NYC Gates-funded small schools enrolled fewer disadvantaged 9th graders than enrolled in large HS they replaced

Prepared by Jennifer L. Jennings, assistant professor of sociology at New York University, and Aaron M. Pallas, professor of sociology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, in collaboration with Annenberg Institute research staff   

Over the last decade, the New York City public school system has sought to reform high school education by closing or downsizing large, failing high schools and opening new small high schools in their stead. This report explores whether these reforms altered the distribution of student characteristics across schools by comparing the demographic characteristics of students entering the new small high schools with those of students entering the large high schools that closed and with high schools across the New York City system.

The authors found little evidence of a fundamental redistribution throughout the system, but their data indicated that new small high schools located on the campuses of the large comprehensive schools they replaced enrolled much less disadvantaged ninth-graders than those who were previously enrolled in the now-closed large comprehensive schools. The authors recommend that the New York City Department of Education remain vigilant when opening and closing new schools, keeping in mind that the fortunes of one school can influence what happens to other schools. (October 2010)

I had conversations with Jennifer Jennings about this issue from the time I first met her in the early days of her research into small schools over 5 years ago. She told  me about a few of the schools - most cherry picked but one principal really tried to do it with the same kids -  his school had loads of issues because these kids just needed more resources. Now if he were given more teachers and more non-classroom resources, it would have been possible, but by no means a sure bet. But the ed deformers don't even want to go there, trying to make it seem it is only a matter of replicating successful models, quality teaching, etc.

Oh, how easy to be a higher quality teacher when there are kids with less needs - and that money spent the right way - let me say it again - money spent the right way - not on schemes like merit pay, or coaches, or ARIS and data and accountability - all the non-classroom accouterments that won't make a difference. See below for a prime example of waste: Hiring teacher effectiveness coaches who need no teaching experience.

Nothing surprising here. We know there are no magic bullets.

Pallas - Jennings report:

NYC Gates-funded small schools enrolled fewer disadvantaged 9th graders than enrolled in large HS they replaced. 

Findings appear to contradict DOE’s claims on this issue.

http://bit.ly/bt3eBn

News from the Annenberg Institute Do new small schools in New York City enroll more advantaged students than the city's other schools ? The New York City public school system has sought to reform high school education by closing or downsizing large, failing high schools and opening new small high schools. In a new report, NYU professor Jennifer Jennings and Teachers College professor Aaron Pallas explore whether these reforms altered the distribution of enrolling students’ characteristics across schools. > Read more and view the entire report

http://www.bridgestar.org/MyCareerCenter/PositionDetails.aspx?jobId=7679

 

Posting for NYC Department of Education
Position Details 

Position Title: TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS COACHES Function: Education/Training Position Type: Full-Time (Paid) Posted On: 10/5/2010 Job Description: DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

DIVISION OF TALENT, LABOR & INNOVATION
JOB POSTING

TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS COACHES

Position Summary:
The Department of Education’s (DOE) Division of Talent, Labor & Innovation is currently seeking multiple full-time Teacher Effectiveness Coaches to implement a talent management system focused on teacher effectiveness.  These positions offer the successful candidate the opportunity to assume a role in supporting school leaders in evaluating and developing effective teachers in New York City public schools.  The Teacher Effectiveness Coaches will be required to travel 4-5 days a week to New York City schools. 

Responsibilities:
These positions offer the successful candidate the opportunity to support school leaders in evaluating and developing effective teachers in New York City public schools.  Specific responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:

Communicating the Teacher Effectiveness Program
• Create materials, agendas, and talking points to help principals have conversations with teachers

Determining Individual Teacher Development Needs
• Provide written guidance to principals on using data to assess teacher effectiveness
• Create tools to help principals diagnose teacher needs and choose appropriate interventions

Tracking Progress of Developmental Support
• Track teacher development needs and the delivery of interventions to establish school and project level patterns

Supporting the Completion of Teacher Evaluations
• Work with principals to improve use of existing evaluation tool, provide logistical support to ensure principals follow the evaluation process
• Track the alignment of evaluation rating to teacher effectiveness, as determined by the principal
• Provide logistical support to ensure principals make timely and informed tenure decisions. Qualifications: Qualification Requirements:
Minimum:

• B.A.
• Minimum four (4) years experience in human resources, talent development, performance evaluation, professional development, operations, public or education administration or a field applicable to the position, with at least 18 months of management experience or
• A satisfactory equivalent of post baccalaureate education and experience
• All candidates must have 18+ months of managerial/supervisory experience

Candi Questions What Randi/Rhee Have Wrought

Candi Peterson, who is running for VP of the Washington Teachers Union with Nathan Saunders as president,  from Day 1 was warning about the contract Randi and Rhee negotiated, lays things bare on her blog. Here is an excerpt - but read it all at http://thewashingtonteacher.blogspot.com/

When the Washington Teachers' Union contract (2007-12) which was negotiated and finalized by 'Hold Over' union President George Parker and AFT President Randi Weingarten in September 2010, I questioned and raised concerns about a clause in the union contract language which states on page 103:


Article 40.1: The Parties agree that all provisions of this agreement are subject to the availability of funds.

40.2: Nothing in this Agreement shall be construed as a promise that Congress, the DC Council and any other organization shall appropriate sufficient funds to meet the obligations set forth in this Agreement."


I was worried that this clause which has never appeared in previous union contracts would come back to haunt us in addition to, protecting DC Public Schools from honoring the terms of our Contract Agreement once ratified. My gut told me that when Parker and Weingarten negotiated our teachers' union contract during a large looming budget deficit (158 mil) that it would only lead to problems for us down the road. Of course my concerns about the contract language that were addressed to 'Hold Over' Union President George Parker fell on deaf ears and of course the rest is history. While I don't have the answers to what the Mayor's Executive order means for DC teachers and school personnel, as a critical thinker it raises for me a number of questions and concerns that requires us to seek additional information on how this will impact teachers, school personnel, students and schools.

