UFT/AFT Leads the Race to the Bottom

Bob Herbert in today's NY Times (A Race to the Bottom) talks about the attacks on workers while millionaire bankers get bailouts. He focuses on teachers and auto workers, quoting extensively from Randi Weingarten. What's interesting is that in the midst of this supposed defense of teachers he says:

But Ms. Weingarten’s defense of her members was not the most important part of the speech. The key point was her assertion that with schools in trouble and the economy in a state of near-collapse, she was willing to consider reforms that until now have been anathema to the union, including the way in which tenure is awarded, the manner in which teachers are assigned and merit pay.

Here we go again as both Herbert and Weingarten engage in the more subtle type of teacher bashing by putting issues like tenure, merit pay and the assignment of teachers on the table as the causes of the problems in education. What Herbert doesn't get is that these ideas have not been anathema to the UFT/AFT.

Rather than pointing out how all these market-based ideas won't work and will in fact damage education, Weingarten goes along with the plan.

The economic crisis is a gift to Weingarten who can use it to justify giving away the store.

Now let me make this clear. This is not just a tactic of Randi Weingarten. Albert Shanker started rolling this ball down the alley 25 years ago and Randi is giving it her own spin. And as far back as 1975 Shanker used the economic crisis in NYC to go along with the layoffs of 15,000 teachers, the cutting of prep periods, the freezing of salaries for years, the closing of schools and lost of other attacks on education, all the while using teacher pension funds to help bail out the city.

When these attacks come this time, the script Weingarten will use was written by Shanker 33 years ago.

What UFT and AFT members need to see clearly is that Randi Weingarten is not there to represent their interests but to serve as the agent for the phony ed reformers in selling teachers on the plan even if it leads to undermining the union at its core.

She does this piecemeal by using scare tactics and saying, "see they wanted the whole loaf and we gave them only 75% but look at the victory in preserving 25%." We have seen it is only a matter of time until the other 25% goes too.

What do the teacher unions get out of this? While teachers at the school level see their unionism destroyed, the union at the top flourishes with incoming dues, a seat (minor) at the table and a sense of power and influence - for the leadership – while the members flail helplessly.

People like Joel Klein don't want the UFT to go away. They serve a much needed function and the political and business/corporate powers that be will continue to praise Weingarten as one of them.

And, so she is.

Related: Ed Notes is inviting people to join in a series of discussions on the role the current leadership of unions is playing and will play in the context of the economic crisis and what the rank and file would need to do to fight back in what is a two front war that attacks them from both sides. Hopefully this will lead to a more in depth analysis. If interested, let us know.

Klonsky and Meier on Arne Duncan

From Susan Ohanian

Obama’s Choice for Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, Seen as Compromise Between Divided Strands

by Mike Klonsky and Deborah Meier

Democracy Now
2008-12-18

http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8375

Susan says:
There is a lot of game-playing and positioning in this discussion. Is Mike Klonsky keeping his options open, or what? Duncan as a "centrist" candidate when he says?

I think Arne Duncan has the potential to be a good Secretary of Education, and I
think he has some real positives going for him.

Read Henry Giroux and Kenneth Saltman on Duncan's corporate brand of schooling and Obama's betrayal of public schools.


After reading Susan's comments I took a good look at what Deb Meier said. Read it all but here are just a few words and though I think she is being careful, she makes some important points:

So, first of all, I think we’re—it’s not two sides. It’s sort of a—it’s different views about the purpose of education, and there are different views about how human beings learn well. And I think there’s a very predominant view right now that gets—has been called by the name of reform and that has nothing to do with red and blue. It’s a kind of market view of education, though. And I
think there are a lot of people on the red side who are more close to my views and a lot of people of the blue side who are more close to Arne Duncan’s views. And that part does worry me, maybe even more than it does Klonsky, my friend Mike Klonsky, because it’s—I think we need a different discussion about what the point of education is.

[O]nce you’ve posed the issue as being union lackeys or reformers—and the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, a variety of magazines, as you mentioned earlier, have said there are two sides: unions lackeys, people who want to—who are worrying—you know, who are dependent upon the union, and on the other side are real reformers. I think it made it hard for the union to speak for its own membership on this question. And the history of reform has almost nothing to do—I shouldn’t say that. There has always been a struggle between these two wings in reform. But they have posed me as an anti-reformer, as though there are—since I’m not for market-style reforms, this testing mania, this narrow focus on prepping kids for a small selection of skills, that makes me a dupe of the union and an anti-reformer and someone who doesn’t care for the future of the economy or democracy. I think it’s been posed that way for so many years now.

ICE Video on MS 399X Protest

ICE video on the "DEC 17 - MS399 Protest against closing/phase out designation by city" is posted.

Click to see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqGPK_kK3MA&feature=channel_page

Since I'm still cavorting in Mexico and having trouble with keyboards, getting online and the impact of a constant influx of mohitos and margaritas, here are some nice links from Susan Ohanian. And Antonucci at Intercepts makes sure to focus on the anti-Duncan positions of the left with this headline: Commies Don’t Like Duncan

Gee, next Mike will be telling us to hide under school desks because of the Soviet threat.

Susan says:

Much of the news items concern Arne Duncan.
Read them all because each offers a somewhat different perspective.

If you can read only one, then Henry A. Giroux and Kenneth Saltman's piece is not to be missed. http://susanohanian.org/show_commentaries.html?id=640



Gary Stager's Huffington Post piece. "Obama Practices Social Promotion"

http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.html?id=8370



No School Left Unsold: Arne Duncan's Privatization Agenda

Jesse Sharkey 2008-12-18

http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8374

A Chicago teacher continues to speak out about Arne Duncan.



17,000 kids have no school library
Meredith Koloner, New York Daily News2008-12-11

http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8373

Ohanian suggests that we call on our professional organizations to redress this grievance.


Controversy brews over move of Richard R. Green High School from Upper East Side to Harlem

Joe Kemp and Merdith Kolodner, New York Daily News, 2008-12-18

http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8372

Charge of racism surfaced over a plan to move a mostly minority Upper East Side high school to Harlem to make way for the children of wealthy white local residents.

The Takeover at the New School

Here are some videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKcuK1H3i50

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQchNXEEVRY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC1uV56Lgag&feature=related

Darn! Missed the DA

I was out of town so I missed the scinitilating Delegate Assembly as described by James over at the ICE blog. There was an ICE leaflet on closing schools and ATRs. James said the teachers and students from IS 399 which is being closed where there and as we reported yesterday the UFT is attempting to control the spigot of militancy.

The announcement that the New School is being occupied today following on the takeover of the Chicago factory may pressage a new day in militancy and the UFT and the rest of the labor movement will have to work doubly hard to control things.

I remember a time in my early years of teaching when a militant parent group occupied the District 14 offices for months. That was my first exposure to political activism - I went over to visit one day. That was pretty dumb as I was new to my school and had a year to go till tenure. But I figured it was a free country.

The next day my principal called me into his office and asked me about that. Okaaay! I get it. Lucky he was on terminal leave and his replacement tried to reign me in, he just was too milktoast to do it. Things might have been different if a real power freak as principal had been there.

I probably would have been denied tenure and ended up as a (fill in the blank)_________.


Note: The spell check on this computer does it in Spanish so excuse the typos.

Teachers at Closing Bronx School Hold Protest....

