Arabella

Every so often I get reports on Arabella, who we met on a cruise to Alaska when she was 3 years old. She's 12 now. Here's the latest from her mom Amanda Uhry:
Happy, tired Arabella at: The Cobra Youth Foil Competition (individual) -- Cobra Fencing 1/19/08

First place Y12 First place Y14

Number of bottles of Vitamin Water consumed - 7

Number of colored rubber bands that popped off braces - 3

Number of hours it took to fence and win both competitions - 9

Toughest bout - finals of Y12 with Jessie Laffey from Cobra Fencing

Person we are most grateful to:
Steve Kaplan head of Cobra Fencing for graciously providing Arabella with weapon when she managed to leave all of hers locked in her locker at her own fencing club by accident.

Number of brand new fencing shoes Arabella managed to destroy in 48 hours (Cobra Foil and Cobra Challenge the next day) - 1 pair (completely torn apart)

Number of hours slept after competition - 13

Number of days til next big event at Cobra - 30 (the New York Super Regionals - Feb 22-24)


Arabella way back then on the cruise ship

Puerto Rico, My Heart's Devotion

I was singing "America" from West Side Story all week while on my first trip to Puerto Rico, most of the time spent at a resort lounging at the beach, snorkeling, reading book after book and eating (a lot). One of the great things about retirement is the ability to travel whenever.

Color War
There were many corporate groups meeting there and we got to see first hand the "business" model of team building - expensive retreats and competitions with loud speakers and annoying noisemaking. One group wore tee-shirts that said their goal this year was $75,000,000.
This is the aspect that has been missing from BloomKlein's attempt to bring the business model to the schools (except maybe at KIPP where spending $70,000 on retreats to the Caribbean is acceptable.) It looked like one of those old camp Color War games where learned all about competition. I was such a lousy hitter when I was 10 years old, my teammates told me to go into the woods and pee when my turn at bat came. (My hitting didn't get much better over the years but I can pee on demand now.)

Coming soon:
Get those scores and grad rates up trips and tee-shirts with logos - 80% grad rates or bust.

I felt real comfortable in PR - lots of good feelings connected to working with mostly Puerto Rican kids in Williamsburg - and we hope to return. Maybe drive around the entire island stopping at beaches.

Next trip is to London in March for the 40th anniversary concert of The Zombies - (INSIDE JOKE FOR ZOMBIE FANS - I hope they're there. Or not there. Or maybe she won't be there.) And then on to Japan in April for the Asian Invitational FIRST LEGO League tournament. And maybe Iceland in June. Phew! I'm tired already.

In the meantime, I haven't been too active in local ed politics recently, with the Privatization Forum the week before last and the big FLL tournament coming up next Saturday (check the norms robotics blog for robotics in NYC for news) and my working for the past month on the FLL program guide (modeled on the old Ed Notes format - see, they were worth more than just using as ballast under the tires when it snowed) which, thank goodness, was just sent to the printer (a pdf is available for those interested, here.)

Last week's Delegate Assembly was the first I missed in a long time and I hear my buddies from ICE actually got something passed. We had a pretty good ICE meeting on Jan. 11 with a lot of people attending and discussed some strategy behind making amendments to a UFT resolution on school leadership teams.

I wouldn't attach too much significance to the fact that Leo Casey supported it, but you can read all about it at the ICE blog. I'll have some comments on the Hillary call later.

Ellen Raider from ICOPE did a presentation at the ICE meeting on their governance plan and we had a rousing discussion that ranged from "Their bottom-up governance plan is just pie in the sky" to "We need to start somewhere and work from that place." I personally support the bottom up concept where the school is the basic unit of power and urge people to take a look at the ICOPE model.

No one other than ICOPE seems to have come up with much of an alternative. Leonie Haimson always points to the "Who controls the money" argument whenever we talk about decentralized plans. But in reality, I feel we will still have some form of mayoral control because the UFT and just about every politician supports it. The UFT is doing its phony baloney Governance road show (tomorrow, Tuesday, at Martin Luther King HS in Manhattan at 6 if you are interested) to make it look like they don't really know what they'll do. They will issue a report to give venting to what people have to say and then do what's in the best interests of the leadership - which guess what, is mayoral control with a few tweaks since they are expecting to get Bill Thompson (who also called into the DA to show Blacks support Hillary) as the next mayor.

Smoke on your pipe and put that in.

How ARIS, data, etc are being used in NYC - your input needed ASAP

A writer is working on a piece on data-driven decision making and needs input on how ARIS, data, etc. are being used in NYC. If anyone has info send it along ASAP. I'll forward it with your email (if you want to be anon. say so) for further contact if needed.

NYCDOE Appoints CEO of "Broad Prize Banners and Flags"

EDNOTESNEWS (EDNN) Reports:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has appointed his old pal Smellington G. Worthington III, the founder of BFER (Billionaires for Educational Reform), to a newly created position as the CEO in charge of "Hanging Broad Prize Banners and Flags." Worthington will generously take a pay cut and work for a nominal salary of $225,000 a year. "It's my civic duty to serve the poor children of New York," said Worthington.

"Imagine their glee when upon arriving at school every morning from their little hovels, they will gaze upon the banners celebrating the wonderful achievement of our winning the Broad Prize, something we will use to get Michael Bloomberg elected as president."

Chancellor Joel Klein has appointed Alvarez and Marsal as consultants on the project for a $5 million a year. "We were lucky to get A & M so cheap," said a DOE spokesperson, citing their historical expertise in being able to find just the right spot to hang a banner. "That is not an easy thing to do and we just don't have people with those kinds of skills currently working in the Department," said the spokesperson, "particularly since they were ordered NOT to hang the banners on a school's exterior wall." [See DOE announcement to Principals below.]

The money for A & M was raised privately from the profits from foreclosing on the homes of people ruined by sub-prime rate mortgages.

Bloomberg will hire a fleet of skywriting airplanes to blanket the skies with facsimiles of the Broad banner and flag.

NYC schools received notice of these banners in Joel Klein's weekly Principal's Weekly (more popularly know as The WEAKLY) with this item:

Delivery of Broad Prize Banners and Flags
All schools / Event: This week
The Broad Foundation has provided us with flags and banners for our schools. These are in recognition your hard work that helped New York City win the 2007 Broad Prize for Urban Education. You will be receiving one banner and one flag during the next week. They will be delivered to your building's general office, to your attention. Your custodial staff can assist you in determining how to display the flag and the banner. Keep in mind that you should not hang the banner on the exterior of your building, since it is likely to be blown around in inclement weather. For additional information, contact the borough facilities director at your ISC.

