"Average Citizen" Jessica Tisch Calls For Bloomberg 3rd Term

Today's Post includes an op-ed calling for voters to decide on term limits so Bloomberg can run again. The piece claims Bloomberg has outperformed, citing his record in improving the schools. It's written by a Jessica Tisch, identified as a "law and business student" in New York. Does anyone know who that is, if she went to public schools or how she otherwise arrived at her insight into our "improved "schools?

What the Post didn't tell you:
NY Times, Nov. 2006

Jessica Sarah Tisch, the daughter of Merryl and James S. Tisch of New York, was married last evening to Daniel Zachary Levine... The bride, 25, and bridegroom, 26, met at Harvard, from which they both graduated magna cum laude, and where she is now in the third year of a combined M.B.A. and law degree program and he is a second-year M.B.A. student.

Her father is the president and chief executive of the Loews Corporation in New York, which was founded by her late grandfather Laurence A. Tisch and late great-uncle Preston Robert Tisch. The bride's father is also the chairman of the board of the Educational Broadcasting Corporation, the parent organization of two New York-area public television stations, WNET and WLIW. Her mother is a member of the New York State Board of Regents and the chairwoman of the board of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.

Meryl Tisch, another useless NY State Board of Regent. Time to call for elections of these jokers.

A response from SK to the NYC Education News listserve:

You're simply not going to believe this -- I'm sitting here with my jaw resting on the floor. I'd say there's a 99%+ likelihood that Jessica Tisch is hardly a disinterested observer of the NYC political and school scene. She's one of "the Tisch's." Her mother is even a member of the NYS Board of Regents. See the NY Times wedding announcement below fro 11/2006. Young Ms. Tisch is apparently a "law and business student" at Harvard -- I'm sure the Tisch family name and money guaranteed that. What are the chances she's an NYC public school student? Does less than zero count? Hers is a family that would never do more than hold it's collective nose as it was chauffered past our public schools.

I guess Mike and Joel are now recruiting their rich friends' kids to shill for them semi-anonymously. I'm just astonished by the sheer brazenness of this, and the timorous little identifier of Ms.Tisch as a "law and business student." That would make Chelsea Clinton "a recent Stanford graduate." So much for full disclosure on behalf of the Post, as if we might have any reason for them to do this honestly. This is utterly outrageous, truly appalling in every way I can imagine. Sadly, it's nothing I wouldn't otherwise expect from the Post and its editorial board. How many other "law and business student" letter writers would get a guest editorial spot in a major NYC newspaper? No different than what doubtless got her into Harvard Business and Law Schools, I'm sure.

UFT's Michael Mendel Hammers Joel

Klein meets the press after the meeting.

One of my complaints about the UFT has been their inadequate response to the attacks on teachers. For years I've been urging Randi Weingarten to have the UFT present at PEP meetings to challenge Joel Klein's bull. Frankly, I was doing this on my own, though in the last few years some people from NYCTAG and some rubber people have joined in. The PEP is a useless body, but it is the only public forum in the entire world of Tweedom. And if the UFT were there, there would be more press coverage.


Last night the UFT, which stupidly holds its Exec. Bd meetings the same night as PEP, as they did last night (though they held it at Julia Richman Complex as a protest of more BloomKleun follies,) brought out many staffers and school psychologists. At the same time, James Eterno showed up with 50-100 parents, teachers and students from Jamaica HS. But more on all this later.

Chrisopher Cerf dreams of how he can parlay his Edison stock into buying the NY Department of Education and taking it public - after he takes it private, of course. (I just got an email calling him a "dick.")

David B. captured some great audio (and these pics) of the UFT's Michael Mendel hammering Klein on the tenure issue. He did a great job, though his speech reaffirms what we've been saying - the UFT offers little protection to the non-tenured. At least I didn't hear mention of any. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Listen to Klein's tepid response. We consider Michael one of the good guys at the UFT. And he's a NY Rangers fan (I used to sit behind him at Ranger games and heckle - about UFT policy.)

Plug in at David's blog.

http://dbellel.blogspot.com/2008/04/uft-cahones.html

or click below.

Don't Build It So They Won't Come

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer (our hero for appointing Patrick Sullivan to the PEP - see the upcoming video of Patrick at last night's meeting in the posting after this) has released a report showing that with the building boom in Manhattan, there has been no provision made for schools. See the details over at Norm's Notes.