Becoming an Activist: From George Washington to Teachers

One of the goals of Education Notes is to provide information and stimulate teachers to become activists. So I tell this tale with that goal in mind.

I just heard an interesting interview with George Washington biographer Ron Chernow on NPR. The roots of Washington's activism were based on personal grievances and resentments at the British (was GW the first tea partier?). As political events in the 1760's began to heat up, Washington was able to transform these grievances into a broader identification with the majority of colonists who were affected negatively by British policies.

Chernow posed Washington in contrast to people like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson whose activism was based on ideological grounds rather than rooted in personal pique. I don't really know enough to say this was true but it got me thinking, always a dangerous thing.

Are all movements rooted in personal issues? 

People are asking what is the difference between teachers in Chicago and New York in terms of activity. In Seattle, there were over a hundred CORE members and everyone I met was so knowledgeable about ed issues - they has become educated, activated and mobilized.

Is it the fact that Chicago has been under mayoral control for 16 years and savaged by the ed deformers? A weaker union all those years than here in NY that couldn't prevent the firing of teachers from closed schools who couldn't get jobs no matter what their seniority? Will it take more catastrophes here to create a wide spread movement of teacher activists?


Educate, organize, mobilize- the 3 pillars of activism
I had a conversation recently with a teacher who has become extremely active in opposition to the ed deformers over the past two years as an educator (writing and disseminating info to teachers and parents, an organizer (working in school and beyond to get other people active) and a mobilizer (bringing people out to various events).

It started in her own school which has been severely impacted by the BloomKlein policies of ed deform. Though she had a basis of being involved in issues of social justice, motivated by standing in front of the often damaged kids in her class on a daily basis, it took a particular event that impacted on her personally to rev up the engine to new levels.
 
We talked about the roots of activism and how some teachers come to it from ideology - they were active in college or in other causes or were socialists with a core of activism in their blood. Some chose teaching for that very reason. There seems to be a different level of motivation - they would be active no matter what they did. At times there seemed to be a disconnect between their activism and the kids they teach. Think theorists like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.

Teachers activated by their personal experiences - grievances against the system or from the plight of their kids - by the way - 2 very different type of motivations -  rather than ideological underpinnings not necessarily rooted in the job - seem to come at things in a different way. I identify myself with the former crew. (Think "George Washington" - and those wooden teeth!)


Sometimes I find a disconnect among teacher activists with an ideological bent who often talk in theory and rhetoric. I am much more practically oriented - based on my personal experiences working with teachers and children. Not always the best way either since some ideology is necessary as a framework.


One interesting point made was that Washington was the only founding father to free all his slaves in his will - an interesting point. Did it stem from his practicality over ideology as he saw the impact of slavery and how it was so counter to the principals of the founding of this nation while Jefferson only saw things theoretically?

My personal roots of activism
When I started teaching in 1967 it was to escape the Vietnam war. Just a job with no concern for kids or ideology and I was nowhere near an activist. I had no ideological underpinnings and had in fact missed the 60's. I never picketed or protested anything.

For the first year and a half I was a full time sub in one school – an ATR (we were called Above Quota teachers) – a white lower middle class kid (my dad was a garment worker who had not gotten past 8th grade and my mom was also a garment worker who was a refugee and could barely read and write English) thrust into a school in Williamsburg in Brooklyn that served almost all Black and Hispanic kids - an environment so alien that it felt like the moon. Over that year and a half I was working on my Masters in history with the intention of going on to an academic career and getting out of teaching as soon as I could. I began to develop relationships with some of the kids. I was also bored. Thus when a teacher/lawyer had a chance to not be drafted and jumped out of the job I offered to take over his class.

It was Feb. 1969. Remember- the fall of '68 was broken by 3 teacher strikes, so I really still had little more than a year plus a few months teaching experience, all as a sub. But in my time as a sub in the same school - I highly recommend this as a way to get new teachers some experience and knowledge under their belts without causing much harm) - I learned enough about teaching from watching and working with other teachers to feel I had a shot at succeeding. That the lawyer/teacher didn't seem to give a crap about this 4-8 low performing class made me feel I couldn't do worse. I actually did better. Much better and by June 1969 I felt I was a full-fledged teacher, earning the respect of the two most critical voices in the school - the teacher trainer and the very tough AP. That I succeeded with this difficult class in the eyes of everyone, changed the course of my life.

To ed deformers I would have been a failure
At this point let me point out that to the value-added ed deformers who would judge my "success" based on test scores, I may have been viewed as a total failure (I don't think there was much progress between Feb and the test a few months later). And since I didn't have tenure - maybe even fired. That I took a class in some disarray with a number of difficult kids and got them organized into a cohesive force with the kids actually seeming to enjoy coming to school or that the two most experienced and respected educators in my school loved my work, would be of no account. And I would have had that academic career or entered the Foreign Service (I took the test and did well).

An activist friend
One of my boyhood pals, a lawyer, was also escaping the draft and joined a domestic peace corps, was placed into the same neighborhood where he also had to live. (By the way, he still lives there and is still an activist). It was that contact that led to my getting interested in local educational struggles and by the fall of 1970 I was an activist and have pretty much remained in the mix – though I missed the 80's and early part of the 90's. But that's a story for another time.

--------
After Burn
Make sure to check out the articles I post on Norms Notes. This one is a whopper from The Amsterdam News taking down Geoffrey Canada and his Harlem Children's Zone.

Amsterdam News: charter school (Harlem Children's Zone) Not Making the Grade

A Day Off - But still gotta duck from the incoming

I played hooky from the Oct. 7 rallies and protests and the PEP somewhere in the Bronx today after getting wiped by hot yoga this morning. A nice cigar, the NY Times, starting a novel, a batch of gardening, dinner with lots of wine and retirement to my man cave for some serious Yankee baseball, though my 19 year old female cat Pinky is allowed in and is watching the Giant/Brave game with me right now, though she is a Tigers fan.

