscal crises for states and localities will energize forces that have been calling for the elimination of tenure, work rules, defined benefit pensions and union representation altogether for educators. In this sense, the fate of unionized autoworkers and teachers are joined. The attacks on the unionized auto workforce – coded in statements by senators from right-to-work states and financial industry types – are a prelude to what educators will be facing shortly as states and localities grapple with collapsing tax revenues and financial crises. It’s a scenario right out of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine: those with their hands on the levers of power will use crisis and disruption to implement policies that they could never have otherwise achieved.

First, a disclaimer: while the industrial base of the US must be preserved – and the auto industry is its core – that doesn’t mean that Detroit can continue with business as usual. Auto management must be replaced, and the industry must re-tool in order to produce reliable, fuel-efficient vehicles that people want to buy. The industry must also be reconfigured for production geared toward less reliance on cars and toward investment in mass transit. However, finance capital must not be allowed to fatten itself on the carcass of the auto industry, otherwise we will see investment bankers earning huge fees to dismantle auto plants and ship them to Mexico, China and elsewhere. Additionally, the federal government must resolve the health care crisis, which accounts for a large part of Detroit’s competitive disadvantage.

Much of the moralizing about letting the auto industry go under masks a deep-seated antagonism to union standards and worker rights. Critics of Detroit openly say that autoworker wages and benefits must immediately fall to the levels paid by Toyota, Honda, et. al. in their non-union plants in the South. This overlooks the fact that the wages workers enjoy in those plants are entirely dependent upon and follow from the wages established by years of struggle by the UAW. We could call it the Invisible Hand of labor economics. Non-union auto workers, and non-union factory workers in general, only get what they do because of the scales and standards established by the UAW. Here in NYC, non-union construction workers only get the wages they do because of the scales established by the organized trades. Likewise in education, the pay, benefits and working conditions in non-unionized schools track – at a lower rate – the scales established by the union. Take away the protections earned by unionized workers – whether they be teachers, electricians or auto workers – and you will quickly see a “race to the bottom” with employers going on the offensive to lower their cost structures and exert absolute control over the work lives of their employees.

People must question the fact that, while Wall Street and the banks have literally been given blank checks by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank – money that has not been used to lend to the real economy but has instead been used to buy up competitors and strengthen balance sheets – Detroit, which has asked for a mere fraction of what the financial industry has had thrown at it, must jump through hoops to obtain a fraction of the needed funds. When you think about it, Congress seems to be saying that when an industry is run by criminals, parasites and predators (Wall St.) rather than idiots (Detroit), it is deserving of special consideration.

Ultimately, saving the auto industry is even in Wall Street’s interest, although their short term greed blinds them to that reality, for what will happen to the parasites and predators when they kill off the remaining hosts and prey? Who will continue to buy their junk and pay their mutual fund management fees?

So, teachers and other school workers, don’t fall into the trap of supporting attacks on “lazy” and “spoiled” auto workers, and how they must be subjected to the discipline of the market. Those arguments are being turned against us, and the screams will become louder.


FOLLOW-UP
Giving credence to the points Michael makes, Fred Klonsky posts this video of Congressman Mark Kirk urging the use of bankrupting GM to bust the UAW contracts.

With A Cast of Thousands

graphic by david b

Back in 1929 Financial Crash it was said...

....that some Wall Street Stockbrokers and Bankers JUMPED from their office windows and committed suicide when confronted with the news of their firms and clients financial ruin . . . Many people were said to almost feel a little sorry for them . . . . . .

In 2008 the attitude has changed somewhat:

Going Beyond Anecdotes

Guest column
Anonymous

This is a Great Blog! Thanks for all the work, it's amazing!!

A few comments from my tiny sector of the universe, along with a question and the suggestion of a research project.

I've been teaching Middle School Mathematics in a district that evidently is among the pioneering leaders in NYC in using "Workshop Model." As far as I can tell the school uses a packaged, commercial version. As interpreted in the school this essentially means that the teachers are mandated to rigidly adhere to formulaic teaching. The formulas are such things as specifically ordered and prominently displayed "Agendas," having student do "Group Work" - i. e. having students sit together in groups of three to six and to do problems together instead of working on problems individually, "Differentiated Instruction" which is to give different students different levels of work, doing work that can be displayed on "Bulletin Boards," etc.

We are given to understand that these things have been going on at this school since Klein became chancellor (or even under his predecessor). Therefore in any case, all the students we now see have been under the Klein administration's organizational structures and models virtually their entire educational lives: the eighth graders since the 2nd grade, the seven graders since the 1st grade, and the sixth graders since kindergarten - indeed their whole educational lives.