The one school they planned for fell through

What kind of income does it take for a family to buy an apartment in Manhattan today? Bloomberg assumes most will go to private school. Wouldn't it be cheaper to provide say a $10,000 subsidy for each family to help them pay for private schools? Oh, I forgot. That's a voucher system. The real BloomKlein plan was to use the proposed Jest Stadium on the west side as a 70,000 seat school during the day. It would have worked, though lunch duty would have been a bitch.

Here's a better idea. Don't build it so they won't come. No schools and we can make Manhattan a child free zone.

On a more serious note, I was speaking to a parent with a child at PS 3 in the West Village who is very happy with the education there. She says it has been a very diversified school with students from other areas of Manhattan. A number of people she knows like the diversity. But now the DOE is forcing them to limit to the neighborhood and the school is becoming segregated- meaning white. Another plank in Joel Klein's "Shame of the Nation" speeches to the black community.

Half the teaching staff is very experienced and excellent she says -- a great balance and giving lie to the attitude at the DOE that long-time teachers are to be hounded out of the system. But now won't these salaries count against the school's budget? More shame!

She says the parents have been raising enormous amounts of money (the "newer" people have been willing to bid $10,000 for a quilt) to cover art, music, etc. - something that poor schools can't do and something Klein should talk about in his "shame of the nation" speeches when he goes to poor areas selling his program. She is wondering whether they will now have to use this money to keep their experienced teachers.

Let's see: BloomKlein- those great civil rights activists in the tradition of Martin Luther King:
More segregated schools. A big drop in the number of black teachers. Less Gifted & Talented than before. Shame.

As parent activist Lisa Donlan from the lower east side commented to me last week -
They broke everything and fixed nothing.

Coming later: More breaking and not fixing - school psychologists protested at the PEP last night. Tales of horror and loathing. Of course, Klein said it was the first he heard of it. And I got pics of him running over to say hello to UFT's Michael Mendel, who introduced him to UFT Staff Director Leroy Barr. Aha! Collaboration. Michael was there to hammer them on the tenure issue but I had to leave before he spoke. Dave B (the real one) came in to pinch hit.

Back Issues- Angelet on Rampage

Here are some links to backdated articles that I just posted:

Ding Dong at Bayard Rustin Ed Complex - Principal John Angelet is leaving.
But even though he's a lame duck, he is hell bent on taking people with him. He is on a rampage and this wouldn't have happened if he had been removed when he was supposed to a few weeks ago. The UFT needs to make a big stink over this. Here's a bitter guy who was forced out but is exacting revenge. All his actions against teachers from the point he announced he is leaving should be declared null and void.


Race on the Table - Globally and Locally. Excerpt from my Wave column from April 4, 2008.
I address some of the Obama/race stuff and also a local issue at PS 106 in Rockaway where the PTA president wrote a piece in the Wave raising issues about white teacher attitudes towards kids of color. You can track the full PS 106 story by clicking on the link in the sidebar.

The Rising Costs of Health Care and NYC Union Contracts - forum April 22. Chapter Leader John Powers will be one of the speakers. John and his colleagues have been on the case of the GHI/HIP merger and has pressured the UFT to provide more info. ICE has joined in with John for support.

Gifted and Talented in NYC

They use the language of civil rights to win over people to their reform model that makes teacher quality and expectations and poor leadership in schools the main culprits of the ills of the school system. "See, there is no need to throw away money on schools because we need to save it for bailouts and wars."

Joel Klein uses the expression "Shame of the Nation" when he talks about achievement gaps.

The DOE's modification of the G&T program was supposed to create more opportunities. Andrea Peyser in the NY Post today is in a lather.

Eduwonkette takes a statistical look at the DOE G&T program as to which districts were winners and which were losers.

The DOE did not release socioeconomic or demographic breakdowns, but one way to get at the equity question is to look at which districts won and lost under the new system.

Did poor kids gain ground? The graph below, which plots the percent change in the number of students offered gifted seats in the entry grades against the percentage of students qualifying for free lunch in the district suggests that the answer is no. On average, districts with higher proportions of poor kids saw declines in gifted admissions.

In Washington Heights' District 6, 80 students are currently enrolled in kindergarten G&T classes, but only 50 have been offered seats next year. In Manhattan's more advantaged District 2, 174 students are enrolled in G&T kindergarten this year, but 371 have been offered seats for next year.

