Tweed Subverts School Leadership Team Training

We've been tracking the subversion of School Leadership Team training (required by NY State law) by Joel Klein's Tweedledees through input coming from the NYC Education News listserve, populated mostly by activist parents (who have not been bought off by BloomKlein).

SLT's were set up as a means of teachers and parents to have a share in making basic decisions at the school level. But BloomKlein believe in all power to the principals and since most principals resent input, they are happy to go through the sham of SLT's, and often manipulate them.

I started posting comments from the listserve thread in a post "Incompetently yours" pointing to incompetence as the reason. I was wrong. It is all intentional to keep parental involvement at a minimum by feigning incompetence.

The local and national press, so enamored and apologetic of the BloomKlein political agenda for the schools, have ignored this undercurrent of parent unhappiness, which Bloomberg has generally derided as dilettantish (I don't have the specifics here but if you do leave them as comments.) Of course, dictatorships don't want anyone questioning them or having any real input.

Klein cynically appointed Martine Guerrier, a mild critic in the past, as the CEO of parent engagement at $150K a year on Feb. 28, 2007, the day of the massive rally of parent, teachers and communities organized by (and later sold out by the UFT). I know and like Martine but was very disappointed at the loss of her voice, but, hey 150k is a 150k. I wrote about it ("Say it Ain't So Martine") back then (search for her name on the blog to read stories I wrote.) I also got a weird critical email from NY Times ed reporter at the time, David Herzenhorn, after I accused the Times of writing puff pieces on BloomKlein generally, and the Guerrier appointment in particular, by praising Klein for choosing a severe critic in Martine. Not true, as I pointed out to Herzenhorn. (He has since left the NYC ed beat to cover Congress in Washington and we hope there are no repeats of the Judith Miller fiasco. NY Times ed reporters should be required to take a course in investigative reporting from the NY Sun's Elizabeth Green.)

Martine's rep has suffered since then as seen by....

This post by Jane Reiff President of (PTA) Presidents Council D25 in Queens exposed some of the underbelly. Here are just a few excerpts:

Dear Chancellor Klein and Ms. Guerrier,

You, Ms. Guerrier, personally told me that the training was set up for teams when I argued that holding a training from 10-12:30PM on a school day was not conducive for teachers and administrators and obviously the OFEA training was not meant for teams. Why on earth and how disrespectful can the DOE be to turn around and say that the teachers who were present were not supposed to be sent to this training. First of all your notice that you sent to Principals clearly stated mandated training for all teams. You expected the schools to pay for subs for a 2 and a half hour training minimum ( this does not include travel time back and forth) and the people were thrown out after 45 minutes after enduring a worthless training. The DOE staff then proceeded to say that remuneration would be for the full time of 2 and 1/2 hours. If you did not want the Principals to comply with your notice you were not clear and then of course that would also mean you lied to me.

How on earth can one make sense of this? I clearly stated and requested that the training Presidents council of D25 set up with the UFT be counted as valid training and you clearly told me it would not be as thorough as the OFEA training. By thorough do you mean incompetent because I cannot think of another word that comes to mind to describe what was told to me. Not only have you not reached out to the parents to find out what time would be good for them you apparently have a lack of content to your training. I am copying and pasting some of the comments forwarded to me by the variety of people who attended and other comments about your training in other Districts. Martine, although you basically accused me of trying to put words in your mouth about beating a dead horse and how you do not want to see that in the press (another insult as you have no idea who I am and the extent of my involvement in the schools but Chancellor Klein does), I do not have to make up any of this information.

Jane Reiff President of Presidents Council D25

Follow the entire thread at Norms' Notes here.

Bad Teaching Leads to Death Row Says James Liebman in NY Times

Shaping the System That Grades City Schools - New York Times

Guest article submitted by Alice to ICE-mail
Nov. 19, 2007

The November 18, 2007 issue of Ed Notes Online's article, "Hunting Down Bad Teachers" observes that "The nation wide focus on quality teaching is curious when compared to lack of focus on quality of physicians where mistakes lead to people dying."

Apparently, the DOE is attempting to make just that connection by hiring James Liebman, a death row litigation expert,to be the chief accountability officer in rating schools.

The Times writes that Mr. Liebman "...would like to think fewer people might end up on death row had they received a basic education tailored to encouraging their strengths."

Thus, the connection between poor education and death has been made.

This article is filled with propaganda techniques from the folksy, plain folks tone, to the reframing techniques deployed in such statements as these: "We're not measuring kids, we're measuring schools."

I really suggest that everyone read this article several times looking for examples such as these.

If looked at closely, the reasoning is obviously ludicrous.

If read quickly, the subliminal message is "Bad Teaching Leads To Death".

As I've said in a number of posts, it would be suicidal to mount any public campaign without studying propaganda techniques.

George Lakoff, an expert in linguistics, writes in his article "What Orwell Didn't Know About The Brain, The Mind and Language,"

"Probably 98% of your reasoning is unconscious...Thought is structured, in large measure, in terms of 'frames' - brain structures that control mental stimulation and hence reasoning."

Lakoff contends that we think in terms of frames. Such a frame is "Failing schools." The catch is that once the frame is wired into the circuitry of the brain. Lakoff writes, "...the new neural structure cannot just be erased. In other words, if teachers try to negate the concept of "bad teachers, failing schools, etc" using those words, they just reinforce the frame.

Lakoff writes that repeating those words just ..."activates the metaphor and strengthens what you're against." (pgs. 70 -71,) Saying that the schools aren't failing, in other words, reinforces the concept that the schools ARE failing. An example of reframing this concept would be, "The schools aren't failing to provide for students, The DOE is failing to provide for schools."

The DOE has their PR experts and the media. In the above article, they're created an insidious frame equating poor teaching with death row.

Any truths told will be spun. If we don't know what we're doing linguistically, we will just provide ammunition to be used against us.

If we do know what we're doing, we can reframe their propaganda and use it against them.
Above Submitted by Alice

Ed Note:
In an interesting anomaly, John Lawhead, one of the ICE founders and one of the most astute analysts and critics of high stakes testing and just about everything James Liebman has advocated since he's been at the DOE, spent many years as Liebman's administrative Assistant at Columbia before John began his teaching career. John should have spiked the coffee machine with truth serum. Currently an ESL teacher at soon-to-be closed Tilden HS after being being forced out of the closed Bushwick HS, we have to wonder if Liebman is closing every school John teaches at because he's short of help.

