The Smartest Ed Deformers in the Room/NY Senate Passes Charter Cap Lift

Having seen the play Enron which I wrote about here, I was looking forward to see the documentary Enron, the Smartest Guys in the Room and low and behold, there it was on CNBC the other night. As Enron was plotting to cause havoc with the California energy system, we heard how often Choice - or cherce as Ralph Cramden would have said - was used to justify playing trader with peoples' lives by using rolling blackouts to push energy prices beyond the stratesphere.

Sound familiar?

"Choice" is the buzz word of the ed deformers who have pumped up charter school parents to get up at meetings and talk about how it is their right to have cherce. This is part of the same bait and switch used by Enron, which if it hadn't gone kaput, would be joining Broad, Gates and Walmart in the charter school gold rush. When there are no more public schools to rape and charters are the only game in town, they will pull plugs all over the place to cream not only kids but as much public money from the system as they can.

Then we'll be seeing stories about black boxes and raptors. Can't wait for the play "Charters."

Add-on
There's a lot of to-do over the NY State Senate passing a bill to lift the charter school cap by a vote of 45-15. With the threat of charter school/Wall Street money flowing into local political races, we are seeing how charter schools are a political movement, not an educational one, a point I made in my testimony at the Perkins hearing as I was looking at 3 HSA parents.

I mean, if you have your kids in a charter school already, why are you so willing to be used as a political wedge to get more charters? Altruism for your fellows who didn't make the lottery even if you know that there can never be enough charters that can handle all the kids, especially those who are left behind in special ed?

The big battle will be the Perkins Senate seat and watch it get dirty as charges of white money and white paternalism invading Harlem start flying around. Don't be surprised to hear references being made to a certain uncle who had a certain cabin down south in pre-civil war times.

Sign the petition to vote no on lifting the cap:

http://www.change.org/petitions/view/vote_no_to_raising_the_cap_on_charter_schools

Here is an excerpt from the Daily News:

The state’s powerful teachers unions accused Senate Democrats of caving in to charter-school advocates, who have threatened to spend $10 million to unseat at risk senators if they did not pass the bill, reports Glenn Blain of the DN's State Capitol Bureau. Union leaders vowed to hold the vote against lawmakers in the coming election season.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew dumped on the news this way:

"It’s a shame that the Senate has spent its time passsing a one-house charter bill that has no chance of becoming law, instead of concentrating on solving the budget crisis that threatens the education of millions of public school children across the state,” he said.

Assembly spokesman Dan Weiller said only, "This legislation, like all legislation, will be reviewed through our normal committee process."

Two senators were excused from the vote: Thomas Morahan (R-Rockland County) and Ruth Hassell-Thompson (D-Westchester).

The No votes were:
Neil Breslin
Tom Duane
Liz Krueger
Ken LaValle
Velmanette Montgomery
Suzi Oppenheimer
Frank Padavan
Bill Perkins
Stephen Saland
Eric Schneiderman
Jose Serrano
William Stachowski
Toby Ann Stavisky
Andrea Stewart-Cousins
Antoine Thompson

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2010/05/state-senate-passes-charter-sc.html#ixzz0mur2jvJT

For more on the impact of private money determining public ed policy, see my previous post (and follow the links as I've moved a big chunk of it to Norms Notes.) Rhee in a Nutshell

Rhee in a Nutshell

Modified 9am, May 4

I'm back in NYC but I still have DC on the brain. I know that the NY State Senate passed a lifting of the charter cap and Resisters are screaming for action but I have to keep going back to DC where 35% of the schools are charters and what is going down there - or not going down due to resistance - is a precursor and national trend setter. I subscribe to Gary Imhoff's fabulous TheMail and get daily updates on the general scene in DC, always looking for RheeGate stories. Today he has some doozies, including Candi's post that I referred to this morning, but I am including it again anyway.

Gary makes the very important connection about the union election - if Nathan Saunders wins it is a big loss for Rhee and may be the stake driven through her heart that will send her back to Sacramento to defend her fiance against any further charges by female students at the charter school he runs. One of the interesting sidelights is: who is Randi Weingarten rooting for in the election? George Parker who Rhee prefers or Saunders? Bet your pension she would take the Rhee/Parker team in a heart beat as a Saunders victory is a harbinger of bigger troubles that might be coming down for her AFT stewardship from other urban centers under attack by the Ed Deformers while local AFT/Unity Caucus type affiliates remain humble and crumble in their path.

Alan Assarsson delves into the dangers of private funding of and its impact on public policy, one of the more effective pieces I've seen. Here are a few extracts for people who don't read these things through (shame).

This insertion of private dollars into the DCPS budget calculations has inherent problems that need to be studied closely. The conditions placed by these foundations for their continued financial support not only impact our schools, but directly inject themselves into our city’s electoral process that will focus on education issues more than any other election in recent times.

These foundations may not be citizens of the District of Columbia, but they still may have an effective vote in our election.

--------

by accepting conditional money, we also inviting upon ourselves the unacceptable dilemma of having to choose between educational priorities that we determine are in the best interests of our children and the divergent priorities of private foundations

-------
the four foundations (Broad, Arnold, Walton, and Robertson) have been funding only public charter school alternatives, and have not supported labor unions that would represent teachers or administrators...

May 2, 2010

Fatal Flaws

Dear Flawless Correspondents:

It’s almost time to write my “told you so” column, crowing about how I saw Michelle Rhee’s fatal flaw years ago, before anyone else wrote about how she would self-destruct as Chancellor. Almost time, but not yet. Her fatal flaw, or at least one of them, is one she shares with Mayor Fenty — an inability to work with anyone else, to collaborate, to consult. Instead, she and he both insist that everyone else must follow them and their plans, and do so at full speed without taking the time to think, to consider, to read, or to question the wisdom of those plans. That flaw was evident again at last Friday’s council hearing into the DC Public Schools budget, when both Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi and Rhee testified.

Gandhi, who epitomizes collaboration and consultation, and who is gentlemanly to a fault, said that he could not certify that the contract Rhee negotiated with the Washington Teachers Union was fiscally sound because of the restrictions on the grant agreements with the foundations funding it. But he said that he was working with the Chancellor, and that he was sure she would identify savings within the DCPS budget to make up the shortfall. Skeptical councilmembers pressed him on where those savings would come from, on what they were, and Gandhi kept saying that Rhee was working with him and that he was sure they were making progress. Finally, he was asked directly whether Rhee had presented any budget savings to him at all to that date, and he had to admit she hadn’t. Then Councilmember David Catania, aggressively pursuing the mayor’s agenda of shifting all blame to the CFO’s office for “miscommunication” between Rhee and the CFO, kept asking the current Chief Financial Officer for DCPS, George Dines, if he had any written communication proving that he pressed Rhee for more access to DCPS decisions and decisionmakers. Catania got increasingly accusatory until Dines pulled from his files an exchange of E-mails in which he had asked to attend the chancellor’s senior staff meetings and was rebuffed and told he would be invited when he was wanted. Gandhi and his assistants testified for four hours without having been sworn in; when Rhee and her subordinates stepped up to testify, they were immediately sworn it. That says volumes about who the councilmembers trust, and whom they don’t. The other remarkable revelation last week was that the city was now attempting to renegotiate its agreements with the private foundations that have agreed to finance some of the costs of the teachers’ contracts. The city’s negotiator is not Chancellor Rhee or any of her staffers; not the Deputy Mayor for Education, Victor Reinoso, who does not seem to have any other job duties these days; not even Mayor Fenty, who claims that education is his top job priority but does nothing to prove it other than to show up for photo opportunities for construction projects. No, said the city’s contumacious Attorney General, Peter Nickles, he claimed he is doing the negotiations, because of course school contracts fit within his job responsibilities.