Here are the joyous reactions of some parents on the nyceducation news listserve:

We were dumbfounded when it arrived this morning. "We need _____" (fill in the blank with any NUMBER of things), "and they spent how much money on THIS?" - BB

There is a huge banner in my school of congratulations to the NYC Dept of Education as broad prize winner. Its like 8 FT wide! What we really need is wiring , not a huge banner, LOL. Any other schools have one? - L

8th Grade Holdover Policy Designed to Force Dropouts

It is so simple. Want to enforce the illusion that graduation rates are rising so you can use that issue to run for the presidency? Start holding back 8th graders before they reach high school. Just enough might of them be disgusted with school to drop out right then and there and never besmirch a Bill Gates school with their presence.

There are consequences when 8th graders are held over. These "social seniors" often feel that is the last straw for them and many drop out right then and there. The ones who show can become a problem for the school – their behavior reflects the impact of being held over.

I was in some middle schools that had to isolate these senior holdovers in a special class. The class size was small but they were so turned off, even that didn't make a difference - maybe 50% attended on any given day with some not showing up for a week or more at a time. Spending any time at all in this class made it clear that though these students were not exactly flourishing before, holding them over made a bad situation intolerable.

Driving them out of school before they can affect the HS grad rates is one of the ideas behind the plan.

Here's what Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters had to say in her listserve:

Today, in his state of the City address, the Mayor announced that the DOE will now extend their policy of holding back students on the basis of low test scores to 8th graders as well. This is the way they intend to cure the problems of our middle schools!

As the research overwhelmingly shows, holding back kids doesn’t work. 107 academics, researchers, and national experts on testing understand that this policy is not only unfair, given the unreliability of one day’s test results, but will also lead directly to lower achievement and higher drop out rates. They signed the below letter drafted by Class Size Matters and Advocates for Children in 2004 opposing this policy, and nothing has changed since then. In fact, if this policy worked, the DOE 7th grade retention would have caused a rise in 8th grade achievement rates, but instead as the recent NAEPs show, our 8th grade test scores have been stagnant over many years.

Among those who signed our letter included Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, Dr. Ernest House, who did the independent evaluation of New York City’s failed retention program in the 1980’s, four past presidents of the American Education Research Association, Robert Hauser, the chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Appropriate Use of Educational Testing, and several members of the Board on Testing and Assessment of the National Research Council. Even the two largest testing companies are on record that the decision to hold back a child should never be based upon test scores alone.

Indeed, the professional consensus is so overwhelming about the policy’s destructive academic and emotional consequences that its use amounts to educational malpractice, according to Prof. Shane Jimerson, a dean at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Nearly everyone who’s looked at our middle schools realizes that their number one problem is huge class sizes. Our middle schools have the largest class sizes in the state by far, and some of the largest in the entire industrialized world. About one quarter of our middle school students are in classes of 31 or more. Yet this administration refuses to intervene by reducing class size, even when the Middle School task force recommended this step. Instead, holding back 8th graders will likely cause class sizes in these grades to grow even larger.

It’s a shame that this administration refuses to take action to actually improve the opportunities for students to succeed, but rather insists on increasing the chances that they will fail.

Bronx High Students Walk Out

Today's NY Sun has an article about Bronx HS students walkout. See our story from the Oct. 11 Ed Notes with more details on the Dr. Quack story.

The Shame of the Nation - It's BloomKlein

When Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein talk about education reform, the like to use the phrase "The shame of the nation" to describe the education malpractice that has taken place for so many years.

Under the guise of trying to convince people, particularly those in the black commuinity - see one Al Sharpton urging Bloomberg to run for president the morning after Obama won the Iowa primary (nice work Al) - using hype and spin. Like - try this one when teachers complain: "schools are for the needs of children, not teachers." Sure. Teachers, often the only ones who stand up for childre, see BloomKlein's Children First principle inaction every minute of the day.

Samual Freedman has been one of the few people in the press calling BloomKlein on their shell game. In this article in today's NY we again see who is perpetrating the true shame of the nation. [I bolded some choice highlights.]

Run, Bloomie, run. Let's let the entire nation know your shame!

January 16, 2008
On Education

A Queens High School With 3,600 Students, and Room for Just 1,800
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

From its brass entry doors to its rooftop observatory to the intricate oak paneling of the principal’s office, Richmond Hill High School in Queens was built to inspire something like awe for public education. The only discordant response during the structure’s dedication in 1923 was whether, with a capacity for 1,800 students, it was too large.

Nobody asks that question anymore. Over the past dozen years, Richmond Hill’s most notable architectural accouterment has been the quote-unquote temporary classroom. Twenty-two of these red metal trailers, encased within chain-link fencing, occupy the school’s former yard, evoking the ambience of the Port Elizabeth container-ship terminal.

As for the cargo, that would be the students, faculty members and staff. Richmond Hill currently holds more than 3,600 pupils, twice its supposed limit, and could have 4,000 next fall as other neighborhood high schools in Queens are broken into mini-schools with smaller, more selective enrollments. Andrew Jackson, Springfield Gardens and Franklin K. Lane have already closed; next year, Far Rockaway will, too.

These days at Richmond Hill, the first lunch period starts at 8:59 a.m., class sizes routinely exceed city and state averages and students have four minutes to negotiate hallways that one biology teacher at the school likens to clotted arteries.

The classroom trailers, never meant for more than a decade of nonstop use, need new walls, ceilings and plumbing. One social studies teacher, Peter McHugh, was reduced last year to conducting class while holding an umbrella against a leaky roof.

To a certain extent, the growing enrollment at the school reflects the influx of immigrants from Guyana and the Dominican Republic to the neighborhood. But more broadly, the problem is the outcome of Department of Education decisions to open scores of small, niched schools in the area, close large ones perceived as academic failures and leave the excess students to land in traditional schools like Richmond Hill that, while relatively successful academically, were often overcrowded to begin with. In this version of education reform, it is never hard to tell the winners from the losers.

City education officials do not dispute that Richmond Hill is severely overcrowded. But they predict that as the department builds and opens new small schools, including several in the Queens neighborhood of Corona next fall, students who might otherwise attend Richmond Hill will choose these options, gradually reducing the overcrowding.

Yet Garth Harries, chief executive for portfolio development for the school system, also said the department was “not in a position to say there is a specific target number, but it is a priority to reduce enrollment at Richmond Hill.”

