Schmidt on Russo, Social Promotion and More

I asked George Schmidt to comment on work Alexander Russo did on social promotion - which we're calling "test-based retention" - in Chicago. Everytime I start to read someone's blog, George trashes them. I can't keep track of which status quo the Education Wonk crowd is defending. Or are they attacking the status quo? No. I get it. They are attacking the old status quo and defending the new (corporate-style mayoral control) SQ.

I'll keep reading Russo's blog anyway. (Has anyone seen Russo and Rotherham in the same place? I'll check out their workshop with Jenifer Medina of the NY Times at AERA on Thurs. and report back.)

Excerpts from George (he is referencing this piece by Russo):

What Russo is doing is recycling conservative talking points, then dressing them up with some twists as "fact." Note that he never actually talks about numbers, but froths into metaphor and some quips. The reason is that at every point, the numbers are nasty. The kids who are kept back are screwed -- just as the data showed from as far back as the New York Gates programs -- for life. The schools don't improve, either. What happens is a massive triage, with the minority of better scoring children (usually, middle class) slowly being siphoned off into magnet, charter and selective enrollment schools, while the remaining public schools receive the "leftover kids" (as they have been called in New Orleans, and in some schools here).

Russo has a way of dodging facts and ignoring data, except when he is cherry picking to fit his conservative biases.

What's amazing about Russo's piece is that he can ignore what now amounts to more than ten years of history and information, then spin out the same lies about "ending social promotion" that were being served up by right wing pundits a decade ago, when Chicago was in the vanguard of test-based "standards and accountability" long before No Child Left Behind.

George's full piece with some Russo quotes is over at Norm's Notes right here.
And some responses to Russo's piece from Leonie Haimson here.

Whitney Tilson Chooses Ed Notes Editor to Manage Hedge Fund

Ed Notes News (ENN) reports that its editor, Norm Scott, has been appointed by hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson to reform the Nasdaq stock trading market in addition to managing Tilson's personal assets. Scott is deemed fit for the jobs after taking a one week course for teachers at the NY Stock Exchange.

"Nasdaq was around 5000 in March 2001 and now it is around 2200," said a spokesperson. "Clearly the financial pros are not doing the job. The culture of low expectations is the biggest reason for the failure of Nasdaq to bounce back.

"The core problems in American financial markets are: large companies with awful bureaucracies, skewed incentives, and powerful, entrenched interests defending them. We feel an optimist with one week's training can turn this culture around."

"It's all about the culture of low expectations and it's clear that the schools training financial managers have failed," said another unnamed Tilson spokesman. "We need to place a quality finance person in every position. The performance of the markets is indicative that MBA programs have failed miserably. Someone outside the field with little training is what is needed. A teacher with no expectations of ever earning a decent salary fits the bill perfectly."

As his first act, Scott had all the hedges trimmed around the nation's financial institutions.
Scott announced that every stockholder and employee at Bear Stearns will be able to bid for high priced consultant jobs.

Nasdaq will be branded a failure, closed down and broken into smaller entities. The public will be invited to apply for charters to open their own stock exchange. No experience in the financial field will be necessary.

Experts have speculated that one of the major causes of the current financial crisis has been due to Tilson and other financial managers' preoccupation with imposing a market-based model on the education system causing them to not pay attention to the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Whitney Tilson background:
Using his extensive knowledge of the public school system and how to fix what's broken - after all, he once did attend a school - Whitney Tilson jumps out of the financial field to comment on education on his so-called ed reform blog. He is also one of the leading advocates of Teach for America, the program that takes high end college grads and runs them through a few weeks of training and tosses them into classrooms in the inner city, mostly as missionaries to serve a 2 year term. Only 18% of TFA grads remain in teaching beyond their promised term of service. Tilson supports GARCOTT - Get A Real Career Other Than Teaching.

See NYC Educator today on Tilson and BloomKlein.
Tilson also has a blog supporting Obama's candidacy.

Scary, dude! Obama supporters, beware!

More This Week in Ed Notes

Besides attending (and writing about) the events listed in the previous post, here are some of the areas I hope to write about this week:

Why does Weingarten embrace holding teachers accountable (See The Chief) when they have absolutely no say in their professions? Why is she grading schools, albeit with an extension (a fairly light extension) of criteria?

The Battle of the Rubber Rooms: Teachers4Action vs. Betsy Combier and the UFT. Or how Betsy got her job at the UFT.

True Confessions: I was an ATR

More True Confessions: I bribed kids

Can an Old Dog Learn New Tricks? How People Learn

Schmidt on Russo: Comments from George

Calling all BloomKlein supporters in the NYC teaching corps

Reader suggestion:
Teacher surveys and the intimidation taking place by administration to score your school well, and mis-represent what services you provide.

Terror Alert for NYC Schools

Blogger Under Assault has been refining her brilliant Security Alert analogy between schools and the Department of Homeland Security. She has a widget in her sidebar and if you want to list your school under the appropriate category (to warn or encourgage potential job applicants) send along the info to either her or to me. Anonymity guaranteed. I sent her a couple I know of. (Note: the buttons don't work here.)



This Alert is still under construction, but in the meantime, press the buttons to show the categories. We'll be listing the schools we already know about soon. They're talked about in public sites, and the reputation they've earned is no secret.

Send recommendations to: woodlassnyc@yahoo.com.

This Week in Education Notes

It will be a busy week coming up.

On Tuesday, at 8 AM Ed Notes will be heading over to the Princeton Club for a Manhattan Institute (the right wing think-tank) breakfast conference. At least when you go to MI events they feed you. (See a report of my visit to an MI luncheon in Feb. '07 for Christopher Cerf at the University Club here and a recent visit last month at the Harvard Club for Chester Finn here.)