Here is a gaggle of stuff coming in like mortars - and I'm just grazing the surface. I urge you to check out the active blog roll for some additional wonderful stuff. They are ordered by the latest updates on top. I can't keep up with it all myself.

This stuff is better than Gotham's Nightcaps.
---------------
A quick report from tonight's PEP:
This place is sick. Klein went on a diatribe about how charters must b doing something right bc of the long waiting lists even if they r substandard by his own accountability reports

--------------
Ed Deformer Jay Matthews loves Randi - now it's over her lovely Baltimore contract

(Former Tweedie Andres Alonso is another Kleinite placed in charge of a school system - it's like the invasion of the body snatchers.)

Baltimore teachers contract could be great

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten called me last week full of excitement over her Baltimore local's new teachers contract. Education leaders often exaggerate when talking to journalists, but Weingarten has taken some bold steps in Colorado and D.C. that were not popular with all of her members, so she is very credible, at least to me.
The contract between the Baltimore Teachers Union, led by Marietta English, and the Baltimore city schools, led by Andres Alonso, embraces the new Maryland state requirement that 50 percent of a teacher's evaluation be based on student achievement. That is not something union leaders welcomed, so the AFT decision to go with it suggests Weingarten and English are willing to meet school officials half way.

Sure, it's not something Randi welcomed. One day Jay and others will listen to me - watch what she does not what she says. Read it all and weep - for the Baltimore teachers.

-------------

Louis Black on John Stewart in a hilarious bit on the public and charter schools. Best bet: Ripping NBC Educashon Nashon, especially when David Gregory has the brilliant idea for how to support public schools.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-october-5-2010/back-in-black---education-crisis

------------
Mona Davids sent this
Ross Global Academy Charter School wants help recruiting students/victims to their failing charter school and get more money!!  Could they be under-enrolled?

This is the "official" worst school in NYC.

RGA is up for renewal. They should be shut down! Let's see if their authorizers, the DOE and SED finally hold this school accountable for their performance. Bad charters MUST be shut down.

Click here to learn the truth about this school.

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2010/10/were-still-waiting-for-superman-here-in.html

SHUT IT DOWN! Our kids are more than dollar bills.

---------------
Perdido Street School is always on the case

Bloomberg/Cuomo Are Coming For Your Pension

Here is one of the reasons Bloomberg endorsed Cuomo:

Charter School Steals Money From Teacher

This is why teachers at charter schools need work protections:

-------------- 
Here's a fun one from the NY Post. My principal used to try to hide me away when visitors came.

'Hidden' teachers

By YOAV GONEN, Education Reporter

Last Updated: 6:06 AM, October 7, 2010

Posted: 12:32 AM, October 7, 2010

They were cast out like the crazy uncle.

Three teachers who have sparred with their principal said she banished them from their Brooklyn school for the day solely to keep them away during a visit by top education brass.

The PS 282 educators said they were handed 11th-hour letters from Principal Magalie Alexis, telling them to report elsewhere yesterday for "instructional support" -- on the same day State Education Commissioner David Steiner and city Schools Chancellor Joel Klein were coming.

Ironically, the officials were visiting to honor great teaching.

"I think [the principal] singled us out because we will tell the truth -- [that] we need the money to be in the classroom, not for show-and-tell," said Norman Rollock, who questioned spending school funds to paint the gym before the visit rather than to replace broken computers and old textbooks.

Rollock, who has butted heads with Alexis since becoming the union chapter leader in March, said he spent the day observing teachers at a Queens elementary school.

His colleague, veteran social-studies teacher David Canty, passed the time similarly. The name of the third teacher was not immediately available.

"With the chancellor and [commissioner] touring the building . . . maybe she felt as though I would not give a response that would be favorable to her or favorable about the running or management of the school," Rollock said.

"It wasn't a coincidence that I would be taken out of there."

Alexis, who oversaw the day's main event, at which teacher Natasha Cooke-Nieves was awarded $25,000 from the Milken Family Foundation, did not respond to e-mails seeking comment.

-------
Finally, here is one great letter to Summit charter school parents. Click to enlarge.

New Chicago Union Leadership Victor on Tenure in Federal Court- A Thousand Teachers Had Tenure Rights Violated

Updated Oct. 11, 2010, 11pm

I'm going to stay mum on any comparisons between the Chicago-CTU/CORE leadership, in power for less than 4 months and the New York- UFT/Unity leadership, in power for well over 40 years. We'll get into potential upcoming sellouts in the next UFT/DOE contract in another post.


[http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1706&section=Article]

[click link above for full Substance News article with legal decision]

Chicago Teachers Union upholds teachers' tenure rights... Judge Coar's decision shows how completely CPS has lost (again) in federal court

John Kugler - October 05, 2010

"Four hundred thousands students will have their teachers returned to them," an elated Karen Lewis told a press conference at the headquarters of the 30,000-member Chicago Teachers Union on the evening of October 4, 2010. Lewis's statement was her opening in describing the immediate impact she thought should take place in light of a federal judge's decision that the Chicago Board of Education had violated the rights of tenured teachers in firing them during the summer of 2010, using inflated "deficit" claims as the basis for creating a financial emergency and assuming to itself unprecedented powers.


Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis (with hand outstretched) was surrounded by members of the expanded union negotiating team on July 23, 2010, when she led union members and the union's newly elected officers across the street from the union's Merchandise Mart offices to the Holiday Inn Mart Plaza for the first meeting with Board of Education negotiators. The Board demanded $100 million in cuts from the CTU contract, even thought the Board's claims of a billion dollar deficit had been discredited, and when the union refused to buckle, Ron Huberman order the elimination of more than 1,000 tenured teachers from their jobs. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.For the second time in six months, a federal judge has handed a rebuke to the Chicago Board of Education because of the Board's lawless (and unconstitutional) actions. On October 4, 2010, U.S. District Judge David H. Coar in a strongly worded opinion held that CPS had violated the rights of more than 1,000 tenured Chicago teachers when it fired them from their jobs based on a number of spurious grounds that had been conjured up by the Board during the summer of 2004.

