A Teacher Comments on Harold Ford Jr. as Ed Deformer

I received this email of outrage from a NYC teacher who is clearly making the connections between the ed deformers and the catastrophe public education is undergoing. Here it is, unexpurgated


Harold Ford Jr. former Tennessee Congressman and now head of the Democratic Leadership Council, co-wrote a piece of jive with Louis Gerstner and Eli Broad about the Race to the Top stuff at the WSJ on November 24. The piece contained the usual stuff - must add competition and accountability to education, data systems and tracking of student and teacher performance is essential to real reform. But Ford, who became a Congressman when his daddy retired from the seat, couldn't pass the most important standardized test he ever took in his own life - the Tennessee bar. To make matters worse, he referred to himself as a lawyer on the campaign trail when he ran for Senate in 2006. Now this shit burns me up - a hypocritical little wanker who has led a life of privilege and thinks he's pulled himself up by his bootstraps, now takes on education reform and pushes testing as the most important measurement of success, but couldn't pass his own fucking bar exam.

I called the DLC and left messages on two different lines. I was polite, asked nicely how Mr. Ford gained his expertise in education reform and wondered if his law professors should be fired because he failed his bar exams.

The bullshit coming from the neo-liberals on education these days - from Obama, from Duncan, from Ford and Bloomberg and Arianna Huffington and even comedians like Bill Marr and Jon Stewart, has me outraged. I have been dropping grenades at Gotham Schools every once in a while, but it just feels like the reformers are winning the message war and the real one too. I did like Diane Ravitch's last piece and Alan Singer has had some good push back at the Huffington post (surprised Arianna lets it go up - she's squarely in the "the AFT is evil" contingent), but otherwise it's all the Obama/Duncan/Bloomberg way in the media these days.


Here is Ravitch's piece referring to the little wanker Harold Ford Jr.:

One of the institutions that made this country a great haven for immigrants was its public education system.

Our public schools were never perfect. There was never a golden age when everyone graduated high school and learned to a high standard of excellence. Improving education and expanding equality of opportunity have been the slow, steady work of generations.

Yet now, we live in an age when it is the custom to bash the public schools, not to thank them for helping to build our nation. It has become commonplace for the president, the secretary of education, and the leaders of the business community to lament the terrible state of our schools and to demand radical, one might even say revolutionary, changes. We live in an age of data, and the data (they say) are awful. They look at NAEP test scores, international test scores, graduation rates, and anything else that is measurable, and they demand solutions, now.

Note that they never speak of the state of learning, nor even the state of education, because those words connote many intangibles that cannot be measured and converted into data. The politicians and business leaders do not speak about whether young people read in their spare time, whether their reading consists of good literature and non-fiction, whether they know how to write an engaging essay or a well-constructed research paper, whether they can engage in an informed discussion of history, whether they are knowledgeable about our governmental system, whether they perform volunteer service in their community, whether they leave high school prepared to serve on a jury and vote thoughtfully.

No, instead what we now hear from our business leaders is that the schools must be redesigned to function like business. They conveniently overlook the fact that business practices and the ruthless pursuit of a competitive edge nearly destroyed our national economy a year ago.

Last week, an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal by Harold E. Ford Jr. (chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council), Louis V. Gerstner Jr. (former chairman of IBM), and Eli Broad (founder of the Broad Foundations) enunciated the new wisdom about school reform. (Leave aside the fact that these three have never reformed a school; nonetheless, they know how it should be done.) Schools with low scores must be closed, and states must open the flood gates to unlimited numbers of privately managed charter schools. Schools must compete for students. Teachers must compete with one another for higher test scores. Everyone must be evaluated by those scores. Everything else is an "insignificant" idea.

Never mind that in many states the test scores are phony, doctored, and meaningless. We might start, for example, with New York and Illinois. The Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago released a report ("Still Left Behind") earlier this year that documented the lowered cut scores on Illinois's state tests, which gave the illusion of progress in Chicago. Chicago students are still far behind, and progress during Arne Duncan's tenure was meager. The report reaches these key findings:

"Most of Chicago's students drop out or fail. The vast majority of Chicago's elementary and high schools do not prepare their students for success in college and beyond.

"There is a general perception that Chicago's public schools have been gradually improving over time. However, recent dramatic gains in the reported number of CPS elementary students who meet standards on state assessments appear to be due to changes in the tests made by the Illinois State Board of Education, rather than real improvements in student learning.

"At the elementary level, state assessment standards have been so weakened that most of the 8th graders who "meet" these standards have little chance to succeed in high school or to be ready for college. While there has been modest improvement in real student learning in Chicago's elementary schools, these gains dissipate in high school.

"The performance of Chicago's high schools is abysmal—with about half the students dropping out of the non-selective-enrollment schools, and more than 70 percent of 11th grade students failing to meet state standards. The trend has remained essentially flat over the past several years. The relatively high-performing students are concentrated in a few magnet/selective enrollment high schools. In the regular neighborhood high schools, which serve the vast preponderance of students, almost no students are prepared to succeed in college."

Similarly, the scoring of the state tests in New York was dumbed down dramatically from 2006-2009, and it became possible for students to reach Level 2 by random guessing. Proficiency rates on state tests soared dramatically at the same time that the state's scores on NAEP remained flat. As a result of the state's dumbed-down tests, New York City's accountability system crashed, and 97 percent of all elementary and junior high schools were rated A or B because of their alleged gains on the state tests. Having just launched its own "merit pay" plan, New York City was required to pay out more than $30 million in bonuses to teachers, triggered by the remarkable (and phony) gains on state tests. My friend Andrew Wolf, who wrote an education column for the now-defunct New York Sun, described the collision of the state tests and the city accountability system thus: "It is like two thieves trying to rob the same bank at the same time."

New York City and Chicago are two districts that adopted competitive business practices, aggressively closing down schools and spurring competition. What are the results? Grade inflation on state scores, but neither district saw significant improvement on NAEP since 2003. (NYC did get a gain for its 4th grade students in math in 2007, but not in 4th grade reading, 8th grade reading, or 8th grade math, and in 2009, the state's math scores were flat, which indicates that the city's were, as well.)

Living as we do in an age when test scores are so easily manipulated and so often fraudulent, we should proceed with caution before using them to determine the fate of students, teachers, principals, and schools. I give Mssrs. Ford, Gerstner, and Broad the benefit of the doubt: They think that school data are as meaningful as a profit-and-loss statement or a price-to-earnings ratio. Presumably, they don't realize that what is measured and can be measured may not be the most important things that happen in schools.

Where I do not give them the benefit of the doubt is that they assume that the Race to the Top is "enforcing academic standards." That is simply not true. In fact, it is sad or laughable, I am not sure which. The main themes of RTTT are privatization via charters and evaluation via phony test scores. How this translates into "rigorous standards" defies my understanding.

