Tracking NYC School Data

I was going to write about today's NY Times article on the so-called independent commission that has both Joel Klein and Randi Weingarten on it but Reality-based educator has done a bang-up job as NYC Educator's columnist. So head on over.

Oh, and the Fund for Public Schools is spending millions to run ads lauding BloomKlein instead of funneling money to the classroom. Now there's Children First.

Check out Woodlass' post at the Under Assault blog.

Military Recruitment Resolution at the PEP in NYC

Patrick Sullivan, Manhattan rep on the Panel for Educational Policy, presents a resolution on military recruitment at the PEP meeting, Sept. 24, 2007. Joel Klein suggests it be tabled. Patrick explains why he wants to have a vote. It loses by a 6-3-1 margin. Patrick compares level of enforcement of cell phone ban to DOE enforcement of military recruitment regs as Patrick gets the last word.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI9CT8bbEtg

See Patrick Sullivan's report on the meeting:

Note: video removed due to some complaints it slowed the loading of this blog.

Andres Alonso Alienates Baltimore Teachers

It took Andres Alonso about 2 minutes of leading the Baltimore school system to alienate the teacher union - following the Plan. Expect the same to happen in Washington with another Klein acolyte running things. Note that teachers are fighting back by refusing to work the extra hours. After working in NY as Klein's assistant, Alonso is unfamiliar with unions that aren't interested in collaborating.

City Teachers To Picket Over Planning Time

BALTIMORE -- Baltimore city school teachers concerned about their contracts are planning to set up what they call informational pickets. They said the goal of the picketing is to put pressure on the administration to sign on the dotted line. City teachers agreed over the summer to work only those hours called for in the contract, refusing to take part in before- and after-school activities. The teacher's union is currently vowing to go a step further by setting up informational pickets this week outside at least three schools. "It will inform the public. We will be asking them to contact the school board in support of us, and let them know that teachers in Baltimore city are working without a contact, and they are to support this effort," said Marietta English of the Baltimore City Teacher's Union. The union said the main sticking point in the contract is teacher planning time. City School Chief Executive Officer Dr. Andres Alonso said that the contract dispute really boils down to a simple request by the administration. "The board and I have asked for one planning period a week to be used for common planning time or professional development at the discretion of the principal. I hear I'm trying to take away planning time. That's ridiculous," he said. "We are talking about planning time, time that is precious to teachers and time that they need to plan their lessons to mark papers to get prepared for the next class," English said. The union said that until there's a new agreement, teachers will continue to work by the terms of their old contract. WBAL TV 11 News learned that the Baltimore city teachers union is not pleased with the school board or Alonso. The union said it is prepared to take a vote of no confidence as it relates to the contract controversy.

Secretary Spellings Forced to Admit Lack of Qualifications for the Job

Thank goodness Susan Ohanian is back from vacation. She came up with this gem where a member of Congress who actually was a teacher and principal questions the education chief officer of the USA. Oy vey!

I got to see Spellings in person at the Manhattan Institute luncheon where there was an entire table of UFT suits (and suitesses) hobnobbing with the very people who are killing real education. See that post here. And Susan's satirical (and hysterical) post on Spellings' declaration of a non-testing day.

Ohanian Comment: Take a look at this short segment of Rep Mike Honda's questioning of Secretary Spellings on if and how she is highly qualified for her current position. It is refreshing to see a politico cut through her hot air snowballing and get right to the point.

— Congressman Mike Honda
House subcommittee hearing
2007-03-26

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zSJexw0Gvs&mode=related&search=

And while you're at YouTube, take another look at these excellent videos:

Test the Kids

NCLB Truths and Consequences

Broad Jumping II - From The Wave

by Norm Scott

The following article appeared in The School Scope column in The Wave, September 21, 2007 and summarizes some of the previous pieces on Eli Broad on this blog.

BloomKlein Win! BloomKlein Win!!
Shout it from the rooftops. Toss the confetti in the air. Have a party.
The BloomKlein gang at Tweed are suffering rotator cuff damage – in both arms– from patting themselves on the back for their victory, announced on Tuesday, in winning the Broad [pronounced Brood] prize.
Who is Eli Broad and why is he using his billions to help destroy public education in the major urban school systems?
Therein lies a long tale and I’ve elucidated much of it on my ednotesonline.com/ blog.

Broad has simple answers to complex questions. Nationally recognized educational historian Diane Ravitch sums it up:
“About 18 months ago, I was invited to meet Eli Broad in his gorgeous penthouse in NYC, overlooking Central Park. I hear that he made his billions in the insurance and real estate businesses. I am not sure when he became an education expert. We talked about school reform for an hour or more, and he told me that what was needed to fix the schools was not all that complicated: A tough manager surrounded by smart graduates of business schools and law schools. Accountability. Tight controls. Results. In fact, NYC is the perfect model of school reform from his point of view. Indeed, this version of school reform deserves the Broad Prize, a prize conferred by one billionaire on another.”

Deborah Meier, a nationally respected progressive educator for the past 40 years says:
“I am afraid. Truly. I think the mayor of NYC, and Eli Broad, are perfectly happy about a future in which most teachers come and go every five or so years. Temps. Easier to manage and harder to organize. A few will rise to leadership positions after a few years of teaching—after getting MBAs?—and the rest of the leaders will come from other fields like law, business, and the military.”

