Exposing ROADS Charter School Invasion of Schomburg Satellite Academy

I know the publication of TDRs is causing much anguish but the charter school invasion is as big a menace. Thank goodness teachers are still fighting the good fight.

More skulduggery from the partnership between the DOE and any charter that comes along. Posted by our friends at Schomburg Satellite Academy.
The blog, which I added to the blog roll, is at: http://savesatellite.blogspot.com/2012/02/roads-charter-school-plans-are-hidden.html

ROADS Charter School:
The plans are hidden, but the consequences are pefectly clear.

On February 2, 2012, the DOE quietly posted plans on its website for a new charter school, ROADS II, slated for co-location in the Bronx Regional high school building. The school is scheduled to open in September of 2012.

As of today, parents and students still have not been notified of the proposed changes, despite a critical Joint Public Hearing on the school scheduled just two weeks away.

Why has the DOE kept this charter school under wraps from the community? What will its impact be on students at the existing schools? And why is it facing nearly unanimous opposition from those who know about it?

FACT: The DOE claims that the ROADS II school will have “no educational impact” on existing public school students, despite the fact that the charter school will take over 1/3 of the classrooms in two of the existing schools schools by 2015.

FACT: The charter school will reduce the current students’ access to the computer labs, the science labs, gym classes, the library, and all other shared school facilities.

FACT: Last year, one of the public schools in the building, Schomburg Satellite Academy, developed an entirely new schedule based on best practices for the transfer school population. Attendance this year has increased by 5%, ELA Regents scores have increased by 30%, and Science and Social Studies scores have increased by 30% under the new schedule. Adding a new charter school to the building will render this cutting-edge schedule impossible.

FACT: New York Education Law Section 2852 states that charter schools must "locate charter schools in a region or regions where there may be a lack of alternatives and access to charter schools would provide new alternatives within the local public education system."
The proposed ROADS school and the exiting public schools (Bronx Regional and Satellite Academy) both serve over-aged, under-credited students though a competency-based program that culminates in a special capstone project. The charter school and the public schools would serve the same population through very similar programs. In this respect, ROADS II may violated New York state law.
(See page 5 of the linked PDF's for details on the mission of Bronx Regional and Satellite Academy.)

FACT: There are currently three programs in the building. The two District 12 high schools in the building are losing classrooms to ROADS charter school. The one District 79 school in the building will not lose any classrooms. The Executive Director of District 79, Sarah Sandelius, is an adviser to the ROADS board.

FACT: The ROADS charter schools are backed by Centerbridge Partners, a private equity investment firm located on Park Avenue.

FACT: Under the proposed plan, the ROADS II charter school will be allowed to grow while the existing public schools will have their growth capped indefinitely.

FACT: The ROADS II school will grant preference in admission to students who have been in the juvenile justice system. In doing so, it will concentrate an at-risk population who studies have shown have far better educational outcomes when integrated into the mainstream public education system.
(See page 10 of the linked PDF for details on admissions criteria.)

FACT: The DOE released information about the co-location on its website on February 2, but has given no notice to parents and students about the planned changes that would radically alter the character of their school.


Why does the Department of Education favor the ROADS charter school over the existing programs in the building?
What does Centerbridge Capital have to gain through its involvement ROADS charter school?
Why has the DOE not shared this information with parents and families?

The Joint Public Hearing for the ROADS II charter school co-location will be held at 6:00 p.m. at the Bronx Regional school building at 1010 Rev. James A. Polive Ave. in the Bronx.

For more info, follow our blog at savesatellite.blogspot.com

NYT and TDRs, Walcott Meets With WllmsbgComm Reps, Eva Hubbie Invades District 14

There is so much stuff coming in I have to consolidate posts. Follow me on twitter if you want more: normscott1.

All of the reports below connect up --- one thing a union working in our interests would be doing but Unity won't.

Follow the Chicago story -- today Karen Lewis said grief counselors for the children should have been sent to closing schools. So much more on twitter:
Even better is this:
Catalyst Chicago Mag ‏ @CatalystChicag

Lewis claims Rahm told her that 25% of the children in this city will never amount to anything, and he's not throwing more money at them

This just about says it all -- the racism behind ed deform. But that requires its own post.
--------

I tweeted this morning - "NY Times excuse for publishing TDRs: The devil made me do it." Leonie pointed to the article today that showed how Cerf and Turf (Joel Klein) just about forced them to FOIL for the info while they refuse to give up stuff to so many FOILs people have given up. I tweeted back that they could have printed this article as a justification as to why they will refuse to allow Tweed to manipulate the press.

FAIR: In today's newsletter--takes the New York Times to task--if the scores aren't accurate why publish them in the first place?

NYT Sues for Right to Publish Bad Teacher Data

http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/02/24/nyt-sues-for-right-to-publish-bad-teacher-data/

 ------
The charter school battle in Williamsburg/Greenpoint heats up.

Walcott met with some comunity people last week. It was an interesting meeting where he refused to remove the Moskowitz co-loc from the March 1 PEP agenda. I'll report more on this meeting (with a juicy Walcott quote) when I can.


Parents battle Eva hubby Eric Grannis invasion
This came in from a parent group:

As many of you have heard, District 13 and District 14 are being targeted for the co-location of TWO MORE charter schools. These two charter schools are coming from a Los Angeles charter school chain, Citizens of the World Charter School, that has only been in operation for a single academic year.

Note that all Eric Grannis (Eva Moskowitz's husband) had to do was have a few meetings with a small roomful of affluent parents and now BOTH of our districts must scramble madly to fight TWO more charter schools seeking to co-locate in our public schools.

Here's a link to the Letter we sent to Krupa Desai and SUNY:

www.williamsburggreenpointschools.org/truth-about-charters/citizensoftheworldcharternewyork

We hope you will find this information enlightening and that you pass it along to your colleagues and your school communities.

LIKE us on Facebook to get regular updates:www.facebook.com/WilliamsburgGreenpointParents

Follow us on twitter:
twitter.com/#!/WAGPOPS

Best,

Williamsburg and Greenpoint Parents for Our Public Schools
WAGPOPS
www.williamsburggreenpointschools.org

I'm going to include the letter here below the fold. I urge you to read it. We have to build alliances with every group fighting ed deform.

Defending the Art of Teaching: Assailed Teacher

At a PEP meeting many tears ago when few people attended I raised the concept of measuring teachers. I asked the PEP members and Joel Klein to think back to the 10 best teachers they ever had and what made them that way. I could actually see a brief moment of thought on their faces. I pointed out that you know a good teacher when you see one. All else is pretty much beside the point. There was possibly a second where Klein gave a short nod.

