NY Times Ends Black Out on Class Size - Sort Of

Today's NY Times actually addressed the class size issue. That there is such a lack of unquestioning acceptance of Bloomberg's point of view is of no surprise from the Bloomberg News Service - er - the Times. We hear the "quality teacher vs. class size debate raised whenever the powers that be try to slip slide away. At least the Times does mention the famous Tennessee study, so ignored and intentionally misrepresented by the phony ed reform gang who try to paint teacher quality as digital - you are or you aren't a QT when in fact TQ is a moving target dependent on a number of variables, with class size being one of the keys.

The Accountable Talk blog, run by an actual NYC middle school teacher, takes Bloomberg to task in this post: Accountable Talk: Spot That Fallacy

the mayor presents the situation as an either/or, when it is nothing of the sort. Most Long Island districts, as well as many districts upstate and in Connecticut, have shown that you can have both low class size and pay teachers well. What makes Mr. Bloomberg's utterance a particularly good example is that he has utterly failed to do either one.

Yes, where are the calls in Long Island and Connecticut and Westchester for reduction in union influence and an end to seniority? Where are the calls for asking parents, who actually seem to have a say in who runs their schools, to make a choice between class size and so-called quality teachers?

Class Size Matters' Leonie Haimson's analysis on the NYC PS Parent blog is so cogent, it deserves to be re-posted far and wide. If there's a song to sing, it is "No Body Does It Better" than Leonie. Here's her post from her blog:

Bloomberg administration blames parents for larger classes

See the article in today’s NY Times, Class Size in New York City Schools Rises, but the Impact is Debated, a follow up to the article on Wednesday, Class Size Makes Biggest Jump of Bloomberg Tenure.

Though it is one of those typical “on the one hand this, on the other hand that” pieces– citing research that is either outmoded or easily refuted -- it is important because it is the first in-depth article in our paper of record to have dealt with the issue of class size in at least five years.

Indeed, the Times has had a “black out” on class size through most of the Bloomberg administration – as the former education editor admitted in June of 2006 – though at that point, she promised “to explore the class size issue” soon after -- which has not occurred until now, almost three years later.

This omission has persisted, despite the fact that our public school students continue to suffer from the largest class sizes in the state, smaller classes have consistently been the top priority of NYC parents, and in subway and TV ads, the administration has claimed to be reducing class size while being repeatedly cited for misusing hundreds of millions of dollars of state aid meant for this purpose.

In today’s article, the administration once again tries to evade its own responsibility for failing to reduce class size, despite a state mandate passed in 2007. In the previous Times article, Garth Harries of DOE attempted to blame the economy– even though the state provided an additional $400 million this fall, with $150 million of that targeted for class size reduction. He also attempted to shift the blame onto principals, which Chris Cerf tries again in today’s article, without acknowledging that it is the DOE’s duty to see that these funds are spent appropriately.

But now, even more outrageously, they are trying to blame parents – with Harries actually arguing that large classes are the result of popular schools where parents insist on sending their kids.

As I pointed out to the reporter, the vast majority of children attend their neighborhood zoned elementary and middle schools– and DOE entirely controls the admissions for high schools, so blaming parents for the systemic problem of large classes is entirely unwarranted. Who will they blame next – our kids?

Indeed, at the same time that the administration goes around claiming that mayoral control means accountability, they are quick to shift the blame on everyone else when they fail to create more adequate and equitable learning conditions for our children.

The article also repeats the administration’s canard that there is a trade-off between teacher quality and class size, when the two factors are actually complimentary. Indeed, the main reason we have such a high teacher turnover rate here in NYC is that our teachers so often leave for a new profession or to work in suburban or private schools -- because their excessive class sizes do not provide them with a fair chance to succeed.

In a recent national poll, 97% of teachers responded that reducing class size would be an effective way to improve teacher quality – far above any other strategy, including raising salaries, instituting teacher performance pay, or providing more professional development. Indeed, the only way we will ever obtain a more experienced and effective teaching force here in NYC is by reducing class size.

But the most ridiculous part of the article is the “evidence” offered by the administration that smaller classes don’t matter, by referring to an unpublished (and probably unpublishable) internal DOE study that purported to show that the grades schools received on the “Progress reports” weren’t correlated with smaller classes. No mention is made of the fact that most experts have found that the grades schools receive are mostly random – with almost no correlation from one year to the next -- as an article by the same reporter in the Times pointed out last year.

In contrast, the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the US Department of Education, has concluded that class size reduction is one of only four, evidence-based reforms proven to increase student achievement. (None of the policies that the Bloomberg/Klein administration has introduced are on the list, by the way.)

In fact, the DOE has devised another formula – a “value added” model to evaluate teacher effectiveness, in which class size is included as a “predictor”, the ONLY factor included in the model under the school system’s control. This is an admission that the larger the class, the less a teacher is expected to raise student achievement. All the other factors in the model pertain to characteristics of the students themselves, such as economic status, prior test scores, absences, etc.

See the model here – which includes average class size at both the classroom and school level, showing that both should be taken into account when assessing a teacher’s performance. The DOE also states that the model used “draws on 10 years of city-wide data (test scores, student, teacher, and school characteristics) to predict individual student gains.”

Check out the accompanying FAQ:

Is the DOE’s Value-Added model reliable and valid?

A: A panel of technical experts has approved the DOE’s value-added methodology. The DOE’s model has met recognized standards for demonstrating validity and reliability. Teachers’ value-added scores from the model are positively correlated with both School Progress Report scores and principals’ perceptions of teachers’ effectiveness, as measured by a research study conducted during the pilot of this initiative.

Anyway, please send a letter to the Times at letters@nytimes.com with your name, address and phone number. Let them know what you think – and whether it’s fair to blame parents for the fact that NYC classes have remained the largest in the state, with no significant improvement under this administration.