Leonie Haimson and a number of other parents sent a letter to the Broad Foundation:
“We urge you not to award the Broad prize to NYC this year. As parents and teachers, we have witnessed one incoherent wave of reorganization after another over the last five years, leading to unnecessary chaos and in many cases, disruption of educational services. None of these changes have been planned or undertaken with any consultation of the stakeholders in the system. “Instead of transparency and accurate information, we get spin and PR. Though overall, the amount spent on education has risen, there is no evidence that a larger percentage of resources has gone to the classroom, despite repeated claims by DOE. Instead, each year the headcount grows of highly paid officials at Tweed, as well as the number of multi-million dollar consultants. “…as recent news reports have revealed, the 4th grade exams in both ELA and math were much easier in 2005, when the largest gains in NYC performance occurred, putting into doubt their validity.”

The full text is available at nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/

David M. Quintana, a parent active in District 27 wrote:
“As one of the four (4) parent participants in a focus group held at Tweed for researchers from the Broad Foundation, I am disappointed in the fact that NYC received the Broad Foundation prize today. “This group of parents, handpicked by Martine Guerrier of the Department of Education (DOE), expressed uniform disappointment with the various changes put into place by DOE, the lack of transparency and accountability, and the lack of consideration given the views of parents about what their children really need to succeed. “Clearly the Broad Foundation did not take parents views into consideration when awarding this prize to NYC today. “I feel that the DOE is totally dismissive of parents views and makes short shrift of our concerns for our children (i.e. - class size reduction, cell phone ban, school bus fiasco, numerous reorganizations of the DOE, et al).”

Quintana’s resume is not a light one:
District 27 Presidents Council - Recording Secretary
District 27 Representative to Chancellors Parents Advisory Council, Queens Community Board 10 - Education Committee and Queens Borough President's Parents Advisory Council member

And the reaction of teachers on the front line to the national recognition of BloomKlein for doing wonderful things in “reforming” the NYC school system? I would bet my pension that 95% of them are laughing (or crying) themselves silly. And they would be joined by a hell of a lot of supervisors too.
I wonder what kind of prize is given to the CEO’s of corporations that have absolutely no respect from the bulk of the people that work for them? Oh, I know. The Broad prize.

Et tu Randi?
It should be clear to teachers in the trenches that they are fighting a 2-front war -– against BloomKlein and their own collaborationist union.
There was a picture of UFT president Randi Weingarten with Joel Klein giving her a big hug and kiss at the Broad Prize Awards ceremony in Washington. (It would not be impossibility for both Klein and Weingarten to end up in a Hillary Clinton cabinet, though I am betting Randi goes to the AFT presidency in July, tries to become the head of a united NEA and AFT and then moves on to John Sweeny’s job as AFL-CIO head.)
Boy, for someone who regularly charges the UFT collaborates with the forces looking to destroy public education, it doesn't get any better than this.
Last year, Broad gave the UFT Charter schools one million dollars.
Of course the UFT is saying the Broad prize is deserved, due to the teaching corps, "the best ever" in their words. Funny how they can argue that experience counts for teachers and then negate that argument by saying a system that has an enormous influx of inexperienced teachers, 50% of whom leave after 5 years, is the best ever. See Debbie Meier’s quote above.
Then they validate high stakes testing, which is the instrument by which the Broad prize is given, negating so much of what their own task force on testing reported last year.
And to further seal my contention that the UFT leadership are collaborators (I compare them to the French Vichy in WWII) against the interests of their own members –
The UFT commissioned a study of whether the ELA tests were easier in 2005 (teachers marking the exam at IS 180 at that time confirmed it at the time), thus enabling Bloomberg to use the “wonderful” results as part of his election bid and as a means to springboard him on the national stage as an masterly (funny that my spell checker first came up with “miserly”) educational reformer. When the study showed that this is exactly what occurred, Randi Weingarten ordered the results to be hushed up. Were it not for a leak to NY Sun reporter Elizabeth Green she would have gotten away with it.
Confused? Did the UFT PR machine lead you to think Weingarten and Klein are enemies?
Let Uncle Normie untangle it for you.
Both Democrats and Republicans are pushing the business/factory model of education that has caused so much misery to so many teachers, students and parents, albeit with slightly different twists. And the Clintons are in it right up to their necks. Now follow the bouncing ball.
Eli Broad, when attacked as a right-winger, responds that he is a Democrat.
Who is Hillary Clinton’s main supporter in the labor movement? Someone who is dedicating all her resources to getting Hillary elected? You guessed it. Our girl Randi.
Who worked for Clinton before he became NYC chancellor?
Bingo!

Want to do some more surf Broading? Check the ednotesonline.com blog.

More next time with a few words on Howie Schwach’s praise for Al Shanker. Needless to say, I have another view.

Urgent: Students and Teachers “At Risk”in D79 Reorganization

John Lawhead, the ICE web site admin, posted Marjorie Stamberg's very excellent piece that she handed out at the Chapter Leader meeting the other day.

The last time I posted something on District 79, Randi Weingarten told people that my post almost killed negotiations with the DOE. (Not the first time Weingarten just makes things up, but at least this blog has one regular reader).

Hey! This may be a rare occasion where Weingarten isn't trying to manipulate peopIe –

give me a minute so I can stop laughing –

so I'm not posting it here in full.

Sorry - I can't seem to stop –

I wouldn't want to mess anything up - Sorry again –

between the UFT

and the DOE.

OK. I'm recovered from my fit.

I can't resist a few quotes from Marjorie's leaflet.

"Why did D79 teachers have to read about their situation in the Daily News and The Chief before it was finally reported in the New York Teacher?"