Randi & the Boys Hanging Out in the Good Ole Days

Follow the bouncing ball:
The AFT and soon the UFT support Hillary for Pres.
NYC teachers are urged to give support to the campaign.
What if Hillary gets elected
and
Appoints Joel Klein to the cabinet as Secty of Education or Attorny General?
HOW WILL NYC TEACHERS FEEL ABOUT HELPING KLEIN, THE PERSON THEY MOST DESPISE, INTO THE CABINET?
REMEMBER:
Klein's wife Nicole Seligman appeared with BILL Clinton when he testified before the grand jury in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and she spoke on his behalf before the Senate at the impeachment trial.

graphics by DB








Not all that far-fetched.

Incompetently Yours from Bloomberg and Klein

One thing people expected from entremanures like Bloomberg was some level of competence. People working in the schools have seen so little evidence that many are pining for the good old days of corrupt local school boards where at least you knew who was stealing from you. As for competence, the local yokels actually knew how to massage the bureacracy to make things work.

The next time the national press like Newsweek wants to write glowing reports on the competence of BloomKlein and the miracles they have wrought, they should check this story out as a prime example of how incompetently these "business" model people are running things. And while they're here, they should jump to the story in today's NY Post on further distortions in the grad rate at the much heralded small schools, where diplomas are granted based on passing rates of 55 instead of the more difficult 65.

Melvyn Meer from the Queens Community Board 11 Education Committee reports

I went to an official SLT "training" this morning. It was something of a fiasco.

Scheduled from 10 am to 12:30, it began at 10:15 and ended at 10:55.

Almost all that happened was that there was an outline handout that was also flashed on a screen. A lady read it, slowly, and it was almost over. I'm certain almost everyone in the audience knew this oh so basic material of the outline before going to this "training".

After the reading there were to be questions and an Asst. Principal from a middle school rose as if to ask a question. But what she said was that all the teachers from her team, as well as herself were there, and the school went to the expense of hiring substitutes for them so that they could attend. Her point was that for the considerable expense and effort the "training" was ridiculous-- only 40 minutes and the reading of a rather elementary outline.

I guess she expected to get some sympathy from a DoE attorney who was there as a back-up knowledgeable resource. Instead she got the bad news that it was a violation of State law for principals and teachers to be attending that meeting during the official school day.

Well, there must have been many others, for the room broke out in uncontrolled and furiously noisy argument all over the place and the meeting was, effectively, over.

I suggest that if you have to go to the training, bring something to read.

The Candlelight Vigil

photo by Norm Scott

There's a long story about the candlelight vigil for Monday, Nov. 26 proposed by rubber room denizen David Pakter. His amazing statement (Flickering Flames, Burning Words), that I hope he gets to make at the PEP or on the steps of Tweed on Nov. 26, is posted at Norms Notes.

How Randi Weingarten came to support it, and her motivations for doing so, are for a later time. Suffice to say: just another attempt to derail and deflect any militancy and most important, keep any organizing that might end up turning against the leadership from occurring. But if you are a regular reader of this blog, you have been reading chapter and verse on the prime directive of the UFT/Unity Caucus leadership – hold onto power by any means and pay strict attention to every single threat no matter how minor. People who have spoken out tell me all the time just how much attention the top leadership pays to "little ole me." While flattered, they eventually come to see there is method in all this - kill 'em with kindness until they go away. The old four F mantra of teenage boys: Find 'em, Feel 'em, Fuck 'em, Forget 'em.

By the way, I took the photo at Gracie Mansion, a vigil that went nowhere, against Giuliani (remember him?) who was the most horrible mayor and the reason the UFT leaders were having such difficulty and just wait 'till he's out of office, yada, yada, yada.

Here is the email sent out by TAGNYC, who seem resistant to the Unity bull:

Teachers- CONTACT OTHER TEACHERS AND DEMAND THAT RANDI DO SOMETHING!

The UFT got us into this witch-hunting of teachers mess by accepting Bloomberg-Klein's description of the Union as weak- unable to fight back. Randi went along with the "Big Boys" and now the chickens are coming home to roost on her back- claws sharply extended. We gave away the store and now have to fight back without the contractual rights the Union had fought so hard to get- like protection of our job rights! The Union has accepted the myth that the TEACHERS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE STATE OF THE INNER CITY EDUCATION SYSTEM. Randi's acceptance of this 50 year old lie is the cruelest cut of all. It is the teachers who have kept this system from imploding entirely- going back day after day to try to teach while society has closed its eyes to the problems that has made teaching so difficult. Randi- the "Big Boys" are finally owning up to the truth- they are bribing kids to learn. Now will you show the fighting spirit that you and 200 other UFTers had the nerve to travel to New Orleans to "teach" to that City's teachers' union.

ENOUGH and again ENOUGH!

RANDI, CALL OUT YOUR TEACHERS. NOT DURING THE SCHOOL DAY BUT AFTER SCHOOL. TAKE US TO THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE OR DOWN FIFTH AVENUE AT 5P.M. ON A BUSINESS DAY. DO SOMETHING RANDI. PICK YOUR 80,000 PLUS TEACHERS UP OFF THE FLOOR. GET THE BOOT OFF OF OUR NECKS. AND SHOW TEACHERS IN NEW ORLEANS THAT THE UFT DID NOT SELL THEM A CROCK OF _______.

Randi- You have to follow your own advice "Spit in the face of fear." Bloomberg and Klein do not have to be feared.

TAGNYC

Hunting Down Bad Teachers

The nationwide focus on quality teaching is curious when compared to lack of focus on quality of physicians, where mistakes lead to people dying. At Friday's ICE meeting, Michael Fiorillo raised a very valid point in comparing the way the US health care and education systems are perceived. He surmised that in reality, the US education system compares rather favorably internationally in comparison to the health care system, where US infant mortality rates are somewhat shameful, among a bunch of other negative stats. Let's say that in poor areas, they are no worse than comparable to each other. Yet, why isn't the Mayor finding a million dollars to root out bad doctors? (I won't even get into the legal profession here.)

I understand the focus on the desire to get rid of “ineffective” teachers but I would love to get people to tell me how to define that. I know plenty of teachers who ended up at private schools and are are considered to be good teachers because the NYC system spit them out due to large class sizes and unruly kids. “Effectiveness” is a relative term. In my first year if I kept the kids from swinging from the lights I was considered effective.

I was part of a group mentoring Teaching Fellows and stories abound of some of them floundering in one school but flourishing in another.

Look at your own schools and from what you can see, what is the % of lousy teachers? Try rating your colleagues in order of effectiveness. Would that list match the administrators’ list? The parents and students’ lists? (I was in Spain 2 years ago at a school where the principal was elected by teachers, parents and kids.) Most bad teachers find a way to migrate out of the classroom, all too often to supervisor’s chair.

