Ravitch to Farina: Fire the Gotcha Squad; Supervisors Skate While Teachers Are Crucified

Chancellor Farina, it is time to fire the “gotcha” squad. It is time to replace Joel Klein’s legal team. It is time to clean house and install officials who share Mayor de Blasio’s vision and values... Unfortunately, the de Blasio administration has been slow to clean house. The Klein regime still controls large sectors of the education bureaucracy, including the infamous “gotcha” squad that is always on the alert for teacher misbehavior. True, the “gotcha” squad completely missed a high school teacher arrested for having sexual relations with several students at selective Brooklyn Technical High School, who is currently suspended with pay.Diane Ravitch, NYC Education Bureaucracy Gone Wild: The Suspension of a Hero Teacher

Diane picked up the same story from the NY Times' Jim Dwyer which we covered yesterday (Wipe out OSI and DOE Legal and Start Over - Let's Focus on Teachers Who Should not be Teaching).

This is the first instance I know of where the mainstream press focused on the abuses of OSI, SCI, or DOE Legal -- all a tandem, covered by so many bloggers, particularly Portelos -- I'll do a follow up with links to the work he's done.

An investigator with the Education Department’s Office of Special Investigations, Wei Liu, found that Ms. Fisher sent emails about the project during her workday at Public School 333, the Manhattan School for Children, and was thus guilty of “theft of services.”

Is there one employee of the DOE that has not sent emails during the workday since email was invented? They tried to pull the same crap at Portelos.

“By omitting essential context, the report wrongly suggested that Ms. Fisher was a rogue employee, acting alone and in her own self-interest.

This is crucial and something that becomes very clear when you attend 3020a hearings -- DOE Legal purposely removes context to try to get a guilty verdict - their measure of "success" in terms of justifying their jobs. They have zero interest in truth.
I heard a story from a teacher about an assistant principal who slapped a child in front of witnesses.  The AP was pulled from the school and disappeared from view for some time, only to resurface as an Assistant Principal in another school. That person is now a principal.

A teacher who did that would be taken out in cuffs.

How can we account for this double standard? We know Tweed protects principals unless they are caught with the knife in their hand with blood all over them - and even then.....

I have come to believe that the CSA (Principal's Union) does a lot of work behind the scenes to protect their people under all circumstances - like the PBA for cops. The UFT? Let then hang from the cross. (I'm reading a book on how Jesus the poor Jewish preacher became god so excuse the reference.)

Meanwhile Diane Ravitch has taken up the case of the teacher suspended for 30 days for assisting a student with a Kickstarter campaign.

NYC Education Bureaucracy Gone Wild: The Suspension of a Hero Teacher

By dianeravitch

October 5, 2014 //

“This is a story of an almost unfathomably mindless school bureaucracy at work: the crushing of an occupational therapist who had helped a young boy build a record of blazing success.
“The therapist, Deb Fisher, is now serving a suspension of 30 days without pay for official misconduct.
“Her crime?
“She raised money on Kickstarter for a program that she and the student, Aaron Philip, 13, created called This Ability Not Disability.

But the “gotcha” squad bagged a teacher who helped run a Kickstarter campaign for a student with cerebral palsy. This teacher was suspended without pay for 30 days for “theft of services,” having helped the campaign during school hours.
As Jim Dwyer, columnist for the New York Times reports:

“The school system has proved itself unable to dislodge failed or dangerous employees for years at a time.
“Ms. Fisher’s case seems to represent just the opposite: A person working to excel is being hammered by an investigative agency that began its hunt in search of cheating on tests and record-keeping irregularities. It found nothing of the sort. Instead, the investigation produced a misleading report, filled with holes, on the fund-raising effort.
“By omitting essential context, the report wrongly suggested that Ms. Fisher was a rogue employee, acting alone and in her own self-interest.
“In fact, the entire school, including the principal, was involved in the Kickstarter project, with regular email blasts counting down the fund-raising push. And the money was to be used not by Ms. Fisher, but by Aaron, who is writing a graphic book and making a short film about Tanda, a regular kid who is born with a pair of legs in a world where everybody else has a pair of wheels.
“Aaron has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair to navigate the world. Ms. Fisher has worked with him since kindergarten.”

Wipe out OSI and DOE Legal and Start Over - Let's Focus on Teachers Who Should not be Teaching

[nyceducationnews] shocking and horrible: therapist at P.S. 333 in Manhattan was suspended b/c she helped a disabled student raise money.... An occupational therapist at P.S. 333 in Manhattan was suspended because she sent emails during work hours for an online campaign to raise money for a student with cerebral palsy.....Confirms deep problems about what many have said about the OSI – including Portelos – and total ignorance at DOE about to handle these issues and reform the OSI office..... Leonie Haimson

This is not only about OSI but the entire DOE legal team which every principal consults before taking action. Yes there are teachers who should be targets - see one Brooklyn Tech -- but the DOE legal and OSI crews are mainly about justifying their jobs so they spend their time trawling through facebook and twitter looking for targets.

I watched the DOE legal slugs at the Portelos hearings -- always 2 of them and sometimes 3. 

Portelos led a "sweep them clean" demo at the Tweed at the end of last school year to make this very point. We had about 20 people there. I would have gone to the UFT since they are as culpable as anyone as they owe more allegiance to their pals at the CSA than to the teachers they represent.


