Monday's PEP: Patrick Sullivan Reports on...

.....Middle Schools Initiative, School Safety & Cell Phone Ban

at the NYC Public School Parent Blog

Let's reform middle school with more Lead Teachers and professional development but ignore recommendations to reduce class size. Of course, that fits into the "it was the teachers fault all along" theme of the BloomKlein administration. Just more of "let's make it look like we're trying to solve the problem rather than actually finding solutions that will work."

Patrick provides a unique perspective as the only truly independent member of the PEP - Panel for Educational Policy (BloomKlein's bogus replacement for the old Board of Education) - who can report from the inside.


NYC Teaching Fellow and author Dan Brown explodes the Joel Klein and his Tweedledee approach in his post "Solving the Middle School Mystery" at the Huffington Post.

Aug. 14, 2007

Why do standardized test scores drop -- sharply, in many cases -- when students hit middle school?

Today, The New York Times reported on NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's answer to the $64,000 question of education:

"Generally speaking, those in elementary school do what you tell them to do. And I think it's also true by the time they get to high school, they don't. It's in those middle years where they transfer from one to another."

He went on to present a maddeningly misguided and half-hearted plan of dedicating $5 million toward 50-performing New York City middle schools.

The mayor of New York City's distillation of our urban education crisis is baffling and offensive. Firstly, how can he be so sure that "what you're telling them to do" is actually in their best interest? Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, NYC elementary schools have fixated on testing, testing, testing. Today's middle school students have lived with counterproductive mania for this their entire scholastic lives.

Urban kids in sixth and seventh grade are hip to the fact that the test preparation craze that has dominated their years in school is actually a superficial, bureaucratic charade that has nothing to do with their own personal futures. An alarming number of sixth graders taught English Language Arts by my wife in the Bronx pointedly told her last January: "The test is over. I'm done." Scores are dropping now because those children have been failed repeatedly since Day One, and their foundation of enduring skills and understandings was never built in the interest of manufacturing short-end bumps on test score graphs.

Rather than making school a nurturing and personal experience, kids, as early as kindergarten, are jammed into overcrowded classrooms, denied support services like fundamental skills tutoring, denied much-needed counseling, and are supervised by administrators more worried about test scores than their real needs. It's no wonder that they "stop doing what you tell them to do," as the mayor says. Bloomberg is blaming the victims here. (And also, who is the "you" that Bloomberg mentions? Does "you" contain the families of the Bronx, for example? It doesn't seem so.)

Students don't spontaneously combust in middle school. When a student's "achievement" on the line graph tumbles, something undetected has been wrong for a long time. Solving the mystery of the middle school decline will require a genuine look at dedicating real resources to truly support every student -- from birth through high school graduation day.

Bloomberg shows little interest in such a difficult, expensive yet crucial undertaking. The New York Times reports:

"But the mayor shied away from adopting the most far-ranging changes recommended in the reports, like significantly reducing class sizes, creating a special middle school academy to train teachers about early adolescence, and removing police officers from city schools to create a more welcoming atmosphere."

How will voiceless public school students get real solutions, not stunts, from their elected leaders?

Dan Brown is a writer and teacher in New York City. His memoir of his first year teaching, The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle, is being released this month by Arcade Publishing.

The More Things Change….

Updated (thanks to DB for finding typos.)
I wrote this column for the upcoming special edition on education in The Wave due out August 24.

So this email comes in from Wave editor Howie Schwach asking for a column for the Wave’s “Back to School” special edition. Back to School? It’s not even the middle of August. And then I remembered - teachers have to go back in August. Two days before Labor Day. Oh, The humanity!

Some have told me of all the indignities of the 2005 contract this may be the worst. Those daye last week before school began and coming back on Labor Day are gone. Some people now feel they have to go in two days before the two days to set up their rooms, as the other two days will be used for professional development, which obviously, every teacher need globs of. The little butterflies that used to start to gnaw away in mid August now show up a week early and grow bigger as the month goes by till they turn into dragons. (By the way, the only way to conquer these dragons is Twinkies, lots of them.)

Well, off to the task at hand. Howie wanted something on how schools are opening without supervision from districts or regions or whatever. All new school years begin with a review of old material. So let’s see what you remember. There will be a high stakes test at the end of this column where your car will be confiscated if you don’t pass, so pay attention kiddies.

In 2002, new Mayor Michael Bloomberg led a charge to give total control of the system to the mayor, a practice that has been growing nationally. This effort was supported by the UFT. Joel Klein, a lawyer without any experience as an educator (other than a supposed 6 month teaching stint in the late 60’s when the draft board was breathing down his neck – my reason for getting into teaching too) was appointed Chancellor joining the national trend to choose non-educators to head large urban school systems. The smell was in the air: Don’t trust educators to make basic decisions about education. What’s next? Having bureaucrats at HMO’s make medical decisions?

In a major move, BloomKlein changed the name from the BOE to the DOE. There was no more BOE. This was replaced by the PEP (Panel for Educational Policy – mostly appointed by the Mayor). In a major reorganization, all districts were combined into 10 regions, some even crossing boroughs. The special ed district was kept intact. All power emanated centrally.

The result? Disaster! Disaster beyond anyone’s imagination as teachers and parents were totally shut out of the system (previously they had been only 90% shut out but it was by people supposedly trained to some extent as educators) no matter how bizarre the decisions coming down from central. I won’t go into the gory details since they require a multi-volume book. Let’s just say experience as an educator didn’t count. And the Klein lawyer/MBA whiz kids types were now in charge. Massive changes in curricula and teaching methods were forced down everyone’s throat as the baby was thrown out with the bath water. Even great ideas were mangled in translation. I won’t even get into the immense amounts of money that was thrown down the tubes as privateers flocked to the DOE. To sum up: almost universal incompetence as everything they touched turned to doo-doo.