There will always be a bell curve of teacher quality no matter what is done and everyone will have some teachers who are great, average and poor. The way to improve quality is to make conditions as ripe as possible for good teaching to take place. But what is occurring is a quota system where principals have to show results in getting rid of some teachers and they often pick on the most vulnerable personality wise, often loners without popular support in the school. In other cases, they pick on teachers who might be good teaching a whole class but struggle in the workshop model. Many have found this to occur when they were slow to adapt to the major changes Diana Lam and Carmen Farina forced down people's throats.

With so many 20-year plus veteran teachers under attack we have to ask, what if they get rid of them all and replace them with first year newbies of unknown quality, many of whom may be worse than the people they are replacing? Are the kids better off?

After the meeting Loretta Prisco sent this item.

A Third of New York’s Worst Repeat Offender Doctors
Continue to Practice Without Licensing Consequences

Statement of Laura MacCleery, Director, Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division

Nov. 16, 2007

We are shocked – but not surprised – by recent revelations that a New York doctor risked exposing more than 600 people to deadly diseases due to a terrible hygiene practice.

While state health officials delayed public release of the information to patients, the state’s medical board also has let this avoidable public health disaster go utterly unaddressed, incredibly finding no evidence of wrongdoing by the anesthesiologist, Dr. Harvey Finkelstein of Plainview, N.Y.

We immediately took another look at the National Practitioner Data Bank, a record of medical malpractice payments. We found that from 1990 to 2007, only a scant third of doctors with 10 or more medical malpractice payouts had a reportable licensure disciplinary action.

That shoddy record of discipline for the worst offenders deserves a close look by state lawmakers. The “I’ll scratch your back” culture in medicine, in which doctors have claimed they are competent to police themselves, must end before more people are killed by criminal negligence.

To add this insult to patients’ injuries, rather than moving swiftly to address the problem with a subpoena, the state health department took months to negotiate a voluntary agreement from Finkelstein to release patients’ names. Health officials must change their lax attitude and adopt an enforcement mentality, particularly when lives are at stake.

Rate of Discipline Among New York Doctors Who Have Made Medical Malpractice Payments

Number of Payment Reports	Number of Doctors Who Made Payments	Sum of These Payments	Subset of Number of Doctors who had One or More Reportable Licensure Actions	Pct. of Doctors Who Made Payments Who had One or More Reportable Licensure Actions	Pct. of Total Dollars Paid Out Statewide
Total	15624	$8,801,597,900	920	5.9	100.0
1	9435	$2,547,679,350	393	4.2	28.9
2 or more	6189	$6,253,918,550	527	8.5	71.1
3 or more	3057	$4,369,937,700	332	10.9	49.6
4 or more	1631	$3,032,795,700	213	13.1	34.5
5 or more	960	$2,173,580,200	141	14.7	24.7
10 or more	127	$482,470,250	40	31.5	5.5

Source: National Practitioner Data Bank

[The data above reflects information from entire period reported in the NPDB database, and includes payments (both settlements and jury verdicts) reported from September 1, 1990 through June 30, 2007, according to the NPDB Public Use Data File Format Specifications File (http://www.npdb-hipdb.hrsa.gov/pubs/stats/Public_Use_Data_File.pdf).]

Speaking out of both sides

graphic by DB

Witch Hunt II

This story is so powerful I'm posting the full blog entry from Moriah (alias) at http://untamedteacher.blogspot.com/.

Call it Witch Hunt II.

I spoke to a teacher at Moriah's school who told me the principal targets one teacher a year. Last year it was Adila. This year it is Moriah. I can't reveal the school until Moriah decides to do so but it would be a good lesson for the principal to have this story pop up every time someone Googles the name.
I also had a friend sent to the RR when a kid peed in her class, never having told her he had to go. She was released 2 weeks later when he did it again in another class - this teacher a favorite of the principal. She still got a letter in her file and has lost grievances
Klein is spending a million to get rid of the Adilas and Moriahs.
And of course, note the "superb" performance of the UFT.

Moriah's story
My "U" rating was not just about my lesson plans, or my teaching ability, or my salary, or my age, or my political views. It really started with my reaction to a frameup.

Another teacher, we'll call her Adila, was framed for child endangerment. She spent all last year in a Rubber Room Gulag. She was offered a deal--admit to a lesser crime, and pay a fine and you can keep your job. She accepted the deal, and signed an affidavit swearing to never speak of the matter again. She could have returned to her school, but she refused. She is now an ATR. Case closed.

When Adila was first accused, she went to a private lawyer, and I went with her. At some point during the interview, I said, "But the principal lied, and we can prove it!". The lawyer replied: "Everybody knows that President Bush lied about the Weapons of Mass Destruction, and no one cares, so why should anyone care if a principal lies?"

The lawyer was right of course. A web of lies had reached from the loftiest office of the land down to our lowly little school in Queens. That just shows why public leaders should to be held to very high standards.

Representative Kucinich has just introduced a motion to impeach the Vice President. The fact that his motion was not automatically tabled, shows that there is a glimmer of hope that we can turn this country around.

Adila does not want her case reopened. She wants to get on with her life, and put the nightmare behind her. But I am going to write about her case anyway. (Sorry Adila). We are all victims of the trickle down effect of Washington's lies. This is not just about one teacher's sad story. What happened to her can happen to anyone, as long as liars rule.

So here begins the telling of THE PRINCIPAL'S LIE

Adila was standing in the doorway of her classroom at the beginning of 5th period, as all teachers were required to do. She was expected to supervise not only the students in the hall, but also her seventh graders who were already in the classroom. The hallway was extremely crowded, because the school itself was overcrowded. We were on double session, but this didn't keep the halls from being regularly converted into mosh pits by squealing students who gleefully pushed one another back and forth when they got caught in a traffic jam.

The administration's answer to this problem, was to get the students from classroom A to classroom B as soon as possible (3 minutes) and then to keep them out of the hallways until the students had to move to classroom C. Regular "sweeps" were made to pick up lagging students who were then "written up". Bathrooms were locked during the first two periods and the last two periods of the day (a period lasted 45 minutes). Bathrooms were also locked during the first ten minutes and the last ten minutes of each period. Aides sat outside the bathrooms writing down the names of the students who entered and the teachers who had given the passes. Teachers were "written up" if they failed to mark students late, or if they gave too many passes to the bathroom. The principal regularly got on the loud speaker and irritably reminded teachers to stop giving passes during the prohibited times.

So in this environment, Adila was trying to get her students into the classroom as quickly as possible. A few girls were playing around down the hallway--putting off going to the classroom until the last possible minute. A boy named Bobby came running up from the opposite direction. He pushed past Adila, and in doing so he tripped and almost fell, but he recovered his balance at the last moment. He must have presented a comic figure to the children in the classroom, because they all laughed at him. Perhaps to cover his embarrassment at his own clumsiness, Bobby shouted," Ms. Adila made me trip".