New York Times

Bureaucracy Turns a Hero Into a Rogue

Pedro Noguera Gets Schooled on Charters

Well, I guess better late than never: the man whose rep helped legitimize Moskowitz and give her a start, now says charters lack accountability... Michael Fiorillo

DUHHHH! - Is All I can say to Noguera who as the chair of the SUNY charter authorizing committee passed charters through the sieve while ignoring their pacman space chewing of public schools. Why should a charter school parent give a darn if public school kids don't get gym or science labs because the charter has grabbed their space? Noguera ignored all those pleas for years. Hopefully he is saying, "What have I done?"

Why Don’t We Have Real Data on Charter Schools?

Charters were supposed to be laboratories for innovation. Instead, they are stunningly opaque.

Noguera makes the same arguments we made in our film over 3 years ago. Double duhhhhhh! Instead of going after the very concept of charters, too many people are putting their energy into calling for transparency. I heard a lot of that at last Monday's hearing which is why I went right at the guts - the white affluent parents who don't give a shit whether public school kids lose their gym or science labs ---

The Nation - Alternet-

Norm in The Wave - Atlanta Cheating, Cops and Firemen, Robots and Jesus

I cover a lot of ground in my School Scope column, published in the Oct. 3 edition of The Wave (www.rockawave.com). I hope my lefty friends don't get all agitated at my saying some nice things about cops.

School Scope: Firemen, Police and Their Kids
By Norm Scott

I was going to continue my series of columns on the topic of “police and teachers” but got distracted the other day while spending my usual 7 hours a day sitting on my front porch reading, smoking my pipe and watching the world go by. I used to be a back porch guy but since the hurricane I have reverted to my Brooklyn East-NY front porch sitting roots. It is just so much more interesting. Since Sandy, two families of firemen with 5 very young children – age 3 and under - between them have moved onto my block within hailing distance of my porch. And I get to observe a lot of daddy care with the children. And what a wonderful sight it is to see how these guys relate to their children. In addition we have a police couple on the block with 2 young girls and there is dad, a big guy, riding bikes with the kids, taking them to the beach and seeming to be having an awfully good time. And then there is a retired police department guy with slightly older kids, walking his beloved dog with one of his kids tagging along, all having the time of their life.

I am not raising this to say that police and fire dads are any more loving than anyone else towards their kids, but rather due to public image these first responders have which does not often include this aspect of their lives when they are off-duty. Someone should follow these dads around with a camera and do a commercial to give the world a window into the tenderness and joy they exhibit towards their children. As for me, it just gives me one more excuse to sit on my porch and watch the wonderful world go by before the coming blahs of winter.

*****
Robotics: FIRST LEGO League moves into high gear

I've been working with NYCFIRST since practically the day I retired - actually from that first day in Sept. 2002. I had a great time last Saturday at NYU/Poly on Jay Street at our annual FLL kickoff. We have about 170 NYC teams registered so far for the Challenge which is called World Class, all about learning. Kids not only build a robot for the game field which represents different styles of learning - but also do and present an extensive research project on the subject. Teams spend the next 3 months prepping. Borough qualifiers take place in January. Finalists go to citywide event at Javits on the weekend of March 14. The winner of may be eligible to go to international event in St. Louis in late April.

****
Atlanta Test Cheating Scandals Go to Trial
Imagine, wanting to send teachers, supervisors, and even Superintendents to jail for changing answers on tests in Atlanta. As if they are special when we know what they did was taking place here and in probably many other places – certainly in Washington DC under Michelle Rhee. I was told a story by friend teaching in a high school in a poor neighborhood in Queens that had 100% of the kids score well on the algebra regents, bearing out even Midwood HS – a red flag for sure. But the principal was hailed as a miracle worker – until people began to blow the whistle. She had threatened teachers without tenure with firing and forced even tenured to cheat – the answers were actually posted on the board. But guess what happened? The whistle blowers came under investigation.
Investigator: “You cheated, you lied.”
Teacher: “But we were forced to.”
Investigator: Following orders is not an excuse. “Did you ever hear of the Nuhrenberg trials?” Some links on Atlanta cheating to check out: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/30/us/racketeering-trial-opens-in-altanta-schools-cheating-scandal.html?_r=0, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/21/wrong-answer

***

Rockaway Theatre Company Update
Since the widely successful Godspell closed last weekend, I won’t be doing columns on the RTC for a few weeks as “Damn Yankees” moves into high gear for its mid-November opening. This past week I joined Tony Homesy and crew as they took down the set and started building the new set, which will be a work of art, as usual.

I will say that the show has stimulated an interest in the historical Jesus and I’m reading an interesting book called, “How Jesus Became God – The Exaltation of a Jewish Peacher from Galilee,” by Bart D. Ehrman, who claims Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher, proclaiming the end of the age was about to come, as did John the Baptist and the later Church changed that message since it didn’t happen – yet.

Norm will continue to blog at ednotesonline.com - until the apocalypse – and maybe beyond.

Go Sandra Noyola: 147K, Where I taught for 27 years, in the (good) news

As many of you know, most stories about wonderbar principals are bullshit. But maybe not this time. Sandra Noyola does not come from the Principal School of BloomCrap. She is from the local community. PS 147 suffered 5 years of hell under a Principal Academy piece of shit whose husband(ex, now) worked for Bloomberg Corp. Now she supposedly has a job at Tweed running some operation. Interestingly she was replaced by another Leadership Acad grad, but this time by some miracle the principal was respected, and even loved by many people in the school. People told me you could look at the faces of the staff after the Monster had left and the nice PRAcad grad came in and they looked 10 years younger.