Another long post from Assailed Teacher but here is the essence of teaching as an art that cannot ever be measured. It has been my pleasure to recently meet this blogger who has been teaching for over a decade and said something so important. I'm paraphrasing: "For most of my career I thought all I had to do was focus on teaching my classes to the best of my ability. But now I see there is a much bigger fight going on. It is time for me to get involved." Boy can the movement use guys like this in this struggle.

If one is to list the crimes the UFT leadership has committed against its members, at the top of the list is the refusal to engage in a defense of the core of teaching as this blogger and people like Leonie Haimson do, instead pandering to the ed deformers insane assault on the teaching profession by accepting the very concept that teaching can be measured in any way whether by tests or Danielson.

http://theassailedteacher.com/

Value Add This

The New York Times beat everyone else to the punch by releasing the teacher data reports last night. The rest of the news outlets are sure to release them throughout the course of the rest of today.

No, I am not linking to them.

I have taught United States History for as long as I remember. My students generally do well on the U.S. History  Regents. Since I have been at my current school, my  students have had well above a 90%  pass rate every year. Two years ago 100% of my students passed the Regents with over 60% of them scoring 85 or higher.
Teachers like me who generally have students with high pass rates should be  just as outraged over what the DOE and the media are doing with this “value added” garbage as anyone else.

First, the U.S. History Regents is cake. The scoring rubric is so generous that an average  student has to literally try to fail it. Second, the test is usually given to 11th graders, who are more serious and mature than underclassmen. The ones at risk of dropping out have usually done so before the 11th grade.

The scores of my students do not reflect my quality as a teacher. When I used to teach 10th grade Global History, the Regents pass rates of my students were lower. Take me out of 11th grade and put me in front of a 10th grade class and my stats would take a hit.

It reminds me of the famous Casey Stengel line after he went from managing the championship-addicted New York Yankees to the hapless Mets, essentially moving him from first place to worst place. He said “I guess I got dumb in a hurry.”

Read the entire piece: Value Add This

A Parent "Gets" the UFT But Doesn't "Get" the Membership

...if the union isn't WITH you, it is effectively against you. From where I sit, it looks like they are in the latter category. Unless YOU do something about that, you're screwed in a big, far-reaching, long-term way. I'd really like to know how it has come to be that the people that make up the union seem to be the last ones with any say at all in what it does "for" them.


The way I see it is this: the union leadership is working with the legislature and Governor 1% to basically redistribute YOUR wealth to themselves, their cronies and their districts. No teacher I've ever spoken to thinks a) the union works FOR the teachers (it's the other way around where they work for the union), b) that they have any power to effect any changes within that structure, and c) that it is inevitable they will be screwed by the system so why bother?


I believe that the union power structure making these far-reaching decisions that are counter to the best interests of the membership, makes those decisions based on the "lack of objection equaling consent" principle, and that the rank and file membership remains docile and takes what they get handed to them without any unified protest - as long as the union delivers good benefits and (dwindling) job security.

I watched "The Train" last week with Bert Lancaster. What a story of the French Resistance. If you look at history with the odds stacked and how some people respond it is thrilling. I understand the reality for many people but that is pretty much true throughout history -- until some plug gets pulled for enough people to begin to make a difference. We can never tell when that time comes. The Middle East a little over a year ago? All I know is that the arrogance of power, whether a dictator or a mayor or an Eva or a UFT leadership, at some point makes enough people say, "Ive has enough.  
 

This was posted to the Dump Duncan group on Facebook on Feb. 23 by a NYC public school parent. He just about says the UFT is Vichy without actually using the term.

I have a question...

I'm father of two kids in the NY public school system, in 3rd and 5th grades. I see the stark difference between the kind of schooling I received as a child of the '70s and what millenials are subjected to by what the system has become. Beyond dismaying, it makes me very angry to see my kids' creativity and their love of imaginative learning stifled by the requirements of rote indoctrination into a system the discourages individuality and creative thinking, while inuring them to mindless repetitive tasks. The test prep regime strikes me as little more than training them to be factory workers, content with their lot as they purposelessly screw endless nuts onto endless bolts. Equally dismaying is the response of teachers and especially the teachers' union.

As a reader of Dump Duncan, it is also quite clear to me that the anger and dismay I feel as a parent is shared by the teachers in classrooms across America. And while I admire an initiative like Dump Duncan (and I signed it!), I don't see it gaining any kind of meaningful traction in the general population for a few key reasons:

1) the transformation of the school system has proceeded gradually, so the metaphorical frogs have no idea how hot the water has become,

2) the media's cooperation in the demonizing of teachers has caused the public to become *skeptical of educators' claims* that the problems are structural rather than holistic, and

3) there's big money to be taken from the teacher's unions (in the forms of compensation and pensions) that private - and public - interests would like very much to get their hands on.

Once the traditional vehicles of profit stalled - real estate, credit and derivatives markets, to name a few - and all the wealth to be easily had had been extracted from traditional public sources like industry subsidies, defense contracts, Social Security, medicare/drug contracts and mineral rights markets, it became imperative to find new ways to extract public money from non-traditional sources.

Unfortunately for all of us, America's schools and pension annuities are a ripe fruit waiting to be juiced.

The truism holds: be very leary whenever government tries to "help".

I'm not going to go into a history of the "Testing-Industrial Complex" - if you're not familiar with it, there are a multitude of easily-found sources that cover it completely.

The purpose of this post is to ask why *nothing meaningful* is being done to counteract the stunningly aggressive, rapacious takeover of our educational heritage by the corporate parasites who care about nothing but maximizing their "share" of the public loot.

Again, I appreciate Dump Duncan, but how on earth do you expect parents to know or care about Arne Duncan? How can you expect someone like me to know that my kids' teachers are as appalled by the shift in the educational paradigm as I am - especially when criticizing the regime could end a career?

I don't believe you can expect either. At the same time, I don't blame teachers for remaining silent on these issues, though, paradoxically, your silence will ultimately be your undoing.

And far more importantly, I have to wonder why the teachers' unions have done nothing to educate parents.

I'm going to insert a comment I made on Mark Naison's "Dark Day for New York" blog post yesterday - that went unanswered.

If it were MY union, I'd be harassing my rep, calling and writing the union management and generally raising hell. YOU are the ONLY ones with the ability to do so, as the union derives its power from YOU, not the other way around.

Tell me why the union - the only entity ostensibly on the side of the teachers, and the only entity with the skillset and capabilities - has not printed 1/2 page flyers giving an executive overview of the points of this debate and handed them to parents at the elementary schools as they go to get their kids?