Just as the bell rang, five or six girls tried to run into the classroom at the last moment, but Adila stopped them and dutifully placed an "L" for Late next to each name in her attendance book. The girls were incensed. They argued that they weren't late because they had gotten to the door as the bell was ringing. Adila told them to sit down, but one of the girls--the leader of the group--left the class without a pass saying that that she had to talk to her counselor.

A month later Adila was called into the principal's office. Bobby's mother was there. It seems that Bobby had complained that he had been tripped by Adila, and he had six witnesses to prove it. Now it was Adila's turn to be incensed. She had done no such thing! But there were witnesses, insisted the mother. Adila consulted her attendance book. The so-called witnesses weren't even in the classroom at the time--they were the girls who had run up to the door just as the bell rang. When the meeting ended, Adila felt that she had established her innocence.

A couple of months passed. Adila received a letter saying that a Chancellor's Investigator was coming to the school to hold a hearing about charges of child endangerment. She was told by the UFT that she would be represented by Ms. Baker, but Ms. Baker was unavailable until the day of the hearing. Adila saw her for perhaps three minutes before the hearing started.

The Investigator asked her about the Bobby incident, and Adila told the same story she told the principal and the mother. Then the Investigator started asking her about a second incident. Adila realized that she had been brought up on two charges. She was hearing about the second one with no warning at all.

The second charge involved a child named Karl. Karl had come into Adila's third period class one day asking to go to the bathroom. She told him that she would give him a pass in ten minutes as soon as the bathrooms were open. Now remember, Karl had already been sitting for two periods in math class with no access to the bathroom, because all bathrooms were locked during the first two periods of the day. When he had asked his math teacher for a pass to the bathroom, she had said the same thing that Adila did--bathrooms are locked. But Karl couldn't wait. He had diarrhea--a detail which he failed to mention to Adila--perhaps because he was already running out the door in an attempt to keep from having an accident. But the bathrooms were locked, remember? The aides were not yet sitting next to the door. There was no one to unlock the bathrooms--none of the teachers had keys. So poor Karl had a very messy accident. And poor Adila took the fall for it.

Adila told the Chancellor's Investigator that she didn't know that the child had an emergency. She told him that even if she had wanted to she couldn't open the bathroom door, because she had no key. The Investigator called the principal and asked her about the bathrooms. Were they indeed locked? NO, answered the principal. BATHROOMS ARE NEVER LOCKED.

Adila told the Investigator that all he had to do was to go down the hallway and look at the bathroom door. There was a huge sign that read:

BATHROOM HOURS OF OPERATION

Bathrooms Closed: Period 1,2,8,9 & Homeroom

Per. 3- 10:03 – 10:31
Per. 4- 10:52 – 11:20
Per. 5- 11:41 – 12:09
Per. 6- 12:30 - 12:58
Per. 7- 1:19 - 1:47

The principal hadn't even bothered to take the signs down. Why should she? The Investigator refused to get up and go look, as the principal knew he would. Ms. Baker, who was there to represent Adila, said and did absolutely nothing.

So because a child tripped and almost fell, and because a child couldn't get into a locked bathroom, Adila spent a year in the Rubber Room Gulag.

No I didn't leave anything out. There were no other incidents. No other crimes. I read the charges. I went with her to the lawyer. I swear those were the only incidents.

If a teacher can be sent to a Rubber Room Gulag on charges like those, none of us are safe. And I think that the principal did that to Adila, because she wants us to feel that way. Unsafe. The principal has the power to ruin our lives.

But my life is already ruined, because I can't stand the thought of such a horrible injustice being done to someone who had done nothing bad to anyone--including Bobby, Karl, and the principal. It knaws at me. People don't understand why I can't let it go. The District Representative, just the other day said, "You're not Adila's mother--let it go".

I can't. I don't think that the principal of a New York City Public School should have that much power. And it isn't just my principal. She isn't a trend setter. She isn't a loose cannon. She is very much a team player. She is doing exactly what she is told to do by higher ups. She wouldn't still be principal otherwise.

ALL OVER THE CITY, TEACHERS WHO HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG ARE BEING FRAMED, LIED ABOUT, RUINED!

I don't know why the UFT is putting up with this. I don't know why New Yorkers are putting up with this. I don't know why Americans are putting up with this.

I have told this story over and over. I wrote to the Chancellor's Investigator offering to send him the sign that was still on the door. I wrote to Randi Weingarten. I wrote to The New York City Teacher's Advocacy Group. I signed all letters with my real name.

I am going to keep writing. It's not OK to frame teachers. This is not going to go away.

Those in power are abusing that power and that means that THEY need to go away--preferably to a specially prepared RUBBER ROOM GULAG just for them.

Witch Hunts for Teachers

graphic by DB

Thursday's NY Times article on the DOE's attempt to start a with hunt to remove ""poor" - read - "tenured, higher salaried" - teachers sent another chill down the spines of NYC teachers. Are they hiring lawyers to remove bad cops or lawyers or doctors? How about that doctor that risked 600 patients with hep C and is not sent to the doctor RR. How about police who are of "lower quality?" These people can actually kill people.

Why the focus on "bad" teachers and how hard it is to get rid of them? Getting rid of a doctor is almost impossible. There are doctors practicing who are not board certified. Do we see bad lawyers being disbarred ( to the RR of the legal profession)?

The witch hunt is part of the concerted attack on teacher unionism as a supposed obstruction to education, part of the general plan of assault on the public schools.

It is very dangerous rhetoric (from Weingarten to Bill Clinton to Joel Klein) to bring up the issue that the most important thing in education is a quality teacher because then witch hunts ensue. In fact what is a quality teacher? We have the same bell curve of quality (a very thin term to use) teachers as in any other job - superb to average to below average to awful.

But the people judging have a different agenda. I saw in my own school my principal support one of the most incompetent and abusive (to children) teachers because he was loyal -- he knew how to play the game.

I know of a 20 year teacher under attack at a middle school. The other day I spoke to a colleague of hers and she told me the admin in her school targets one teacher a year for u rating as a demo of power and to keep people in line.

So the Jack Welch philosophy leads to quotas. - get rid of your negative people and the "bottom" 20%. (And if you haven't read it yet read Mary Hoffman's wonderful piece "Jack Welch is My Daddy" at the ICE web site http://ice-uft.org/daddy.htm which details the impact of the Welch/Leadership Academy principal at her school (also my former school.)

Welch, Tweed, Farina, and Creative Destruction

A great discussion (started by Woodlass) broke out on the NYC Public School Parent listserve that led to the ideology of "creative destruction" behind much of what Tweed is doing today. A lot of it is laid to former GE chairman, Neutron Jack Welch, who was instrumental in setting the ideoligcal framework of the Principal Academy.