Washington Post columnist Valerie Strauss, who likes and admires Chancellor Michelle Rhee, has written a remarkable column that explains why Rhee is more of a problem than a solution for DC’s schools, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/dc-schools/smoke-and-mirrors-in-dc-school-1.html#more. For everyone who is sick and tired of reading my tirades over the past three years about why she would turn out this way, take the time to read the lament of a disappointed supporter. “So what have we got? A powerhouse of a superintendent who is bent on doing whatever she thinks she has to do to achieve her goals. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to understand — still — that reforms only work when the people who have to implement them are on board. She can make bold pronouncements and she can start all kinds of new programs. But if she keeps damaging her own credibility, it is not likely that she will be in the city for the very long term to see that the reforms are put in place.” And Robert McCartney breaks his long streak of uncritical praise of Rhee with a column today acknowledging a few of her faults, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/01/AR2010050102974.html; and says, “Writing this is a comedown for me.”

But it’s not yet time for me to crow. That will have to wait a month or two. Because Rhee has promoted the contract as her signature achievement, she has made it into a referendum on her. That has shifted the balance of power, and for the first time given power to teachers over her. If they don’t approve of the contract, if they vote against it, that will be a vote of no confidence in her and make it almost certain that she will find an excuse to leave office. And there’s not as much to vote for in the contract as press accounts make it seem. Teachers’ jobs are still at risk, at the whim of an arbitrary and vengeful administration; their raises are not as guaranteed and secure as they have been described; those raises have been purchased at the cost of the jobs of their fellow teachers who were fired last October; and the much-touted “performance bonuses” are illusory, will-o’-the-wisp promises. Moreover, when the teachers vote between the current president of their local, George Parker, and his opponent in the election, Nathan Saunders, who said all along that Rhee couldn’t be trusted, it will be a second teacher referendum on Rhee. The third referendum will come over a longer time period, when the economy improves and there are better job options both for current DCPS teachers and for the inexperienced teachers whom Rhee prefers (and who are taking the jobs now because they can’t get work in their preferred professions). Who will want to work for Michelle Rhee at DCPS then?

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

Read the other stories at Norms Notes More From TheMail in DC

Leonie invitates you to second annual "Skinny" - not Broad - Awards dinner: Diane Ravitch, Juan Gonzalez, Norman Siegel, Robert Jackson

Help support the amazing work Leonie and Class Size Matters does. Ed Notes will be there covering the event. Don't miss it. (Okay, so I am dense and didn't get the takeoff on Eli Broad awards.)

When: Thursday May 20 at 6:30 PM

Where: Jasmine Restaurant at 88 7th Avenue

(between 15th-16th St.)

A fundraiser sponsored by Class Size Matters

Please join us for a very special evening where we will honor three heroes who provide us with the real “skinny” on NYC schools:

Juan Gonzalez, Daily News columnist

“Hold the city accountable”

Robert Jackson, NYC Council Education chair

“Tireless fighter for our schools”

Norman Siegel, attorney

“Peerless defender of parent rights”

A rare opportunity to celebrate these three individuals and enjoy a three course dinner with wine.

Special guest: Diane Ravitch, recipient of last year’s Skinny award

Tickets: $100 -- Patron

$75 – Supporter

To order tickets or donate online, please go to http://www.nycharities.org/events/EventLevels.aspx?ETID=1489

And please forward this invitation to your friends, Leonie

Down in DC

I've been out of NYC for a few days visiting family and friends and doing lots of sightseeing in the Washington DC area. Just behaving like a typical tourist and trying to ignore the constant drum of ed news. But of course that's impossible. On the way down we stopped at a rest stop in Maryland and there was a Unity Caucus slug on the way to the NYSUT convention in DC, one of those coincidences where you think you are getting away from it all. My wife would have strangled me if I made any attempt to get near the convention.

Numbing Nuts
Then I get a phone call from a reporter on Saturday asking me if Mulgrew called Klein "Numbnuts" at the NYSUT breakfast on Friday. Do they have tracking devices on our cars? Actually, I know this reporter because a relative lives next door to me. She said she had read on Ed Notes that Mulgrew was referring to Klein in that manner at the April 21 DA. I told her I wasn't at that meeting but she reminded me that Philip Nobile had written that report. I'm glad someone knows what's being published on this blog. I had to hang up as my wife was giving me THAT look, but I figured with this being the NY Post, some kind of hit job was coming on the union and Mulgrew. There was a report in the NY Post yesterday that mentioned me and Ed Notes and it was not as bad as I thought it would be. I personally like the Post reporters and we know that editorial influences the reporting. But at the Daily News, where the editorial opinion often matches the Post, reporters like Meredith Kolodner and Rachel Monahan somehow manage to get so many things right.

By the way, before going on, I am finding a lot to like about the way Mulgrew has dealt with issues - on the surface at least, though if you read the ICE blog (see top of the sidebar for a link) there is lots of consternation over the rubber room agreement and the way Mulgrew went about it. That is not surface so all the things I like may be more style than substance. I have had very little contact with Mulgew and got a chance at the Perkins' hearing to see him in action and felt he handled himself pretty well. I will work on getting some tape up when I get back.

I was certainly happy to see Mulgrew announce they were going to run a primary against Bing for putting up that recent law over seniority. "He is dead to us" was the kind of thing those of us who saw the UFT endorse incumbents who knifed us in the back have been looking for. And they held a demo at Ruben Diaz' office as reported by Under Assault.


I didn't get to see Rhee in DC, but it was close
We are staying in Bethesda and were taking the train into the city every day. On Saturday they held a memorial for the principal who was found dead in his house in a space near the train station. Michelle Rhee was the main speaker. Lots of press coverage according to local news but we escaped in time to avoid it.

Rhee has real problems with her private funding sources (Broad, Gates, Walton - all those stellar citizens of Ed Deform – for the proposed contract putting conditions on the money. Candi Peterson's guest blogger raises some serious issues for DC teachers about this all being about a bait and switch: teacher get offered big raises to entice them into signing a contract while also signing away seniority protection rights and - whammo. Candi asks: "Should the WTU Tentative Agreement ever get ratified by our union members, will you still be around to collect your pay raise or will you be among those on the unemployment line ?" Read More.

One of the articles that came across my Blackberry this weekend was an article from a Rhee supporter who trashed her in so many ways I was drooling. But I can't locate it right now. Probably a WAPO article. If anyone comes across it send me the link and I'll update it here.

Goldstein on Bill Gates and Measures of Effective Teaching
Speaking of bait and switch, Arthur Goldstein is siting the Bill Gates teacher effectiveness initiative (A Bill of Goods), jointly sponsored with the UFT, as a B&S tactic. Tell teachers one thing but do another. Like video tape them. Arthur raises some wonderful points and Under Assault parses them (Goldstein on Gates.) I'd like Mulgrew a lot better if he ended any contact with Gates.

Video taping teachers
I do want to say something about video taping in the classroom. Back in 1969, Elaine Troll, my teacher trainer - there was money in those days to have someone full time to deal with the new teachers - asked me it I would take part in an experimental program to video tape lessons and then analyze the tapes as to the types of questions I was asking and the type of responses I was getting. The idea was to judge the effectiveness of my questioning technique - I had to categorize them to see if I was making kids think rather than give simple responses. Pretty daring for that time - think video on the late 60's. If you read Arthur's piece, sound familiar? I guess the tapes could have been used for nefarious reasons to judge me - but I wanted to be judged. I didn't view administrators as "gotcha" people but as looking to improve my effectiveness as a teacher. In today's world and what the ed deformers have wrought, even if they were well- intentioned, we as teachers have to say "Hell No!" Good for Arthur - who I had a hand in converting from a Windows to a MAC user. Remember, every MAC bought is one less dime in Gates' pocket (not that Steve Jobs thinks any better of us).