I mean something like: "your kids' education is being transformed into a drastic testing regimen that SOUNDS good but has not been proven effective by ANY studies; that removes everything but test prep from the curriculum so that teachers can be "evaluated" and fired in order to help take pressure off of the state and banks that squandered the money that you've paid toward your schools and we've contributed toward our retirements (that they now blame US for!).

Add a couple action bullet points for parents along the lines of "call your community board/school board members who are Ms. X at (xxx) xxx-xxxx and Mr. Y at (xxx) xxx-xxxx, your state rep Ms. Z at (xxx) xxx-xxxx, state senator Mr. A at (xxx) xxx-xxxx, as well as your congressperson at (xxx) xxx-xxxx and Senators Schumer at (xxx)xxx-xxxx and Gillibrand at (xxx) xxx-xxxx and tell them to stop punishing the schools as though they are the cause of the problems the state has. And include a link to the Dump Duncan petition.

Why isn't this being done? A few interns at Union HQ could compile all that data and make the flyers in an afternoon.

Like I said earlier - if the union isn't WITH you, it is effectively against you. From where I sit, it looks like they are in the latter category. Unless YOU do something about that, you're screwed in a big, far-reaching, long-term way.

You bemoan lack of parental awareness and involvement, but that's like asking why the doctor didn't magically know you were sick and come over to your house to heal you. The only information we get comes from the papers, and the papers definitely aren't working to make you look good. If parents were really aware of the big picture surrounding what their kids - AND YOU - are being subjected to, you'd have more parental involvement than you knew what to do with. But the parents DON'T KNOW the deal, nor do they know that there's anything they can do. The educators need to EDUCATE them and ALIGN with them to work together against that hegemony. Or just give up and pray there's still a pension fund when you're ready to retire.

Save Coney Island Wood Boardwalk

Friends, 

I created a petition entitled New York City Parks Department: Keep the Boards in the Coney Island Boardwalk and Save the Rainforests, because I care deeply about this very important issue. 

I'm trying to collect 5,000 signatures, and I could really use your help. 

To read more about what I'm trying to do and to sign my petition, click here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/new-york-city-parks-department-keep-the-boards-in-the-coney-island-boardwalk-and-save-the-rainforests?share_id=COFLBMHVFg& 

It'll just take a minute! 

Once you're done, please ask your friends to sign the petition as well. Grassroots movements succeed because people like you are willing to spread the word!

Rob Burstein


NY Times

Wood May Give Way to Plastic on Coney Island Boardwalk

By LIZ ROBBINS

Memories, more than wood and nails, have long been embedded in the weathered Boardwalk of Coney Island: a first kiss, a marriage proposal, a roller-coaster ride, a hot dog and a custard cone, a seaside stroll in New York City.

But rites of passage take their toll. And one day soon, it seems, economic reality will pave over sentimentality.

After a yearlong fight over the city’s proposal to use concrete to replace the wooden boards along stretches of the aging, 2.7-mile Boardwalk, the city’s parks department is offering a compromise of sorts — but wood is not part of the plan.

Instead, the department is promising to use a combination of concrete and a type of recycled plastic that looks like wood. They want a 12-foot concrete section for emergency vehicles, with 19-foot-wide sections of the plastic polymer on either side for pedestrians.

This is not the all-concrete sacrilege that local preservationists had feared, but they still see the hybrid product as a travesty of tradition — not to mention a worrisome indicator of what could happen when the city decides to renovate other portions of the fabled walkway.

“It’s like putting a piece of plastic into a diamond ring, and this is our jewel,” said Rob Burstein, 57, the chairman of the Coney-Brighton Boardwalk Alliance, whose online petition to keep the Boardwalk wood was signed by more than 1,700 people since the beginning of the year.

The five-block stretch in question is in Brighton Beach, a mile from the heavily-traveled historic district of Coney Island, where wood is still used.

Mr. Burstein, who lives in Brighton Beach, was offended that his neighborhood could not have wood. “What are we, chopped liver?” he said.

Two small sections of the Boardwalk are already concrete. The push for new materials followed a campaign by environmental advocates and a directive from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to reduce the use of tropical hardwoods from endangered rain-forest supplies.

The parks department’s plan must be approved by the Public Design Commission, whose members are appointed by Mr. Bloomberg. If the commission approves the plan, as it is expected to do, reconstructing the Boardwalk would take at least another year, said Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner.

Some commission members said they would reluctantly embrace the synthetic wood-concrete compromise.

“I have pushed them to look at every possible wood alternative, and they have persuaded me that there aren’t wood alternatives that are practical,” said one commission member, Otis Pratt Pearsall, a trustee of the Brooklyn Museum. With that in mind, he said he would support the hybrid plan because “it is important to have the thing look as Boardwalk-y as possible.”

Another commissioner, Paula Scher, shared that sense of resignation.

“If you think we’re happy that wood is being replaced by material we find less appealing, that is certainly not the case,” said Ms. Scher, a partner at Pentagram Design. “It’s called a Boardwalk, and if you use other material, it loses its identity. I understand that, but it’s so much better to have a surface to walk on next to the beach.

“We love our icons of the past, and sometimes you can preserve them,” Ms. Scher said, but “things have changed.”

Mr. Benepe said the parks department had investigated every option, from natural woods like Douglas fir and black locust to treated woods like Southern yellow pine. They concluded that such hardwoods were neither durable enough nor, in the case of black locust, abundantly available. Opponents rejected this argument, and Michael Caruso, a forestry expert in West Virginia, said that black locust wood could be ordered in sufficient quantities.

The plastic composite, which can last 75 years, is cheaper than wood to build with and maintain, Mr. Benepe said. According to City Council member Domenic M. Recchia Jr., it costs more than $1 million a year to maintain the wooden Boardwalk.

Under the hybrid plan, it would cost the city $6.85 million to replace the 60,110-square-foot stretch of the Boardwalk from Coney Island Avenue to Brighton 15th Street. That is more expensive than concrete, but cheaper than some natural woods that could last just eight years, the parks department said.

“Given all the variables, this addresses as many of the desires as possible,” Mr. Benepe said.

The local community board, which has an advisory role, rejected the plan for synthetic wood last spring. One board member, Todd Dobrin, who founded a group called Friends of the Boardwalk, said the department was “disregarding the will of the public.”

Mr. Dobrin said it would be problematic to use concrete in any form. This winter, he said, the concrete sections have been dangerously icy, with poor drainage and numerous cracks.

“When you come to the Boardwalk, it’s such a peaceful realm,” said Soul Bryan, 48, who, like many local residents, takes a round-trip walk on the Boardwalk daily. “As soon as you go off the wood, it takes you out of your zone.”

But Mr. Benepe said economic considerations outweighed the historical importance of the wood.

