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| Washington Teachers Union Pres. Nathan Saunders |
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| Chicago Teachers Union Karen Lewis |
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| Angel Gonzalez, GEM |
The transformation of Catherine Ferguson Academy into a for-profit charter is an attack on the students, educational staff and population as a whole. It is part of a nationwide trend to undermine public education and privatize schools. Detroit, as Obama’s education secretary said, is “Ground Zero” in education “reform”—that is, the looting of public education by corporations and Wall Street speculators.
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| Wearing capes and name tags that read "I am a public school teacher, talk to me" New York teachers (above) protested the premier of the teacher bashing movie "Waiting for Superman" on September 26, 2010, in Manhattan. Substance photo by John Lawhead. |
James Eterno, Jamaica's representative to the teachers' union, has been portrayed in the news media as a man who cares more about preserving jobs than - as the mayor never tires of saying - "putting children first." That is not how Kevin Gonzalez sees it. For Kevin, Mr. Eterno is the United States history teacher who stayed late to tutor his students, helping Kevin earn a top score of 5 on the Advanced Placement test.(And let me remind people that James has a little 2-year old of his own at home.)
Doreen and Gerard definitely feel put first. Jamaica had no college adviser this year - until October, when Mr. Eterno stepped in. "Before Christmas break he stayed late to make sure everything was perfect to send to the colleges," Gerard said. "Mr. Eterno went way beyond." After Doreen was accepted to Columbia, she spoke with people at the admissions office. "They told me how Mr. Eterno kept calling them about me and faxing them stuff," she said.
As James S. Liebman, the Columbia law professor who developed the city report card, wrote in an e-mail: “Good high schools aren’t satisfied when just a few kids get into strong colleges. They aim for all kids to do so.” Education Department officials point out that the graduation rate at Jamaica has stayed at about 50 percent for years.---------
But it is also possible that the deck has been stacked against Jamaica High, that the 15 “worst” high schools have been packed with the students with the worst problems. According to an analysis by the city’s Independent Budget Office, these schools have more poor children (63 percent versus 52 percent citywide), more homeless students (6 percent versus 4 percent), more special-education students (18 versus 12). For 24 percent of Jamaica High students, English is a foreign language, compared with 11 percent citywide.The “worst” high schools are sent the eighth graders who are the furthest behind: their average proficiency score on state tests is 2.6 out of 4, compared with 2.9 citywide, and more of these students (9 percent versus 4 percent) are over age, suggesting they have had to repeat grades.
Though the worst was averted, the city budget deal is still only a very partial victory for our kids.
In essence, the deal came about because the city finally acknowledged what the many have long warned: Bloomberg's failed policies and the worsening conditions in our schools have persuaded even more teachers to leave voluntarily than usual, which mitigated the need for layoffs.
Nearly half of the 6,100 teaching positions that the budget cuts would eliminate will still be lost -- an estimated 2,600 -- through attrition, and these teachers will not be replaced, despite rising enrollment. This will certainly lead to the fourth year in a row of increased class sizes in our schools and probably even sharper increases than have occurred in more than a decade.
Children in the early grades will experience the worst of it, as Kindergarten enrollment is rising especially fast. Grades K-3 will suffer the largest class sizes in twelve years--with an even larger class size equity gap between NYC children and those in the rest of the state.
All this, despite Bloomberg’s original campaign promise to reduce class sizes in grades K-3, a court decision in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case and state law passed in 2007 requiring that the city lower class size in all grades, several audits showing DOE misusing millions of dollars of state class size funds, and a growing body of research indicating that smaller classes lead to more learning, narrow the achievement gap, and are a significant determinant of success later in life.
Another problem with this deal is it sets the stage for yet another budget battle next year; in which the interests of children will again be pitted against those of millionaires as well as Tweed bureaucrats with flawed priorities.As parents, we need to redouble our efforts to pressure our political leaders, including the Governor, the Mayor and the Speaker of the City Council, to adequately fund our schools and provide NYC children with their right to smaller classes and an equitable chance to learn.
Leonie Haimson
America's education reform movement -- the most significant reform movement in the history of this planet -- is just concluding another amazing school year. Politicians of all stripes and parties have come together to say, "We will not accept inferior teachers destroying the lives of our children anymore".
With grim budget cuts necessitating layoffs, we are reminded once again that seniority based layoffs make as much sense as saying that U2 should have to keep Bono as their lead singer just because he's been with the band for 30 years and has tenure.