The topic is "Can Mayoral Control Fix Urban School Districts?" Joel Klein will be the featured speaker followed by a panel discussion with Michelle Rhee (former Tweedle, Teacher for America hot shot and now the head of the Washington DC schools) and Paul Vallas, privatizer supreme of 3 urban school systems (Chicago, Philadepphia and now New Orleans). Don't these people have school systems to run. The fact that they are gathered here is proof of the political over educational agendas they are pushing.

Gee, bet I can guess the outcome of this panel.

But there may be a fly in the ointment – Diane Ravitch is also on the panel. We'll report back and maybe get some pics of the food fight.

I hope Eduwonkette shows up to ask this question she raised on her blog on Monday:

Really!?! Joel Klein

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NYC's Panel for Education Policy voted tonight to require 8th graders to score above level 1 on reading and math tests and pass core courses in order to be promoted. Meanwhile, last week Joel Klein wanted to invest a hypothetical billionaire's bling in a research institute - "There are two things that I would do with this money. One, I would try to set up a national institute for educational policy that does serious research. This is an industry in which there are so many myths, and that’s because there are such large gaps in our knowledge right now."

Really, Joel Klein? That's surely true in some areas, but grade retention ain't one of them. Really. It's just that a recent paper by Brian Jacob and Lars Lefgren found that the 8th grade retention initiative in Chicago increased students odds of dropping out. That's on top of a boatload of other studies finding the same. Why waste that billionaire's money if you're not even going to read the research? And why are 18,000 8th graders projected to be retained if your 3rd, 5th, and 7th grade retention initiatives were so effective? Really.

AERA in NYC This Week
Wednesday through Friday I am checking out the American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference being held in NYC. Eduwonnkette says "Weighing in at ~500 pages, the AERA program is a good weapon, but a crappy guide to a professional meeting."
Eduwonkette and Skoolboy have some suggestions as does Rethinking Schools.

This one might be fun Russo and Rotherham (Eduwonk) on the same panel - another food fight?

Disseminating Education Research Through Electronic Media: Advice from E-Journalists

Scheduled Time: Thu, Mar 27 - 10:35am - 12:05pm Building/Room: Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers / Lenox Ballroom, 2nd Floor

Session Participants:

Chair: Paul Alan Baker (Wisconsin Center for Education Research)
Participant: Alexander Russo (This Week In Education/Scholastic Administrator)
Participant: Andrew J. Rotherham (EduWonk.com, Education Sector)
Participant: Jennifer Medina (New York Times)
Participant: Richard L. Colvin (Columbia University)

And maybe this one later that afternoon at 4PM (after finding a good movie.)

Organizing Against Intolerance: Teacher Unions, Antiracist Education, and the Limits of Liberalism

Sponsor: SIG-Teachers' Work/Teacher Unions

Scheduled Time: Thu, Mar 27 - 4:05pm - 5:35pm Building/Room: New York Marriott Marquis Times Square / Majestic Complex, Palace Room, 6th Floor

Session Participants:

“Communism Is Jewish”: New York City Teachers Unions and Tolerance Education During World War II
*Zoe Burkholder (New York University)

What’s A Teacher Union for Anyway? Race, Community, and Organization in the Chicago Teachers Union, 1965–1973
*Kyle Westbrook (University of Illinois - Chicago)

Keeping the Peace: Social Justice Teacher Unionism in a Canadian Context
*Cindy Rottmann (OISE/University of Toronto)

A Critical Analysis of the BCTF Aboriginal Education Program: A View From Within
*Blanche Christine Stewart (British Columbia Teachers' Federation)

Discussant: Wayne J. Urban (The University of Alabama)
Chair: Lois Weiner (New Jersey City University)

Abstract:
By examining the tolerance education of New York City Teacher Unions during World War II, the adoption in 1971 and quiet disappearance in 1998 of an anti-racist program with the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation, and the struggles within the Chicago Teachers Union over full inclusion of African-American educators during the late 1960s, this session will highlight the ways in which teachers’ unions have functioned as sites of struggle over race, power and privilege.


Labor Conference at UFT HQ
On Friday afternoon (4-8) and Saturday (8-2) there is a labor conference at the UFT building at 52 Broadway. Party Friday at 4.

Note: Lois Weiner will be on a panel on Saturday at 10. Lois has written extensively on the neo-liberal collaboration with business interests in the attack on the public schools. She will be the keynote speaker at our upcoming Teachers Unite forum om April 15.

See More This Week in Ed Notes coming up later today.

Our school just voted down the bonus/merit pay plan

Posted to the ICE-mail listserve.

Our school just voted down the bonus/merit pay plan. We are in D75 and they finally gave us the criteria of the plan last week. (although the UFT wanted us to vote on the plan back in November)
Anyway, I wanted to thank everyone on this list for the discussion of the pros and cons of the bonus plan. I was able to better articulate the reasons to vote against it, because of this list.

A spreadsheet (not updated) on NYC schools that voted down pay for performance is here.

Let's Rally - In France

I just dried off from the rally. I had 2 more events to attend afterwards and I was squishing all over Manhattan. What else is there to say? If it made the participants feel good, the more power to them. Will it get any funding back? I am sticking to the point that if the rally were held back in May when momentum was strong (and the weather better) it would have had a bigger impact. But then again, the UFT would have led that one too and we know where that ultimately takes us - nowhere.

I still say the rally should have been at the Federal reserve and the NY Stock Exchange. Or Bear Stearns. Now that the guy who ran it is available, why not make him a CEO of something in the DOE?

Below, NYC Parent Steve Koss (and former teacher) posting to the NYCEducation News Listserve. He raises the issue of what they would do in France, where unions have a bit of heft. As UFT'ers, we can only go home after the rally and dry out. Steve closes with, "The only other choice is to wait for the next Mayoral election after suffering eight years of abuse and hoping for something better. Good luck with that."