Nor do I admire their belief that schools will get dramatically better if they compete, just like businesses do. Maybe people in business win by competing, maybe competition produces better mousetraps, but that is not the way that schools function. Schools work best when teachers collaborate with one another to identify students who need extra attention or a different program or to mentor weak teachers; schools work best when they collaborate around common goals. Schools are not trying to build a better mousetrap. They are trying to educate our citizenry. Schools are not businesses, and we will continue to flounder so long as we put politicians and business leaders in the driver's seat on education policy.

Diane

Blogger "Under Assault" Takes Mulgrew to the Whipping Shed

UFT Prez Michael Mulgrew wrote us today about how terrible Bloomberg's recent speech in Washington was.

Sure enough, he talks a good line about ATRs, rubber rooms and test scores, but who can believe what these union managers say anymore?


When the ATR pool was created, he says, the union had "warned the DOE that faulty implementation of the process would leave hundreds or even thousands of teachers without permanent assignments."

There is no better example of the Department of Education’s mismanagement and failed leadership than this group of dedicated and experienced teachers.

Sure looks to me as if he's denying the union's role in negotiating a contract that handed us the ATR situation on a platter.

Let's be clear about this. Randi Weingarten, backed by her indefatigable Unity Caucus, signed a deal that gave principals the right to pass over any or all excessed teachers.
----

Unity management works behind our backs and lies to us.

As nice as Mulgrew's letter sounds — and it does sound better than Weingarten's claptrap — I don't believe anything Unity says anymore. Not one word.


The above are excerpts from a superb piece that exposes Unity (and don't forget their allies New Action- see if any of their literature is in any way critical of the UFT on so many of these issues - and they joined Randi at her wine and cheese party screwing the ATRs as Under Assault refers to).

I agree that Mulgrew is skating on his use of less cloying language than Randi. But the ice is getting thin and do not expect him to deviate one iota from her policies. He will get away with this for a time, certainly through the upcoming UFT elections, where many Randi-haters will argue they should give him a shot.

They shouldn't.

Read the full piece: MM Pinocchio

School Closings, ATRs, Charters, Rubber Rooms Are All Snakes in the Same Basket

Jeez, try to get away for a few days the all kinds of stuff start hitting the fan. More school closings - and the creation of more ATRs. Rubber rooms in the news and all kinds of other stuff on charter schools, using test scores to judge teachers, tenure and the Obama/Duncan Race to the Top to force the privatization model down the throats of state legislatures. These are all connected and one of the things we try to do here is link the various issues that may seem local to the big picture. Like it's not all about getting rid of Joel Klein as the UFT/Unity Caucus/New Action tandem would have you believe.

School closings and the creation of ATRs and rubber rooms are all part of the plan to privatize and de-unionize vast swaths of public schools, mostly in urban areas. And having a union leadership (the UFT/AFT is the only organization that has the resources to fight all of this) that either doesn't see the big picture (doubtful) or does see it, yet deliberately misleads the members and the public to think it is all about local stuff like BloomKlein puts people who want to resist things like school closings in a box. But more on school closings in a follow-up post.

For this post, let's start at the top and take a look at the overall plan in the use of charter schools as the wedge to break public control. I put this link at the top of the sidebar to a John Merrow (an ed deformer) podcast with Diane Ravitch, who savages Race to the top (listen carefully to some of Merrow's cloying questions).

Also check the link to the CAPE (PS 15, Redhook) piece (What Your Money Can and Cannot Buy) on the Medina article on charters sharing space in public schools.

Also keep an eye on the controversy over the charter school study of CMO's (Charter Management Orgs) being repressed by the Ed Sector (one of the leaders of the ed deform pack) and the excellent reporting coming out Alexander Russo's blog. This post there by Marc Dean Millot exposes some of the fault lines. Millot starts out with this:

Debra Viadero's article in today's online edition of Education Week ( Study Casts Doubt on Strength of Charter Managers) is worth reading if you are trying to determine the extent to which EdSector manipulated Tom Toch's Sweating draft, and whether it makes any difference. The gap was wide enough for Toch to disown EdSector's authorless Growing report, but Edsector argues that "the sort of editing process it went through would not be something out of the ordinary."

All I can say is that every research analyst should hope it is extraordinary, because if what has happened to EdSectors co-founder and co-director is the ordinary course of business in education policy research, the ordinary staff member is little more than an intellectual serf.

The first bit of new information in Viadero's report is Toch's accusation that EdSectorCMO Czar, Kim Smith, pressured management to excise financial and other insider information that cast doubt on the future of some CMOs as going concerns. board member, New Schools Venture Fund founder, and

Read more
http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2009/12/millot-ed-weeks-story-on-tochs-sweating-v-edsectors-growing.html#more

You can download Toch's original draft here. (Thanks to Leonie for putting the Ed Sector stuff together. If you are not on her listserve you are missing out on one of the best ways of getting educated on what's happening in NYC and beyond.)


Is the Battle Over Charters Just About Public Space?

This comment was posted on the Leonie Haimson moderated NYC Ed News listserve,

I have no problem per se with Charter Schools but great resentment when they go into used public school spaces, taking over libraries and science rooms, making public schools less effective. If they find/pay for their own space, then let them open… but not when they encroach on public space....

I find this argument all the time. That people think charters are ok as long as they find their own space. We need to look at the larger picture of the charter school movement even if in their own spaces as part of a plan to undermine the public school system and put most of the schools in the hands of privateers, where large chains of charter schools (through buyouts and consolidations - the next phase) will control the education system and drive out public schools. Think Walmart and how small businesses were driven out, leaving a monopoly in many communities. Mom and pop charters may seem cute. But so were the local hardware stores driven out by Home Depot and Lowes. That is the future of urban school systems. Capitalism capitalizes and leads to bigger and bigger. The competition will be between national chains of charters like KIPP, Victory, etc. If there is to be a monopoly, the public should control it.

My Nov. 9, 2009 post had links to The Plan to replace public school systems and other articles of interest.

Here, in a series of posts over the last few days at the Schools Matter blog, we see the plan to undermine public education (and of course to destroy teacher unions) laid out by a former Bushie in early 2008. Now ask yourself: exactly what is the AFT/UFT doing in response? Think: who needs public education, let's get our share. Thanks to Michael Fiorillo for finding this gem (and don't forget, GEM in NYC right now is the only organized opposition to THE PLAN.)