In the October decision, Judge Coar held that the Board of Education of the City of Chicago and its Chief Executive Officer, Ron Huberman, had violated the rights of tenured teachers it has been firing since June 1, 2010, under the guise of various pretexts. Despite the clear language of the judge's decision upholding tenure, Patrick Rocks, the top lawyer for CPS, claimed in a quotation distributed by CPS in an October 4 press release that the judge's ruling only allowed the teachers CPS had dumped to "complete for jobs." At a 7:00 p.m. press conference held at CTU headquarters, CTU President Karen Lewis told reporters that the judge clearly disagreed with Rocks's version of the law. "We won," she said, chiding reporters from WBEZ and Catalyst who kept repeating the Rocks talking point after she had explained the decision.

... For full story, go to ttp://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1706&section=Article

NOTE: Some people were passing this email around as connected to race. George Schmidt sets us straight:

Please see the correct information from George Schmidt.

From: gnschmidt@aol.com

Subject: Re: AFT P&J: Fwd: Black Chicago Teachers Win Discrimination Lawsuit

10/11/10

There were two separate legal actions.

In 2009, CORE filed an EEOC complaint against CPS, charging that the firings of veteran teachers was racially discriminatory. That complaint is still pending.

In 2010, the Chicago Teachers Union (by then led by CORE people) filed a federal lawsuit charging that the June - August 2010 firings of veteran teachers in Chicago was unconstitutional. That's the lawsuit that was won last week. (Substance published the decision along with an analysis by John Kugler at www.substancenews.net).

Chicago Teachers Union v. Board of Education was a federal civil rights case. And it had nothing to do with the race of the teachers who were fired. It was based on the Fourteenth Amendment (equal protection) and decided, as you can read in the decision, on that basis. I don't think there was one reference to race in Judge Coar's decision.

George Schmidt

Substance

www.substancenews.net

TODAY: New York Call to Action OCT 7 - Defend Public Education

New York Call to Action OCT  7

Defend Public Education

(Part of the National Day of Action to Defend Public Education)

4 p.m. rally at the Harlem State office building,
163 W 125th St just east of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd. (Seventh Avenue)

On Thursday October 7^th, 2010, students, educators, workers, and activists from community organizations across New York City will rally at 4pm outside the Harlem State Office Building at Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd and 125^th street before marching across Harlem, finally ending at City College New York (CCNY).

Other events will include rallies, teach-ins, sit-ins and other actions at CUNY and SUNY schools across the city and state.  Students at Brooklyn College, Queens College, Hunter College, CCNY, Lehman and Hostos College have plans earlier in the day before converging at the Harlem State Office Building at 4pm.

The plans in New York are connected to the October 7^th National Day of Action to Defend Public Education, the continuation of the national movement that began on March 4^th 2010.

Since 2008 the cuts to public higher education include $400 million from SUNY and $200 million from CUNY.  Over the past six years, tuition has increased 46% at SUNY and 44% at CUNY as vital services, like childcare at Hunter College, are cut or scaled back.

Millions have been cut from k-12.  The state of New York recently passed measures that will double the cap of charter schools in the state and tie teacher pay to student performance on high stakes standardized tests.  These changes were keeping in line with the Race to the Top, a nearly $5 billion fund set aside by the federal government and dangled in front of strapped state governments as a prize for the states that launch the most vicious attacks against public education and teachers.

In Harlem, the attack on public education and the community as a whole is much more acute. The charterization movement has threatened public schools in Harlem by moving charter schools into the same building as public schools and pushing the public schools and the children that attend them out of their space.  This occurs at the same time as the expansion of Columbia University and the takeover of the community by rich developers.  Harlem is a center where the crisis, the massive unemployment that has been a devastating effect of it, homelessness, the attacks on the public sector and the criminalization of young people who are denied an equal quality education and the closing of hospitals all converge.

Join us as we stand in solidarity with the community of Harlem, march against racism, the attacks on the community and the people of New York.  We demand an immediate halt and reversal to all tuition hikes, budget cuts, lay-offs, privatizations and closures of public schools, will call for jobs, free health care for all students, the cancellation of student debt, free public education for all from kindergarten to college, the elimination of systems of racism in the public school system, and equal pay for equal work, as well as job security, for all faculty and teachers.

Endorsers:

Bail Out the People Movement
Black New Yorkers for Educational Excellence (BNYEE)
Councilman Charles Barron
Coalition for Public Education / Coalicion por la Educacion Publica
Coalition to Save Harlem
December 12^th Movement

East Village Community School – Parents Association, New York, NY
Fight Imperialism Stand Together
Harlem Tenants Council
Committee to End Abusive Policing in Our Communities (CEAPOC)
Iglesia San Romero
Independent Commission On Public Education (ICOPE)
International Action Center
International Socialist Organization
Labor-Community Forum of the South Bronx Community Congress
May 1st Coalition for Worker & Immigrant Rights-NYC
National Black Education Agenda (NBEA)
New York City Labor Against the War
Roots Revisited

Socialist Alternative
STAND (Queens College)
Students for Educational Rights (CCNY)
Take Back our Transit System
Ya Ya Network

Workers World Party

For more information go to:

www.march4ny.wordpress.com
www.defendeducation.org

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=535767918#!/event.php?eid=116869771699508
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=535767918#!/group.php?gid=244000051960

Sisters and Brothers

Please Join CPE-CEP's Harlem Chapter and

Support Public Schools and Public Housing in Harlem!!!

Support Community Control of our Institutions!!!

Strike a Blow Against Racism and Class Oppression!!!