"We need our union to fight for the kids and the teachers of D79!"

Read the whole thing, as she raises some great questions. I've heard all too many teachers say the union has no business fighting for the kids. These teachers just don't get it. Aside from being the right thing, improving things for kids also affects teachers' working conditions. Marjorie points out that there are ATR's from District 79 while kids are tossed out of schools. If they were back in schools these teachers would not be ATR's. Get it now?

Weingarten Says: It's All Hunky Dory in UFT/Tweedland

When only around 500 chapter leaders out of a potential 1500 showed up at the citywide Chapter Leader meeting on Tuesday, Randi Weingarten stated it must be because things are going well in the schools.

"This was one of the smoothest openings of schools ever," she said.

Boy, that wacky gang at Tweed must be doing something right.

Only 4000 over class size grievances and not the usual 6000. See, they're listening.

Last year almost twice as many CLs attended the Sept. meeting (held at the the magnificent auditorium at UFT HQ at 52 Broadway) and squeezing almost a thousand people into a room holding only 850 served to remind them of their overcrowded classes and how years of the UFT's "reduce class size" campaign has netted them nothing. And a lot of people never got a banana.

So this year I was all excited when they moved the meeting to the Brooklyn Marriott, where if I got there early, I was sure to score a macadamia nut cookie. And a banana.

But so many happy chapter leaders were busy celebrating the glorious opening of school with their colleagues, the meeting had to be moved to a much smaller room, which they had plenty of time to arrange since Weingarten showed up so late. But chapter leaders have plenty of extra time on their hands, so they didn't mind.

And I had time to eat and drink myself silly.

I was there with my leaflet announcing that after 10 years, the final print edition of Ed. Notes would be distributed at the OCT. 17 Delegate Assembly (you can read it here.)

There was shock and awe in Unity Caucus at this news and I had to console them. UFT District 22 rep Fred Gross came up with tears streaming down his face after reading the news and pleaded with me for another copy. I had to turn him down and he went off sobbing.

Well, here's some more good news. (Read James Eterno's right-0n report on the meeting at the ICE blog.)

The UFT will join the fight on NCLB, not to eliminate the horrendous law, but to stop the provision calling for individual merit pay for teachers. (Remember Randi's suggestion years ago that summer school teachers who get good scores should get free airline tickets.) But as a compromise the UFT/AFT seem willing to accept merit pay for entire schools that raise scores. Just plugging into the "test will decide all" mentality that I always charge them with no matter what their task force on reading says.

With reports of open revolts about to take place in the Queens and Staten Island rubber rooms, where the inhabitants blame the UFT as much as the DOE for their situation and the formation of groups like TAGNYC (who did such a good job standing up to Klein at the PEP meeting on Monday) to defend themselves in the absence of the UFT, Weingarten announced that the UFT will focus on ATR's and the rubber room and will be holding meetings with both groups. More deflection by the "masters of deflection." [Make sure to check this post out as it develops my theory on how the UFT operates.]

The work Woodlass has been doing on this blog on the ATRs and excessed has clearly had an impact and gotten the UFT's attention. (It is amazing how much they worry about anyone out there organizing.)

In a post the other day I wrote "the screams of the people are beginning to be heard and with the potential national impact of blogs calling Randi a sellout, she is trying to make it look like they will do something-- she has assigned Ron (back-stabbing worm) Isaac, Betsy Combier and reporter Jim Callahan to visit the rubber rooms and come up with suggestions. So she is trying to let the air out of the balloon."

It will be the usual "We hear you, we feel your pain." People will feel good like the union is paying attention and will stop organizing. A year later when nothing much has changed they will get the message: Talk loudly, carry a tiny stick.

3 Stooges
Jeff Kaufman (who brought rubber room conditions to everyone's attention in 2005) in a post called "Rubber Room Redux" wrote on the ICE blog about what he termed the "3 stooges" Randi has appointed to investigate the rubber rooms. I know all of them and only consider Ron (the back-stabbing worm) Isaac a true stooge. Jim Calahan is a reporter for the NY Teacher who has written a number of exposes on abusive principals and probably has good intentions, but will not have much impact.

Betsy Combier, not a teacher but a parent advocate who I have worked with on a number of cases, was recently hired by the UFT, ostensibly to assist in rubber room cases. But since the real reason she was hired was to keep her from revealing sensitive information about some high UFT officials she gained from a FOIL request, I have to be suspect about how effective she will be. But if someone wants to pay you 50 grand to keep your mouth shut, who can blame them? And since I and others know the sensitive info, it will do them no good anyway.

NOTE: Want a job with the UFT? FOIL all the work records of every former and current district rep to see if they actually teach the one period a day. Word is that a reporter for a local daily has already done so, which is causing all the DR's to make sure to do their daily period of teaching - poor dears.

Weingarten hired Ron Isaac last year for 60 grand a year as a reward for his work during the 2005 contract negotiations in stabbing the opposition in the back. (Ron had run with ICE in the 2004 elections and parlayed that into his job.) I also used to publish Isaac's articles in Ed Notes when the UFT did not want anything to do with him (years of applications to get into Unity were rejected.)

And by the way, one of Isaac's main jobs is to monitor this blog all day. From our conversation the other day it is clear he knows more about what I write than I do.

So, this is the rubber room crew that Weingarten has put together. If I were in the RR I wouldn't make plans to be back at my job real soon. Better to join up with TAGNYC.

Apparently there's some upset at Kaufman's calling them "3 Stooges." The UFT wouldn't know how to spell rubber room if not for Kaufman.