Witness the latest exercise: the implementation and follow-through of the Kahil Gibran International Academy with the predicted resignation of the respected educator Debbie Almontaser, who had run interfaith healing meetings after 9/11 and the appointment of a Jewish successor – to run an Arabic language school. We won’t even get into the discussion of whether such schools should exist. But for those people out there who like to jump on anything related to Arabic or Muslims (i.e., the NY Post), someone should check out what’s been going on in Williamsburg for the past 35 years where there have been bi-lingual Yiddish classes in public schools with all Hassidic teachers and kids. Guess the Post is not all that bothered by the concept.

Come 2006, guess what? Bloomberg and Klein (forever joined at the hip in these columns as BloomKlein) decided to reorganize again. Regions were out, districts back in. High schools were now out of the local districts and back into five borough districts, which is how they have been organized from say, 1890 ‘till 2002. The more things change….

But there were some major twists as BloomKlein institute a management system that has not been used anywhere. (If Bloomberg ran his business this way he would probably have ended up working as a clerk. Or maybe teaching 4th grade.) All power now resides in the hands of individual principals with supposedly little oversight from above – unless something goes wrong.

All principals were required to choose a support network from the following: Four networks led by former regional Superintendents (including Region 5’s Kathy Cashin), a centrally managed Empowerment Zone - a network of over 300 schools, or from a list of 9 private support agencies. How do you spell M-E-S-S?

Schools will now be giving 6 tests a year to prepare them for the BIG ONE. It is all about data and outcomes, saith BloomKlein. And outcomes do not mean that a teacher manages to do wonders with a difficult child in terms of their behavior. Or hold kids in an oversized class in check. Nada. Outcomes mean solely the results of these tests. Schools will graded from A-F and principals with an F will be fired (but probably recycled into some other bureaucratic job.) Attempts will be made to use the outcomes on these tests to evaluate the performance of teachers. Results will be used by principals to deny teachers tenure and U-rate teachers with tenure as being incompetent because Johnny can’t move from a Level One to Level Two. The UFT (who are they again?) will put on a show of objecting. But only a show. They will tell teachers to file grievances which will take a year to be heard. And teachers that are fired will not be recycled but blacklisted from ever working in the system again.

District superintendents will function mainly to evaluate schools based on the results of tests and will have no role in support. Just in evaluation.

I spoke to Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters who has the best handle on what is happening in Tweedledom. “The separation of support from evaluation is a model that has not been tried in any educational system I know of, and from what people tell me, not even the corporate world. Usually, the person evaluating is also responsible for helping to fix what is wrong.” District Superintendents will not even be evaluating schools in their own district and will not know the specific needs of the schools they should be most familiar with.

“The $80 million IBM Aris system will be inputting and spitting out data. But the data will be severely circumscribed and will not include factors such as class size or overcrowded conditions. Principals are supposed to be able to manage them. Haimson pointed to Murray Bergtraum HS, one of the large schools that have been affected by the closing of other large schools and the placement of small schools in their place. It is 125% over capacity, with triple shifts and maximum class sizes, with many more needy kids pushed out of closed schools, while the favored small schools and charter schools have lower class size limits that allow Tweed to brag about higher grad rates (don’t get me started on how these numbers have been arrived at.)

“Their strategy of fixing problems by shutting down schools and opening new ones rather than actually providing these schools with a chance to improve demonstrates the emptiness of their vision of school reform,” Haimson said.

“They only push problems from school to school. Their refusal to cap enrollment at large schools at least as a start to fix these schools instead of closing them is an admission they do not know how to do it. They absolve themselves of responsibility when they refuse to go beyond the idea that all it takes is proper management of a school and good instruction. In other words, failures are the fault of principals and teachers, not systemic. They claim they have changed the system from bad to good. To get to great all they have to do is unleash the entrepreneurial spirit of individual school leaders. It is the wild west.”

It is also the free market and competitive system brought to the schools, which will prove to have the same impact as if it were brought to firefighting (a bonus to the first fireman up the ladder?)

Haimson points to some obvious outcomes based on principals’ fears of being fired or the incentive to earn bonuses if “successful.” Poor performing students will be forced out or discouraged from attending the school in the first place. Cheating on tests and pressures on teachers to pass failing students to inflate the graduation rates will be rampant. Since schools get grad credit for kids passing the much easier GED (about an 8th grade level) students will be channeled in that direction. Things will appear to look much better. In reality, the more things change…

(Note: While the outer surface of the system may have been changed mucho times, for the overwhelming majority of students, the long-term results will not be much different.)

Additional material:

Historical background
Until circa 1968 schools were centrally controlled but with some oversight by a board of Education. But it was pretty much under the control of the mayor. There were districts for managerial purposes and superintendents appointed centrally.

In 1968, power over K-8 schools was taken over by locally elected school boards divided into 32 geographical districts. These boards had to hold public meetings every month. Nobody cared. Few voted. Few attended unless there was a pressing issue. The performance of the districts varied greatly depending on – guess what -- the abilities the kids brought to the table when they entered school. Duh!

High schools remained under central control divided into roughly 5 districts. There was also a centrally controlled special ed district though local districts had their own special ed operations. Geez, I’m tired already.