Join us as we March from PS 123 

to the St. Nicholas Houses and then 

to the Adam Clayton Powell Junior State Office Building 

where we will join 

the National Day of Action to Defend Public Education!!!

Meet at PS123 

(301 West 140th Street, New York, NY  10030)

3:00pm

For more information please contact 

Vicente Montero at vmms033@aol.com 

or 

Ernestine Agustus at queenteenie45@aol.com 

or (646) 262-9052.

Thank you,

Brian Jones at HuffPo: What I Learned at NBC's Education Nation Summit

A Real Reformer speaks out:



Brian Jones
Teacher and activist Posted: October 4, 2010 01:13 PM

What I Learned at NBC's Education Nation Summit

Last week I participated in a panel discussion at NBC's Education Nation summit.
For those who missed it, Education Nation was effectively a two and a half day-long meeting of the minds for those who see privatization as the last word in fixing America's public schools. They are known as the "reform" movement.

Yes, NBC eventually conceded that some teachers needed to be sprinkled around the summit, and even some union leaders. But organizations such as Class Size Matters, or the new social justice-oriented leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union, or educators who promote progressive pedagogy, such as Rethinking Schools were, unfortunately, not included.

I was invited to speak on the recommendation of Steven Brill, who moderated the panel, and whom I originally met last year when he came to my school to research his latest feature article for the New York Times Magazine.

The "reform" line of thinking goes like this: The main problem with the schools is that the teachers have no incentive to work hard, and they are protected by a union; if we remove the union, teachers can respond to individual financial incentives and great things will become possible. That, wrapped in a powerful emotional package, with clever cartoons and brilliant editing, is the message delivered succinctly to the general public in the new film, "Waiting for 'Superman' ".

It occurs to me that this is a rather convenient storyline for the recession. Just as millions are losing their homes and facing endless months of unemployment, along comes a "movement" of billionaires -- Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Mark Zuckerberg -- fighting for "justice". The rich, you see, are altruistic. They're high-minded, they don't think about themselves, just the children. Meanwhile, the teachers, so the story goes, are the greedy ones. The teachers are selfish and self-interested. Really, it's a wonder we trust them around children at all.

If you were quite angry with Goldman Sachs a few months ago, don't be. They just gave Geoffrey Canada $20 million to build another charter school. If you thought that all these foreclosures and layoffs were caused by the wealthy, then "Waiting for 'Superman' " will tell you it's the opposite: it's the schools (specifically, the teachers in the schools) that are dragging down our neighborhoods.
My panel, "Good Apples: How can we keep good teachers, get rid of the bad ones, and put a new shine on the profession?" fit neatly into that narrative.

You can watch the panel online here and judge for yourself. Below, I simply want to develop a few points that were raised in the discussion.

How to train great teachers? I dared to suggest that it takes time to become a great teacher. Geoffrey Canada cut me off, saying, "We don't have time! We can't wait another ten years!" (He later backtracked and admitted that it takes time for a teacher to hone their craft.)

Yes, we have to have a sense of urgency. No one feels that more than parents. But he who shouts loudest about the problems doesn't necessarily have the answers.

"Waiting for 'Superman' " paints Canada as a kind of educational Chuck Yeager -- the pilot who first broke the sound barrier. So he seemed particularly incensed that I brought up the fact that after New York's test scores were re-scaled last year, only 38 percent of his students in Harlem Children's Zone 1 fell within the benchmark for "proficient" reading ability. Canada tried to change the subject to the better scoring Harlem Children's Zone 2.

But even if we assume that he's doing something wonderful, then we have to ask the question: what does it take to do that something wonderful? Apparently it takes the kind of wrap-around services that Canada aspires to provide his students from the cradle to graduation, such as health care. And, we should note, it apparently takes tens of millions of dollars.

Yet, while taking large checks from Wall Street on one hand, Canada insists that "it's not about resources" on the other.

I argued that wealthy people, who spend five figures on their own children's education, insist on small classes, beautiful facilities, and experienced teachers. I mentioned that the Harlem Children's Zone flagship building on 125th Street is beautiful, and that all children deserve such attractive surroundings.
Canada countered that his highest performing school is in a building with no windows. Then why, I wonder, does he need $20 million for new construction, especially when Harlem has the lowest school utilization rate in the city? Still, Canada insisted, "It's the not the building that drives teaching, it's what's going on inside those classrooms; not whether or not kids have a window to look out of, which ours don't."

Here we have a message honed to perfection... for the wealthy: the unions are the problem; the teachers need to be cheaper; give me money now for a few beautiful schools that can help break the unions and open up the education market; but don't worry, we don't want too much; we certainly don't want what your children have.

That's what I learned from NBC's Education Nation Summit. Beware CEOs who say teachers are the problem. And beware CEO solutions. You might find yourself in a room without windows.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Educators dedicated to real reform in NYC can be contacted at http://www.waitingforsupermantruth.org/

Follow Brian Jones on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brainyandbrawny

See Ed Notes interview with Brian at the Real Reformer Rally at the opening of Waiting for Superman.

The Wall Street Journal Comes Calling on GEM: Who's Really on the Moral Defensive Now?

Did Real Reformer/GEM protest at film make Rupert's crew nervous?

This was the lead in an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal:

The new film "Waiting for 'Superman'" is getting good reviews for its portrayal of children seeking alternatives to dreadful public schools, and to judge by the film's opponents it is having an impact.

Astoundingly, the WSJ devoted one of its 3 major editorials today to the Grassroots Education Movement-led rally at the opening of the film on Sept. 24. My take is that it was our protest that had the real impact for the WSJ to do this editorial condemning the Real Reformers and trying to tie it into the unions.

Not only am I quoted but there is a plug for our upcoming film "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman," – the trailer has already topped 6000 hits and our rally film has almost 800 hits.