To that, I say, "Bon chance!"

Steve Koss writes:

Today's NY Daily News reports:

Before the protest, city leaders held a press briefing to stress that city spending on schools has grown by $4 billion since 2002, when Mayor Bloomberg took office. They also noted that if education was saved from budget cuts, other city agencies, including the NYPD, would take a 12% hit.

So even before yesterday's Keep the Promises rally had begun, the DOE's official response was another thumbed nose at the parents, teachers, and students who showed up to protest. Worse, their response was the now-classic Bush/Rove strategy of false dichotomy, the "You're either with us or you're against us," "If you don't support the war, you don't support our troops," "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" approach of scare tactics and implied ad hominem attacks. In this case, it's either, "You accept the cuts in the DOE budget or we cut the NYPD's budget by 12%, so good luck protecting your family from the rampaging criminals and rapists who will be then be running wild through your communities."

One thing has become abundantly clear: this Mayor and Chancellor couldn't give a fig about public school parents or their silly little protests. "Go ahead, have your little march, and we'll ignore it, the media will barely notice, everyone will go home after a little harmless catharsis, and we'll go right ahead doing what we planned to do anyway." Doesn't matter if it's 8th grade promotion policies, budget cuts, or anything else.

There's only one thing this Mayor will ever respond to (other than the power of money), and that's threats to his national political image. Short of parents actually boycotting the public schools and holding their kids out indefinitely in a mass strike, nothing is going to change with this Mayor. Nothing else parents can do -- no number of protests or rallies or City Council testimonies or petitions or blog postings -- is going to make even the slightest dent. Five or six years of this should at least have made that clear by now.

Say what you will about the French, but they understand the power of mass strikes as the last (and, too often, only) weapon left by which regular people can still exercise their democratic power. Government still requires the consent of the governed, even in Mayor Bloomberg's New York City.

The only other choice is to wait for the next Mayoral election after suffering eight years of abuse and hoping for something better. Good luck with that.

Weingarten May Soon Hold N.Y., National Union Jobs

Elizabeth Green wrote in the NY Sun.

Ms. Weingarten has enjoyed broad popularity inside the UFT, consistently winning elections by a landslide. A group of teachers that organizes against her, the Independent Community of Educators, has repeatedly condemned some of Ms. Weingarten's more unconventional positions, such as her support for performance-based pay for teachers, her support for charter schools, and her new partnership with a charter school operator that bans traditional teacher tenure, Green Dot. The group greeted her announcement, delivered to the union's executive board and legislative body last week, with disgust. "The UFT deserves a full-time president," a UFT chapter leader at Jamaica High School who is a member of ICE, James Eterno, said.

Are you sure about that, James? We've had one, supposedly, for the past 10 years. Where has that gotten us? Let's try for 10 years with Randi as a part-time President. Think it's impossible for Weingarten to attempt to break Shanker's 11 year record? Green writes [emphasis mine]:

Ms. Weingarten said holding both jobs would be the only fair way to ensure the smoothness of her departure from the UFT. An AFT president starts her term the day after being elected, she pointed out, arguing that such abruptness would prevent any smooth transition out of the UFT. "If this happens, I would do both for an uncertain time period," she said [how about a decade?]. The period would probably end when Ms. Weingarten felt a qualified successor [the search is on for another lawyer] had emerged to take her place at the UFT. Three have emerged as top contenders: two UFT vice presidents, Michael Mulgrew and Michelle Bodden, and the New York State United Teachers vice president, Maria Neira.

What Abruptness? Everyone knew for the past 3 or 4 years Randi was becoming AFT president this July. So if there was any intent to pass on power to anyone, a clear cut successor would have been chosen and groomed, as Shanker did with Feldman and Feldman did with Weingarten (who was designated at least 5 years before she actually took over.)

If you read our 2 part series on Weingarten's succession (see link on the sidebar), you will see the candidates mentioned (there were 6 at that time and expect more names to surface) include a white, a black and a Hispanic to keep all constituencies in Unity Caucus (the membership is irrelevant in all this). None of them are viewed as serious candidates capable of filling Weingarten's shoes, not as much due to their inabilities, but because Weingarten has assured the existence of a divide and conquer strategy by not putting a clear successor in place. Imagine as people begin to line up as near to the potential throne as they can, with supporters of each jockeying for positions within Unity and even going beyond into the rank and file, and heavens forbid, some people in the opposition, playing the "I'll be a different type of leader" card.

Expect Weingarten to play them off against each other. When Feldman handed her the reigns of power, she moved to edge out those Feldman supporters who did not kiss the ring. She cannot risk the same happening to her.

Remember, the entire power in the AFT resides in the UFT, and ultimately, Unity Caucus – control the caucus and control the world.

Mulgrew, who came out of nowhere from a high school chapter leader to near the top of the heap in a very short time, is mentioned as the person with the power game to run the union. But people see him as a bit rough at the edges, in more of a role to control the faithful while Weingarten races around, functioning like Tom Pappas did for Feldman and Weingarten (don't think the Randi/Tom relationship was always smooth either.) The threat to Weingarten is that Mulgrew moves behind the scenes to build an internal support system that would make him the obvious choice. Then Weingarten would face pressure to make it official.

If Bodden were truly a potential successor, she would have been given responsibilities to prepare her for the role. Neira has played little of a public leadership role to date.

So my guess is this is all about setting Randi up to run in 2010 because if she didn't groom someone by now when she knew she was leaving, why would she at this time when she won't be around to ease the transition?