...UFT will be there in ususal role of undermining militancy.

Oh, Randi, the enabler of closing schools, will be there to cry crocodile tears and commiserate. UFT officials will be there to tell teachers their "rights" - their rights to join the growing ATR pool from which they will have to race around the city applying for jobs with all the other ATRs and then be branded incompetent a year later if they are not hired and then with the help of the UFT be councelled on how to make a settlement with the DOE.

And sadly, the teachers at MS 399X, grasping at straws, will have no choice but to buy it.

Imagine if every school being closed held a protest on the same day all over the city? That will never happen with a UFT that plays the role of easing the closings for the DOE, not fighting them.

If one day there is a massively organized opposition to Unity, this is exactly what could happen. But that day is still far away.

Schmidt on Duncan/ Media Failure on Fair Reporting

Crony Capitalism in Education

Take another look at that slimy AFT letter by Randi Weingarten to the New York Times in the context of Substance editor George Schmidt's analysis.

by George Schmidt

Arne Duncan's career has been in crony capitalism, Chicago style. Since he was appointed "CEO" of Chicago's public schools by Mayor Richard M. Daley in July 2001, he has been responsible for the greatest expansion of patronage hiring (generally, but not exclusively, at the central and "area" offices, but often as well in the schools) on the CPS payroll since the Great Depression (when the school system was controlled by politicians, leading to its near-demise in 1945).

Duncan has also presided over more "no bid" contracts from contractors (for everything from buildings and computer hardward and software to charter schools) in the history of the City of Chicago abd its public schools. Finally, and equally important, Arne Duncan has closed "failing schools" (dubiously defined by low test scores for one or two years, often because of special circumstances at the schools) in Chicago's African American community.

Since Duncan became CEO, he has eliminated 2,000 black teachers from Chicago's teaching force, undoing decades of desegregation and affirmative action in the name of "school reform." Last year (2007-2008) Duncan began a program he called "Turnaround" (based on the corporate models) that was actually reconstitution.

He fired most of the teachers and principals in six public schools (four elementary schools; two high schools). At each of those six schools, the majority of the teachers and principals were black.

Were Arne Duncan living and working in Mississippi in 1952, it would be easy for the USA to see what he is and has been up to in the service of corporate Chicago. Because he plays ball not only with Barack Obama but with Richard M. Daley and corporate Chicago, Chicago's white blindspot has ignored the fact that Duncan has gotten rid of more African American educators than most Mississippi and other southern governments during those dark days just before Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

The reason why the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) can promote Duncan's candidacy is that seven years of turmoil within Chicago's union has left the union badly split (and weakened).

Arne Duncan does not have the support of Chicago's teachers. He has the support of the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, Marilyn Stewart, who is in the midst of a purge of her own staff and elected administration. Stewart, a lame duck officer with no more chance of re-election than George W. Bush, is viewed by the majority of Chicago Teachers Union members as a traitor to her union and the teaching profession.

— George N. SchmidtSubstance2008-12-14http://www.substancenews.net

FAIR Media Report:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3663

Media's Failing Grade on Education 'Debate'
12/16/08
President-elect Barack Obama chose Chicago schools superintendent Arne Duncan as his nominee for Education secretary after an almost entirely one-sided media discussion that portrayed the most progressive candidate in the running for the post--Stanford educational researcher Linda Darling-Hammond--as an unacceptable pick.

Corporate media accounts presented the selection as a choice between "reformers who demand more accountable schools" and "defenders of the complacent status quo," as a Chicago Tribune editorial put it (12/9/08), claiming that the selection would determine whether Obama "wants to revolutionize the public education industry or merely wants to throw more money at it."

The Washington Post's December 5 editorial was headlined, "A Job for a Reformer: Will Barack Obama Opt for Boldness or t he Status Quo in Choosing an Education Secretary?" The Post warned readers about "warring camps within the Democratic Party," which they characterized as "those pushing for radical restructuring and those more wedded to the status quo."
Such loaded language was not confined to editorials. The Associated Press' Libby Quaid (12/15/08 ) summarized the debate this way:

Teachers' unions, an influential segment of the party base, want an advocate for their members, someone like Obama adviser Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University professor, or Inez Tenenbaum, the former S.C. schools chief.
Reform advocates want someone like New York schools chancellor Joel Klein, who wants teachers and schools held accountable for the performance of students.

These were almost the same terms adopted by conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks (12/5/08):

On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers' unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.

Brooks' exemplar of the "establishment view" was Darling-Hammond, who seems to have attracted the same kind of fury from the actual establishment that was visited on Lani Guinier during the early days of the Clinton administration (Extra!, 7-8/93). As the Tribune editorialized:

If Obama awards the post to Darling-Hammond or someone else reluctant to smash skulls, he'll be telegraphing that the education industry has succeeded in outlasting the Bush push for increasingly tough performance standards in schools. That would, though, be a message of gratitude to the teachers unions that contributed money and shoe leather to his election campaign.Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter (12/15/08) echoed the same theme: "Obama also knows that if he chooses a union-backed candidate such as Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford professor active in the transition, he'll have a revolt on his hands from the swelling ranks of reformers."

Strangely, in corporate media's view, the selection of someone who would continue the education policies of the Bush administration would to signal that Obama favored serious change, even "radical reform" (in Brooks' words). The Tribune again:

The Bush administration exploited this post not only to help promote crucial No Child Left Behind legislation, but to follow up by making schools more accountable for how well their students do--or don't--learn.

Will that emphasis on accountability now intensify? Or will it wither as opponents of dramatic change reclaim lost clout? We trust that Obama instead will make a statement for real improvement.

Voices in support of Darling-Hammond were hard to find in corporate media: There was an op-ed backing her in her local paper, the San Francisco Chronicle (12/12/08), and a couple of prominent letters to the editor--one by Darling-Hammond herself (New York Times, 12/12/08) responding to the Brooks column, and another in the Washington Post (12/11/08):

The claim that Ms. Darling-Hammond represents the "status quo" is ludicrous.... She was the founding executive director of the National Commission for Teaching and America's Future, a panel whose work catalyzed major policy changes to improve the quality of teacher education.

She has been a powerful voice for the fundamental principle that all children deserve a well-prepared and properly supported teacher. She has advocated for strong accountability and has offered thoughtful alternatives--a balanced system of measures to evaluate higher-order thinking skills. And she has urged federal policies that would stop the micromanagement of schools and start ensuring educational equity--an issue only the federal government can tackle. Corporate media have thus far been mostly pleased with Obama's nominations--in large part because the president-elect's moves have been seen as staying close to the media-approved "centrism." (FAIR Media Advisory, 11/26/08).

The media unease with the possibility of a progressive pick for education secretary was dealt with by Alfie Kohn in the Nation (12/29/08):
Progressives are in short supply on the president-elect's list of cabinet nominees. When he turns his attention to the Education Department, what are the chances he'll choose someone who is educationally progressive?

In fact, just such a person is said to be in the running and, perhaps for that very reason, has been singled out for scorn in Washington Post and Chicago Tribune editorials, a New York Times column by David Brooks and a New Republic article, all published almost simultaneously this month. The thrust of the articles, using eerily similar language, is that we must reject the "forces of the status quo" which are "allied with the teachers' unions" and choose someone who represents "serious education reform."