If we cut the data by the percentage of African-American students in the district, we also see that many districts with high proportions of black students lost ground.

The full piece is here.

Gates Foundation Supports Apartheid in Jamaica

....buzzards are us

The Gates Foundation and New Visions are certainly consistent. Like buzzards looking for entrails, they track large schools in trouble – trouble, by the way exacerbated by Tweed – and here conspiracy theorists and have a ball. After all, one of the basics of the phony ed reform movement is to close "failing" schools. But they don't talk about the no longer so secret part of the plan – close 'em to make room for the boutique schools that will serve a mere fraction of the population, and with kids that are not exactly the same.

Jamaica High School in Queens is a beautiful building that is way too nice for the kids who go there. Teachers knew they were in trouble when the buzzards showed up to measure the room while they are teaching. "Where are the outlets in here" the buzzards ask? "We have to put in new wiring for new computers." Only the best for the Gates kids. An application process for the kids. And lower class sizes. And non of those pesky ELA or special ed kids too. "These kids coming in do NOT look like our current kids," says a teacher.

They are calling it cultural apartheid.

Tonight, the parents, students and teachers at Jamaica are coming to the Panel for Educational Policy meeting at Frank Sinatra HS. They even got a bus. They will hold a demonstration outside before the meeting and then go in to speak to people with deaf ears – other than Manhattan borough rep Patrick Sullivan. (I will support MB Pres. Scott Stringer for any office he runs for because he had the guts to appoint Patrick.) Some ambitious reporter is missing a great story by not doing a profile of Patrick who has been the lone consistent voice on the PEP representing parents. (Oh, and QB Pres Helen Marshall has still NOT appointed anyone to the PEP.)

Raising Graduation Rates

Thanks to David Bellel

Where Are All the Catholic School Teachers?

Catholic school teachers in New York engaged in some job actions over the last week or so. Their pay and benefits are abysmal compared to NYC teachers. And they work with high class sizes and few admnistrators.

It is a well-known fact amongst certain ed reform voucher freaks that they are vastly superior teachers to those in the DOE. Just check results of their grad rates and on test scores (do their kids take the same tests as NYC kids, such as regents?), clearly the most important factor in determining quality teaching.

So, where are they? Why does NYC have to resort to expensive Teaching Fellow Programs? Or recruit abroad? Isn't the theory if you give people merit pay, they will flock to work in schools in poor neighborhoods? Or if they can make a few extra bucks by getting their kids to score high, they will have the incentive to work harder?

So, instead of standing on picket lines, what's keeping Catholic school teachers away from jumping on the money they can make so easily by coming over to a public school? Haven't they heard about the vastly improved system under Bloomberg and Klein after 6 years of leadership? Maybe Tweed needs a public relations campaign to tell these teachers about the wonderful opportunites to teach in our schools. Maybe even hire a few more PR people.

Sunday - Call Uncle Joel on KISS-FM

Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein Appears on 98.7 KISS-FM’s “Open Line”

Date: Sunday, April 13, 2008, Time: 10 a.m.

Tuesday: Forum for Teachers and Education Activists

Lois Weiner put together a wonderful presentation at the Education and Labor Conference a few weeks ago. Lois captured our attention when she pointed to a World Bank report stating that teachers and their unions were the major threat to global prosperity. See how events in your classroom are related to the global assault on teachers.

APRIL 15

Tuesday, 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Making Schools Work for Poor People?: Joel Klein & the World Bank's Dedication to a Corporate Agenda

A Presentation by Lois Weiner, New Jersey City University, author of "The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, and their Unions: Stories for Resistance"

Discussion to follow.

Breathtakingly rapid changes are being made in the NYC schools in the name of equalizing opportunity for poor, minority communities. Services ranging from tutoring to curriculum development to professional development are being privatized; standardized tests have become the sole measure of student and teacher achievement and value; preparation of teachers and
principals is shifting to a fast track model; merit pay is being pushed on teachers, to replace salaries based on experience and education. What's been missing in the debate about these changes is how NYC's experience reflects the footprint of a global project advanced by world financial institutions to transform work and education with it.

Julia Richman Education Complex 317 E. 67th St. (betw. 1st and 2nd Ave.),
6th Floor "Penthouse"

FREE

RSVP at info@teachersunite.net

No Teacher Left Behind

Designed by some people in the rubber room in their spare time, here is the revised "No Teacher Left Behind" t-shirt. Full range of designs at: http://www.cafepress.com/braines

Misinterpretation (Deliberate?) on Tests and Tenure

Kevin Carey at the Quick and the Ed at the Education Sector, which is part of the Rotherham Empire, misses the point of our post on tenure and testing.