“Suggesting that you can only have wooden Boardwalks because that’s what they were originally built of is like saying you should only have cobblestone streets,” he said.

Still, economic sense clashes with the emotional connection that many Brooklynites have to the Boardwalk.

Dan Klores, a public relations executive and filmmaker from Brooklyn, remembered running on the Boardwalk in the 1970s and encountering Abraham D. Beame, who was campaigning for mayor. The wooden boards were in disrepair then, Mr. Klores said, and Mr. Beame told the crowd that replacement wood was on order from Honduras.

One elderly man, Mr. Klores recalled, did not miss a beat.

“Honduras, shmonduras!” the man shouted. “We want the wood.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 22, 2012
An article on Monday about a plan to use a combination of concrete and recycled plastic to replace a stretch of the wooden Boardwalk in Brighton Beach, N.Y., misstated the timing of an online petition to keep the Boardwalk wood. More than 1,700 people have signed it since the beginning of 2012, not in the last year. The headline also misstated, in some copies, the status of the plan. It is under consideration; it has not been adopted.

Former DOE Official Michael Duffy: It's All About the Adults

Don't you just love it when every ed deformer says it's about the children not the adults -- like teachers--- when in fact an entire charter school industry has sprung up where adults like Michael Duffy go into the DOE for a short time before using that "service" -- a very loose term here --- to enrich themselves on the backs of children.

Here Leonie Haimson takes Duffy and Victory down. (By the way -- Victory used to be run by Peg Harrington, with a deep resume of working as a teacher, principal and top level official at the old NYCBOE. I think she got nudged out by Klein and went on to run Victory.)

Before you get to Duffy, check out Leonie doing about a 200% better job than any UFT official in defending teachers in her appearance on WPIX- 11 this morning: who is to blame for struggling schls. Hint: it’s not teachers. http://goo.gl/ZpqeI

Michael Duffy and the "turnaround" of Victory charter schools

A new charter school called Great Oaks is applying to the state to start in NYC’s District 2, to be located on Governors Island, though Downtown Express reports that the Education Committee of Community Board I opposes it.  The charter school’s letter of intent to NYSED lists as the lead applicant Benjamin B. Carson, described as a former “statistician” for the NYC DOE charter office, as well as the Co-Founder of the Great Oaks Charter School in Newark. 

The Newark branch only started last August and has no track record, but the letter of intent says the network has formed to “replicate the successful methods of the MATCH Public Charter School in Boston," featuring “high academic expectations, a No Excuses school culture, a focus on engaging classroom instruction and individualized attention to students’ needs via high-dosage tutoring.”

One of the co-founders of the proposed NYC school and a board member will be Michael Duffy, who is the former head of the NYC DOE charter office, well known for his blase attitude towards protesting parents during intense co-location hearings.   Duffy is also listed as the key contact for the Great Oaks Charter School in Newark on the NJ State website. 

Michael Duffy

Duffy is now employed by a company called Victory, which has started at least 16 charter schools in NYC, Philadelphia and Chicago.  
Victory has had a generally dismal reputation in NYC for charging large management fees while running some of the lowest-performing charters in the city. Here is what Kim Gittleson of GothamSchools wrote about the chain in 2010, after analyzing their management fees and results:

“I found that the five Victory Schools that had progress report scores in 2008-2009 placed in the bottom 35 percent of all charter schools and in the bottom 20 percent of schools citywide… These middling performance numbers come despite the fact that the seven schools paid around $2,163 per pupil to Victory Schools for the company’s services. This is 17 percent of these charter schools’ per pupil revenues from the state.”

DOE now intends to close Peninsula Prep charter, a school run by Victory until recently.  Unfortunately when NYT /School Book ran a story about DOE’s plan to close the school, Duffy was quoted as a approving of the decision, as an apparently disinterested observer, without noting that he currently works for the company that ran the school until June 30, 2010.  Indeed, in Peninsula Prep’s  most recent annual report to DOE, dated July 2011, the board made clear that they had dropped Victory as their management company, in an apparent attempt to persuade DOE to allow the school to stay open:

a. Peninsula Preparatory Academy Charter School disassociated itself from Victory Schools as a management company.
b. PPACS adopted the New York City Department of Education scope and sequence for Social Studies instruction instead of the Victory proprietary Core Knowledge Program. and: c. PPACS increased the student enrollment to from 300 to 350.

In the NYT/Schoolbook article, Duffy supported DOE closing of the school: “I definitely think in 2012, what was good enough even five years ago is no longer good enough,” Mr. Duffy said.  (He should know!)

Duffy left DOE to work for Victory in July 2010, shortly after Victory’s Albany charter school, New Covenant, was shut down by SUNY because of poor performance.  

 Read more:  Michael Duffy and the "turnaround" of Victory charter schools

Parent Objects to Walcott Being Honored by 100 Black Men

7 p.m. – Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott is honored at One Hundred Black Men’s 32nd Annual Benefit Gala, New York Hilton, Mercury Ballroom,1335 Avenue of the Americas.

Karen Sprowal whose child was tossed out of Eve Moskowitz's Harlem Success Academy responds:

This a joke right?

As an African American public school parent I can say honestly, Walcott is a disgrace to the race! We should be protesting his appointment as chancellor not honoring him for anything! 

Shame on 100 Black Men org. there are many black men working within public schools and the community they could honor, all they had to do was ask.

Testing Expert Fred Smith Calls for Boycott of Flawed Tests

Leonie posted this post with fabulous links and I'm cross-posting due to the importance of Fred Smith's work.

The GEM high stakes testing committee, which Fred has worked with, has been working on supporting parents who are willing to do a test case in NY State, one of the only states without a policy) by opting out of the test (do their kids get left back?). Even within the anti-hst community there is some controversy as to whether pushing a program of opting out is worthwhile at this point (if high scoring kids opt out the school rating goes down) but there will be a push forward.


From Leonie Haimson: Feb 22, 2012
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2012/02/testing-expert-points-out-severe-flaws.html

Testing expert points out severe flaws in NYS exams and urges parents to boycott them this spring!

Many recent columns have pointed out the fundamental flaws in the new NY teacher evaluation system  in the last few days: by Aaron Pallas of Columbia University; Carol Burris, Long Island principal, education historian Diane Ravitch, (who has written not one but two excellent critiques) and Juan Gonzalez, investigative reporter for the Daily News.  All point out that despite the claim that the new evaluation system is supposed to be based only 20-40%  on state exams, test scores in fact will trump all, since any teacher rated "ineffective" on their students' standardized exams will be rated "ineffective" overall.