I and many of my Mathematics colleagues (newer teachers as much as, if not more than senior teachers) consistently say that they see that classroom performance in Mathematics is horrendous. (Some of the senior teachers say that they are seeing Mathematics performance as clearly worsening over the last decade (kids do the times tables or divide, can't remember procedure, can't solve word problems on their own.)

From conversations with colleagues who teach high school and college it is seems that NYC teachers universally think that Mathematics skill and knowledge is worse than it's ever been across the city. I've heard a CUNY Mathematics professor go so far as to declare that even the best NYC students who apply to major in Mathematics at CUNY are routinely no less than a year their out of town peers despite their high school grades.

Most of us have come to believe that scoring students at a Level 2 is simply the new method of doing social promotion. We heard that in Mathematics the old form of social promotion was straightforward: students were routinely promoted even if they were at a very low percentile (perhaps the 15th?). In any case it seems that the number of poorly performing students passing is great.

As Mathematics teachers we know that as compelling as anecdotal observations and "war stories" are, they in no way constitute any type of proof. So, it would be worthwhile to be able to have some relatively objective "proof" of what we think we are seeing. We have been relying simply on the reports of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for far too long now, which Tweed just denies and / or ignores. Unfortunately, the teachers currently in graduate school are reporting that the local college professors are taking a very fatalistic attitude to educational research as it appears that public schools administrations across the country and not just in NYC are now simply ignoring educational research.

Is anyone aware of a publicly available test akin to the National Assessment of Educational Progress that we can administer to the students? Perhaps, it might be a good idea to organize to do a serious study that would test the veracity of the beliefs we have formed based on our experience.

Children Who Live in Public Housing Suffer in School

Where's the accountability?

The NY Times reports today on a study showing that "children in public housing perform worse in school than students who live in other types of housing even if they go to the same schools."They are "more likely to drop out of high school and less likely to graduate in four years than those who do not live in public housing.... fifth graders living in public housing did worse on standardized math and reading tests than fifth graders who lived elsewhere. Researchers found this disparity in fifth-grade test scores even when comparing students at the same school who shared similar demographics, like race, gender and poverty status."

Hmmm. With the city of New York being the landlord, shouldn't the accountability freaks in the world of BloomKlein jump all over this and fire all the housing execs? You, know you just can't find enough quality people to run public housing, which in their world (no quality teachers, no lower class sizes) should mean we have to shutter all the housing until the quality of the people running them improves.

Well, I guess only teachers and schools are held accountable. Even when studies show otherwise.

Norm on ATRs and Today's Rally on WBAI

I was interviewed on WBAI's Sunday News Program on the ATR situation and today's rally. Thanks to David B for extracting the piece.

Note: They also asked me about Joel Klein and the Education Secretary situation but didn't use that segment.

RALLY ON MONDAY -- STAND UP FOR THE ATRs

SEE SIDEBAR FOR FULL DETAILS

4:30 p.m. Monday ---Rally for the ATRs at Tweed

Look for an upcoming Ed Notes analysis on the ATR agreement.

The UFT/DOE ATR Agreement: The Not So Tender Trap

I and David B. will attempt to make a short film on the event to be posted on you-tube. Look for us and stop by and say a few words.

Joel Klein's School Trip to Australia

Save Our Schools media release welcoming Joel Klein to Australia.

It is also posted on the SOS website http://www.soscanberra.com/

Leonie, Patrick and crew have issued

A warning at the NYC Public School Parents blog to Australians:

Don't let your kids suffer, as have ours!

And if you'd like to read some of the propaganda Joel is putting out for Aussies to read check this at Norms Notes.

Click to enlarge.

The Unmet Promise of Merit Pay

Somebody tell Randi and uncle Joel.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

by Bernadette Nakamura

Once again, merit pay is being considered as the magical ingredient needed to fix the schools, this time in Washington, where Schools Chancellor Michelle A. RheeJay Mathews devoted his Oct. 6 Metro column to a discussion of this plan. Lest we forget that wants to offer sizable cash incentives to teachers who relinquish tenure protection and raise student test scores. Post education reporter pay-for-performance schemes have failed wherever they have been tried, here is a first-hand account of my Fairfax County experience.

More at the Washington Post


Some teacher comments on headline:

Union Prez [good ole Randi]: Performance Pay Work

SICKENING! - jp

Is this really true: Has anyone done a study to compare similar schools without the merit/bonus program to see if their scores went up also? My school did not have the bonus/merit pay program and our test scores went up...WE went from a C to an A! - LN

What a terrible admission. Translation to parents: I am not working as hard as I can to do the right thing for your child - give me $3,000 extra dollars and I will do it right. - LP

Ed Notes' last post on Randi's statement.