She had a baby and then got a job as a principal upstate. By the time she left, the energies of BloomKleinCott were beginning to wane and some of the people from the old pre-Bloomberg takeover crew in District 14 were gaining back some of their influence and they were beginning to win more battle over getting their people into principal jobs.

When I went to a community charter protest a few years ago and they told me to come meet the new principal of PS 147 we recognized each other from the good old days when district people used to gather on Fridays after school in various locations. "Didn't I once spill a drink on you," I asked Sandra?

From my contacts at the old school she gets good reports. And then a few weeks ago I heard this one from a parent with a 4 year old looking for a school for her child next year. "PS 147 is considered an up and coming option for parents." Holy Crap. I left there 17 years too soon.

East Williamsburg Principal Introduces Students to the World Beyond School

By Serena Dai on September 28, 2014 9:33pm 

@ssdai

Sandra Noyola, principal of P.S. 147 in East Williamsburg, said she's proud of the school for its partnerships and project-based learning.

View Full Caption

DNAinfo/Serena Dai

EAST WILLIAMSBURG — For Principal Sandra Noyola, student performance goes beyond grades and book smarts.
Schools should also be supporting the emotional, social and intellectual growth of children, she said — a goal she's pursued through teaching methods and partnerships with outside organizations since taking the helm at P.S. 147 in 2011.

The pre-K through 5th grade elementary school located at 325 Bushwick Ave. now has a focus on environmental engineering, with the hope that the students will be prepared for a world grappling with the challenges of a climate crisis.

Noyola budgeted money for a $10,000 hydroponic lab, which is now in its second year of growing cherry tomatoes, herbs and cucumbers in the school, with the help of students and a partnership with NY Sun Works.

P.S. 147 works with Columbia University's Teacher's College on its teacher development, with the Bushwick rooftop farm ECO:Station NY. It also collaborates with a former New York Historical Society consultant who brings in objects to visualize curriculum and with some 15 to 20 other organizations throughout the year, she said.
Noyola hopes to add yet another program to the school by fall 2015 — the city's first Japanese and English dual-language classes, a program suggested by local parents.
Noyola, who has a dedicated grant writer on staff, says she constantly seeks out ways to help students see the world beyond the school's walls.
"It's that integration of resources that really makes the curriculum rich and hands-on for the kids," she said. "If they're not doing, they're not learning. They have to access the content, they have to touch it, feel it, be a part of it."
The principal credits the partnerships and a strong school team with increasing enrollment and diversifying the population at the school, which went from 227 students in 2011-2012 to 308 students this school year, a 37 percent increase.
Noyola worked as a teacher, a literacy coach and an assistant principal before coming to P.S. 147. She sat down with DNAinfo New York to talk about her philosophy, test scores and how the area's changing demographics impact the school.
Why did you decide to make P.S. 147 an environmental engineering-focused school?
I am very in tune with what’s happening in our world — global warming, climate change — and what’s happening to our planet as a result. Technology is not going anywhere. These are the jobs of the future. We want to arm our children with the skills that are necessary for them to be able to be marketable. Not everybody is going to be a lawyer, a doctor, police officer, a teacher. Those are all great jobs, and they are all significant, but we have a crisis here in this world. We need children that have this awareness [about climate change].
How do you balance holistic learning with the need to score well on tests?
My response to the test scores is: 'How can we bring more project-based, hands-on experiences that connect to the curriculum? How can we build that knowledge base so that when they are asked to perform on the test, they can take it?'
We do prepare the children for tests. But we are not a test-prep factory school. We're about the real hands-on, engaging project-based learning for kids. As the test draws near, we shift our programming to do explicit test-prep work.

What's the greatest challenge as you move forward at the school?
Childcare. That’s what we’re working on. Right now, we don’t have a full-scale, after-school program that runs until 6 [p.m.]. We're limited to funding to support that kind of program.
What parents have initiated is a partnership with Kids Orbit. Our parents have to pay [more than $3,000 a year]. It’s not funded by the school. That’s challenging for some parents.
Parents approached you about starting a Japanese and English dual-language class. How will it impact the school?
[It's bringing] new families. The parents are really invested.
Previously, our school was predominantly Hispanic and African-American. Now we have Asians. We're diversifying the school. The truth is that Bushwick is diverse. The school should reflect that.
It’s nice to know that parents who don’t even have their children here come and visit. It’s ignited a flame. We’re really ensuring our school embodies the East Williamsburg community.
You've increased the number of outside partnerships at the school since you've started. Why have you pursued that?
That was an area that we needed to improve in: How can we make the learning deeper and more hands-on and relevant, so that the content is not abstract?
We are continuing a partnership with Richard Bluttal, a consultant [formerly at] the New York Historical Society. He actually bought shackles through eBay and did a workshop with us as a staff [for a unit on slavery]. That created a genuine conversation among all of us, which is what we strive to do across the school community with workshops and content areas.
He plans with teachers. He goes into units of study. He’s helping teachers integrate objects and visual-thinking strategies into his lessons so that the learning is not just abstract and from a textbook, but looking at paintings [or objects] from the time.
In this progressive model, the children are integral. They are the center of the learning.

MOREistas in the House, UFT Not @ Success Academy Charter SUNY Authorization Hearing

We were there to battle the forces of Evil. The UFT, along with de Blasio, have abandoned the fight. MORE will join with communities, parents and teachers at co-located schools.

Here are videos of MOREistas making their points.