To add insult to injury, the NYC Department of Education is expected to release the teacher data reports to the media tomorrow -- with the names of individual teachers attached.  These reports are based SOLELY on the change in student test scores of individual teachers, filtered through a complicated formula that is supposed to control for factors out of their control, which is essentially impossible to do. Moreover, there are huge margins of error that mean a teacher with a high rating one year is often rated extremely low the next. Sign our petition now, if you haven't yet, urging the papers not to publish these reports; and read the outraged comments of parents, teachers, principals and researchers, pointing out how unreliable these reports are as an indication of teacher quality.   

Though most of the critiques so far focus on the inherently volatile nature and large margins of error in any such calculation, here in NY State we have a special problem: the state tests themselves have been fatally flawed for many years.  There has been rampant test score inflation over the past decade; many of the test questions themselves are amazingly dumb and ambiguous; and there are other severe problems with the scaling and the design of these exams that only testing experts fully understand.  Though the State Education Department claims to have now solved these problems, few actually believe this to be the case.

As further evidence, see Fred Smith's analysis below.  Fred is a  retired assessment expert for the NYC Board of Education, who has written widely on the fundamental flaws in the state tests.  Here, he shows how deep problems remain in their design and execution -- making their results, and the new teacher evaluation system and  teacher data reports based upon them, essentially worthless.  He goes on to urge parents to boycott the state exams this spring.  Please leave a comment about whether you would consider keeping your child out of school for this purpose!


Fred Smith:
New York State’s Testing Program (NYSTP) has relied on a series of deeply flawed exams given to 1.2 million students a year.  This conclusion is supported by comparing English Language Arts (ELA) and Math data from 2006 to 2011 with National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data, but not in the usual way.

Rather than ponder discrepancies in performance and growth on the national versus state exams, I analyzed the items—the building blocks of the NAEP and NYSTP that underlie their reported results.

 

NAEP samples fourth and eighth grade students in reading and math every two years.  Achievement and improvement trends are studied nationwide and broken down state-by-state.  The results spur biennial debate over two questions:

Why are results obtained on state-imposed exams far higher than proficiency as measured by NAEP?  Why do scores from state tests increase so much, while NAEP shows meager changes over time?  

 

By concentrating on results—counting how many students have passed state standards; or trying to gauge the achievement gap; or devising complicated value-added teacher evaluation models, school grading systems and other multi-variate formulas—attention has been diverted from the instruments themselves.

In 2009, the year statewide scores peaked, Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch discredited NYSTP’s implausibly high achievement levels and low standards.  She pledged reform—“more rigorous testing” became the catch phrase.  She knew that New York’s yearly pursuit and celebratory announcements of escalating numbers belied a state of educational decline.

 

It was an admission of how insidious the results had been, not to mention the precarious judgments that rested on them. Unsustainable outcomes became a crisis.  But Albany refuses to address the core problem. 

 

The NAEP and NYSTP exams contain multiple-choice and open-ended items.  The latter tap a higher order of knowledge.  They ask students to interpret reading material and provide a written response or to work out math problems and show how they solved them, not just select or guess a right answer.

 

Ergo, on well-developed tests students will likely get a higher percentage of correct answers on machine-scored multiple-choice questions.  In addition, the same students should do well, average or poorly on both types of items.   

 

NAEP meets the dual expectations of order and correlation between its two sets of items; the NYSTP exams, which are given in grades three through eight, do not.  Here are the contrasting pictures for the fourth grade math test.  

 

NAEP’s multiple-choice items yield averages that are substantially higher than its open-ended ones.  The distance between them is consistent over time—another way of saying that the averages run along parallel lines.  There is an obvious smoothness to the data.

Items on the NYSTP exams defy such rhyme and reason.  The percent correct on each set of items goes up one year and down the next in a choppy manner.  In 2008, performance on the teacher-scored open-ended items exceeded the level reached on the multiple-choice items. In 2011, when the tests were supposed to have gained rigor, the open-ended math questions were 26.2% easier than the NAEP’s.

                       

The reversals reveal exams made of items working at cross purposes, generating data that go north and south at the same time.  That’s the kind of compass the test publisher, CTB/McGraw-Hill, has sold to the State since 2006 to the tune of $48 million.

 

I found incongruities in all grades measured by NYSTP.  On the ELA, divergent outcomes on the two types of items are noteworthy for grades 5, 6 and 7 in 2010 and 2011.  The fifth grade items provide a jarring illustration, because they continue to function incoherently in the years of promised reform. Averages on the open-ended items increase (by 10.7%), as sharply as the multiple-choice averages fall (10.3%)—crossing over them last year.

It all goes unnoticed.  Press releases are written in terms of overall results without acknowledging or treating NYSTP’s separate parts.  This is odd since so much time and money go into administering and scoring the more challenging, higher-level open-ended items.

 

So, we’ve had a program that has made a mockery out of accountability, with the head of the Regents running interference for it.  Parents watch helplessly as their children’s schools become testing centers. And the quality of teachers is weighed on scales that are out of balance, as Governor Cuomo takes a bow for leveraging an evaluation system that depends on state test results to determine if a teacher is effective.  

 

If the test numbers aren’t good enough, there’s no way teachers can compensate by demonstrating other strengths needed to foster learning and growth.  Within days it is likely that newspapers will publish the names of teachers and the grades they’ve received based on their students’ test scores going back three years.  As shown, however, these results are derived from tests that fail to make sense.

 

The graphs are prima facie evidence that the vendor and Albany have delivered a defective product. High-stakes decisions about students, teachers and schools have depended on it. An independent investigation of NYSTP is imperative to determine what happened and, if warranted, to seek recovery of damages.  

 

It is also time for the victims—parents in defense of their children, and teachers in support of students, parents and their own self-interest—to band together and just say “No!” to this April’s six days of testing.

---Fred Smith, a retired Board of Education senior analyst, worked for the city public school system in test research and development.

Jumping on Leo Casey Defense of Ed Eval Deal From Critics Ravich and Rest of World

I hear Leo Casey over at Edwise is defending the ed eval deal after the assault by:

• Diane Ravitch -- with the scary title of A Dark Day for New York,  
• LI Principal Carol Burris at the Answer Sheet ---Carol will be speaking at the GEM conference on ed evals on March 15) and 
• pretty much everyone else as you can see at Perdido Street School (Ravitch, Gonzalez, Pallas Take On Cuomo's New Teacher Evaluation System).

One has to find it pretty interesting that long-time UFT/AFT ally Ravitch has pretty much gone ballistic on them. (Don't look for an invite to speak at the AFT convention this summer).

UFT to auction off spots for inclusion in 13%

I just don't have the patience to dig into the particulars -- I take the position with so many others that high stakes tests (as opposed to tests useful for diagnosis and correction) are a waste of time and money and have been saying to -- even proposing resolutions at Delegate Assemblies as far back as the late 90's. So I'll just leave it to others to address Casey's defense. [WARNING: CASEY IS DOING A PART 2].