There was some hanky panky in some districts that resulted in demands for more oversight at the central level. In the late 90’s, some power was given to the Chancellor (did I say there was a revolving door for this position?) to choose the district superintendents. There was a different level of hanky panky in the centrally controlled high schools but no one bothered to mention this.


Demonstration supporting Debbie Almontaser at Tweed, Aug. 21

Klein's Drill and Kill... in the womb

KLEIN SEES 3 R'S FOR 3-YEAR-OLDS
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08192007/news/regionalnews/klein_sees_3_rs_for_3_year_olds_regionalnews_angela_montefinise.htm

"There's no question in my mind we ought to start our students much earlier," said Klein, a self-proclaimed "public school guy" who took his job exactly five years ago today.

"We should have all of our students start and have rigorous standard-based programs at age 3, age 4, age 5," he said.

He added that it's especially important in high-poverty areas where private preschool is not necessarily an option.

There was a good thread of discussion on this article on the NYC Education Listserve. I posted parts of it on Norm's Notes.

Oh man, did your readers leave stuff out!

Remember the comment from Son of Unity (you promised to come back - pleeeze, we could use more material) about all the incredible stress UFT leaders are under from having to deal with the likes of BloomKlein on our "Stress Relief for UFT Leaders" post and our top 10 stress relievers? This follow-up comment by the ghost of Eugene Debs deserves a post all it's own:

-Randi makes at least over 350 grand on three payrolls- UFT, NYSUT, AFT. Plus an unlimited expense account-worth tens of thousands- to entertain and feed herself, deputy mayors and candidates, consultants, hangers on and newspaper folks. She has an SUV and a driver- he makes 120K to ferry her back and forth to the Hamptons. Add it up- gasoline, insurance, lease payments, maintenance, parking- it's all free for this "average" person.

Add: she is in the NYC pension system for her part-time job at Clara Barton [where she worked as a full-time teacher for only 6 months, partime for 6 years]- so the value of her pension is increased every year, just like teachers- except she hardly taught!!

Add: she has surrounded herself with sycophants whose main job is to say "yes" to whatever crazy scheme and or sellout Randi comes up with. She tolerates no dissent, rewards her sycophants, allows the incompetents who are her friends to scam the union, punishes those to speak up (think principals) and is wholly owned by BloomKlein and Wall Street- she does whatever they tell her to do.

She hires $20,000 a month consultants who wear different hats with other clients (Murdoch, the Jets, the Post. Whose side are they on?)

Question: How does she get away with filing the LM2 reports a year and a half after they are due? The figures on the last report should be raised by whatever increase teachers got. Someone should ask the Department of Labor why they allow this.
[Ed Note: An older LM2 is available at the ICE website or email me and I'll send you one. Or go to the US Labor Department and download the last one available yourself - UFT File number is 063-924].

ADD - Unity folks get free parking at 52 Broadway that is worth $40 a day because they refuse to ride the subways. Plus they get their tolls paid for and $32 a day to use their car for "UFT business." (going to one school).
[Ed Note: I've seen this myself as they line up with their union credit cards after Exec bd meetings to get their cars. The UFT has around 40 spots and Randi micromanages the doling out of these spots to her favorites.]

ADD- The Unity crew - 50 of them- treated themselves to a five-day vacation in Philadelphia the July 4 week- for an NEA convention! This defines chutzpah.
[Ed Note: Hey, they worked hard all year. Think they actually sat in on meetings? Besides, they were layng the groundwork for the ultimate merger of the AFT and NEA so Randi can lead the entire educator labor movement as the springboard to AFL-CIO leader.]

keep it coming folks-

-Eugene Debs.

Commentary:
Generally, I have not made a big deal about the salary earned by UFT leaders and I never viewed Randi Weingarten as being in it for the money - power is way more important to her. Some people feel they couldn't care less how much Weingarten earns if she had delivered great contracts instead of selling the "Look how bad BloomKlein are and we did the best we could under terrible conditions" line.

But now, it's getting obscene when the union leader earns 4-5 times the salary of the average teacher. Not only at the very top, but throughout the hierarchy of the UFT/Unity Caucus staff, people have an incentive to sell bad contracts as long as there is money in it - for them, since they all get the same percentage raises as teachers do without the negatives - though Randi has ordered all staff members to do lunch duty - at the nearest restaurant. Even the gap between district reps, the people at the union staff level most in touch with the schools, and teachers, has been growing.

And the gap grows between the daily lives of teachers and union officials - who many of us in the opposition think work hard and put in long hours, but that is oh so different than teaching. I worked at the district level for the last 4 years of my career - I worked hard and long hours too, but that was a joke compared to what teachers were doing.

I have been more concerned with Weingarten's lack of real teaching experience just as I do about principals who have not really taught because that gives one so much insight into the emotional core of people - ie, a visceral understanding of the impact of the reinstitution of lunch duty or the longer day or the even why going back a measly 2 days before Labor Day is so disturbing to people or what it means to have a vicious Asst. Princ. on your back or teh humiliation of having a kid curse you out in front of the whole class and have nothing done about it.

Weingarten was/is a lawyer for the UFT when she was hand-picked by Sandra Feldman to succeed her (which everyone knew about) and was carefully placed at Clara Barton HS - not at the scary Prospect Hts. HS across the street. She was treated like a celebrity by the staff and administration and chapter leader Leo Casey assured she would be taken care of, a favor that has been returned 10-fold by Weingarten. This history is such a sore point that Weingarten feels the need to lie and distort the truth, even declaring in a NY 1 interview that she taught 5 periods a day for 6 years.

