rd to having the entire nation get the full details of his disastrous attempts to remake the NYS school system into model of a corporation while alienating teaches, parents, principals and just about anyone who has any knowledge of education.
.... is a good thing for kids?Administration is barely holding it together. Most of the staff is living on the edge (except for the ones that are either too new or too arrogant to care). What bothers me most is our stress is slowly but surely finding its way to the kiddies.
CTF? I doubt the AMA recognizes such a condition, but if they did - I suspect I'm suffering from it.
Perhaps it's just the ELA prep that's getting to me. The simulation exams, the "incorporation" of testing skills in all subjects, the "pumping them up for the exam" hype ... it's all a bit much. The kids are trying their best; that I have to admit. But even they begin to become tired and need an outlet. Unfortunately, that seems to be exactly at the time of my class. So today's chatty class got the consequence for not completing their work. A 30 minute lunch detention. 30 minutes of agony for me. But once you say you're going to do issue a consequence, you have to follow through. Even if that means a loss of one's own lunch.
I'm slipping further and further behind in the curriculum due to this damn test. I can't wait for it to be over.
things but that would be fairly powerless. However since money is always at the central level there would be allocation powers.
el Fiorillo. Josh teaches at Vanguard HS in the Julia Richman Complex and has been part of the Teachers Unite Forum Planning Committee. Michael, one of ICE's founders, is CL at Newcomers HS in Queens. The article is posted at Norm's Notes.
One of the fun things about this teacher activism business is meeting people with interesting backgrounds and families. One of the original founders of ICE, a former opera singer, happens to have a
daughter who also went into music. Not exactly opera, though.
....FROM 1895
The department's deputy chancellor for finance and administration, Kathleen Grimm, said last week that her staff began brainstorming cuts about two months ago, in November.
No principals have yet been informed of the cuts.
A Department of Education spokesman, David Cantor, said they would be informed in the next few days.
[De Vale] listed several multimillion-dollar expenses the Department of Education might cut from its central office budget instead, including ramped-up testing; a new data warehousing program called ARIS, and a process of reviewing schools through an outside contractor based in Britain. The ARIS system is costing the Department of Education $12.2 million this year, and the review process is costing $5.9 million, Mr. Cantor said. The new interim tests were to cost $80 million over five years.
To save money, Mr. Bloomberg's budget calls for scaling back the tests to four a semester from five. Mr. Klein hails all three programs as innovations that put
schools ahead of the country in terms of their ability to individualize teaching. New York City In an interview yesterday, Mr. De Vale, whose school received an A grade on its progress report, said the emphasis on data did not match his priorities. "We don't spend our day looking at flow- charts," he said. "My priority is keeping kids off the street."
The criticisms come a week after Mr. Klein released a survey showing wide approval among principals for the programs Mr. De Vale disparaged.
The survey was given anonymously, and about 70% of principals responded.
Mr. De Vale said the results were distorted because many principals were not under the impression that their answers were actually anonymous.
"This is a climate of fear," he said. "Principals don't speak the truth."
teachers were forced to take action because, in part of the UFT’s failings to do its job to protect teachers. Unfortunately, you did not see fit to provide a copy of your response to my clients and instead circulated your proposals in a typical political maneuver.