The students and staff at Richmond Hill painstakingly calibrate their own comments. They cite the school’s myriad classes and clubs as a strength; they do not lay blame on the principal, Frances DeSanctis; and they hold Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein responsible for the situation.

“Who decides to treat people this way?” asked Brian Sutton, a dean and special education teacher and a 16-year veteran at Richmond Hill. “You don’t build a school for 1,800 students and stick nearly 4,000 in it. Why? Who would want to do something like that to other human beings? On purpose.”

When Christine Dayao entered Richmond Hill as a freshman in September 2005, she thought the 8:59 a.m. lunch period on her schedule had to be a misprint. “I was freaking out,” said Christine, 16, a junior. “My parents called up the school and said, ‘Is it normal for someone to have lunch that early?’ And they said, ‘At Richmond Hill, yeah.’ ”

To make it through her day, which ended just short of 3:30 p.m., Christine said she “drank a lot of water.” That way, her stomach at least felt full.

THE crowding has only grown worse since 2005. Freshmen take virtually all their classes in the trailers, separating them from the school’s community. When they do walk to and from the main building — for lunch, physical education and science labs — they can easily slip away to cut class.
Within the permanent building, the crowding has created a disciplinary headache. Ninety seconds after each new period begins, deans or teachers make a “hallway sweep” to catch the stragglers. Many of them wind up in detention for little more than having been caught in a human traffic jam.

“Students just have to cope with it,” said Shelleaza Ramdass, 18, a senior. “They don’t feel like they have a choice. That’s what they have to do.”

Richmond Hill received a C grade on its Department of Education report card, and its pupils perform decently on standardized tests. But daily attendance remains at about 80 percent, and the attrition rate from freshman year to senior year is more than 50 percent. It is only fair to wonder how much those numbers reflect the disenchantment or disengagement of students who begin their high school careers in trailers.

Ms. DeSanctis, the principal, has increased team-teaching, particularly in English as a Second Language classes, and has asked the education department to build a direct corridor from the main building to the trailer yard. (She is still waiting for an answer.) It is also possible, however, that next year Richmond Hill will have to extend its class day by one more period so that it will run 7:19 a.m. to roughly 4:15 p.m.

“What I’d love is a brand-new building,” said Ms. DeSanctis, offering her opinion. “What I know is that nobody who has trailers has ever had them removed.”

Samuel G. Freedman is a professor of journalism at Columbia University. His e-mail issgfreedman@nytimes.com.

“Merit Pay” Hurts Teachers, Staff and Students

From Marjorie Stamberg to ICE-mail:

This is a leaflet circulating in GED-Plus that colleagues may be interested in. Our school was belatedly asked to "participate" in this project.

“Merit Pay” Hurts Teachers, Staff and Students

10 REASONS TO VOTE NO ON "BONUS PAY"

UFT members in the GED-Plus program are being asked to approve a so-called “Performance Bonus Program.” This is a really, really bad idea. We have to organize to vote it down.

On Thursday we received a joint letter from the United Federation of Teachers and the NYC Department of Education announcing that hub meetings will be held next week on this plan. The first meeting was held in Staten Island on January 3, the day the letter arrived. They want to ram this through, just like they got the Delegates Assembly to vote on it with barely 15 minutes discussion, just hours after the deal was sealed.

Beware: this is not a bonus but a bribe. And don’t think you’ll be seeing 3 grand anytime soon. Already they’re talking about $1,500 if the school only makes “partial gains.” What you give up for that is the basic union principle of equal pay for equal work.

While pretending to encourage teachers in impoverished neighborhoods, the “incentives” will tend to push educators away from all but the best-funded inner-city schools. While claiming to support teacher collaboration, it will set teacher against teacher, dividing paras, teachers and support staff.

Call it whatever you want, it’s not really voluntary, it’s not really a bonus -- it’s the same old “merit pay” we’ve been resisting for years, until the UFT leadership caved.

This plan opens the door to individual “merit” pay. Bloomberg says straight-out that’s what he’s after. And once they get that, you can kiss ALL your union protections goodbye. It won’t stop at “bonuses.” Next time around, if “goals aren’t met,” it’ll be your S rating, your appointment, or the ATR sub pool (which Klein is looking to “terminate”).

Teachers and other school staff may be tempted by the money, but it’s a poisoned offer. Look again! Please read the points below and try to have the maximum discussion on the pros and cons at your hub and spoke. Be informed.

Here are ten reasons to vote down this dangerous plan:

1)Why are they offering the bribe? Teachers already work tirelessly because we are dedicated to our students and public education. We can’t “work harder” for the “bonus,” because we’re already working beyond capacity. They know it. The main purpose of the “bonus” (financed by private corporatizers like the Eli Broad Foundation) is not to improve education, it’s to break the power of the union.

2)If they wanted to give teachers more money, they could just grant a raise. If they wanted to improve education in impoverished school districts, they could lower class size. But instead, the DoE has repeatedly refused to spend money offered by the state to reduce class size, and used money earmarked for reducing class size for other purposes (particularly testing).

3)It will set up competition between teachers instead of solidarity. Imagine the kind of resentment that will be directed at fellow union members on the school “compensation committee” who decide who gets how much of a “bonus”!

4)It will increase the power of principals who have veto power. Want more money? Work lunch. Do extra coverages. There will be pressure to teach to the test, or scapegoat teachers who won’t, because they’re “costing” the school a possible bonus.

5)It is bad for the students. Bonus pay is tied to test scores. So economically, it means teachers will drift to schools where students’ test scores can be the highest. (Low-performing students will be pushed out, low-performing schools will be closed.)

6)There’s nothing really “voluntary” about it, since this “data” will be used in part for the “report cards” to close schools.

7)Think of the extra paperwork required to track the increase in the already over-the-top test schedule to track student “gains” on which the bonus depends. We already work tirelessly for our students.

8)In the 2005 contract, the UFT leadership traded away seniority and work time (going back before Labor Day) for a pay increase. This opened the door for the notoriously corrupt “open market system” and the ATRing (a new verb) of up to 1,000 teachers sitting in sub pools across the region.

9)In some ways this is even more foolhardy, because it goes to the very core of the principles of education and teaching. This re-introduces “piece work” – paying per head (literally) of those students making gains – which the union movement fought for years to get rid of.

10) Schools aren’t factories, kids aren’t widgets, and teachers aren’t stupid. Don’t buy the “bonus” pay scam!

It’s not just about the money. Yankees coach Joe Torre said it best when he turned down George Steinbrenner’s “performance pay” contract. He said, “I’d been there 12 years and didn’t think motivation was needed….Incentives, to me, I took it as an insult.” It’s an insult to teachers, too.