I hear vets speculate all the time about what Shanker and Feldman would do in today's climate. Some people, even Unity vets, mutter to me at the Delegate Assemblies, "Shanker is turning in his grave." Even their vehement opponents feel Shanker/Feldman had a real sense of "union" that Randi seems to be lacking. They were true Social Democrats, albeit right wing SD's in the SDUSA party, while Weingarten is a liberal of the Clinton variety, which means not all that liberal in the classic sense. When Casey and I used to communicate, he swore Weingarten was not SDUSA.

I'm not so sure if they would have made any difference, but they could not be happy with the state of the union, especially in the schools. Of course a major difference is that Shanker was so smart and confident, he surrounded himself by very smart and capable people. As Eugene Debs points out above, Weingarten is too insecure and needs sycophants and YES people around. People outside the UFT who have worked with them complain at the lack of people around Weingarten one could respect.

Since 1970, I fought against Shanker and Feldman. But today, I actually miss them.

On This and That

Fringing in NYC: Farmer Song
For the past 3 years I've been volunteering with the NYC Fringe Festival (http://www.fringenyc.org/) running until August 26 - 190 plays at 19 venues in the Greenwich Village vicinity. The other day I met Joel Perkins, a computer programmer from Iowa who is appearing in "Farmer Song, The Musical." The play is about the farm crisis in the 80's and is written and performed mostly by people who grew up on a farm and in some cases, continue to farm. The rolled into town in a van and a pickup truck and spent the last week soaking up NYC while doing 5 performances. (The last one was yesterday afternoon and they headed back to Iowa with some great stories to tell about their experience.)

We headed over to the New School Theater on Bank St. on the far west side on Friday and enjoyed the show with it's unusual political message. The cast seemed most impressed that our friends from Western Australia had attended, certainly the award for coming the furthest (you can't get any further from NYC than Perth.)

Yesterday, I was asked to come down and film an interview at Fringe Central (Carmine & Varrick St) and low and behold, it was with the entire cast and crew of "Farmer Song." They were all as delightful off stage. The gang at Fringe are working on a documentary about the festival and the Iowans should be a great feature as they are true Fringers.

Pedagogy
Speaking of which, a bunch of us are going to see Staten Island teacher Nanci Richards' "Pedagogy" [Can working for the Department of Education be worth more than just a $10 co-pay?] this Weds. Aug. 22 at 5:30 at the Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia Place).
"I wanted to do this show because I was sick of the story of the "hero" teacher. We only seem to hear about teachers when it comes from some myth that Hollywood creates. I wanted to tell a story about a group of people, (teachers ) who we all seem to talk about , but barely seem to know."
All tickets are $15, no reserved seating.
Some of the ICE gang are going out to eat afterwards but I may be on duty taping...


Jaspora...
...at the same venue by Chicago actress of Haitian decent Nancy Moricette's one woman show (she bills herself as "An Imitation Haitian") at 7pm. I met Nancy the other day and I hear she is dynamite. Where else can you see back to back performances for $30? Only at the NYC Fringe.



Today we are going to see "Williamsburg, the Musical" which should be fun since I spent 35 years working in what was considered a ghetto but is not the hippest place on earth.

We're going with Dan & Robyn Scherr, our house guests from Fremantle, Australia. Dan grew up in the Williamsburg Houses off Bushwick Ave. and went to JHS 50, which is near the epicenter of the Williamsburg revolution. (Think one day soon the reading scores at some of these schools may rise? Oh yes, if they do it will probably be due to things like paying teachers merit pay or better staff development, according to the pundits at Tweed.)

Dan should be catatonic from culture shock. Last night we got together with our college friends and Dan's co-Williamsburg buddies from JHS, Jeff Gleicher and Ken Shrednick. They were responsible for my ending up teaching in Williamsburg, where they also also taught for a number of years. They grew up in the South 9th Street area, where Jeff's parents owned a cleaning store on the corner of South 9th and Bedford. I once went up to Jeff's apartment in a tenement on South 9th and even coming from east New York, it was somewhat shocking. They both left the Burg for Long Island to raise their kids. Now Jeff just bought a condo on North 8th and Kent St. for, let's say, a few shekels more than the rent at the old South 9th st. tenement.


Rome
I've become an ancient Rome nut. Fueled by our recent visit at the end of May, my first trip there. Actually, always I was. As an undergrad history major and with 30 grad credits, I still never took a course on Rome. But I read Robert Graves' "I Claudius" and "Claudius, The God" when I was in high school. (I was looking for the sex scenes.) Imagine my delight at the PBS series "I Claudius" my favorite TV program ever. I even have a complete set of tapes still in shrink wrap that I swore I would watch as a marathon when I retired 5 years ago. Still haven't got to it. That damn union crap keeps getting in the way.

Digression: With Rome on my mind I can't help thinking of how the UFT/Unity Caucus empire will last longer. Augustus/Shanker set it up real good. You could actually get rid of Roman Emperors but Unity is forever with hand-picked successors. By the 22nd century Leo Casey's grandchild will be saying "we just have to wait out this mayor."

Oh, yeah, back to Rome. I don't have HBO but friends have humped the 2-year series "Rome" as an amazing piece of work. So for the past few weeks I have been avidly watching the dvds and they were right. Covering about a 10-15 year slice of Roman history (turn on the little notes you get to explain some of the background) it is a great companion piece to "I Claudius." Why does Octavian/Augustus remind me of some of the Tweed types we see around?
I've also got a few books by Julius Caesar and Livy and even a volume of Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall." That ought to keep me off the streets.