There is so much more to write about that's happened since I've been away - like questions about how charter schools mark the recent exams as opposed to how public schools do it and questions on charter school data - like to they EVER take real attendance - so many exempt from scrutiny of the ATS system. All kinds of goodies which will just have to wait since I'm getting THAT LOOK AGAIN.


Oh, and I do want to talk about sightseeing in DC (maybe tonight when I get back) and all the things we saw- I realize I have not been a tourist in DC for a long time, though I have been her for demos and meetings (last being the AFT convention in 2003, Sandy Feldman's last speech, which I liked very much). The museums we saw were just wonderful (and FREE) and we were excitedly filling in our cousins and friends who live here and are so blase about it. But when they come to NYC we can be just as blase about not going to any tourist attractions there. Maybe we could swap museums with DC and I could go down there and enjoy MOMA without having to pay $20 to get in.

The Ballad of Evan and Sidney

Boy are these guys getting coverage - from all sides. First ,Gotham gave them creds and then mention in the NY Times. On the good guys side, Accountable Talk joined Chaz and South Bronx School with his post the other day. One of the things AT points to is the slick E4E web site.

It's certainly nicely done, as it should be--it's powered by Media Mezcla Campaign Engine, which provides tools for politicians to run campaigns. I wonder how two low-salaried teachers managed to put up a website using expensive software that politicians use in their campaigns? A suspicious person might infer that these two fine newbie teachers somehow managed to hook up with powerful, moneyed pols, but we all know that couldn't be, could it? In any case, one of their goals is to join the "debate" on how to improve schools, apparently by eviscerating them. Toward this end, they have a blog that does not accept comments. So much for debate.

People often ignore things from experienced teachers like AT, Chaz and SBS- just gripers they think. Curmudgeons. So how much do I love it when Miss Eyre, who blogs at NYC Educator, and is more of Evan and Sidney's generation than ours, exhibits some tech saavy of her own with this comment over at Accountable Talk:

The plot thickens:

http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/educators4excellence.org

I wonder why two obviously proud young educators would wish to keep the registrant name of their website private. After all, we know their names! Evan and Sydney! Just two squeaky-clean kids puttin' together a little PAC, havin' a little fun! Right? Right?

I checked some of the clients of Media Mezcla Campaign Engine:

Education Reform Now
www.edreformnow.org

Harlem Success Academy
www.harlemsuccess.org

Democrats for Education Reform
www.dfer.org

Ahhh, the usual suspects.

But then again there is this:

State Senator Bill Perkins, New York
www.billperkins.org

I don't see the web site or blog as all that fancy and it seems you don't need a lot of tech skills to do it. So why pay for Media Mezla when you can do it for free?

Charter Operator Dirty Tactics (With DOE Complicity) Undermine Public Schools

Updated: 8am with new info from PS 241, Harlem


One of the basic tenets of the Ed Deform movement is the fragmentation and destabalization of local community schools. Why? To remove the stake locals have in their public schools. Note how charters can draw from a much wider catch basin than zoned public schools. (The destruction of community is an issue we must explore further - but see Lois Weiner's video where she spoke after Diane Ravitch at NYU and explored so many implications of "The Plan" at http://www.blip.tv/file/3425447/). We hope to have Lois as a guest speaker at an upcoming GEM meeting.

The tactics used are many. One of the key issues that arose at the Perkins charter school hearings was the confrontation between Perkins and John White over the release of student information to charter operators. I have some good video of this which will be up in a few days.

Another lesser known tactic is to redirect pre-k kids from the public school they attend into the charter kindergarten by making it more difficult for parents to register their kids in the public school.

We first heard about this from our friends at PS 123 in Harlem where this tactic shunted kids to Moskowitz' Harlem Success and ended up reducing PS 123's pre-k population from (I think) 3 classes to 1. By the way, HSA at PS 123 has an illegal pre-k (not part of their charter) but calls it something else.

Before you know it, Moskowitz will be finding out the names of every pregnant woman and trying to enroll their kids before they are born.

Here is an email I received from a high school teacher who is shocked at these tactics.

Hi Norm,

I’ve met you a few times. I thought of you when I heard the information I am about to tell you. I have a very good friend who teaches a pre K program in Brooklyn. She told me that parents of children in her class are receiving letters saying that their child is accepted at______ (whatever the local charter school is).

There are several problems with this charter school tactic.

These parents never applied to the charter school.

How are the charter school operators getting names and addresses of these parents if they never applied to this charter school?

Someone, somehow, is supplying this operator with names and addresses from the pre K database. Is this even legal?

This friend also told me that the school that houses the program she works in used to automatically enroll any Pre K kid in the kindergarten once they are old enough. This year, this same school is making parents re-register their kids in the school if the parents want them to go to kindergarten in the same school.

Why is this new procedure now in place?

My friend is advising parents to be careful with charter schools, and that they should visit the charter first, ask a lot of questions, and not jump to enroll their kid even if the charter is aggressively soliciting “business”. What do you think? My friend is very upset and disturbed, since this charter operator is trying to lure kids away from her school, and using her program as a jumping-off point. Thanks for any ideas you can offer.

I asked my friend to ask a parent if she could actually take a look at one of these letters. She hasn’t actually seen one, but the parents, whom she has a wonderful relationship with, were complaining to and questioning her about these letters.

Another teacher writes:

The DOE is also sabotaging our Gifted and Talented program...they are offering kids who pass the test who are currently enrolled at my school, other schools - NOT mine.


And another just sent this:

You might want to add that at 241 DOE took away PreK to severely affect enrollment. We have many families who need and want PreK and are struggling to get their kids in any PreK which has now resulted in our losing these kids for Kindergarten and forever! Enrollment sabotage is real and thriving here!

We are responding and will contact the local political forces, who are strong anti-charter school people in the area.

Then got this:

Norm a friend of mine got one of these letters from LaCima Charter in Dist 16. I will ask her for a look. Can we ask for their lottery results? I believe that we should demand that the CEC and President's Council to be required to sign off with a passed resolution on their application to ensure the community is well aware and most importantly the parents in the community are saying yes to them.

The Takeway
By the way, let me not get away without a shot at the UFT (the Unity slugs are all down in Washington DC at the NY State United Teachers conference - just so you know why your local slug is not in school - I ran into one of them yesterday at a rest stop in Maryland). Why are teachers finding out about the DOE/charter school tactics from parents and not from their union so they can mount a defense? But then again, the UFT has its own charter school (one of the major errors they have ever made) issues to deal with.

That is what GEM is doing. Trying to assist these schools where they can in the absence of the UFT. Don't get me wrong here. We welcome the UFT if they get moving and will work with them in mounting a defense. But first they must raise the alarm system wide about what is happening so teachers can begin to educate and organize the parents and other teachers in their schools.

The Passion of NY State Senator Bill Perkins

School Scope Column in The Wave: Friday, April 30, 2010

(Ed Note: The first section is an expanded rewrite of a posting from a few days ago, now tied into the Bill Perkins charter school hearings.)

Passion

by Norm Scott

"These guys must be crazy," I was told by someone I know. He was referring to those who keep fighting no matter how bleak things look. "Why would someone of retirement age stuck in the rubber room not just retire," he said? I can't explain it but I understand it. Why stand up to BloomKlein when they own the world, including the press (except the Wave, of course)? Or the UFT leadership?

