Staten Island "Gets" DOE School Closing Irrationality

As the nationwide policy of using public school closings as a main cog in undermining and privatizing public education shows increasing signs of fracturing as the failures in New York and Chicago over a decade and more are emerging into the public consciousness. I know many people fighting these closings year after year often throw their hands up in frustration with a "what is the point in fighting" attitude, don't underestimate the value these fights have in raising public awareness even if we lose the battles. Over time I believe we will win the war. We may lose a generation of children. Think: by the time Bloomberg is gone a child will have gone from pre-k to high school with the "test prep/credit recovery ed deform regime.

Until now Staten Island was exempt from school closings by the WalBloomKlein administration. ICE's Loretta Prisco, a long-time SI resident and political activist on the Island wrote on ICE Mail:

This is the Sunday's editorial from our local paper. They get it! They have never shut a SI school.  Some feel that is why they are closing the school - to avoid the criticism that SI is never touched.  P.14 is next to the projects - and very troubled ones at that.   A charter school opened nearby.  I am sure the savvy parents will take their kids out of 14 and place their kids' names in the "lottery".  Loretta

The Advance I believe has been known as a fairly conservative paper. But this editorial is so good in that is exposes most of the fault lines in the school closure policy - excpet for the fact that the "change in school culture" the DOE claims is the reason for closing is really about dumping out the teachers. Teh principal too, but they can dump the principal at any time they want but with tenured teachers they just can't do that without closing the school and turning teachers into ATRs, with the hope they can ultimately end Last In First Out (LIFO) and fire them (with 25 more schools on the chopping block, watch the LIFO attacks intensify).

Let's do a bit of parsing:

Staten Isl Advance joins chorus vs. school closings 

http://goo.gl/K6Kms

Even though the city Department of Education’s plan to close PS 14 in Stapleton is proceeding, students, parents, teachers and other supporters of the embattled neighborhood school are not giving up the fight. Not by a long shot.

Hundreds demonstrated last week in front of Borough Hall and can be expected to make their opposition heard again at a Jan. 25 public hearing on the DOE’s plan and in other venues before the final vote of the Panel for Educational Policy on Feb. 9.

Nonetheless, the PEP, which is packed with mayoral appointees, is expected to approve the closure, which was ordered because of PS 14’s poor performance on tests and its low rating in the DOE’s new grading system for schools.

The other piece of the puzzle is a parallel plan to replace PS 14 with a “new” school, to be known as PS 78.

The DOE wants to phase out PS 14 over three years as successive classes move through it and move on to intermediate school, and, over the same period, successive new classes will be enrolled in PS 78. By 2015, PS 14 will have closed and PS 78 will have reached full enrollment of 653-713 students - the same number of students PS 14 now has enrolled.

This “new” school will occupy the same building on Tompkins Avenue, and, as a zoned elementary school, will serve exactly the same population that PS 14 served.

In other school closings they changed the teachers, admin and the students, so this might prove more tricky. But as Loretta points out there is a charter school in the area (not an accident) that might cream some of the top admits off the new school.

This year, 92 percent of PS 14’s students qualified for free or reduced-price lunches, which points to the entrenched poverty in this community. Of course, economic circumstances and their relation to family education and parental involvement, are generally known to be a critical factor in kids’ ability to do well in school.

So kids from the same stressed socioeconomic background and the same troubled neighborhood will make up the student population of PS 78 just as such kids make up the student population of PS 14 now.

****If that’s the case, what’s going to change?

****A DOE official insisted that phasing out the old school will result in “a pretty major change in school culture.”

THE FIRST MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION 

****Really? How so?

The official said, “We can get different leaders in there, some different teachers in there, sort of an updated program.”

OK, there will be a new principal, a number of new teachers and a revised curriculum.  IBut was PS 14’s poor showing solely a matter of administration and staff? If the students at PS 78 face the same day-to-day challenges in and out of school as the students at PS 14 face, it’s hard to see how PS 78 will do substantially better.

Now, the critical difference officials are pondering could be in the amount of support the DOE gives to the new school. Obviously, having taken this drastic step, the department will do whatever it takes to see that PS 78 succeeds.

But the question people who oppose the death sentence for PS 14 have is:

THE MONEY QUESTION IS COMING UP:

****Why couldn’t the DOE provide that high level support for PS 14? It might have made a big difference and avoided closure. After all, it was only in 2009 that PS 14 earned an A on its progress report. What happened?

“How does DOE phase out a school before providing the necessary support, while simultaneously bringing in a new, well-resourced school - PS 78?” asked City Councilwoman Debi Rose. “The closure of PS 14 is evidence of the continuing systemic failure of the DOE to manage resources for the education of the children in its care. It appears that they are relegating our students to separate and unequal learning environments.”

Speaking of which, we have to wonder what’s going to happen when PS 78 comes on line next September and it and PS 14 are operating simultaneously out of the same building. Are they going to be treated equally or is doomed PS 14, already deemed a failure, going to be relegated to a lower tier in DOE’s eyes?

Count Community Education Council 31 President Sam Pirozzolo among the skeptics. He says that if the DOE’s full commitment and resources are going to be put into supporting all five grades of PS 14/PS 78, “Then just fix the whole school.”

And call it PS 14, so no one has to go through the trauma of having their school pulled out from under them.

Too bad the DOE didn’t consider this option.  

Too bad, indeed. School closing hearings will commence in January and the following PEPs will vote to endorse these closings. But if the opposition keeps heating up we may begin to see a lot more editorials like these (unimaginable a short time ago) as the reality of the failures of ed deform sweep the nation. And yes, we do need your bodies there to swell the crowd and create the kind of disruptions and opposition that shows a growing movement. I say make then vote under police guard in front of a screaming crowd. (If you missed it see Brian Jones' speech at the PEP on the police presence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPiNqcKSDm4).

And would you have seen a story like this until recently?
In Miami, charter schools enroll a disproportionately low number of poor students. (Miami Herald)
============

Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on the right for important bits.

Audio of My Statement at the PEP/ Bloomberg's Biggest Failure (In a long list)....

.... Meglomaniac/Incompetent/Psychotic Principals ... and the contined support of them no matter what they do.....

There is not more outrage than the purposeful destruction of a teacher's career for political/personal reasons. Tweed's allowing this to happen and supporting it undermines every single thing they say about wanting teacher quality and enforces the idea that what they want is teachers to be sheep and go baaaaaa (I heard a lot of this on sheep farms in New Zealand) on call.

In the earliest PEP meetings going back to Klein's early tenure I raised this issue regularly and told Klein that unless he put a stop to political vendettas every single initiative to improve the teaching corps would fail. Unfortunately I was standing up alone - actually with one or two others but there was never a sign of the UFT - and even today you see the UFT often ducking this issue, preferring to talk about how they want to streamline the process of teacher extraction. I wouldn't streamline anything until cases like Peter Lamphere no longer exist.

I raised this issue at the PEP the other night in relation to the Peter Lamphere/Valerie Reidy/Bronx High School of Science situation where despite a court vacating one of his 2 U ratings, the DOE was continuing to challenge the ruling. I didn't expect to be called so my remarks are very off the cuff. (I couldn't tape myself so the sound is a bit sketchy.) I wanted to point to the hypocrisy of Walcott's supposedly wanting quality teachers when in fact Peter won a reprieve of his U rating last week Walcott's minions objected.