Hugo Bloomberg....

...Michael Chavez

Based on Elizabeth Benjamin's post on the Daily News Politics blog (Feb. 18, 2009) in a piece titled Bloomberg: No Connection Between Me and Chavez the Economist Democracy - -heh- heh -- in America blog posted this:

ERIN EINHORN of the New York Daily News deserves some sort of award for this question. Last year Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, got the city council to repeal the law that prevented him from seeking a third term. This week, Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, won a vote (insofar as the polls there can be trusted) allowing him to run for as many terms in office as he likes. Cue Ms Einhorn:

Q: Mayor, it’s hard to compare New York City to Venezuela but as you know, Hugo Chavez did his second effort - this time sucessful - to extend term limits. You chose to go through City Council. Do you have any second thoughts about this? Do you wish you should have had a chance to take to the...

A: I don’t understand your question. What on Earth do we have to do with Hugo Chavez?

Q: Well, like you, he wanted to extend his term.

A: If you wanted to ask Hugo Chavez, call him up! Maybe he’ll take your call. My suspicion is he doesn’t have press conferences and let people ask questions or if they ask questions, he probably throws them, I don’t know what he does with them...Who knows? (Laughs). I still fail to see a connection.


Mr Chavez doesn't throw too many press conferences, but he does host hours-long radio shows and TV shows where citizens can toss questions at him. No one's suggesting that Mr Bloomberg should do that.

More from Benjamin

Mayor Bloomberg did not take kindly today to a question from the DN's Erin Einhorn about whether he wished he had followed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's lead and allowed a public term limits vote.

As Erin noted, this was Chavez's second attempt to scrap term limits. After Venezuelans voted down a similar proposal in December 2007, Chavez, who was facing ouster from office in 2012, spent considerable government resources on this second - ultimately successful - effort.

Unlike the first proposal, which would have only applied to the president, the one that passed earlier this week applies to all elected officials (sound familiar?).

Here in New York, opponents of extending term limits are still holding out a slim hope that the courts will force a third public referendum on the subject. But so far, the legal challenge hasn't been going so well.

Despite the efforts of Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Kevin Parker, it doesn't appear a bill that would require a public referendum for any term limits change - even the one Bloomberg signed into law last November - will be brought to the floor in either house in Albany.

This isn't the first time the mayor has been unfavorably compared to Chavez. During the City Council's term limits debate, Councilman Charles Barron urged Bloomberg to "be like Hugo, and let the people decide."

Charter schools and the attack on public education

Charter schools and the attack on public education(Posted at Norms Notes)

by Sarah Knopp, teacher in Los Angeles (morph Knopp just a bit and we end up with you know who - Sarah Knopp as the anti Wendy Kopp.)

From: ISR Issue 62, November–December 2008

...because the noble intentions of some of the pioneers of the charter school movement (to create laboratories that prove what all educators know: that creativity, individual attention, and curricular relevance are the roots of good education) took shape so recently, and because there are some good charter schools, many progressives are disoriented in the current climate. Teachers who support the idea of public education, while recognizing the horrible state of some of our schools, aren’t sure what to do or what position to take when their unions fail to oppose charters, or worse, even endorse them...

A long article, but with a strong analysis of charter schools with some attention to Green Dot. "Many suspect Green Dot of signing somewhat toothless union contracts as a way of keeping more combative unions out." While talking about SEIU in LA, it might as well apply to the non-combative "we've laid down our arms" UFT, which also is chasing the Green Dot charter school blues - or dues.

Here is s short excerpt from Sarah Knopp:

The slow destruction of union power that occurs when subcontracting creates lots of small workplaces—in place of large, highly unionized ones—has been a fact across many industries. “Whipsawing” is a term used to describe the effect on unions like the UAW when workers in smaller, spun-off shops get inferior contracts, and those contracts are used to pressure workers in bigger plants to accept similar concessions. The same could apply to the effect of charter schools in education.

Some suggest, then, that we have to seek out “pro-union” charter operators and make deals with them. But if we are speaking of privately run CMOs, then genuine power for their teachers would threaten the board’s hegemony in the schools. Some, like Green Dot, are willing to allow teachers a contract, and claim to be pro-union. But in their contract with the AMU/CTA/NEA teachers’ union, one can find few guarantees of any kind of real teacher voice (in the form of voting). According to the contract between Green Dot and the “union,” in effect until 2010,

It is understood and agreed that the Board retains all of its powers and authority to direct, manage and control to the full extent of the charter school law and the regulations of a 501.C3 California corporation. Input from the staff will be considered and decisions will be derived in a collaborative model; final decisions will rest with the Board. Included in, but not limited to, those duties are the right to: ...establish educational policies with regard to admitting students; ...determine the number of personnel and types of personnel needed; ...establish budget procedures and determine budgetary allocations; contract out work and take action on any matter in the event of an emergency.51

The Board will make all staffing decisions. By contrast, the United Teachers of Los Angeles contract with Los Angeles Unified District requires faculty votes on key aspects of running the school, like the schedule and certain discretionary budget items, and guarantees that class assignments will be chosen by the teachers, through seniority, and not arbitrarily by the administration.52 This vision of unionism, typified by SEIU (a representative of which sits on Green Dot’s board) is antithetical to real power or democracy for teachers. A large union cuts a deal with the employer, quickly begins to collect dues from members, and in exchange for “neutrality” on the part of the boss gives away key workplace rights. Green Dot specifically aims to hire younger, more inexperienced teachers and gives incentives for senior teachers to leave.

Many suspect Green Dot of signing somewhat toothless union contracts as a way of keeping more combative unions out. This wouldn’t be surprising given the presence of SEIU on their board of directors. SEIU is currently engaged in undermining the legitimate teachers’ union of Puerto Rico (the FMPR) in the wake of the strike that the FMPR led last spring. After the strike, the Puerto Rican government decertified the FMPR. SEIU helped the Asociacion de Maestros (coincidentally, the same name as the teachers’ union at Green Dot schools) to try to win representation of the Puerto Rican teachers. The FMPR was not allowed to contest them.