Carmen Farina's name came up because she was quoted in a Business Week article from June 2003. Farina replaced Diana Lam as chief ed mucky muck at Tweed and gave Klein educational cover for creative destruction of the system, but was declared obsolute after her usefullness was over, supposedly being told she didn't have the skill set for the job – which means she spent some time in the classroom. Note how she spoke out [below] about 10 minutes after hearing her name was being bandied about.

Farina's original BW quote from June, 2003:
"Jack Welch said one thing that really struck me…You can't allow an organization to grow complacent. When you find those kinds of organizations, you have to tear them apart and create chaos. That chaos creates a sense of urgency, and that sense of urgency will ultimately bring [about] improvement."

Farina's comment posted on the listserve Sunday, Nov. 11, 2007:
"Complacency is not the same as complicity in how to evaluate schools. The problem with the report cards is that they leave out the human touch from evaluation and evaluating the caliber of teaching. I am not for any report that focuses only on grades since most of us know a complete education for our children includes critical thinking, problem solving, humane education and writing skills. None of these are possible with this evaluation. Hopefully parents can see beyond the reports and evaluate for themselves how their own schools are serving their children. The people who are giving greatest credence to these reports are those who do not have children in our schools. My favorite choice for Charlie [grandchild] right now is not an A school but one that strikes the balance of all important issues and respect the development stage of his growth. It is also does not stress test prep. Don't know who is quoting me out of context but feel free to put this quote on blog."

Now she tells us. Farina was part of the enabling structure that gave Klein cover.
In the words of Ricky Ricardo, Farina has a lot of splaining to do.

Leonie Haimson followed up with this:
There’s been a lot of discussion about the Carmen Farina’s quotation and its source. This came originally from an article in Business Week – about the first phase of the DOE’s so-called “Children’s First” reforms, when they eliminated the districts, formed the regions, selected a uniform curriculum, etc.etc. following the expert advice of that renowned educator, Jack Welch of GM, along with a bunch of McKinsey consulants.

I quoted it in testimony during hearings in the fall of 2004 held by Virginia Fields when she was the Manhattan Borough President. (Her full testimony is here.)
This quotation was included in testimony I delivered in the fall of 2004, during hearings held by then-Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields on the first phase of the Children’s First reforms. I was describing the free-wheeling attitude of the administration and the theory of “creative destruction” that was supposed to revolutionize education in this city, popularized by Jack Welch, former president of GE and the McKinsey consultants who were brought to DOE by Klein to bring change. They decided to dissolve the districts, and create the regions that would take their place, an decision which in turn, led to thousands of special education students being deprived of services and referrals for more than a year.

The regions are now gone, replaced by an even more inchoate management and organizational structure. Carmen Farina was subsequently promoted to Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning after Diana Lam left in disgrace; she lasted two years, until retiring in April 2006, to be replaced by Andres Alonso, who has since departed for Baltimore.

Klein may have endured longer than most modern Chancellors in the city’s history; but the top educator post in the Department has been a revolving door, reflecting the rapidly changing fads and fashions in the methods and theories of reform attempted by this administration.


It all seems so sadly familiar, even though the main actors have changed somewhat . Instead of Jack Welch and Mckinsey consultants ripping things apart and sowing chaos, we’re now dealing w/ new confusion and problems created by a former Columbia Law Professor and others, including a former executive at Edison schools.

Yet sadly, the attitude and underlying incompetence is the same, the extreme arrogance and a lack of any knowledge about what makes good schools work, and how to improve those that aren’t.


After reading Leonie's piece, I urged people to read teacher Mary Hoffman’s piece, Jack Welch is My Daddy, at the ICE web site and this led to Leonie’s response:

The article Norm cites is very interesting at http://ice-uft.org/daddy.htm. It takes a look at the PBS series about the Leadership Academy, and examined the training given to principal recruits in relation to what was happening at the author’s own school and systemwide.

Here are two excerpts from the piece about the Jack Welch philosophy, the first showing its overriding emphasis on test scores, the second on ridding the schools of teachers who are contrary, ineffective, or who don’t buy into this philosophy:

· “Jack Welch had invited the [Leadership] Academy’s students to GE’s upstate conference center for a weekend retreat. At one point they were all seated around him in a circle. The topic under discussion was the value of teacher incentives. I was heartened when one of the aspiring principals took issue with the idea that incentives should be tied solely to test performance. “Children are not products,” she said, heatedly, and went on to present her case: schools must try to consider each child’s individual needs and talents...

Mr. Welch squashed her outburst. “Oh, yes they are,” he said, with the absolute assurance of a man whose retirement package was so generous that it even raised eyebrows on Wall Street, and her protest petered out.”

· “…This fall, the opening episode of the documentary about the Leadership Academy featured scenes from the ceremony for the first class of graduates. Chancellor Joel Klein addressed the gathering, as did Mayor Bloomberg. Again, Jack Welch played a role in the proceedings. When I saw him at the podium I wondered: would he wish the graduates luck? Tell them they could continue to call on him for advice and support? Thank them in advance for the years of public service they were about to embark upon?

“Get rid of your negative people,” he said.

Not an unexpected sentiment, coming from Jack Welch, if somewhat inappropriately – well, negative – for the occasion. He earned the title “Neutron Jack” for his slash-and-burn style of doing employee relations. His lack of concern for how his policies impacted on his employees is legendary.”

The Jack Welch philosophy, in a nutshell, is the ideological approach that now dominates Tweed. Make principals and staff focus solely on test scores, create as many incentives as possible to pump those test scores up, and get rid of any educators who don’t raise test scores sufficiently or don’t buy into this philosophy.

At the outset, this theory conflicted with what I call the District 2 ideology, that also another strand in the first wave of reforms and that the leadership of Carmen Farina exemplified – an overwhelming emphasis on professional development and sometimes heavy handed oversight of teaching methods, which it was believed would produce its own results—no matter what other problematic conditions might exist in schools, whether that be students of different backgrounds or needs, overcrowding, large classes, or anything else that might hamper these goals.

The D2 model led to the emphasis on the workshop model, constructivist curriculums, literacy and math coaches in all schools, etc. etc. I think this model of reform has its own weaknesses, but at least it exemplified a more holistic view of education – as well as an acceptance that leadership at the top has some responsibility for helping schools improve.

Now everyone in top leadership positions, including district superintendents, are supposed to take a hands –off attitude towards schools, and in the case of superintendents only “evaluate” the schools in their district rather than help them succeed. Just as kids are seen primarily as test scores, the evaluation of principals by superintendents and soon, the performance of teachers themselves, is supposed to be based on hard “data” alone – read test scores, attendance, grad rates etc.