Using U-ratings for political vendettas undermines the DOE position they are interested in quality teachers. Peter is a noted math instructor - my voice is garbled where I mention a young math teacher driven out by Reidy who ended up teaching at one of the elite public schools in the city (meaning that what Reidy found unsatisfactory was NOT endorsed by another great school). Peter mentored her and she told me he was one of the best math teachers.

I was prompted to speak based on this:

DOE spokeswoman Barbara Morgan said officials are contemplating their next step. 

“We are disappointed in the decision and are weighing our legal options,” she said.

 Shame on you Barbara.

By the way - Peter raised money for his lawsuit. I don't have all the details of what support the UFT gave Peter but I do not think there was financial support for the suit - I'll get more info and update when I do and before I say Shame on the UFT.


Background:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Judge Overturns Arbitrary U...
Riverdale Press: http://bit.ly/rXLLoV



This came in from Perry on ICE mail:

I've been re-reading some stuff about the infamous Iris Blige

She's the principal on Fordham Road who instructed her APs to U-rate teachers before they had even classroom-observed them.

Some of the APs went ahead and did it. One refused outright . Another declined, was reminded that he was a probationary AP himself and..... you get the picture: he went out and U-rated the principal's target.

It strikes me that Principal Blige is extraordinary only in that she was dumb enough to *explicitly* tell the APs to engage in unethical and ... I've never been clear on this part.... possibly *illegal* acts.

My suspicion is that this goes on commonly... perhaps even routinely... in schools around the city. The instigation is just more indirect. Subtle. Discrete. Wrapped at all times in the trappings of "plausible deniability."

My guess is there are many principals as evil as Blige , but few who are as flat-out *dumb*.

My own experience suggests also that the *vast* majority of APs will "oblige", (excuse the pun) when placed in a similar circumstance. The system rewards nothing more than obedience and adherence to hierarchy. People attracted to administrative work may have (usually very) briefly been teachers, but are... in my experience... a different breed of human being altogether.

Or perhaps I'm too cynical?

 

Professor Walmart: The Promisor of Profit

By Rob Rendo

Charter School Leaders Love Quinn for Mayor - So Does the UFT

This article below by Anna Philips has to scare you. The big battle is coming over mayoral control and even though there will be lots of rhetoric from the UFT they will not take a stand against because to them the alternatives (local control) are not acceptable. Interesting in that one of the calls for local control include lots of teacher influence at the school level along with parents. The UFT doesn't trust teachers at the school level - the leadership wants all the power in their hands. I got this right from the horse's mouth when 12 years ago I posed to Randi Weingarten the idea of teachers taking over schools (I am for teachers electing principals - we would get the best principals that way). She began her response with, "How can we trust...." before realizing what she was about to say. Thus I got an early inkling of where she really stood.

Many of the advocates believe the charter school movement cannot survive without Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg‘s policy of having charter schools share space in public school buildings. Without this policy, the schools would have to seek out and pay for private space on their own, leaving some of them with fewer dollars to spend on students than traditional public schools.

Michael T. Duffy, a former city education official and now managing director of Victory Education Partners, figured that at the least, he would begin by putting all of these people in the same room with the candidate he is enthusiastic about, City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn.
On Wednesday night, members of the charter school world, as well as the technology start-up world, gathered in a honey-colored apartment on the Upper East Side to query Ms. Quinn, raising more than $15,000 for the candidate. Ms. Quinn’s remarks, her aides insisted, remain off the record. But the advocates in attendance spoke more openly on Thursday in interviews, expressing what is on their minds as they look ahead to 2014, when they will lose a mayor who has given them space in public school buildings at no cost and hardly questioned their raison d’être.

Charter School Leaders Hunt for Their Mayoral Candidate

http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2011/12/16/charter-school-leaders-hunt-for-their-mayoral-candidate/?partner=rss&emc=rss

And I hope you noticed this on the ed notes side panel:

Regents agree to give NY student and teacher data to limited corporation run by Gates and operated by Murdoch's Wireless Gen
This work will be guided by participating states and informed by input from a panel of expert advisors, including Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers;

Teachers in the UFT have to wake up and take action - I don't mean blogging and leaving comments on blogs - your bodies are needed. If you don't see the connections here you are missing the boat. You should be doing everything you can to wake up the people you work with. The UFT is aiming to support Christine Quinn even though she is anti-LIFO (but I think our leadership is also against LIFO though they try to hide it).

Connect the dots by reading this post on Ed Notes from the other day: AFT/NEA: More Sellouts to Ed Deform. 
Note how slick the UFT, sending Leo out to make it appear they are opposing ed deform. Here is an excerpt from my post:

Leo Casey and Pedro Noguera are both hypocrites; talking out of both sides of their mouths. Supporting charter proliferation, and at the same time spouting progressive BS denouncing privatization etc.-----anon. email comment on below

Netroots conference Dec. 19 at Pace

http://www.netrootsny.org/schedule

Privatize, We’re Watching You: Fighting Privatization UFT VP Leo Casey, Ken Bernstein

  Watching who? The theme should be: We are watching you... And not really doing anything about it.

 Or: We're making it look like we're watching you but really working with you - but don't tell our members.

They (NEA) explicitly embraced the notion that teachers should be responsible for student learning. - Rick Hess

This was posted on the NYCEdNews Listserve:
AFT local to authorize Minn. charters, as supported by AFT innovation fund; NEA supports merit pay and end to seniority protections for teachers. Rick  Hess (and I’m sure Bill Gates etc. approves.) NEA: seniority should only be a factor in teacher retention or assignment when all other factors are equal…   “The need for tenure is replaced by a peer review program that provides opportunities for improvement or, when improvement is lacking, ensures due process throughout dismissal."

-------------------------
Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on the right for important bits.

PEP: Same Old, Not Same Old

Updated: 12:30PM
Read Leonie's take: Last night's PEP meeting approving a further expansion of the DOE (Department of Eva) and Walcott's falling poll numbers

Occupy the DOE was out in full force at tonight's PEP Meeting despite attempts to keep the public away by holding the meeting in Queens. -----Gloria Brandman, GEM/ICE

What kind of public body has to meet about our school under armed guard?- Brian Jones

I have so much to report with video to go that I don't know where to start. I've spent a lot of time trying to put something together but will have to do it in multiple posts. The UFT other than getting some buses (a good thing that helped attendance) stayed under the radar with a few officials hanging out - they seem to back away when having to confront the Moskowitz machine.

See the video of the opening Mic check here or at you tube.

So what looked to many like just another PEP meeting where people get up and rail at/plead with the slugs on the Panel (except Patrick Sullivan and an occasional voice of independence from another borough) only to be ignored (which was the SAME OLD last night) the new factor was the combination of forces (mostly teachers with some parents) that constitute the "Occupy the DOE" movement which has been in existence for about 6 weeks.

Why go to PEP meetings when the outcome is predetermined? It is the one time a month where all the forces battling ed deform can get together in a setting where they can take the fight to the horse's mouth, often in front of the press. The PEP and the outrageous conduct of the puppets is an organizing tool to grow the movement. The 1% understands that and that is why they moved the meeting. I believe that did affect attendance but there is another opportunity every month.

Enormous police presence connected to fear of Occupy
This issue was addressed by Brian Jones in this video: http://youtu.be/yPiNqcKSDm4

Certainly the Occupy movement and the ODOE in particular has lead to a high degree of police presence and I spent much of the evening arguing with police over where I could be.