This insightful parsing of Casey came in anonymously. Darn, wish I could take credit

Casey: “With evaluations based on multiple measures, evaluations will be more comprehensive, more accurate and fairer, and in sharp contrast to other states such as Florida and Tennessee, the role of standardized testing in the evaluation will be minimized.”

This is hard to see from reading the SED summary that says “Teachers rated ineffective on student performance based on objective assessments must be rated ineffective overall.”   In this context, multiple measures would seem to mean one thing: multiple ways to fail.

Casey bases his argument on the fact that the 20% left up to local bargaining will not be standardized tests: but “an authentic assessment of student learning” based on some other not yet agreed-upon process.  He adds:  “I know of no significant New York district where the local union has agreed to the use of standardized state exams as the basis for the local measures of student learning.””  (Today King restored the SIG grants to Rochester and four other cities because they had submitted evaluation plans acceptable to him; no news yet as to what they involve. ) 

Casey goes on: When the UFT was working on developing performance assessments as the local assessments for the 33 Transformation and Restart schools, one of our agreements with the NYC DoE was the development of a system of weighting that would account for the academic challenges of a teacher’s students.

So what happened? Not clear if DOE really agreed to non-standardized tests as their local assessment component, especially as the DOE issued an RFP over the summer for 408 new citywide standardized tests – some of which were conveniently called performance assessments.  Indeed, “performance assessments” is another phrase like “multiple measures” which seem to have multiple meanings depending on the eye of the beholder.

It is also true that many districts are cash-poor and may adopt the state tests simply because they don’t have the funds to develop and score their own assessments.

Casey doesn’t mention that Commissioner King has the authority under this agreement also to reject any local assessment that is not “rigorous” or “objective” enough; in general, King doesn’t sound particularly open to portfolios etc:

“All evaluation plans are subject to review and approval by the Commissioner to ensure rigor, quality and consistency with standards;

·  The Commissioner has the authority to require corrective action, including the use of independent evaluators, when districts evaluate their teachers positively regardless of students’ academic progress.

In a footnote, Casey mentions something even more startling:  that “The law envisions that once the State Education Department has developed a valid value-added model for measuring growth in student learning, which it has yet to do, the state component can grow to 25%, while the local component would shrink to 15%.” 

I wonder who gets to determine whether the state’s value-added model is “valid” or not.  The Regents?  So far the majority of members have rubber-stamped anything that King or Tisch want them to do.

Casey concludes by echoing the words of the corporate reformers:  “While a change of the complexity required by the new teacher evaluation system is daunting, it should not lead us to romanticize a failed evaluation status quo.”

-----------

Next up is a long piece by blogger Assailed Teacher: Leo Casey “Sets the Record Straight” on the New Teacher Evaluations who closes with

As much as I would like to believe Leo Casey’s characterization of the foremost historian on American education’s concerns as “alarmist”, I do not see anywhere in his post today where he silences those alarms. All I see is a dark time ahead for the children and teachers of New York City.
This does not even touch on how the new evaluation regime destroys tenure for teachers. According to Leo Casey, his next installment will address this concern. I can only say I hope it goes over better than his latest defense of this horrid new system.

HS Chap Ldr John Elfrank-Dana comments at his blog Labor's Lessons:

Teacher Evaluation and the Lesson of Teaching for the 21st Century (RIP)

---------
And then there's Eric Przykuta, president of the upstate NY Lancaster Central Teachers Association with a scathing assault on NYSUT for making the deal, calling NYSUT dues a "horrible waste of hard-earned dollars." He closes with:

I find you and your organization wholly ineffectual and ineffective. Teachers can not sit idly by facing financial ruin while you enjoy your wine and chocolates. You offer no clout in Albany and services that can be duplicated less expensively. NYSUT dues are a horrible waste of hard-earned dollars that members of this Association can put to better use and receive a better value in so doing. You will be notified in writing regarding our future association with your organization.

Here are some links he includes:

Letter to Iannuzzi in response to February 16, 2012 Agreement
Letter to Iannuzzi in response to NYSUT RTTT 2010 Agreement
Links Relating to Teacher Evaluations

And a link to a news report.
Naturally, as expected, Mike Antonucci over at Educational Intelligence Agency has some fun with the view from the right. I'm including this because I know how much Leo looks forward to my citing EIA and since he pretty much reads this blog full time (check this video for proof) I'm sure he'll enjoy the reference.

Eric Przykuta is upset about what he sees as a NYSUT sell-out on the issue of teacher evaluations. He sent a rather pointed letter about it to NYSUT president Richard Iannuzzi.

“Your pandering is shameful,” Przykuta wrote. “You have done nothing to protect teachers or advance our agenda as professionals to be respected. NYSUT caved under pressure and ran from the good fight.”

But it’s the final paragraph that drops the big hammer:

Przykuta wants to hold a summit of local union presidents in Western New York that, according to one published report, would discuss “severing ties” with NYSUT.

I doubt this will amount to much, especially since natural ally Phil Rumore (see item #2 here) thinks the letter was “a little over the top.” Still, if a bunch of mid-sized locals break off and form their own organization, I have the perfect name for it: NEA New York!

It might cost a few bucks to buy the old domain name back from the odd dudes who own it now, but there’s probably a stack of old stationery and envelopes lying around that will help keep costs down.

Well, there it is. We can look forward to Casey's Part 2 where he will tell you that tenure is totally unaffected, followed by a fund-raiser auctioning off slots for those who want to be included in the magic 13%.

On Chicago and New York Teacher Unions

Info Overload
There's so much incoming from so many sources --- too many listserves, too many blogs to follow, too much facebook and twitter is a killer. And all that great video to process. So many issues -- teacher eval, charter invasions, Chicago news, general UFT crap --- I can't decide what to write about. As usual in my case, when presented with too many options I do nothing. Of course I hope you are checking my blogroll which takes me hours to get through before I get to post anything here.

One of the more interesting blogger/NYC teachers I've come across recently is Assailed Teacher, who I was tipped off to by a Diane Ravitch tweet. Some really thoughtful stuff there with some depth. Today's post -- It’s Up To You…. Chicago?
digs into a comparison of the actions of the UFT and the CTU.

Michael Dunn over at Modern School nicely outlines the coming contract battle between the Chicago Teachers’ Union and its employer, Chicago Public Schools. Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to expand the school day by 90 minutes. The union wants a 30% raise, lower class sizes and greater enrichment opportunities for students. They have put money aside for a public relations campaign and are already making arrangements for a strike should contract negotiations break down. I agree with Michael Dunn in that teachers, even workers in general, across the country should keep their eyes on Chicago.