Alexandra Alves
Mindy Rosier
Michelle Baptiste
David Dobosz
Norm Scott - who should have pulled out his shirt out to cover that belly.

http://youtu.be/MjAbNW-sBvMhttp://youtu.be/MjAbNW-sBvM

The Demographic Shift of Eva Moskowitz - The Grim (and Almost All White) Faces of Success Academy Parents

A large group of MOREistas joined parents opposing Eva Moskowitz's politically and economically (not educationally) motivated Success Charter expansion into the most expensive real estate in the world, a clear shift from the stated purpose of serving poor kids of color - which from day 1 we never believed. Eva used these kids as cover for her real purposes.

Some speakers were benign towards these obviously wealthy and almost all white parents, saying they understood that they wanted what was best for their kids. I saw it differently. I'm betting that what they see as best for their kids is to not be in classrooms with poorer kids of color. Their smirking at some of the positive comments about how many good public schools there were set me off.

MORE's Mindy Rosier, a teacher at the Mickey Mantle school whose kids Eva wanted out in the street - one of the 3 schools where de Blasio actually stood his groung, posted:

What surprised me the most was the SA parents. It's like they stepped out of the Stepford Wives movie and they pretty much said the same thing. They did not care what was happening to any other parents and kids as long as they were happy. Much to our delight, public school parents later called them out on that.... Mindy Rosier

Here is a video of my speech (I'm working on the others).
https://vimeo.com/107632260



I took photos of the Success Academy parents and officials and their camera and sound guys - Why do they all look so grouchy?

Oh the horror

My kid is better than your kid

Grim and more Grim

My kids get gym, your don't - na na na na

A proud lawyer

Anyone named Courtney must be a charter school parent

One of the few I found likeable

Success officials - wishing they were in witness protection program

Do we really need to listen to this? Eva - you owe us a bonus

One of the regular Success cameramen

and the sound guy -

More from Mindy:
Last night's Success Academy's co-location hearing in District 2 & 3 had a huge showing. Found it interesting that even at a hearing you saw clear separation. Most pro charter on the right side of the room an most publi school education warriors and parents on the left. Success Academy had their own film team and we had our ever so faithful Norm Scott filming as well. The hearing took place in the conference room of District 2. Many people spoke from both sides. Members from CEC, MORE, advocates, parents, etc., all gave powerful, passionate speeches!!! Was so proud to be in the room with them. The were no officials from Success Academy there to speak however there were 7 "observers" present. There was one from the Success Academy team that spoke, she is the SA President of Parent Council and claimed that no one has been hiding anything and will answer all questions and after many demanded transparency from SA and a moratorium from SUNY. (Yeah, right!) I took many pics and posted most them to Twitter. (Check out my page for the live Tweeting and pics.)

What surprised me the most was the SA parents. It's like they stepped out of the Stepford Wives movie and they pretty much said the same thing. They did not care what was happening to any other parents and kids as long as they were happy. Much to our delight, public school parents later called them out on that. Most of those SA parents had children with special needs and two of them had ELL's. Hmmmmmmmmm. Those are the two areas that SA gets slammed for and those parents just so happened to be in attendance AND give testimony. Planned much!?!? I spoke to one of those parents after the hearing after she spoke to a few others. This woman claimed to be a labor lawyer. She told me she defends teachers all the time. Some of the things that came out of her mouth really surprised me. About Special Ed Teachers, she felt they are ALL too young and inexperienced and that's why they leave and the kids don't do well in pubic special ed programs. I called her out on that. I have 17yrs experience. Most of the teachers/paras in my school are seasoned. She stumbled. About teacher attrition, she dismissed that saying it doesn't matter. "SA teachers have very long days and work very hard." I replied, "yes they do and they burn out and leave. How is this good for children?" We calmly talked overall for about 10 minutes. She just didn't seem to get it. She only cared about her kid, (I understand parents always wants what's best for their kids,) however she clearly dismissed all of us because it does not fit into her vision of SA. So sad how much tunnel vision there is. I'm sorry, Success Academy CAN be compared to a cult with Moskowitz as their leader.

Appocalypse Soon - DC Watch Debate: Guns and Race

"When government officials distrust their people, they disarm the people to protect themselves from the dangers they fear from them...." - Gary Imhoff, DC Watch

You know I've been thinking along these lines. That with the .01% stealing resources with the ultimate possibility of unrest, the bringing home of the military and the flood of heavy weapons into police departments --- well, draw your own conclusions. There won't be jobs and the social net will be gone. Plus add the upcoming massive impact of climate change - will the powers use the excuse of unrest to decide to thin the herd?

The main problem the super wealthy face is that all these missions to Mars will not make that planet feasible as an escape valve from an uninhabitable earth for quite some time - but maybe their

descendents. They can always build temporary space stations in the sky. Why do you think all these billionaires are starting companies in a race for space while things fall apart down here?


Is this a further rightward drift of my thinking?  Or maybe I am moving further towards anarchism/libertarianism. Maybe I've had too much of a dose of certain leftists, with their tiny little bands of sectarians. Actually, there's almost a coming together of the left - always mistrustful of government and the right - more recently mistrustful of the government. A major difference is that the right sees the government as a liberal conspiracy and the left sees government as a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporations and wealthy.
 
I've subscribed to Gary Imhoff's DC Watch for years but haven't been paying much attention recently due to the influx of email. This caught my eye this morning. Here are both sides of the issue on arming the populace not against criminals, but against the criminals who control our society.