On one side of the auditorium, they actually set up gates to pen in the press and on the other side, where I spent much of the evening, not wanting to be penned in, one crowd control plain clothesman said, "Don't you know what a press box is," pointing to the 2 white boxes on the floor? "I've been covering these events for almost 10 years and this is the first time I saw a box on a floor."
"Things have changed since Occupy Wall Street," he said.
"So this is as much about containing the press as in controlling the audience," I said. He wouldn't respond. As we were talking, 2 cops came up with these barriers and penned me in. Jeez, the attention being paid to control, control, control. I spent some time just turning the camera on the cops themselves, which made them very nervous. (After the walkout with the group gathered outside holding a meeting, the cops stood almost arm to arm in front of the building as if to block re-entry but when I turned my camera on them, the moved out of the way - I have to say, that I have generally had friendly feelings towards cops, but since OWS some have turned nasty and intimidating and I'm not thinking positively - I told a bunch they are on the wrong side - I know they are only doing their jobs but there are ways of doing it without being nasty.)

When I went up the aisle later to get footage of Eva Moskowitz and her (all white) crew the same guy came over and told me to go back to my box, claiming there was a complaint about me. "She is a public figure and I have a right to cover her," I argued. "This is about showing favoritism."

There were some new rules with threats to remove people for shouting out. And there was a confrontation when they tried to remove Leia Petty and were shouted down (I'll have video up of this confrontation later).

Passionate voices from schools under occupation/Low Key Success
As usual, there was much eloquence from the schools themselves from teachers and parents while Success, knowing the outcome, only brought along a relatively few people.

See this revealing interview with 2 somewhat cagey parents who are reluctant at first to even admit where they live - which turns out to be Brownsville and not Bed-Stuy where the Brooklyn Success school is located. Eva can cast as wide net - or has to - to fill her schools. But when you spend $1.6 million on advertising, you do catch some fish.


http://youtu.be/rbGIAgpTEdw

There is some irony here when you notice these pics I took of Eva and her not exactly diversified crew.

If you look carefully in the back row (or back of the bus) you can see a few parents who were there to speak for Eva  – there is some irony when Black parents are being used to get Eva a school full of white kids with parents who are avoiding schools with Black children.)

Growth of Occupy DOE is Key
Some people measure growth in thousands but as I said at the meeting last night, I have been there from almost the beginning a decade ago when I was often one of few voices standing up challenging their policies. Then came the GEM years since 2009 when we tried to deal with closing schools and charter co-locos with a relatively small handful of people - and give credit to GEM for getting a lot of this started. While getting worn out, we also made loads of alliances towards building a movement of opposition. We also did a lot of performance art at these meetings.

These alliances  – working with NYCORE and Teachers Unite, with support from the traditional caucuses like ICE and TJC (which have not been as active as groups in this aspect of the movement - but then again, many key ICEers have been working full time with GEM) – have begun to blossom, especially when tied into the Occupy the DOE movement, where a coalition have been holding organizing meetings every Sunday afternoon. Alliances with various parent groups around the city when they come under attack have been fruitful. Eva's move into Cobble Hill has been a gold mine of amazing people - teachers and parents. The key will be whether these people remain active - so far in the past once the school-level battle was over, we saw no more of many people. Hopefully, the Occupy concept has mobilized a greater number of people. To me this is the key outcome so far but we have to wait and see.

A special shout-out to NYCORE which has brought a great number of young teachers to the table (they are meeting tonight at 6 at NYU and I bet there will be at least 50 people there.) If you check the video I posted of the Mic Check to start the meeting you will notice how many there are. And notice that these are teachers - young teachers - unafraid of going head to head with their ultimate boss, Dennis Walcott.

The closing down of Walcott's little shindig in October (Video of Occupy PEP), followed by the General Assembly meeting on the steps of Tweed (OWS Comes to the DOE: General Assembly on Steps of...) gave some legs to the growing movement.

So when I see hundreds of people shlepping to Queens I get optimistic. The Occupy movement seems to have given organizers a mechanism for moving and activating people.

I really love Eva (and you can see it is mutual) because she alienates so many people and really is at the fault line of how political influence dominates ed decision-making and is such a great organizer for us. With her is Jenny Sedlis, her PR person who has to do so much damage control (other charters hate Eva too) she is kept hopping all the time and is paid accordingly. Strangely, Jenny and I have  a nice relationship. Hard to explain how we can be on opposite sides and get along. I know after reading Michael's comment that PR people know how to play people. We had a long talk at last year's Gotham Party and I didn't see her as a phony. My philosphy is to not make things personal but focus in the political. But when I detect a phony I do make it personal (like I increasingly feel about Walcott). I told Jenny I would hire her to do PR at Ed Notes. But when will public schools get PR people at 6 figure salaries?

 When the crew walked out I followed them and filmed some of the outside stuff but went back in for a while. I left before the vote. Here are some pics. More later.

Noah Gotbaum from CEC 3 - Yes, Victor and Betsy

Check Out: State Supreme Court's overturning of Peter Lamphere's "unsatisfatory" rating that appears on the front page of this week's Riverdale Press: http://bit.ly/rXLLoV . The DOE wants to appeal and fire Peter, an outstanding math teacher (they have to go to the Philippines to get math teachers but want to fire a top level guy who was being persecuted politically). I castigated Walcott at the PEP on this last night.


Coverage:

See Lindsay Christ's Report: Panel Votes To Approve New Charter Schools - NY1.com 

New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/education/charter-school-approved-in-cobble-hill-brooklyn.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&gwh=809F59A531E1D9203C192A5AE6E2D0B5

NY1: http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/152547/panel-votes-to-approve-new-charter-schools

Fox 5: http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/charter-school-meeting-20111214

NY Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/vote-move-decide-fate-controversial-charter-school-locals-fuming-article-1.989384

Poll shows nyc residents approve of Occupy, disapprove of Chancellor Walcott http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/poll-negatives-nyc-schools-chancellor-article-1.991667

Gotham Schools: http://gothamschools.org/2011/12/14/other-schools-without-space-where-city-gave-moskowitz-a-home/

and a similar action in Chicago two days ago: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-met-cps-board-1215-20111215,0,5156489.story

Occupy DOE Uses Mic Check to Open the Meeting

The activist crowd keeps growing - considering where some of us started years ago - the DOE and Success Charter have been the best organizing forces we have as one outrageous action after another galvanizes more and more people for action. More later.

Video: Mic Check at Chicago Board Meeting/ Board Scurries Out

Last Update: Thursday, Dec, 15, 7:30AM

CTU President Karen Lewis said that she has no idea who organized the protest. "I didn't have anything to do with it, but I certainly enjoyed it," she said.

Interesting irony that Chicago and NYC hold meeting same day - except Chi is early AM to really keep people out. While the CTU may claim not to have organized this, they certainly played a much bigger role than the UFT did at the PEP in NYC (meaning almost none). See Chicago Tribune article below.

http://youtu.be/AoIsdXkVzVg

On December 14, 2011 Parents, community members, and educators took over the monthly Chicago Board of Education meeting. After years of not being heard, they stood up and took it back.