Kenneth Libby laid out the plan to eliminate the public option in education in this post:

From the Vault

This is part of an essay written in early 2008 by AEI/Fordham's Andy Smarick, a former Bush II Domestic Policy Council member tasked with K-12 and higher education issues:

Here, in short, is one roadmap for chartering's way forward: First, commit to drastically increasing the charter market share in a few select communities until it is the dominant system and the district is reduced to a secondary provider. The target should be 75 percent. Second, choose the target communities wisely. Each should begin with a solid charter base (at least 5 percent market share), a policy environment that will enable growth (fair funding, nondistrictauthorizers, and no legislated caps), and a favorable political environment (friendly elected officials and editorial boards, a positive experience with charters to date, and unorganized opposition). For example, in New York a concerted effort could be made to site in Albany or Buffalo a large percentage of the 100 new charters allowed under the raised cap. Other potentially fertile districts include Denver,Detroit,Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Oakland, and Washington, D.C.

Third, secure proven operators to open new schools. To the greatest extent possible, growth should be driven by replicating successful local charters and recruiting high-performing operators from other areas. Fourth, engage key allies like Teach For America, New Leaders for New Schools, and national and local foundations to ensure the effort has the human and financial capital needed. Last, commit to rigorously assessing charter performance in each community and working with authorizers to close the charters that fail to significantly improve student achievement.

In total, these strategies should lead to rapid, high-quality charter growth and the development of a public school marketplace marked by parental choice, the regular startup of new schools, the improvement of middling schools, the replication of high-performing schools, and the shuttering of low-performing schools.

As chartering increases its market share in a city, the district will come under growing financial pressure. The district, despite educating fewer and fewer students, will still require a large administrative staff to process payroll and benefits, administer federal programs, and oversee special education. With a lopsided adult-to-student ratio, the district's per-pupil costs will skyrocket.

At some point along the district's path from monopoly provider to financially unsustainable marginal player, the city's investors and stakeholders--taxpayers, foundations, business leaders, elected officials, and editorial boards--are likely to demand fundamental change. That is, eventually the financial crisis will become a political crisis. If the district has progressive leadership, one of two best-case scenarios may result. The district could voluntarily begin the shift to an authorizer, developing a new relationship with its schools and reworking its administrative structure to meet the new conditions. Or, believing the organization is unable to make this change, the district could gradually transfer its schools to an established authorizer.

You can practically check off each of Smarick's suggestions for a pro-charter policy environment, particularly in places like Los Angeles. The general silence of Right-wing education "reformers" (hell-bent, in reality, on destroying and privatizing public education) is not a coincidence - they're largely happy with Obama/Duncan's education agenda.
Welcome to "third way" centrism.


More Schools Matter articles on charters:

After Years of "Innovation," NJ Charters Perform No Better Than Poorest Public Schools

The Real Effects of Corporate Charter Schools on Public Schools

CEO Pay in Charter School Chains

Gloucester Parents Stage Protest Against Crooked Charter School Approval



NOTE: Make sure to check the sidebar regularly for new snippets. I add to it every day, with the latest near the top.

PS 241, Portrait of a Harlem School, 2008-2009

This powerful summary of the last school year from an educator at PS 241 in Harlem exposes the predatory practices many of the charters schools and their partners the BloomKlein administration engage in and that many of their school closings are politically motivated, in essence a real estate grab for charters. A classic case of how the quasi stewards of the NYC public school system work as quislings to undermine the very institution they have sworn to fix. I'll just pull a few quotes as a preview to emphasize this point:

A charter school [Eva Moskowitz' Harlem Success Academy], had sent hundreds of their parents to the hearing to lay claim to our building. We were repeatedly referred to as failures throughout this hearing. The charter school representatives asserted that our school should be completely replaced with their school. There were many things disturbing about that hearing and its disrespectful tone, but nothing more so than the charter school's refusal to commit to enrolling all of our students if they did, in fact, take over our building. Some parents of PS 241 students attended school in our building as children themselves. They were now being told that, should the charter get our school building, their children would have to win a seat in a lottery to gain admission. No plan was offered for lottery losers.

In early April, the Chancellor of the NYC Department of Education sent letters to the families of PS 241, in an attempt to persuade them to leave our school.

In May, PS 241 again appeared in the New York newspapers. This time, however, it was announced that we had made the top 10 list of New York City’s MOST IMPROVED SCHOOLS that had the greatest test score gains.

The following 2009-2010 school year had over 200 students report for the first day of school. This was about 50-60 fewer students than the previous year. Nearly half of PS 241's staff are now gone. As we moved further into the month of September our community received the news that we had earned an A on our annual school report card for the previous 2008-2009 school year. It was a small consolation for the Department of Education's maltreatment of PS 241 and for the loss to our community. The news was taken in stride, there was work to be done, routines to set, students to understand and teach.

PS 241 continues to fight for its survival even though we are now considered an A school. The Department of Education is not only phasing out our Middle School, but it also denied us a pre-kindergarten class that we've had for the many years and for which we received 20 applications. They are now working more covertly to replace our school.

Related: The UFT, which helped file the suit, has since sat back and will allow PS 241 to be undermined. What weren't they allowed to begin a pre-k despite 20 applications? How about a suit about that clear sign the DOE would chop at PS 241 until Eva Moskowitz had the entire building for her empire? Harlem Success, by the way, which has no charter for pre-k, illegally has pre-k as part of their program by calling it something else.


PS 241, Portrait of a Harlem School, 2008-2009
by an educator at the school who for obvious reasons wishes to remain anonymous

[Meaning, this person will probably end up as an ATR, with demands he/she be fired if he/she doesn't get a job within a year and a google search of his/her name if out there would doom him/her - a perfect example of the real reason we have tenure - to defend the people who really stand up for kids and their community from reprisals.]


In December of 2008 the PS 241 community was informed by the Department of Education that our school would be closed down. This news was reported in most of the New York newspapers. What followed was a school year filled with confusion, anger, frustration, a lawsuit, intimidation and, at times, a little bit of celebrating.

During the 2007-2008 school year, PS 241 received a D grade on its annual school report card; this followed a B grade the previous year. The fact that our school needed to improve was understood by the teachers, students and families of our community. What caused great confusion was how abruptly the decision to close our school was made and that no input from anyone in our community was sought. The Department of Education had rendered their verdict and thought that would be the end of our story. They were wrong.

In January, a hearing was announced and presided over by the Department of Education. It quickly deteriorated into a yelling match that pitted charter school parents against the PS 241 community. A charter school [Eva Moskowitz' Harlem Success Academy], had sent hundreds of their parents to the hearing to lay claim to our building. We were repeatedly referred to as failures throughout this hearing. The charter school representatives asserted that our school should be completely replaced with their school. There were many things disturbing about that hearing and its disrespectful tone, but nothing more so than the charter school's refusal to commit to enrolling all of our students if they did, in fact, take over our building. Some parents of PS 241 students attended school in our building as children themselves. They were now being told that, should the charter get our school building, their children would have to win a seat in a lottery to gain admission. No plan was offered for lottery losers. We all struggled to understand what would happen next.

In early February and into March teachers, support staff, students and parents from PS 241 began to organize a petition to stop the Department of Education's plan to close our school. Several hundred signatures of support were collected.