Obama's Education Policy is Third Term for President George W. Bush

In education, the new administration is as ruinous as the old

by Diane Ravitch, Historian of education, NYU, Hoover and Brookings

At Politico

TFA, TQ and NTP

Teach for America Trolls Pay A Visit

Ever wonder how people who work Teach for America spend their days?

Their trolls search the web for negative publicity.

Thus, not long after posting Studies Show Teach for America Teachers Are... , Ed Notes got these visits from TFA offices in 2 cities:

Organization TEACH FOR AMERICA/ MCGRAW COMM , Washington
Organization TEACH FOR AMERICA, Chicago

Must be a light week at TFA.


Teacher Quality and the New Teacher Project

There are other trolls out there who tell us about "studies" and "research" with vague references. often by biased self-interest groups. Joel Klein and his minions do this all the time. As does the press. Eduwonkette and Skoolboy have pretty well demolished the "teacher quality studies show" line of bullshit.

This post Skoolboy Savages Kristof was visited by "Jacob" a Socrates-like clone (Socrates posts responses to attacks on the phony ed reformers all over the web under various aliases and pretenses and clearly shows signs of being a paid responder) who disingenuously wrote:

There is actually ample evidence, see any report by the new teacher project, the national counsel on teacher quality, or the national governors association. For information regarding the effects of effective teachers see the work of Sanders or Goldhaber among others.

To use research by the New Teachers Project is akin to accepting a North Korean study showing the high level of democracy in that nation.

Rebecca responded:

The "teacher quality" debate is about classism-pure and simple.
Have you ever noticed that the debate rarely centers around middle class suburban students and their relationship to their teachers? Why do you suppose that is?

It's because most middle class suburban children arrive at school with their needs already met. Their teachers simply teach and miraculously the children learn.

The debate is an attempt to draw attention away from the vast inequities in lifestyle, health care, nutrition and wages which exist in high-needs schools.
It is an abomination that private interests push the teacher debate as a way to avoid the horrendous class divisions which they have helped to create.

It is laughable that the above comment directs attention to the New Teacher Project for evidence.

The same organization that consistently short changes high-need children by sending in poorly trained teachers?

When the truth comes out about what these private interests have been doing, the public will be outraged.

Make no mistake about it-it will come out.
More importantly, however, how do these individuals live with themselves?

NYC Educator followed up:

The New Teacher Project takes millions from NYC, then writes reports suggesting we fire TPD teachers, twisting and manipulating statistics so outrageously that a layman like myself can detect it on one cursory reading. I wouldn't trust Tim Daly as far as I could throw him.

Incredible he can take all that money from Klein and have the audacity to present himself as an objective observer.

Studies Show Teach for America Teachers Are...

....Ten thousand times more effective than other teachers.

The hype grows and grows and grows. The Detroit News editorial today says:

Bring 'Marine Corps' of teachers to Detroit schools

Guess who they are talking about?

A growing [like a fungus] body of [uncited] research shows Teach for America instructors' impact on student academic achievement is two to three times that of teachers who have three years of experience.

Wow! The factor of effectiveness keeps growing - like Pinocchio's nose.

Last week we read this:

What's the Best Way to Make Teachers?

A new federal study on teacher quality has found that teachers who enter teaching through an alternative route have roughly the same impact on student achievement as teachers who come from regular teacher education programs.

As we all know from these growing studies, TFA first year teachers are at least thousands of times more effective than any other teachers that ever lived. That ought to raise Socrates from the dead. Of course all these "studies" are based on test results and no other factors. I knew every trick in the book on getting good results, tricks that I used sparingly because they cheated the kids of real teaching time. If I were still teaching, I could be the most effective teacher ever and qualify for all sorts of bonuses. Darn!

You can read both articles at Norms Notes:

Studies Show Teach for America Teachers Are...

A Fatal Exception Has Occurred

...and it's Bill Gates, who is even dumber about education than Nicholas Kristof

NYC Educator points out in his inimical way

Mr. Gates Unleashes the Parasites

Excerpt:

It's nice to have billionaires, whose kids wouldn't attend public schools on a bet, running around stating what they think should be done about public education. Gates, of course, has no idea why the Nassau schools five minutes away from NYC do as well as KIPP without union-busting, or kids and teachers working preposterously long weeks. I could tell him, if he weren't already so in love with Jay Matthews. In fact, he thrilled the audience by giving them free copies of Matthews' book about KIPP.

Personally, I heard nothing new or surprising from Gates. His description of the KIPP classroom sounded like no big deal at all. I've watched his "reforms" in action, and aside from much-enhanced PR and larger-scale rigging of stats, there's just not a whole lot to jump up and down about. We can do better for our kids, and it's unfortunate that their futures are, to whatever extent, in the hands of ignorant galoots like Bill Gates.

If Microsoft and its lousy multiple try software with all the glitches were tested the way Gates wants to test kids and rate teachers, we would have a much more virus free world and no blue screens of death (you've got to see this video of the BSoD with Gates standing there and a great Sun commercial).

This Gates guy really has some nerve. Yet money talks and he now controls a serious number of schools. I bet there is some quid quo pro on using Microsoft products in many systems. Someone should start scratching around Gates supported schools in NYC and checked just how much money flowed to Microsoft products from these schools.

Updated: Skoolboy Savages Kristof

DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLE TEACHERS?
CLOSE THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP BY PUTTING JESUS IN EVERY CLASSROOM.