When Government Distrusts the People

Dear Washingtonians:
When government officials distrust their people, they disarm the people to protect themselves from the dangers they fear from them. My introduction to the last issue of themail caused some controversy for referring to the racial roots of the antigun movement in America, and how this distrust and fear of black Americans continues to motivate the antigun movement today, even in DC.
For a personal story of how the disarming of black Americans was used as a tool of racial repression, I’d recommend Robert F. Williams’ 1962 memoir, Negroes with Guns, that tells the story of his presidency of the Monroe North Carolina, chapter of the NAACP, and how he got a charter from the NRA for a rifle club to train people in self-defense against the KKK. (For those who don’t remember Williams, he later left the US to live in Cuba and China.) For more scholarly studies, try two 2014 books, one by Charles E. Cobb, Jr., a veteran of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible; the other by Nicholas Johnson, a professor at the Fordham University School of Law, Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms.
I’d say that the racial motivation of the antigun movement isn’t buried very deeply. Its rhetoric makes it open and evident. The Second Amendment, we are told, may be all right in rural Wild West places like Montana, but it can’t be abided in urban environments like the District of Columbia, Chicago, or New York, where there is more danger. What makes an urban environment dangerous? The same thing that makes urban music or urban fashion different from middle-American music and fashion. And we all know what that is.
Marc Battle, below, in an eloquent refutation of my thesis, argues that “the proliferation of guns will further exacerbate the already unacceptable level of police aggression in many communities,” and that forbidding guns to the people will therefore make the people safer from the police. But I don’t see how that refutes my point, rather than reinforcing it.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
###############

Manage the Proliferation of Guns
Marc Battle

Your comparison [“Council Antics,” themail, September 24] of DC government officials' efforts to legislatively manage the proliferation of guns in DC to "the southern states’ strategy of massive resistance to Constitutionally mandated desegregation" is dead wrong on too many levels to thoroughly discuss here. Your analogy attempts to equate the "plight" of would-be gun owners in DC, including those who want an open carry policy, to African Americans who suffered under centuries of oppressive state-sponsored racism that was enforced by physical and psychological violence. All of this was done to perpetuate a morally repugnant and intellectually dishonest mythology of white supremacy. With this as your contextual premise, your argument is fatally flawed and cannot be taken seriously.
Just as the First Amendment is understood to be subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions, so too is the Second Amendment. The Bill of Rights has never been interpreted as a recitation of limitless activities. Elected officials have a tough job balancing the rights of gun owners with the understandable concern of citizens who do not want to live in a Wild West society where people walk around armed to the teeth. And in a society where unarmed African Americans are far too often shot by police, one must consider the effect of how the proliferation of guns will further exacerbate the already unacceptable level of police aggression in many communities. Simply put -- there are legitimate reasons for elected officials to limit the presence and use of guns in a community. However, there was never any legitimate reason to subjugate African Americans to racism, discrimination, and violence.
There are many additional issues to debate regarding guns in society. But comparing the tactics of DC officials to those of racist segregationists adds nothing of value to this important discussion.
###############

EIA: Providence Teachers Union Prefers Convicted Felon to Charter School Director

My question to Mike Antonucci is: What exactly is the difference?

Providence Teachers Union Prefers Convicted Felon to Charter School Director

The executive board of the Providence Teachers Union “overwhelmingly” endorsed Vincent “Buddy” Cianci Jr. for mayor. “Mr. Cianci had a little bit more experience in terms of the city’s schools and had a better understanding of the fundamental needs of the schools as they exist in this point in time,” said PTU president Maribeth Calabro. Cianci also picked up the endorsements of the police and firefighters unions.

MORE Takes a Stand Against Eva Moskowitz at Hearings - Last Monday and Today in Manhattan

Thanks so much to all of you dear sisters and brothers who organized around getting folks out or going to the charter school hearing on Monday. These pics from DNAinfo are worth a thousand words and clearly show who's active and ready in the fight for Public Ed! So proud to wake up and see this today, so proud to stand in solidarity with all of you! 

http://dnain.fo/1xhTsyY.. Megan M. MOR

A gaggle of 9 MOREistas attended the hearing last

Monday in Brooklyn as Eva intends to invade more gentrified areas in Districts 13, 14, and 15. The CEC presidents of all these districts, joined by District 23, are working together to address the charter problem. Noted Connecticut charter scoundrel Steve Perry, strangely, attended the hearing but left when MORE's Gloria Brandman did her "Eva the witch" impersonation.

MORE's Pat Dobosz with CEC14 Tesa Wilson behind her

Most of us spoke and the community people were very happy we were there to support them. Here's the full video with all of the speeches, followed by the announcement of today's hearing on 7th Ave in Manhattan.

See news story at http://dnain.fo/1xhTsyY

Charter Hearings Monday 9/29

MORE Caucus

https://www.facebook.com/events/777864822272715/

PLEASE join us tomorrow today.

333 7th ave, 7th floor Conference Room NYC

A public hearing is being held to solicit comments regarding a new charter school application. Success Academy proposes to open 14 new charter schools in various 
Community School Districts (CSDs) in New York City.

Success Academy Charter School NYC 1 & 2 have expressed interest in opening in CSDs 2 & 3. 

Speaker Registration: 5:30pm

Hearing starts at 6:00pm

Stand with public school parents,

students and teachers!

Once again we are here to Say NO to the displacement of public schools by charter schools.

WHAT CO-LOCATION MEANS: 

*Public schools with limited financial support, forced to compete against charter schools with

ample funds for the newest resources

*Overcrowding as schools deal with fewer rooms

*Competition between schools for access to the school's libraries, gyms, auditoriums, and cafeterias

*Parents pitted against parents in the same neighborhoods due to inequitable funding between charters and the district public schools.