In March one of our fifth grade classes and their teacher testified before District 3's Community Education Council about their anger regarding our school's closure, but more specifically their anger over being called failures. Many students stood up to speak on that night, but one fifth grade student put it this way, "I am not failing and neither are my classmates. So why are they calling me a failure and planning to close my school?" This question was never sufficiently
answered.

As we moved further into the month of March members of PS 241, the District 3 Community Education Council, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the UFT came together to file a lawsuit on behalf of the entire PS 241 community against the Department of Education and their plan. We weren’t willing to give up our school, especially to a charter school that wouldn't enroll all of our students. New York City is divided into zones and state law mandates that each of these zones have a public school, one where every child living in that zone can attend. The Department of Education could not replace PS 241, who accepts everyone in the community, with a charter school that would not. They did not contest the lawsuit and withdrew their plan to close our elementary school. The plan to phase out our middle school, however, would move forward.

In early April, the Chancellor of the NYC Department of Education sent letters to the families of PS 241, in an attempt to persuade them to leave our school. The Chancellor was essentially asking families to abandon our school community at a time when we needed to come together. We struggled to comprehend why he would encourage our families and students to abandon their school community. Why didn’t the Chancellor offer us real support and encourage us to work harder, smarter and to come together?

In May, PS 241 again appeared in the New York newspapers. This time, however, it was announced that we had made the top 10 list of New York City’s MOST IMPROVED SCHOOLS that had the greatest test score gains. We were one of only two Manhattan schools to make the list. The other, PS 150, had also been slated for closure by the Department of Education back in December.

Despite the test score gains and the lawsuit, the Department of Education continued to move forward with their plan to give the charter school operator, Harlem Success Academy, a huge part of our classroom space. They were in and out of our classrooms during the last month of the school year, analyzing our space for renovations. Teachers and students, who occupied future charter school classrooms, were made to relocate during the school day so that renovations could
be completed. Teachers boxed up their classroom supplies and materials during the last week of school for removal at the conclusion of the school year.

The 2008-2009 school year came to an end quietly and without the celebration that often accompanies the last day of school. Many from our staff had plans to teach elsewhere the following year, while other's futures were less certain. What we all knew was that our school would be drastically different the following year and that PS 241's future was in doubt.

The following 2009-2010 school year had over 200 students report for the first day of school. This was about 50-60 fewer students than the previous year. Nearly half of PS 241's staff are now gone. As we moved further into the month of September our community received the news that we had earned an A on our annual school report card for the previous 2008-2009 school year. It was a small consolation for the Department of Education's maltreatment of PS 241 and for the loss to our community. The news was taken in stride, there was work to be done, routines to set, students to understand and teach.

PS 241 continues to fight for its survival even though we are now considered an A school. The Department of Education is not only phasing out our Middle School, but it also denied us a pre-kindergarten class that we've had for the many years and for which we received 20 applications. They are now working more covertly to replace our school.

Unfortunately, our story is not unique. School closures are becoming standard operating procedure for our country's educational leaders, many of whom are not educators themselves. PS 241's story has introduced many interesting questions for further exploration. Here are a few of mine:

Is giving up on a community of children ever wise?

Does (prematurely) closing a school deny a community of the opportunity to persevere and grow?

Is struggle an inherent part of the learning process for students, teachers and for schools?

Do schools require the same nurturing guidance that works so effectively with students?

Conversely, is the punitive approach that is so ineffective with struggling students just as ineffective when applied to schools?

Does closing schools improve our public system of education or make it worse?

Should public elementary schools be permitted to exclude anyone from their local community?

Should an education be won in a lottery?


To learn more about what is happening in our public schools, please visit these informative web sites:

Grassrootseducationmovement.com,
ednotesonline.com,
gothamschools.org,
nycparentschoolblog.com,
Coalitionforpubliceducation

DC Teachers Union Criticized by Laid-off Teachers

Laid Off DC Teachers Criticize Union's Efforts to Help Them Keep Their Jobs

Are you surprised? Randi Weingarten has been advising them.

Follow the DC story at The Washington Teacher blog.

New Action Supported UFT Charter Schools

This comment

Thank God for New Action. The UFT needs change. The UFT needs to start to fight for its members who are fighting with all their might, all on their own against charter schools. It is terrible the UFT, the teachers unions, is sitting back and doing NOTHING! That is what teachers pay for and the UFT does absolutely NOTHING!

at the Gotham Schools posting that made it seem New Action was an opposition caucus led to my response below:

New Action at one time used to be for change, but as partners with the UFT leadership for the past 7 years that is all over. They used to actually have a decent platform calling the UFT leadership undemocratic and calling for democratization of the union. Now that they got theirs, all that has disappeared.

How can the UFT fight charter schools when they have two of their own? And occupying space in public schools. And New Action supported them all the way, with some New Action members volunteering in the charters. ICE and TJC were opposed to the establishment of the charters because it was clear what was coming down the line and having their own charters would make a fight impossible. The UFT strategy was to "show them we can do it with a union contract," which New Action has supported. Then they sign a contract with Green Dot charter, also not opposed by New Action. Now their strategy is not to oppose charters but to try to organize them. Sort of like going back to the 1950's. The charters will remove public schools and the UFT will try to sell charter school teachers on the concept of "look how incompetent we have been in defending NYC teachers, now give us a chance to screw you too."

I know. Some say better any union contract than nothing. But the idea is so ass backwards as to make your hair hurt. The tidal wave is coming and the UFT is using a thimble to bail. And New Action will be there with them all the way.

ICE, TJC, Ed Notes and GEM have been working on positions that place the charter attack on public education in context. We have also been on the front lines supporting public school parents and teachers in their struggles over shared space. It was no accident that ICE's Lisa North's picture was on the front page of the NY Times yesterday in the story on charters. Angel Gonzalez, other GEMers and I also were there to support them. New Action has had zero presence at any of these charter school battles, even less than the bare presence the UFT leadership itself has had.

Related:
The New Action blog doesn't allow comments.

Pallas Responds to Tisch on Teacher Quality Issues, Value-Added ---and more

When data rating teachers based on student outcomes comes up in conversation and on blogs, the first thing I hear teachers say is, "How can I be compared to teachers who teach at schools like Stuyvesant?" When I raise the value-added concept, most pretty much have no idea what I am talking about and I blame the UFT which does not do education, but propaganda.

Value-added attempts to remove the difference between kids' poverty levels and other issues by trying to compare performances by similar students - apples to apples. At some point teachers can even be compared to each other based on how the same kids performed in their particular classes. Supposedly. But all issues point to flawed models.

An excellent essay by Aaron Pallas at Gotham addresses many of these issues. (For those not aware, Pallas was a Jennifer Jennings (Eduwonkette) mentor at Columbia and blogged under the Skoolboy mantle.) There's so much meat here, that I pretty much took a few excerpts at random. Read it all.