UPDATED:

Horn and Bacey at Schools Matter and Diane Ravitch on The Miracle Teacher Revisited

I tend to believe things I read. And I would usually believe Kristof. But when you actually know something about something and see a guy getting it so wrong, I wonder why I should take anything he writes seriously. Word to the wise: Don't write glowing reports about the education reform movement or about how important a good teacher is until you have a real clue. If all it takes are 4 years to erase the achievement gap by having excellent teachers, try an experiment in a bunch of places. But since you are only measuring teacher quality by test score results (rather than things like ability to control kids and nourish them) you can only use teachers who get high test scores.

At Gotham Schools

Nix on Nick Kristof’s Claims

by Aaron Pallas (alias Skoolboy)

Excerpt:

Breathlessly, Kristof reports in Sunday’s New York Times that teachers are “astonishingly important.” “It turns out that having a great teacher is far more important than being in a small class, or going to a good school with a mediocre teacher,” he writes. “A Los Angeles study suggested that four consecutive years of having a teacher from the top 25 percent of the pool would erase the black-white testing gap.”

Wow, erasing the black-white testing gap in four years sounds like a pretty good deal. And just from being taught by some really great teachers! There must be some evidence of this for it to show up in the New York Times, wouldn’t you think? Some study somewhere that actually showed that black students exposed to teachers in the top quarter of the teacher effectiveness distribution for four years in a row can routinely move from the 16th percentile in the test score distribution (roughly the black average) to the 50th percentile (roughly the white average)?

Eduwonkette in Australian TV Program on NYC Schools

You and your readers may be interested in this report on NYC schools aired on a public affairs program on a public broadcast TV station in Australia last weekend. The program is called Dateline. The Dateline website is: http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/

The video of the program is available at:
http://video.sbs.com.au/player/news/index.php?mmid=31566&chid=13

As you will see it is disappointingly uncritical, although it does interview Jennifer Jennings (Eduwonkette) who makes a salient point.

Regards
Trevor Cobbold
Save Our Schools

Deb Meier on Teacher Unions and KIPP

From The Nation

TEACHERS' UNION

I'm rarely cheerful these days about matters that relate to schooling in America. But the decision by teachers at a KIPP NYC school to join the United Federation of Teachers, joining two other KIPP schools where the teachers are already union members, lifted my spirits. As the favorite flavor of school reform these days, KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) is perhaps the fastest-growing charter school network in the country. The organization of KIPP, which some schools are resisting, suggests that even those teachers attracted to "boot camp" reforms can see that America's young people shouldn't be in the hands of Ivy League volunteers who dedicate a few years "in passing" to education. Precisely out of loyalty to their students and to KIPP, some have begun to see teaching as a lifetime commitment that requires teachers' voices to be heard. A young KIPP teacher told me that he and his colleagues were looking to revise some aspects of the KIPP model as they became more experienced.

The organization of KIPP teachers refutes those who relentlessly and falsely suggest that unionism is a crutch only for weak teachers, or that without collective bargaining we'd easily produce good schooling for one and all. In some fifteen Southern states, teachers are denied the right to collective bargaining--and those states are among the lowest educational performers in the nation. What these KIPP teachers are telling us is that the best schools, regardless of their pedagogical philosophies, are those in which powerful and unafraid adults join the young to create powerful and unafraid schools.

DEBORAH MEIER

Politics is –

A: Local B: Global C: Sleazy
D: All of the Above

by Norm Scott

(For The Wave, Feb. 20, 2009, www.rockawave.com)

They say all politics is local. Or maybe in the flat world of Thomas Friedman and worldwide financial meltdowns, all politics is really global. Or both.

Politics, both global and local comes together in next week’s election for the vacant City Council seat in Rockaway, Howard Beach and South Ozone Park. That the issue of education has been put on the table makes it all the more delicious. First, some facts.

Democratic District Leader Geraldine M. Chapey is running against Lew Simon and newcomer Glenn DiResto, amongst others. A DiResto ad in last week’s Wave charged Chapey with underhanded tactics in challenging his petitions on a minor technicality, causing him to be tied up in Supreme Court and denying him public campaign funding. DiResto claims Chapey received $55, 000 of these funds. He has since been restored to the ballot and the Wave is endorsing him, but his supporters are livid at Chapey’s tactics, as evidenced by a number of letters to the Wave (“Chapey’s Disgusting Tactics.”) Hey, haven’t I been telling you all politics, global or local, is sleazy? And so are most politicians. But that’s an article for another time.

Then there is the little matter of Chapey’s million-dollar taxpayer subsidized bus service over the past decade and exactly how it is used – Chapey has refused to reveal how the funds are being spent. (I’ll leave those details for you to read elsewhere in the Wave.) Sleaze squared.

Now, onto the education connection. Chapey’s mom, Geraldine D. Chapey, has been on the NY State Board of Regents since 1998. How did she get that seat? Wave editor Howie Schwack reports that when Floyd Flake gave up his congressional seat and wanted his assistant Greg Meeks to replace him, Chapey junior held the deciding vote and traded it in favor of Meeks in exchange for the Regent seat for her mom. Rudy Blagojevich, where are you when we need you? Sleaze to the third power.

Ah, it doesn’t stop there. Let’s look at the role Chapey the elder and the rest of the Regents have played in enabling the Michael Bloomberg/Joel Klein assault on the school system, part of the nationwide attack on urban public school systems and the rights of parents and community to make basic choices as to who will run their schools. Oh yes, and the focus on blaming teachers for all the failures of the system with the consequent assault on basic union rights.

Chapey senior and her buddies gave Joel Klein the lawyer his waiver to be chancellor and have supported BloomKlein in just about every scheme they have foisted on the public, from allowing the manipulation of tests that show phony results to the just as bogus graduation rates where teachers joke about drive by diplomas – just leave your car window open as you drive by the school and they’ll toss it in. And how about the worm-ridden state education department headed by Richard Mills, one of the worst commissioners in the nation, all supervised by the Regents? Chapey and her buddies at the Regents make basic decisions about approving charter schools.