One prominent exception to the corporate media's one-sided presentation of the Education nominee search was Sam Dillon's news article in the New York Times (12/14/08). Not only did it avoid caricaturing Darling-Hammond by citing views of both her critics and supporters, the article included some accurate media criticism:

Editorials and opinion articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have described the debate as pitting education reformers against those representing the educational establishment or the status quo. But who the reformers are depends on who is talking.

Unfortunately, in most establishment media accounts, only one side has been allowed to do the talking.

Feel free to respond to FAIR ( fair@fair.org ). We can't reply to everything, but we will look at each message. We especially appreciate documented examples of media bias or censorship. And please send copies of your correspondence with media outlets, including any responses, to fair@fair.org.

Duncan Is It

Arne Duncan has tried to cultivate a middle position but in fact is is Klein lite, as has been pointed out by others. I'm out of the country so can't comment extensively but here are a few so far.- Norm

Hello All,

And so, just as it took a Republican to initiate trade with China, it is taking a Democrat to destroy (what's left of) the teacher's unions and public education.In a perverse way, Klein would have been the better choice, since he's such a polarizing figure, and his appointment might have led to more static. Duncan seems to be smoother, making him more dangerous.Randi, of course, played her part in this, blowing a kiss to Duncan just the other day. Was that the public statement and capitulation - the first of many more to come - Obama was waiting for?

Michael Fiorillo


Teachers in Chicago are sorry to see the CEO of the schools here being promoted.
In the past couple of years Chicago has been turning public schools over to private operators (mainly in the form of charters and contracts) at a rate of about 20/year. The city has also resuscitated some of the worst ideas of the 90's like firing all the teachers in low-performing schools (called 'turn-arounds') while at the same time eliminating many Local School Councils and making school decisions without public input. Charter schools and test-score driven 'choice' have been the watchwords of Duncan's rule in Chicago. Expect more of the same in Washington DC.

But in case anyone is wondering what kind of a person we appear to be getting as Secretary of Education. Duncan is a tool. To me, the thing that made clear Duncan's role came after three months of organizing against the Chicago Board of Education's proposal to install a Naval Academy at our community high school, Senn HS.

After an inspiring campaign that had involved literally hundreds of people in the biggest campaign the area had seen in decades, we forced Duncan to come up to our neighborhood to listen to our case for keeping the military out of our school. Over three hundred of us--parents, teachers, and community supporters held a big meeting in a local church and, at the end of the meeting, we asked Duncan to postpone the decision to put the military school at Senn. Duncan's answer was a classic--he said, 'I come from a Quaker family and I've always been against war. But I'm going to put the Naval Academy in there because it will give people in the community more choices.'

When push came to shove Duncan was always a loyal henchman of the Daley political machine--albeit with a style that made it seem like he was listening and a knack for a sympathetic phrase--the kind of person who will look a t you with a straight face and tell you that, as a person with a Quaker background, he supports a military school, and in a community that is fighting as hard as it can against some Daley-Department of Defense backroom deal, that he is ignoring us because it will give the community more choices.

Jesse Sharkey
Chicago Public Schools Teacher



Editorial: Duncan's agenda and Paul Bremer's

Substance Editorial Staff

Picture Paul Bremer, the erstwhile “viceroy” of Baghdad, only without the boots. You now have Arne Duncan and his troupe of zealots privatizing everything in sight at the Chicago Board of Education and in the “Office of New Schools.” Of course, just as Bremer would have been nothing without George W. Bush and the crazies in the Washington Think Tanks that write the privatization scripts for the world, so Duncan would just be another washed up former professional ball player if Mayor Daley and his corporate buddies weren’t backing his massive privatization plans.

For the past six years, we’ve watched while Chicago Schools CEO Arne Duncan lied repeatedly to the public about how and why he was closing dozens of public schools. Duncan was not trying to improve public schools in Chicago for all children, but was in command of a ruthless privatization plan that is designed to undermine traditional notions of public education for urban children and replace them with a crackpot version of “market choice” that exists only for the wealthy and the powerful.

The key to Duncan’s ability to get away with the Big Lie, however, is not Duncan’s own eloquence, but the face that he has the backing of Chicago’s ruling class. From the CEOs of the city’s largest corporations (organized into the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club) to the editorial boards of the two power daily newspapers, Duncan’s lies are amplified every day, and except for the pages of this newspaper and a few other places, unchallenged in the public arena where democratic debate is supposed to take place.

After we reviewed the school closings in Chicago since 2001, when Mayor Daley appointed Duncan the second “Chief Executive Officer” in CPS history, the shocking details began to become clear. Not only were poor black children being forced out of their homes (public housing reform, it was called), but they were also being deprived over and over of access to public schools.

Comparing Duncan’s other work with massive privatizers like Paul Bremer (who headed up the Provisional Coalition Authority in Baghdad from 2003 to 2004), any clear-eyed reader can see the same pattern. These guys are not in the business of improving public school, but of stripping the assets from public services and turning unionized public servants into non-union public slaves.

For five years, we have watched thousands of people appear before the corporate stooges who constitute the Chicago Board of Education, trying to talk about what would be best for public schools. Every argument has been eloquent.

But the arguments don’t really matter, because Arne Duncan and the seven members of the Chicago Board of Education are not in the education business, they are in the privatization and charter school business. Once the public understand that, at least people can stop wasting their time talking about what’s best for the education of Chicago’s poorest children. Duncan couldn’t care less about that as long as his crimes — and they are crimes that flow from these lies — don’t make the TV news or interfere with the agenda of his mentor Richard M. Daley.

The Fearless Forecaster Prediction on Darling-Hammond Chances

With the battles swirling around the potential next Education Secretary - for and against the Joel Klein/Michelle Rhee/Arne Duncan, a major attack has been launched on Linda Darling-Hammond, who has been a key advisor on Obama's ed team even though a critic of those media darlings Teach for America. Naturally, the TFA machine is sweating a bit and has been part of the attack on Darling-Hammond.

Some people are optimistic, thinking the D-H critics have gone too far. That Obama will move in her direction. Witness the John Affelt post at Huffington (which I posted at Norms Notes). Affelt opens with this:

A slickly-coordinated string of editorials and columns in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The New Republic, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere has poured forth recently, all decrying the possible appointment of Stanford University Professor Linda Darling-Hammond as Secretary of Education. Obviously responding to the same talking points, the pieces paint Darling-Hammond a status quo, incrementalist and anoint a new group of pro-merit pay/pro-testing/pro-charter school advocates as the hard-charging "reformers."

Darling-Hammond has spent 30 years pushing for a radical restructuring of public schools and the systems that serve them so that all students will have high-quality teachers and rich learning opportunities, not just well-off, predominantly white kids. To call her a defender of the status quo is like calling Lincoln a defender of slavery because he wasn't as absolute in opposition as were some on his team of rivals.

By drawing so heavily from the old playbook, the hard-chargers may have just charged off the cliff--virtually ensuring Obama will be less receptive to their pleas.

So I have borrowed WFAN's Steve Somers' FEARLESS FORECASTER to predict the fate of D-H. Unfortunately, I don't agree with the view that Obama will turn out to be the kind of politician who will pick D-H. He seems to look at how easy it will be to get a person confirmed. And with both Republicans and many Democrats taking a view that D-H is easy on teachers, we can expect quite a battle if Obama chooses her. On the other hand, if he chooses Duncan or Klein or Rhee, there will be screams of protest from educators but not from politicians.