Not that there is any comparison in terms of danger, but I thought of that guy standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square. Or the people who stand up for human rights against Putin in Russia no matter how many of their friends are killed. Or any number of people throughout history who were mad as hell and wouldn't take it any more.

I thought of this as I was watching the academy award foreign language winning film The Secret in Their Eyes (Argentina). One review states: "A thoroughly entertaining murder mystery, The Secret in Their Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos) stars Ricardo Darín as a retired prosecutor who can't let go of a 25-year-old rape and murder that he considers still unsolved, but solvable."

Benjamin, the detective, is relentless in pursuing answers. But the movie is really about passion. His 25 year unrequited passion for his married boss, who may have had similar passions (they keep you guessing.) The unending passion of a husband for his murdered wife. Benjamin's alcoholic sidekick Sandoval helps track the killer by figuring out he is a passionate soccer fan. "You can change almost anything," he tells Benjamin. "But you can't change passion. It will always win out."

I find many Humphrey Bogart films fall into this category. In "Deadline-USA" he edits an independent newspaper standing up to the mob while it is being sold to a Rupert Murdock type publisher who will kill the paper so his sleazy NY Post prototype will have a monopoly. Bogart gets the gangster in the end but loses the paper. However, his speech to the judge about the need for a democracy to provide divergent points of view is a must see. In Hemingway's "To Have and Have Not" Bogart is a seemingly cynical boat captain who does the right thing by his rummy helper (Walter Brennan) and a woman on the loose (Lauren Bacall), finally standing up to the WWII German tyranny by helping resistance fighters. And then there is Casablanca, my favorite movie of all time, where Bogart (Rick) jumps off the fence and begins a beautiful friendship with the resistance.

Maybe passion is what explains so many inexplicable actions by so many people. And thank goodness for these crazy, passionate people. If not for them we would all be living like the zombies in that revolutionary Apple commercial at the 1984 Super Bowl. Or like the drones at Tweed.


The Passion of NY State Senator Bill Perkins

Speaking of joining "The Resistance", a national network has been forming to fight the attacks on public education with lots of action in Florida (where some teachers engaged in a sick-out), Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington DC where a dissident, Nathan Saunders is running for president and if elected would throw a spear at a dirty contract deal being set up by Superintendent Michelle Rhee and AFT President Randi Weingarten.

With it being open season on politicians, NY State Senators have been amongst the most ridiculed in the nation. Our own Malcolm Smith, Pedro Espada and recently deposed Herman Monserrate are prime suspects. But then comes along Harlem State Senator Bill Perkins, who gives you a little faith.

Perkins, you see, has been one of the lone politicians to swim against the charter school tide, not only in NY but perhaps the nation - including President Obama, whose market-based support for undermining the public school system takes him as far away from being a socialist as possible.

Pretty gutsy stuff for a Harlem politician to push back against the policies of the most popular president in history in the Black communities. And Perkins has been vilified. The sleazy NY Post has been rabid, with up to three articles, editorials and columns a day attacking him for holding hearings examining the activities of charter schools.

If you have read the Wave over the past few months on the activities of Malcolm Smith and his Peninsula Prep charter school, you know what "activities" I'm talking about. Scandal after scandal has emerged about these schools that put our tax money into the hands of private interests with little or no oversight. Their partners in crime at BloomKlein headquarters are aiding and abetting them by favoring charters over the public schools they run, especially with the co-location shenanigans where they purposely declare a public school underutilized - see our own Goldie Maple here in Rockaway, where parents have attempted to push back.

Perkins leads an emerging line of resistance coming from Black and Latino/a communities undergoing the charter school influx. Harlem is the epicenter, with 28 charters, and more Harlem politicians are joining Perkins.

Hedge fund managers and other Wall Street types who led us into the world of financial meltdown support charters. (Why miss an opportunity to get their fingers on public funds?) Democracy Prep charter school founder Seth Andrew is so outraged at Perkins that he is calling on his buddies on Wall Street to raise a massive amount of money to defeat Perkins who is running for reelection this year. In what may shape up as the modern equivalent of "The Battle of Hastings" in 1066, the Norman conquest of Britain, Wall Street backed armies, joined by charter school advocates, will invade Harlem this summer in an attempt to knock Perkins off as an example to any politician who might dare to question how charters are misusing public money. I know of at least one Norman who will be there standing with Perkins.

Perkins' hearings were held on April 22 and started at 8am. I was the last speaker when it ended at 9pm. Boy, was I hungry, since I got there at 10am with my trusty little video camera and tripod. See some amazing parent voices on the ednotesonline you tube channel. http://www.youtube.com/user/EdNotesOnline

Did Times' Medina Accuse Klein of Racism?

When I read this late last night, I blinked.
Buried in Jennifer Medina's story on the ten thousandth reorganization at Tweed is this:

Santiago Taveras, who less than a year ago was appointed the deputy chancellor of teaching and learning, will now be in charge of community engagement. Mr. Taveras has been one of only two Hispanic members in Mr. Klein’s cabinet; there are no African-Americans among the department’s top officials, and all of those who received salary increases in the latest change are white. About 70 percent of the system’s students are black and Hispanic.

Whoa! That is a HEAVY statement coming from the Times in the midst of an article like this. Medina should do a story on the enormous drop in the number of African-American teachers in the 8 years of BloomKlein. See our May, 2008 post on this issue: Racial Policies at Tweed: Disappearing Black Teachers.

Leonie Haimson said:
So much for Joel Klein’s claim to be a great civil rights hero of our time.

She had more comments on the article:

I don’t get the headline of the Times article, which is reprinted here ….does the mandated curriculum change? I don’t think so.

Generally, I don’t see this as a big change in the DOE’s laissez-faire attitude, generally allowing principals to run their own schools however they like, including violating the law, as long as test scores go up. Clearly the educrats care not at all about teaching and learning, having eliminated that division entirely.

Clearly, they care not at all about the impression that the bureaucracy at the top and the salaries are increasing while they are threatening massive layoffs to teachers.

The outrageous thing is they are pretending that the following is their rationale for these changes:

“New school governance legislation has increased external oversight. Sustaining our reforms will require us to redouble our commitment to an open public dialogue."

Come on! That’s like justifying the proposal on laying off senior teachers by saying that it give parents more power, when we know quite the opposite is true.

See also http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/outrage_as_school_bigs_boo_bosses_qwwuXKRfUWC9hjkVUHBLEJ and http://www.ny1.com/6-bronx-news-content/news_beats/education/117637/latest-doe-shakeup-comes-at-a-cost/

Ed Notes Prediction:
Klein will be hiring an African-American within the next half hour.

Add-On
Alternate headline: A Deputy Chancellor in Every Pot

Oakland Teachers Plan One Day Strike April 29

Click to enlarge. PDF available upon request

Hey Norm,

This is Jack Gerson, a voice from the past. I've been meaning to drop you a line for a while, since every once in a while I've seen you reference something I've written, and also to compare notes about the privatization in Oakland and New York (I think that to some degree they track each other).

Anyway, as you may know OEA is locked in a pretty fierce contract struggle with our school district. We've been bargaining for more than two years, and we've been without a contract for nearly two of those years (I'm on our bargaining team). Five days ago the district imposed their "last, best and final" atrocious offer -- no raise (we're the lowest paid teachers in Alameda County); larger class sizes; the "flexibility" to eliminate the adult education program, etc. We're doing a one-day strike this Thursday (April 29), and will build the campaign to force them to lift the imposition and give us a decent contract.

I've attached a pdf file of a flyer / ad that four of us wrote, and which has been approved by our executive board. It was intended to be a full-page ad for the Oakland Tribune, but we decided not to empty our campaign fund at this time to pay their exorbitant rates. Instead, we're going to mass distribute it to our members and the community, and will try to go viral with it on the web. It tells a good piece of the story. There's more -- but given space limitations, the rest will come in the next thing we put out.