For teachers in New York City, seeing a union actually standing up for its members and students is strange indeed. It seems like it was just this past Thursday that our union sold us out by agreeing to a bonehead evaluation system based entirely on student test scores. In return, the union got absolutely nothing for its members, not even the due process for teachers rated “ineffective” for which they had been holding out. Our fearless leader Michael Mulgrew can be seen hobnobbing with the people responsible for the chartering in this, the country’s largest school district. If New York City schools serve as a model for the rest of the country, then there is plenty for the country to fear.

Read the entire piece (It’s Up To You…. Chicago?).

I wouldn't paint everything that's going on in the Chicago TU as slam dunk perfect even though I am pretty prejudiced because I know many of the leaders. Sure there have been some mistakes (no time to find links now) but I remind people that all these guys and gals were in the classroom teaching until July 2010, not part of a Unity Caucus like machine that has been running the UFT for 50 years. (And how many mistakes have they made?)

CORE -- the Caucus of Rank and File Educators --- started out as a small group to study Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" in 2008 and captured the union in the 2010 elections. I have some tape from an appearance in NY in late 2010 at Teachers Unite by CORE leaders talking about their short history (if I have some time I will post on vimeo). One important point is that (at least at that time) CORE was run by people still in the classroom, not by people working for the CTU.

In fact, when people felt that Karen (who says she reads Ed Notes so I hope I get this right) screwed up she had to face some music from within the caucus, something that can never happen in Unity.

This is an important point --- creating the most democratic body that will function that way under all circumstances. CORE must maintain some level of independence in its relationship to the CTU leadership even if coming from the same group.

I believe in caucuses as a way to function within a union. The problem with the UFT is that there is no balance of power. New Action owes its existence to Unity benevolence. ICE and TJC have had gained traction, and they know it unlike NAC. Other groups like NYCORE, Teachers Unite and GEM have not directly related to the union -- until recently.

Assailed Teacher closes with:

Teachers in NYC have to take a page from CTU’s playbook now. When their union proved to be shills for the forces of ed reform, they turned the leadership out of office. When their Machiavellian mayor proposed a longer school day, their new union immediately responded with a deluge of common sense demands that school districts around the country have long neglected. Contrast that with a union that rolls over and dies in every negotiation and smiles in the face of their members like they did them a favor. It is time for New Yorkers to swallow their pride and give Chicago their due respect for having a teachers’ union ahead of the curve.

He is right about doing it now. And that is why people from all the groups (including people from TJC and ICE) have been meeting around the concept of State of the Union in an attempt to create a CORE-like caucus. Will such a caucus be able to capture power in terms of a union election in the near future? Anyone who came to my UFT 101 workshop at the Feb. 4 SOTU came away pretty depressed over the almost impossible task given how Unity has basically rigged things (there is a video of my workshop I will release soon), especially given the new constitutional amendments diluting the voice of the classroom teacher.

But I point to Egypt where the government fell without an election but because of a people's movement. I view the over 1500 schools in the same way --- the true battleground for the union.

CORE didn't even win power through taking the schools but due to a very incompetent version of Unity that split into 2 plus other caucuses running and winning a runoff, which we don't have here in NYC. In reality, CORE captured 1/3 of the vote the first time and all the other groups endorsed them in the run-off. Thus CORE has had to do school by school organizing AFTER they won and the old guard still has support. If CORE doesn't accomplish this in time for the 2013 election they might very well lose.

In the case of NYC, they are sort of starting from scratch and if a new caucus emerges that focuses on Delegate Assemblies, Exec Bds and talking to the union leadership instead doing the school to school organizing, it will not go very far. Doing this school to school work is not easy, especially given that Unity uses the District reps to monitor and disrupt every sign of opposition coming from schools. (The other day I heard an example of one of the nastiest pieces of work a DR could do in an attempt to undermine a perceived threat --- I am efforting to get permission to print).

The only advantage a true opposition caucus would have is numbers or organizers. Not enormous numbers but enough to counter the Unity machine and get people at the school level to work with the caucus. Given the apathy, that is not an easy task. But I am guessing of such a group can develop strong people in 300-500 schools it becomes a real threat, especially if they can capture delegates and chapter leader positions.

Elections for CL and Del are coming this spring. If you have had enough of Unity, consider running for at least the delegate position and joining with the State of the Union crew (next meeting is March 10).

If things continue the way they are expect more and more sell-outs.

-----
Aftterburn
The move to a new caucus have caused ICE, TJC and even GEM to examine what role they have to play in the battle against ed deform --- which after all is the main war --- but you can't have a hope to win that with a union leadership on the city, state and national level that plays footsie with the deformers instead of organizing to fight them. We'll be reporting on whatever we are allowed to on these internal debates.

Another Bill of Goods the UFT/AFT is Trying to Sell: Common Core Standards

Remember, the first action of Occupy DOE was to shut down the Walcott/David Coleman "information" session on Common Core in October.
(Video at: http://youtu.be/YbmjMickJMA).

When our union and WalBloom and Gates are all on the same page, it's time to run the other way. Susan Ohanian has been outing the common core crap (CCC) for years. When the UFT starts pushing this like dope, time for you to stand up and fight.

THE COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS & LITERACY IN HISTORY/SOCIAL STUDIES, SCIENCE, & TECHNICAL SUBJECTS

http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1205

Ohanian comment: This incredibly Incredibly pompous, ignorant document is part of Coming Together to Raise Achievement prepared Center for K--12 Assessment & Performance Management at ETS.

Don't you love this?

The CCSS outline what students will know and be able to do. By grade 6, students will trace and evaluate an argument and determine the specific claims supported by evidence and those that are not. By grades 9 and 10, students will have read U.S. documents of historical and literary significance and will learn to delineate and
evaluate the reasoning in these texts.

How many 6th graders do you think this claimant has taught? She has been Director of Curriculum and Instruction for Rochester, MA school district and Director of English, MassInsight Education, a corporate-based organization, infamous for pushing the MCAS.

Student writers will think expansively. [emphasis added]

In the 1970s, the era of behavioral objectives,I refused to write required "The student WILL. . ." in lesson plans. My god, I taught 7th grade. On a good day, student "might"... And there were plenty of days that weren't-so-good.

Apostles and assorted groupies writing about the Common Core admit to no such students, no such days.