Script:

Parents, teachers, students and communities
reject CPS failed reforms.
In 2004,
then-CPS CEO Arne Duncan
introduced the first Renaissance Schools,
soldiering Daley's initiative
to close 60 failing schools
in order to open 100 new schools.
In 2006,
Duncan introduced turnarounds,
as an answer
to communities' outrage
over the displacement of students.
In turnarounds,
students stay in the building
(some of them)
while all adults
have to reapply for their jobs.
Since then,
communities have been thrown into a turmoil
every year
as school closings and turnarounds are announced.
Now Jean-Claude Brizard
continues this tradition,
proposing to turnaround 10 schools,
close 2,
phase out two
and shutter a few more.
But has this approach worked?
The answer is
[together] NO!
We now know
that only 18 percent
of the replacement schools
(those schools
that are located in buildings
where schools have been turned around or closed)
were considered high performing.
Of those schools,
more than half are selective enrollment
or magnet schools
run by CPS.
Nearly 40% are performance level 3,
the lowest rating CPS gives.
The Chicago Tribune reported
that since Renaissance 2010 was initiated,
1/3 of the schools perform better,
1/3 are the same
and 1/3 of the schools are worse
than traditional neighborhood schools.
Mr. Mayor, Mr. Vitale, Mr. Brizard
and the rest of the board;
you should be ashamed of yourselves.
The definition of insanity
is to repeatedly do the same thing
and expect a different result.
You have ignored community voice,
community proposals
and have operated schools
as a foreign institution in our neighborhoods.
You know how
to make good neighborhood schools;
they exist in CPS.
You don't care to.
These are our children, not yours.
Your job is not
to broker the responsibility
of running public schools.
It is a violation of the civil rights
of African American and Latino children
to deny them the same resources,
expectations and opportunity
as children from more affluent communities
within this city.
These are our children, not yours.
We are taking our fight to the mayor!
We are taking our fight to the courts!
We are taking our fight to the schools!
We are taking our fight to the streets!
These are our children,
not corporate product.
These are our children,
not corporate product.
These are our children,
not corporate product!

www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-crowds-gather-to-protest-cps-school-closures-and-turnaround-projects-20111214,0,10496.story

AFT/NEA: More Sellouts to Ed Deform

Leo Casey and Pedro Noguera are both hypocrites; talking out of both sides of their mouths. Supporting charter proliferation, and at the same time spouting progressive BS denouncing privatization etc.-----anon. email comment on below

Netroots conference Dec. 19 at Pace

http://www.netrootsny.org/schedule

Privatize, We’re Watching You: Fighting Privatization UFT VP Leo Casey, Ken Bernstein

 Watching who? The theme should be: We are watching you... And not really doing anything about it.

 Or: We're making it look like we're watching you but really working with you - but don't tell our members.

They (NEA) explicitly embraced the notion that teachers should be responsible for student learning. - Rick Hess

This was posted on the NYCEdNews Listserve:

AFT local to authorize Minn. charters, as supported by AFT innovation fund; NEA supports merit pay and end to seniority protections for teachers. Rick  Hess (and I’m sure Bill Gates etc. approves.) NEA: seniority should only be a factor in teacher retention or assignment when all other factors are equal…   “The need for tenure is replaced by a peer review program that provides opportunities for improvement or, when improvement is lacking, ensures due process throughout dismissal."

What else is there to say?
Note that these policies are not allowed to be vetted within undemocratically run locals like the UFT where if we had open discussions I'm betting the members would question these moves. But with in essence a one party system where every single one of the 89 seats on the UFT Ex Bd are endorsed by Unity Caucus, we have little opportunity to get member input as voices of opposition are shut out. Thus, I am often amused by some commentators on the NYCEDNEWS Listserve - Unity Caucus members who have been part of that process and supported it who rail against the DOE abuses but let the enablers in the UFT off the hook. I think I read while I was away in a post by a retired union official about Eric Nadelstern having PROMISED something and going back on his word. Oh, the outrage at that. But I have plenty of outrage at a union leadership that aided and abetted the very policies (see support for mayoral control for just one) that have undermined the public schools in this city - spending most of the past decade supporting the closing of schools. And a union leadership that vilified those who opposed and tried to raise issues at various venues. And plenty of outrage at the rank and file Unity people who know better go along - like the 800 Unity members that jeered the people who walked out on Bill Gates at the AFT convention in 2010. If we had a democratic union I'm sure the membership would reject this move by the AFT. But with Unity Caucus here in NYC still licking at Randi's boots and refusing to allow discussions over these policy moves from the top, there is little hope of change.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2011/12/im_skeptical_but_intrigued_by_aft_initiative_nea_report.html

I'm Skeptical But Intrigued By AFT Initiative, NEA Report

By Rick Hess on December 13, 2011 7:58 AM

Eva Puts Out "Done Deal" Leaflet in Advance of Tonight's Vote - Announces Meeting This Saturday

There's so much "demand" for a Moskowitz Charter in Cobble Hill Success has to drum up people to attend a meeting this Saturday for the new school even in advance of the vote tonight. Success has hired people to hand out these fliers as per this email:

A colleague of mine received the attached flyer on her way to work from someone who was handing them out.  She passed it along to me yesterday afternoon, so I am forwarding this to you all.

The PEP vote, which is scheduled for tonight, has not even happened yet. The flyer presents as if this charter school co-location has been approved.

Panel for Educational Puppets Meeting Dec. 14 - HELP STAMP OUT EVIL MOSOWITZ

Graphic by Mattew X. Curinga

Eva spends $1.5 million to pump up phony demand for her schools and then ends up with public school buildings built with public funding. 

They are organizing planes, trains and automobiles to send people from Harlem to tell people in Brooklyn why they need Success charter schools - at a meeting being held in Queens.

Here is an email I received from someone based in an HSA school on how they are organizing:

A conversation I overheard this morning between two HSA parents. They were talking about getting parents to attend the PEP mtg. One was explaining her reasoning (and I paraphrase): we need to go to this mtg to explain that our children need space. These other parents don't understand. They think we are after their space. We are not. It would be easier if the DOE just explained to or told these parents that their school was closing so they would not think we are taking their space. They would know that it is simply space available that we need/can have.
Interesting! Wonder what eve know about doe plans to close schools before the public knows? Or will they continue their MO of closing them for her..... Clearly the brainwashing of parents is continuing in lieu of the truth being told....

See a short 3 minute video from the press conference that took place on Thursday outside of Eva Moskowitz's Success Charter School Offices in Harlem. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpW4Etc5EM8

Recent Brooklyn Rail piece on D15 Co-location by Liza Featherstone:
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2011/12/local/report-card-here-comes-success

Here's a report of Cornel West visit to a school targeted by HSA from DNA info.

http://www.dnainfo.com/20111205/harlem/cornel-west-vows-fight-harlem-school-closures 

From Occupy DOE:

The Panel for Educational Puppets (sorry, Policy!) is meeting this Wednesday at 6PM at Newtown High School in Queens to decide on a number of charter co-locations into existing public schools. Occupy the DOE believes that the PEP is illegitimate, undemocratic and should not be empowered to make decisions affecting public school students, parents and workers. Occupy the DOE also believes that charter co-locations create "separate and unequal" educational institutions in this city. We believe in equal public education for ALL students.

The Department of Education is literally RUNNING SCARED and undemocratically switched the December PEP meeting from Manhattan to Queens, despite the fact that no Queens schools are being discussed. The DOE also recently set up new permitting laws for any political activity happening on their steps, forced participants in the October PEP to submit comment cards instead of allowing parents real voices in the meeting (don't worry, we shut it down!), and at the November PEP, gave out headphones to audience members to make sure participants could shut out the terrifying sound of democracy. 