"I trust that Chancellor Tisch and Commissioner Steiner are not seduced by claims that the single most important determinant of a child’s achievement is the quality of his or her teachers, because that’s simply not true. Family background continues to be the dominant factor. But the quality of teachers is, at least in theory, something that is manipulable via education policy initiatives, and it’s a lot more tractable than addressing the fact that one in five children under the age of 18 in New York State live below the poverty line.
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it’s striking that the recommendations single out value-added student assessment data as components of both the portfolios of candidates for professional certification and of the profiles of certifying institutions. Simply put, the technology for using value-added student assessment data for these purposes is not ready for prime time, and likely will not be for many years to come. One major obstacle is the lack of reliable and valid measures of student performance that can serve as the basis for value-added assessments of teacher effectiveness.
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I’m saying to Commissioner Steiner and Chancellor Tisch, “Clean up the state assessment system — and take the time to do it right. Then we can talk about value-added assessment.”

But beyond the many questions about value-added effects on students’ test scores, we should be asking, how do we assess a teacher’s contributions to other learning outcomes? Surely we care about more than test scores. What are good measures of a teacher’s contributions to preparing students to be competent citizens in our democracy? How much are the Board of Regents and the State Education Department willing to invest in creating measures that will capture how well teachers teach students to think, question and act?

A brief vignette may reveal the challenge. It’s January, and Ms. Bilsky, a fourth-grade teacher in the Bronx, is teaching a math lesson. The subject is geometry, and the lesson is about how to classify angles as either acute or obtuse. The topic is a standard from the state’s math core curriculum. In the middle of the lesson, Rashid, a boy in the class, audibly aims a racial slur at his classmate Javier. Ms. Bilsky hears it, but she chooses to ignore it, instead plowing ahead with the lesson. At the end of the year, the students in Ms. Bilsky’s class did a bit better on the state math assessment than the students in other fourth-grade classrooms in the Bronx.

Now, is that good teaching?

The value-added assessment will tell us that it is good teaching.

Now this essay is what I call good teaching by Professor Pallas. I hope Regent leader Meryl Tisch and new State Ed commish Steiner learned something, but somehow I doubt it.

I might also add this question: How come college professors like Pallas and parent activists like Leonie Haimson can do so much effective defenses of teachers than the UFT and AFT?

Gotham Schools seems to think New Action is an internal opposition group

Have I got a bridge to sell them.

I left a comment at Gotham after they posted a link to the New Action positioning statement. Yes, NA is all about political positioning for the upcoming UFT elections so they can hold onto the 8 exec bd seats handed to them by Unity Caucus. The "house" opposition.

Calling New Action an internal opposition group is like saying Christine Quinn stood up to Bloomberg. New Action has been the UFT's house opposition for over 5 years. Weingarten ran at the top of their ticket in the 2007 election and all 8 of their exec board members were endorsed by the UFT leadership Unity Caucus. In the 2007 election they got the lowest vote total of all groups running but only won their seats due to Unity Caucus votes.

So how are they an internal opposition when the party in power controls their fate?

Their original sellout in 2003 was based on the same premise they are advocating in this post: it is time to fight Bloomberg. That was their excuse for not running a candidate against Weingarten in the last 2 UFT elections and they will not run a candidate against Mulgrew in the upcoming elections. Since they owe their continued existence to the beneficence of the UFT leadership, they cannot be critical or they will lose their support. Thus they have to come up with the "mistakes were made by the leadership but let's not dwell on them" argument to justify their sellout.

New Action mentions charters but in fact backed the UFT all the way when it set up its own charter schools in public school buildings while ICE and TJC took positions opposed, knowing full well the charter dagger was squarely aimed at the heart of the union.

The New Action statement says:

Today we need a united stand. We will need to talk about the mistakes that we as a union have made: Mayoral endorsement, governance, term limits, but another day. This is not the time for recriminations. This is the time for a united fight against this corporate mayor.

When is the time to talk about the mistakes of a misguided UFT leadership that New Action has been uncritical of since the sellout? Note there is no mention of the other mistakes: the 2005 contract – which both members of New Action who served on the negotiating committee at the time voted for despite their attempts to rewrite history. Or the mistake of the end of seniority. Or the ATR problem that was created by the UFT and BloomKlein. New Action supported the leadership throughout these "mistakes."

New Action has supported the UFT leadership without dwelling on the mistakes for all these years. They act like there will be a change despite the fact that New Action has been around for decades and seen little change in the way Unity Caucus operates.

There was a time when New Action put up a fight to create a more democratic union. Now they are part of the problem. Progressive teachers looking to reform the UFT in no way consider them an internal opposition, but a former opposition that has sold out to the leadership for a few Executive Board seats and some minor positions on the payroll of the UFT.

NY Times article on charter school shared space

I'm looking forward to reactions to today's Jennifer Medina's piece in the NY Times on charters sharing space with public schools as she has been working on this story for quite a while and was having problems getting teachers to talk because of the assumption the NY Times would not do a fair and balanced piece and also because of fear of retaliation from the DOE.

My immediate reaction is that this should be a series with this piece an intro. It could even be a book.

Some first impressions:

Medina touched on all the hot spots: Dist. 1, Red Hook, Harlem, the MS 126 library story. I bet if we delve into PS 16K (I spent my first 3 years as a teacher there) as being so cooperative between charter and an elem school - they made no fuss when the charter expanded to 9th grade and took 4 more rooms - could use some elaboration. Of course the charter will have to go to 12 grade - 4 rooms more a year plus admin space. My guess is PS 16 is doomed as a public school. There is a lot of history of contentious shared space there. The story decades ago about the attempt of Dist 14 to build a wall to separate the Hassidic kids from the public school kids and the community protests is legendary.

The heads of 2 charters are quoted but the Principal of PS 20 James Lee who made an excellent presentation at the meeting as to how his school is affected is not. Other principals spoke too about the impact of Girls Prep on their schools. Some talked about the bait and switch Girls Prep has been pulling. Medina was present for the entire CEC1 meeting a few weeks ago.

I posted an excellent video of a PS 15 teacher in Red Hook who presented the case for her school. It is worth checking out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlJNjRMFLls. If you haven't seen it take a look. The Jan. 26 PEP will address the PS 15/PAVE issue.

The stuff about Spencer Robertson's building falling through is priceless. When he announced at the CEC15 meeting that he had space and refused to divulge any info the PS 15 crowd hooted that this was just a lie and a smokescreen. And so it was.

Yes charter schools do lie.

Check ICE/GEM Lisa North in the pic on front page of Times - she is on the lower right hand corner.

I'll get back with more reactions later.

The article is also posted at the GEM blog.