They need 55 percent of chapter members to vote this deal up (not just a majority of those voting). Already, 33 schools offered this plan have voted it down. Don’t say later, “I wish I had voted no at the time.”

Alvarez and Marsal of St. Louis, NY, New Orleans, etc.

How many consultants on the head of a pin does it take to destroy an urban public school system?

Follow the further adventures of A and M, our favorite experts on ruining entire public school systems - the famous authors of last year's school bus route fiasco, among other NYC atrocities. Ahhhh! I love the smell of Privatization in the evening!!!

Lisa North to ICE mail:

Below are comments from St Louis on the NY Times article. Notice the comment about charter schools at the end of the comments. Lisa

Comment: The following NY Times article gives enough impetus for either the Post-Dispatch or The St. Louis American to do an investigative report on what transpired behind the scenes politically and perhaps malevolently against St. Louis' public school system.

At the end of this article, the management firm that did so much damage to the Saint Louis Public Schools is called into question in New York as well for costs. Though the contract with Alvarez and Marsal under William J. Roberti and Karen Marsal here in St. Louis was for $5 million, I recall it exceeding that amount and totaling near $11 million--this in a city where the mayor accused the previous administration of spending like "a drunken sailor." And then the State takes over the school district with its financial crisis being a major factor. So much for the alleged reform decisions of the mayor's personally chosen slate of board members.

Connect the dots. . . now the mayor is attempting to establish 27 charter schools. Was the ruination of the traditional public school district part of the plan in order to initiate private or for-profit schools that would receive public funds?

Helen Louise

January 12, 2008

State to Audit No-Bid Award of City’s School Contracts

By JENNIFER MEDINA
The state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli , is opening an audit of the City Education Department’s increasing practice of awarding contracts without competitive bidding. In the past five years such contracts have totaled $315 million.

To keep down costs, competitive bidding is normally required of city agencies. But although the Education Department is controlled by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, it is by law a state-authorized entity free from some of the more stringent city financial regulations.

School officials have said that awarding contracts without bidding gives them more flexibility and allows them to get better and faster results, but the city has been fiercely criticized for a rapid rise in no-bid contracts since Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein came into office.

In 2002, when the school system was still controlled by the Board of Education, 32 contracts totaling $11.9 million were awarded without bidding. In 2003, after Mr. Klein took over, the number nearly doubled and totaled more than $56 million. They reached a high of $121 million in 2006, then dropped again last year to $62 million, according to the city’s public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, who has been a critic of the practice. She pressed the state for the audit last fall.

“This is about transparency and accountability,” Ms. Gotbaum said. “Why are they awarding so many contracts without any other consideration? It may all be perfectly legitimate and fine, but we don’t know why.”

In a letter sent to Mr. Klein on Tuesday, the comptroller’s office said it would begin the audit on Jan. 21. Audits typically take between six months and a year. The audit was reported in The Daily News on Friday.

Most city education contracts are still competitively bid, but some of those that were not have been particularly well publicized.

The city came under tough criticism in 2006 over a $15.8 million deal with Alvarez and Marsal, a consulting firm that was hired to restructure the schools’ financial operations and cut as much as $200 million from the city’s more than $15 billion budget. The consulting firm also restructured several school bus routes to save money, but the plan infuriated parents when it took effect last January.

Some of the consultants charged as much as $450 an hour for their work, and were able to bill as much as $500 a day for such expenses as transportation and housing.

Broad Foundation and Merit Pay

From Marjorie Stamberg to ICE-mail:

Teachers have asked for information on the Eli Broad Foundation and its connection to NYC schools.

Here are some information points, with references.

The "School Wide Bonus Pay" is being funded by private funds. The major contributor is the Eli Broad Foundation. He is a California billionaire real estate mogul whose agenda, along with others on the "Business Roundtable" is the charterization, privatization of public schools, and for teacher pay linked to student tests scores.

A press release from Mayor Bloomberg (17 October 2007) announcing the school wide bonus plan says the first year there will be about $20 million in bonuses. "These money are being raised privately, and so far, commitments have been made by The Eli and Edythe Broad foundation, the Robertson Foundation and the Partnership for New York City."

Why is private money being used the first year, to be followed with "public funds" later? According to the influential financial weekly, 'The Economist", (November 10, 2007):

"Mr. Klein says that this private source of funds was crucial in paying for experiments that might have involved huge political battles if they had been paid for out of public funds. The hope is that in the future, such reforms might be widely supported."

Mr Bloomberg "has avoided inflammatory political terms --'merit pay' and 'vouchers' are red rags to teachers' unions." Instead, "by using the carrot of pay rises to extract performance concessions from principals and teachers, and by persuading philanthropists such as Bill Gates to pay for innovations that might be hard to sell to the public" he is putting his agenda in place.

--Eli Broad is a California billionaire and real estate and life insurance mogul. With assets valued at $5.8 billion, Broad is the 42nd richest person on the planet, according to "Forbes" magazine. Broad believes "the best way to fix troubled urban school districts is to employ the classic American business model in which a powerful chief executive runs roughshod over a weak governing board." (East Bay Express [California], 10 October 2007. The East Bay Express goes to on say:

"Many Broad Foundation watchers around the country say the real purpose of this group is to diminish the power of school boards for an incremental and eventual takeover of public education by the corporate sector. There are concerns that Broad is carrying out the goals and education agenda of the Business Roundtable, made up of the CEO's of the nation's biggest companies, one of which Eli Broad headed. [Bloomberg is a member of ths Business Roundtable, which has called to privatize all NYC schools and to cut off public education at the 10th grade (!)]

An article in a Oregon community paper ("Willamette Week" 3 May 2006) was titled "L.A. Foundation's Role in Portland Schools Alarms Teachers, Some Parents." The articles states:

"They're troubled by how entrenched billionaire Eli Broad's Los Angeles foundation, which is devoted to making schools more businesslike, has become in Portland schools...."

Eli Broad says "urban public schools are failing and must adopt methods from business to succeed, such as competition, accountability based on 'measurables' and unhampered management authority--all focusing on the bottom line of student achievement, as measured by standardized tests."

"Broad wants to create competition by starting publicly funded, privately run charter schools, to enforce accountability by linking teacher pay to student test scores, and to limit teachers' say in curriculum and transfer decisions."

"In Portland, the foundation has flown all seven school board members since 2003 to Park City, Utah for weeklong all-expense-paid training."