For the past 30 years, education reformers have had to fight the forces of the status quo, but in that time we have agreed that certain changes must be made to education:
These points are the hallmark of true education reform. They bind together Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Chris Cristie, Arne Duncan, and myself. Several forces of the status quo have naturally opposed these moves, but lately one of the worst critics has been Diane Ravitch.
- The business principles that have made our economy great should be applied to our schools as well.
- We need a common curriculum
- We need frequent standardized testing
- We need a longer day and school year to allow more time for increased test prep
- We need a rich curriculum focused like a laser on only math and reading
- We need an end to tenure and LIFO policies
- Younger perkier teachers are superior to the old saddle horses who too often dominate public education.
- The best teachers for poor inner city students are young, preferably Ivy League educated young people from well to do families.
- Charter schools are superior to public schools because they can council students into leaving and public schools must teach everybody.
- We should fire the bottom 1/3 of all teachers every year.
From an August 13, 2010 webpage with video segment on the NewsOne website
"In a neighborhood where only 33 percent of students make it through high school and few go on to college, the Seed School in Washington DC is making a difference to get its youngsters on the road to success. Most students entering the Seed School do so three grades below grade level. Upon entry, students are set up in dormitories during the week and allowed to spend weekends at home. This year, the school proudly reported a 100 percent graduation and college acceptance rate." A video segment on SEED from MSNBC can also be viewed on this webpage.
Our public sector workers got a lot of bad press for striking. Lots of teachers I know went on strike, but I didn't as my union hasn't voted for that at this stage. One of our main issues (along with the similar issues you face) is that of our pensions. We have two perks in teaching - good holidays and a good pension. Our salaries do not equal our other professional counterparts, but knowing we would have a good pension have kept teaching unions quiet for a long time. Unfortunately, the pension we all signed up to is being destroyed and the governement is asking us all to pay around £100 a month towards it, whilst our final pension will on average be worth £50,000 less!Who knows what will happen, but our current conservative government don't respond well to strikes (remember the miners of the 1980s!).The world isn't how it should be. I'm currently marking GCSE religious studies papers and the main essay question is; "You should always stand up to unjust governments".... do you agree? Quite apt at the moment eh?Hope the cause is a success and things start to change for both sides of the Atlantic!
Hi Norm
As you have already stated on ednotes I was unfortunately the only speaker allowed at the Delegate Assembly against the UFT's deal with Bloomberg that averted layoffs. There was, as James Eterno has pointed out, much more that could have been said especially about the position of ATRs. I chose, however, to look at the wider question of cuts to education, how this will affect teachers as well as students and parents and how the cuts could have been stopped.
Anyway here is the gist of what I said:
Michael Mulgrew in his report stated correctly that the budget the City Council is about to agree contains a range of cuts to social services and the layoff of 1,000 city workers. What is not correct is to suggest that the budget won't contain major cuts to education on top of all the other cuts to education in this city in recent years. We are all greatly relieved that there will be no layoffs of teachers. But the deal we are discussing implicitly accepts a reduction in the teacher workforce of 2,600 which in addition to previous cuts amounts to a reduction in the order of 8,000 teachers in the past three years. In my school, IS 218, we experienced class sizes of 37-38 in the 7th and 8th grade this year and it wasn't until well into the school year that we got partial relief in the 8th grade. With cuts this big in the workforce, our experience at 218 will be increasingly common. It may be true that our pay and benefits are not being cut in this deal but it is inevitable that, for large numbers of us, our working conditions will be further degraded.
The cuts and attacks against public education are part of a wider corporate offensive against the public sector and the working class in this country. Bloomberg is the sharp end of this in New York but Cuomo is not far behind. The question may be asked: how could we stop such an onslaught? The answer history gives us is social struggle. If you are looking for a model look at the civil rights movement. On May 12 we took a step in that direction. As Micheal Mulgrew stated previously it was good that we got out of the pens. We marched on Wall Street alongside other unionized workers and activists and gave vent to working class anger. And there are a lot of angry working class people in this city right now. From there we should have steadily escalated the resistance and made clear that business as usual was over until ALL the cuts were taken off the table [as we all know the resources are there; it's a question of priorities, those of Wall Street vs the needs of ordinary people] If necessary there should have been mass civil disobedience; instead in the end we chose to break the front of labor.