Two Thousand Posts: Taking Stock

This turned out to be a busy weekend. I realized this is the 2000th post on the Ed Notes blog which began in August 2006, about 40 months ago. That averages to about 50 posts a month. Over twelve a week. I was going to do a "taking stock" piece for this special occasion, but I just had so much to say that I ended up saying nothing. Basically, I stayed away from the ed/pol stuff for the entire long weekend.

Maybe it was the aftermath of the 23 people we had for Thanksgiving, the group ranging in age from age 1 to 91 with just about every decade represented: teens, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty and sixty somethings. My dad, who will be 92 in January, held the upper limit. He had the company of my wife's aunt who is also 91. Our niece's 2 year old and our cousin's 3 year old were chasing each other around the house, with the 1 year old crawling along trying to keep up. The two 18 year old cats were OK with it for a while before deciding to take a powder – just a bit of hissing and hiding under the bed. (Some pics of the gang in action.)

Friday was cleanup and going to the gym day.

Saturday was an early morning Bikram yoga class. There's nothing like spending an hour and a half in a hundred and five degrees to get your brain to turn to mush. But I had wake up as I had a noon meeting at my house with a playwright (who is in my acting class) and his director friend to discuss making a film of one of his plays, with my video pal Mark and I doing the cinematography. We watched a tape of the play which was performed in Manhattan and it looks like an exciting project.

Saturday night Mark and I taped a performance of "The Odd Couple" at the Bayswater Jewish Center in Rockaway, with Mark's business partner Stuie playing Felix. I had been offered the opportunity to play one of the card players a few months ago but time constraints made it impossible to consider. Before the play we went to eat at "Lucky Boy" on Rockaway Turnpike. The place looks like a shabby diner from the outside, but what great food.

Sunday morning was my acting class and I spent some serious time trying to memorize my monologue from "Talk Radio" but my brain is not well equipped to hold onto so much information. This is one big rant and I really get worked up. So be careful if you run into me, as I may start practicing. Or I could just attend a charter school hearing and let it all fly.

After class, it was over to a friend's house for the weekly NY Jets game self-flagellation (soothed by piles of chips and dips). But lo and behold, the JETS WON! Then there were two more football games to watch, with the Baltimore/Pittsburgh game going to overtime, followed by Mike Francese's "Miked Up" which didn't end until past midnight.

Then I woke up to see the front page of the NY Times and Jenifer Median's story on charter schools sharing space with public schools and it was back to reality. Or maybe the weekend was reality. She has been working on the story for weeks and contacted me about getting people to talk to her. I know there was some reluctance. I already wrote up some comments for my 2001st post, which I will put up next.

Postscript:
I really do want to do a taking stock article, since the Ed Notes blog is an extension of the Ed Notes newsletter, which has been around since 1996. I believe that this body of work constitutes some kind of history of the UFT and education in NYC, plus the national trends over that time. It could be a book, but then one must pretty much drop everything to get such a project done and I have too much schpilkus, the original Jewish version of Attention Deficit Disorder, to sit down long enough to do it.

The Education Sector: What Crooks

The Education Sector has long been part of the ed deform crowd, with blogger Eduwonk, Andrew Rotherham leading the way for years. That he was a former Clinton admin ed official should give us a clue as to why we are not totally surprised at Obama joining the crowd. The Democratic Party is no friend of true ed reform.

So, they issue a supposedly unbiased report on charter schools and managed to leave out the critical findings. "What crooks!" was one comment we received by email.

(Here are a few previous Ed Notes posts on this gang:
teacher quality at the education sector... a stacked deck
the education sector's biased survey

audio of ed sector teacher quality event

check out the ednotes analysis of the biased education sector teacher survey which didn't ask about the impact of class size because the ed sector is totally on board with the usual suspects on this issue. ...)

We do have a wonderful nationwide network sniffing out these news nuggets.

Caroline Grannan sent this clue and I forwarded it to Leonie Haimson, who put this report together on the NYC Education News Listserve. Monte Neil from Fair Test sent out an original post and Alexander Russo blogged about it from his sources.

Here is Leonie's post. (By the way, it was great to see Leonie's husband Michael Oppenheimer's excellent stint on the News Hour the other day discussing: Bound for Copenhagen, Obama Faces Climate Change Obstacles.)

Tom Toch’s report on Charter Management Organizations was scrubbed by Education Sector – with many of the negatives taken out. Education Sector is a think tank heavily supported by pro-charter foundations like Gates and Broad. (see below discussion from Alex Russo’s This week in education.)

The report cites the following funders: Smith Richardson Foundation….. Education Sector has received grants from foundations that have funded charter schools, charter school networks, and other organizations mentioned in this report, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Specific disclosures of funder and board relationships associated with this report can be found in the endnotes.

Toch’s original findings as published in Education Week and elsewhere were remarkably balanced; see this excerpt:

In the decade since they emerged on the education landscape, nonprofit networks of charter schools called charter-management organizations, or CMOs, have built some of the biggest brands in education—the Knowledge Is Power Program, Aspire, Green Dot Public Schools, Uncommon Schools—and won plaudits from the likes of Oprah Winfrey, The New York Times Magazine, and “60 Minutes.”

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is now poised to give them a central role in the federal government’s multibillion-dollar school reform campaign. He has named leaders of the CMO movement to key posts in his department and has pledged to make “big bets” on the highest-performing charter networks with the expectation that they’ll produce large numbers of outstanding new schools for disadvantaged students.

But the research for a report on CMOs that I’ve produced for the think tank Education Sector reveals that many of these organizations are going to be hard-pressed to deliver the many schools that Duncan wants from them. Discussions with dozens of CMO executives and other experts, an examination of CMO business plans, consultant reports, and other documents, and visits to over a dozen schools run by prominent CMOs in different parts of the country make clear that a host of challenges—the need to find and finance school buildings, the expense of educating impoverished students successfully, the difficulty of recruiting high-performing teachers and principals, and, in many instances, strong opposition from traditional public educators—has left many CMOs working hard to sustain themselves academically and financially.

The report even now is interesting about finances of NYC charter schools, and makes clear that the funding it receives from Bloomberg is quite generous. See this:

http://www.educationsector.org/usr_doc/Growing_Pains.pdf

Since pledging in 2003 to make New York “the most charter-friendly city,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein have provided leading CMOs like Achievement First, Uncommon Schools, and KIPP (as well as many individual charter schools) heavily subsidized space in under-enrolled city schools; subsidized custodial, maintenance, and security services; and independence over staffing, budgets, and instruction.37 Civic Builders, a nonprofit real estate developer established in 2002, bundles money from the city’s school system, philanthropies, commercial lenders, and various state and federal construction programs to buy real estate and rent it to charter schools at below-market rates. The organization has spent $227 million developing nine schools, including the retrofitting of a Brooklyn ice cream factory to house an Achievement First elementary and middle school.38

With the annual funding that they get in New York City (some $12,440 per student, plus additional local and federal monies, a sum that Achievement First estimates to be between 80 percent and 95 percent of the funding that the city’s traditional schools receive), Achievement First’s New York schools are able to operate without philanthropic subsidies once they are fully enrolled, says chief financial officer Max Polaner—in sharp contrast to Amistad in New Haven. Says CEO Toll: “We expanded into New York because of Klein and because the dollars are doable.” But such partnerships have been rare, because [most other] school districts are wary of losing students and revenue to CMOs, and charter networks have wanted to preserve their independence. And while New York City is relatively charter-friendly, the state as a whole has been less so, imposing strict caps on the number of charter schools that have only recently been increased after years of bitter political struggle.