Ed Notes offers a justification for banning the use of student performance data in teacher tenure decisions: Using test scores to estimate teacher effectiveness is methodologically complicated. (This is true). Therefore, it should be outlawed. (This is absurd).

Yes teacher effectiveness is complicated and therefore test results should not be used, or misused. Why outlaw it? Because the practically criminal people running the NYC schools are not to be trusted. But read on, as Carey says:

Most important things, including teaching, are complicated. If we squelch every attempt to understand such things and act on that knowledge, we'll be left knowing very little about very little, which more or less describes the state of knowledge about teacher effectiveness today. Indeed, most teacher policy failures are a function of privileging easily measurable unimportant things, like master's degrees and state certification, over difficult-to-measure important things, like effectiveness in boosting test scores.

Do you understand any of this jargon? Let me translate: I think it means that we know little about teacher effectiveness but let's throw testing for tenure against the wall and see if it sticks. If there's a high body count of teachers who don't get tenure due to something we know very little about, so be it. Us policy wonks need data, data, data.

I do agree with Carey that MA's and state certification mean little in teacher effectiveness. But how come the wonks always use the term "like effectiveness in boosting test scores." I love the word "like." Like what else makes for teacher effectiveness? They always stop at boosting scores - how about, like Johnnie enters a class as a serial killer and leaves tame as a pussy cat but alas, the teacher is a failure and denied tenure because he didn't boost Johnnie's test score. Or the teacher did fabulous science projects with the class which turned many kids onto science but, darn, we just don't know how to measure a rise in enthusiasm.

Carey goes on:

Ed Notes also offers the "it hasn't been tested" argument, i.e. the chicken-and-egg theory of policy obstructionism: it can't be tried because it hasn't been proven; it can't be proven because it hasn't been tried.

I love being called a dreaded "policy obstructionist." The "teacher effectiveness" crowd seem to use the "it hasn't been tested" argument when it comes to class size reduction, i.e. the chicken-and-egg-theory of class size reduction obstructionism, preferring to focus on teacher effectiveness (which is guaranteed to improve with lower class sizes) despite the fact no one has come up with any way to judge other than observation - not a bad way if done objectively. (Here I will be accused of not wanting this method either because I always talk about vindictive principals, but offer the solution of teachers being allowed to call in an independent arbiter. And while I'm on this, I often tell teachers under attack to tape an observation, which seems to make some supervisors incredibly nervous.)

And of course the obligatory attack by Carey on Eduwonkette for calling all the hysteria over the tenure/testing law "union-bashing:"

Meanwhile, some unknown person who claims to be a social scientist but isn't willing to offer any credentials to prove it labels all critiques of the union's role in legally banning evidence of student learning from judgments of teacher effectiveness as "union bashing."
I'd always been under the impression that "science," and thus "social science," involved certain values of empiricism, evidence, and transparency of information..
But maybe "science" means something different wherever they hand out anonymous, theoretical social science degrees, I don't know.

Now, isn't it interesting how Carey on the one hand disparages official teaching credentials
"that most teacher policy failures are a function of privileging easily measurable unimportant things, like master's degrees and state certification, over difficult-to-measure important things, like effectiveness in boosting test scores."

....but attacks Eduwonette for not showing her credentials, without which we obviously can't trust what she says. The quality of what she (or he -wouldn't that be a kick) write is enough for me. Like take this one from Eduwonkette:

Joel Klein, in his op-ed, even blames unions for the existence of achievement gaps:

Protecting grownups rather than making sure students can read and do math is how our country has gotten into the educational mess it's in today. It's the reason we have shameful racial achievement gaps separating our white and Asian students from our African-American and Latino students.

That's why there are no achievement gaps in North Carolina and Texas!

And add Florida and Mississippi and probably a few other non-unionized states around the nation. Gotta love Wonkette, credentials or not.

And what if it turns out that Eduwonkette drives a school bus? Her credentials are what she has to say. Enough for me.

And note the consistent attack on Wonkette by the Rotherham crowd for being anonymous. Boy, will they all be surprised when she turns out to be 13 and in junior high school.