A perfect example would be the coalition of groups the union worked with to put together the rally. Much is based on the personal relationships with Randi. If they don't deal directly with Weingarten, the people they do deal with in the UFT are basically gofers and are not enabled to make any real decisions. Thus, the entire political house of cards Weingarten has built, will come down without her hand being on the till. And don't think people aren't worried. If she had put in a strong successor, that person would have been picking up the relationships and assuring a smooth succession.

Soon we will be hearing how the fiscal crisis requires an experienced hand at the helm and that hand must be Weingarten's, even if it has to reach from Washington.

Of course, all of the above it total speculation on my part from a distant galaxy, so take it all with a grain of salt.

Social Promotion Under Bloomberg/Klein

Here is the true incarnation of social promotion - clearly, by their actions in giving Diane Dixon a job, BloomKlein support social promotion. And who is that nameless bureaucrat at the DOE who approved her? Any guesses out there?

The NY Post said:
The [DOE] stated, "Most importantly, Lt. Gov. David Paterson was mostly responsible.

No. More importantly, the DOE is as subject to politics as ever.

Blaming David Patterson for making a phone call - where's the accountability on the part of the DOE for saying "Yes?"

Can't you see the spin: Diane Dixon is qualified because she has proven that she can run (for a job.)

Leonie Haimson wrote on her listserve:

While thousands rally against the budget cuts to schools, and our new Governor David Paterson stands w/ Bloomberg to reject the state tax on the wealthy, saying that "I think the world that the teachers, the schools in New York City, knew, has changed," to justify these cuts, the NY Post confirms that last month he made phone calls to get Diane Dixon, his alleged ex-girlfriend a job at DOE.

Today’s story gives more details: Dixon was rejected as a CEC specialist , but then after Paterson made some calls, was hired as a District family advocate in D17 (under Martine Guerrier) at $50,000 a year. As the DOE says, “Lt. Gov. David Paterson was mostly responsible.”

Nice to know that these positions – as well as the money promised our schools as a result of the state’s highest court decision -- are considered politically expendable. How many others have been hired in this office – which the Mayor cites as showing how much he cares about parental involvement- to cement relationships with potential friends and allies?

The NY Post article is here: ED. DEPT. PATERSON CALLS GOT GAL A JOB

Test-Based Retention

Leonie Haimson responded to our previous post on social promotion (feh) with a very perceptive point:

Norm and others: you really ought not to refer to the administration’s policies as opposing social promotion; call it test-based grade retention. No one supports social promotion, and by calling it that, you’ve already bought into the Mayor’s line.

She also did the research I am too lazy to do in relation to the Alexander Russo piece on social- er – test-based retention that I referred to in the posting.

Leonie writes:

Alex Russo’s article is a bit out of date – he refers to Brian Jacob et al as supporters of this policy; more recently he has shown significantly increased dropout rates for those kids retained, as has the Chicago Consortium.

For links to the more recent Jacob research see eduwonkette (here).

For links to the Chicago studies, see our blog at On the fourth anniversary of the Monday night massacre; what have they learned?

Since then, there have been two authoritative studies, both conclusively showing that holding back kids hurts rather than helps them . See the Chicago Consortium report called
Ending Social Promotion: The Effects of Retention, which shows that third graders who were held back did no better than those who were promoted; and that sixth graders who were held back did even worse.

Even more pointedly, check out Ending Social Promotion: Dropout Rates in Chicago after Implementation of the Eighth-Grade Promotion Gate which concludes that eighth grade students who were retained increased their likelihood of dropping out by 29%.

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters

Social Promotion Blahs*

See latest update to this post here.

How does BloomKlein claim they empowered principals but then dictate from above decisions on who gets promoted or not? There are views on both sides on the part of teachers, who generally seem to come down on the side of using promotion as an arrow in their quiver (they have been left with precious few) to get kids who don't do much work to be motivated.

The non-worker is very different from the child who tries and struggles. If a child can't read at all - no skills after even 5 years in school even with the worst teachers then there is a problem like dysleksia. If the child is 2 years behind then there could also be a problem that no amount of holding the child back in yet another class of 25 or 30 kids will help make a difference.

When I found the graphic, it was attached to an interesting article by Alexander Russo on retention in Chicago which goes into the pros and cons and discusses the research – I don't pretend to absorb the implications, but it is worth a look-see at http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/3251976.html.

I asked George Schmidt for reactions and will add them to this post.

UPDATE, March 20: Leonie Haimson's response on Chicago is posted here.

Read NYC Educator (Get Tough But Pass Everyone Anyway) here on the 8th grade social promotion farce.

Manhattan borough PEP Rep Patrick Sullivan, the lone dissenting vote commented at the blog:

Like most people, Manhattan BP Scott Stringer and I don't think we should push kids into high school who are not ready. We don't support social promotion. Yet the proposal that Klein put forward for approval had no plan to provide services to the retained kids, let alone deal with the pervasive problems of middle schools. Panel members were asked to put faith in the "forthcoming" plan that DOE is developing to turn around middle schools. The end of the administration struck me as an odd time to start working on a plan.

I've looked closely at all the research on these programs to hold kids back based on test scores and pretty much across the board the research says they don't work. A very comprehensive study in the Chicago school system showed that the retained kids had higher drop out rates, the program overall did not help despite costing hundreds of millions to fund another year of school. We will see somewhere between 5,000 - 18,000 additional kids repeat 8th grade. Tweed has not even thought about where they'll put these kids in middle schools that are already overcrowded.

What we've been saying is to instead find these kids early and provide the remediation instead of waiting for them to fail. DOE has an $80 million dollar student achievement database and the most extensively tested student body in the free world yet they can't figure out which kids need help and give it to them. Instead of paying for another year of school, we should invest in creating middle school environments that are more attractive for both students and teachers - small classes, enrichment programs, real music, art, etc.