See also this, about the high attrition levels at some charter schools, pointed out by Caroline Grannan:

Another challenge is high student attrition. Rigorous standards, struggling students, grueling schedules along with transient families and the other attendant problems of poverty often lead to significant numbers of students leaving leading CMO schools. The cumulative effect can be substantial. For instance, a 2008 study by SRI International, an independent research organization, found that an average of 60 percent of the entering fifth-graders at four Bay Area KIPP middle schools left before graduating at the end of the eighth grade, and that the students who left tended to be lower achievers (by law, charter schools must be open to all students and use a lottery if over-subscribed).44

One wonders how much more negative the report was originally before being scrubbed.

From: Monty Neill, Fair Test

Yesterday I scanned just the exec sum of this report from Ed Sector. It was clear that the recommendations were merely Ed Sector's pro-privatization agenda, said nothing about what presumably were findings of various kinds of problems with charters. Now it seems Ed Sector changed the original report by its co-founder Tom Toch, removing lots of content and tacking on its ideology as 'recommendations'.

Here are excerpts from Alexander Russo:

November 24, 2009 | Posted At: 05:59 PM | Author: Alexander Russo | Category: Think Tank Mafia

EdSector CMO Report: Who Lost Tom Toch?

Thanks to a couple of eagle-eyed readers (including MDM) for pointing out that the much-delayed Education Sector report on charter management organizations lacks the name -- and apparently much of the content provided by -- its original author, writer and EdSector co-founder Tom Toch.

...

Toch can't publish the original version of the report because of copyright issues but he points to several other pieces (in Education Week and the Kappan)

Read Russo's full post at:

http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2009/11/cmos-who-lost-tom-toch.html

Sharon Higgins report on Oakland charter per pupil spending

The work Sharon Higgins does at her Perimeter Primate blog is invaluable. This came in from Pete Farrugio. Pete and I taught together at PS 16 in Williamsburg in the late 60's when we were newbie teachers. When I started going to meetings of Another View in District 14 in 1970, my first teacher activist group, I brought Pete along. Pete has gone on to a college level career and has continued his activism. In the small world department, NYCORE's Bree Picower, who we are associated with now, told me Pete was a mentor when she was at Berkeley.


Sharon Higgins published a report on public per pupil spending that compares Oakland, CA's charters with regular public schools (some of which are part of Oakland's small schools initiative and have been treated favorably compared to larger neighborhood schools)

Here's the link to her blog. The punch line is that the politically connected charters are spending lots more than local schools, even though the locals have most of the ELLs and special ed kids. What's more, I've personally noticed that in most neighborhoods the lowest proficiency ELLs (kids who barely understand or speak English, and thus score lowest on the English high stakes exam) are pretty much not in the charters.

http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/

Pete

Girls Prep Charter Financials: $76,000 for Recruitment

They get free space in the public schools but spend money to recruit kids away from public schools, which have no budget to compete. All those market-based ed deformers don't exactly believe in a level playing field.

http://www.newyorkcharters.org/auditedfinancialstatements/2008-09/GirlsPrepCSofNY2009AuditedFinancialStatements.pdf


page 7 Recruitment/marketing costs:
2009= $76,636
2008= $45,487

Page 12
Note C: School Facility

As part of the New York City Chancellor's Charter School Initiative, the NYC DoE has committed space to the Organization at no charge. the facilities and services provided by the NYC DoE to the Organization are outlined in a Shared Facility Use Agreement.

The agreement is for 5 years or until termination of the School's charter.

Is this agreement still in effect for the renewed/expanded charter whose application is in process at SUNY CSI? Where is a copy of this agreement?

Norm's "School Scope" Column in The Wave

My bi-weekly column in The Wave (www.rockawave.com).

By the way, the Village Voice chose The Wave as the best community newspaper in NYC and NY Magazine is including The Wave as one of the one hundred best reasons to live in NYC. Not bad for a small outpost on the edge of NYC.

A lot of this recognition is due to Howard Schwach, the current managing editor, who preceded me in writing the School Scope column. A long-time teacher and critic of both the old (and current) school administration and the UFT, Howie retired from teaching to take over running The Wave in June, 2001. He was told there wasn't much news out here. Then came 9/11, where many Rockawayites were killed and the plane crash of Flight 587 two months later where The Wave became the center of international coverage.

Nov. 27, 2009

(Michelle) Rhee-gate

by Norman Scott

If you haven't been following the saga of former Joel Klein Clone and now Washington DC school superintendent Michelle Rhee and her fiancé, former pro basketball player Kevin Johnson, now the mayor of Sacramento, get thee over to my blog (http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/). This is one juicy story that involves charges that Johnson made inappropriate advances on some young ladies and misused almost half a million dollars in Americorps funds for his St. Hope (less) charter school. But the real gravy may turn out to be the firing by the Obama administration of the Inspector General, the only person to be openly fired by Obama. Republicans in Congress and swift boaters and tea baggers are seizing on the story and will try to turn it into an Obama WhiteWater/Watergate story. As we went to press, details were emerging on an Obama administration cover-up of the firing. Some bloggers are calling it "Rheegate" and my blog has the famous Nixon "I'm not a crook" poster with Rhee's face superimposed on Nixon's.

Obama a do-nothing?

I was watching the Jets game the other day with some friends. During Sanchez' 2nd (or was it 12th?) interception, one of them said that a close relative hated Obama. Why? "He hasn't done anything." Done anything? I pointed out that this relative hated Obama before he was elected because he feared Obama would actually do something that would take us down the road to socialism. "He should be happy Obama hasn't done any of the things that he thought he would do," I said. "Look at Bush. He did things. Two wars and an economic collapse."

From now on I don't want our politicians to do anything. Other than keep their hands out of the till. They should be more like South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, on the verge of impeachment, and spend more time sneaking off to meet their mistresses in places like Argentina. Sanford should get an award instead of being vilified. For at least one weekend he didn't didn't do anything to screw (the public, at least). Remember, he was the guy who wanted to turn down the stimulus package for political reasons, but his package got stimulated anyway.

Obama: Hoover or FDR? Hoover or Jimmy Carter?