My First Screen Credit
MSG has been showing "The Irish Ropes" - last week after a tape of a recent John Duddy fight. Duddy is an Irish fighter who is undefeated. I'm not a boxing fan but I was recruited by retired NYC teacher and current filmmaker Bob Sarnoff as a cameraman for the film, which is about a boxing club in Rockaway in the Arverne section. We followed the fighters through Golden Gloves matches which took place all over the metro area - from Freeport to the Copacabana to Brownsville. The owner if the Irish Ropes club (it has closed) was Eddie McLoughlin who is Duddy's manager. The film includes a visit to my alma mater Thomas Jefferson by McLoughlin and Duddy where a teacher who is a Golden Gloves fighter invited then to speak to the kids.

This MSG version is shortened from Sarnoff's original film and emphasizes Duddy, whereas the full version deals much more with the amateur fighters, many of whom are from Arverne in Rockaway. The Ropes attracted a group of people of all races and ages and even though I was involved towards the end of the life of the club, it was obvious the potential for filling a gap in an area of Rockaway that could really benefit was lost.

I wrote a column about the sad closing of the Irish Ropes boxing club in Arverne in The Wave in Sept. 2006. Sarnoff's full version of the film is still to be released.

Sarnoff, myself and Mark Rosenhaft, my long-time partner in NorMark Productions (non-profit - meaning we have never made a dime) are currently working on "Dispatch," a Rockaway-based film on a local car service. Cab, anyone?

Is it racist to criticize Barry Bonds...

... or antisemitic to criticize Israel?

Both seem to be two sides of the same coin.

Sometimes I seem to be spiraling in space.

I received the following email from a colleague in ICE:

How can you be 100% that Barry Bonds took steroids?
This is the type of thing that offends many in the black community.
And many Latinos.

I'm often accused of not getting it. Some might say "It's a black thing." It is common to attack non-Jewish critics of Israel as antisemitic and Jewish critics as self-hating Jews. Or I am accused of being a self-hating Jew when I have defended - or more likely explained - the motivations behind the actions of Palestinians or, in years past, over the actions of members of the minority community in response to certain education situations, especially in the 70's when the repercussions of the '68 strike were still being felt most strongly (and they still are today.) Jewish colleagues at my school in the early 70's used to tell me I should not worry so much about Blacks and Puerto Ricans but about Jews. One of them was a Holocaust survivor and also happened to be my first Hebrew School teacher at the New Lots & Pennsylvania Ave. Synagogue. I could understand where he was coming from but that didn't make it any less racist.

To be criticized by both ends might just be where I want to be.

The recent turmoil over the Kahlil Gibran school and Steve Quester's post that was critical of Randi Weingarten on this blog resulted in an anonymous attack on Steve - "He hates Israel." Not that he is critical of the policies of Israel, but a personification of Israel as an entity beyond criticism. Like people opposed to the war in Iraq (or Vietnam) are anti-American. Or better yet, the opposition to the UFT leadership are traitors to the union and are even funded by Bloomberg - the rumor Unity used to spread about Ed Notes. (New Action used to claim it was Unity giving me money when Ed Notes was critical of them.) Sure, I used to get all that money from a submarine off Rockaway. These are the attacks made by singleminded sectarians who only see their own narrow point of view.

I responded to my ICE colleague:

Why are blacks and Latinos offended?
To me that is racism.
Jason Giambi is white and I believe he took steroids. I'm not offended as a white person.

He came back with:

Why is the media so intended to attack Barry Bonds? And why was Hank
Aaron attacked when he was chasing Babe Ruth"s record?
To me this is racism.

And I said:

Aaron was not attacked by the media but by racists. He was breaking Babe Ruth's record. I don't remember the media being against Aaron. There was more of a hubbub when Maris was breaking Ruth's record.
In this case the media seem to support Aaron.
Bonds has been a jerk to the media - arrogant, etc. The media responds to that. There are many other examples both white and black. I remember Mickey Mantle being under attack by people like Dick Young in Mantle's early years because Mantle's shyness was taken as arrogance.
Bonds is under attack for breaking another black man's record. Aaron is being defended as someone who did it legit.
The fact that Bonds' major home run hitting came after he was 36 and admissions from people that he took steroids makes it a pretty good bet he took them.
Personally I don't really care. Pitchers took steroids too.
Question: If Bonds were white would you give a shit? Do you think he wouldn't be criticized given the exact same conditions? To me that smacks of a racist attitude. Like black and Latinos defending OJ. When he was acquitted half my school screamed in victory and cheers and there was a party attitude. The other (white) half were mortified.

Maybe it's true. I just don't get it.

The Excessed and ATR's Want to Meet

Calls and emails are coming in from ATR's. Each story has its own backdrop, but I'll stay away from these now. There is certainly a feeling the UFT has nothing for them. There are calls for a meeting of ATR's to discuss the situation.

Our July 14th post:

The Bronx is Burning ... with ATR's reported
A UFT official writes in an email to one of my correspondents: "The number of veteran teachers in excess in the Bronx is huge. 33% of the teachers at Stevenson have been placed in excess this June and a whopping 56 employees from Evander Childs have been excessed. Dozens from Walton are out, including the Chapter Leader. Meanwhile, on the hiring committees that I have been attending, at least 3/4 of the applicants have been Teaching Fellows with shiny new Trans B licenses."

This was followed by "Excessing," a guest editorial from one of these ATR's and resulted in some comments by anonymous UFT officials (most likely Zahler or Casey and maybe their lapdog Redhog). The editorialist demolished their specious arguments in a follow-up comment.