This ideology has so infected Tweed that the management structure now is unlike any corporate model than even Jack Welch might have espoused, in that principals are supposed to rely on organizations outside the management structure (ie the SSOs) -- totally separate from their ostensible superiors (ie the superintendents), ostensibly so that principals can’t blame their superintendents if they haven’t received adequate support.

This peculiar management structure is completely unprecedented as far as I know, not only in any educational system in the country, but also in any corporation, where your supervisor is also supposed to act as your support officer – and if you don’t succeed, he or she is tasked with helping you do given the underlying conditions and environment that you are working in.

This is why supers are now Senior Achievement Facilitators – drafted into the cause of coaching schools in the use of the ARIS and all the data it spews – but only for schools outside their district. That way no personal relationship can infect their evaluations of principals in their district. Of course, this peculiar management structure also leads to an ignorance about the specific situations and needs of various schools – which in DOE’s eyes, are irrelevant unless they are already captured in ARIS. Thus, problems such as class size, overcrowding, and most specific characteristics of neighborhoods and/or students, are completely ignored -- besides a few demographic characteristics in elementary grades, and entering test scores in middle and high schools.

Bloomberg and Klein Get Desperate

graphic by DB

All it takes are a few messages from some rappers on a cell phone to motivate kids turned off by school. Jeez! Why didn't think of that when I was teaching? Oh, I forgot. In those days we used waxed string and milk containers to communicate. (Is there a way to send text messages that way?)

That DOE consultant Roland Fryer jumps from the fryer pan into the fire.

I was taken by these quotes in today's NY Times article:

“How do you get people to think about achievement in communities where, for historical or other reasons, there isn’t necessarily demand for that,” Mr. Klein said yesterday in an interview. “We want to create an environment where kids know education is something you should want. Some people come to school with an enormous appetite for learning and others do not — that’s the reality.”

"Mr. Klein said the effort was spurred in part by the results from focus groups performed by market research firms for the Education Department. That research found that black and Latino students from some of the city’s most hard-pressed neighborhoods had a difficult time understanding that doing well in school can provide tangible long-term benefits."

Duhhhhh!
They needed a focus group to tell them something teachers find out in their first 10 minutes of teaching?

You see, we have been telling Klein this all along and his response is that we are making excuses. Many of us actually know how to fix this problem. Engaging, exciting curricula, not test prep. And smaller class sizes so kids who do not come with an appetite for learning have more of an opportunity to be engaged. Hell, I do not remember my friends and I having that enormous appetite for learning - we were more afraid of our mothers' daily nag.

Now let's review, kiddies:

You have non-motivated students who are often struggling with academics. I have an idea. turn on the screws by threatening them with being held over on the basis of high stakes tests and then tell them they will get a cell phone and a text message from JB Cool if they can withstand the pressure. Pure Genius!

Leonie Haimson took care of the rest of what I wanted to say on her listserve:

See today’s Times – the latest experiment dreamed up by Roland Fryer, and “focus groups performed by market research firms for the Education Department.” Cell phones, mentors, messages, free tickets to Knick games and more – all to “convince” students that staying in school is worthwhile.

Excerpt: Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein said the project was the city’s first attempt to bring about change in the culture and behavior of low-performing students after years of efforts focusing on school structure and teaching.

“How do you get people to think about achievement in communities where, for historical or other reasons, there isn’t necessarily demand for that,” Mr. Klein said yesterday in an interview. “We want to create an environment where kids know education is something you should want. Some people come to school with an enormous appetite for learning and others do not — that’s the reality.”…. Dr. Fryer said he viewed the project in economic terms, arguing that while the administration’s previous efforts have focused on changing the “supply” at schools, this one is proposing to change the “demand” for education by making students want to seek learning.

“You can have the best product in the world, but if nobody wants it, it doesn’t matter,” Dr. Fryer said. What school systems have done so far, he added, “isn’t working well enough.”…. Details about how much will be spent and where the money will come from are still to be worked out, Education Department officials said.

If Fryer thinks that NYC schools are the “best product in the world,” he must be blind. Klein says there have been “years of efforts focusing on school structure and teaching”!!! How out of touch can they possibly be? This is an administration that is clearly clueless, and appears to be drowning in loose change.

It’s kind of startling, the amount of effort, time and money going into this “rebranding” PR campaign – but I guess when you’ve given up actually trying to improve schools, as they seem to have done at Tweed, what’s left?

If you run Tweed via PR, you think that’s PR is all that exists; it’s like the Bush administration and Karl Rove, who said: ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out.”

So what students at which schools are going to get the “thousands” of new mentors, the tickets, the cell phones and the rest? Those attending KIPP charter schools, and those run by New Visions. I thought those schools were already so expert at motivating students…but I guess not. If nothing else, this will probably lead to a surge of applicants to those schools, so they can even more effectively skim off the top.

And I guess we’ll let all those hundreds of thousands of students, left attending the large, overcrowded high schools with classes of 30 or more, to continue to drop out, be discharged or pushed out, or in other ways actively encouraged to disengage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/education/13schools.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1194931294-Rw4bHvFh4o/V/jTqo4F0Cw&pagewanted=print

DOE Data as Doodoo

Many of us believe in tests, but tests that help teachers learn what the problems are so they can fix them.
Earth to Tweed:
Teachers know stuff about their students without having to study reams of data.
DOE Data as doodoo is the usefulness quotient of the "Data is King" program at Tweed.
But let Round Deux say it.
Rant away - PLEASE!

Posted by Leonie Haimson on the NYCEducationnews listserve.
by 3^rd year middle school math teacher – not an unusual reaction I would imagine.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Data'ed Out

http://rounddeux.blogspot.com/

WARNING: This is a rant. You have been warned.

I'm all data'ed out. Our PD's are all about data: looking at data, using data, finding data, inputting data, implementing data in our classrooms, not going on field trips to improve data, worrying about data from the tests, feeling good about ourselves because our report card data was decent. I'm sick of it.

We've had a few discussions before in our math department meetings about relevant projects and exciting lessons, unfortunately we're bogged down and dominated by data. Today, one of few PD days we have left during the year, we spent most of our time looking at math data, or how to access data. I asked our coach/lead teacher if we could do something that would improve my teaching ability. It only makes common sense, right?

The data is supposed to help us assess, teach, group by seating, and place students in specific classes (tracking is still around people), but I still don't get how this is supposed to make me a better teacher. Sure its good to know what a student has a problem on, but spending day after day of data training is overkill.

I want to be a good teacher; but not the good teacher that politicians want, a good teacher that motivates, inspires, and helps students to develop a love for learning, not a fear of it.

Board of Education, Chancellor, and Mayor Bloomberg, enough data already. Let me teach.

PS: Kudos to schools going against merit pay!