There's a lot more from Patrick and Leonie Haimson at the NYC Public School Parent blog.

Read Patrick’s lucid explanation of his vote on the new 8^th grade promotional policy here: 8th Grade Retention Vote at March 17th Panel for Educational Policy

Leonie's (in her words) somewhat less lucid account, including links to news stories, is here

last night at Tweed.

Both are worth reading.


Loretta Prisco, retired teacher and one of ICE founders writes to ICE-mail:

In my school for many years (until a new test-centric principal took all decision-making into her own hands), we made the decision to promote or hold back very carefully - teachers and supervisors and parents too without some self-serving political crap from a mayor or chancellor. And in fact as pointed out at NYC educator schools will cheat to get around the issue so they look better. Social promotion will be stronger than ever.

Retired teacher and one of ICE founders, Loretta Prisco writes on ICE-mail:
What is so amazing is that our current 8th graders were in 2nd grade when Klein took over. They have been the recipients (or should we say victims?) of his policies,curriculum mandates and personnel appointments and yet he takes no accountability for the fact that 8th graders cannot reach level 2.

Are we expected to believe that after 8 or more years of education that have not enabled students to achieve a level 2 on a standardized test, they will be successful in 6 weeks in summer school. Achieve in 6 weeks what couldn't be done in 8 years? Why not just cancel school and have them spend a few weeks in summer school? Throw in some Saturday sessions to guarantee success.

It is interesting to note that 5 of the 6 identified SURR schools were middle schools this year. Holding back 8th graders will definitively challenge middle schools even more - a challenge they will not be able to overcome. Are we looking at systematic closing of middle schools as we have seen in the high schools? A cause for more charters?

Middle schools can work. Classes of no more than 20, true advisor-advisee sessions, guidance support, good attendance improvement programs, a full gym program, intensive English classes for our ELL population, a full visual and performing arts program, health programs offered on site, professional development on working with the adolescent, teachers teaching within their license area, and providing the mandated services that our special ed. population deserves.

And we should be sending on 5th graders prepared for middle school. That begins with a substantial foundation in the early childhood grades. A full comprehensive program, low class size and further reduced for those who need more attention, intervention with struggling learners in kindergarten, before failure takes its ugly toll.

$220 Billion for Bail Out, Zilch for Schools

The Ed "reformers" always talk about accountability in terms of "no excuses" for poverty, large class sizes, etc. They are quick to support the billions for bailouts but say they can't waste money on lowering class size because they can't guarantee a quality teacher in every class.

How about not allowing a bank to open until there's a quality banker in each and every one? Are any of teh characters who led us into this crisis truly suffering? Poor guy at BearsStern- wealth fell to 12 million.

Under whose watch were laws passed during the depression to prevent the kinds of abuses we are seeing today repealed? I believe Mr. Clinton. And of course, followed up by the massive giveaway of the institutional protections to corporate interests.

If we had unions that stood up and exposed the practices that end up in bailouts ( Chrysler, savings and loan - one a decade) instead of collaborating, it all wouldn't be as easy for them.

If the UFT/AFT defended its members instead of seeking ways to cooperate in the dismantling of public education, they could have played a role in exposing some of the shams. But how can the UFT play at that level when they can't even defend teachers in their schools?

Not a word from the union about how 200 billion can be found for a bailout or how 2 trillion magically appears for a war. Instead of pointing out where the money is, the UFT/AFT buys into the phony accountability/reform movement and calls for tinkering at the edges.

We will see the UFT lead a rally at Tweed tomorrow begging for a few crumbs to be put back on the table while the Fed throws billions on the table for the financial industry.

The rally to restore the budget cuts would have a much better chance of succeeding if it were held at the Federal Reserve.

8th Grade Retention Battle at Tonight's PEP

It is the 4th anniversary of the Monday Night Massacre where 3 PEP members were fired by Bloomberg because they were going to vote against the 3rd grade retention. Since then, they've added 5th and 7th grade. It's all a crock. What happened to those kids who were held back? The DOE won't reveal - they have a study going supposedly that won't be completed until '09, just when these jokers are leaving office.

With Patrick Sullivan leading the charge and the Bronx PEP rep calling for a postponement of the vote at tonight's Panel for Educational Policy meeting at Tweed, expect the rubber stamp PEP to rubber stamp the BloomKlein policy.

As many have pointed out, ending social promotion is a political, not educational policy. All research shows the policy of holding kids over doesn't really work.

But individual schools (remember how they were empowered?) should make those decisions for each individual child at the school level. (Read this post from Have a Gneiss Day for a different perspective of a teacher needing the threat of holding kids over to get some work out of them.)

Take any 8th grade prospective holdover. My guess is that this is not the first time. Maybe it's been twice. The kid is practically a grandfather. My friend tells me about a 17 year old father to be in the 8th grade of a K-8 school. So the result will be an increased chance the kid drops out and never clogs one of the Gates schools with his or her presence.

And guess what? Their disappearance will make the high school grad rates go up.

Under Bloomberg schools are micromanaged and budgets cut...

... while the Construction Industry Gets to Run Around Like Free Range Chickens.

Sent this morning from a friend whose office is down the block:

Would have been interesting if I was in my office on Saturday. Top left with white wrapping is the building which used to have a crane. View is looking down 51st towards east river.

News from the Blogs

Grading the Schools on Terror – Under Assault writes
As long as everyone’s going around designing “grading” systems for schools – first Klein, now Weingarten — I’ve decided to make one up myself. I see it this way. When the staff lives in fear, they can’t do a good job. Simple as that.

A brilliant concept modeled on the alerts at Homeland Security at Under Assault.