Anyway, I've attached it. If you can give it any play, I'd appreciate it.

Hope you're doing well. Maybe we can get together next time I'm in NY.

In solidarity,
Jack Gerson

Jack Gerson was part of the early 70's resistance here in NYC and worked with "Another View" which was based in District 14 before expanding into a citywide group that became the Coalition of NYC School Workers, some of the same people who helped form ICE in 2004.

Fact finder calls on Bronx Science administrator to step down- Riverdale Press

Yes, there has been a reign of terror for years at Bronx High School of Science (search our archives for stories.)

I'm amazed that the fact finder also recommends that chapter leader Peter Lamphere, who has been active in the opposition, also transfer when the crimes have clearly been perpetrated by Reidy and Jahoda. I recently met one of the young math teachers hounded out by them (luckily she landed in a great place) and she told me Peter is one of the best math teachers she's seen. That 20 math teachers in one department filed a complaint should have been cause for an instant response from Tweed. Here is the classic case for why seniority rules MUST be maintained. If the geniuses at Tweed had a clue and wanted to make a serious case for eliminating seniority, they would have been smart enough to not let these lunatic supervisors run rampant.

Why this took at least a year or more to come to a decision, giving the Bronx High admins time to go after more people, is something some of the "impartial" NYC Ed press should take a look at. And by the way, if you are going to write articles on seniority, why is only the Riverdale Press reporting on this important story going on at one of the elite schools? (And I can tell you some stories about what Valerie Reidy has done to students but I'm waiting for the statue of limitations to run out (meaning the kid has to graduate.) And ditto for the principal at Stuyvesant - just wait till June.


Fact finder calls on Bronx Science administrator to step down
By Kate Pastor

An fact finder has substantiated 20 Bronx Science teachers’ complaints that an administrator harassed and intimidated them.

In May 2008, the vast majority of teachers in the school’s math department filed a Special Complaint charging that Assistant Principal Rosemary Jahoda attempted to make changes in the math department by focusing on four untenured teachers. They claim she harassed them, treating them like children in an effort to meet the goals set out for her by Principal Valerie Reidy.

“It would be difficult to have heard the testimony of seven of the complainants, to have read the statements of the 13 others and to have listened to the June 10, 2008 audio recording of the meeting in Jahoda’s office and not conclude that Jahoda has a confrontational style that is intimidating and demeaning,” according to the arbitrator’s report issued on April 15.

The fact finder, Carol Wittenberg, concluded that Ms. Jahoda and UFT Chapter Chair Peter Lamphere should transfer out of the school, that the school remove all ‘letters to the file’ issued to the complainants during Jahoda’s tenure and that actions affecting teachers who transferred out of Bronx Science be rescinded.

"After hearing extensively from all concerned, the Fact Finder is convinced that the education community at the Bronx High School of Science, one of the flagship high schools of the Department of Education, needs to see substantial change to overcome the disruption caused by the events and to begin the healing process," the report said.

The recommendations have been sent to School Chancellor Joel Klein, who will make a final decision in the case.

This is part of the April 22, 2010 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

Have an opinion on this matter? We'd like to hear from you. Click here.

http://riverdalepress.com/atf.php?sid=12131&current_edition=2010-04-22

Tweed Power to the Parents: Hand out a button

A major part of the Ed Deform neo-liberal program is to totally disenfranchise the major stakeholders - parents and teachers. For teacher readers of this blog, I am posting some parent reactions so you know you are not alone in facing Tweedle takedowns.

In the light of the Tweedie position of "Deputy Chancellor for Community Engagement" the following question was asked on the NYCEd listserve:

What the implications for the currently existing parent involvement/engagements structures and staff?

Some responses:

That they neither engage or involve parents. Have you been made aware of the current elections for the Citywide Council on Special Education or the Citywide Coouncil on English Language Learners? Do you realize that only 4 candidates for the CCSE positon showed up at the Brooklyn hearing and no one for the CCELL? Are you aware of the fact that there were only a few people in the audience and only one person was from a Presidents Council? The cost of this fiasco is 25,000.00 dollars. It may be a pittance in the scheme of things but it would pay for an aide in some school that needs one.
Another use of the position would be to quell any dissent from the community...but that is too Machiavellian. heaven help this poor son of a gun.

Power to the Parents my eye!

Another parent says:
The reason for this fiasco is that “Power to the Parents” is a contractor. They’re a bunch of recent Ivy-league grads who know nothing about the communities they’re supposed to recruit from and even less about how to find and engage public school parents as they’re recently out of diapers themselves. Their only virtue is that—when they were initially hired at least—they cost less than KPMG.

A few of us from the Manhattan High Schools Presidents’ Council dealt with them extensively when they were first hired (for the 2008 CEC elections); they came in totally clueless and, even with lots of hand-holding, were almost comically ineffective. Suffice it to say that a big part of their communication plan was the distribution of “Power to the Parents” buttons.

I have a file on all this, which I intended to dig up anyway in advance of Thursday’s WNYC forum on education coverage, which I will attend. I first got ticked off at WNYC—and specifically Beth Fertig—for her fawning, uncritical coverage of “the first online election” even in the face of emails from actual parents detailing how DOE perpetrated a fraud on the system.

Paola de Kock

MORE COMMENTS:

The NY Times, parroting DOE spin, says: “[t]he moves are intended to give principals more power to determine what kind of instruction they use at individual schools, rather than using only suggestions developed in central offices.”

Without a trace of irony, the article goes on: “The changes underscore a substantial shift that the department has made under Mr. Klein, who early in his tenure focused on centralizing control of the system and developing a uniform citywide curriculum.”—or, more succinctly, much to-ing and fro-ing at DOE.

DOE is also doubling the number of Deputy Chancellors (from four to eight), and “spending nearly $500,000 more, although it is possible other positions will be eliminated.“ Not exactly chump change in a system where PAs must chip in to buy paper and lab supplies. And, in the world of education, the number of administrative positions does not get reduced—ever. That’s the lesson of every RIF that’s ever taken place in higher education and it won’t work any differently here because the people who do the actual teaching—be they professors or teachers—are at the bottom of the educational industrial complex food chain. Back to DOE. The most interesting question to me is what exactly will Santi Taveras be doing as Deputy Chancellor for Community Engagement beside providing some color to DOE’s top echelons? (where, the Times notes, there are no African-Americans and only one other Hispanic). I was hoping—partly because Mr. Taveras is a genuinely nice guy—that he’ll be supervising OFEA, but it looks like Martine will continue as mistress of her domain. Instead, we learn from Klein’s “Dear Colleague” letter that “Santi will work closely with the Panel for Educational Policy and other external-facing offices to engage and work with stakeholders.” It sounds like he’ll be trying to convince parents DOE really cares—a job at which the current “engagement” officer evidently failed.

Paola

Reactions to Playing Musical Chairs at Tweed

More changes announced Monday. I won't bore you with details but only reactions.

Leonie's take:

Greenberger jumping up to COO…looks like Photo has been demoted to head of finance.
Marc Sternberg, former TFA and principal of Bronx Lab, founded in 2004, only six years ago, now head of Portfolio Planning; Where is John White? Demoted? Fired? Who can tell?
No longer any office of Teaching and Learning (at least they’re honest about this; they haven’t had any interest in teaching and learning in years.) And poor Santi Taveras now definitely out of the swing of things:

As part of the DOE’s broader effort to bring the perspective of public school families and community partners to policy decisions, Chancellor Klein will create the new position of Deputy Chancellor for Community Engagement and appoint Santiago Taveras, who has served for the past year as Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning, to that role.