Note: If you read Randi Weingarten's letter to the NY Times (posted at ed notes Dec. 13) you will see she did not put the AFT/UFT in the Darling-Hammond camp at all - which shows how the union lines up as more political than educational. A recent quote is in effect an endorsement of Arne Duncan: “We have no candidate in the race,” Ms. Weingarten said. But last week she publicly praised Mr. Duncan in an interview with The Associated Press. “Arne Duncan,” she said, “actually reaches out and tries to do things in a collaborative way.”


FEARLESS says that Obama will go the route of least protest and choose some non-controversial politician who is palatable to all sides. After all, Obama himself has gone both ways on education and left people guessing.

Thus, FEARLESS' prediction is that for Darling-Hammond, becoming Education Secretary is
A LOSS!


Related:
More Speculation on Education Secretary at Norms Notes.

More from Moore on NCLB

Paul Moore Comment on WaPo article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/14/AR2008121401924.html

NCLB is the evil spawn of the globalization of our economy. That process is at the very foundation of business model for schools, charters, vouchers, data driven instruction, merit pay, standardized testing, and most perversely of all, paying students to consume the corporate version of knowledge. It was the reason the Business Roundtable and Bill Gates were so instrumental in getting this absurd and perverse legislation passed. The CEO's wanted a profit making private school system. In the new economy there would be Wal Mart and security guard jobs or the military for the kids that used to go to public schools.

These Reagan revolutionaries had a good run, in fact their campaign appeared ready to bear its bitter fruit. They had public school system wreckers like Michelle Rhee in place. Just then their rationale for being, their precious global economy, crashed! Why in just the past month they have had to do $326 billion CPR on Citigroup and scrambled to rescue the Big Three. Their pride and joy is on fire. It was supposed to be immutable. It was eternal! Now that attitude's all
gone. There's only panic now.

Any talk of NCLB is prayer said over a corpse.

The great transition is coming!

Pathetic Letter to Times From Weingarten

Want to get a bead on why teachers are in a losing two front war where the enemy is within? Instead of castigating David Brooks for his outrageous column, Weingarten says:

The educational improvements that have occurred during Joel I. Klein’s tenure as chancellor of New York City’s public schools are the result of hard work and collaboration with the United Federation of Teachers and the teachers we represent.

Improvements? Every teacher knows this is a crock.

OK, stop gagging. Susan Ohanian's comment:

This "cover your backside no matter who gets chosen" letter shows how morally bankrupt union leadership is.

Letter in New York Times

To the Editor:

The three very different candidates David Brooks (column, Dec. 5) names as possible choices for secretary of education share a common denominator — they all have worked with teacher unions, to great effect.

The educational improvements that have occurred during Joel I. Klein’s tenure as chancellor of
New York City’s public schools are the result of hard work and collaboration with the United
Federation of Teachers and the teachers we represent.

In Chicago, Arne Duncan has partnered with the local affiliate of the American Federation of
Teachers to restructure struggling schools and adopt promising innovations.

Linda Darling-Hammond has worked with the A.F.T. on projects going back decades to implement lessons from the best research and real-life experience for the benefit of students and teachers in America’s classrooms.

We agree that the choice of a secretary of education is a crucial one. But we disagree that distance from and disdain for teachers’ unions are positive credentials. Demonizing teachers’ unions might win favor in certain quarters, but it won’t do anything to help kids or advance school improvement.

Randi Weingarten
President
American Federation of Teachers and United Federation of Teachers

2008-12-13

So Randi, how do we say people like Klein and Duncan who demonize teachers' unions and castigate teachers and then claim to have made "improvements" are somehow "collaborative?"

British Columbia Teachers to Boycott Tests

When will teachers in the States get as fed up one day?

A solid majority of B.C. Teachers' Federation members voted this week in favour of a controversial plan for a province-wide boycott of the tests - known as the Foundation Skills Assessment and delivered in Grades 4 and 7 - unless the government agrees to stop testing every student and introduces random sampling instead.

"It's clear that teachers are ready to take a strong stance," BCTF president Irene Lanzinger said in an interview as her union announced that 85 per cent of teachers who voted were in favour of the boycott plan. Slightly more than half of the 41,000 members cast ballot

Read full piece at http://www.vancouversun.com/teachers+vote+boycott+standardized+tests+unless+changes+made/1063369/story.html or at norms notes.

A Voice speaks da trut about Rhee....

.....at The Chancellor's New Clothes

Quite frankly, I’ve never met anyone who works in the system for a few years, who does not eventually see the truth.

Perhaps this is the real genius of Teach for America and of Michelle Rhee who is a product of it; get the teachers out of the schools before they question the corruption and label those who stay and begin to question it as “burned out.”

The New Know Nothings

I just heard Jonathan Alter rant against teacher unions on Don Imus while praising Bill Gates as a reformer. Alter joins David Brooks, another education Know Nothing in pushing the Joel Klein/Michelle Rhee/Arne Duncan model of "it's all the teachers and their unions fault" model of school reform. Brooks recently wrote his second column pushing his vacant ideas on education.

What's interesting about these Know Nothings is how they refuse to look at places where the anti-union market based "reforms" have had little impact. Arne Duncan brags about how he fired the teachers at low performing schools. How has the Chicago model worked out? (See my recent column about how PS 225 in Rockaway had most of the teachers dumped out in March 2005 and is now being closed.) As a matter of fact, the refusal to look at the record of Chicago 13 years after mayoral control began and where George Schmidt reports the union has been rendered just about helpless, is a major plank in the Know Nothing platform.

Another plank is the refusal to look at all the right to work states where unions barely exist and how education is working out in those places.

Alter never mentions Gates' recent turn around on his support of small schools, a movement that has decimated and de-stabilized so many schools in New York City. Ooops! Let's try another experiment with no data backing it up. The irony, of course, of all these data kings never using data to judge the validity of their "reforms," would be delicious if it wasn't so destructive.

The rants ignore the significant voices of vocal parents in New York who have actually made a firmer stand against BloomKlein than the UFT.

I put a lot of blame for how this is being played out squarely on the teacher unions, who could of/should of been fighting for the kind of education reforms that would work. But they abandoned that fight a generation ago. We expect people like Gates, Alter, Brooks, Klein, etc. to act the way they do. But when the rank and file have to fight a two-front war, their situation is very bad indeed.

As we full well know, the UFT has barely made a stand at all. I won't go into the gory details. You see, the UFT/AFT wants to play "me too – see, we are also reformers." No, not the kind of reformers who call for low class sizes and offering urban kids the same kind of education wealthy kids get. But merit pay, ending union work rules, support for the testing mantra (though making squeaks about how much they are opposed.)

The tragedy is that our union leaders are not Know Nothings. They actually know something about how schools work but have decided to play the political game with the union attackers. "We'll give you some of what you want now and sell it to the members while leaving you loop-holes to get the rest. We will then put on a big act for the members about how awful this is but shrug our shoulders with a 'what can we do' attitude." The key issue: hold on to power.

They want to be a partner with the business community and have a seat at the table. Except for the extreme right wing union attackers, the reformers are perfectly happy to have a UFT/AFT on board as their intermediaries in selling their platform from the inside. The union leaders will get dues no matter what happens to the teachers. And most importantly, they will remain in power.