On a closing note, it was nice to get responses from people about the impact Ed Notes has had. (check the comments here). One chapter leader who I did not know came up and said he really enjoyed reading it all these years and even some positive words filtered out from some Unity people the non-suit non-goon wing.

It is also nice to see ICE beginning to stir again after a bit of hiatus. One Unity slug commented: "ICE melts slowly." Or not at all.

Robots Are Us

While it may appear that writing and organizing in the UFT is my major activity, since I retired 5 years ago I've been even more involved in the NYC robotics community through volunteer activities with NYCFIRST, the local incarnation of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology) which puts on various tournaments for kids from age 6-high school all over the world.

My focus has been the FIRST LEGO League, where teams of kids from age 9-14 build and program robots out of LEGO materials. That makes for an interesting competition with 4th/5th graders competing on the same playing level as 9th graders. (And they do pretty well.) There are over 8000 teams world wide.


A team from a public elementary school at the tournament at Brooklyn Tech last year. The teacher has left after 2 years to start a program at a private school, citing the high class sizes as a reason. (See, I can combine robotics and ed politics.)

We are just completing the registration procedure for this year and at this point have 180 NYC teams from all 5 boroughs, mostly from public schools. We have grown so much that we are running events in each borough in December. All of these events are mostly run by high school kids from the senior robotics teams at Brooklyn Tech, Stuyvesant, Aviation, Lehman and Staten Island Tech, along with their great teacher/coaches.

The top 80 teams will go on to the citywide at Riverside State Park at the end of January. The winning team there may have an opportunity to go to Atlanta for the World Festival, which includes teams from all over the world. I went last year and had a blast. One of the interesting highlights was seeing teams from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordon and Israel interact. And teams from different Chinas - Hong Kong, Taiwan, Shanghai.

A bunch of us from NYC may be going to Japan at the end of April to assist with the Asian Open tournament. Konichiwa.

This Saturday we are holding a kickoff event at Polytechnic U. in downtown Brooklyn from 9-1. Stop by if you are in the area. Or come on down to one of the events in December and think about getting your school involved for the future. You can check it all out at my robotics blog .

Giving up on the UFT Delegate Assembly

The following was distributed at the UFT citywide chapter leader meeting on Sept. 25.

Education Notes has been distributed at almost every Delegate Assembly since 1996. Roughly 100 editions of the paper, in various formats from mimeographs to full newsprint tabloids.

The last regular print edition of Education Notes will be distributed at the October Delegate Assembly and will only publish in print when there are special issues on the table.

Why stop now?

Ed Notes began when I was a chapter leader and delegate as a means of establishing a regular communication with the members of the Delegate Assembly to counter the Unity Caucus spin.

The initial purpose of Ed Notes was to inform delegates of motions I was going to present in advance to meet the “has to be printed if 3 lines or more” rule. I would inform Randi Weingarten before the meeting where I was sitting. Initially, things worked out, with Randi even declaring to the DA “I love reading Ed Notes.” But then again, I wasn’t overly critical of her and Unity Caucus at that point, thinking that as a new President, she would bring a breath of fresh air to a union that was in much need of reform. I also felt that with New Action being such a weak (and pathetic opposition even then) that only by getting Unity people to back reforms would we see the kind of democratic changes that would prepare for the coming attacks. New Action even began spreading rumors that Randi was funding Ed Notes. Ironic in the light of New Action’s total sell out in years to come.

At some point it became clear that I was being avoided when Weingarten wasn’t happy with my motion, even canceling the new motion period (the only opportunity for rank & file delegates) at one point. I angrily told her that in all my years at the DA (since 1971) neither Shanker nor Feldman had ever gone that far. The final straw came in 2001 when I spent 4 months trying to get a motion calling for the UFT to reject all schemes that hint at merit pay. That was followed soon after by Weingarten’s endorsement of mayoral control, a clear disaster for members of the UFT. (I had been in touch with George Schmidt in Chicago.)

It was clear there would not only be no reform under Weingarten but she would take the control and manipulation of the membership to new heights. And so she has. At that point Ed Notes went into opposition mode which led to the formation of ICE by supporters of the paper after the New Action sell-out left a void.

I won’t go into the history of the past 5 years. Just look at your schools and the state of the union at the school level where pre-UFT conditions prevail in so many places. From Kahlenberg’s new Shanker bio: “Shanker was assaulted by a student, but when he asked for help from the principal he was told, ‘This would not have happened if you had motivated your students.’” That was 1952. “Administrators were in a position to play favorites, assigning some teachers to ‘administrative assignments’ and others to the most violent classes. At long drawn out faculty conferences “teachers sat there seething.”

Back to the future.

So, why stop publishing the print edition of Ed Notes now? Ed Notes continues to be more active than ever on the ednotesonline blog. But with Unity Caucus more tightly in control than ever and a DA that reminds me of the Roman Senate in the declining years of the Republic, the idea of reaching out to people at the Delegate Assembly seems fruitless.

Weingarten has turned the DA into a farce. Why not just put up a video of her hour long report on the web and save everyone the trip?

The past few months of last school year took things to a new level. With 10 items waiting on the agenda, a deputy mayor and DOE reps from the reorganization are brought to the April DA and a meeting gets extended until after 6:30. One blogger, a member of New Action, actually complained about this on his blog. Where was he at the meeting raising a protest at the outrage? Only silence. And silence from most of the opposition, including some of my colleagues in ICE. They seem to have given up on the DA too.