Enter charter schools
Remember those old movies about the opening of the west where the settlers lined up behind a rope and made a mad dash to claim their land when the rope was dropped? Reminds me of how the charter school movement has led to the movement of public school buildings into the hands of private interests. That is the essence of the charter school movement where most schools are non-union and very unregulated. Think: Real Estate scam. Just in the last few weeks, we have heard of the announced closings of large high schools Brandeis (upper West Side) and Bayard Rustin (Chelsea) and the smaller Health Professionals (Grammercy Park). Guess in whose hands these massive buildings built and maintained with public funding, all in Toney neighborhoods, will end up?

Add closing Catholic schools to the mix
Wait, we’re not done yet. With the announced closing of many Catholic schools – due to a great extent because the free charter schools have drained away so many students – Mayor Bloomberg has offered to come to their rescue by turning them into charters.

Now I spent years working in Williamsburg and saw how parochial school interests – in that case the Hasidic community – glommed onto as much public money as they could. (At one point, $7 million just went up in smoke, a crime for which no one spent one day in jail.) They even managed to set up a bi-lingual Yiddish school, claiming it was open to all students. Somehow, they were not inundated by Black and Hispanic kids. Believe me, it won’t be long before every denomination will seek to turn their religious schools into charters.

Now mind you, the NYC public schools are overflowing and could certainly use the often large buildings the Catholic Schools occupy – remember all those arguments that there is not enough room to reduce class sizes in NYC schools to a limit that comes close to the suburbs. But instead of trying to lease these buildings or buy them outright, Bloomberg wants to turn them over to private interests. Maybe even the church itself. Mr. Archbishop, tear down that cross – or don’t tear it down at all. Just cover it up from 8-4. There is a plan afoot for the Church to create a non-profit so they can continue to manage the schools, though, by law, no religious instruction could be offered. So, what exactly is the Church’s purpose in trying to manage these schools?

Just as I’m sitting down to write this column, Lorri Giovinco-Harte, NY Education Examiner, sends this piece she wrote on the web, based on a February 17th Daily News article:

Bishop's questionable 'donation' made to daughter of woman who assists in the approval of charters:

Just one month before Mayor Mike Bloomberg made the announcement that some city Catholic schools would be converted to charters, Brooklyn/Queens Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio made his first ever donation to a political candidate - a political candidate whose mother is involved in the approval of charter schools. Bishop DiMarzio donated the money to Queens candidate, Geraldine M. Chapey, whose mother is a member of the Board of Regents; the governing body which approves the creation of charter schools in New York. The Bishop dismissed accusations that there was a connection between the donation and the subsequent announcement that several struggling Catholic schools would be converted to charters.

The $250 dollars is minor, but it is matched by over $500 in taxpayer money. The Daily News quoted DiResto (I guess religion has a place in politics now), Simon (I've never seen the church speak out on a candidate before) and Chapey (The bishop is a citizen, and he's participating in the democratic process.) She said there was no quid quo pro for her mother to ease the way for the funneling of massive amounts of public money into the hands of the archdiocese.

Is Chapey following the same script Illinois Senator Roland Burris is using in denying he made a deal with impeached Governor Rudy B who tried to sell the Obama seat? Sleaze to the – sorry, I’ve lost track.

Gee, politics really is global.

Related:
Bloomberg Is as Bloomberg Does from NYC Educator

The Examiner article

The Daily News article

Is Seniority Killing Pawtucket Schools?

This is the way teachers are assigned in Pawtucket, RI. Have we heard calls for an end to seniority due to failing schools? Do they even have failing schools? Oh, they must. After all, the system is run by dreaded and evil seniority rules.

Teachers Pool

Who: Any teacher in Pawtucket may participate.

Where: Auditorium of one of the schools

When: Thursday after the last day of school in June

Why: Collective Bargaining Agreement has said so.

What: The assistant superintendent stands in front of the crowd (generally 500 seated teachers with others crowding the aisles) everyone carrying a card listing their seniority number.
The assistant superintendent stands before a large screen that has projected all of the available vacancies across the district for the next school year. The assistant superintendent starts by saying, "Ok, numbers 1-79, stand up if you see a position you would like and are certified for." Mr. x, a 9th grade math teacher holding onto a card with the number 54 on it, who hates his high school, sees that there is a projected vacancy at the other high school, stands up, and says, "I will take the math position at Tollman High School." Assuming no one else has bid into that position, he is the new 9th grade math teacher at Tollman High School.

Paul Moore on a "Kindler, Gentler" Rhee

Miami's Paul Moore sent this over the transom. My view is that Rhee is getting advice from the same PR people that handle Randi Weingarten, who probably told her "We can't sell out the DC teachers like we did in NYC unless you tone it down a bit." Look for the fix to come real soon, with the AFT trumpeting a great victory and selling it to the teachers with a PR blitz. A year later - uh, oh!

As her corporate masters are forced to stand down by the collapse of their global economy, Michelle Rhee has begun to change her tune in Washington D.C. The new "kinder, gentler" Rhee is reflected in this WaPo article.

As the article says, Rhee has told private audiences that the money behind her campaign to abolish seniority rights for teachers comes from Gates, Broad, Dell and Robertson.

For all the defenders of the public schools, those standing up to the corporate onslaught from NYC to LA to New Orleans, there was another revealing passage in the article. It reads, "Rhee and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) also highlighted several statistics that they described as encouraging news. They reported that 14 of 17 senior high schools increased their graduation rates last year. Although the cumulative growth was only 1 percent, it represented significant gains at some schools, including Bell Multicultural (14.3 percent) and H.D. Woodson (10.2 percent)."