If a reform movement within the UFT ever got started and attracted masses of rank and filers, watch how quickly the gang running the schools line up with Unity Caucus to keep militants away from union power.

Related
Greg Palast had a great post at Huffington which I posted at Norms Notes. Is the real Gates interest to make sure poor kids are educated in a narrow, test-driven school he would never send his own kids to so he can assure enough data entry clerks?

Is Obama Getting Bad Advice on His Appointments?

Joel Klein is being considered for secretary of education, which would make as much sense for our schools as Michael Brown did for disaster relief.

Has Barack Obama forgotten, Michael "Way to go, Brownie" Brown? Brown was that guy from the Arabian Horse Association appointed by President George W. Bush to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brownie, not knowing the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain from the south end of a horse, let New Orleans drown. Bush's response was to give his buddy Brownie a thumbs up.

We thought Obama would go a very different way. You'd think the studious senator from Illinois would avoid repeating the Bush regime's horror show of unqualified appointments, of picking politicos over professionals. But here we go again. Trial balloons lofted in the Washington Post suggest President-elect Obama is about to select Joel Klein as secretary of education. If not Klein, then draft choice No. 2 is Arne Duncan, Obama's backyard basketball buddy in Chicago.

It's not just Klein's and Duncan's empty credentials that scare me: It's the ill philosophy behind the Bush-brand education theories they promote. "Teach-to-the-test" (which goes under such prepackaged teaching brands as "Success for All") forces teachers to limit classroom time to pounding in rote, low-end skills, easily measured on standardized tests. The transparent purpose is to create the future class of worker-drones. Add in some computer training and -- voila! -- millions trained on the cheap to function, not think. Analytical thinking skills, creative skills, questioning skills will be left to the privileged at the Laboratory School and Phillips Andover Academy.

Alphie Kohn has a piece in The Nation which I also posted at Norms Notes.

Beware School 'Reformers'

For Republicans education "reform" typically includes support for vouchers and other forms of privatization. But groups with names like Democrats for Education Reform--along with many mainstream publications--are disconcertingly allied with conservatives in just about every other respect.

Sadly, all but one of the people reportedly being considered for Education secretary are reformers only in this Orwellian sense of the word.

Duncan and Klein, along with virulently antiprogressive DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, are celebrated by politicians and pundits. Darling-Hammond, meanwhile, tends to be the choice of people who understand how children learn. Consider her wry comment that introduces this article: it's impossible to imagine a comparable insight coming from any of the spreadsheet-oriented, pump-up-the-scores "reformers" (or, for that matter, from any previous Education secretary). Darling-Hammond knows how all the talk of "rigor" and "raising the bar" has produced sterile, scripted curriculums that have been imposed disproportionately on children of color. Her viewpoint is that of an educator, not a corporate manager.

Imagine--an educator running the Education Department.

For more research-based pieces, check Leonie Haimson's consistent defense of reforms that will work at the NYC Public Parents blog. Leonie's stake is that she has a child in the NYC schools. In this piece Leonie punches holes in the entire Bill Gates rationale.

No evidence of improved outcomes at NYC's small schools

And of course the work done by Eduwonkette to debunk the Know Nothings. And then there's the ongoing discussion between Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch at Bridging Differences.

You see, the new Know Nothings want to know nothing about all this evidence of opposition that goes way beyond teachers.

Previous Ed Notes articles on another David Brooks column in July.

David Brooks and the Status Quo at the NY Times

Responding to David Brooks

Michael Fiorillo Challenges David Brooks

Randi in Miami

Paul Moore sent this link to Randi's speech today in Miami.
http://www.teachdade.com/Randi-Weingarten-Addresses-Board
She sure brought along her shovel.
I love the part where she says she was a social studies teacher.
She left out the "full time for 6 months" part.
She doesn't mention her former buddy Rudy Crew, who left (or was chased out of) Miami recently.
And she agrees with rewarding teachers who produce results.
Hmm. Exactly what kinds of results are we talking about? Test results, of course. But don't be shocked to see Weingarten make a speech to another group tomorrow where she rails against the evils of testing. Remember the mantra: watch what she does, not what she says.

When Schools Close

My column for the Dec. 12 edition of The Wave (www.rockawave.com)

The geniuses at the Tweed Courthouse (the HQ of the NYCDOE) have done it again. Joel Klein and Mike Bloomberg have been in charge of the NYC schools for seven years and they still don’t have a clue. But they have to make it look like they’re doing something, so they race around closing schools. Closing schools has been a failed policy. The mantra should be, “fix schools, don’t close them.” Like, have they ever tried the idea of drastically reducing class size?

Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters has written on the NYC Public School Parents blog:
The Institute for Education Studies has concluded that that class size reduction is one of only four, evidence-based reforms that through rigorous, randomized experiments have been proven to work – the "gold standard" of research. None of the strategies attempted by the NYC Department of Education under Joel Klein's leadership were cited.

But Joel Klein has always pooh-poohed class size reduction with the response that high quality teachers are more important. Our response has been that with smaller class sizes the overall quality of teaching will go up across the board.

The act of closing a school is a deflection of responsibility and an open admission by Klein that he has no answers. After all, he is in charge. He can change the administration of a school at any time. But that’s not the fish Klein wants to fry. His minions have put in these administrators to run most schools in the city and their continued problems can be laid directly at his door. So, it becomes “blame the teacher” time.

The most recent list of schools to be closed includes PS 225 on Beach 110th Street here in Rockaway. Howie Schwach’s front page story has a list of exactly how this plan will be implemented. Tweed arrives at these plans by tossing a bunch of post-it notes in the air and those that land inside a square are the ones implemented. More of that rearranging of deck chairs on a sinking ship.

They have a particular problem with PS 225. In Schwach’s article, a parent says, “This school was closed once before. They got rid of all the teachers, some of who were very good. They kept the administration and the kids, who are the real problems in the school. What good did it do?” Over two-thirds of the teachers had to find new jobs and the others had to reapply and be accepted by the administration.

In the world of the BloomKlein model of education reform, the lack of quality teaching is the problem with poor academic performance. So how did changing the teachers three years ago at PS 225 work out?

Now let’s get this straight. We know there have been some problems at PS 225. But Tweed doesn’t care about the problems parents and teachers worry about. They care about data. And the widgets (or idjits) at the DOE looked at some numbers and made the decision to close the school – again. Guess what? Watch them do it again in three years.

There’s been a lot of focus on the “D” grade the school received on the school report card, another bogus attempt to create a phony accountability system by Klein, where everyone is accountable but him. These grades are 85% test-driven and ignore so many other factors. Leonie Haimson suggested we focus less on the grade and explore the more reliable state accountability status of PS 225 and compare it to other schools that are not closing down. “We simply have no idea why DOE chooses certain schools to close and others to keep open,” she said. “If there is a problem with the principal the DOE can remove him and put another in place without closing the school.” People who want the school to stay open can do this and make their case to the public. But with a union that goes along and gets along, teachers are left to the wolves. Imagine if there was a real union out there that made a big issue of this! Nah, not in this universe.