A future post will go into more detail the entire BloomKlein tenure/testing PR sham.

It's Capitalism, Stupid

David Leonhardt's column in today's business section of the Times discusses how so many people in the middle and at the bottom were left out of the boom years. We all know the gap between rich and the rest of us has grown astronomical since the early 70's, the first time in US history this has happened.

So what are reasons according to Leonhardt? I'll let you read his theories here. But one word is missing from the entire article, not surprising given the bias at the Times: UNIONS.

Could it be that the attack on unions spurred on by Ronald Reagan's firing the air traffic controllers 25 years ago has weakened them so much that they can no longer win fights for the higher wages needed to sustain our economy? Add the Democratic Party support for NAFTA and other anti-union breaking rules under Bush and we have the roots undermining the economy in the long run.

As Leonhardt searches for solutions, he neglects the basic rule of capitalism: maximize profits for your company, the rest of the nation and the world be damned. That means the lowest wages you can get away with. If you can get 8 year-olds for 50 cents a day abroad, then bye.

The economy will only be robust when there's a strong union movement to fight it out with the corporations.

Note: I still consider myself a capitalist – a laissez faire capitalist – where there are rules that force a balanced playing field for people to compete. That is NOT what we have. Instead, we have a government, the theoretical arbiter, clearly aligned with the big business interests. And the press, the 4th estate that should also be an arbiter, also pro-business and anti-union. The "paper of record," whether covering business or education, is a prime example.

The Sham of Tenure and Test Scores

Updated 2 pm

With the NY State legislature rejecting BloomKlein's attempt to tie tenure to test scores on the heels of turning down the congestion pricing plan, the attacks from Bloomberg and Klein are coming fast and furious. This is not really about tenure. Principals have the right to delay tenure for teachers and many are so vulnerable, they can pretty much be let go quite easily.

First of all, an enormous number of teachers are not even in the mix. Gym teachers? No tenure if the kid can't pole vault? Music? Kids can't play Bach or sing like Callas? OUT! Computer teachers? Typing teachers? 20 words a minute? or 30? or 5? OUT! So where's the equity?

But let's look at the kinds of classes that would be affected. High school regents would be the only ones at that level. Now we need a system to compare apples to apples. What rules are in effect to adjust for the differences in schools and between different classes in schools? What impact does attendance have? Should teachers of a first period class, where many more kids don't show up, be held to a different standard than other periods? What about teachers of non-regent classes? What tests are they to be judged on?

In elementary and middle school, the tests they are talking about are math and reading. So are only these teachers in the line of fire? Do social studies, science, gym, computer, etc. get off? What about reading with push-in programs? What if the teacher who comes in daily is tenured and incompetent while the classroom teacher is untenured? What about the literacy or math coach? In sports the coaches are the ones to get fired, not the players.

Of course, the pro BloomKlein press will express outrage while ignoring all these angles.

With all these questions left on the table - and I blame the UFT for not raising them publicly to point to the folly of the plan. Unity Caucus slugs will jump on this statement: "See you chronic complainer, give the union credit for using its political muscle to win this." Without battling it out over the ideology and relying solely on the political sphere, they will win some battles but will lose the war.

It is clear there is another purpose on the part of BloomKlein. They know full well the linking of test scores to tenure will have no impact on the kids. It is a political and ideological ploy so they can say they beat the union and were successful in modifying tenure. Kudos from the anti-union right will follow. It's about PR.

This is also about putting pressure on just those untenured teachers who can influence the only results BloomKlein care about - the ones that they can use to bolster their political case that they really, really did close the achievement gap. The message: DO WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO TO MAKE US LOOK GOOD OR YOU WILL NOT GET TENURE!

The next step is to hand out erasers that do not leave a trace.


Update from Leonie Haimson on NYC Education listserve:

I was just interviewed by Marcia Kramer on the teacher tenure/test score controversy – I said basically what I wrote in today’s news wrap-up:

1- standardized test scores alone are not sufficient to judge teachers’ competence, since they have to be examined in relation to a lot of other important factors, including class size and the type of students they have, as well as other evidence of the teacher’s skill and what else is going on in the classroom -- and that this administration cannot be trusted to use this data carefully, given their record on merit pay and school grades.

2- tying teacher tenure to test scores could have very destructive effects, discouraging teachers from taking on struggling or special ed students, and lead to a further loss of morale, with even more test prep replacing real learning.