What this claim reflects is the success of a nationwide effort to manipulate graduation rates. It is a handmaiden of the strategy used by Rod Paige in Houston to claim dramatically higher test scores. Of course, the "Houston Miracle" has since been exposed as the "Houston Fraud". But by the time the world learned that, among a battery of tricks, students were kept in the 9th grade for three years to avoid testing Paige was the US Secretary of Education and he had the protection of the Bush justice department.

The harebrained pedagogy and the absurd policies of the privatizers were never meant to actually work but it must appear to be producing results. They cannot cite any objective measure of progress so they trumpet the appearance of success in several areas--parental involvement, student discipline and school violence statistics, and graduation rates.

To use Florida as a case study on graduation rates, the Florida Department of Education is consciously directing a policy to drive students out of certain public high schools. The NCLB Act and the FCAT have done their appointed task. Several years of low test scores have isolated the state's inner-city schools and laid the groundwork for an attack.

The FDOE has begun this attack under a program called Differentiated Accountability. The program is described here.

In the DA high schools the administrations have been directed to drive out as many students as possible. Every DA high school has been significantly depopulated with an eye to presenting higher graduation rates at the end of this coming school year.

So next fall the FDOE will send out another celebratory press release like this year's, which read, "Governor Charlie Crist today announced that Florida’s graduation rate reached its highest point ever last year at 75.4 percent, according to results released today by the Florida Department of Education (DOE). This rate exceeds the previous year’s rate by three percentage points and represents an overall improvement of 15.2 percentage points since the 1998-99 school year. The results indicate that rising numbers of minority graduates continue to play a significant role in the improvement of Florida’s overall graduation rate."

“Similar to last year, graduation rates for African-American and Hispanic students showed some of the largest growth this year, increasing by 3.8 and 3.1 percentage points, respectively. White students also showed sizeable growth, with a 2.6 point increase in their rate compared to 2006-07."

Reporting from the rabbit hole,
Paul A. Moore

Change We Can't Believe In

For Education Chief, Stimulus Means Power and Risk

Mr. Duncan said he intended to reward school districts, charter schools and nonprofit organizations that had demonstrated success at raising student achievement — “islands of excellence,” he called them. Programs that tie teacher pay to classroom performance will most likely receive money...

The bill sets aside $5 billion of that to reward states, districts and schools for setting high standards and narrowing achievement gaps between poor and affluent students. The law lets Mr. Duncan decide which states deserve awards and which programs merit special financing.

NY Times

What does this say about the ideological underpinnings of the education aspect of the stimulus spending package in an area many of us actually know something about? (Imagine what else lurks in the parts of the plan we don't know much about). Can't you see Duncan funneling money to his buddies Michele Rhee and Joel Klein who will use it to create more useless data? And he WILL buy the Tweed phony stats about rising scores and grad rates because he engaged in the same game in Chicago. One thing we know. An enormous opportunity to test the impact of class size reduction in at least pockets of various urban areas will never see the light of day.

Sorting at Charter Schools

It's nice to see one of our blogging buddies The Perimeter Primate, a public school parent in Oakland, getting more recognition. I've been intending to write more about what I have termed the 35% rule. In my years of teaching, about 35% of the children I worked with were pretty much on grade level, mostly with parents who seemed more involved with their education than the other 65%. The 35% came from more 2-parent homes and generally had less poverty levels, though we had almost 100% free lunch kids. These are the kids who end up in charter school in inner city neighborhoods, leaving the other 65% to the public schools.

We used to do the sorting through homogeniously grouping classes based on reading scores and teachers rotated each year from top to middle to bottom (when the contract was followed, which it wasn't in my school). In essence, then, we had a mini charter school effect on each grade. Thus, one year I was an amazing teacher and the next year I sucked.

PP has some amazing insights into all this from a parent on the ground.

Caroline Grannan, SF Education Examiner, is focusing some attention on these insights.

http://www.examiner.com/x-356-SF-Education-Examiner~y2009m2d15-Innercity-culture-and-the-charter-school-selfsorting-effect

In the next couple of days I’m going to feature two posts from the education blog The Perimeter Primate that I think are particularly insightful. The blogger is an Oakland resident who is a veteran public school parent and a former staff member at a diverse public school.

Yesterday she blogged about a letter she wrote to Dr. Elijah Anderson, an African-American Yale sociology professor who wrote the book “Code of the Street,” about the culture that separates “street” from “decent” people in the marginalized inner-city.

Dr. Anderson called her in response to the letter, and she also reported on her conversation with him.

PP wrote:

One reason "Code of the Street" was so fascinating to me was because of your [Dr. Anderson] insights about "decent" and "street" families. I recognized the two types immediately. Here in Oakland, I suspect the charter schools are being sought out by decent-oriented families in part in an attempt to provide their children an escape from street-oriented school mates and the havoc at school which they often cause. The resulting effect is the increasing stratification of students, school by school.

My notion is that the low-income Black parents who seek out charter schools for their children are a specific type, the type who is more likely to stress the importance of education to their children and to support the mission of the school in their homes (= “decent”). I believe that their children are more likely to end up with greater academic achievement than the children who happen to have been born to parents who lack enough of that focus.

To enroll a child in a charter schools requires more forethought, effort, research and consideration on the part of the parent. This makes the population of charter school families a self-selected one. Charter schools prefer to deny this, but I know for certain it must be the case.

So, I am beginning to envision an inner-city school landscape where charter schools appear more and more successful simply because they collect and concentrate the children of “decent” families. Additionally, they become the recipients of large donations from philanthropists because they appear to be educating inner-city minority children more effectively than the regular public schools. It is rarely admitted that the charter schools and the regular schools have an increasingly different population of families.


Read every delicious morsel at The Perimeter Primate.

Loretta Prisco Testimony Before the NYS Assembly Hearings

Mayoral Control

Feb. 12, 2009

Thank you for opening this discussion. You asked for comment on the results of Mayoral Control.