What will they do next? What will WE do next? 

We need YOU to OCCUPY the PEP this Wednesday! 

Be there by 5:30PM, we don't want to start the meeting without you...

GETTING THERE

1. The Panel for Educational Puppets will take place in the auditorium of Newtown High School, 48-01 90th Street, Queens, NY, 11373. 

2. Get on the BUS! Occupy the DOE requested that the UFT provide buses to those from Brooklyn who would like to attend. They will leave at 4PM from UFT Brooklyn Headquarters on 335 Adams Street. You can get on this bus by filling out this form. There will also be buses leaving from District 15. Email misskellz@gmail.com for more information.

3. . Drive there! If you have extra room in your car, that means you have space to bring friends, coworkers, kids...

4.  Find subway directions here. 

WHAT TO BRING

1. Your voice! Everyone should plan to sign-up when entering to speak your mind. If you think the allotted 2 minutes isn't enough, we encourage you to use the people's microphone to continue speaking. 

2. Signs, banners, photographs! The PEP may not care about our voice but the people do! Lets let the PEP know how outnumbered they really are. 

3. A sock (yep, you read that right, A SOCK!)

WHAT ELSE...

1. Look for educational opportunities before, after and during the meeting.  Email e.h.bell@gmail.com if you are interested in doing a testimonial about why you are at the PEP. We will do our best to compile these.  

2. This will be one of many occupations of the PEP. If you would like to be part of the planning of these in the future, please come to Occupy the DOE meetings every Sunday @3PM at 60 Wall Street. Next week we will be discussing how to stop the proposed school closings. Join us!

Join the Peeps at the PEP

Stand up for Public Schools

Tell the Panel for Educational Policy 

NO CHARTER CO-LOCATIONS IN OUR SCHOOLS!

When parents, teachers, and students from Brooklyn rallied to save their schools, what did the NYC Department of Education do?

They moved December’s Panel for Educational Policy to QUEENS!

LET’S SHOW THE DOE THAT WE WON’T BE DISSUADED BY THEIR DIRTY TRICKS!

Join parents, teachers, and students from Brooklyn and around the city at the 

Panel for Educational Policy 

Wednesday, December 14, 2011 

6pm 

Newtown High School

48-01 90th Street, Queens NY

JOIN THE MOVEMENT! HELP PLAN WHAT WE WILL DO AT THE PEP!

Occupy the Department of Education meets every Sunday

Occupy the PEP

The Atrium

60 Wall Street

OCCUPY THE 

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION!

The Fight for Quality Public Education for the 99%

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Judge Overturns Arbitrary Unsatisfactory Rating for Bronx Science Teacher Peter Lamphere

Read closely to see how the DOE kept persecuting Peter even after Reidy stopped contesting the U. What does that tell everyone about their interest in keeping quality teachers, especially in areas of need like math where they allowed the persecution of the entire math department.

Also note the comment from Mark Kagen who happens to have a sister on the US Supreme Court.
-------------
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 
Date:  Monday, December 12, 2011    
Contact:  Peter Lamphere, peter.lamphere@gmail.com, 917-969-5658
 
Judge Overturns Arbitrary Unsatisfactory Rating for Bronx Science Teacher
 
In an oral bench decision Wednesday, December 7th, New York State Supreme Court Justice Paul Feinman granted the petition to overturn a 2009 Unsatisfactory rating for Peter Lamphere, former math teacher and UFT chapter leader at the Bronx High School of Science.  The decision is a small step in restoring some of the damage done to the careers of numerous teachers at the prestigious Bronx school, where a deteriorating relationship between Principal Valerie Reidy and faculty has dramatically increased staff turnover accompanied by a decline in the school's national ranking (New York Magazine, December 12, 2011, New York Times, September 15, 2011, Daily News, March 29, 2011, attached).   

The decision rejects the Department of Education's attempt to ignore scrutiny of Principal Reidy's administrative actions. The DOE disregarded a fact finding ruling by an independent arbitrator last April upholding claims of harassment by 20 math teachers at the school, including Lamphere (New York Times, April 28, 2010). Even after Valerie Reidy abandoned the 2009 Unsatisfactory rating by refusing to contest Lamphere's administrative appeal, the DOE arbitrarily upheld the rating. 

"This is an alert to the Department of Education that they need to examine more closely what's happening at Bronx Science," was Lamphere's first response to the news.  "It's outrageous that they have chosen to look the other way while the school adminstration at Bronx Science has undermined the learning environment at what should be one of the crown jewels of the city's educational system."

Lynne Winderbaum, former UFT High School District Representative, commented: "It is a shame that teachers have to use the court system to get fairness. But justice will be done whenever the abusive tactics of principals such as Valerie Reidy are exposed to an unbiased hearing.

Mark Kagan, who voluntary transferred from Bronx Science as part of the exodus of 40% of the Social Studies faculty this year, added, "It was understood at Bronx Science that Valerie Reidy used U-ratings and denials of tenure for non-pedagogical reasons. I'm glad to see that the court saw this clearly. But it's too bad for the students that Peter and other good teachers were forced out of Bronx Science."

Former Bronx Science teacher Mark Sadok said, "I am delighted to hear the news, as it not only vindicates Lamphere, but also paves the way for a return to teaching for those of us whose dismissals were based on observations that violated the UFT-DOE contract." 

Megan Behrent, of the activist group Teachers' Unite, pointed out how this case "exposes the way teacher evaluations are used for political rather than professional reasons and how the 'the bad teacher' narrative provides cover for retaliation against activists. It also shows why tenure is so important. Without tenure, this victory would never have happened as Lamphere would have been dismissed without any due process at all."

Brian Jones, activist with the Grassroots Education Movement, stated that "Peter Lamphere is a dedicated and highly intelligent educator; and yes, he's also a union activist. Unfortunately the national campaign to scapegoat and punish teachers has meant that the former fact mattered less than the latter. I'm glad to see that Peter received some small measure of justice. Let's hope that this reversal reverberates through the halls of power and gives our highest officials reason for pause.

Jonathan Halabi, chapter leader of neighboring High School for American Studies, commented that "This unjustified U-rating should have been overturned much earlier.  Today's decision shows that the DOE's current internal hearings and appeals are unfair and rigged against the employee. New Action/UFT remains deeply concerned by the problem of abusive administrators.  A victory, especially by a chapter leader who had been targeted for abuse, is a victory for all of us. "

Another arbitrary U-rating for Lamphere, from 2008, remains the subject of another case before Judge Paul Wooten, with a decision expected soon. But, regardless of the outcome of this individual case, the recommendations of the independent arbitrator's 2010 fact-finding report will still not have been implemented, and the struggle to replace the current administration at Bronx Science with one that can work together with Bronx Science teachers to rebuild a positive environment and a commitment to educational excellence has a long way to go.