3- Off camera, I said that a hiatus of two years was good since whatever is decided will be implemented by a new administration that will hopefully be more trustworthy with the use of such data.

Marcia Kramer’s Channel 2 story came out pretty good; except for last line, which is blatantly untrue. Video available here:

For more on this issue, see the blog here. Use test scores for tenure? Not a good idea, with these bumblers.

This Week's Carnival of Education

... is up and running.

Breaking News

James Eterno posts on the ICE blog about how working teachers are now a minority in the UFT and suggests a program for democratic reform of the UFT. There will be zero debate on this issue in all bodies of the UFT, a perfect illustration of James' point.

Under Assualt makes a point about the way schools are staffed today - with a majority of new, lower cost teachers, a recipe for disaster. The BloomKlein attack on union rules and seniority claimed the system was shortchanging school in most need as teachers used union rules to gravitate to the better schools (meaning easier places to teach.) Then their minions place senior, higher salaried people under assault, followed by a school funding formula that puts a penalty on schools that hire teachers with higher salaries. They used the language of the civil rights movement to get the black community on board - see, your kids are being denied the experienced teachers. So, take a look at the schools and tell us what has happened. I bet that under BloomKlein there's less experience in the schools than ever. So they change tune - "see, we now have a young, committed teaching corps. So what if many leave. We'll just train a new crop."

Teaching is all about testing anyway and in the factory model you don't need the same level of skills in classrooms under the complete control of the teachers - the term being used is the de-skilling of teachers.

1968 REVISITED: Ocean Hill-Brownsville

Lots of meat here. This one should be a "fun" event. I'm not sure the statement in the announcement that local communities ever had control of the schools is accurate.

I went on strike in '68 but did not know anything about nuthin' then. A few years later I met many of the gang that crossed the line and worked with them politically. I understand their position. There's plenty of blame to go around on both the UFT and community control side and I'm not sure what I would do if I were back then with my current knowledge of the UFT - my instinct is that if I intended to organize teachers in the UFT crossing the line is death. If you disagree with the strike, work to provide people with a balanced view and you can't do that when you are looked at as a scab. But then again, if you wanted to work with the community, as many teachers did then, staying out was also death. Oy vey!

This event will present only one side of the issue, but I will be there to get a better read. I'm currently reading Kahlenberg and Podair's book on the strike, which is much more balanced than RK.

I might even write about '68 one day - but only from my fall-out shelter.

One of the fun ironies is that the old lefty guard of the former (and now bought out) New Action Caucus all crossed the lines in '68 and now traipse through the 52 Broadway with impunity. Thus, Randi's "liberal generosity." But we've always said she has no real ideology and it's all about what politics she sees is necessary to firm up Unity power - like having New Action on board with the paltry vote totals really has an impact.

No matter what she's done, that more than anything is what would make Shanker turn over in his grave. "Better dead than red" was one of Al's major themes. Some old-line Unity Caucus still seethe when they see the New Action crew around. But I do too - for other reasons.

Announcement:

1968 REVISITED: Ocean Hill-Brownsville
The Struggle for Quality Public Education: 1968-2008

Stanley Aronowitz, Sally Lee, Edwin Mayorga, Roberta Thomas & Jitu Weusi

Co-sponsors: New York Coalition of Radical Educators & Teachers Unite

In 1968, Ocean Hill-Brownsville, Brooklyn, was the site of an experiment that gave local communities control of their public schools. The controversy sparked from this movement still resonates throughout the city. This panel discussion will explore the political moment that gave rise to the community control experiment and will attempt to compare it to today's context. How are NYC Communities responding to the current mayoral control of our public schools? How do these contrasting forms of school governance impact classroom teaching and learning?

Panelists include: Stanley Aronowitz, author of Education Under Siege: The Conservative, Liberal, and Radical Debate over Schooling; Sally Lee, Teachers Unite; Edwin Mayorga, New York Coalition of Radical Educators; Roberta Thomas, Independent Commission on Public Education (ICOPE) and Jitu Weusi, Teacher in Ocean Hill Brownsville.

The Brecht Forum

451 West Street

(Between Bank and Bethune off of the West Side Highway)

212-242-4201

www.brechtforum.org

Thursday, April 10
7:30 pm

Sliding scale: $6/$10/$15
Free for Brecht Forum Subscribers

The Rising Costs of Health Care and NYC Union Contracts

Tuesday April 22 at 6 PM.
Brooklyn Transit Wheelers Club
14 Williams Ave (corner of East NY Ave.)