I answer in one simple word:

Fear.

But you have given speakers five minutes, I will elaborate.

Children fear being tested, retained, and being identified as a “1” or a “2”.

Parents fear that once labeled by their score, their child’s career will be over, their ELL and Spec. Ed. child will not get mandated services, and fear that if their child commits a minor infraction that used to result in a call home, now means an arrest.

Communities fear the labeling and closing of their schools, and the detrimental effect it will on their neighborhoods.

Teachers fear that a tap on the shoulder to comfort a child, or the return of a hug will cause them to be sent to the rubber room. Pedagogues, who once enjoyed collegial relationships, are fearful that low scores will bring the wrath of their supervisors and peers.

Nothing grows in fear – at least nothing worth harvesting.

As an almost 47 year public school advocate, a former public school student, teacher in and out of the classroom, a district coordinator, a city graduate student and college instructor, PTA member and president, member of the parent federation, and major critic – I daresay, I doubt anyone was more pleased than I that the “old” system folded and doubt that anyone had more enthusiasm than I for a new governance.

I will not repeat the testimony about the data which was to show that schools are moving toward success has been manipulated. You have heard it from extremely reliable sources.

Allow me to share one fear that I have. As our schools have become test taking factories with children trained to select from a few possible answers on tests with as few as 34 questions, I fear that we will not have a citizenry prepared to be the scientists solving the problems of survival on this planet, the social scientists to help us navigate a more complex world, the peacemakers for nations continually at war, the artists who express ideas in creative and innovative ways and help make a more beautiful world, and urban planners to help us plan our cities for healthy living – the problem solvers of the world.

Children who entered Kindergarten in 2002 are leaving 5th grade – an entire elementary school career under this administration. Kids get one bite of the apple – and this one has been, pardon the expression, a rotten one.

I am a member of a group that met over two years on Staten Island to design a school governance system. Our plan has been reviewed and approved by the Issues Committee of our Democratic Club and a caucus of the UFT.

Attached is a detailed version, this morning I want to identify our basic core principles.

1. The system must be based on democratic participation of the community with decision making flowing from the school level to a central body.
2. The DOE must be politically neutral and not tied to any one political office. A school system cannot change/adjust according to the political aspirations, career, whim, caprice, or ideology of a politician. It must be an independent office with responsibilities to the people of the City and operate within the regulations of the NYS Ed. Department and laws of NYC.

3. Benchmarks must be established and evaluations conducted by an independent agency.

4. Inherent in the system design must be respect and support for all constituents and recognition of their expertise.

5. Funding must be fair, equitable, transparent, with budget decisions made at the school level.

6. School and District lines must be drawn to preserve and strengthen the integrity of neighborhoods and communities.

7. A system of checks and balances must be put into place to give voice to all constituents.

8. Professionals creating and implementing instructional policy must have classroom teaching experience so that they have a clear understanding of the implications of their decisions. No waivers granted.

9. Schools in distress must be supported. Closing should be the last resort.

Our children do not deserve to go back to the old, suffer under the present or have the current system “tweaked”. We would like to suggest that an appointed Task Force be assigned to govern the system for the period of one year, continue the present structure, and hold public hearings to help plan for a new system.



Video links from David Bellel:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1292364082718662287&hl=en


In this segment Loretta and Gene Prisco offer testimony. Lynda Bernstein is also questioned.

PURPOSE:
To review the impact of governance changes which granted mayoral control of the New York City school system Friday, February 12, 2009, 10:30 a.m., College of Staten Island Center for the Arts, Williamson Theater, 2800 Victory Boulevard, Building 1P, Staten Island, NY Catherine T. Nolan, Member of Assembly,Chair, Committee on Education. Other Members Present: James F. Brennan, Daniel J. O'Donnell, Michael Benedetto, Matthew Titone, Michael Cusick, Lou Tobacco

We are DROWNING in Paperwork

"Data collection" to be specific.

From the ICE Listserve - (I'm keeping the sender anon.)

It's special ed : Ieps, report cards, assessment rubrics, project logs, homework logs, log logs , BFAs and the motherlode of all paperwork sinkholes: Alternative Assessment porfolios.

I'd conservatively estimate that the job is, at this point, 10% pedagogy and 90% clerical.

The contract says this: "Committees composed equally of representatives of the Board ( sic) and the Union shall be established at the central, district and division levels to review and reduce unnecessary paperwork required of employees." (P.52)

Here's my question: where are said committees? Do they even exist? Can I participate in one?

UFT phone person says it should be addressed via chapter consultation committee. Is this true? Bad news for us if it is 'cause we don't have one, far as I know and we don't even have chapter meetings.

So... what do you suggest? Any help appreciated.

I responded:

As we've seen time and again, the UFT addresses the problem - and I use this term lightly - with words and no action.

This is an important issue for ICE to take up. There is no solution for one school but must be addressed on a wide basis. The problem is the UFT just plays footsie. Sure file a grievance if something is in the contract. But imagine what would happen if the union started organizing a boycott of some of the worst of these paperwork abuses and started a campaign for public support and also made a commitment to rigorously defend any teacher punished.

Don't hold your breath when we have a sell out union.
But that doesn't mean ice can't start creating pressure.

Anon responds:

I'm thinking along these lines as well. First things first: I'm trying to get my CL to tell me where these committees are and how I participate in them. So far - ignored two emails on the topic.

I think merely clamoring for the contract to be implemented re. paperwork is a good first step from the staff's POV. ( I.e. without filing an explicit grievance) It communicates disgruntlement to an echo chamber-type environment where the supervisory staff leaves the building at the same time as the teaching staff. They talk only to each other and have the staff cowed with the implicit threat of requiring even more paperwork. Meanwhile they couldn't care less what actually goes on in the classroom, in terms of *learning*. A more emotionally detached group I've not encountered in my [many] years but "I'll leave that to Dr. Freud along with the rest of it." Point is, I don't think they want a grievance and MAY respond to..... lets say, "persuasion".