Some more funnies from the editorial:

....leaving the monopolists to the hapless recourse of suggesting that reformers are merely the tools of hedge fund philanthropists.
....The odd complaint is that donors to charter schools include some hedge fund managers. [my emphasis]
....We saw a trailer for this anti-"Superman" film, which denounces most of the leading advocates for charter schools. The irony is that most of those criticized are Democrats or noted liberals [we actually agree here] who've been mugged by public school reality.

The editorial closes with:

The teachers unions continue to wield enough power to deny choices to these students, but their days as political supermen are numbered.

Ahhh, so right. The days of top-down worm-like teacher unions' days are hopefully numbered. As CORE in Chicago has proven. Yes, the editorial writers at the WSJ and the ed deformers should be worried.

Read this back story of my interview with the WSJ and then read the full editorial, but don't break a rib laughing.


I get this call late last week from someone named Bari Weiss who writes for the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Okaaaay, we know where she stands on ed deform before she utters another word. She wants to talk about "Waiting for Superman" and the protest held in front of the theater by GEM and the Real Reformers. I know, I know Bari. You loved the film and didn't love our protest. But Bari is not going to tell me that openly. She is posing as an unbiased reporter, after all.

So we talk for a good amount of time - at least 20 minutes or more. I tell her the protest consisted of public school parents and teachers. She asks about GEM and the protest. I tell her these are mostly young, activist teachers, some even Teach for America alums – an interesting development in that most of them have spent the overwhelming bulk of their careers working under BloomKlein. In some cases their activism has been fueled when their schools have been invaded by charters run by sons of billionaires, who get favored treatment over the public school. In other words, the actions of the ed deformers have done a whole lot o' organizing by default.

Then Bari gives herself up with this question: "What do you say to parents who I speak to who love their charter schools?" She brings up that loooong waiting list.

Oooh, boy. I go to town. "For every charter school parent who loves their school, I'll match you a hundred to one of public school parents who love their school. Why aren't you talking to them?

And why aren't you talking to the charter school parents who hate their charters schools? Or the numerous parents who have removed their children from the charter? Or who have been counseled out?" I tell her about the parent of special ed children who I interviewed at the Parents Across America/GEM/NYCPA press conference at Rockefeller Center last week. This parent had a child make the lottery for Harlem Success Academy but when they realized she was a 12-1-1 child, they told her her child couldn't be serviced. We know Bari ain't goin' there. This is the Wall Street Journal, after all.

And I got to town on that phony PR drummed up waiting list crap. I talk about the PR budgets of charter schools and ask her how much of a budget does she think public schools get for glossy PR brochures. I don't know if I brought up HSA's own head of PR Jenny Sedlis and how much she gets paid.

She asks me about myself and I tell her chapter and verse that I am not an anti ed deformer because of some ideology but because I spent 30 years in a classroom in the inner city and spent 40 years fighting the old status quo and am now fighting the new status quo. "How about that class size issue," I ask? I tell her about the difference between having 24 and 28 in a class. I even bring up how much longer it takes to line them up and take them to the bathroom with even just a few more kids. And some more blah, blah, blah.

Then we talk union and how the UFT had zero to do with this protest. At this point I hold back in criticizing the UFT since I am representing GEM and the RR's as the press contact and not my own positions on the UFT. So I am careful. I tell her that if she googles me personally she will see how the UFT views me and I view them and that personally I have been a critic for a long time though GEM has been focused on broader issues of defending public education than the UFT so far. But many progressive real reformers see the UFT as being way too cooperative with the ed deformers and not on the side of real reform. I think I mention Chicago.

Bari comes back with, "That's the left doing the criticising." Ahhh, that reveals where she might be going with this. I tell her there may be leftists involved it is broader than that. She then brings up the "other" group led by Marjorie Stamberg who were protesting at the same time and place. She wanted to know if that protest was part of ours. She even asked if it was ISO (International Socialists). Here this got tricky. Navigating through the left for someone like me who doesn't always get all the left messaging is always tricky.

I told her that ISO was working with us and that this was another group called Class Struggle. I told her it was a separate protest that GEM and the Real Reformers were not involved in planning and that when we heard about it we asked them to join our rap but that they declined and wanted to get their message across. I wanted to be clear and not have the Wall Street Journal brand this as some kind of left wing conspiracy. I could imagine her rolling her eyes.

I ask Bari if she is an education writer. She says "No." She certainly seems to be aware of the push button ed issues. I tell her I'm impressed. She tells me she also enjoyed the conversation and asked if it was ok to call again. "Anytime," I said. I won't hold my breath.

Before you get to the editorial itself, here are a few comments for your guided reading

Here is Mariama Sanoh, Vice President of the NY Charter Parents Association, one charter school parent Bari didn't talk to.

We’re still waiting for Superman here in Charterland

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2010/10/were-still-waiting-for-superman-here-in.html 

Note that Bari Weiss was present at the rally but did not interview one participant. Not one of the 50 people who were there to protest. Yet she spent 160 words of a 560 word editorial quoting one Harlem parent who was there with his son. I don't know if this was the same parent who was outside giving out literature, but there are stories out that some people were paid to do so at various theaters. Note he is a parent at Democracy Prep, which has been notorious for certain undemocratic processes.

Hating 'Superman'
Teachers unions are on the moral defensive.

* http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703882404575520160925291820.html

The new film "Waiting for 'Superman'" is getting good reviews for its portrayal of children seeking alternatives to dreadful public schools, and to judge by the film's opponents it is having an impact.

Witness the scene on a recent Friday night in front of a Loews multiplex in New York City, where some 50 protestors blasted the film as propaganda for charter schools. "Klein, Rhee and Duncan better switch us jobs, so we can put an end to those hedge fund hogs," went one of their anti-charter cheers, referring to school reform chancellors Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The odd complaint is that donors to charter schools include some hedge fund managers.

Or maybe not so odd. Teachers unions and the public school monopoly have long benefitted from wielding a moral trump card. They claimed to care for children, and caring was defined solely by how much taxpayers spent on schools.