Bill Cala on Class Size...and Bloomberg's Reps Too

Any one who claims that class size doesn’t make a difference has not been in a classroom in the past 20 years.

- Bill Cala, most recently interim Superintendent of the Rochester School District in New York and a long-time Superintendent of three school districts, now retired.

I met Bill Cala and his wife Joanne in March, 2003 at an ACT NOW conference at the WOO (World of Opportunity) in Birmingham, Al., hosted by the late, great Steve Orel. With a cast of Susan Ohanian, Juanita Doyon, John Lawhead, and twenty other education activists from around the nation, that was one hell of a two days of intensive discussion on NCLB, high stakes tests and general education issues. Quite a few bonds were formed, especially at the anti-war vigil in downtown Birmingham, followed by a communal dinner.

I was shocked when I discovered that Bill was a school Superintendent in Fairport in upstate New York, the third district he has run. How could I be on the same page on so many issues with someone who runs a school district? Besides, he was a hell of a lot of fun to hang out with. Nowhere near the Supes I had run across in NYC.

We kept in touch and on a visit to NYC, he invited me to a meeting at the Urban Academy at the Julia Richman Educational Complex. That was the first time I met Ann Cook (co-director of the school and one of the true heroes of education) and the amazing Jane Hirschman (Time Out From Testing).

Bill retired from the Fairport school district a few years ago and he and Joanne started Joining Hearts and Hands, which promotes improved educational, health and economic conditions for African orphans and their communities by building schools, sponsoring health clinics, providing secondary scholarships, and nurturing sustainable development initiatives – all to promote dignity, opportunity and hope.

While I was sure of where Bill stood on class size, it is one thing to be use rhetoric (see one Randi Weingarten) and another to deliver when you have the power in your hands to do so.

Here is Bill's own words on class size:

While superintendent of Fairport, I initiated a long-term plan to reduce all primary classes to no higher than 17. For the most part, we accomplished that goal, reducing class sizes to that level K-3. In fact, in order to put meat on the bone, I had the board adopt a policy to that effect. In the intermediate, middle and high school grades, I brought class size down to the lowest levels in the school district’s history.


Any one who claims that class size doesn’t make a difference has not been in a classroom in the past 20 years.

Why do I bring up Bill's views on class size now?

Because on Nov. 19, I attended a panel on mayoral control at the Wagner School at NYU with

• Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters
• Richard Kessler, Executive Director, The Center for Arts Education
• Lesley Redwine, Director Of External Relations, Achievement First
• Fatima Shama, Senior Education Policy Advisor, NYC Office of the Mayor

Shama was a last minute replacement for the Tweed rep, Emily Weiss, who pulled out after hearing Leonie would be on the panel. (Tweedies are not good at actually having to face people who have real data.)

Shama was pretty smooth with the usual claptrap coming from the mayor's office on education. You know how closing the achievement gap is an ethical issue and inequality must be blah, blah, blah, blah.

So I asked her how come it wasn' t an ethical and equality issue for NYC students to have 25% higher class sizes than the rest of the state? Why the poorest kids in urban areas, who just happened to be mostly people of color, don't deserve equality with the richer kids? Why isn't this the civil rights issue of our time?

Shama's response was - now hold your breaths kiddies - was that class size doesn't matter.

The ideal class size in Bloomberg land.

There was an audible gaps from the audience of mostly education students about to become teachers (but maybe not in NYC now that they know the official policy.) Redwine, was quick to jump in and agree with Shama.

Now there's a pair for you.

For my money, Leonie kicked their butts all over the place.

Come Hear a Union President who Does Organize the Teachers!

I was going to go to the Teachers Unite event tonight in Brooklyn and then to Leonie's mayoral control event at Judson Church until I was reminded of this event. Since this is right near the Judson Church I am checking them both out.

The situation in Puerto Rico is very important and I really need to write more about it. The FMPR disaffiliated from the AFT years ago, held a strike, had the governor declare them as no longer the bargaining agent, has SEUI come in and try to undermine them, beat them back, and there's lots more. I had a bunch of posts about them a few months ago with a lot of historical context using some of the stuff from Mike Antonucci's EIA which followed the FMPR/AFT story from its earliest stages. Just search this blog for FMPR to find them.