Additional Contacts: 

Mark Sadok - msadok@verizon.net

Lynne Winderbaum – lynwindy@hotmail.com

Megan Behrent - ebehrent@gmail.com

Cheers,
Norm Scott

Twitter: normscott1

Education Notes
ednotesonline.blogspot.com

Grassroots Education Movement
gemnyc.org

Education columnist, The Wave
www.rockawave.com

nycfirst robotics
normsrobotics.blogspot.com

Sent from my BlackBerry

Countering Naked Ed Deform

Subj: Brooklyn Success hearing at PS 59K Dec. 6, 2011
This is the PTA president of PS 59 in D 14 speaking against the co-location of another Brooklyn Success Academy.  PS 59K is a beautiful building with a school population that has not been given the resources it needs to serve the neighborhood's children.  The school's request to expand to grade 8 was denied by the DOE so it could give the space to Eva Moskowitz.  This school has always served special needs children in many capacities.  I went there as a child from 3-6 grade and was supported by the visually handicapped program.   We had one of the few African American teachers in the district in the 1960s. Her name was Mrs. Anderson and she was magnificent.  This school has a long history in District 14 as you will hear the President say.  I spoke with other people who also went to this school and now their children and grandchildren are going there.  They have stayed in the neighborhood and feel betrayed and angry that Eva can waltz into our building.  She will eventually take over as she has done in Harlem and another neighborhood will lose their school and it's heritage. Please come out to the PEP meeting on Wednesday to let them know that Brooklyn does not need or want Eva and her success Academies.
 
http://youtu.be/jAT6Y9YRVeM
 
Cheers,
Norm Scott

Twitter: normscott1

Education Notes
ednotesonline.blogspot.com

Grassroots Education Movement
gemnyc.org

Education columnist, The Wave
www.rockawave.com

nycfirst robotics
normsrobotics.blogspot.com

Sent from my BlackBerry

Video: NYC Parents Want Moskowitz Success Charters OUT of Their Schools plus Brooklyn Rail Article by Parent

It's our last day straddling major earthquake fault lines. Trying not to jump up and down.
----------------
GEM/Real Reform Studio's Darren Marelli (who did the awesome editing of The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman) made a short 3 minute video from the press conference that took place on Thursday outside of Eva Moskowitz's Success Charter School Offices in Harlem. 
"NYC Public School Parents Want Success Charter Network Out Of Their Schools."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpW4Etc5EM8

-----------
When dynamic author/public school parents see it in front of their eyes the signs are there that Eva and the ed deformers have pushed too far. Word to SC PR person Jenny Sedlis - hope you are having fun trying to put these fires out.

The Brooklyn Rail - from author Lisa Featherstone to NYCEdNews listserve:

Lots of informed discussion on this list of Success Academy coming to Cobble Hill. Here's my 2 cents in my latest Brooklyn Rail column. Hope folks find it useful. Please circulate if you see fit.

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2011/12/local/report-card-here-comes-success

Liza Featherstone

__._,_.___
REPORT CARD
Here Comes Success
by Liza Featherstone

Much of Brooklyn's school District 15—which includes Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, and Red Hook—is a comfortable, brownstone-studded idyll, with schools so popular that they drive up real estate values and boast long waiting lists. Many of the district's parents are privileged and have, commendably, used their advantages to improve their local public schools, insulating them from the budget cuts that devastate the rest of the borough. But an escalating charter school battle serves as a jarring reminder that even District 15 parents are still only the 99%—and that it's the 1% that runs the show.

Education entrepreneur and former city councilwoman Eva Moskowitz plans to open a new branch of her Success Academies in the district, as well as one in Bed-Stuy. She already operates several other schools, including in Harlem, the Bronx, and the Upper West Side. In Cobble Hill, the unlucky District 15 neighborhood in her sights, she's not welcome. A survey conducted by Moskowitz's own organization found that only five percent of respondents in District 15 would consider sending their children to such a school. Dissenters besieged a November information session on Success, as well as a hearing at the proposed Baltic Avenue site. Members of the Panel on Educational Policy (PEP) have already received more than 450 e-mails opposing Success Cobble Hill.

As in most such fights in New York City, the opposition focuses on the use of physical space. That's understandable, given the research showing that traditional public schools sharing buildings with charters tend to suffer. There are already three schools in the building in which the Department of Education proposes to install Success Cobble Hill. Community leaders say that an early childhood center offering pre-K and kindergarten would be a better use of the building's limited extra space, given the dearth of public pre-K in Brooklyn and the importance of early childhood education. It's New York City, and in education as in all areas of life, we're obsessed with our scarce, expensive space. But in these real estate scuffles, it's easy to lose sight of larger reasons we should fear the spread of Success Charter, and organizations like it, throughout Brooklyn.

Almost everyone on the Success board of directors hails from hedge funds and private equity firms. Why would we want to put the same people whose greed critically injured our economy in charge of educating our children? "Report Card" would not hire people lacking impulse control, with a demonstrated penchant for demented risk-taking, to watch our child, even for a few hours. Yet two members of Success Academy's board are partners in Gotham Capital, a hedge fund financed mostly by notorious junk bond trader Michael Milken. The rest of the gang is deeply implicated in the reckless financial antics that have mired Brooklyn neighborhoods in foreclosures and unemployment. The hedge fund class has a track record of failure and destruction, and its very existence is a sign of a society rotting from the top. Does anyone really want the folks who brought us the Great Recession to be in charge of anything that matters?

And what about the values that the hedge fund crowd models for our kids? What could be worse? We discourage—sometimes even forbid—our own children from playing with selfish bullies. Yet our leaders are happy to place such people in charge of our kids' education.

In District 15, parents are active in running the schools. They show up to PTA meetings. They help out in the classroom. When they see programs missing that they want for their kids—whether it's sustainability or French—they agitate. Sometimes they even show up and create those programs through their own volunteer labor. When parents in these neighborhoods disagree with decisions made by teachers or principals, they have a voice. When they disagree with a city policy affecting their school, many of them will complain to the Community Education Council or even the Department of Education itself—using what's left of our democratic process to appeal.

At Success Academies, by contrast, the 1% runs the schools for the 99%. But public schools are not supposed to be charities. In fact, in the 19th century, the move away from charity schools, toward a publicly funded, publicly controlled system, was a significant step toward a more democratic society. That's progress we're rushing to undo in our own century. A public school is not supposed to use the generously donated largesse of the rich to benefit a handful at the expense of the many; rather, the public school system is supposed to use our resources as a body politic to educate everyone.

That is the crucial point we miss when we redefine quality public education as a marvelous favor bestowed by the elite upon a lucky few. Eva Moskowitz need not care if her charters take space from public schools or take children—and therefore funding—from them. In District 15, Success Cobble Hill could deal a severe body blow to excellent schools already dealing with severe budget cuts—but Moskowitz is not in the business of worrying about that. She has no reason to be concerned that her schools sometimes kick out underperforming, ill-behaved, or special needs children. She does not need to figure out how to educate the kids who aren't welcome in her schools, or whose schools are made intolerable by sharing space with too many others. She doesn't have to worry about the effect of Success Academies on the system as a whole. She's in the business of philanthropy, which is all about allowing the 1% to get credit for helping the less fortunate, even as it creates winners and losers, and forces recipients to bay for the crumbs. Her job is to make her schools look good, and she has no reason to care how she hurts other schools—and many children—in the process.

Success Charter, bringing the wisdom of the private sector to public education, spends staggering sums, not on educating children, but on marketing. Our neighborhoods are blanketed in slick mailings and billboards advertising Moskowitz products. Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News has reported that in 2009 – 2010, Success spent $1.6 million on such marketing. That means the chain spent $1300 per child to lure kids—and therefore money—from other public schools. These marketing blitzkriegs escalate competition and give Success an edge over traditional schools in the war for middle-class parents, an advantage not based on better performance but on better advertising. When we allow Success into our neighborhoods, then, we're allowing our own tax dollars to subsidize an organization that will then spend heavily to undermine our public schools. Success is not an organization that exists to further the public good, but to perpetuate itself, to build its own brand and that of its creator.