More comments from ICE-mail:

LP says:

I was in an elementary school this week. I could not believe the assessment process that teachers are going through. They must administer, 1-1, a series of assessments, 3 times a year in ela. Then enter the results on a computer. They are not given any time to do it. Teaching time is severely cut, and management really can become an issue (this teacher has good management but I cannot imagine it in the class of a new teacher). This teacher, who is normally so smooth, gentle, easy going - was a wreck. I could not get a minute to talk to her. If it helped - well then, maybe it should be done. But I asked another teacher if she really had time to use the results of these assessments to help kids. She laughed. In addition, professional development is on how to assess, how to enter - that dreaded word - data - into the system, not on how to meet the needs of kids who are struggling. I sit here imagining all of the teachers of this city, entering any old data that they want... would anyone even know????

L says:

This is a big issue in most schools. It got a lot worse with the quality reviews. Every teacher MUST have an assessment binder now....NO ONE knows what exactly they want in it. Some principals go way over board with it. Why have a binder when you can just have folders for different student work and assessments? The new thing this year is that teachers are required to come up with individual goals for every student. The students are suppose to know their individual goal.

G says:

My principal hired a company to keep track of all data in glossy , professionally prepared booklets at a very high cost. Not sure exactly how much but I'm trying to find out. Here is some of what they say:

Schools work with us because they believe that the only way to improve student performance is to make instruction more effective. The only way to provide more effective instruction is to have data drive what is taught. It is only what students actually learn that matters; teaching methods, curriculum maps, pacing calendars and formal observations do not matter if students are not learning. In the business world if you want to improve something you must first be able to measure it.

The teachers have to collect and give all data to the administration every few months. And not only do the teachers have to write learning goals for the kids, the students have been hounded to write their own learning goals.Try asking a 2nd grader with a learning disability what their learning goals are?

The UFT Response? Do [another] survey.
You see, it gives people the impression you are doing something.

We are hearing from some districts and networks that some principals are asking teachers to set written, individualized goals for every student several times throughout the year. In some cases, the student goals must be rewritten each semester, every six weeks, or every month. They seem to be the result of both the changes that were initiated this year in the Quality Review, and training principals have received in their networks.

In order to effectively pursue this issue, we need a sense of how widespread this is, and we need that information quickly in order to avoid timeliness issues.

Can we quickly survey chapter leaders, perhaps by email, with the following questions?

1. To your knowledge are all or some of your teachers being mandated to set individualized written goals for all or most of their students?
2. Is this practice new this year?
3. Have teachers been given extra time to do this?

We would need this information by Wednesday, February, 4th.

For our documentation we need every district representative to respond with names of the schools that are impacted by goal setting.

Thank you

Aminda Gentile

One more issue: when are teachers to enter the data on computers? During the day on their "free" time? And if they could, how available are computers? Teachers are often left with no option but to put hours of useless work into data input at home.

Testimony on Mayoral Control For Assembly Education Committee

Patrick Sullivan testimony on mayoral control at the NYC Public Ed Parent blog

Patrick is the lone member of the PEP, appointed by the Manhattan borough pres Scott Stringer. All other borough presidents appoint little gnats who say nothing, proof that the UFT to let politicians appoint PEP members is a tweak to mayoral control that is much ado about nothing.

Late in the afternoon Patrick Sullivan, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s appointee to the Board testified. It was riveting!



Excerpt:

I hope today I’ve been able to provide you with insight into the functioning of the current citywide board. In its current form the Panel for Educational Policy does not make policy or even meaningfully advise the chancellor. Those roles are reserved for the chancellor's management consultants and the distant foundations of wealthy men: the Broad Foundation, Gates Foundation and Dell Foundation. But we parents know better. The real insight into the challenges of urban education lies in the communities, school leadership teams, PTAs, community councils. We will never have real improvement in our schools until we embrace parents as real partners in the education of their children. I urge you to restore balance, order and even simple decency to the governance of our schools.

Below is a testimonial from the UFT's Peter Goodman, also known as Ed in the Apple, a long-time employee and apologist for the UFT. He posted his view on his blog.


See what he says because he is an open example of the dishonesty of the UFT. He rose to oppose Michael Fiorillo and ICE's position which calls for an end to mayoral control. The UFT wants to pretend and convince people this is just a little matter of Joel Klein and not a nationwide attack on teachers and parents with dicatorial mayors.

http://mets2006.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/noblesse-oblige-or-the-sans-culottes-school-governance-as-an-exercise-in-democracy-as-two-views-of-governancemanagement-collide-should-governance-be-topdown-or-bottomup/

The Board is “managed” by the Chancellor: no agendas to the day before the meetings, or the day of the meeting, no minutes of meetings, vacancies on the Board abound, the Chancellor has emasculated the Board, that, in reality, has absolutely no function, and, any attempts to question any actions by Klein are rejected by Klein. The Board is a Potemkin Village

The UFT is the real Potemkin Village.

Conquering Wonkette Withdrawal

Noticing that Robert Pondiscio had some suggestions for those suffering from Eduwonkette withdrawal, I decided to go straight to the horse's mouth to get my daily data dose.

There were only a few stares at the cape and mask, not a biggie in the Manhattan mix. But I knew I should have taken them off before I got there.

'Wonkette appears to be in great health and spirits and looking forward to new adventures. I was prepared with a bunch of topics so as to get my head screwed on straight. But there is just too much to talk about. And the there were all those guys hiding behind newspapers. Looked like Tweedles to me.

Was that David Cantor lurking behind that potted plant? And was that Andy Rotherham with him?

Eighty Percent of Teachers Want Union in LA Top Charter School

LA Teachers union organizes celebrated charter school