Ed Note:
Round Deux is a former Teaching Fellow - to all the critics who felt they were indoctrinated BloomKleinies, there is hope. Round Deux says in another post:

"Whichever one of Bloomberg's teachers taught him that infusing capitalism into educational policy making was a "good thing" should be sent to a rubber room. My solution? Move to another country or take back and rebuild our union."

Pretty good insights for someone fairly new to the system. We look forward to the Round Deuxs of this world to start taking back and rebuilding the union.

Your description of the hostile takeover...

....of PS 97 by Bard with Burt Sachs as the agent misses a point (see post on Bard and PS 97). As staff, we were completely dedicated to our kids and their parents. We offered the kids what no one else in their short lives had given them - security, stability and nurturing. Sachs should have known that when he walked in with his clip board and "measured for drapes". Our service to them was obvious to anyone who walked in - even the State Ed. Dept. It is hard to know whether or not we raised reading scores, the students weren't in our school long enough. Even after he left after that visit, we were not told that the school was closing! We did not know until the end of the school year that we were closing - and were not even sure where we were going. A complete disregard for the staff and the children we worked for every day. The irony of it is that he was hired by the UFT and we now our dues pay the man who screwed us a hefty salary.

I guess I should remain anonymous, because if I ever get sent to the TRC on bogus charges, I may be giving this man the opportunity to screw me twice.

---

UFT PR on Merit Pay

It is worth repeating this comment from proof of life as a prime example of how the UFT operates to obfuscate the issues and confuse the membership. Sign a deal that rewards teachers for teaching to the test and further encapsulates high stakes testing, but then make it look like they are against the overemphasis on testing. Sort of like having a high stakes testing task force spend a year issuing a report that says much of what PoL below talks about but then doing the very opposite. Check out Lisa North's comments on the ICE blog where she says:

The UFT High Stakes Testing Committee spent a year studying the issue and concluded, "those who advocate for the misuse of student test scores to evaluate individuals, schools, and entire school systems are ignorant of or choose to ignore the fact that the makers of these tests never intended them to be used for those purposes."

Bah, humbug, hypocrites.

Comment from Proof of life:
The UFT is circulating a Petition Against DOE School Report Cards. Some highlights of the petition include.. "By awarding a school a grade from A to F , the progress report trivializes the complexity of teaching and learning. It is a punitive system that ultimately hurts, not helps, schools." Then it goes on to list major concerns "* overemphasizes testing *will potentially drive schools into doing even more test prep at the expense of learning. * is based on a curve so that there will always be losers" It goes on and on, but I personally love the last bullet * demoralizes whole school communities that have worked hard for the success of their schools.. Sounds to me like a petition against MERIT PAY!! What a contradiction. Can't have your cake and eat it too!

Worth Noting

Pseudo-Intellectualism takes a look at "A" rated school PS 188M that Joel Klein so raved about when the grades came out. On the school survey, 100% of the teachers said there was little order or discipline maintained at the school and 79% of the teachers said they get little help from the admin in addressing student behavior and discipline problems. But why should these teachers' opinions count for the school grade when we all know that schools in disorder have little real learning going on. My guess is the principal has naked pictures of James Liebman.

Jim Horn at Schools Matter on the Bloomberg-Klein plan to charterize the entire city school system.

NYC Educator looks under every rock and finds the UFT and Green Dot. (And congrats on reaching almost 900 visitors the other day.)

and Gary Babad of GBN News reports on an interview with ARIS officials on the NYC public school parent blog.

Bard's Botstein says "Let 'em eat cake (or meat)"

Bard College President Leon Botstein is being hailed a hero in some quarters for appealing the "C" rating his school (today's NY Times article posted at Norms Notes). There's lots of meat in his comments, though he says his school (the elite) are vegetables and the rest of the vermin are meat. Or something like that.

Some choice nuggets from the NY Times article:

School officials agreed to meet with Bard officials next week. “I appealed to the chancellor in an effort to tell him to remove this year’s assessment so that a better mode of assessment could be put together,” Mr. Botstein said.

Elisaa Gootman writes: educators and parents at.. nontraditional and high-performing... say that while the new rating system, which is driven by standardized test scores, may be a good way to measure whether schools are imparting basic knowledge, it is less useful and even harmful on the higher end of the performance spectrum.
Mr. Botstein said he respected the chancellor’s need to turn around a failing school system, but urged that he not do it at the expense of innovation and excellence.

“You have a system that is broken and that is failing, and they are desperately trying to improve it. But don’t throw the baby out with the bath water,” he said. “There are a couple of places, and we’re one of them, that really do something different and well.
“Not all plants are weeds,” he said, “so why are you spraying insecticide on the whole thing?”

He said of the Regents, “They’re to a lower standard, and we won’t teach to the test.“They’re in a tough bind, and I have a lot of respect for them,” he said.

“Let’s say we’re a vegetarian restaurant and you’re telling me our meat is not good. I’m telling you we don’t serve meat. We’re not in the meat business.”

In Botstein's world, and he knows full well this rating system is a farce for everyone, it is ok to force such a system down everyone else's throat but he wants special treatment. Or he says he has respect for them for political reasons, knowing full well if he criticizes the entire concept of the grading system, Tweed will pull out their dossier on him as they did with Diane Ravitch and send a Wylde attack dog after him. Or suddenly find building problems with the school he wants to open in Queens.

Before we go on with Botstein and Bard, let me reference Eduwonkette who uses her stat stick to give us five reasons the report cards might kindly be called statistical malpractice.

"I've concluded that the people in need of a wake-up call work not at F schools, but at the NYC Department of Education. Undoubtedly, data can and should be used for organizational learning and school improvement. But if we're going to rank and sort schools - an action that has serious consequences for the kids, educators, and parents affected - the Department of Ed's methods should be in line with the standards to which statisticians and quantitative social scientists hold themselves. Needless to say, NYC's report cards are not.

I urge Botstein to go and read the entire wonkette piece and then look us in the eye and tell us how much he respects BloomKlein.

I have a particular interest in Bard's progress. I know and like one of the teachers there so if she ever reads this I am never saying that great education doesn't take place at Bard (but they do have special kids that make great education easy) and of course the fact that Botstein says they don't teach to the test is an important statement.

I just wish he wouldn't say it is ok for everyone else, especially kids who are struggling and do not need a culture of teaching to the test that will only serve to turn them off to school even more. They need the culture Botstein is trying to instill as much if not more than anyone. If Botstein wants a challenge, let him open a school that does not attempt to pick the low-hanging fruit but goes after the most at risk students. Take the most struggling school in the city and turn it around without replacing the kids. Then he would be a hero.

But Botstein's history vis a vis struggling schools is not a good one.

