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School Scope: Bits
‘n Pieces
By Norm Scott
I got a call from Gail at
Fios that my monthly bill was going up but the good news was that for about the
same cost I could have five premium movie channels I will barely watch instead
of the three I currently have that I don’t watch. I told her my problem was
that with Netflix I had so many choices I often wasted so much time trying to
choose I ended up just watching the Yankee or Mets game. I took the deal anyway
because I can’t resist a “bargain.”
So, as I come to what will be
the final School Scope of the summer, I face the same problem: I have so much
to write about I can’t choose. So I’ll take a brief shot at a few of them and
leave it to interested readers to follow up.
The SHSAT
My last two columns were
about the test that some elite NYC high schools use as sole admission. While I don’t
support the entire structure behind standardized tests and all the baggage they
bring to the educational table, I won’t take the position at this time that
they shouldn’t count at all – just that other factors should be taken into
account, including creating a diversified school environment for all students
which will benefit everyone. That means having some flexibility so that if a
student scores a one point below another don’t assume that the other student is
one point smarter. I scored very well on standardized tests to become a teacher
but certainly wasn’t a better teacher than colleagues who scored much lower
(our scores were posted on the seniority lists and some of the best teachers
had the lowest scores). In other words, don’t take a narrow view of the concept
of merit. Speaking of which…
Teacher Merit Pay Dies in Newark and Denver
We heard this summer of the
death of the much vaunted merit pay for teachers in Denver and Newark pushed by
the ed deformers with a lot of help from former UFT and current AFT President
Randi Weingarten which negates the charge that it was the teacher unions that
killed them. For years Randi campaigned for teachers in numerous cities to
accept contracts with merit pay. At the time I termed that “Randi’s Sellout
Tour.” In Newark, then mayor Cory Booker took the $100 million bucks Mark
Zuckerman gave him and wasted it on this and other scams. Good riddance
hopefully to him as a serious candidate and to merit pay. While capitalism may
teach a logic that these schemes should work, the reality is that they don’t
work in education and cause harm because the only way to judge “merit” is based
on student test scores. I knew every trick in the book on how to inflate test scores
and could have been a rich teacher. I know there are many rabid capitalists out
there who doubt me and consider the way teachers are paid based on years served
as socialism. Of course police, fire, sanitation and just about every other
public worker don’t work on merit pay. Go out and do some research.
Speaking of capitalism and socialism, I’ve been doing a little bit of thinking given that
this is the first time that the concept of socialism is being discussed in a
serious way since the 1930s. Polls show that over 40% of young people think
favorably of socialism, which has caused panic among right wingers and
Republicans, which pretty much boils down to the same thing. Witness last
week’s distorted and hysteria-filled (and hilarious) letter to The WAVE
attacking socialists and branding Democrats as socialists. As if here are no
failed capitalist systems. But that is the way Republicans think so I don’t
hold it against them. The reality is that the leadership of the Democratic
Party are just as nervous over the insurrection from the left in the party they
have owned which is why they are pushing Biden. There is much confusion over
what exactly “socialism” means and I was using this column to explore the
differences last summer. I get the feeling that The WAVE doesn’t want too much
talk on that issue so check out my blog for that discussion.
When you examine the
presidential candidates considered most “left” (despite polls showing their
ideas have a lot of public support, Sanders and Warren, there are differences.
Bernie has always been a socialist and brands himself as a democratic
socialist, which means bringing elements of socialism through democratic means
by convincing enough people that society needs a serious makeover. Warren
proudly calls herself pro-capitalism, as long as it is not allowed to run amuck
with the “greed is good even of we have to burn down the Brazilian rain forest
and make the earth inhabitable one day” crowd.
Norm burns with ambition – to
blog at ednotesonline.com.