But perhaps in order to assuage the hurt feelings of all of these guys, they will all be given the rank of Deputy Chancellors!

How that aligns with the need to cut the bureaucracy, who knows?


And from an astute and knowledgeable high end contact with connections.

So Marc Sternberg is the new boss of Portfolio (Charter school expansion ) office at DOE among 1000 other things.

He is listed as a White House fellow working for Arne Duncan .. my reading of the white house fellows program says they may not be paid but are paid by the white house fellows program..so do we now have a white house employee actively engaging in running the NYC portfolio office while NYS has still already reached its cap on charter schools? This would be what I would expect but it seems totally biased as the man taught only 3 years then went for an MBA and wound up working for Victory Charter schools... the whole thing seems like a conflict of interest when you consider that the Office of portfolio development decides on what spaces are to be given to charter schools... very disturbing and seems problematic. I see it as more of the charter invasion from Obama through Duncan and their Democrats for Education reform friends right through to Bloomberg Klein and the Business world's charter movement- dangerous rich enemies to be feared.

NY Mag Story on Moskowitz and HSA by Jeff Coplon

When I heard that NY Mag had done a piece on HSA and Moskowitz, I immediately thought: another puff piece. But then I saw Jeff Coplon's (he's no low life Steve Brill) wrote it. While some commenters felt he tilted towards Evil, I don't agree. Jeff is one of the best writers when it comes to these kinds of pieces. For those HSA people who might scream that he was unfair to HSA, Jeff also did a similar comprehensive NY Mag piece on NEST, an exclusive public school on the lower east side - NEST+m: An Allegory - an article full of insights into the kinds of manipulations principals go through to get the kids they want in a school.

Read the full piece at http://nymag.com/news/features/65614/

This picture is worth a million words. Anyone know how to spell "fabissoner?"

One former HSA teacher commented:

I worked at Harlem Success for 2 years as a teacher. The last page is completely true---they counsel children out with learning disabilities and behavioral difficulties because they do not want their test scores affected. It is beyond shocking and morally disgusting. I could not work there any longer because of it. Also, the part about 10 minutes of test prep a day---totally untrue. Try two hours. At least.

I have extracted some of the more telling sections. On special ed:

At Harlem Success, disability is a dirty word. “I’m not a big believer in special ed,” Fucaloro says. For many children who arrive with individualized education programs, or IEPs, he goes on, the real issues are “maturity and undoing what the parents allow the kids to do in the house—usually mama—and I reverse that right away.” When remediation falls short, according to sources in and around the network, families are counseled out. “Eva told us that the school is not a social-service agency,” says the Harlem Success teacher. “That was an actual quote.”

In one case, says a teacher at P.S. 241, a set of twins started kindergarten at the co-located HSA 4 last fall. One of them proved difficult and was placed on a part-time schedule, “so the mom took both of them out and put them in our school. She has since put the calm sister twin back in Harlem Success, but they wouldn’t take the boy back. We have the harder, troubled one; they have the easier one.”

Such triage is business as usual, says the former network staffer, when the schools are vexed by behavioral problems: “They don’t provide the counseling these kids need.” If students are deemed bad “fits” and their parents refuse to move them, the staffer says, the administration “makes it a nightmare” with repeated suspensions and midday summonses. After a 5-year-old was suspended for two days for allegedly running out of the building, the child’s mother says the school began calling her every day “saying he’s doing this, he’s doing that. Maybe they’re just trying to get rid of me and my child, but I’m not going to give them that satisfaction.”

At her school alone, the Harlem Success teacher says, at least half a dozen lower-grade children who were eligible for IEPs have been withdrawn this school year. If this account were to reflect a pattern, Moskowitz’s network would be effectively winnowing students before third grade, the year state testing begins. “The easiest and fastest way to improve your test scores,” observes a DoE principal in Brooklyn, “is to get higher-performing students into your school.” And to get the lower-performing students out.

The piece above triggered this response from one of our contacts at PS 241:

The part about PS 241 enrolling the "more difficult" of a set of twin kindergartners, who were both enrolled at Harlem Success Academy, says it all for me.

Harlem Success Academy counseled out the "more difficult" twin, but kept his "easier" twin sister. This took place around the second month of the school year. PS 241 is clearly the better school. PS 241 can educate students that Harlem Success Academy cannot, because we are a school of experienced, professional educators. Inexperienced HSA teachers and administrators stand around dumbfounded, unable to understand, intervene or help students with special needs. HSA teachers repeatedly call the same parents to the school and give them laundry lists of their child's misbehavior. HSA teachers apologize to these same parents and tell them they have to call or they could lose their job. This is not a reflection on the HSA teachers, who lack the skills that experience provides. It is what happens when you give too much power and influence to an over privileged and educationally ignorant, self-proclaimed savior of Harlem children.

PS 241 is filled with students who HSA teachers would be unable and unfit to teach. And for the record, the mother of the twins has already enrolled the "easier twin" at PS 241 for next year.