Writers of documents like this never admit to the reality of students or the variety they bring to the classroom. I once wrote a little document for the New York State Teachers Union "What is a 7th Grader?" In it I pointed out that I never knew which Sherrie would walk in the door--the one sucking her thumb and wanting to read fairy tales or the one parading the role of nymphet. Some days she would indeed think expansively. Other days, she was much more intent on the drama of being a 7th grader confused and challenged by her own sexuality, family problems, insecurities. Whichever Jenny appeared on a given day, I had to be ready to adapt to her needs of the moment. Certainly, I did not pull out any "The student WILL" document. Or call on Aristotle to show me how to teach. I do remember how much Sherrie--and her peers--enjoyed our read-aloud of Ron Jones' Acorn People. My team teaching partner and I felt it was critical for our students, known as the worst readers in the school--and not so good in other subjects either--learn to empathize with people with worse problems than their own. I am happy to see this book is still in print. It's values will far outlast any picayune dictates coming out of the corporate-educational complex.

Okay, I admit it: Jenny and her classmates also liked Flat Stanley--almost as much as I did. I've recounted all this in a book about our middle school years, Caught in the Middle: Nonstandard Kids and a Killing Curriculum.

I would just add that years ago my article in The Atlantic featuring what the basal committees had done to make Flat Stanley "acceptable" provoked more mail than I've received on anything--including a correspondence with Jeff Brown and Sid Fleischman.

Oh, sorry. I wasn't teaching "Twenty-first Century students. I'm still mired in that old Twentieth Century paradigm.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

[T]he CCSS compel collaboration; students will know how to be smart, sound smart, and affirm the intelligent contributions of the people with whom they work or learn.

Damn. Damn. Damn. I just keep forgetting. I don't work in the century of such claims. In our time, we did our best, but we just lacked the standards to guarantee that students would be smart, etc. etc.

But hey, you teachers in the Twenty-First Century, if you made a list of "What has to be taught", what would be on it? Think hard. Picture your students. . . individual students. Think hard. What must be taught. Here's what this ETS writer, delineating the Common Core dictates: key Aristotelian claims of ethos, logos, and pathos will have to be taught.

This writer offers David Coleman lite. Not that I subscribe in any way to true blue David Coleman, but. . . I'm somewhat bemused that ETS would offer such a weak argument.

And Gentle Reader, if you don't recognize the name David Coleman, I advise you to put the name into a 'search' on this site. Do it immediately. Your very survival as a teacher who responds to the needs of the children in your care depends on it.

You must prepare yourself to fight. YOU...with colleagues. NCTE won't help you. The unions won't help you. You have to gather with other teachers and parents and FIGHT THIS.

 See below the fold for the original article:

NYC Teacher Performs One Woman Show at Cherry Lane

Support a fellow teacher.
NYC teacher Elizabeth Rose opens her one woman show tomorrow night at the Cherry Lane. There are even some ed references in it. It will run through March 3. Tickets are $18.

RELATIVE PITCH

Written and performed by Elizabeth Rose
Mentored and directed by Gretchen Cryer

The Cherry Lane Theater's Mentor Project

    Angelina Fiordelissi, Artistic Director

February 21 – March 3, 2012   PURCHASE TICKETS

Elizabeth Rose's RELATIVE PITCH is a one-woman musical comedy about the hilarious roller-coaster ride of a performing songwriter.  Written and performed by Rose, the musical's score features 19 original songs (from opera to rap) to depict her story of a childhood in a noisy musical family through the Vietnam and Woodstock eras to an inner-city classroom where hip hop trumps the blues. 

As a performer Elizabeth Rose's wide-ranging credits include having sung the National Anthem at Shea Stadium, composing music for Discovery Channel and PBS as well as for the film "Sex and the Other Man" starring Stanley Tucci.  She created the music video "Leave Me Alone" featuring a cast of nonagenarians, wrote the hit single "I'm Too Beau'ful for You," and recorded an original CD "Sleep Naked."  As an educator, she has raised over $300,000 for several NYC public schools.

The press links are:

http://broadwayworld.com/article/Cherry-Lane-2012-Mentor-Project-Kicks-Off-2

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/159514-Gretchen-Cryer-Will-Direct-Elizabeth-Roses-Relative-Pitch-at-Cherry-Lane

http://www.theatermania.com/off-off-broadway/news/02-2012/gretchen-cryer-to-direct-elizabeth-rose-in-relativ_49930.html

and...

The Cherry Lane Theatre's Mentor: Project:http://www.cherrylanetheatre.org/programs/mentor_project/

Website:  www.elizabethrosemusic.com

Teaching Addict

...the contribution I want to make now I want to make in the classroom. The difference between teaching and play-writing is not incomprehensible to me, they're not so different. They both create a public event that leads to understanding..... Teaching -- for Ms. Edson at least -- is a full-time occupation. She needs the summers, she said, to do nothing, because that makes you a more interesting person in the classroom...   Margaret Edson, Pulitzer Prize winner and classroom teacher.

I love reading about teachers who love the process of classroom teaching. I never heard of Margaret Edson until today's Susan Ohanian update. I watched the video of her Smith commencement speech from 2008 and I think I'm in love.

Susan Notes:

Margaret Edson astounded the media when, as a kindergarten teacher, she won the Pulitzer for drama. And she gets more than ten minutes of fame. More than ten years later, the media stays fascinated. The media is amazed that a teacher is an intelligent person.

Margaret Edson now teaches sixth grade. She remains passionate about her calling. Her teacher calling. And we can all be grateful that the media is still interested enough to talk to her about her teaching.

Here is the transcript of Margaret Edson's 1999 appearance on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Here is video of her commencement address at Smith College, delivered without a written text.

Read a fascinating interview with Margaret Edson.  Changing Gears but Retaining Dramatic Effect

---------------------
Debbie Meier often says that teaching kindergarten was one of the most intellectual challenges she faced. I loved the mechanisms of organizing a class of 4th, 5th or 6th graders and found intellectual challenges in figuring out a good seating chart or how to get coats hung in the wardrobe without them falling to the floor. Or how to get the idea of circumference across.

I was a classroom teaching addict for most of my first 20 years in the system and developed a superiority complex that I was doing the most important job in the school system. I was in the infantry and though I would never leave till they hauled me out. I certainly felt superior to people who did leave, even clusters or pull-out people. Unless they were older and had put in their time.

Then one day, I was older, with a principal who began to limit the control the teachers had over their classes through the institution of a high stakes testing program. I started thinking about leaving teaching altogether and even went back to school for a degree in computer science which led to part 2 of my career which I spent as a computer cluster and training teachers. I really can't say I was addicted to teaching once I left the elementary school classroom – once I was out of a classroom with a group of kids I would spend the day and the year with, I lost some of that passion. So reading about Edson was inspiring. Of course she didn't start teaching until she was in her late 30's and is in the early part of her 2nd decade. I hit that wall in the latter part of my 2nd decade. Here's hoping she never meets that wall.