[Note; at our UFT/NYCDOE informational meetings on "school wide bonus pay," the representative from Tweed tried to downplay the contribution of Eli Broad to the fund for performance pay. However, an NYCODE statement (12/18/07 states that "The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Robertson Foundation have each committed "$5 million to the City's school-wide bonus program. This is the largest amount that the Broad Foundation has contributed to teacher performance pay initiative."]

Last Chance at English High: We are Not Alone

As has been done all over the nation, they make cosmetic changes (certainly necessary) but assume things like changing the name of a principal to head master or paint the building or "demand more of teachers" will be enough instead of a long-term plan to inundate the school with resources.

Jeff Kaufman posted this article from the Boston Globe to ICE-mail with this comment:

Interesting article forwarded by a friend in a closing school….as he wrote, “we are not alone.”

First read George Schmidt's Comment:

1/13/08

Jeff:

Sixty-six percent of students had failed at least one class. More than a quarter had failed five of their six classes. Nearly half of the ninth-graders were failing. More than a third of them were absent regularly. A teacher groaned. "That's kind of crushing." The lights flickered on. The assistant headmaster delivered an inevitable message: Teachers would have to do even more.

Sad thing is that nobody in the article seems to be willing to say that all the "standards and accountability" pushing by the "headmaster" simply cracks up against the realities of poverty, just as Rothstein and others would have suggested. There is an element of unreality in that interview in the principal's (headmaster's) office with the girl who wanted to drop "AP Biology". If the headmaster had so many answers, why didn't he just get the people who are pushing the corporate "school can do it all" solution he's implementing to provide child care for the student's family? Instead, he packs up his data driven data sets and heads into a classroom to bully a teacher.

George Schmidt
Chicago


Boston Globe:

LAST CHANCE FOR ENGLISH HIGH
Harsh realities Amid visions of a turnaround, overwhelmed teachers find that a new approach can't solve all the old problems

By Tracy Jan, Globe Staff | December 27, 2007

Second in an occasional series.

In the hallway outside her classroom, Marlene Diaz disappears amid the swirl and din of students. It is five minutes past class time. The young English teacher shouts to be heard. Her voice is hoarse, as it has been many afternoons this year. "You're late," she calls. "Let's go, let's go!"

She herds a group into the classroom and closes the door. She makes a mental count of the empty seats; five of 17 students are not there. A knell of frustration rings inside her. She takes a breath and marshals her stamina. It is her last class of the day.

"Good afternoon, my seedlings," she says and walks the rows of tables, handing out photocopied pages. She has been trying to teach her ninth-graders to write basic essays, and it has not been easy. Some of them have only a rudimentary grasp of grammar and language. Several are repeating the class after failing in previous years. Today, she hopes to inspire them with examples of good writing.

As Diaz launches into her lesson, a boy draws circles on his desk with a blue pen. A girl points her cellphone camera at a classmate and says, "Do something stupid." Another girl lays her head in her arms on top of her backpack and shuts her eyes.

"You lost a soldier," a student says to the teacher.

Diaz walks over and taps the sleeping girl's head with the stack of papers in her hand.

"Yo," the girl responds, without looking up.

"Miss," another girl says to Diaz. "Nobody's paying attention to you."

The words might as well have echoed through the halls of the school, taunting the teachers and administrators who just three months earlier had begun the year with a giddy hope of reversing the academic decline of one of the worst-performing high schools in the state.

Decaying for decades, The English High School in Jamaica Plain, the nation's oldest public high school and once one of Boston's best, was threatened with closure by the state last year. But education officials decided on a last-ditch attempt to turn the 186-year-old school around.

State officials gave the school's headmaster unprecedented power to manage English, and a year to show improvement. The headmaster lengthened the school day, started tutoring centers and study skills classes, and pushed students to enroll in college-level courses. He dismissed teachers he believed were not committed to his mission and hired enthusiastic ones who said they were. He told the faculty he would demand more from them than ever. And after weeks of intensive preparation over the summer, teachers arrived at a freshly painted school this fall with a belief they could achieve the headmaster's ultimate goal: Graduate every senior and get them into college.

But a third of the way through the school year, a new reality is setting in. Teachers, shouldering the main burden of reforming the school, are confronting the fact that many of the students lack even the most basic skills. And in a school that serves many students from poor or immigrant families, the challenges of dealing with difficult home lives has proved daunting.

Some teachers are exhausted and overwhelmed. Two of more than two dozen new teachers have quit.

"This was going to be the year where everything changes," said Diaz, who is in her third year at the school. "Now, frustrations are setting in."

In coming days, teachers would receive an even grimmer picture. Assembled in a darkened classroom, they watched as a staccato of sobering statistics about the recently completed first term were flashed on a screen:

Sixty-six percent of students had failed at least one class. More than a quarter had failed five of their six classes. Nearly half of the ninth-graders were failing. More than a third of them were absent regularly.

A teacher groaned. "That's kind of crushing."

The lights flickered on. The assistant headmaster delivered an inevitable message: Teachers would have to do even more.

Two months earlier, veteran math teacher Jerry Gallagher sat alone at his desk, aimlessly flipping through the syllabus for his calculus class. It was back-to-school night, when teachers had planned to show off the school's all-out effort.

Teachers had called parents to invite them to the event and sent letters home with students. Teachers spruced up their classrooms. Secretaries put out plates of pastry and fruit.

More than an hour had passed. Not one parent stepped foot in Gallagher's classroom. The food in the school lobby sat mostly untouched.

Gallagher bowed his head and sighed.

"Just because we're doing something brand new doesn't change the dynamics," he said.

That was October, when teachers were beginning to understand the magnitude of the job they had undertaken and perceive that some of the school's most ambitious efforts were already suffering.

Attendance, after a brief spike early in the year, slipped to 85 percent in the first term, back to last year's level and far short of the state standard of 92 percent.

Frustrated by the increased amount of class time and homework, some students have simply left. Since the start of the year, more than 100 of English High's 800 students have transferred to other schools or been discharged because they stopped coming to class.

"These kids have been so accustomed to getting by doing the minimum that when somebody tells them that's not good enough, it can get stressful," said Junia Yearwood, a veteran English teacher.

It has taken a toll on teachers, too. Diaz has struggled to keep her frustrations in check. But at the same time, walking through the hallways near her classroom, she has also taken heart.

On one wall are the names and photos of newly elected student officers, members of the school's first student government in four years. On another bulletin board are the names of 28 students who have been inducted into the National Honor Society - more than in recent years.