Here's more from Coplon

English Language Learners (ELLs) are another group that scores poorly on the state tests—and is grossly underrepresented at Success. The network’s flagship has only ten ELLs, or less than 2 percent of its population, compared to 13 percent at its co-located zoned school. The network enrolls 51 ELLs in all, yet, as of last fall, provided no certified ESL teacher to support them. After a site visit to Harlem Success Academy 1 in November, the state education department found that the school had failed to show evidence of compliance with its charter and with No Child Left Behind, which mandates ESL services by “highly qualified” teachers.
---------
As the face of the social-Darwinist wing of the local charter movement, she’s been cast as the grim reaper of moribund neighborhood schools, a witting tool of privatizing billionaires, and a Machiavellian schemer with her sights set on the mayoralty. “She’s the spokesperson in demonizing the public schools,” says Noah Gotbaum, president of District 3’s Community Education Council. “Eva’s philosophy is that you’ve got to burn the village to save it.”
-------
A pristine stairwell is one more step toward her objective: a data-driven, no-excuses haven for learning, where all children excel and shoestrings never come undone.
-------
traditional schools in Harlem face plummeting enrollments—a sign, Chancellor Joel Klein likes to say, of parents’ voting with their feet. But State Senator Bill Perkins draws a different conclusion: “What you’re seeing is people fleeing out of a four-alarm fire.” Charter schools, Perkins says, “are at best an act of desperate faith.”
-------
Most charter operators, observes Sy Fliegel, president of the Center for Educational Innovation, “ask for space very quietly and hope they can get it. Eva asks for schools.” Co-location, as she once put it, is a “Middle East war.” As her beachheads roll out and roll up, one grade per year, her need for real estate sparks resistance. Police were called last summer when she brought movers to take another floor at P.S. 123, piling the zoned school’s belongings in the gym after it neglected to vacate on time. Stringer flayed her “thug tactics”; Moskowitz dismissed him as a “UFT hack.”
-------
Moskowitz identified five zoned schools that had declining enrollments “and suck academically.” In October 2008, she informed Klein that she was “most interested in” P.S. 194 and P.S. 241 in Harlem. Two months after that, the DoE moved to shutter those two schools and pass their buildings in toto—a first—to Success Charter Network. But there was a problem: Success could not accept all the children to be displaced. For one thing, the network has no self-contained classrooms for the profoundly disabled; for another, it takes in no new students after the second grade. At an incendiary public hearing at P.S. 194, zoned- and charter-school parents roared each other down, neighbor against neighbor. In a colonial metaphor that made Moskowitz shake her head, one resident compared her to Tarzan’s Jane—“back again, swinging through Harlem not with vines, but with charter schools.” When Klein stayed the closings in the face of a UFT lawsuit, he also advised the zoned schools’ parents to “seriously consider” moving their children to Harlem Success.
------
Moskowitz has already burned through three principals at Harlem Success Academy 1, taking the reins each time as the school’s de facto leader. The latest was Jacqueline Getz, a highly regarded veteran from P.S. 87 on the Upper West Side, who took the job last summer and resigned within weeks. (While Getz declined to comment, she told a confidante that there were “things going on that she could not in good conscience let happen.”) Her presumptive successor is Jacqueline Albers, a 26-year-old alumna of Teach for America. Critics point out that Albers fits the profile for much of Moskowitz’s top leadership circle: young white women with thin résumés. “The people they have making decisions are inexperienced and undereducated,” a former network staff member says.
------
For Moskowitz, success is a family affair and a shared obligation. Parents must sign the network’s “contract,” a promise to get children to class on time and in blue-and-orange uniform, guarantee homework, and attend all family events. “When parents aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” Fucaloro says, “we get on their behinds. Eva and Paul Fucaloro are their worst nightmares.” Infractions can range to the trivial: slacks that look worn at a child’s knees, long johns edging beyond collars. Recidivists are hauled into “Saturday Academy,” detention family style, where parents are monitored while doing “busy work” with their child, the ex-staffer says. Those who skip get a bristling form letter: “You simply stood up your child’s teacher and many others who came in on a Saturday, after a long, hard week.” At the last staff orientation, according to one Success teacher, Moskowitz reported telling parents, “Our school is like a marriage, and if you don’t come through with your promises, we will have to divorce.”
-------
New students are initiated at “kindergarten boot camp,” where they get drilled for two weeks on how to behave in the “zero noise” corridors (straight lines, mouths shut, arms at one’s sides) and the art of active listening (legs crossed, hands folded, eyes tracking the speaker). Life at Harlem Success, the teacher says, is “very, very structured,” even the twenty-minute recess. Lunches are rushed and hushed, leaving little downtime to build social skills. Many children appear fried by two o’clock, particularly in weeks with heavy testing. “We test constantly, all grades,” the teacher says. During the TerraNova, a mini-SAT bubble test over four consecutive mornings, three students threw up. “I just don’t feel that kids have a chance to be kids,” she laments.
-------
even the lottery losers made distinct progress compared to their zoned-school peers. Though they didn’t close the achievement gap, these children held their own—unlike their traditional-school classmates, who lagged further behind the suburbs each passing year. While charter-school lotteries may be blind, they are hardly random; by definition, their entrants are self-selected. The least stable families—the homeless, say, or those with a parent on dialysis—might not find their way to apply. And there is the rub: If charters’ populations skew toward more motivated students, they cannot fairly be compared to come-one-come-all zoned schools.
-------
One problem with “school choice,” as writer-activist Jonathan Kozol noted, is that the “ultimate choices” tend to get made “by those who own or operate a school.” At stake is not just who gets in, but who stays in. Studies show “selective attrition” in the KIPP chain, among others, with academic stragglers—including those seen as disruptive or in need of pricey services—leaving in greater numbers.

Bill Perkins Charter School Hearing Videos - Parent and Community Voices

New You Tube channel: ednotesonline

Today's NY Post is already throwing up candidates to oppose Bill Perkins. They will raise lots of money. But they will be facing people in the streets like the speakers here.

This particular panel was very inspirational. The ed deformers should be nervous, very nervous.

I know all of the people speaking here except Sonia Hampton, who is a delightful discovery for me. Many of the things they say will blow you away. It is growing voices like these from the community that is the biggest form of resistance to BloomKlein since no one cares much what teachers say. A very important point is that the ed deformers and charter school forces cannot accuse them of being tools of the UFT. Some work with GEM. But just watch them all in action and try to tell them they are a tool of anyone. [Still being processed from this batch: Jim Devor and Rosie Mendez which will be added to this post later.] Also, don't forget to check out my video in the post below this - I was the last speaker at around 9pm. I spoke after 3 HSA parents spoke. Nice people and we had a good chat afterwards. But I challenge the HSA political machine supporting BloomKlein and mayoral control while at the same time attacking the failures of the very school system they are running.


Lydia Bellahcene, Parent PS 15K. Lydia was there all day - from even before I arrived at 10- with her young child, who just may be the best behaved child I have ever seen in my life. Lydia makes an awesome presentation here. I've gotten to know her through the PS 15/PAVE battle and she is one of the main CAPEers. She never ceases to amaze me. That the actions of BloomKlein have led to activating her and people like her is a sign of their ultimate failure.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU-n8OvBhao


Khem Irby, Parent District 13, Brooklyn- another awesome parent advocate. Khem is always there for everyone. She makes a statement for Leonie and for herself.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1FYsHYo0ww


Sonia Hampton, Parent PS/MS 149, Harlem. This is the first time I've seen Sonia and my mouth fell open at her testimony. I wanted her to go on forever.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47MJUHScfuo

Bill Hargraves and Akinlabi Mackall do a lot of community organizing in a number of spheres including the Coalition for Public Education, which has been exploring opportunities to work together with GEM.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkHfkNtX4ss

Add-On:
These parent and community voices have been so strong and it's been a pleasure getting to know them over the past year. Ed Notes has often been looked at as a voice for teachers. But since I began teaching I had the utmost respect for many of the parents I met. I can honestly say I had fantastic relationships with the parents of the kids in my class. I worked very hard at it. The first day of school I gave them my phone number (see KIPP, we did it 40 years before you). That built trust and helped enormously, though they rarely called. Kids were very rarely able to divide me from their parents or use them against me. It had a big impact on their behavior and created an extremely positive climate for all of us. Teachers must find ways to create links to parents, both educationally and politically. Without a joint alliance, the forces of BloomKlein and neoliberalism, which has a basic aim of sowing divisions, win out.

I started a new you tube channel - ednotesonline - and future videos will no longer be listed under norscot2, though you can still access the 77 videos I already posted there. Other videos will be posted at the GEMNYC you tube channel.

If traffic gets too heavy for all these videos and slows up the blog, let me know and I will pull them and leave just the links to you tube.

All videos must be 10 minutes so I had to do some trimming to get them in. So if you see yourself and a bit is missing that is why.

Coming in next batches: Magnificent Mona and cohort charter school parents rake over charter school operators, followed by the John White interrogation on how charter schools get parent info.

Bill Perkins Charter School Hearing Videos -Norm Scott

I was Last and Least
But since I took the footage, I get to put my video up first.
I spoke after 3 HSA parents spoke. Nice people and we had a good chat afterwards. But I challenge the HSA political machine supporting BloomKlein and mayoral control while at the same time attacking the failures of the very school system they are running.




More videos in next post

Seniority and Layoffs in The Times

There was an interesting article in the Sunday NY Times on the attack on seniority. In some ways one of the fairer ones I've read in that it presented a variety of points of view by at least quoting Arthur Goldstein on how dangerous it was to give vindictive principals the choice.
See Last Teacher In, First Out? City Has Another Idea.


Here are some key points:

...a New York Times analysis of the city’s own reports on teacher effectiveness suggest that teachers do best after being in the classroom for at least 5 years, though they tend to level off after 10 years.

“You want to keep a rookie who looks good relative to other rookies, even if it’s not that great relative to all other teachers, because they are going to turn into a really good teacher,” said Douglas O. Staiger, an economics professor at Dartmouth who has worked with the city on teacher quality studies. “The question is: Are our current methods good enough at figuring out who those teachers are? I’m not sure where you draw the line on that.”

Arthur Goldstein, the chapter chairman of the teachers’ union at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, said that Mr. Klein and his supporters were trying to pit teachers against one another.