The lack of any effort on the part of the UFT to seek out and provide any level of support to ATR's as a class (they only do things on an case by case basis when an individual contacts them - call this the Deflection modus operendi - see UFT: Masters of Deflection) led to a follow-up:

Calling All Teachers in Excess on July 23 which set up a special email address (excessed101@gmail.com) and a form (see below) to be filled out for people to respond so information can be gathered that can be presented to the UFT. The idea is to form a pressure group of excessed and ATR's that can force the UFT (the only way they will act) to defend their interests as a group.

A UFT Tea Party?
This came in the other day:

NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION !

Why pay dues, when the union bosses have gone AWOL under the unremitting attacks by corporate educrats and unprincipled principals.

– ATRs abound.

– A union-condoned Open Market system that demolishes seniority protections.

– A contract left undefended (Article 17B on excessing procedures).

– Senior teachers with S-ratings (or fake U-ratings), their careers in ruin.

One would think that if you’ve just taken a hit through school restructuring or a cut position, you could go to the UFT’s own website for guidance and help.

Think again. This debacle has been playing itself out all summer, but shamelessly and for the world to see, the UFT website doesn’t even set up links for Excessed Teachers or ATRs. And if you search those terms, you’ll get nothing but gems like this one: “You can receive, upon request, individualized assistance from ... Human Resources on how to maximize your chances of success in being selected for a transfer.” What? How we can increase our “chances” of being selected? They can’t be writing all this pollyanna spin stuff for me or for anyone else who wants real help getting back into a real job.

Don’t be deluded either by the link "Denied a Transfer." I told them a couple of months ago that people who don’t even get asked in for an interview are not actually being denied a transfer. The name of that link doesn’t fit any of us left out here in the stone cold, especially senior teachers who are eliminated flat out for their big salaries alone. Why would we even think that link applies to us? No response from the union on that one. They never changed it because they don’t care and they don’t want to know.

NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION !

As for the Edwize blog, another joke. We could read all the stuff they post there on CNN.com. (By the way, check out the picture of Randi and Bloomberg. She’s in a white suit, all smiling and happy. We suspected they're in bed together, maybe they just got married.)

NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION !

The computers at union headquarters can tell the people we’re paying our dues to all kinds of stuff, like the numbers of teachers in excess, our ratings and seniority. A little trolling for senior teachers with problems getting new jobs would turn this union into a viable one. Our dues would mean something then.

Silence on their side doesn’t mean lie back and play dead on this side. We’re collecting information about teachers who have been thrown under the wheels of this UFT/DOE juggernaut. If you or someone you know is excessed and having trouble getting another job or likely to be an ATR next term, please contact us (or tell them to contact us) through this form. Copy and paste the questions below in a new email, answer the ones you want to answer, and send them to excessed101@gmail.com. You don’t have to give your real name, and you can sign up for updates.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Your real name (optional) OR a pseudonym to prevent duplication: ________ 


When were you excessed? Month ________ Year _____ 


Seniority at the end of June 07: _________________

If you're a teacher, your subject: ______________


Otherwise, your title: _______ 


Used the Open Market yet? Y/N _____ 


No. of schools applied to: _______ 


No. of interviews you were granted: _____

No. of interviews you attended: ______ 


Has the DOE tried to place you yet (as stipulated in the contract)?
Y/N ______ 


Any factors you think make your excessing not your fault (e.g., school closing): ________________________

Any factors you think make it unlikely you'll be placed in a permanent position

(e.g., politics, race; optional, but probably very important): ________

Additional comments: ________________________________________




Do you want to be contacted with updates on the statistics? Y/N ______

If so, your email address: _____________________________


Daily quote of the day from infoweek update
"Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good." -- Samuel Johnson

Steve Quester on UFT Role in Debbie Almontaser Resignation

"I write as a White, Jewish anti-racist educator who is heartsick over the role his union played in this sordid affair." - Steve Quester

The resignation of Debbie Almontaser as principal of the proposed Arab language school in Brooklyn has caused a great deal of controversy. The DOE replaced her with Danielle Salzberg. (That ought to inspire the Arabic community to register their kids for the new school.) There's so much stuff flying it is hard to keep track of it all. An interesting interview by Amy Goodman posted on Democracy Now can be found here. Also this piece written by Almontaser, not long after 9/11. http://www.gothamgazette.com/commentary/107.almontaser.shtml

Steve Quester, a UFT chapter leader, comments on the role the UFT President played.

Imagine...
A veteran Latina educator, with a years-long record of service supporting Latino/a youth and building bridges between Latino/a and non-Latino/a communities, is slated to be principal of a new middle school with a focus on Hispano-Caribbean studies and Spanish language. She endures months of vitriolic attacks from right-wing hate websites and blogs, and from the Murdoch news organizations. Finally, the Murdoch media uncover that she’s on the board of an organization that shares an office with a Latina girls’ empowerment organization. The organization has produced a T-shirt with the image of Che Guevara and the words “Hasta la victoria siempre.” The Murdoch media point out (rightly) that the “victoria” to which Che referred was the violent overthrow of all capitalist governments, including the U.S. The media demand that the educator condemn the T-shirt, but instead she says that the girls’ intention was to point to the victory of tolerance and coexistence over anti-Latino/a bias in New York. The media howl. The educator quickly apologizes, admitting that she did not take into account the effect that the image of Che has on Cuban-American refugees of Castro’s oppression.

After the apology, the UFT president, who had been supportive of the new middle school and its principal, is quoted condemning the educator’s initial defense of the T-shirt. The president makes no mention of the educator’s exemplary record, or the racist context in which the controversy about the T-shirt has taken place. The UFT president says, "maybe, ultimately, she should not be a principal." The print, broadcast, and Internet media trumpet the UFT president’s condemnation far and wide, and the next day, the educator resigns from the principalship.