The outrage continued at the next DA when Manhattan chapter leaders, who voted 19-1 to call for discussion at the June DA on a rally against the reorganization, had their resolution overwhelmingly defeated. Nothing better illustrates the disconnect between the schools and the Unity Caucus leadership when nineteen chapter leaders representing probably a thousand to fifteen hundred members are turned down in the attempt to discuss - I repeat “Discuss” - the idea of a rally. (By the way, are you still happy with the cancellation of the May 9th rally?)

But it went further. When Kit Wainer rose to defend himself against Jeff Zahler’s red-baiting attacks, Weingarten had the nerve to suggest that the body read all 10 resolutions while he spoke so they could be voted on en masse. When someone objected, she incredulously said, “Well, people have been waiting for these for so long, it is not fair to obstruct them.”

No one called a point of information to remind the delegates about the deputy mayor and all the DOE people at the previous DA. Farce, indeed!

At that point I said “Enough.”

It seems the overwhelming majority of delegates and CL have accepted the rationale of the Unity spinmeisters that the UFT leadership bears absolutely no responsibility for the events of the last 5 years. They are coated with Teflon. Similar to the way BloomKlein have become the heros of the nation for basically destroying the union at the ground level. It confirms a new insight - that the most important job in the world – one I would urge any young person to go into – is public relations.

In fact, the UFT leadership have been enablers of BloomKlein. And all too many members of the DA have been enablers of the leadership. If they won’t look at themselves in the mirror and see that the conditions for most rank and file teachers resemble those that existed before the birth of the UFT, there is no point in Ed Notes trying to convince them otherwise.

I pity the rank and file. To survive they have to fight a 2 front war – against a horrendous assault on them by BloomKlein and with a collaborationist leadership that has shown a masterful ability to coopt and deflect any hint of militancy that might arise. I can go into numerous examples but you will have to read them on the ednotesonline blog, where daily I post the outrages of the BloomWeinKlein team.

Have I given up? Not at all. Not with the loads of emails coming in from teachers in schools all over the city that have been decimated by BloomKlein who are screaming for a union that will truly stand up for them. Increasingly, teachers are beginning to take action on their own, in small groups. The U-rated, rubber rooms, ATR’s are beginning to make their voices known. The biggest threat they face to this movement is from a union that will leap in to gain control of them by promising action with words, not deeds. They will get high level meetings which will impress them no end. But in the end the most vocal might get a behind the scenes transfer or some special deal that will separate them from the rest of the group.

Deflection, cooptation, delay. Or form a committee.

I will continue to work with ICE and support TJC. But from now on I will only attend Delegate Assemblies purely for the entertainment value – and for the post DA visit to a local pub with the regular DA gang. Join us. If you are an independent delegate, skip the meeting and go directly to the pub where the real delegate assembly will take place.

Carnival of Education is Open

.. at Global Citizenship in a Virtual World.

NYC Public School Parents: GBN News Editorial: Let Them Speak

NYC Public School Parents: GBN News Editorial: Let Them Speak

Teacher Advocacy Group NYC (TAGNYC): TAG Confronts Klein at PEP Meeting September 24th

Teacher Advocacy Group NYC (TAGNYC): TAG Confronts Klein at PEP Meeting September 24th

TAG NYC Crew Rock at the PEP...

....and Patrick Sullivan was pretty fine too with a resolution on military recruitment plus lots of good questions and comments for the Tweedles:

"Mr. Cerf. I'm from the corporate world, not education. But our human resources people take a good hard look at retention rates as a measure of effectiveness."

And I got it all on tape. Details later.

Eduwonkette on Teacher Effectiveness

For the past few months I've been using my 2-minute speaking time to "educate" the members of BloomKlein's Panel for Educational Policy (the rubber stamp replacement for the old Board of Education) on the concept of what makes for a quality teacher.

I will continue those attempts tonight. Of course, it all falls on deaf ears (except for Manhattan rep Patrick Sullivan), but why not at least point up the contradictions in basing an entire body of educational policy on the concept that the quality of a teacher has more impact than any other item - class size, socio-economic conditions, etc. I raised some of these issues in a Teacher Quality, Part 1 post. A key point is that all the forces - Broad, Klein, Weingarten, the Clintons - are aligned on the same page without any clear understanding, or interest, in the research on the issue.

Along comes a brand new blog by eduwonkette, clearly someone with a research-based finger on the trigger of many of these push-button issues. (I intend to raise many of these points as I can at the PEP.) Expect insights galore from this blog.

(Kickline roster (from left to right): Eli Broad (Broad Foundation), Kati Haycock (Ed Trust), Michael Bloomberg (NYC), Michael Petrilli and Checker Finn (Fordham).)

This week, eduwonkette will post a daily article on teacher effectiveness, touching on issues that all members of the kickline, which should include Weingarten and Bill Clinton (any photoshop people out there, feel free) have been ignoring.


Introducing eduwonkette
http://www.eduwonkette.com

The Teacher Effectiveness Kickline
From Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg to George Miller and Checker Finn, we’re awash in chatter about measuring and rewarding teacher effectiveness. This week I’ll consider some of the problems with these proposals. What’s missing from this discussion, I argue, is a full exploration of their potential consequences for students, teachers, and schools.

Let me note that I am not opposed to measuring and rewarding teacher effectiveness in principle. But it’s more complicated than most commentators would like to acknowledge, and I hope this week’s postings will help us think about that complexity.

Monday: Acute tunnel vision syndrome - The teacher effectiveness debate focuses only on a narrow set of the goals of public education, which may endanger other important goals we have for our schools.