Hello Friends:
Please check out the attached flyer.

It would be wonderful if you could attend this very important health care forum. I know many of you are already familiar with GHI-HIP's plans to privatize; however, your support would be greatly welcomed and could help opposition movements gain traction in their attempts to defeat the plan to privatize 93% of city workers' health care insurance.

City unions have remained virtually silent on the issue because they have plans to reap millions of dollars from a pool of conversion money.

The intent of this forum is to raise worker consciousness about a serious health care issue and to follow it up with a number of public demonstrations.

More info about these demonstrations will follow in the coming weeks.

It is also my hope that my UFT brothers and sisters will come out and show their support at the forum and the proposed demonstrations. This issue is important to teachers and can, I think, make inroads toward organizing ourselves to resist and overcome Unity Caucus' lack of effort in seriously challenging the DOE's attempts to privatize and destroy our school system as well as Unity's stranglehold on antidemocratic procedures and willingness to repeatedly engage in give-backs with the DOE.

Thanks.

John Powers, Chapter Leader, Liberation HS in Brooklyn.
P.S. I will speak at the forum.

Was the Nation Really At Risk?

... Twenty Five Years Later

Richard Rothstein has done some work on "A Nation At Risk" report which started the current ed "reform" movement. Standards and one-way accountability (for schools and teachers only) followed. Many of us in the anti-standardista movement (see Ohanian) have suspected all along this was a business/political plot to begin the private take over of the public school system. And they seem to be doing pretty well. Unfortunately, our own union, the AFT/UFT have played an integral role in their success.

Richard Kahlenberg's "Tough Liberal" bio of Shanker states:
Diane Ravitch called it the most important education reform document of the twentieth century. And Al Shanker's role in the report's reception was pivotal."
Shanker stated his support for the report in a major speech at the NY State United Teachers convention on April 30, 1983. Teachers should not dismiss reforms they had long resisted, so long as reforms are tied to higher teacher salaries and infusion of new funds in education. (Kahlenberg, p. 276). Of course, Kahlenberg, funded by Eli Broad, the Century Foundation, etc. thinks Shanker's support was an even better thing than white bread.

Shanker's embrace... represented an enormous departure from past AFT policy. Here was a major labor-union leader endorsing a report that said public education was in trouble, proposed merit pay, had the strong backing of business, deemphasized the inportance of labor's equality agenda, and put emphasiss on all kids rather than the poor." (p. 278.)

Voila- No Child Left behind.

The whole idea was explained by Shanker as a way to forestall vouchers. As was his charter school idea. But we'll go into that another time.

The problem was that Shanker spent the rest of his life pushing the reforms without the funding (again, class size reduction is nowhere in the equation.) Not that we believe the reforms being pushed would ever work, even with more funding.

Note that teacher salaries have risen, but in exchange for contract givebacks and longer days and school years, not a raise in most books. To Shanker (and Weingarten) being able to claim teachers make more was OK. In their world, the professionalization of teachers (an idea which separates them from other unions - like, horrors, the idea of a general strike with other workers is oh, so left) means making teaching more of a full-time job in exchange for money. Many teachers do not agree.

When Al Shanker signed onto the results in 1983, he created the alliance with the business community and doomed the teacher movement to follow along. Call it "reform without funding." It cemented what many of us teaching in NYC since the late 60's saw happening - the UFT had already given up the ghost of fighting for the serious level of funding needed for reforms that would work - especially lowering class size, an issue we in the opposition were constantly raising.

We heard all sorts of arguments why this couldn't happen. The "no space" case was laid to rest when the UFT sat by without a whimper as schools were closed and sold off after the 1975 fiscal crisis. At least three in my district (14) were handed to the Hasidic community and they're still in use.

You know the drill. It's all about low expectations and lack of standards and lack of quality teachers. Fix those and "voila" the so-called achievement gap will be closed. (We agree there's a gap, but this expression has been misused.)

The nation-wide mania for ed reform has turned public schools into a forced factory model with federal mandates forcing states local school districts, schools, school leaders, and teachers into a rigid test-driven agenda where they will be rewarded and punished according to how they carry out these mandates.