*Increased importance of high-stakes tests to determine the future of students and teachers

*The excessing of quality teachers into the ATR pool of rotating teachers, as fewer rooms mean

fewer classroom teachers

+Separate and unequal Schooling for our students!

NYCFIRST LEGO League Kickoff - Photos

I had a great time yesterday at NYU/Poly on Jay Street at our annual FLL kickoff. We have about 170 NYC teams registered so far for the Challenge which is called World Class, all about learning. Kids not only build a robot for the game field - below - represent different styles of learning - but also do and present an extensive research project on the subject.

Teams spend  the next 3 months prepping. Borough qualifiers take place in January. Finalists go to citywide event at Javits on the weekend of March 14. The winner of that may be eligible to go to international event in St. Louis in late April.

I've been working with NYCFIRST since practically the day I retired - actually from that first day in Sept. 2002.

The amazing Rich Wong - engineer and teacher extraordinaire

The Secret to Eva Moskowitz’s ‘Success’

Another curious fact about Success Academy is the attrition of both students and teachers. For schools that are widely acclaimed, this is surprising indeed. Why do so many students and teachers leave?... What we can learn from Success Academy is that it is possible to winnow out the most intractable students and be left with the best and most compliant ones by selective attrition. But that is no model for public education....The Nation

MORE people spoke at Monday night's charter school hearings - and I particularly pointed out that this was the plan from Day 1 - to use Success as a battering ram to undermine and ultimately destroy the public school system and the unionized teachers. And it has been working, due in part to the lack of resistance (other than backstage) by the UFT. If the UFT wanted to close down the Brooklyn Bridge with a mass demonstration it could do so - there is enough anti-Eva sentiment amongst UFT members.

This article appeared in the October 13, 2014 edition of The Nation.

 

Eva Moskowitz (Photo courtesy of House Committee on Education and the Workforce Democrats, CC 2.0)

This article is adapted from the author’s blog, DianeRavitch.net.

 

The media have long been in search of a ”miracle” school, a school that can succeed in turning poor children of color into academic superstars. Of course, there already are poor children of color who are academic superstars, but they’re the exception, not the rule (the same is true for poor white children). The defining characteristic of low test scores is poverty, not color. The titans of our society are especially interested in the pursuit of miracle schools because finding them would relieve those with high incomes of any obligation to alleviate the poverty that interferes with academic achievement.

 

Today we have that very school—or chain of schools—in New York City: Success Academy. It was declared a success almost from the day it opened, back in 2006, as Harlem Success Academy. Founded by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz and backed by a team of Wall Street financiers, Success Academy schools have delivered spectacular results on state tests. While everyone else lagged behind on the new Common Core tests, Moskowitz’s schools did well.

 

Success Academy schools have been consistently delivering high test performances for several years. And that record has not gone unnoticed. Madeleine Sackler, daughter of Connecticut multimillionaire Jonathan Sackler, made a film about Moskowitz and her charter schools in 2010 called The Lottery, which portrayed them as miraculous institutions holding the key to families’ hopes and dreams. The much-hyped documentary Waiting for Superman also featured Moskowitz’s celebrated lottery. Just recently, The New York Times Magazine published a fawning article about her, seeming to position Moskowitz as a future mayoral candidate.

 

What are the secrets of Eva’s success? To begin with, there’s the lottery itself. As the Times reported in 2010, Moskowitz spent as much as $325,000 to market her charter schools in Harlem, while the neighborhood public schools could afford no more than $500 to advertise their offerings. The goal of Moskowitz’s marketing was to build her brand and generate excitement about the lottery. This gave her schools an aura of prestige, with the lucky winners clutching their tickets. But the very fact of a lottery is a screening device, since the least functional families—i.e., those who are homeless—are too busy trying to survive to enter it.

Moskowitz often says that she enrolls exactly the same types of children as the public schools, but this is not true. Success Academy has very few of the students with the most severe disabilities (in some of its schools, the number is zero). In Harlem’s public elementary schools, by contrast, the average proportion of such children is 14.1 percent. Also, Success Academy has half as many English-language learners as the neighboring public schools. Whether this is the result of a screening process at the outset or because these children have been “counseled out” is unclear; what is undeniable is that Success Academy has significantly fewer of the children with the highest needs.

Another curious fact about Success Academy is the attrition of both students and teachers. For schools that are widely acclaimed, this is surprising indeed. Why do so many students and teachers leave?

The only Success Academy school that offers grades three through eight (the testing grades) tested 116 third graders but only thirty-two eighth graders. Three other Success Academy schools have expanded to sixth grade. One tested 121 third graders but only fifty-five sixth graders; another, 106 third graders but only sixty-eight sixth graders; and the last, eighty-three third graders but only fifty-four sixth graders. Why the shrinking student body? When students leave these schools (for whatever reason), they are not replaced by other incoming students. In public schools, students also leave, but they are usually replaced by new students. Of the thirty-two eighth graders to finish at Success Academy, twenty-seven took the competitive exam to enter one of New York City’s prestigious specialized high schools. Despite their excellent scores on the state test, not one of these students gained admission to a specialized school like Stuyvesant or Bronx Science.

Teacher attrition at the Success Academy charter schools has also been unusually high. Journalist Helen Zelon wrote in the magazine City Limits that in Harlem Success Academies 1 through 4, “more than half of all teachers left the schools ahead of the 2013–14 school year. In one school, three out of four teachers departed.” On a website called Glassdoor, many former teachers expressed their candid views about the “oppressive” work climate at Success Academy schools.