Tonight at 6:30- 9:30, the leader of the FMPR, Rafael Feliciano, will be speaking at NYU (Silver Bldg, 50 Washington Sq. Room 714. For those who have not heard Rafael Feliciano speak, I would encourage everyone to attend. He is the kind of union leader that builds support and activists from the bottom up. Here in the US we need to hear how that is possible since few of our union leaders follow this path. ICE's Lisa North, chapter leader at PS 3K will also be speaking.

Recently retired NYC teacher Angel Gonzalez has been spearheading the organizing effort here in NYC.

Excerpts selected from an article by Brian Cruz, a rank-and-file member of SEIU Local 1021 in the Bay Area. Oct 31, 2008


PUBLIC SCHOOL teachers in Puerto Rico overwhelmingly voted October 23 to reject representation by the Puerto Rico Teachers Union (SPM)--a union affiliated with the U.S.-based Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Those who voted "no" to the SPM weren't voting against having a union, however. In effect, they were voting in favor of their current union, the Teachers Federation of Puerto Rico (FMPR), which was not allowed on the ballot. The 42-year-old FMPR previously had exclusive rights to represent the teachers. However, the FMPR was decertified by an anti-labor government in January 2008 for voting to go on strike. This created an opening for the SEIU to push its affiliate, the SPM.


The cards seemed stacked against the FMPR. Under Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vilá of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), the Puerto Rican government had been unwilling to agree to a collective bargaining agreement with the teachers. The FMPR sensed an impasse and decided strike for better wages, better conditions at schools for both teachers and students, and a halt to the privatization of the schools through the expansion of charter schools. However, the island's Law 45 prohibits public workers from striking, so the government decertified the FMPR even before the strike began in early February.



More than just a viciously anti-union government was at play here. In the New York Daily News, columnist Juan Gonzalez revealed that Vilá and Dennis Rivera, a top leader of SEIU, had arranged a deal in which SEIU would contribute to Vilá's campaign for re-election if Vilá would support SEIU's attempts to gain representation.

More about the victory at norms notes.

Pay for Performance Works? So Says Randi

Click to enlarge

There comes a point where Randi Weingarten becomes an embarrassment to working teachers everywhere. Her pronouncement that bonus pay works is an insult to teachers.

Even NYC parent activists at the NYC Public School Parent blog, where Weingarten doesn't get much attention, are disturbed.

Patrick Sullivan who represents Manhattan on the Panel for Educational Policy, put up this post.

Randi Weingarten’s recent speech, where she was introduced by Mike Bloomberg, includes a strong endorsement for teacher merit pay based on high-stakes standardized testing.


From an AP article entitled “Union Prez: Performance Pay Works”:
Weingarten described the teacher pay system in New York City , where school-wide bonuses are based on overall test scores in high-poverty schools. Weingarten, as head of the New York teachers union, negotiated the system last year with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.


The new system is working, she said: Teachers already are getting bonuses for improving student achievement in 128 of 200 eligible schools.


But it wasn’t so long ago we were hearing a different story from the Weingarten-led United Federation of Teachers. Last year, a more detailed analysis in the UFT newsletter was entitled: “Pay for performance not performing well: Places using such models have run into snags”.


The UFT article starts out this way:


“Guess what? New teacher pay-for-performance plans in Florida and Texas have run into big problems. Not surprised? Aha. You may be a teacher”.


It's not just teachers who should be concerned. The program here in NYC makes standardized testing even more high stakes which will lead to more cheating, test prep, teaching to the test and the narrowing of the curriculum. It's our kids who will suffer.


Weingarten’s new position is certainly disappointing. Is it a result of politics and ideology trumping research and actual experience?

If parents are disappointed, the emails coming in from angry NYC teachers is beyond the pale. I'll share some of these in a future post.

Serious teachers are concerned that bonus pay will not make teachers work harder, it will force many to shade their teaching in a narrow, standardized test driven direction and place those who resist in a terrible position.

A NY Times Op ed by Dan Ariely (What's Value of a Big Bonus?) on Nov. 20 blew some serious holes in the "pay for performance" case. Here are some excerpts:

By withholding bonuses from their top executives, Goldman Sachs and UBS may soften negative reaction from Congress and the public if their earnings reports in December are poor, as is expected. But will they also suffer because their executives, lacking the motivation that big bonuses are thought to provide, will not do their jobs well?


We presented 87 participants with an array of tasks that demanded attention, memory, concentration and creativity. We asked them, for instance, to fit pieces of metal puzzle into a plastic frame, to play a memory game that required them to reproduce a string of numbers and to throw tennis balls at a target. We promised them payment if they performed the tasks exceptionally well. About a third of the subjects were told they’d be given a small bonus, another third were promised a medium-level bonus, and the last third could earn a high bonus.