Now imagine that the educator is a respected African-American, and the new middle school will have an Afrocentric focus. The T-shirt has an image of Malcolm X holding a rifle and the words “By any means necessary.” The media point out (rightly) that the “means” to which Malcolm X referred included armed struggle. The educator says that the girls’ intention was to point towards non-violent African-American empowerment, not armed struggle. When the educator apologizes, she admits that she did not take into account the effect that the image of Malcolm X holding a weapon might have on efforts to combat gun crimes in New York City. The UFT president is quoted saying, "maybe, ultimately, she should not be a principal." The next day, the educator resigns from the principalship.

In reality, it’s unlikely that these T-shirts would have prompted sustained media attacks, or that the UFT president would have ever taken such an extreme public reaction. And if the president had taken such action, there would have been an outcry from the rank and file, and not just Latino/a or African-American members. In New York City, T-shirts of Che Guevara, Malcolm X, Mumia Abu-Jamal, or Leonard Peltier do not instill fear, provoke tabloid campaigns or result in demands for any person to make a wholesale repudiation of other members of their community.

Now imagine that the veteran educator is an Arab-American and a Muslim, with a years-long record of service supporting Arab-American and Muslim youth and building bridges between Arab-American, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities. The new middle school will focus on Arab studies and Arabic language. After months of vitriolic attacks from right-wing hate websites and blogs, the Murdoch news organizations uncover that she’s on the board of an organization that shares an office with an Arab-American girls’ empowerment organization. The collective has produced a T-shirt with the words “Intifada NYC.” The Murdoch media point out (rightly) that for most New Yorkers “intifada” connotes terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.

When the media demand that the educator condemn the T-shirt, she says, “The word [intifada] basically means 'shaking off.' That is the root word if you look it up in Arabic. I understand it is developing a negative connotation due to the uprising in the Palestinian-Israeli areas. I don't believe the intention is to have any of that kind of [violence] in New York City. I think it's pretty much an opportunity for girls to express that they are part of New York City society… and shaking off oppression."

The media howl. The educator quickly apologizes, saying, “The word 'intifada' is completely inappropriate as a T-shirt slogan. I regret suggesting otherwise. By minimizing the word's historical associations, I implied that I condone violence and threats of violence. That view is anathema to me.”

After the apology, the UFT president, who had been supportive of the new middle school and its principal, is quoted in the media condemning the educator’s initial defense of the T-shirt. The president makes no mention of the educator’s exemplary record, or the racist context in which the controversy about the T-shirt has taken place. The UFT president says, "maybe, ultimately, she should not be a principal." The print, broadcast, and Internet media trumpet the UFT president’s condemnation far and wide, and the next day, the educator resigns from the principalship.

The third scenario happened, in August of 2007. Our union could have stood with Arab-American and Muslim students and educators against the onslaught they have endured since 9-11, but instead we joined the chorus of racists, led by the teacher-hating, Arab-hating New York Post and Fox News, who hounded veteran educator Debbie Almontaser out of her job as principal of the Gibran Academy.

In writing all of this, I do not claim to speak for the members of my chapter. I did not consult them. I do not claim to speak for a UFT caucus. I do not belong to one. I certainly do not claim to speak for Debbie Almontaser. Although, as a District 15 educator, I am acquainted with Debbie and her work, I have not seen or spoken with her since long before the Gibran Academy controversy erupted at P.S. 282. In presenting the imaginary scenarios, I do not claim to speak for the political views of anyone in the Latino/a or African-American communities.

I write as a White, Jewish anti-racist educator who is heartsick over the role his union played in this sordid affair.

Peace,
Steve Quester
UFT chapter leader
P.S. 372/418K The Children’s School

Stress Relief for UFT Leaders

A Unity Caucus critic comments:
"It amazes me that time and time again people like you in ICE/TJC fail to acknowledge the amazing efforts and the incredible stress that our officers face."

Six figure salaries and double pensions not enough boobie?

Here are some ways for UFT leaders to reduce stress as recommended by the classroom teachers of New York City.

#10 Become an ATR.
No paperwork, enjoy the experience of different classes, different schools every day. Get to know all parts of the city from the north Bronx to Staten Island while enjoying the luxury of a pay check.

#9 Do Lunch duty and potty patrol.
One of the great stress relievers of all time, which unfortunately was not available for the 10 years between the 1995 and 2005 contracts. The sounds of kids talking, eating - join in the fun of food fights.

#8 Spend 37.5 minutes a the end of the day teaching small groups of 10.
A great relief after spending the first 7 hours with classes of 30 or more.

#7 Go to school 2 days before the Labor Day weekend.
See all your friends early. Relax during faculty conferences and hours of staff development.

#6 Go to school 2 days before the 2 days you're supposed to go back.
Set up your room, wash your desks, put up bulletin boards.

#5 Be observed by a supervisor out to get you.
One of the great stress relievers. And no anxiety of having to grieve a negative letter in your file thanks to the 2005 contract.

#4 Get excessed.
Staying in the same school gets tiresome and is a known cause of stress. Meet new friends.

#3 Give up seniority with all these additional stress relievers:
Try the Open Market System.
Put in for 10 jobs. When you get no response, you save the stress of traveling to job interviews. Then you can.....
Go to a hiring hall.
Enjoy nice relaxing interviews, especially if you are an experienced, higher salaried teacher waiting on one slow moving line. Watching the separate line for Teaching Fellows and new teachers moving at 3X the speed of yours will sooth you.
Make up a portfolio of yours and the kids' work to bring to interviews.
Relive the fun of those childhood days of scrapbooks.