Even though Success Academies take public money and use public space, the public has little oversight over how the organization spends its money. We also have little say in how its schools share public space, whether they help or hurt our communities, whether they operate in our neighborhoods at all, or how they decide which children to educate. Says Patrick Sullivan, the Manhattan borough president's appointee to the Panel for Education Policy, "I don't think most people understand the importance of the governance issue."

The worst aspect of the D.O.E.'s plan to bring Success Academy to Brooklyn is that there may be little that anyone—parents, teachers, students—can do to stop it.

There will be a public discussion before the PEP votes on it on December 14, though the D.O.E. is doing its level best to ensure that dissenting Brooklyn families—and Occupy D.O.E. activists—stay home that night. That PEP meeting was originally supposed to take place at the High School of Fashion Industries, which is in Chelsea, easily reached from all over the city. At the end of November, the D.O.E. announced that the meeting would be held, not in Manhattan, but in Corona, Queens. The new location, at Newtown High School, takes nearly an hour, with several train changes, to reach from Cobble Hill. The D.O.E.'s move evokes the World Trade Organization's effort to avoid anti-globalization protesters by moving its meetings to Doha. (Apologies to Corona readers for the comparison but "Report Card" is sure they would feel the same about, say, Cobble Hill.) Sullivan describes the move as "very unusual …I've never seen them move [the PEP meeting] to a less accessible location like this."

D.O.E. officials say that the High School of Fashion Industries' auditorium was undergoing a renovation, which would not be finished in time for the PEP meeting. They've also said that the Corona location will make it easier for Queens parents to comment on proposals affecting schools in Queens. The funny part is, there are no such proposals on the agenda.

As "Report Card" has pointed out (see "Our Fake School Board," Sept. 2011), the majority of PEP appointees work for the mayor, and they already know how they're voting—with the mayor. Mayor 1% wants Success Academies to expand and prosper; for obvious reasons, he sees nothing wrong with the very wealthy running our lives. After all, Bloomberg's political career is based on the slightly depraved, medieval notion that it's okay for one of the richest people in the city to be the mayor.

But it's still worth dragging ourselves to Corona for the PEP meeting. If our opinions meant nothing at all, Bloomberg and Walcott wouldn't be so eager to stifle them. We need to have a public discussion about who runs our schools, and to demand a more democratic kind of school reform, one that begins with families having a say. Says Sullivan, the father of two public school students and often the lone voice of dissent on the PEP, "When we cede control of our children's education we lose respect, dignity, and ultimately our ability to influence anything else."

Print
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Liza Featherstone is a writer who lives in Clinton Hill. Her son attends kindergarten in District 15.
 
Cheers,
Norm Scott

Twitter: normscott1

Education Notes
ednotesonline.blogspot.com

Grassroots Education Movement
gemnyc.org

Education columnist, The Wave
www.rockawave.com

nycfirst robotics
normsrobotics.blogspot.com

Sent from my BlackBerry

Why Are The Rich So Interested in Public School Reform by Judith Warner From Time INC!

This was sent along by Mark Naison with this comment:
She calls School Reform "The Rich's Feel Good Hobby!"

My guess is these articles are appearing to try to get on the train before the counter reaction to ed deform gathers full steam.

-------------------
EDUCATION
Why Are the Rich So Interested in Public-School Reform?
They want to remake America's students in their own high-achieving image, but they're overlooking socioeconomics
By JUDITH WARNER | @judithwarner | December 9, 2011 |
5

It was perhaps inevitable that the political moment that has given birth to the Occupy movement, pitting Main Street against Wall Street and the 99% against the financial elite, would eventually succeed in making some chinks in the armor of the 1%'s favorite feel-good hobby: the school reform movement.

It's been a good decade now that the direction of school reform has been greatly influenced by a number of highly effective Master (and Mistress) of the Universe types: men and women like Princeton grad Wendy Kopp, the founder of the Teach for America program, her husband, Harvard graduate Richard Barth, who heads up the charter school Knowledge Is Power Program, the hard-charging former D.C. schools chancellor (and Cornell and Harvard grad) Michelle Rhee and the many hedge fund founders who are now investing significant resources in the cause of expanding charter schools. Excoriating the state of America's union-protected teaching profession and allegedly ossified education schools, they've prided themselves upon attracting "the best and the brightest" to the education reform cause, whether by luring recent top college graduates into challenging classrooms or by seducing Harvard Business School or McKinsey-trained numbers-crunchers away from Wall Street to newly lucrative executive positions in educationally themed social entrepreneurship.

The chief promise of their brand of reform — the results of which have been mixed, at best — seems to be that they can remake America's students in their own high-achieving image. By evaluating all students according to the same sort of testable rubrics that, when aced, propelled the reformers into the Ivy League and beyond, society's winners seem to believe they can inspire and guide society's losers, inoculating them against failure with their own habits of success, and forever disproving the depressingly fatalistic '70s-style liberal idea that things like poverty and poor health care and hunger and a chaotic family life can, indeed, condemn children to school failure.

And yet as schools scramble to keep up with these narrow demands, voices are emerging to suggest that perhaps the rubric-obsessed school reform game, as it's been played in the Bush and Obama years and funded and dressed-up by the well-heeled Organization Kids, is itself perhaps due for a philosophical shake-up.

(MORE: Andrew J. Rotherham: Cheating on the Hard Work of School Reform)

Earlier this year, S. Paul Reville, the Massachusetts Secretary of Education, blogged in Education Week that reformers need now to think beyond the numbers and "admit that closing achievement gaps is not as simple as adopting a set of standards, accountability and instructional improvement strategies." In Massachusetts, he wrote, "We have set the nation's highest standards, been tough on accountability and invested billions in building school capacity, yet we still see a very strong correlation between socioeconomic background and educational achievement and attainment. It is now clear that unless and until we make a more active effort to mitigate the impediments to learning that are commonly associated with poverty, we will still be faced with large numbers of children who are either unable to come to school or so distracted as not to be able to be attentive and supply effort when they get there." Reville called for "wraparound services" that would allow schools to provide students with a "healthy platform" from which they could begin to work on learning.

Diane Ravitch, the education policy specialist and reformed charter school advocate, made the same argument in a trenchant New York Review of Books article this fall, where she enumerated the many reasons that school reform as we've come to know it needs to be called into question. For one thing, like so much else "the best and the brightest" have brought us in recent years, many of the reform movement's results don't stand up to scrutiny. After reviewing the data, she writes: "Most research studies agree that charter schools are, on average, no more successful than regular public schools; that evaluating teachers on the basis of their students' test scores is fraught with inaccuracy and promotes narrowing of the curriculum to only the subjects tested, encouraging some districts to drop the arts or other nontested subjects; and that the strategy of closing schools disrupts communities without necessarily producing better schools."

Striking a serious blow to the contention that it's bad teaching — not bad luck in life — that makes some American students perform much worse than others (and all of them much worse than students in other countries), Ravitch noted that on a recent international test, the Program for International Student Assessment, "American schools in which fewer than 10% of the students were poor outperformed the schools of Finland, Japan and Korea. Even when as many as 25% of the students were poor, American schools performed as well as the top-scoring nations. As the proportion of poor students rises, the scores of U.S. schools drop."