Also, as the result of “co-locating” a charter school in a public-school building, the educational climate comes to feel very separate and unequal. The Success Academy children get spiffy new facilities and the latest technology, while typically the host public school loses space, such as its computer room, music room, art room, science lab or even its library. In PS 149, a school for special-needs children lost all of these things and will lose even more space now that Success Academy’s request to expand has been granted. Last spring, following a public battle between Moskowitz and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, the State Legislature required the city to give charter schools whatever space they requested and to pay their rent if they needed private space as well.

So even though Moskowitz can raise millions of dollars in a single night; and even though she is paid more than $500,000 a year to supervise her schools; and even though Success Academy has a private board well populated by hedge-fund managers, Moskowitz’s charter schools do not have to pay rent to use public space.

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The fundamental question is this: Are charter schools like Success Academy a model for public education? The answer is: they are not. If public schools were able to exclude, one way or another, English-language learners and students with severe disabilities, the schools would have higher scores. But they cannot do this because, with the exception of a small number of exam schools, public schools are required to accept all students, regardless of their language skills, learning disabilities or test scores. If public schools could refuse to accept new enrollees after a certain grade, they could “build a culture,” as Success Academy’s fans say it does. But public schools must take all enrollees, even those who show up mid-year.

What we can learn from Success Academy is that it is possible to winnow out the most intractable students and be left with the best and most compliant ones by selective attrition. But that is no model for public education.

 

NYC Teacher Steve Ryan's Play - A Beautiful Mourning - At Manhattan Rep Theatre Oct. 16, 17

The boy can act, sing dance - and now we learn Steve Ryan, a teacher at Leon Goldstein HS in Brooklyn, a colleague and pal of Kit Wainer and Mike Schirtzer (and a MORE supporter) can also write. His play will be featured at Manhattan Rep for 2 days next month.

Steve is also appearing this weekend (tonight, tomorrow and Sunday matinee) in Godspell at the RTC. One of the fun things is when Steve's students come out to see him perform - their reactions to their teacher doing all kinds of shtick is often very funny.

Steve sent along this message:

Read the bottom of the flyer if you want to reserve for "series A"   It is a 50 seat theater.  Tell him what show you are reserving for.  Both nights start at 6:30pm.  Get there early because they start promptly. Hope you can come! 

Updated: Kathleen Elvin and AP Emily Creveling Use Terror Tactics to Intimidate

Corrected and Updated
These comments on our earlier post (John Dewey Principal Kathleen Elvin Discontinues Iraq War Vet and Mother) provides some more detail on the reasons behind the discontinued Iraq war vet and mom. Are Elvin and Creveling the local version of ISIS, using this teacher as a hostage in retaliation for actions taken by the union - beheading the teacher, economically, by taking her job.

The actions of Principal Elvin, along with Emily Crevling, the Assistant Principal of the English Department in John Dewey High School, regarding the termination of a untenured teacher, who was teaching a mere 4 months, should be viewed as nothing less than malfeasance. The teacher was hard-working, followed school policies, and the students attended her class because she established a rapport with them. Her only misstep was voicing a difference of opinion and questioned Ms. Crevling on a particular matter. I suppose this teacher would have needed more than 4 months to realize that in John Dewey High School one never questions Kathleen Elvin or her puppet assistant principals. This teacher, had she been given the opportunity to continue to teach in John Dewey, would have quickly learned that Principal Elvin prides herself on running a tight ship. So tight, that staff is not allowed to disagree with her or else she will find a way to retaliate. So tight, that she has managed to bring on [the blog post] John Dewey Principal Kathleen Elvin Discontinues Iraq War Vet and Mother

This is just the latest disgusting act of this power-mad, vengeful, menacing, and roundly-hated "Closer" Principal, who I have sent out diatribes about many times, to no avail. Elvin has not only gone after teachers who she takes a dislike to, like this one, for no explicable reason, but has decimated entire Dept's. since her arrival 3 years ago: there are at least 5 tenured teachers who are internally " rubber-roomed" through 30-20a terminations, and many others, including myself, who were forced out, through retirement as in my case, or by transferring to a less dangerous school administration. Now, I heard that she changed the locks on all the teacher' s lounges, just for sheer spite, and staff are left to eat/ get down-time in their own classrms (not very private!), or their cars!!! She has used sycophantic and spineless and heartless and careerist dept supervisors like Creveling, as well as her emasculated APO Messenger, who was an ATR up til last school year, to terrorize and destroy those on her Blacklist ( which includes other supervisors,paras, aides, as well as teachers ), and she has ruined a great school with paranoia, divisiveness, and a mania to " know everything"....a Stalinesque horror show. She must be curbed, and exposed for the true crimes she goes on committing against hardworking staff , who are virtual prisoners.

John Dewey Principal Kathleen Elvin Discontinues Iraq War Vet and Mother

 “We’re sorry you won’t have health insurance for your child and thank you for serving your country. You’re fired!” 

• Single Mother
• Iraq War Veteran
• Teaching for Only Four Months

This is who Elvin and the AP of English wanted to terminate this past June. Termination would have meant that she could no longer teach in any New York City Public School. She dared to have her own ideas. She dared to want a voice. So charges based on nothing of any real consequence were brought against her. In fact, most of us believe they were trumped up.....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "No Change of Tone at John Dewey HS: Principal Kat...":

I've known about this case since the Discontinue at the end of June. Every teacher who came into contact with this woman praised her and people would have been shocked she was Discontinued and had her license lifted so she could no longer teach in the DOE - except they know the vicious retaliatory principal, Catherine Elvin, plays games with people's lives for political reasons. The story I heard was that this teacher, given some bullshit idiocy to do asked why and what was the point. Enough! You dare to ask a question? End of job. End of career.