#2 Read a book on differentiation of instruction.

And the number one way to reduce the stress of working full-time for the UFT?

Go back to teaching full time.
Get the advantages of 1-9 and end worries on how to spend all that extra money you make at the UFT while ending worries about what to do with that extra pension.

Daily Doins: Aug. 9

A fairly new chapter leader is very serious about getting a complete picture of UFT history and sharing it with the teachers in his school as a way to foment a higher level of union consciousness. He has been going over some of the old issues of Education Notes and has found them very helpful. But he doesn't have a complete set.

So I spent the morning pouring through 10 years of issues, which pretty much correspond to Randi Weingarten's tenure as UFT President. So reading them will provide some historical perspective. Now I'm the first to say that my point f view is particular and may not always reflect reality. But certainly the official UFT position is so often more about appearance that reality that if he balances mine and theirs he may come up with some point in between.

But here are some basic truths:
From the first editions class size was #1 on the agenda. I had a regular feature called Class Size Matters even before Leonie Haimson got her organization going.
Another issue from Day 1 was a call for more protections for UFT chapter leaders.
Calls for NO MERIT PAY under any circumstances.
Constant refrains on the impact of high stakes testing.

And lots of satire. Good satire. I don't know where that has gone. Maybe things aren't so funny anymore.

Other issues today

Asian Population of NYC grows...
....was the report in today's Times. obviously BloomKlein's secret plan to raise reading and math scores and improve the grad rate. Part 2 of their plan is to have the Partnership of NYC raise funds to by Level One readers condos -- in Peoria.

The AFL-CIO ...
frees member unions to endorse Democratic candidates of choice. The Times says the AFT is "leaning" towards Hillary. Leaning? With Randi Weingarten working full time to get Hillary elected, I would say more than leaning. Like how about horizontal? No simple Tower of Pisa here. The Times naively says that strong support for Obama in midwest could prevent the AFT from endorsing Clinton. A basic misunderstanding that the AFT is controlled by the UFT and will do whatever Randi wants it to. When Randi takes over the AFT in July 08 she will put the entire structure in the service of Hillary.

No End in Sight - the supposed anti war movie on Iraq
We saw it last week and I didn't find it anti war but a critique of the Bush implementation of the post-war Iraq. Talk about to hell and (not) back. Even conservative pro-war critics could like this movie. Someone sent me a hard copy of a good review from The Nation. I have no links but check it out if you can.

Go Barbara Morgan
I was one of 16,000 teachers who applied to go into space in 1985 for the Jan. '86 flight that ended in disaster. I read with jealousy about Christa and Barbara. I became big fans of theirs. Barbara was supposed to go on the flight after the Endeavor. She worked all these years to become an astronaut. The idea of a teacher in space was a real PR move on the part of NASA and many people feel the money could be spent on many more worthwhile projects. But I'm a space junkie and have a hard time taking a critical look at the space program.

I was in Antigua when the Challenger went down. A friend had sent me a post card a day or two before the flight saying "Sorry you didn't get to go." I got it the day after the crash. With Friends like these....

Just heading out for some volunteer work at the NYC International Fringe Festival. 200 plays for over 2 weeks all in the Village area and tickets are all $15 starting tomorrow (Aug. 10). Some of us are going to see Pedagogy written by a NYC teacher (Can working for the NYCDOE be worth more than just a $10 co-pay?) on Aug. 22 at 5:30 at the Center for Architecture on LaGuardia Place and then out to eat afterwards. Fringe HQ are at the corner of Varrick and Carmine St.

A Sight to Behold

Worth sharing from Ira Goldfine who volunteers at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens:

When I got down to the Discovery Garden this morning there was this big hullabaloo at the Flatbush Avenue gate. It turns out a huge snapping turtle -- probably 100+ years old had strolled from the flooded Prospect Park lake and was lost and got across Flatbush Avenue somehow withoutn getting killed -- it was snapping at everything in sight until they put a garbage can over it. The turtle used to be in Japanese Garden pond but they moved it to the lake in the park a while ago. What a scene it caused.

Seriously folks....

.... let's talk educational steroids. Pump up those test score and grad rate muscles.

Cream the best kids.
Lose the potential chronic low scorers.
Encourge failing students to take the so much easier GED's.
Have teachers mark their own students' tests.
Pay "merit" pay to teachers so they have an incentive to pump that iron. Ditto for bonuses to principals.
Pressure teachers to pass kids who can fog a mirror even if they are rarely in class and have barely passed anything.

And it's all so legal. Barry Bonds should have been a teacher.

Barry, Mike and Joel: It Ain't Tainted

The connections is so obvious, this post can pretty much write itself. Barry and BloomKlein have been using the same cream(ing) to get similar results - pumped up everything - home runs, grad rates, test scores. Tweed has been slipping the cream into Leadership Acad. water coolers.

Barry is significantly more honest and up front than Mike and Joel. No one got hurt. Teacher and student lives weren't ruined. Just a few extra home runs. Didn't Babe Ruth spend whole nights in whore houses drinking and carousing? Give him an asterisk for using artificial stimulants.

If Joel and Mike get the Broad prize on Sept. 18, as expected (Broad giving BloomKlein a prize is like Halliburton giving the Bush administration an award for fiscal responsibility) we need to prepare an asterisk the size of the Goodyear blimp to put next to Mike and Joel's "achievements."

(Any photoshoppers out there want to take a shot at this?)