The “new” plan for PS 225 now calls for two separate schools instead of the current K-8, which was supposedly forced down the throats of the school administration to relieve the pressure on the other middle schools in Rockaway. Beginning in September 2009, a Pre-K to 5th grade school will open, which will ultimately go up to 5th grade and a 6-8 middle school with a different administration will open. See, now we can have two high priced principals and sets of administrators and office staffs all fighting over the same space. Like, I said, geniuses. The “old” DOE policy seems to have been to form lots of K-8 and 6-12 schools. Is that policy now dead? Or will it be resurrected when the “new” policy become old. How about trying this? Form two separate schools with odd and even numbered grades. We can have a school with grades 1, 3, 5 and 7 and another with K, 2, 4, 6, and 8. Ok, I’m joking. But don’t be surprised if it doesn’t happen.

The teachers at PS 225 now face the prospect of being added to the growing ATR (Absentee Teacher Reserve) list, where those that don’t get jobs (while brand new teachers do) will be relegated to substituting and doing scut work around the school or being sent off into the hinterland to other schools while many of whatever union rights they had left disappear. Oh, yes, there is always that Open Market System of job searching, so vaunted by the UFT (Unfortunate Federation of Teachers.)

I’ve been working with groups around the city to defend and rally around the ATR atrocity created by the disastrous 2005 contract agreed to by our wonderful UFT leaders, who have broken a Guinness record by selling more teachers down the river in the shortest amount time.

Teacher quality
Speaking of sell-outs, I’m really getting sick of the line being pushed that the single most important factor in student achievement is teacher quality, something the UFT unfortunately signs onto. That has lead to a focus on so-called accountability where teachers are being measured by the scores of their students (again, something agreed to by the UFT). Many teachers in NYC will be getting report cards supposedly based on the value added approach, which measures how much their students have grown (not height, unfortunately). But researchers have pointed out that the value added approach is an unproven commodity. And even if it was, we still question whether the narrow test score approach that leaves so much out about what teachers do is an adequate way to judge a teacher’s quality. There will never be a true measure. But here is what I know about judging whether someone is a good teacher: you know one when you see one.


Related: No evidence of improved outcomes at small schools

Are Racial Achievement Gaps Closing in Chicago?

Gee, has it only been 13 years of mayoral control and market-based education with 2 Superintendents (Vallas and Duncan) who were not educators? Eduwonkette zeros in on that elusive gap.

Gov. Patterson to Sell Senate Seat to Randi

Gov. Patterson is expected to enjoy his food at UFT Ex. Bd meetings along with his (free) copy of Ed. Notes in exchange for giving Randi the Clinton Senate seat.

New York has a tradition of copying events taking place in Chicago and Illinois. Such as mayoral control – and other recent events.

With reports surfacing about Randi Weingarten's consideration for the US Senate by Governor Patterson, Ed Notes News is reporting in an exclusive that he has offered to sell the Clinton Senate seat to Weingarten in exchange for a lifetime pass to attend UFT Executive Board meetings so he can partake in the fabulous food offerings. "They meet around 26 times a year," said a spokesperson. "That's 26 free buffets. We only asked they add surf and turf."

Weingarten is taking it under consideration, though she is thought to have doubts about accepting a Senate seat since that would be such a come down in power from her current positions as AFT/UFT Czarina. Being held accountable for her actions by a voting public would be quite a novelty.

In addition, it is thought she would miss the action where she can shout at the top of her lungs at a packed meeting, "NORMAN PUT DOWN THAT CAMERA!"

Klein Lied to the National Press Club

Trevor Cobbold of Save Our Schools has been in touch. They have followed up on Klein's recent visit. Leonie Haimson sent out this excerpt of their report. (See below for links to full document.)

Click to enlarge (page 1 only)

Check out the latest report from the Australian organization Save Our Schools. Here is an excerpt from "Klein Lied to the National Press Club":

New York City Schools Chancellor, Joel Klein, was exposed as a dissembler at his National Press Club address in Canberra last week. Under forensic questioning from The Canberra Times’ education reporter, Emma Macdonald, Klein resorted to lies and deceptions to justify his claims of increases in student achievement in New York City schools.

Macdonald challenged Klein on his claims by citing national reading and mathematics assessments which show that there has been no improvement in student achievement in NYC since 2003, except for 4th grade mathematics. She questioned him on whether the grades given to schools in this year’s school progress reports had been manipulated by reducing the cut-off scores to achieve an A or B.

Klein denied both charges. He said that Macdonald was wrong on both facts. His response was to falsely assert that the cut-off scores for school grades had not been reduced, falsely claim that New York State tests were a better measure of student achievement than the independent national assessments, and to selectively cite evidence about the success of African-American students.

Check out the entire document, complete with bibliography.

By the way, it was our own Steve Koss who first figured out the cut-off scores had been manipulated in this way: Don’t Like the Results? Change the Scale!

Full SOS document posted at Save Our Schools web site and Norms Notes.

RELATED:
Paul Moore - "The likes of Klein will perish in the blaze."

More on Rhee from DC

I posted themail's editor Gary Imhoff's insightful editorial on Rhee over at ed notes last week and there were some interesting comments. One of the insightful comments is from a parent activist in Oakland.

The Perimeter Primate said...

I have yet to meet, or read any commentary by, a "Skinner-type" who has been a classroom teacher for more than a few years.

People with that mentality seem to leave the classroom about the time that the Truth is starting to dawn on them.

Sometimes they leave it before that point because their two-year commitment has come to an end. Then they slink off and wash the challenges of those "nasty" children off their hands, feeling superior as they proceed into law school, educational-reform management, or administration.

It's too bad the usual TFA-type commitment for baby teachers isn't seven years because great insights would be gained. Of course, the organizationa probably know that few of those somewhat arrogant, but disillusioned, youngsters would be able to hack it.

Perimeter Primate doesn't post often, but when she does she brings an insightful parent perspective from the perimeter.

Here is some follow-up from at week's themail posted at Norms Notes – More on Rhee in DC from themail.

Ira Socol's (Who's Behind the Curtain?) makes some great points (see the ones on interest-based reading which are so similar to my thoughts in this morning's post) on why Rhee is being pushed and by whom. Here's an excerpt but go read the entire piece here.

Which brings us back to Michelle Rhee. Who's marketing her, and why?

Rhee is part of a broad push by America's true "old guard" to ensure that education doesn't really change. The same folks at Harvard and Penn who offer our minorities the lowest educational expectations possible through Teach for America and KIPP Academies, are selling you Rhee, and lowered expectations for all schools - except of course, for the schools attended by the children of those elites.

There is a reason the television networks and New York Times and Time-Warner love TFA and Rhee. These organizations are run by people with power, and by people who would rather not share power.

So they have adopted the ultimate in reductionist standards. "If we had even decent education - or even enough teachers of any kind - in most of the places it places its students, then [TFA] would be a step down," a commenter on this blog said yesterday. Right, so here's the standard: Teach for America, or Michelle Rhee's DC school system, is better than not having schools at all.

Rhee's own words: '"People say, 'Well, you know, test scores don't take into account creativity and the love of learning,'" she says with a drippy, grating voice, lowering her eyelids halfway. Then she snaps back to herself. "I'm like, 'You know what? I don't give a crap.' Don't get me wrong. Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don't know how to read, I don't care how creative you are. You're not doing your job."'

No, she doesn't give a crap. She wants her African-American students prepared for the lowest possible jobs on the economic ladder. That way (perhaps, in her unconscious thinking) they will not threaten the success of her small minority group - a group which has found itself accepted by the powers-that-be because it isn't big enough to be threatening.