That moral claim is being turned on its head as more Americans come to understand that teachers unions and the public bureaucracy are the main obstacles to reform. Movies such as "Waiting for 'Superman'" and "The Lottery" are exposing this to the larger American public, leaving the monopolists to the hapless recourse of suggesting that reformers are merely the tools of hedge fund philanthropists.

The Manhattan protest was sponsored by the Grassroots Education Movement, which was co-founded by Norman Scott, a retired public school teacher. Mr. Scott says the group has nothing to do with the United Federation of Teachers, and that it's comprised of New York City teachers and parents who have been "adversely affected by charter schools." Mr. Scott told us he and several others are developing their own film, "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for 'Superman.'" That's a nod to Davis Guggenheim, who directed Al Gore's climate change documentary before he did "Superman."

We saw a trailer for this anti-"Superman" film, which denounces most of the leading advocates for charter schools. The irony is that most of those criticized are Democrats or noted liberals who've been mugged by public school reality.

Though the protestors were the main spectacle that day outside the theater, two others in the crowd provided a counterpoint. Charter school parent Daniel Clark Sr. and his son Daniel Jr., a ninth grader at Democracy Prep, came down from Harlem. "The reason there's such a gravitational pull" to such schools, Mr. Clark says of parents in poor neighborhoods, "is not because they love charter schools. It's because they're the only game in town."

Mr. Clark thinks "Waiting for 'Superman'" is helping people get it. "There's a lack of information in general about the charter schools . . . the movie puts it in personal terms. You can see the kids, you can see the anxiety in the families." He describes his son as "a typical kid on 133rd street. The only difference is that he got lucky enough to get into a charter school. . . . God knows where he would be if he was at the public school he was meant to go to."

The waiting list in Harlem to attend a charter is more than 11,000 and nationwide it is an estimated 420,000. The teachers unions continue to wield enough power to deny choices to these students, but their days as political supermen are numbered.

After burn
Some ed deformer found a typo in our Truth About Charter pamphlet - a double negative - and condemned us as teachers for that error. I wonder - if he reads this editorial and finds a spelling mistakeiIn the WSJ whether that means capitalism is about to fall?

Absurdities and Kneecapping

 Dear Absurdists and Kneecappers,

 Did you see this headline: NY Post Comes Out Against School Grades: These grades flunk

It is becoming increasingly clear that Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is doing no one any favors -- not the public, and certainly not himself -- by assigning letter-grade report cards to city schools. The jerry-rigged system for determining the grades obscures more than it reveals. Thus, the information the cards impart is worse than misleading -- it's virtually useless. And the charter-school movement -- an unambiguously bright light in the city school system -- is particularly ill-served by the letter grades. 

Unambigously bright light? They must suffer from severe pupil dilation.

Poor babies. They're favorite pet charters didn't do so well on the grading system. It must be flawed. But then again we knew that all along. Of course Michael MulGarten stepped into it with this one:

The teachers union -- which detests both the competition from charters and the use of tests to hold teachers accountable -- hopped on the new grades with both feet.
Traditional schools' edge in grades means "either the strategy Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have touted for so long -- the creation of more charter schools -- isn't working, or that the entire progress-report methodology, which relies almost completely on standardized test scores, is flawed," crowed union boss Michael Mulgrew.

Tweed was quick to point out that the UFT's own charter got a "D" with the comment, "those in glass houses shouldn't cast stones." The UFT charters have suffered one disaster after another with numerous changes in leadership. I actually agree with the Tweedies here. We told the UFT not to get into the charter school game because they would never be able to take a position opposed to charter schools or be able to lead a real fight back for public education if they did. And so they did (get into the game). And so they don't (lead a fight back).

 

Leonie Haimson commented:

Even the NY Post, owned by Murdoch and close buddy of Bloomberg and Klein admits that the school grades are so absurdly unreliable they should be eliminated.

The straw that broke the camel’s back for them this year appears to be the way charter schools got lower scores on average this year.

The jerry-rigged system for determining the grades obscures more than it reveals. Thus, the information the cards impart is worse than misleading -- it's virtually useless.

 Followed by Steve Koss

It's difficult not to guffaw over the absurdist inconsistency in the Post's "new position" on school report cards, what with their having gone from its greatest shills to sudden detractors simply because they disagree with its outcome in respect to the system's assessment of charter schools.

What's even more astonishing is that they either don't see or don't care to see the other astonishing inconsistency in their revised position on the school report cards. If after having spent countless millions of dollars and doubtless reflecting the professional genius of innumerable experts on education, the end result is so inconsistent and unreliable that even the Post's troglodytic conservatives want to throw out this type of reporting at the aggregated school level, what could possibly make any sentient homo sapiens think that INCREASING the granularity of these measurements to the teacher/classroom level will be any better?

Likely without the faintest sense of what they've done, the editors at the Post have kneecapped their own already-indefensible position with regard to value-added analysis and evaluation of teacher performance. After all, if the geniuses at DOE and their wasted millions couldn't do it right for entire schools (where aggregation enables at least some degree of the margin for error to wash itself out), how on earth can it be done for a third-grade teacher with just 25 or 30 children in a classroom?

What could be more better than seeing the Post's editorial troglodytes unknowingly clubbing themselves in the knees without even realizing they're doing it?

Steve Koss

John Powers on Cuomo and the UFT

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More WfS Critics- Updated

Last Updated: Sat., Oct. 2, 2pm

You know, I think this Waiting for Superman thing will ultimately work out better for the Real Reformers and against the Deformers. Even noted Ed Deformer Brent Staples, editorial writer for the NY Times, has some words that are not total idiocy for a change - if you extract the super praise for Steve Barr. At least he makes the positive point for why teacher unions were founded in the first place.

And here is Rick Ayers who wrote this great critique of WfS Breaking Down "Waiting for Superman" appears on Democracy Now.