She was especially touched by notes tacked to another wall - Thank you letters, written by students after teachers and an assistant headmaster staged a huge Thanksgiving meal in a school hallway the day before the actual holiday. Students and teachers had hauled desks from classrooms and placed them end-to-end, draped them with blue table cloths and piled them with roasted chickens and pies. Nearly 400 students feasted and relished what seemed to be a new kind of bond with teachers.

"I remember when I first came to English High, I didn't feel it was the best," one girl wrote. "I wanted to change schools so badly, but I feel I have a chance for my last year with you by my side."

Diaz hopes at least some of her students feel that way. Sometimes they behave so badly in class that she has been reduced to counting loudly to regain their attention. Already, she is worried that some may be on a track to fail. It eats at her and makes her think of her own youth. Raised by immigrant parents in a Dorchester housing project, Diaz had felt intense gratitude for the teachers who took the time to care for her and spur her on. Now 26 and in the teacher's role, she sometimes wants to scream at her students that at stake is nothing less than their lives.

"It's so overwhelming and disheartening knowing where these kids can end up, and how high the odds become when they act this way," Diaz said.

One afternoon in November, a teacher pulled Fred Daniels out of his world history class and walked the senior to a small classroom set aside this year for tutoring students who fall behind. The teacher introduced Daniels to a clean-cut Boston University business student named Edwin Pimentel.

Pimentel is one of 15 tutors at English High's two new Learning Centers. He is 18, a year younger than Daniels.

Daniels sat next to Pimentel at a round table. The tutor flipped through an orange math text Daniels had pulled from his backpack and asked him what chapter he needs help on. Daniels grinned sheepishly. He has hardly opened the book.

Daniels is in his sixth year of high school. He arrived at English last year after a string of expulsions and stints in juvenile detention. But he is bright, and determined to become the first in his family to earn a diploma. The school is determined, too. A school secretary calls him every morning at 5 to rouse him from bed.

He has done well in some classes, but he is failing Algebra II Honors. In the third week of school, the tall, muscular teen had wept in frustration in his headmaster's office and threatened to drop out of school. His algebra teacher was moving too fast, and he was too embarrassed to ask for help.

Daniels stayed in school but started skipping math.

His teacher had recently hunted him down in a hallway and offered him a deal: He would not receive the F on his first-term report card if he agreed to get help at the Learning Center.

He took it. Now, Daniels rummaged through his backpack and pulled out a stack of homework papers.

"All of this, I'm not gonna lie," he said, dropping the stack on the table. "I literally copied people to get credit."

"That's not good," Pimentel said. The tutor wrote a problem on a pad of paper and asked Daniels to solve it. Daniels went through the steps, talking out loud. The two worked, passing the pad between them.

Half an hour later, they stopped. Pimentel believed Daniels understood most of the basic principles and was not hopelessly lost.

A teacher who runs the Learning Center told Daniels he should return the following week. Daniels nodded, smiling as he left.

"I'm trying to be optimistic about my future," he said in the hallway. "But everything in the past is catching up to me. I guess I set myself up for failure."

Daniels did not return to the Learning Center the following week - or the one after that.

Valeria Cabrera stood in the front office waiting to meet with her headmaster early one November morning. Her brimming backpack pulled her posture ramrod straight. She cradled a stack of binders.

The 17-year-old had fought hard on the first day of school for a full slate of advanced courses. But two months later, she felt pressures mounting. She wanted to drop Advanced Placement biology.

Twice as many students are enrolled in college-level courses this year. And no one drops an AP class without the headmaster's permission.

José Duarte motioned the girl into his office. Cabrera is ranked third in her senior class of 165, a new member of the National Honor Society and a winner of a statewide college scholarship because of her high MCAS scores.

Duarte was counting on students like her - a first-generation immigrant from the Dominican Republic whose dream is to attend a school like Princeton - to succeed. English High has not had a Princeton admission since the 1970s.

Cabrera sat with her arms crossed. "Do you know I have four AP classes?" she asked Duarte.

He nodded and smiled. "I put you in them."

"That's like six hours of homework every night," Cabrera said, then ticked off her other responsibilities: baby-sitting her younger brother, college applications, a class at Harvard Medical School.

"I hate to see you drop AP biology, for someone who wants to go into the sciences," Duarte said.

"It damages my other classes," she said.

"Let me push you back," Duarte said. "For the next two weeks, let's put you in the Learning Center."

"But . . ."

Duarte cut her off. "Don't just say no."

"But no," Cabrera said. "Sometimes there's a line."

Duarte knows about a line. After overseeing English High the last eight years, he knows it well.

The next week, he allowed Cabrera to drop AP biology and pick up AP Spanish - a language in which she is already fluent.

Diaz hurried down the hall to borrow a dustpan from a fellow English teacher.

"Have they come yet?" she asked.

The teacher nodded.

Diaz wore gray slacks, an argyle sweater vest, and a crisp white blouse, not her usual end-of-the-week outfit of jeans and blue English High sweatshirt. Earlier in the day, she had frantically decorated a bulletin board. She dusted and swept.

State observers, on their first visit to gauge the school's progress, were due shortly at her sixth-period class. How many of her students would show up? Would they be ready to present the essays they had spent more than a month perfecting?

The assignment had seemed simple. She had asked each student to pick a subject they know well and explain it in writing.

When she had made the assignment in October, she had allotted two weeks. But day after day, the students struggled to organize their thoughts and express themselves on paper. She gave deadlines, but extended them when students didn't finish.

The bell rang and students filed in. Diaz counted eight students. Nine were absent.

"Are you ready? Are you ready?" she asked.

The door opened and five state and district officials, including the headmaster, walked in. They wore suits and carried folders. Diaz flushed. Her ears started ringing. She began writing on the board but caught herself misspelling a word. Silently, the officials sat in a row at the back of the room, arms crossed, chins in hands.

A boy volunteered to present his essay. He stood at the front of the room and began reading from a piece of paper. He paused frequently and took deep breaths.

When he finished, a girl peeked in her notebook, where she had written questions that the class had come up with earlier and raised her hand. Why did he choose to write about surviving high school? she asked.

The boy said he had heard rumors in middle school that seniors would flush freshmen's heads down the toilet. The panel of officials chuckled. Diaz relaxed. After a parade of other presentations, the officials left the classroom as wordlessly as they had entered.

Diaz was grateful, even proud, of her students' efforts. They had shown mastery of some of the basic writing techniques she had been trying to teach them. She gathered the students at the front of the room, where they buzzed in triumph. "Great job, you guys," she said before dismissing the class.