Of course I have a different view of reading than Rhee, and of language itself. First, I know that there are lots of ways "to read," and second, I know that when children are inspired to learn about things, they tend to want to learn to read (in one form or another). As opposed to the Joel Klein-Michelle Rhee-KIPP Academy-George W. Bush notion that reading is a skill which should be learned outside of the context of interest-based education.

But then, my goal is opportunity, and my belief system - not being market-capitalist in nature - doesn't think an underclass is a good idea (to hold down upward pressure on wages).

Rhee is not important, of course. She's racist in her expectations and racist in her strategies, she's not an educator at all in the real meaning of that term, she talks a great deal but has little actual impact in her job. But Rhee being hailed as the educational messiah is important.

Like those who favor TFA solutions - the Rhee idea is to NOT change US society. Yes, we'll make impoverished minority groups marginally more competent - thus improving profits at the top and reducing the cost of the dole. But no, we will not empower those groups by empowering their children. Teaching them to be creative 'will have to wait' (forever). Teaching them to find their own learning styles - thus accepting cultural change instead of social reproduction - is dangerous (as it always is for those at the top).

We lower expectations. We test meaningless things (Time: "The ability to improve test scores is clearly not the only sign of a good teacher. But it is a relatively objective measure in an industry with precious few. And in schools where kids are struggling to read and subtract, it is a prerequisite for getting anything else done." Really? Anything? You can't teach the physics of a bouncing ball to a non-reader, or the love of literature?). We strip time away from what is precious to children and force them into chanting. We enforce white majority cultural norms and deny identity. We argue that teachers should be paid according to the "short term gain" rules that worked so well for traders at Citigroup and AIG.

And this is all brought to you by the wealthiest people, and the largest old-line corporations in the country. Because, I'll say it again, they have no incentive to allow those below them to succeed.

COMING SOON: Ed NOTES' EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH MICHELLE RHEE

Data-Zilla Comes to Gotham

Click to enlarge. Print and share with your school.

Graphic by David B

OK for Scarsdale, Off Limits to City Kids

From my first days as a teacher, I felt the the key to reading well was an interest and joy in reading.

So, what comes first? An enriched curriculum that will create a need to read or a skill-based reading program based on a data and accountability program? Scarsdale, the gold standard of school districts, increasingly pushes the boundary in the direction of enrichment.

An article in Sunday's NY Times, Scarsdale Adjusts to Life Without Advanced Placement Courses, talks about the change from a focus on teaching to the Advanced Placement Tests toward a more enriched curriculum in AP courses.

A handful of exclusive private schools, including Ethical Culture Fieldston, Dalton and Calhoun in New York City, have abolished Advanced Placement courses in recent years, but Scarsdale has set a precedent for high-achieving public schools.

A year after Scarsdale became the most prominent school district in the nation to phase out the College Board’s Advanced Placement courses — and make A.P. exams optional — most students and teachers here praise the change for replacing mountains of memorization with more sophisticated and creative curriculums.

Bruce G. Hammond, executive director of the Independent Curriculum Group, a network of private schools that do not teach to standardized tests, said that many private and public schools chafed under the limitations of Advanced Placement courses, and would drop them if not for opposition from parents.

Now comparing AP courses in Scarsdale with the way kids in the inner city are being taught in the test and data driven world of the NYC school system may look like a classic case of trying to compare apples to oranges.

I don't agree. I have heard Joel Klein and his minions talk about equity and the civil rights struggle of our times. But when challenged about the narrow casting of the curriculum that has resulted from his data and accountability emphasis, he has said that first kids need to read well before they can take full advantage of an enriched curriculum.

I beg to differ.

The primary motivation in reading development is a need to read and many kids who struggle don't feel that need. Reading in a world of test prep equals tedium and with the pressure and threats of being left back added, becomes an often joyless exercise.

Build an enriched curriculum and they will come. And improve their reading in surprising ways. Of course, there are often some techinical issues, like poor phonics, that may interfere in the process, but those are relatively easy to solve.

Reading well is based so much on vocabulary, which expands in the context of experiential learning. Poor vocabulary development is one of the major gaps in the so-called achievement gap and it takes years to overcome.

The lessons about test prep being learned in Scarsdale (a system run by real educators – would they ever pick a Joel Klein for Superintendent?) should be applied to a broader base.

The Klein/Leibman model denies urban kids the same kinds of opportunities given to wealthier kids by restricting their learning to things that can be measured, leading to the creation of an even larger gap.

Talk about lack of equity. Bringing the apples and oranges of the inner city and the wealthy suburbs into alignment is the true civil rights issue of our times.

Update on Cerf Investigation....

Graphic by David



....from Leonie Haimson, who foiled the report. (I mistakenly gave the NY Times credit in my last post. I shoulda known better.)

Check out Juan Gonzalez' column in today's NY Daily News about the long-suppressed report from the Special Commissioner of Investigation on Chris Cerf, the Deputy Chancellor, as well as the NY Times story here. Elizabeth Green of Gotham Schools has some of the back story here; Gotham Gazette has an analysis here.

I was the one who FOILed the report and made it available to Juan last week. Some of the questions answered by the report – and some important questions that remain, as well as a link to the report itself, are posted on our NYC parent blog at http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/ Take a look. This report raises real concerns about whether the current system of Mayoral control has sufficient accountability and oversight.

Speaking of which, save the date! The Parent commission will hold a forum on the need for more accountability, transparency and checks and balances under Mayoral control on Dec. 19 at 6:30 at Judson Church. Speakers include CM John Liu, George Sweeting of the Independent Budget Office, Udi Ofer of the NYCLU, and Bob Tobias of NYU, formerly head of testing for the Board of Education. More information on this important public forum is posted here, and a flyer you can post or distribute in your school is here. Please spread the word!

Elizabeth Green made a very pertinent comment on the report which has

not only resurrected questions about Cerf’s propriety, but bigger questions about how sufficiently the Department of Education is held accountable. … Advocates charge that the current structure allows school officials to hide from scrutiny. This report provides them some new ammunition.”

NYC Deputy Chancellor Cerf "Chided" About Soliciting Donation

Chided? That's it?
Would you buy a used car from Christopher Cerf?
A teacher would be hung.
Remember the librarian at Brooklyn Tech who was hounded for promoting his daughter's book?
Don't they have rubber rooms for deputy chancellors?
Five years ago I spoke at a PEP meeting and said one day the entire gang would be taken out of Tweed with their coats over their heads.

Mr. Cerf’s relationship with the company, now called EdisonLearning, first made headlines in February 2007, when he assured a citywide parents’ group that he had “zero” financial interest in Edison. He later acknowledged that he had relinquished his equity stake in the company only the day before.

“Raising money for a not for profit, tell me, what’s wrong with that?” he added.

Graphic by David

Interesting how the DOE imposes all kinds of crap on schools and teachers attempting to raise money.

The NY Times had to get the Condon report using Freedom of Information. Good for them.

DC POV on RHEE

You can't say this any better.

From Gary Imhoff
Editor
themail@dcwatch.com

Practice Makes Imperfect

Dear Practitioners:

I’m reluctant to disagree with Jay Mathews, the Washington Post’s national education reporter, because his years of experience have given him a deep knowledge of his field. But on Monday he wrote an article that I have to challenge, “New DC Principal, Hand-Picked Team Make Early Gains,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/30/AR2008113001929.html. This article is yet another link in the Post’s chain of articles prompted by Michelle Rhee’s national public relations campaign. This public relations blitz explains why Rhee’s school “reform” remains popular with those who are untouched by it, though it is viewed with deep skepticism by the teachers, students, and parents whom it affects. Mathews’ article praises the work of the principal whom Rhee hand-picked as a shining example for Mathews to interview, Brian Betts at “Shaw Middle School at Garnet-Patterson,” as the combined schools are clumsily called.