All the best,
Tom Crean
Chapter Leader MS 218, Brooklyn
...anyone who brings up out-of-school factors such as poverty is both defending the status quo of public education and claiming that schools can do nothing to overcome the life circumstances of poor children. The response is silly and, by now, tiresome. Some teachers will certainly be able to help compensate for the family backgrounds and out-of-school environments of some students. But the majority of poor children will not get all the help they need: their numbers are too great, their circumstances too severe, and resources too limited. Imagine teachers from excellent suburban public schools transferring en masse to low-performing, inner-city public schools. Would these teachers have as much success as they did in the suburbs? Would they be able to overcome the backgrounds of 15.6 million poor children? Even with bonus pay, would they stay with the job for more than a few years? Common sense and experience say no, and yet the reformers insist they can fix public schools by fixing the teachers.
"It's about time the AG's Office takes a look around -- they'll have a lot to work with," said one ex-staffer. "Mr. Melendez always likes to say that finances and compliance are the two things he and the board handle exceptionally well, but this doesn't pass the laugh test."
I'm currently a teacher under the Believe network and would love to whistle blow... once I am no longer employed by the network. In fact, Melendez received public criticism a few years ago for firing a teacher without due process who circulated the DOE pay scale among her WCHS colleagues and mentioned the dirty u-word. No one at the school who hopes to continue to work there for more than 48 hours would dare approach the UFT or even think about doing so, since firings come fast and furious. Right now our best hope is that someone who made it out can fight the good fight (from a safe distance)!I've been in touch with the teacher who is now teaching in another state and I think I asked her to contact Yoav who has been following up on the story for months. I imagine some of the hordes of former teachers are talking to Yoav, who used Ed Notes source material as part of his investigation.
In Patrick Sullivan’s opinion, the only real hope for PS 9 is if the chancellor has a change of heart, and grants them the right to expand into a K-8 school. “Rather than help successful public schools,” Sullivan said, “the DOE is more focused on giving preference to charter schools…and certainly the fact that the money behind the schools is from a lot a people the mayor knows helps the charter school agenda.”
Julie Cavanagh also believes cronyism is at play, and points out that the founder of PAVE, Spencer Robertson, received $26 million to build his charter school after his father, hedge funder Juilan Roberson donated $6.75 million to Bloomberg’s New York City Center for Charter School Excellence, and various other pet projects of Bloomberg’s. (There are other claims of the Robertson Foundation and Bloomberg’s funny business here.)
I march because of what this war on education will do to my former colleagues and the new teachers with whom I work.
I march for change.
I march for reform.
I march for academic freedom.
I march for curricula and methodologies to develop the best-informed, critical thinking, problem solving students in the world.
Most of all I march for our kids.
David Greene
Why I ain’t ain’t marching anymore. (with apologies to Phil Ochs)
The last and only time I marched on Washington D.C. was the Moratorium to end the Vietnam War in November 1969. Hundreds of thousands marched through the cold streets of Washington D.C. while FBI agents took pictures of us as we shouted “Peace Now” and waved our flags and signs. My friend and I had constructed a giant (we thought it novel) Peace Flag that was eventually used up on the speaker’s platform. We were so proud. We slept on the gym floor of a local parish church. When it was time to leave, at first we couldn’t find our bus to go back to NY, but eventually we did. Frankly, it is all a blur but a well worthwhile one.
I was not a joiner, a marcher or a protester. I was not much of an activist either. I had friends who were deeply involved in the movement but I was happy to get involved in conversations and do my little part to convince people, one at a time, that the War was wrong. However, when friends were deployed I felt it important to do more. So I marched.
Here we are 42 years later. I will march on Washington this July because again we must stop a war. This time it is the war against teachers, students, and education. Over the past 10 years what started as an intervention has become a full-scale assault. The parallels with Vietnam are astounding.
Now as well as then presidential decisions to begin by giving assistance in “the battlefield” became congressional acts to fund, arm and send troops. Corporations were enlisted to fund and manufacture the goods to fight. Escalation became the operating word.
This time I was content to argue against standardized testing, No Child Left Behind, and most recently, Race To The Top. This time I pointed out not how a military-industrial complex gained control of foreign policy, but how a new education-industrial complex had seized control of education policy, for their own profit.
In addition, what seemed like a good idea, TFA, had morphed into what I now call a 5th branch of the armed forces. At first it innocuously sent advisors in small numbers to educational “battlefields”. But now its power and numbers escalate as we idly sit by.
Not for nothing, but TFA recruits young men and women in a not so unfamiliar way. “Join the Army- Be All You Can be? Join the Marines- Looking For A Few Good Men? Join the Navy- It's Not Just a Job, It's An Adventure? Join the Air Force- Aim High? TFA- This could be the best career decision you make?”