Tuesday: Neglecting the school as organism - The teacher effectiveness debate ignores that teachers play many roles in a school. Experienced teachers often serve as anchoring forces in addition to teaching students in their own classrooms. If we don’t acknowledge this interdependence, we may destabilize schools altogether.

Wednesday: Ignoring the great sorting machine - If students were randomly assigned to classrooms and schools, measuring teacher effects would be a much more straightforward enterprise. But when Mrs. Jones is assigned the lowest achievers, and Mrs. Scott’s kids are in the gifted and talented program, matters are complicated immeasurably.

Thursday: Overlooking the oops factor - Everything in the world is measured with error, and the best research on teacher effectiveness takes this very seriously. Yet many of those hailing teacher effectiveness proposals missed out on Statistics 101.

Friday: Disregarding labor market effects - The nature of evaluation affects not only current teachers, but who chooses to join the profession in the future and where they are willing to teach. If we don’t acknowledge that kids that are further behind are harder to pull up, we risk creating yet another incentive for teachers to avoid the toughest schools.

Q&A From a Chapter Leader on Rubber Room

CL: Due process/speedy trial and all that it entails are rights that we as citizens have. Those same rights cannot, as a matter of course, become abrogated by a contract. Our own contract states that even if any part is deemed illegal, the rest of the contract stands.

So, why is it that teachers can be pulled out of the classroom without even knowing why?

Shouldn't that be totally illegal????

EdNotes: Of course. The argument by the DOE and the UFT is that they are getting paid. A proactive union would never allow this and would raise so much hell about it. But the UFT/Randi is worried about image and a potential article in the NY Post that they are protecting a child molester. So, they would rather let 50 innocent people be railroaded than risk the 1 bad apple. There is a % of guilty people but the union should be saying publicly that it is their job to provide a rigorous defense to everyone but they don’t do that. Instead they make public pronouncements about how they want to "help" the DOE get rid of people. Thus Randi gets points nationally from the anti-union forces for being a "progressive" union leader, meaning she is perfectly willing to make "adjustments" to contractual rights.

On the other hand, the screams of the people are beginning to be heard and with the potential national impact of blogs calling Randi a sellout, she is trying to make it look like they will do something-- she has assigned Ron (back-stabbing worm) Isaac, Betsy Combier and reporter Jim Callahan to visit the rubber rooms and come up with suggestions - I hear Staten Island RR people are organizing with tee shirts and something might explode at some point as much against the UFT as against the DOE. So she is trying to let the air out of the balloon.

CL: The argument that one is getting paid is irrelevant. People in jail still are able to earn income from their investments, yet they are in jail.

They have been removed, and I am curious if they (union and board) are liable for any health problems that are exacerbated by these tribulations - ala if one robs someone, and that person has a fatal heart attack, the perpetrator is guilty of homicide.

There is no need to go to rubber rooms for suggestions. Any constitutional lawyer can tell you that the process, as it stands now, is flawed. The union should send some of their retainered lawyers to work on this.

The union should be defending the people, realizing that there is always the bad apple, just as there are bad cops, bad doctors, etc. does not permit the warehousing of teachers. The damage done cannot be undone by licking one's paws.

EdNotes: One day soon we must explore how Ron and Betsy got jobs at the UFT.

Monthly PEP Meeting

Monday Sept. 24 at Tweed, 6-8pm. Sign up time for speaking is 5:30.

TAG Members to Speak at PEP

On Monday, Sept. 24, a group of teachers from the Teachers Advocacy Group NYC, many of whom have unfairly been given U-ratings and/or sent to rubber rooms, plan to take 2 minutes each to force the members of the Panel for Educational Policy to look into the faces of teachers who have been savaged by the policies of the BloomKlein administration.

They will do so with dignity and style, befitting senior teachers who have been slated for obsolescence.

Their blog states: "We represent teachers and counselors who have been excessed, unfairly U-rated for political reasons, teachers forced into ATR status, and high-salaried and senior teachers who have been discriminated against. We feel abandoned by the United Federation of Teachers, which by its silence is allowing Bloomberg and Klein to destroy our careers."

TAGNYC can be contacted at their blog and at tagnyc@hotmail.com.

Ed Notes will be there to support them while UFT will be holding one of their rubber stamp Executive Board Meetings.

Monthly PEP Meeting: Monday Sept. 24 at Tweed, 6-8pm. Sign up time for speaking is 5:30.

Lois Weiner on Shanker, NCLB and Neoliberalism

Right wing conservatives have turned the term "liberal" into a dirty word. To the left, neoliberals are even worse.

Former UFT'er Lois Weiner wrote a great piece on Neoliberalism a few years ago for New Politics. I posted the entire article with a link to New Politics on Norms Notes. Here is the section on Al Shanker:

Although Albert Shanker, AFT's longtime chief, died in 1997, his organizational stranglehold on the union, his political compact with social conservatives, and his leadership of the segment of the AFL-CIO that has collaborated with the U.S. government in subverting popular movements throughout the globe, were continued by his co-thinker and replacement, Sandra Feldman, who recently resigned the AFT presidency due to poor health. (Readers can find a fuller discussion of Shanker's politics in the obituary of him Paul Buhle wrote in New Politics, or the one I wrote in Contemporary Education, Summer 1998. ) The similarities between Shanker's vision for school reform, which because of his iron-clad control of the union were de facto those of the organization, and the neoliberal program manifested in NCLB are apparent in his article, published posthumously, in the Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy (Fall 1997).