In other words, more than good teachers, more than targeted testing, more than careful calibrations of performance measures and metrics that can standardize and quantify every aspect of learning, it's the messy business of life — where a child comes from and what he or she goes home to at the end of the day — that really determines success in school. This message flies in the face of the pull-yourself-up-by-your-boostrap individualism, the extreme emphasis on private (read: teacher) responsibility that has animated the school reform movement in recent years. It demands a complete rethinking now of what our public response to the perennial crisis of public education in America should be.

(MORE: Warner: Overmedicating Foster Kids: The Cost of Skimping on Care)

Fortunately, there are some programs in place that have had real success in providing "wraparound services" that help children come to school ready to learn. In Northern California, for example, the Making Waves Foundation has for decades run a program providing tutoring, academic advising, college counseling, after school enrichment programs, mental health services, nutritional food, transportation and parent education to more than a thousand low-income children, selected by lottery. In Cincinnati, where more than 70% of children live in low-income households, a program called the Strive Partnership coordinates services and support for school children that include mentoring, health care, arts programs, quality preschool and financial aid for college — and the result, according to a new report from the independent think tank Education Sector, is that, over the last four years, Cincinnati schools have made greater gains than any other urban district in Ohio and have had the most success in reducing the percentage of its students who score at the very bottom on achievement tests.

The Obama Administration hasn't been blind to these initiatives, and has committed $40 million to a new Promise Neighborhoods program that seeks to link family support services to schools. But, the Education Sector report notes, that initiative is unlikely to receive the $150 million the Administration requested for 2012, given that its 2011 budget request of $210 million was cut down to $30 million.

Thinking structurally about social ills, rejecting excessive individualism for community-based, it-takes-a-village-style responsibility, has been out of favor in America for a long time. In education reform, what's been in style instead is vilifying teachers and their unions. For some schools, making the grade has meant cooking the books to show results. Let's hope that the time to reform this business-modeled mindset has finally come.

Warner, a former contributing columnist for the New York Times, is the author, most recently, of We've Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication. The views expressed are her own.

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2011/12/09/why-are-the-rich-so-interested-in-public-school-reform/#ixzz1gA8HtNZs

Cheers,
Norm Scott

Twitter: normscott1

Education Notes
ednotesonline.blogspot.com

Grassroots Education Movement
gemnyc.org

Education columnist, The Wave
www.rockawave.com

nycfirst robotics
normsrobotics.blogspot.com

Sent from my BlackBerry

Norm in The Wave: The Big Lie(s)

The Big Lie(s) and Where Bob Turner Stands
by Norm Scott
Dec. 9, 2011

Well over a decade ago they were branded as radical education reformers looking to change the way education is delivered. They were embraced by both those on the right who had been attacking public schools as a monopoly and liberals on the left who had become frustrated at the lack of progress. As an experienced educator I know from day one that they were tossing around a load of crap - no real reforms but a political ideology based on making changes that would in the long run reduce the costs of education, mainly from the largest source - the labor factor - ergo, teacher salaries. I could never manage to even use the term "reformer" and indeed started using quotes around the word until I came up with the term "education deformer" because that is what they were doing - deforming education.

The mantra of the Education Deformer
Did you know that the reason almost a quarter of the children in this nation are poor is because we have a lousy educational system? And why do we have a lousy educational system? Because we have lousy schools. And why to we have lousy schools? Because we have lousy teachers. Research shows we are told - though the actual research is rarely sited - that the biggest in school factor is not high class sizes or the principal or the number of children struggling with academics or family problems or the lack of resources provided by the people running the system – but the teacher. And didn't you know that the reason we have so many lousy teachers is because the teacher unions prevent the removal of so-called lousy teachers. But, oh, we really do love most of our teachers but if only we could remove those few bad apples. And in order to do that we have to eliminate the unions - or at the very least take away their collective bargaining rights and maybe even their ability to recruit new members (wink, wink: so we can weaken the ability of the only organize any opposition to turning the billions of dollars of public school funding over to private hands).

And we need school choice (charters) since only competition and free enterprise can work. Hey, maybe we can do the same with the police and fire departments - set up competing agencies in some higher crime and higher fire neighborhoods - so that when there is a fire people can decide whether to call 911 or 912.

Of course the only way we can accomplish any of the above is by turning over entire school systems into the hands of one person – usually the mayor – and thus removing any vestige of democratic governing or control over the billions of dollars that go into the education budget. Even better if he happens to be a billionaire who can buy the press, politicians (see Christine Quinn, et al.), and many local community organizations that might put up opposition.

And there's another big lie. That the above is a Republican attack on the public education when in fact just about every Democratic politician, led by the Commander-in-Chief and his Education Secretary attack dog, Arne Duncan who was appointed after 7 years of failure leading the Chicago school system down the road to failure following the very same ed deform policies. Did Obama, who has out-Bushed Bush on ed deform, live in Chicago, which led the way with ed deform starting in 1994, with blinders on? My answer is NOT. In fact, Obama has proven himself to be corporate all the way in so many ways that the charges he is a socialist is absurd.

So where does our local Congressman Bob Turner stand on ed deform? As I pointed out in my Nov. 25 column, Turner is a free enterprise guy. You know the type. If Eva Moskowitz' Success Charter spends $1.5 million in advertising – $1300 per child they manage to recruit and then complain that the public money they get and the free space in pubic schools is not enough – while the local public school may not even have a working copy machine – that is the free enterprise system. When the day comes that the most capable students are lured out of the local public school, leaving an underfinanced hulk with struggling students and the poorest parents, thus leading to that school being closed and parents having only a Moskowitz-run school to go to – unless they are special ed or from non-English speaking families which Eva doesn't take into her schools – there is the free enterprise system at work for you with a privately controlled monopoly replacing the supposed monopoly that had been under public control.

And speaking of Turner, he wrote a piece in The Nov. 18 edition of The Wave extolling his support for veterans. Paul Krugman wrote a column in the Times on November 13 about a proposal from Mitt Romney (whom Turner will support if he is the Republican nominee) to privatize the Veteran's Health Administration (VHA) by offering vouchers.

Krugman writes:

American health care is remarkably diverse. In terms of how care is paid for and delivered, many of us effectively live in Canada, some live in Switzerland, some live in Britain, and some live in the unregulated market of conservative dreams. One result of this diversity is that we have plenty of home-grown evidence about what works and what doesn’t. Naturally, then, politicians — Republicans in particular — are determined to scrap what works and promote what doesn’t. And that brings me to Mitt Romney’s latest really bad idea, unveiled on Veterans Day: to partially privatize the Veterans Health Administration (V.H.A.). What Mr. Romney and everyone else should know is that the V.H.A. is a huge policy success story, which offers important lessons for future health reform. Many people still have an image of veterans’ health care based on the terrible state of the system two decades ago. Under the Clinton administration, however, the V.H.A. was overhauled, and achieved a remarkable combination of rising quality and successful cost control. Multiple surveys have found the V.H.A. providing better care than most Americans receive, even as the agency has held cost increases well below those facing Medicare and private insurers. Furthermore, the V.H.A. has led the way in cost-saving innovation, especially the use of electronic medical records.

I say this all the time about politicians and union leaders: watch what they do, not what they say.
Norm blogs at: http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/