“I understand how they feel — I lost my job four times and nobody ever helped me,” Mr. Goldstein said of the younger teachers. “I don’t have a principal who is crazy now, but I’ve had other principals who would have fired me in a New York minute. It had nothing to do with teaching — things he would take as a personal insult.”

In 2008, New York City began evaluating about 11,500 teachers based on how much their students had improved on standardized state exams.

A Times analysis of the first year of results showed that teachers with 6 to 10 years of experience were more likely to perform well, while teachers with 1 or 2 years’ experience were the least likely.

The analysis could not account for differences in the makeup of the 11,500 classrooms, like how many of them had large numbers of students with learning disabilities.

In essence, the Times' research is saying that the 6-10 year teacher are the ones to keep even if seniority rules were eliminated. Since those are in the mid-range salaries before the heavy longevity increases begin, this "research" gives principals an excuse to dump 2nd decade teachers even if they don't keep the newbies.

It was nice to see reporter Jennifer Medina interview Arthur Goldstein, who makes essential points. In 1975 13 teachers, some who started 6 or 7 years before, were excessed from my school. Most were sent to other schools as seniority bumping went on all over the place. Even out 20 year guidance counselor was sent elsewhere as my district eliminated all of them. But within a short time things evened out and those who actually lost jobs started being recalled. Many left the system but others did come back. Some got recertified in shortage areas. Don't forget that layoffs go by license.

The article talks about the young teachers who are upset at seniority rules and the organization some of them have founded.

Mr. Borock, the Bronx teacher, said that the layoffs would discourage newer graduates from entering the profession. “If you have a number of job opportunities, as many of us did, and you have a nagging feeling in the back of your mind that you could lose this job really quickly,” he asked, “why would anyone want to go into that?”

He joined a group created recently by other young teachers, Educators for Excellence, to lobby against seniority rules, taking on their own union

Let's see now. Mr. Borock has many job opportunities (in this economy? - please tell) and reports are emerging that the founders of Educators for Excellence may be leaving teaching, as 50% of the new teachers do within 5 years. So the idea that newer graduates, many of whom were driven into teaching by the economy anyway, would not do so is interesting. I can't tell you how many young teachers I hear from who are dying to get into the system. Something about health care and maybe even pensions - oh, gosh, these are not things teachers should talk about - that's stuff about "adults" and it's all about the kids.

So Mr. Borock if he's laid off should take all those job opportunities. There are plenty of people waiting to take his place when they start rehiring.

Add on
Chaz has some thoughts on E4E:
The Educators4Excellence Group Is Just A Stooge For Bloomberg & Klein's "Education On The Cheap" Policy

And as usual, South Bronx School has been going wild.

Bullied and Bribed: A Poem About Rhee, Parker and DC

Bullied and Bribed
by Arjun Janah

Michelle Rhee, and Parker tried/
To cut a deal. And Randi, too./
She's bold as brass, is dear Michelle./
And lying? Why, she does that too.//

Can Gandhi lie? No, he cannot./ **
George Washington, he puts to shame./
Oh dear, oh dear! What have we here?/
It seems the deal they cut is lame.//

She fired the teachers, saying she/
Was facing deficits so deep./
But now, a surplus is, she claims,
For she has promises to keep.//

Or smoke to blow? The council's mad./
It's clear that much is fishy here./
She needs the power. They've been had./
Such disrespect is tough to bear.//

So welcome, pols, to this our world,/
Where students, those who are sincere,/
And teachers, into pits are hurled./
With leaders bold, why should we fear?//

We should, because, and yet again,/
They try to be too smart, and so,/
They usher in yet more of pain,/
As we are bribed and bullied more.//

So don't be bribed. To bullies, say,/
"Your heart is small, your mind is wee./
We teach, and we are here to stay./
If you want change, a teacher be!"//

So listen up, Obama, hear!/
The ones you trust are flinging bull!/
Perhaps you should, those workers, hear,/
Whose plates, with endless work, are full!

Arjun
2010 April 24th, Sun
Brooklyn
** Natwar Gandhi, the D.C's C.F.O., disputes Rhee's sudden claim of a
budget surplus to finance the raises she had dangled to cut the deal with
Weingarten and Parker that gave her the firing powers she craved.

Her new-found "surplus" replaces the "deficit" she had claimed earlier
-- and utilized to fire teachers.

Arjun teaches science in a NYC high school

HELL EXPLAINED BY A CHEMISTRY STUDENT

A joke for a rainy Sunday

The following is an actual question given on a University of Arizona chemistry mid term, and an actual answer turned in by a student.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving, which is unlikely. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over. So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct .....leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'

Passion

"These guys must be crazy," I was told by someone I know. He was referring to those who keep fighting no matter how bleak things look. "Why would someone of retirement age stuck in the rubber room not just retire," he said? I can't explain it but I understand it. I could add: Why fight Unity Caucus? Why stand up to BloomKlein when they own the world, including the press?

I had no easy answer for my friend but I thought of that guy standing in front of the tank in Tianamen Square. Or the people who stand up for human rights against Putin in Russia no matter how many of their friends are killed. Or any number of people throughout history who were mad as hell and wouldn't take it any more.

I thought of this as I was watching the academy award foreign language winning film The Secret in Their Eyes (Argentina) on Friday. One review states:

"A thoroughly entertaining murder mystery, The Secret in Their Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos) stars Ricardo Darín (Nine Queens) as a retired prosecutor who can't let go of a 25-year-old rape and murder that he considers still unsolved, but solvable."

Benjamin, the detective, is relentless in pursuing answers. But the movie is really about passion. His 25 year unrequited passion for his married boss, who may have had similar passions (they keep you guessing.) The unending passion of a husband for his murdered wife. Benjamin's alcoholic sidekick Sandoval helps track the killer by figuring out he is a passionate soccer fan. "You can change almost anything," he tells Benjamin. "But you can't change passion. It will always win out."

Maybe that passion is what explains so many unexplainable actions by so many people. And thank goodness for these crazy, passionate people. If not for them we would all be living like the zombies in that revolutionary Apple commercial at the 1984 Super Bowl. Or like the drones at Tweed.

Add On
I saw Bogart in "Have and Have Not" last night and there is a similar relationship between him and the Walter Brennan character who also makes a case for drinking, just as Sandoval did.

The Howler Ravished by Ravitch

The Daily Howler, who taught in Baltimore for many more years than Michelle Rhee, did a 4 part series on Ravitch which is very critical from a certain point of view. He posits the question: if Ravitch was wrong once, who is to say she isn't wrong again? Lots to digest here and I don't necessarily agree, but I'm making it available all in one place for people to peruse and criticize. His final conclusion is certainly worth pondering:

Long ago, we liberals quit on this topic. We left the field to conservatives, to business types, to “educational experts.” (We left the field to Wendy Kopp!) Those people actually seem to care. Your side is AWOL, uninvolved.

I've been pondering this idea about the UFT/AFT. Shanker abandoned "this topic" when he supported the Nation at Risk in '82, backed the Clinton Goals 2000 in the 90's and after his death when the Feldman/Weingarten team supported NCLB. In other words, fighting for full funding for public education instead of looking towards market-based low-cost gimmicks like incentives. Looking at outcomes rather than incomes for solutions. Take a look at Rolan Fryer's mea culpa at John Thompson's post at TWIE where Fryer says, " "’To my surprise, incentive programs that rewarded process seemed to be more effective than those that rewarded outcomes." DUHHH!

The battle for real ed reform from teacher unions ended almost 30 years ago, leading them down the path of trailing the ed deformers. And yes, there was a Ravitch/Shanker alliance through much of this standards/accountability process.

Read it all at Howler on Ravitch