Untamed Teacher
Moriah has entered the red zone as she gives a graphic illustration of the above with her running (and painful) account of her U-rating hearings. Make sure to read the comments from her online support group. I know Moriah's school and principal, who feels obligated to choose at least one teacher a year to humiliate and drive out of teaching. If there's a deity, one day her time will come.


Unity on the Couch
by John Powers at the ICE blog on the March DA and the GHI/HIP merger.

Unity at the DA is an interesting machine to observe. If it were to be rated according to the fairest and most practical methods used to evaluate classroom teaching and community building, it would undoubtedly receive an unsatisfactory rating. It rarely starts on time or ends on time. There is plenty of chalk and talk or just plain talk and no chalk. There is also no "accountable- talk" amongst delegates. Its agenda ("objectives") goes unchecked, unmet and off on tangential paths. Certain members of Unity feel comfortable hurling aloud words and moans meant to intimidate and stop others from voicing their ideas and disagreements about a given topic. All of the above, from my perspective, creates a culture that attempts to dumb delegates down, maintains the status-quo and ultimately makes it difficult to create a stronger, democratic union capable of beating back the no longer creeping, but rapidly advancing privatization of our school system.

http://iceuftblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/unity-on-couch.html

Leonie Haimson and the gang celebrate the 4th anniversary of the Monday Night Massacre at the PEP on St. Patrick's Day with the real St. Patrick (Sullivan) leading the opposition to the 8th grade holdover policy at the NYC Public School Parent's blog.

And the great Gary Babad at the same blog reports on Bloomberg's naming Elliott Spitzer to the post of Deputy Chancellor.


Have a Gneiss Day has a very hilarious (or very sad) post on recent parent teacher conferences.

Rubber Room on the Radio

David Bellel has put up the audio with a slide show of the this american life radio program – produced by Joe Richman, Anayansi Diaz-Cortes, and Samara Freemark at radiodiaries.
David combined images with the audio. Broadcast 3/1/08.

Part 1:

http://dbellel.blogspot.com/2008/03/rubber-room-from-radio-diaries-part-1.html

Part 2:

http://dbellel.blogspot.com/2008/03/rubber-room-from-radio-diaries-part-2.html

The trailer to the RR movie is here and here.

Spitzer Redux

Selections from ICE-mail on Spitzer:

Michael Fiorillo writes:

Now that the tsunami-like tide of revulsion and moralizing has ebbed somewhat, I have to say a few of things about this week's events.

The distaste many people have felt about Eliot Spitzer's behavior should not cloud their thinking about what has actually happened. A progressive elected official- at least by the debased standards that exist today - was destroyed for reasons having far less to do with his moral failings than with whom his enemies are. And federal law enforcement, financial institutions and the New York Times were complicit in it. This week's events suggest that powerful forces are aligned to see that those who have looted the country and enriched themselves over the demise of its actual, productive, wealth-producing patrimony will not be brought to account for the trillions of dollars they have stolen and the wealth they have destroyed.

Spitzer had many faults. As a teacher, I mistrusted him for his support of charter schools. He came off as arrogant and self-righteous. His using the state police to go after Joe Bruno was wrong and only served to make that old-school political crook seem sympathetic. And the way he satisfied his appetites, its affect on his family, is creepy and painful to watch.

Nevertheless, he signed the executive order giving city day care providers the right to union representation - a good thing Randi has accomplished, by the way -, fought for the humane position of allowing undocumented residents to obtain driver's licenses, was a strong supporter of women's reproductive rights. Most importantly, and the fundamental reason for his downfall and destruction, he was an aggressive opponent of "the malefactors of wealth." He successfully went after Wall Street in the aftermath of the last stock market and tech mania of the late 1990's. That he did it not to bring about the communal garden society we hope for, but to save those greedy sons of bitches from themselves, well, OK. But working people and the possibility of a more humane and democratic economy benefited from what he did.

The malfeasance behind the current financial crisis, and suffering that is sure to follow from it, will dwarf anything seen since the 1930's. That, and the war in Iraq, is the true degeneracy we should be talking about. My fear is that what happened to Spitzer is a taste of what's in store for any elected official who might raise a few questions. Every politician who might feel the dangerous temptation to act in defense of the public interest must now wonder whether their every banking and credit card transaction is being fed directly to law enforcement, to be later later leaked to the Times.

Will David Patterson, Andrew Cuomo and others take the hint?

Best,
Michael Fiorillo
Chapter Leader, Newcomers HS, Long Island City

George Schmidt replies

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Now about that New York Times part.

For the past decade, we've been watching here while otherwise intelligent people think that clippings from the Times equals some kind of "research." As we've noted over and over, without the Times, Paul Vallas would still be a small town hack in Springfield Illinois. Thanks to the Times, he went from "school
reform" in Chicago to Philadelphia to New Orleans. Ditto charter schools.

We need our own media.

Yesterday would have been nice.

Today is too late.

By Monday, when Wall Street gets hit with the next wave of this tsunami (if Bear is down, can Merrill be far behind?) we'd better be able to get some facts fast from other than the most official ruling class sources.

This is going to be ugly, uglier, and ugliest.

Elliot Spitzer was in every way a fool. When I was growing up in Jersey (Elizabeth, Linden, Newark) "down the shore" included three beers people. (In those days, they were called things we no longer share on e-mail). Three beers and you were in bed.

And New York's millionaire governor paid $4,000 for that?

Lot of growing up to do, we have.

Lot of learning to do the hard way, we will.

Yoda said.

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance
www.substancenews.net


Woodlassnyc adds:

I guess I have to disagree somewhat. You say: " My fear is that what happened to Spitzer is a taste of what's in store for any elected official who might raise a few questions."

True, but some people in government (alas, not enough of them these days) don't do things like structure money transactions and visit sex workers.