"Waiting for Superman": Critics Say Much-Hyped Education Documentary Unfairly Targets Teachers Unions and Promotes Charter Schools

Waiting for Superman, a new documentary by filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, has caused a stir in the education world for its sweeping endorsement of the charter school movement and attack on teachers unions. President Obama has endorsed the film, describing it as "heartbreaking" and "powerful," but some teachers have called for a boycott of the film for its portrayal of teachers and the teachers union. We speak to Rick Ayers, founder of the Communication Arts and Sciences program at Berkeley High School and adjunct professor in teacher education at the University of San Francisco.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/1/waiting_for_superman_critics_say_much

And here is another video of Diane Ravitch in Los Angeles this week. You don't have to wait for superwoman - she is all over the place (Detroit). Can someone make her a cape with a giant D?



Update: Additional info on Staples piece from Leonie Haimson:

Brent Staples, author of the NY Times editorials on education, and staunch supporter of mayoral control and charter school expansion,  cautions that the film “Waiting for Superman” is overly simplistic in attacking Randi, especially as she has established charter schools in collaboration with Steve Barr, founder of the “Green Dot” chain of charters that started in LA.  (see below).

Staples writes: “Green Dot is one of the stars of this [charter] movement. Despite the fact that many of its 17 schools serve desperately poor, minority neighborhoods, its students significantly outperform their traditional school counterparts, on just about every academic measure, including the percentage of children who go on to four-year colleges. “

Green Dot currently operates 18 schools in Los Angeles, CA and one in the Bronx, NY, according to its website. Yet Green dot has already closed down one of the first five charters it started in LA: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/22/local/la-me-greendot23-2010mar2

 Caroline Grannan, one of the founders of Parents Across America, has analyzed Green Dot’s results. Based on the API, the California Department of Education’s accountability system, the Green Dot schools have mediocre results, and all but one had worse results than the supposedly “failing” LA public schools that Green Dot ran campaigns to take over, through the “parent trigger” measure, led by their fake grassroots organization, Parent Revolution.  (The Parent Revolution is run by Ben Austin, an attorney who works for the city of LA, http://rdsathene.blogspot.com/2009/07/ben-austin-six-figure-salary-man-green.html lives in Beverly Hills, http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_13185224 , has no school age children, is paid $100,000 as a part-time consultant to Green Dot, and yet regularly claims to be a typical, aggrieved LA public school parent.  http://dailycensored.com/2010/04/24/political-patronage-for-green-dot-public-schools-chief-propagandist/. http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/02/parent-revolution-and-green-dot-too.html   

As Caroline writes:
Average API of all Green Dot’s schools (15 total, counting several small schools on one campus, Locke High in Watts): 632 (rounded up to the nearest whole)Average API of the “failing” schools Parent Revolution is targeting with parent trigger campaigns: 670 (rounded down to the nearest whole) ….. By Parent Revolution’s own definition, Green Dot’s other 14 schools [out of 15] are “failing.”

http://www.examiner.com/education-in-san-francisco/14-of-15-green-dot-schools-are-failing-by-parent-revolution-s-definition

According to the LA Times, the achievement results of Locke HS, its most celebrated takeover school have been “lackluster.”, despite substantially increased funding. “First-year scores remained virtually unchanged and exceptionally low.”…. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/17/local/la-me-0817-star-tests-20100817

Moreover, Staples claims that Green Dot charters outperformed traditional public schools in “the percentage of children who go on to four-year colleges.”

Yet Steve Barr admitted that “We only started tracking our graduates during the past year and a half”, in an August 2010 interview published on the Univ. of Phoenix (!) website: http://www.phoenix.edu/uopx-knowledge-network/articles/expert-voices/q-a-steve-barr-founder-of-green-dot-public-schools.html  

I have searched the web for any independent analysis or study that shows that Green Dot has outperformed similar public schools and cannot find any.

This is not to say that these schools may not prove themselves over time, but the claims in this column represent yet another example of the exaggerated hype around charter schools. Someday, Staples might consider talking to some real life NYC public school parents in the same way he apparently communicates with LA-based charter school operators.

Harlem Success Academy Marketing: $1.3 Million Over Two Years

You know the drill ed deformers throw at us. It's all about children, not adults. 

 

The Daily News reporter Juan Gonzalez shows just how much it is all about adults at the leading charter school vulture capitalist, Eva Moskowitz, who generates those huge waiting lists through good old marketing. Note the comment from HSA's Jenny Sedlis, my favorite PR flack (since David Cantor left Tweed). I read somewhere that Jenny makes around 90K a year to do PR. How much does your local public school pay its PR person? Jenny won't apologize for taking public money away from public schools while spending 1.3 mil on glossy brochures. Adults first anyone?

Here are some excerpts from Gonzalez' piece today:

Local charter schools like Harlem Success is big business as millions are poured into marketing

a Daily News review of Harlem Success financial reports suggests the network's huge backlog of applicants is the result of a carefully crafted Madison Ave.-style promotional campaign. In the two-year period between July 2007 and June 2009, Harlem Success spent $1.3 million to market itself to the Harlem community, the group's most recent financial filings show. Of that total, more than $1 million was spent directly on student recruitment.

"We won't apologize for recruiting students for Success Academy charter schools," said Jenny Sedlis, the network's director of external relations.

When she launched Harlem Success four years ago with the backing of a group of hedge fund millionaires, Moskowitz vowed to expand to more than 20 schools in a few years. By generating a huge waiting list, she has been able to pressure state officials to let her open more schools.

That's why Moskowitz chose to be the marketing juggernaut of the charter school movement.
It's worked. This week, her network got multimillion grants in federal and private money.
The selling of charter schools has indeed become big business.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/10/01/2010-10-01_behind_parents_desperation_to_get_kids_in_charter_school_the_news_uncovers__harl.html#ixzz1195rpl16