I’m sure that Betts is as enthusiastic and energetic as Mathews describes him. In addition, Betts was given the opportunity that Rhee wants to give all her principals, to replace almost all of the teachers at his school with new hires. In the most telling paragraphs of the article, Mathews quotes what Betts thinks was the key question in his interviews with prospective teachers: “‘Shaw and Garnet-Patterson have proficiency rates in both math and reading in the low 20 percents. To what do you attribute this poor performance and what do you plan to do or do differently next year to improve test scores and student achievement?’ A young teacher from New Jersey named Meredith Leonard was hired after saying: ‘Every kid can learn, and we all say that, but what is missing is the last part of the sentence: every kid can learn given the motivation, given the supports, given the expectations. I will be motivating my kids, I will be giving my kids the support and I will be expecting them to do it.’ Many more applicants, including experienced teachers, blamed the bad test scores on undereducated parents and impoverished homes and suggested that those social ailments would be hard to cure. They weren’t hired.”

In one way, Betts’ and Rhee’s emphasis may be right. Teachers aren’t social workers who can solve their students’ home and social problems. That’s not their job. They should concentrate on what they can accomplish in their classrooms. They also should have the attitude that teaching their students is not hopeless. In another, more important way, Betts and Rhee are very wrong. Teachers can make all the difference for some students, but it is naive and foolish to think that they can be the most important factor in the education of most of their students. Meredith Leonard is simply wrong in thinking that the motivation she provides will be the most important thing determining the performance of her students; she’s setting herself up for disappointment, disillusion, and an ultimate fall. Betts rejected the teachers who correctly recognized that most students are much more influenced by the attitudes of their parents and peers, and that if their parents and peers do not value, or are even scornful of, education, that will be more important to them than any single teacher’s enthusiasm and energy. Betts chose to hire the teachers who gave the answer politically and ideologically approved by Rhee, not the right answer.

The Washington Post shares Rhee’s faith that the path to improvement is to get rid of older, experienced workers in favor of younger, inexperienced ones, assuming that the new workers will have an initial burst of energy and enthusiasm that will make up for their lack of background and knowledge. Malcolm Gladwell, in his new book Outliers, argues “that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice,” and that “researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours,” http://tinyurl.com/6jsvo7. It’s a commonsense notion, long ago distilled into three words: “practice makes perfect.”

Rhee rejects it; she thinks teachers are best at the beginning of their careers, and that practice at teaching makes them imperfect. Similarly, over the past few years the Post has used repeated worker buyouts to rid its newsroom of many of its best writers and editors, those with years of experience and depth of knowledge in their fields. As readers of the newspaper, we’ve seen how well that is working out. As one of the rare survivors, Mathews should know it better than we do. Now the Post is urging the same road to perdition on DC’s school system.

The Left Wing of Teach for America

Updated Thurs Dec. 4, 8PM:

Chancellors New Clothes has an excellent post on Teach for America (and not because she mentions me favorably a few times) on how some TFA's really do get it.

Two weeks ago I attended a Teachers Unite (check out the new web site) social at a bar in downtown Brooklyn. I've been working with TUs' director Sally Lee for a few years and am on the steering committee of TU. A 5th year TFA alum still in a NYC classroom is also on the steering committee.

At the social (it was wonderful to see how many teachers are interested in the work TU is doing) Sally introduced the TFA alum to another TFA alum. "The left wing of TFA," said my fellow steering committee member.

Many TFA's really do get it.

Note: We are currently working with others in the UFT and TU to develop a series of workshops on the UFT and teacher union activism that goes beyond a narrow definition. It will be aimed at the recently arrived teacher corps with a focus on those who have decided to stay and make teaching a career. We expect a number of TFA's to be involved.

They see beyond the single-minded phrase "the achievement gap" and will look to be active in the union in a way to promote true ed reform and not to attack career teachers as being ineffective. You know the mantra. The system has failed so many students. Teacher effectiveness is the single most important factor. Ergo, the failures must be due to these teachers. Like a geometric theorem to the official TFA world.

Weingarten to Meet with Washington TU Exec Bd Tonight

The Washington Teacher blog reports:

WTU Executive Board members have been notified that a special meeting of the executive board will be held Thursday, December 4, 2008, at 7:00 p.m. at the WTU. Ms. Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), has been invited to the meeting to discuss critical issues affecting the WTU. I am sure that issues related to our tentative agreement (teacher contract) and recent discussions with Chancellor Rhee will be among the hot topics to be discussed.

In addition to dealing with Michelle Rhee, the Washington TU has internal issues with what looks like a top-down leadership that acts without input of the members. But the union does seem to have people on the Exec Bd who will raise issues with the leadership, something the UFT has made sure cannot occur in NYC.

Maybe that will be Randi's advice to WTU leader George Parker who has failed to hold a representative assembly meeting in September, October or November.

Keep up the good work. Now just get those people who criticize you off the Exec Bd and all will be well.

Randi will come on all militant at this meeting. Maybe even throw a few curse words around about Rhee. My message to the rank and file of the WTU is: make no mistake about it. The AFT is not your unequivocal advocate in the war with Rhee, who has so much support from politicians and the business community which Randi so much wants to court. So out and out support for the WTU will not be in the cards, though Randi's speeches internally will make it look that way. We have learned here in New York to watch what she does, not what she says.

The AFT, which is after all controlled by the UFT – Ed Notes has written extensively on this tail wagging the dog situation – wants to be viewed as "ed reform" friendly. Witness recent quotes from Leo Casey about not being wedded to ideology. They are "realists." Translated that means the winds of reform are calling for merit pay, measuring teacher quality by standardized tests, developing flexibility about tenure, having the union play a role in removing teachers, etc.

This mindset has existed since the early 80's when Al Shanker shifted the role of the union (without any internal discussion, of course) into this reform camp in exchange for a seat at the reform table even when "reform" has been narrowly defined by the enemies of teacher unions. So don't blame Randi for instituting this policy. In fact she is even better than Shanker at this stuff because she play the I feel your pain role so well.

And that is exactly what she will do at the WTU meeting. But behind the scenes she will urge a deal with Rhee in which teachers will lose half a loaf and then proclaim that a victory. That is what Rhee is after. She and Joel Klein put outrageous demands on the table and then Randi gives them part of what they want with lots of gaps left open for them to get the rest over time. What Randi will get is a bribe for teachers to give up their rights by getting them money, some of it for longer days and years. This is a good short term investment in the world of Rhee who full well knows with the absolute power to hire and fire, she can make sure few teachers will reach the higher salaries promised.

Only democratic elements within the WTU can put roadblocks in the way of the almost unstoppable events set in motion when your own union stops functioning as your advocate but shifts to the role of mediator between people like Rhee and Klein and the rank and file.

Fighting a frontal assault and a rear guard action from the likes of Randi Weingarten and justifiers like Leo Casey can easily turn into a lose-lose proposition.

It is not too soon to start to scream.