This model includes high stakes testing, frequent and heavy-handed monitoring, forcing specific educational programs on schools, closing down public schools, hiring and firing teachers and supervisors based on student achievement, forcing school systems to adopt longer school days and years, punishing senior teachers, shifting students to private schools and hiring private contractors to take over functions that were formerly done through the public systems.

The stated rationale is that our education system is failing too many children and only a top-down overhaul will change this. A corollary to this is that only disinterested researchers (rather than experienced educators) can determine how to make the system work. Teachers are the enemies of reform because instead of caring about children or education, they put their own self-interest first: protecting their jobs, high salaries, and work rules that make life easier for them.

Ultimately, the focus is on teacher unions - that they are a major obstacle to reform: Work rules limiting class size and time in the classroom, protection of incompetent teachers, inflexibility in regard to teaching methods.

Eduwonette asked: Has "A Nation at Risk" Done More Harm Than Good?

Why? First, Rothstein argues, the report wrongly concluded that student achievement was declining. The report mistook the changing composition of SAT test takers for a half a standard deviation decline in SAT scores since the 1960s. Second, Risk placed the blame on schools for national economic problems over which schools have relatively little influence. While education surely plays a part in economic growth, he shows that our economic vicissitudes are driven by factors much larger and more complex. Third, he writes, Risk ignored the responsibility of the nation’s other social and economic institutions for learning.

Rothstein concludes:

A Nation at Risk was well-intentioned, but based on flawed analyses, at least some of which should have been known to the Commission that authored it. The report burned into Americans’ consciousness a conviction that, evidence notwithstanding, our schools are failures, and a warped view of the relationship between schools and economic well-being. It distracted education policymakers from insisting that our political, economic, and social institutions also have a responsibility to prepare children to be ready to learn when they attend school.

The full Rothstein report from the Cato Institute is here.

That Shanker bought into it was significant and ultimately sold out teachers. The Democratic party joined in, with the Clintons and Shanker forming an alliance. What's needed today is a counter attack by progressive reformers, who have been termed "status quo defenders" by the regressive ed reformers, who have misused the language of the civil rights movement, with Mayor Bloomberg actually comparing some of his work in NYC ed reform to Martin Luther King.

See Leonie Haimson here and Dan Brown's commentary here and Elizabeth Green's report in the NY Sun, where whe quoted Bloomberg: "We are doing the things, I think, that if Dr. Martin Luther King was running the New York City school system, he would have done. And I think that if you were running the New York City school system, you would have done."

Unfortunately, many in the black community have bought into this argument. Our job is to reacapture the language and policies of true reform. Come to our Teachers Unite forums on April 15 and May 8 to join the debate.

Bronx Green Dot Principal...

... report from the trenches

A recent news report (sorry, lost the source) about the new Green Dot/UFT Partnership school:

Ashish Kapadia, former assistant principal for organization and supervision at the Eximius College Preparatory Academy, a College Board school in the Bronx, will head the Green Dot school. He was chosen after an extensive search involving more than 100 candidates interviewed by a team of Green Dot principals and staff. Born in the Bronx, Kapadia graduated cum laude from the University of Chicago and went on to earn master's degrees from New York University and Queens College at the City University of New York. He also taught for seven years at Jane Addams High School in the Bronx, specializing in government, economics and history.

This report on Kapadia's history came in over the Ed Notes transom. Other evaluations are welcome and should be added to the comments section:

Is the best candidate that "an extensive search" could find?
Ashish Kapadia's appointment speaks to how thin the ranks of would-be administrators are.
He was a Social Studies teacher at Jane Addams HS. ("Specializing in government, economics and history"???) For a while he taught an honors class (not AP, though). He was COSA for a few years until 6/06, and then Senior Advisor until 6/07. (That date is not a typo.)
His mantra was, in regard to the concerns of students: "I don't care!" (This is a direct quote.) He also was baseball coach.
He was not active in the UFT chapter. At Addams, he had no track record of any interest in partnering with the UFT, yet now he's going to be in charge of a school that is a partnership with the union.
He left Addams at the end of the last school year (2007), and hasn't been AP (at Eximius, or anywhere else) for even one school year.

ED NOTE: After an "extensive search" for a principal of the UFT middle school charter (housed at George Gershwin - 166, the junior high I attended) the choice turned out to be Drew Goodman, the son of former UFT district reps Peter and Joan Goodman. Peter still shills for the UFT on the Edwize and Ed in the Apple blogs. So far, Drew has a good rep, as opposed to the principal of the UFT elementary charter.