If we ignore the article's curmudgeonly asides and focus on its main argument, Shanker's agreement with the major portion of the neoliberal educational program is apparent. First, Shanker contends that U.S. schools are far worse than those in OECD nations because we offer too much access to higher education, or as he formulates the problem, we have an insufficient amount of academic "tracking." We don't start early enough to put students into programs that prepare them for their vocational destinies, so he advocates putting all students into vocational tracks sometime between grades 5 and 9. In their earlier grades, they should have a curriculum based on E.D. Hirsch's project for "cultural literacy." Although he maintains that in these tracks students must all be held to "high standards," his use of Hirsch's curriculum signifies that instead of engaging first-hand with primary sources, reading, appreciating, and perhaps creating literature, students will memorize facts about the "great" (white men) of history, the arts, and science. He bemoans the absence of a system of high-stakes tests with really harsh penalties for failure, the absence of mandatory national curriculum standards, and the presence of far too much tolerance for student misconduct. Shanker assails the laxity of the pre-NCLB curriculum standards, which were additionally problematic for being left to the states to execute.

Shanker adds that some standards can be too "vague -for example, ‘Learn to appreciate literature.'" Note how Shanker's breezy dismissal of the standard about appreciating literature echoes the OECD's rejection of international assessment in "reading for literary experience." Although Shanker used his weekly column in the New York Times, paid for by the membership, to ridicule the national standards developed by professional organizations of teachers of the arts, rejecting them as grandiose and unrealistic, his own children attended school in a suburban district with excellent arts programs -- and no E.D. Hirsch curricula. Union members had not formally endorsed many of the positions Shanker adopted, for instance rejection of the standards in the arts, and recent surveys of teachers, in cities, suburbs, and rural schools find even less support now than there was at the time Shanker advocated many of his positions about standards and testing. Yet because of the AFT's bureaucratic deformation, of which the indictments for graft in the Miami and Washington, D.C. locals are shamefully graphic illustrations, the opposition to the AFT's vocal, unwavering support for testing and "high standards" scarcely registers at the national level. Most of the biggest locals are so bureaucratic that rank and file challenges to the leadership must be about fundamental practices of democracy, in order for classroom teachers' voices on issues of educational policy to be heard.

The NEA generally can be counted on to adopt liberal positions on the important political issues of the day, although its positions do not necessarily represent those of its members because its organizational structure is also bureaucratic -- but in a different way from the AFT. The AFT is a federation of locals so the state organizations have small staffs and little power. The AFT constitution contains no term limits for its president who has little direct control of local functions. Shanker masterfully exploited the post of AFT President to promote himself and to trumpet his political views on a wide-range of opinions. He did so by using his domination of the massive New York City local to leverage control of the state and national organizations, ensuring that his political views received a formal stamp of approval from the union's executive council while never being debated at the local level. Shanker ruled the national staff with an ideological iron fist, employing only people who agreed with him -- or were fired.

Maybe It Wasn't Shanker After All - Updated

Read the additional update below from the AFT blog with an addendum from me and brief history of the opposition in the UFT from Shanker times on.

Posted by Alexander Russo on September 20, 2007 on his edweek blog.

"One of the most interesting of the 20-something mostly irate comments on my Huffington Post article claims that Shanker doesn't deserve credit for unionizing the teachers because David Selden was the true visionary and was replaced by Shanker in a power struggle along the lines of Stalin and Trotsky. Hmm. Guess I skipped that chapter in Kahlenberg's book."


Ahh! Now we're getting to the source of Jeff Zahler's red-baiting attack on Kit Wainer who ran against Randi Weingarten in last spring's UFT election. I am into just the 2nd chapter of Kahlenberg's book ("Tough Liberal") and there are many themes and contradictions emerging. Like Shanker's "commitment" to democracy and vehement opposition to totalitarianism, while at the same time setting up the Unity Caucus system of governing the UFT that would make your average run of the mill dictator envious. Kahlenberg's index doesn't even mention Unity Caucus. Maybe it's a figment of all our imaginations.

I won't even go into the issues of his support for all the very things that have led to the undermining of the very union structure he helped build. Reading an account of Shanker's humiliating experience as a teacher in the 50's sounds so much like today. But then the UFT leadership would say he didn't have big, bad BloomKlein to deal with in those early years of organizing (Maybe it really was Selden). Poor babies, they have it so hard.

Not that I am new to this stuff since I was part of the opposition to Shanker in the 70's and even attended Shanker's coronation as AFT President at the AFT convention in Toronto in 1974 where Shanker stabbed Dave Seldin in the back and turned the AFT into an agent of his foreign policy.

We'll be doing a lot more on Shanker as I am working with Bruce Markens on a review of the Kahlenberg book for New Politics. Bruce was in this thing from the early 60's and ended up being the only elected UFT District rep that kept beating the Shanker machine (even though it was run by Feldman at the time.)

I hear old timers say that Shanker must be turning over in his grave over saw what is happening to teachers in schools today. I don't agree. He would be perfectly comfortable as it is a system inherited from him.

And in many ways, Randi Weingarten is more adept at selling this kind of stuff to the members. She's much more socially adept than Shanker (or Feldman) and much more of a politician - in the Clinton "We feel your pain" sense.

When Feldman/Shanker chose their successor, they knew exactly what they were doing. And it is in this sphere where Weingarten is far behind them - never secure enough to cultivate someone strong enough to run the UFT effectively in her absence. That may prove to be her bete noire.