TFA recruits are also thrust into a war zone, yet less prepared than my friends were 42 years ago. Often misled and naive 20 somethings, they are unarmed when they go to war to defeat the enemies of education: poverty, poor training, poor leadership, and a host of other saboteurs.
So now 42 years later I go to Washington to march again. But this time I go as more than a marcher. I go as an organizer, presenter, and activist. I do all this because the Chief Executive, Congress, and an Industrial Complex including TFA threaten the avocation I have loved for 41 years.
I march because of the high school kids and programs I see threatened by this assault.
I march because of what this war on education will do to my former colleagues and the new teachers with whom I work.
I march to teach how good high schools can be if we let professionals do the work.
I march to fix how we train new teachers (traditional and TFA) to be better able to fight the real war they and our students face day in day out.
I march to get TFA to change; to work with traditional teacher training institutions; to stop vilifying veteran teachers and actually recruit them to train their recruits; to help us recruit top talent to stay in teaching; to become "lifers". I march to get TFA to listen.
I march for change.
I march for reform.
I march for academic freedom.
I march for curricula and methodologies to develop the best-informed, critical thinking, problem solving students in the world.
Most of all I march for our kids.
David Greene
Balancing the budget on the backs of ATRS is not quite as awful as balancing it on the backs of newer teachers who would have been laid off but it was totally unnecessary. With Bloomberg’s poll numbers on education sinking to "Bushian Post Hurricane Katrina" levels, the UFT was holding all of the cards and should have insisted that to save money that the DOE should be compelled to place all of the ATRS into positions in their districts.
Teacher bashing continues. When firehouses close, the firefighters aren't blamed and they are sent to another firehouse. When police precincts redeploy whole precincts because of corruption scandals, the clean cops who worked in the corrupt precinct don't have to apply to other precinct captains. They are transferred. Only teachers face the indignity of having to pound the pavement to seek a job because a program was downsized or closed. President Mulgrew said this union leaves no educator behind. This is not totally true as the ATRs have certainly been left to basically fend for themselves.--- James Eterno at the ICE blog
As much as it pains me to admit this, it's not really a bad deal for most of the membership.- Miss Eyre at NYC Educator
It is absolutely a bad deal for most of the membership - at least anyone in front of a class--- Norm ScottI hope you all had a great final day of school. It wasn't all that great for the people who had to miss school parties to attend the UFT Delegate Assembly to vote on the recent budget agreement - see some of my posts on that over the last few days.
As much as it pains me to admit this, it's not really a bad deal for most of the membership. Although ATRs will be doing per diem substitute work, they'll be doing it for appointed teacher pay and benefits. It's not good for them, I realize, and they're in the original situation for the terrible crime of having worked in a school that closed. But they do still have jobs, with the same pay and benefits they've always had, and it's going to be pretty tough to U-rate them now because they can't be expected to properly plan or participate in the life of a school.Well, I wouldn't bet they are not going to be U rated. I think that's the plan. What does the DOE lose in U-rating someone? It can take a year to adjudicate and in the meantime the teacher is barred from earning extra salary (there may be some other penalties) and can get so stressed that they end up leaving, especially those nearing retirement age. Call this an end run around LIFO.
How assignment in district for a week at time will work for ATRs in D79 who could be sent anywhere in the city. The answer at last night’s Executive Board was that it will be looked at by the Joint Oversight Committee that is part of the agreement.
CITY BUDGET BEING BALANCED ON THE BACKS OF UFT'S ATRS
We have an agreement between the UFT and the city that eliminates the possibility of over 4,000 layoffs this year. We also gain increased hiring opportunities for Absent Teacher Reserves to be hired provisionally and to get considered for positions at reduced costs to principals. In exchange the UFT has agreed to suspend sabbaticals for 2012-2013 and to allow the DOE to move Absent Teacher Reserves who are not lucky enough to secure a permanent position from school to school on a weekly basis.
UFT President Michael Mulgrew's report at tonight's emergency Delegate Assembly highlighted the no layoff part of the agreement, which we are all happy about. Nobody in their right mind wants to see over 4,000 teachers lose their jobs. Mulgrew also thanked everyone for doing work with the state and city council. He told us the mayor said he wanted non seniority layoffs. He talked about opposing the mayor with the city council. He didn't, however, talk for too long about the part of the agreement that dealt with Absent Teacher Reserves becoming nomads.