I heard the teacher's former commanding officer spoke up for her for the appeal - which are pretty much useless with people who are associated with the principal making the decision.

My suggestion was for the teacher to show up at a PEP in full military uniform with her child and confront Farina and the panelists - along with teachers testifying in her behalf.

Roots of the UFT: Max Shachtman, Al Shanker Mentor

Vera Pavone and I wrote a review of the Shanker bio in New Politics: Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neo-Con | New Politics which delved into the roots of Shankerism which still dominates the UFT today.

It is important for people to know how the UFT/Unity party was born out of Trotskyism and the the firmament of left-wing politics, then morphing into socialism and then into vicious anti-left right wing social democracy with Max Shachtman as a leading light - the Social Democrats USA (SDUSA) of which most of the union leadership were members of, including Al Shanker and his successor Sandy Feldman. As for Randi and Mulgrew, with the end of the cold war, it is not exactly clear if the party still exists and if it does what their relationship to it might be. Leo Casey ideologically seems to be tied to the politics of SDUSA but I don't pay all that attention. Many years ago when I was in the early stages of Ed Notes and not blatantly anti-Unity, Leo and I were in touch for a while and he was sending my comments on my commentary. Now that we are no longer at war, the next time I see him I may ask him some questions from his view for some balance with the views of my friends on the left. I'm sure my discussion here is fairly shallow. (At this time I see myself as a left-wing social democrat, which is as far right as I want to drift.)

So for those who wonder why the UFT/AFT take positions far beyond teaching, there are roots in anti-communist social democracy. Shanker learned his lessons so well at the feet of Shachtman that the leading ideologues in the UFT feel they must control every aspect of the organization not only as a power play - like what would it mean if real opposition caucuses gained a few seats -- but as a way to keep left ideology and terminology out of official bodies. Other than to use certain leftists to their advantage in order to paint the opposition as a far out left.

Shanker used the UFT as an instrument of his political ideology nationally and internationally. (See George Schmidt - The American Federation of Teachers and the CIA which Vera retyped and we published for George.


A social democratic party, as do most leftist parties, take wide-ranging positions. I find the fault lines emerge when these parties push their ideologies in the mass organizations they either control outright (Unity Caucus and the UFT) or in organizations they participate in -- like MORE and New Action, for example. And always not in the most forthright manner, which often leads to internal splits. I'll review the history of these splits and realignments in the opposition over the past 50 years in a future post - I was part of the MORE summer series this past summer when we ran an event on this topic - there is video available.

You know the old joke - put 2 Trotsyists in a room and you get 3 groups. Splitting is endemic to the nature of these parties and that is why you end up with a tower of babel on the left. But more on this in future posts where I'll delve more into the history of the groups presently involved in the UFT.

From Wikipedia, Max Shachtman (/ˈʃɑːktmən/; September 10, 1904 – November 4, 1972) was an American Marxist theorist. He evolved from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL-CIO President George Meany.

Individuals influenced by Shachtman's organisations have shared his opposition to Stalinism. A number of political organizations have emerged from the Trotskyist movement which have considered themselves to be Marxist. This broad tendency is described as "Left Shachtmanism", but does not include followers of Tony Cliff such as the International Socialist Tendency^[23] as Cliff himself was greatly critical of Shachtman's entire political life and theoretical work.^[24]
Glotzer argues that Shachtman's theory of bureaucratic collectivism has also informed unorthodox approaches within Marxism towards the class nature of the Eastern Bloc.
A number of Shachtman's former followers became leading figures in the neo-conservative movement.^[25]

Inevitably, there are UFT members to the right of the UFT leadership and we see some of that playing out today over the Garner march. But again, I'll do some political analysis in the future.

Contents at Wiki

• 1 Beginnings
• 2 Trotskyist leader
  • 2.1 Differences with Cannon and Trotsky
  • 2.2 Workers' Party Merger
  • 2.3 The Fourth International
  • 2.4 Break with Trotsky
• 3 Political evolution
  • 3.1 The development of the "Third Camp"
  • 3.2 Shachtman in the Socialist Party
  • 3.3 Death and legacy
• 4 Footnotes
• 5 Works
  • 5.1 Original writings
  • 5.2 Translations and editions
• 6 Further reading
  • 6.1 Shachtman
  • 6.2 Shachtman and others, especially the Trotskyist traditions
  • 6.3 Oral History
• 7 External links

Shachtman's wife was Shanker's assistant.

Yetta Barsh Shachtman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yetta_Barsh_Shachtman

Wikipedia

Yetta Barsh Shachtman (1925-1996), American socialist politician, married to Max Shachtman, a Marxist theorist. She wrote most of Albert Shanker's weekly ...

And see my post on Norms Notes with an article by Lois Weiner:

Norm's Notes: ALBERT SHANKER'S LEGACY

Oct 11, 2007 - After Albert Shanker's death in February 1997, the numerous .... The intellectual mentor of this group, Max Shachtman, was well known in ...

And I came across a piece by our own Kit Wainer and Marian Swerdlow that no longer seems to be available.

Yetta Barsh on Shachtman - Marxists Internet Archive

https://www.marxists.org/archive/.../barsh.htm

Marxists Internet Archive

Aug 18, 2013 - Max Shachtman Collection, Tamiment Institute/Ben Josephson Library.

Albert Shanker, Image and Reality (Obit by Marian Swerdlow and Kit Adam Wainer)