Posts on Unity Caucus red-baiting can be found here, here, and here

Also check out the Century Foundation slightly biased roundtable discussion on Shanker's legacy. There are some powerful political forces behind the Shanker resurrection. And none of them bear well for teachers.


UPDATE from AFT blog:

Shanker in Our Times
September 21, 2007 12:28 PM

I am currently reading the new Shanker biography the Washington Way--I am looking up names in the index and then seeing what people said, or what is said about them, in the text. (C'mon, I work here, it's all part of the intrigue.) So, who did I start with? Bella Rosenberg. And, in the short section on NCLB, Bella says:

"Al believed in eradicating achievement gaps, group distinctions . . . But Al also knew that since the beginning of time, there had been individual variability," so a performance standard which requires 100 percent proficiency by a certain date "is just a human impossibility."

In reading over that section, I thought, gee that sounds familiar. Who was it, who was it, oh yeah, it was Amy Wilkins at Ed Trust who recently said in press release a on the Miller-McKeon bill:

"The 2013-14 deadline for proficiency is a powerful disincentive to raising standards. If we are going to ask states – and students – to climb a higher mountain, we need to give them more time to get there . . ."

So, it only took Wilkins five years and half years of NCL to realize what Shanker knew intuitively over ten years ago. He was a man ahead of his times. To read some of the reviews of his biography, click here.

Oh, and if you really want to understand what makes the AFT tick, read the sections on the Social Democrats with care. I, myself, never realized that Yetta Barsh, Shanker's assistant, was married to Max Shachtman.

Ed Notes comment:
Back in the 70's we used to talk about certain ironies in the fact that Yetta Barsh held the gateway to Shanker.

It is worth reading the Wiki about former Trotskyite Shachtman to get a picture of the underlying roots of the UFT/AFT.

Here's a piece:
Social Democracy. After Shachtman's death in 1972, many social democratic Shachtmanites rose to prominent positions in government and organized labor. Supporters of Social Democrats USA (SDUSA) in the labor movement included Albert Shanker (president of the American Federation of Teachers), as well as AFL/CIO presidents George Meany and Lane Kirkland.


The Opposition in the UFT: A brief, down and dirty history

With the main opposition to Shanker coming from Teachers Action Caucus, a Communist Party dominated group, the Stalin/Trotsky wars were being fought out in the UFT beneath the surface. With the rise of the New Left in the 60's and 70's, new groups of Trotsky derivatives began to surface in the UFT. As oppositionists, they could not work with TAC and therefore became part of the opposition independent of TAC.

TAC was opposed to the '68 strike and for years were branded as strike breakers, an unfair label, as that strike had so many connotations beyond labor issues.

The group I was with (Coalition of NYC School Workers), independent left-wing but anti-left political party - by this I mean, we viewed people who joined left political parties came into a group with a priority of organizing for their party and not for the group – occupied a middle position within this milieu and anti-CP (Communist Party) leftists gravitated to us.

Ultimately (1975-6), some of the Trot party people saw they weren't going to get anywhere and split off into New Directions along with others who felt the CSW were too cerebral and not action oriented. The dichotomy in New Directions led to a split there with the Trot party people left out in the cold and they ultimately formed a group called Chalk Dust while ND was left with the more middle of the road right wing elements. Eventually, ND and TAC merged (around 1990) into what is currently New Action and some of the Chalk Dust people evolved into Teachers for a Just Contract. New Action still has the old TAC/New Direction dichotomy with the NA core people still coming from the old TAC.

Thus, the roots of why New Action and TJC would find it impossible to work together go a long way back.

ICE (Independent Community of Educators) was formed 4 years ago from the original people involved in the old CSW from the 70's and people who worked with Education Notes, which began publishing around 1996 as an alternative point of view to New Action and TJC. The word "Independent" in the name of the organization was very important, reflecting those same feelings from the 70's when the CSW was in the middle of the ideological battles between the Social Democrats, CP and Trots.

That battle still goes on, as does the red-baiting on the part of Unity Caucus.

What Makes a Quality Teacher? Part 1

revised

They all say it: Joel Klein, Christopher Cerf, Randi Weingarten, Bill Clinton, Eli Broad - the entire mishpucha. "The single most important factor in education is the quality of the teacher."

The Quality Teacher issue is one worth exploring and we will do so in a series of posts.

Does the quality of the kids and their families have any impact at all on the quality of the teacher? This is a question loaded with implications. We won't go there yet.

The focus on the QT issue, naturally leads to the conclusion that when students and schools fail, there can be mainly one cause - the quality of the teacher. That is the most important factor, isn't it? Hey! They all said it.

Why would a leader of a teachers union go along with this idea when it can only lead to the "blame the teacher" witch hunt mentality with all the consequences — U-ratings, rubber rooms, loads of useless PD [professional Development for those not familiar with educational gunk words], total control of what to teach, how to teach it, when to teach, etc. (often decided by supervisors who have spent 10 minutes in the classroom,) is beyond some people.

But then again you have a chancellor and union president who have spent 10 minutes in the classroom.

There are lots of answers - from – "the UFT is in the PD business and stands to profit from PD, certainly in that scads of jobs are created for the Unity caucus faithful" to "the UFT leadership basically lines up with the rest of the mishpucha philosophically - as befitting of people who think they have answers to educational issues but do not have much teaching experience to really make these judgements. I have not heard many working [classroom] teachers make the claim that "The single most important factor in education is the quality of the teacher."

I guess they're not part of the mishpucha.