The new agreement forces each principal to interview at least two ATRS per semester if they have vacancies and they are supposed to hire ATRS for vacancies and leave replacements. I don’t quite understand what happens if they interview two and don’t like them. Can they then hire someone from outside or give the classes away in a secondary school as a sixth class for special per session pay or to substitutes? UFT leadership believes these new procedures will lead to a big reduction in the ATR pool. I hope they are correct because anyone unfortunate enough to be left behind in the ATR pool risks becoming a teacher gypsy.
The agreement on page three contains the following ominous clause: "An Excessed Employee/ATR shall be assigned to a school within his/her district/superintendency each week. A 'week' shall be Monday through Friday, or shorter if the work week is less than five(5) days." Then there is clause C which says: "An Excessed Empoyee/ATR shall be notfied no later than Friday (or the last work-day of the week) if he/she will be assigned to a different school the following week and, if so, to which school. An ATR who has not been notified that he/she has been assigned to a different school by Friday shall report on Monday, or the first work day of the work day of the work week, and for the duration of that week, to the last school to which he/she was assigned." In other words, if a teacher does not find a permanent job on his or her own, buy a good GPS.
Besides the obvious problems of ATRS not having stability from week to week and not being able to bond with students, or know which person in each particular school to go to in order to resolve issues with payroll or their sick bank days or other items, this makes it virtually impossible for ATRs to do any per session work (extra activities for money that are pensionable.) We are truly worried that ATRS will now become third class citizens.
One of the worst parts of the horrible giveback laden 2005 contract was the loss of placement rights for members whose schools close or are excessed because their school or program is downsized. Since then, there has been a pool of teachers ranging from the hundreds to thousands called ATRs who have no permanent job and must substitute. Under current rules, ATRs usually stay in a school for a year and then can be reassigned. It is not a very professional existence but we are told by UFT leaders that at least the ATRs have jobs. In 2008 the DOE and UFT came to an agreement to allow principals to hire ATRs and only get charged on their budget the cost of half of a starting teacher for seven years. (The teacher still gets full pay.) The UFT predicted this would basically end the ATR problem but it didn't. The reasons ATRs are not hired are either because they have obscure licenses or they are activists who are not going to say, "How high?" when a principal tells them to "Jump!"
UFT Secretary Michael Mendel told me the ATRS will have a much greater chance of getting a full time position under this new agreement. Again, I truly want him to be right but I fear he might be wrong. The subsidies didn't lead to the withering away of the ATR pool and neither will this as I see it because unfortunately some principals don't care about cost as much as they care about control. Furthermore, having teachers do coverages is much cheaper than hiring someone they don’t know.
Balancing the budget on the backs of ATRS is not quite as awful as balancing it on the backs of newer teachers who would have been laid off but it was totally unnecessary. With Bloomberg’s poll numbers on education sinking to "Bushian Post Hurricane Katrina" levels, the UFT was holding all of the cards and should have insisted that to save money that the DOE should be compelled to place all of the ATRS into positions in their districts. That would save some money for sure as it would eliminate the ATR pool if DOE was not allowed to do any new hiring until every ATR in a license in a district was placed. Any remaining ATRs could cover classes in an individual school so as not to create the potential chaos that this agreement could bring.
Teacher bashing continues. When firehouses close, the firefighters aren't blamed and they are sent to another firehouse. When police precincts redeploy whole precincts because of corruption scandals, the clean cops who worked in the corrupt precinct don't have to apply to other precinct captains. They are transferred. Only teachers face the indignity of having to pound the pavement to seek a job because a program was downsized or closed.
President Mulgrew said this union leaves no educator behind. This is not totally true as the ATRs have certainly been left to basically fend for themselves.
Hi Norm,At FDNY HS 11 teachers of 24 received U ratings. That has to be a new record. And the s-o-b principal bragged today about the great graduation rate and the regents passing rates. Who the heck is responsible for that, if not the U-rated teachers?
Anecdotally, at least, there appears to be a spike in U ratings this year ... at least in my district ( D75) and from what I've heard, elsewhere as well.
Lots of 'em handed out to people retirement-eligible or and/or to people top scale. Probationer got one in my school and an ATR as well, I understand. The would have *easily* passed in previous years.
Has UFT acknowledged this phenomenon? Anyone collecting data on this?
Scary stuff for everybody, but esp so for those holding the U s.
I would NOT want to be looking for a teaching position at this time, in this economy with the added onus of a U rating.
We live in a beautiful world.