I witnessed Botstein's rape and pillage of IS 126 (taking the entire 4th floor) in Williamsburg (I was the district tech liaison there) where Bard was first located, followed by the hostile takeover of PS 97 on the lower east side, where kids from homeless shelters had the only school that nurtured them ripped out from under them by Bard after they abandoned 126 because they refused to give in to their lebensraum (Bard wanted the 3rd floor too, being perfectly willing to squeeze the middle school students and teachers into closets).

No blame to BloomKlein here, as those deals were Klein predecessor Harold Levy's deal. Maybe that's what's going on.with the "C" rating. The revenge of Tweed on Harold's baby?

Read on for the ugly details
I was in JHS 126 on the day (I think it may have been spring 2000) the Bard deal was announced to much fanfare and press and DOE officials, with Harold Levy leading the charge, inundated the school's auditorium. Word was that a million dollars would be poured into renovating the 4th floor. Teachers were very pissed at the long-time principal, Sheldon Toback, for agreeing to this but he felt this would protect him against his growing critics (he may be the dean of Principals having run the school since the last 60's, but they just got an "F" and that may be the end.) Toback had gone from one of the leading lights as a principal in the 70's to leading a quickly declining school.

The renovation that summer included dividing almost every classroom in two since Bard kids were going to have small class sizes, beautiful new doors for each class, a new computer lab (while the old ones at 126 were falling apart – I know as it was part of my job to help keep them running) and all kinds of other goodies. When probably less than a 100 9th graders arrived in the fall, the disproportion between Bard and the IS 126 grades 7-9 kids (many Polish kids from Greenpoint, including many non-English speakers) now squeezed into 3 floors was clear. There was little mixing between the staffs, with the Bard administrators showing extreme arrogance towards the people at 126.

Naturally, the staff at 126 had tremendous resentment towards Bard, who they (rightly) saw as trying to steel their school out from under them. So relations in the teacher cafeteria were not exactly cordial.

I should point out that JHS 126 was once the flagship of District 14 when Supt. (Wild) Bill Rogers, who "taught" there, gave them mucho resources and the ability to steal the best kids from all over the district. When the coup d'etat by which UFT District Rep Mario DeStefano became Superintendent in the late 80's or early 90's and Rogers was deposed, resources shifted to IS 318 where Mario's guy Alan Fierstein (see my recent post in what makes IS 318 a good school here) was ensconced and JHS 126 began a long slow decline as the best kids went to 318 and more and more special ed and problem kids were dumped into the 126. In recent years, PS 132, a local feeder school, went K-8, thus taking away more kids. But some of the remnants from the teaching staff from the good old days still carried the "we're the elite" attitude.

Though the decline in 126 (and don't get me wrong, it was my favorite school to go to, with a wonderful teaching staff which Toback still actively recruited very rigorously) was due in part to the political manipulations by the old school district machine, it had become a self full-filling prophesy and teacher turnover began to rise. People were hoping Toback would retire and new leadership would help restore the luster. Under the first reorganization, the LIS in charge of the school was considered quite good and supportive and there were people actually hoping she would lead the school. But Toback has survived I believe because he can still count on some level of old-style seniority CSA protections and is still clinging on. The "F" grade may doom him and the school.

Back to Bard
As expected, Botstein and Bard began to demand the 3rd floor and finally Toback said "NO" which apparently he had the right to do. Bard then focused its attention on a new location. Besides, Greenpoint is not all that accessible. What of all the renovations on the 4th floor that left almost every single classroom unusable by the full-sized classes at 126? Not Bard's problem.

PS 97 the next target
PS 97 on the lower east side became the new takeover target. My source over there is a former teacher who was working with the school as an employee of Central. A top notch educator who spent most of her career in the classroom, her evaluation of the school can be trusted. She told me in an interview yesterday that it was a school that had an enormous number of kids from local shelters and did an amazing job of nurturing these kids. An example she gave was that since shelters have a rule that people can stay for only 6 months and then be moved to another shelter, often in the Bronx, many parents still brought their kids down to PS 97. She praised the principal and staff as being excellent, given the conditions. As an example of turnover rates, out of 326 children, 197 were new one year.

My friend was in the building when one day she saw a man from central going around with a tape measure. That was the first anyone in the school new they were in danger of being closed Who was that masked man, by the way? No less than Burt Sachs, notorious pre-BloomKlein central board power monger who had a reputation for enormous arrogance, one of the first to go under the BloomKlein takeover - some people early on considered Klein a hero for dumping the likes of Sachs and others - who would a thunk that one day we would wish for the likes of Burt Sachs to be back as Tweedle arrogance make Sachs look like a saint.

UFT to the rescue
But never you worry about Burt. Soon after leaving the DOE, guess who hired him for a full-time position? Randi Weingarten. He's still there doing something that no one knows exactly what it is. But he is valued for his knowledge in gaming the DOE. Maybe he helped work out the brilliant deal on merit pay with the Kleinites.

And Bard? They now occupy the entire old PS 97.

Give Botstein an "A" in hostile takeovers.

The Stealth Contract

special to Education Notes, author wishes to remain anonymous

We need to challenge the union leadership’s maneuvering to prevent discussions of items that they say are already in the contract that the membership voted on. The inclusion of clauses in the contract that are seemingly innocuous and buried in neutral sounding verbiage must be criticized. Any time the union says that it is opening discussions on items, or exploring the possibility, etc., we know that something terrible is down the pike. It is a stealth maneuver that allows them to give up more behind our backs.

What’s happening now is that the Union Leadership is portraying the merit pay proposal as a victory for us. A victory over what? Over the fact that the ambiguous contract language meant that the outcome could have been worse? The worse possibility was certainly hidden from the membership during the contract vote. And, just because the worst case scenario (individual merit pay) hasn’t yet occurred, it doesn’t mean it won’t. As many people have pointed out, school merit pay opens the door to individual merit pay, especially since they are leaving the method of distributing bonuses up to a principal-dominated school committee.

But even if the bonuses were distributed evenly to all UFT members within a school, we must recognize that merit pay is a significant setback for union solidarity and a huge step in the continuous attack on teacher professionalism. In the newly defined verbiage of the federal government and the DOE, “professionalism” has been equated with adherence to their “research based” educational mandates, and their criteria of success, always tied to test scores, and always used to further their political and corporate careers. But from the point of view of teachers, professionalism includes the commitment to do what’s best for the children, the right to make decisions, and to expect the kind of support necessary to succeed. Like other professionals they should be able to make use of their own education, training, talent and experience. The DOE’s carrot (bonuses) and stick (closing of schools) strategies are not only insulting but are bad for public education.

That our Union Leadership has joined the DOE and mayor in furthering an agenda of high stakes testing and its punitive consequences for students and teachers alike is shameful. When they say that this is what the members voted for, they are just proving that their role is to fool us rather than represent our interests.