Alone, Diaz gathered her students' papers and treated herself to a piece of the Puerto Rican candy she keeps in a locked cabinet by her desk. She savored the victory of her students' success. But even as she did, she thought about the difficult road ahead. The essay was but the first of at least five essays the students would have to write before June. It was already nearing Christmas. She would need to be tougher.

Spitzer and Green Families: You Scratch My Back...

Why do people trust ANY of these guys?

Today's NY Times has one of those delicious little articles that expose the depth of corruption in the political world. "Spitzer and Family Help Pay Supporter’s [Mark Green] Debts"

The Spitzer family gave Green $50,000 to retire his debt.

The article says:

The contributions were the latest exchange of political largess between the Green and Spitzer families. Mr. Green’s older brother and pre-eminent political backer, the Manhattan real estate developer Stephen L. Green, donated $135,000 to the governor’s election campaign in 2006.

Why didn’t Stephen Green bail out his brother?

“He can’t help retire the debt because he was so generous before,” Mark Green said. Indeed, the elder Green and his wife donated $270,000 to his brother’s campaign, either directly or through businesses they control. Mark Green received an additional $200,000 from other family members.

“It’s a family matter, but trust me on this, Steve was so generous, as a matter of law, he cannot help retire the final debt.” Asked whether his brother had reached the legal contribution limits for his businesses, Mr. Green would not elaborate further.

During the 2006 campaign, the business donations were criticized by government watchdog groups, which said the contributions were a symptom of the loopholes in state campaign finance laws that allow wealthy businesspeople to exceed spending limits by donating through limited liability companies they control — a tactic used particularly by real estate developers.

So, the political shell game is on. Stephen Green gives Spitzer $135,000 and Spitzer gives his brother Mark $50,000 back so no one exceeds any limits. Think Spitzer will do anything that might in any way harm Green's real estate interests?

Now, here comes the funniest line in the entire piece by Mark Green:

“This is now a relationship among friends. “I am not a registered lobbyist and I have no interest before the state.”

Almost as funny as corporate job cutting down-sizer Mitt Romney telling people in economically depressed Michigan he is committed to fight for every job.

Oh, yes. The UFT has supported both Spitzer and (not too enthusiastically) Green in the past.

Israeli Teachers Strike

One of the points Michael Fiorillo made at the Teachers Unite forum on The Big Business of Public Education was the global nature of the attack on teachers, their unions and on public schools. Here is part of a comment from an Israeli on a post at Pissed off teacher:

As a teacher, you must be aware of the teachers' strike. Teachers are getting half the salary of a bank teller. Teachers are receiving money each month from welfare in order to survive. Try teaching in a situation far worse than the misery caused by Reich Chancellor Klein and Reich Fuhrer Bloomberg.

Two years ago 14,000 teachers were fired and the principals were given unparalleled powers. Sound familiar?

The Impact of Scanning on a School

Updated 11am: See Gary Babad's comment below

We know the fear there is out there about weapons, etc., especially since Columbine. Though if those guys wanted to do the same even with scanning, no one would have stopped them unless they were scanned first outside the grounds of the school.

Many schools have scanning every day and there are always reports of the impact, from having to stand outside for a half hour and missing their first class, to the dehumanizing aspects.

The report below is from a school in eastern Queens with a higher proportion of middle class parents, who often seem to be the most outraged at how their children are being treated. It is often pointed out that there seem to be few complaints from parents in the poorer inner city but that may be due to a complex set of reasons.

I've heard more from teachers, generally on the left, who object to the degrading dance the poorest, most at-risk students must go through. Given the general conditions, even before scanning, the number of weapons used in attacks by students seemed pretty low compared to the population, but it is understandable that safety is on people's minds.

But when you throw police into the mix, with an all-too-often attitude of perps and peeps - we've heard of kids getting arrested for refusing to take off their hats – a more hostile environment is created. Ed Notes has been opposed to police in the schools, which can make a bad situation worse and that as much as possible, educators who at least have some modicum of experience in dealing with kids on a regular basis, should be left to address these issues. But schools must be given the educator (rather than police) resources to do the job adequately and as painlessly as possible.

You'll note below that the principal of John Bowne did not seem happy when the scanning was imposed on the school. Didn't BloomKlein give principals all that power and shouldn't the decision to bring in scanners have been left to him? As you can see, at least he is to some extent responsible to a PTA, which we're sure would be abolished by BloomKlein ( I wonder how the anti-parent policies of Bloomberg would play in the hinterlands in a presidential campaign?)

Frankly, in today's pressure cooker environment in schools, it's more likely for a teacher to go postal.

A report from a parent on the nyceducationnews listserve:

At John Bowne's PTA meeting last nite, the issue of scanning was brought up by the principal. We had scanning on Dec. 17. I asked what the attendance was for that day and the principal said the drop was between 18 and 23%. He was not a happy camper about the whole situation either. He estimated that the overtime alone cost the school about $10,000.00. And he was also not happy about the disruption to the education process. He had deans, APs, secretaries, teachers, etc. bagging and tagging electronic devices? Another mom asked what was confiscated, other than eds - 2 pockets knives, a box cutter and a couple bags of pot. The principal said that he made 4 announcements yesterday that eds would not be tolerated and hoped that the kids got the hint that scanning was going to be done today (but we didn't hear that from him). When I got home, I asked my daughter about the announcements and she didn't ge the hints. However, she promptly started texting and sending out My Space alerts to her friends. Sure enough, this AM, the outside of the school was crawling with (what I assumed) police officers (another waste of our tax dollars) and school security officers.

Gary Babad adds:
For anyone who has not seen it, the NYCLU report, "Criminalizing the Classroom" is a comprehensive look at this issue, with history and some chilling anecdotes, but also a set of alternative proposals for maintaining school security. One can navigate to and download the entire PDF file.
http://www.nyclu.org/policinginschools

Big Business of Public Education Forum Attracts a Crowd

Updated Friday, Jan. 11

It was standing room only at today's Teachers Unite-sponsored forum on privatization. Speakers Michael Fiorillo and Leonie Haimson wowed the crowd with their knowledge and analysis of the privatization of public schools. Michael concentrated on the historical and broad context, while Leonie focused on the impact of BloomKlein on NYC.

Michael is an ESL teacher and chapter leader at Newcomers HS in Long Island City and Leonie is the founder and director of Class Size Matters and the co-founder of the NYC Public School Parents blog.

The mixed crowd consisted of teachers new to the system and veterans and there was a rousing discussion afterwards with some the fault lines between newbies and vets being exposed. Teachers Unite, under the direction of Sally Lee, will attempt to address some of these issues at future events. (We've talked about holding a "bridging the gap" open discussion at some point.)