Whereas I agree with you and George that negative forces went after Spitzer and that they seem to be a part of a much larger syndicate of corrupt people, Spitzer did do harm â€" to his family, his constituents, and his office. It looks like he broke some laws as well. We do not need these people to run our government and put others in jail. We have to elect the ones that are fundamentally moral, as well as being crime free. Is that too radical? If it is, we may as well give up.

Woodlass followed up with this:

The most recent Greg Palast mailing connected some dots for me along the lines of what Mike was saying, including some stuff I didn't know, so here's a few paragraphs from it:

Then, on Wednesday of this week, the unthinkable happened. Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Who? That's Carlyle as in Carlyle Group. James Baker, Senior Counsel. Notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family and more dictators, potentates, pirates and presidents than you can count.

The Fed had to act. Bernanke opened the vault and dumped $200 billion on the poor little suffering bankers. They got the public treasure . .. Not one family was saved – but not one banker was left behind.

Every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value. Mozilo's Countrywide stock rose 17% in one day. The Citi sheiks saw their company's stock rise $10 billion in an afternoon.

And that very same day the bail-out was decided – what a coinkydink! – the man called, `The Sheriff of Wall Street' was cuffed. Spitzer was silenced.

Do I believe the banks called Justice and said, "Take him down today!" Naw, that's not how the system works. But the big players knew that unless Spitzer was taken out, he would create enough ruckus to spoil the party. Headlines in the financial press – one was "Wall Street Declares War on Spitzer" - made clear to Bush's enforcers at Justice who their number one target should be. And it wasn't Bin Laden. __._,_._

The entire piece is worth reading or listening too - it's a podcast.

The link is here:
http://www.gregpalast.com/elliot-spitzer-gets-nailed/

I would say this about "any elected official who might raise a few questions–" Keep it in your pants or just shut up.

Michael followed with this:

My intention was not to condone or minimize what Spitzer did, but to suggest some of the possible intentions among those who brought him down, and the wider purposes it served.

What I should have also mentioned was the poiltical hypocrisy of Spitzer's situation versus, for example, Louisiana Rep. Vitter, who admitted to patronizing prostitutes and remains in Congress.

Fair treatment under the law?

As for politicians keeping it in the pants, Norm, that seems unlikely: their narcissism, their overlapping libido and will-to-power seems to make it almost impossible

Best,
Michael Fiorillo

My response:

Michael is right about politicians keeping it in their pants. I should have said they should try to use their brains when they are potential targets.

I compare it to teachers who decide to become active politically. no, I'm not talkign about keeping it in their pants, but about making sure all their i's are dotted and their t's crossed when it comes to not leaving themselves open to anything obvious in terms of latesess, absence, getting work in on time, etc. Though we know things can and will be trumped up, don't give them more ammo.

I quetion whether Palast is making Spitzer out to be much more of a crusader than he really is.
Was Spitzer was truly out to fight Wall St or just use his fight to make some political hay? He did things selectively and went after people for what often seemed like personal pique.
His games and dishonesty with campaign finances, many lies, etc. raised a red flag a long time ago.

I'll add to this as more comes in and post a link on the sidebar.

Ed Notes take on the Spitzer saga the day after is here.

Jumping Checker

Susan Graham blogging at A Place at the Table at this link with a post called "Lessons Not Learned"and Nancy Flanagan at Teacher in a Strange Land lay some big ones on Chester Finn (known affectionately as "Checker") who recently came out with a book called Troublemaker.

For those who are not aware, Finn is one of the ideological gurus of the corporate takeover and marketization of public schools. We dumped Rothstein on him at the Manhattan Institute Luncheon a few weeks ago. Read the piece at this link which included our parody of The Band's The Weight:

Crazy Chester went on and on, and he made me see through the fog.
He said, "If you accept KIPP, you’ll be allowed to eat your hot dog."
I said, "Wait a minute, Chester, you know KIPP can’t educate em all."
He said, "That's okay, boy, we’ll take 70% and public ed will take a fall"

Unlike me, Susan is serious and goes after Checker where it hurts. Read the entire piece at this link and the comments, but here are some excerpts:

He "is usually styled as an “education guru” because he is a Hoover Institute Fellow and President of The Fordham Foundation where he contributes regularly to The Education Gadfly. For something like three decades, he has been more than willing to explain to people in positions of power exactly what is wrong with public education."

After attending Phillips Exeter Academy ( pricey now, pricey then) and earning bachelor and master degrees from Harvard (ditto), it must have been pretty traumatic to discover he couldn’t cut it in a public high school classroom [Finn taught one year and couldn't hack it] .... Finn says he "came to realize that, if I were going to make a difference in American education, it wouldn’t be at the retail level."

I wonder...why he derives such pleasure in styling himself as a gadfly (meddler, busybody, pest, nuisance) and a troublemaker. I spend my day with people of persistence, character, leadership and courage. (Many, Finn might be surprised to learn, are also smart and well-educated.) They are classroom teachers. They didn’t give up after a year. They come back to the classroom every day to try to improve the lives of their students. Some of them are amazing. Some of them struggle. But they are sticking around and putting in the time it takes to become accomplished teachers. Finn went back to Harvard and got a doctorate in Education Administration and Policy. And while I may not be qualified to question the screening process for the doctoral program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I wonder about it. If a new CPA fails to survive an entry level job at an accounting firm, is the obvious path to skip the “retail” level and go back for a PhD. in Economics? Perhaps so. Perhaps this explains something about the quality and practicality of education policy today.