A year ago I surmised whether Obama would be looked at as an FDR or a Herbert Hoover, depending on how the economic crisis turned out. Remember that FDR's policies created massive changes. The charge that Obama has not accomplished much should be put in context. If we think back to the disaster he inherited, things don't seem to have gotten worse. That is worth something. People point out his push on health care reform might actually lead to something, though once the bones of the bill are picked over there won't be much meat left, except for the lobbying interests. Now it is clear there is little chance Obama will be an FDR, as the Hoover-like depression seems to be fading, though I still think there is a shot at if enough people start living under bridges and set up Obama-ville tent cities. Barring that, what are we left with? Obama channeling Jimmy Carter? Well, I am not ashamed to admit that I am one of 10 people in this nation that actually liked Carter as president, but admitting it means I have to wear a bag over my head.

On education policy, one of the few things I know something about, Obama is totally off base by focusing on teachers (almost all his policies relate to blaming teachers for failures of school systems). Do the education deformers, who always seem to send their kids to private schools with low class sizes, ever talk about reforms that actually include lowering class size?

In essence, Obama supports the demise of the public option in education. One of the fascinating aspects of the health care debate has been over the offering of a public option to reduce costs. At the same time the Obama administration has been promoting policies (charters, etc) that will ultimately lead to the destruction of the public option in education. The Right-wing education "deformers," who always had an agenda of destroying and privatizing public education, have had no words of criticism of the Obama education agenda, which takes Bushism to new heights.

We get letters

A letter writer, clearly a hater, in the Nov. 13 edition of The Wave accused me of being an anti-white racist, pretty much painting me as a founding member of the Black Panthers, mostly based on some things I've written about the 1968 teachers strike. In fact, I supported the strike in '68, as I supported all three UFT strikes. He focused on my contention that19 teachers in Ocean-Hill were illegally transferred and not fired. District 23 Superintendent Rhody McCoy used the word "fired" but the UFT contract guaranteed them jobs and they were offered positions in other districts. The UFT told them to make a stand and stick it out to make a political point. To call me a racist against whites is akin to my calling the letter writer a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Hmmmm. On second thought....

Acting 1.1

I've completed six weeks of Frank Caiati's acting class at the Rockaway Theatre Company and there is no more stimulating way to spend two hours on a Sunday morning. Most people would say I've exhibited few signs of being shy. I've spoken in front of large audiences, but this acting business is very intimidating. If you've seen Frank on stage, you know how he makes it all seem so natural and people rave about his talent as an actor.

We're doing monologues and I'm doing one from "Talk Radio" where I play an abrasive radio talk show host who goes on a rant against the audience. Typecasting to the extreme. What could be more perfect for me, a well-known ranter, than a screaming diatribe? It barely takes acting. Frank emphasizes the subtleties of the diatribe. "It doesn't have to be one big outburst," he says. "You can show anger with pauses and in a low voice too." Call it a slow seethe. These insights are what make Frank as good a director as he is an actor. After I do my monologue, I'm in great shape to join my friends later that afternoon in watching the Jets blow another one, though I skip the subtleties of the rant as the game progresses.

Love That Bob (Compton)

Not. Well, filmmaker and self proclaimed ed expert, nee ed deformer Bob Compton, is not loved by Paola de Kock over at the NYC Public School Parent blog.

What Is Our Children Learning from Ersatz Education Experts?

Paola writes:

"Compton’s bright new ideas are the usual mix of “assessment and accountability” measures, pay-for-performance, and limitless expansion of charter schools and of teaching by TFA recruits and private-sector professionals; details are, of course, available by clicking the “Shop my store” tab."

"According to his biography on robertacompton.com, he is or has been an “IBM Systems Engineer, Professional Venture Capitalist, Angel Investor, President/COO of NYSE company, Entrepreneur and Filmmaker”; and “active in over 30 businesses including software, telecommunication services, healthcare services and medical devices.”


Bob apparently has problems with sticking with one thing. You see, Bob, some of us spent an entire career actually teaching kids. I even spent 27 years in one school. I know, I know. In your world that makes me a slacker. I guy without ambition (except to teach) to rise up in the competitive world you want education to be.

Ed Notes was visited by Bob Compton, or "Dumb Bob" as he signed his first comment after we posted this:

Renowned Arizona Charter School Asks Disruptive Students to Leave

We responded to Bob with this post:

Dear Dumb Bob Compton

And DB returned with a 2 part comment that read like a press release for the market based ed deformer crowd. Stop by and respond.


Nostalgia Note: Love That Bob with Bob Cummings was all the rave in the mid-50's when we were kids, particularly pre-adolescent boys. Cummings played a bachelor photographer and dated the hottest girls, who often wore skimpy outfits. More on the show here.

The story that keeps giving

The dogs are howling as Rhee-Gate gets closer to the White House.

Plus the DC teachers union WTU- loses in court.

All at Norms Notes. Rhee/Johnson/Huffner (Rhee ex)/White House

Photoshopped by David Bellel.

Satire, collated by Susan Ohanian

From the Eggplant:

U.S. Department of Education Orders Confiscation of All Teacher Plan Books

WASHINGTON, D. C.-In an effort to address both the waste and the lack of uniformity exhibited by public school teachers' use of individualized plan books, the U. S. Department of Education announced today a new policy prohibiting all teachers from access to individual plan books, a plan taking effect on January 15, 2010.

"After watching the messy, haphazard use of these planbooks when teachers are entrusted with autonomy, we can see that it is time to exercise a little Federal oversight," said Undersecretary for Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development Sallie Songster.

"Unlimited access to planbooks is not scientific," Songster continued. "It's unpredictible and unverifiable. To compete in the global economy, we have to be assured that every teacher is following the Common Core Standards in a timely and uniform manner." MORE

Over the Top: Winning Strategies for the Race to the Top Fund
by Yong Zhao

Susan comments:

'November 16, 2009, from Yong Zhao blog Michigan State. Suggestion #1 is a brilliant take on what's happening, almost too close to Arne's dream to be a parody. Go to the site and read the comments, too.

I have been reading through the 775-page final notice document to be published in the Federal Register on November 18, 2009. It includes the final versions of application guidelines, selection criteria and priorities for the $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund (RTT), the largest education grant in U.S. history.

I can guess from news reports, op-ed pieces, and blog posts that many states are working hard to prepare their applications. From my reading of the criteria, I think the following are the winning strategies and actions to include in the application, although they may be inconsistent with research findings or common sense.

Suggestion #1:

Stop paying teachers and principals a salary. Instead pay teachers and principals on a per standardized test point basis each day. At the end of each school day, students should be tested using a standardized test, what a teacher and principal is paid is calculated at the end of the day based on the growth of the student, i.e., how much has the student improved over the previous day. This is true accountability and will for sure keep teachers and principals on their toes!

MORE