What would you expect the results to be? When we posed this question to a group of business students, they said they expected performance to improve with the amount of the reward. But this was not what we found. The people offered medium bonuses performed no better, or worse, than those offered low bonuses. But what was most interesting was that the group offered the biggest bonus did worse than the other two groups across all the tasks.


...the offer of a higher bonus led to poorer performance.
If our tests mimic the real world, then higher bonuses may not only cost employers more but also discourage executives from working to the best of their ability.

Read the full piece.


The DOE press release (98% of Eligible Schools Opt to Participate in Second Year of School-Wide Performance Bonus Program) is here.

Kelly Vaughan at Gotham Schools has a piece that indicates there is little difference between schools with and without performance pay. She put up this chart. Kelly has a link if you want to download a pdf listing all schools involved.

If you watched the CBS evening news last night you saw a story about the greatest shoe salesman (Walk a Mile in His Shoes) who worked without commission. "What was your motivation?" "Myself."

I urge teachers to join with those of us who will be starting a city-wide campaign to reverse a policy by our own union that gives credence to the anti-teacher community that teachers will work harder for more pay. Next JNJT Meeting Dec. 1 at 5:30 at CUNY - 34st and 5th ave. rm 5414 (see sidebar for updates.)

Message From Oz, Ready to Welcome Joel

Norm,
Thank you for the nice run you gave SOS today. I hope we can deliver some uncomfortable moments for Joel. We have done a lot of work briefing several journalists who will attend his address to the National Press Club here in Canberra next Tuesday.

The right wing the Centre for Independent Studies (which is funded by major Australian and international corporations) published a report here yesterday supporting school reporting and league tables (see http://www.cis.org.au/). It is an appallingly slipshod report.

It is interesting how much publicity a large well-funded organisation like this can get for basically shoddy work while a substantive report like the SOS study of NYC results goes unreported. Yesterday, the Sydney Morning Herald gave the CIS report's author, Jennifer Buckingham, space for an opinion piece. Yet, SOS has been unsuccessful in its request to have an opinion piece published on NYC.

However, I did get a little run in the Melbourne Age yesterday in response to the CIS report
(http://www.theage.com.au/national/report-cards-would-improve-failing-schools-20081119-6blv.html ) and also in today's Canberra Times, but the article is not online.

cheers
trevor

The Way They Were...

....and The Way They Are Today

Fidgetyteach blogs:

Before my reassignment, an ordinary teaching day was active and productive. Along with my colleagues, I yearned for the Pre-Kleinberg, Pre-"Robo-Principal " days when my school was like a second home. I knew the ins and outs of the school and I knew what to expect. When my principal was having a bad day, we too, had to be in a bad mood. When my principal was happy, in turn we had to act ecstatic. It may not have been perfect, but we knew how to survive. My principal wore her moods on her sleeve and we monitored them like the weather. When her mood changed, warning signals were transmitted throughout the building in a flash.

The arrival of Robo-Principal changed everything. There were no changing facial expressions or moods to read. There was only one stone face and one mood and no one knew what that was. Fear permeated throughout the building, almost as if someone had died. He didn't like laughter or noise and reminded us to keep it down. In discussion, he never made eye contact and wrote everything down. He responded only through email. Communication as we once knew it had died. Everyday we mourned the loss of human contact. Teachers walked around saying, "I don't know." We were in the dark about everything. That is why it came as such a surprise when I was 'served' my rubber room invitation. MORE

NY Times Shuts Out NYC Parents...

...while giving space to LA Parents.

Hey! When you have your news up Bloomberg's butt, why expect the Times to give space to NYC parents who are critical of BloomKlein?


Leonie Haimson sends them a message at the NYC Public School Parent Blog.
Excerpt:

Nor, to my knowledge, has the Times covered a single one of the many hearings and debates on Mayoral control that have occurred over the course of recent months, sponsored by legislators and other independent groups, featuring the informed views of countless disillusioned parents, advocates and the elected officials themselves, who have openly decried not only the manner in which this administration unilaterally imposes its policies but have also offered substantive critiques of these policies.

Indeed, it is disappointing that the NY Times has never offered the same sort of platform to a NYC public school parent as they have to Ms. Lo, but consistently excludes our voices from the public debate.

Maybe the Times might should check out the mayoral control discussion Leonie is running at Judson Memorial Church tomorrow (Friday) night with guests from Chicago and Washington talking about the issue.

If you think that all that is wrong with Mayoral control is Michael Bloomberg or Joel Klein – guess what! I think you’ll find out otherwise.