...those of us out here on the front lines could do without professional Troublemakers who leverage their privileged backgrounds, elitist education, and the contacts that go with them into careers directing the campaign from the rear. Public education is serious business. The future of our economy, government, and people depend on it. If Finn is serious about determining what works and what doesn’t, perhaps he should spend less time posturing in the plush chairs of non-profit think tanks, or the marble halls of government, and a little more time in quiet contemplation, observing and listening to the teachers, school administrators, and students who spend their days in our public schools.

In this excerpt, Nancy Flanagan hits Checker with this right cross:

I will never win any smarter-than-thou contests, Checker, but I made good use of my free and low-cost public education. In the post-war decades there have been millions of teachers like me: upwardly mobile, hard-working, intellectually curious, still dedicated to the idea that education is the ticket out of poverty, and still committed to kids who are less than intrigued by a classic, liberal-arts college preparatory curriculum or getting up at 3:00 a.m. to read Beowulf.

Sorry that your first teaching job didn’t work out, what with all those discipline problems, probably resulting from kids already irreparably scarred by their dreadful public school system. I’m not so sure that a strong syllabus or demanding accountability measures would have made a difference in your sense of efficacy—although a good mentor may have helped. One of the lessons I’ve absorbed is that nobody learns how to teach well in a single year. I am always mystified by pundits who suggest that putting graduates from our most prestigious colleges into our toughest schools with little training or on-site assistance is a good idea.

My first year of teaching wasn’t all that I hoped for, either, but I stayed with it, because (as you yourself noted) persistence counts. I came to love teaching, and was very good at it, for more than 30 years. I persisted because I had tangible evidence, every day, of my impact on real children and a real school. Later in my career, I worked for two years at a national education non-profit. I attended lots of conferences and meetings—saving the world one white paper at a time—but discovered that the real juice in education reform comes from the work with kids, and went back to the classroom.

The NY Sun's Elizabeth Green has written a review of Finn's book, giving just a little bit too much credit.

Two Awful Opeds in NY Times

David Bellel places Andrew Rotherham/Eduwonk in his true role as a high-priced hooker for the phony Ed reform establishment. Anyone surprised that he loves the UFT leadership (see Vera Pavone's piece on this aspect posted March 18 here)?
Hmmm. Anyone got a good pimp picture?

Anyway, here is Leonie Haimson's take on the Op Eds in the NY Times from last Sunday (March 9.)

Highlights:

"Nice to have such so-called “balanced” opinions in our newspaper of record. Shows how strong the rightward drift has been." "Between this and the Sunday Roundtable discussion of how helpful it is when billionaires “disrupt” our schools, the NY times appears to have lost any pretense of a balanced perspective – or any anchor to reality."

The first is called “Educators or Kingmakers? “ by David White, a “adjunct scholar” at the Lexington Institute, a libertarian think tank. (Apparently, White’s main job is working for “Keybridge Communications, a boutique public relations service that works with free-market think tanks around the world.” see http://www.americasfuture.org/aff-team.php )

Here’s an excerpt: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/opinion/10white.html?th&emc=th

“Forty percent of teachers leave the classroom within their first five years on the job — in some measure because they don’t stand to gain the same performance-based pay raises available to their private-sector counterparts. Merit pay would help public schools retain good teachers by paying them more. But the unions have fought against such measures.

There is no research to show that merit pay helps reduce teacher attrition– in fact the evidence from states like North Carolina and Florida suggests the reverse, as merit pay tends to penalize and stigmatize teachers who work in low-performing schools w/ high needs students.

And : “The same can be said about school choice. Despite compelling evidence that it improves student achievement, the national teachers’ unions regularly stand against the policy. “

Again, there is no such evidence that “choice” meaning vouchers, improves student achievement. Even some of the most conservative theorists on education – eg. Sol Stern – have moved away from that position.

The other oped is called “Teaching Change” by the well-known polemicist, Andrew Rotherham, Eduwonk himself.

While he purportedly praises the UFT and some other unions for adopting merit pay and establishing their own charter schools, he proposes creating “a portfolio of contracts to match a portfolio of schools” that would supposedly “give parents better options and re-energize teachers’ unions as an agent of progress.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/opinion/10rotherham.html?ref=opinion

Nice to have such so-called “balanced” opinions in our newspaper of record. Shows how strong the rightward drift has been. Rather unsettling that now the mainstream explanation for the purported low-performance of our urban schools has become the teachers union.

The existence of such unions somehow don’t seem to hamper suburban schools from high achievement levels, but is somehow the root of all our problems in low-performing urban schools – not their high-needs populations, not their huge class sizes and overcrowded conditions, not the immense student loads that most teachers are saddled with, not the lack of commitment on the part of our elected leaders to replicate the conditions under which suburban schools thrive, but supposedly the lack of “choice” and the low skills of our urban teachers.

Between this and the Sunday Roundtable discussion of how helpful it is when billionaires “disrupt” our schools, the NY times appears to have lost any pretense of a balanced perspective – or any anchor to reality.

Leonie Haimson
Class Size Matters

"I Blame the NY Times"

A NYC teacher, a Teaching Fellow from one of the first cohorts who after 5 years moved west and is still teaching, writes:

Out here, I hear that the union (AFT) is terribly weak and ineffectual. It actually sounds much worse than in NYC. It's like younger teachers in NYC-- they've been well-conditioned to not expect rights as a union member. As a charter school teacher, I'm not unionized.

What makes steam come out of my ears is that people here will say things like, "Oh, I heard Bloomberg's really doing a great job with the schools in NYC." You realize how strong hype and PR can be.

I blame the New York Times for this. They love their CEO mayor and they celebrate most of the bullshit he and Klein put out about the schools. I mean, really, these test score "improvements" are not really valid, statistically, and it doesn't take an advanced degree to see it. Put reporters on the ground, in the classrooms, at the meetings, etc., and the emperor's new clothes are revealed. It's just not that complicated. And, what, they reorganized, again????