Why have these forums (we've held 3 events so far) tempted over 50 teachers to come out on a Thursday afternoon/evening and attracted the interest of some influential people in the ed/political world (look for more fabulous speakers in the future)? Because these crucial discussions are taking place no where else. One of our goals will be to figure out how to include more audience participation as there were still many questions left unanswered and the sense that people would have staid around even longer.

I put together a list of resources for the participants and will post them later.
I videotaped the event and will try to get sections up on the web within the next 2 weeks.

Look for the next forum on big business and privatization on March 27.

Run, Bloomberg, Run

graphic by DB

by Norman Scott
From The Wave, Jan. 11, 2007
www.rockawave.com

A story in the NY Times, "Obama’s Surge Deflates Forum and Talk of a Bloomberg Run," on the day before the New Hampshire primary may have been premature in burying Michael Bloomberg’s independent run for the presidency. I hope he does run, but not because I am a supporter.
One has to ask why so many veteran NYC educators have such disdain for Bloomberg and his henchman Joel Klein. They have witnessed close up and personal the destructive nature of what has been done to an already fragile school system.
There is no question that the NYC schools needed major reform. But not on the basis of bringing competitive business practices like merit pay for teachers and students, competitions between schools, bottom line results resulting in punitive measures for schools and personnel – all while funneling money to private interests that leech off the system.
Not only are they an indication of educational policy gone awry but also a tale of major incompetence that has invited comparisons to the mismanagement of the Bush administration.
Hopefully, a presidential campaign by Bloomberg will focus national attention on the Bloom/Klein educational "reform" disaster.

Small learning communities
With so many initiatives by Bloom/Klein being wrong-headed, the idea of setting up small learning communities with a regular Ed and special Ed teacher working together seemed to have possibilities. I have heard of some cases where, if carefully managed, with small class sizes and with lots of teacher input, it has worked. Do you think any of these factors are in operation on the small learning communities set up by the NYCDOE? That’s a rhetorical question. There are such setups at our own Beach Channel HS. Let us know how they are working out.

Beach Channel staff shaken by Far Rockaway HS closing
The staff at BCHS is preparing for an influx of 9th graders next year that will have nowhere convenient to go other than BCHS. Worried about a disproportionate influx of ELA and special ed students who will not be accepted at the small schools replacing Far Rock, there is the additional factor of increased gang activity due to rivalries between students at the two schools. Will the DOE provide in increase in resources to BCHS to handle the influx? Or will the DOE squeeze the school to force it into a closing of it’s own? You can find hints of an answer in items one and two above.

State Education Dept. and Board of Regents performance shameful
Someone ought to start an investigation as to why NY State is one of the most regressive in the nation when it comes to over testing, amongst other items. Who to blame? Start with the Board of Regents, which appoints the state education commissioner, who happens to be the hapless Richard Mills. It is time to take the appointments of these people out of the hands of politicians and hold an election, as is done in many other states.

Political action as a teacher
As someone who was an unwilling entrant into teaching in 1967, I’m convinced that becoming an educational activist both in the union and in the community I worked in (Williamsburg) gave me perspective and an understanding of the forces that impacted on the daily events I was witnessing. The powers that be at the schools and district level and in the UFT were not very happy, but I was young and didst not know what I was doing. But I’m very glad I became an activist. Regularly meeting with like-minded people enabled me to work with parents and community and gave me insights I was able to use with the kids. These types of meetings continue today. A current project is:

The big business of public education
Millions of dollars are exchanged between New York City’s Department of Education and private companies. How do these relationships impact our classrooms? What can be done about the seemingly inescapable trend of schools privatization?
I’ve been involved in helping set up forums addressing these issues in conjunction with Teachers Unite, an organization (www.teachersunite.net), under the direction of Sally Lee, that builds ties between educators and community organizers, using these political/education forums to build an informed teacher constituency where educators can relate their experiences in schools to larger political trends.
The 2007-2008 forums focus on the impact of privatization and the corporate model on classroom life in NYC public schools. Next year, with the law giving the mayor total control of the schools due to sunset in 2009, we will tackle the thorny issue of school governance. These forums are open to the public.

Rockaway Theater Company
I spent the past season as the videographer for the Rockaway Theater Company and the more involved, the more impressed I was about the quality work they do. Recently, I finally delivered DVD’s of all the shows. Working on them was delightful, as it gave me a chance to see the shows time and again, something I never get tired of. If I don’t chicken out, I might even take their acting course, taught by a remarkable young actor who delighted audiences with his antics as the narrator in Rockaway Café and as “Larry” in “Inspecting Carol.”

Rubber room movie
The trailer for a movie about the rubber room, also known as Teacher Reassignment Centers, has been released and can be viewed at www.rubberroommovie.com.

UFT to start it’s own grading system
As I was finalizing this piece, I read a report by Elizabeth Green (the most relentless education reporter in NYC) that Randi Weingarten was going to create a union-sponsored grading system as a counter weight to the one being used by the DOE. Fraught with lots of minefields, this idea bears watching. I’ll comment next time.

Education Notes Prognostications for 2008

Teachers urged to give steroids to low scoring children to pump up scores.

Teachers ordered to take steroids during height of testing season to counter "testing fatigue."

What the hell: Teachers told to give steroids to all children.

Roger Clemons becomes NYCDOE Chancellor. NY State Ed Commissioner Richard "DICKIE BOY" Mills gives Clemons special waiver. "He has even more qualifications than Joel Klein to be Chancellor. He has 4 children,” says Mills.
Test scores and grad rates break Bloom/Klein record for inflation.

Bloomberg is elected President on a platform of nationalizing schools before selling them off to private interests. Russia's Putin puts in best bid and owns the entire school system of the United States. The business community cheers the advent of a Soviet style system that will prepare children to work long hours without complaining.

Joel Klein arrested for handing out cash to children in front of schools. His claims he was only paying kids for getting high scores on tests were laughed out of court.

Bloomberg Presidential Campaign being Derailed by Obama?

I am saddened at the story in today's NY Times, "Obama’s Surge Deflates Forum and Talk of a Bloomberg Run."

We will be missing an opportunity to focus national attention on the BloomKlein educational "reform" disaster. Not only are they an indication of ed policy gone awry but also a tale of major incompetence that has invited comparisons to the mismanagement of the Bush administration.

Photoshopped by DB at pseudo-intellectualism

Seduced and Abandoned by Intel: My Poor Sad XO Laptop

It does tricks too

When I saw the chance to get my hands on one of the XO laptops when One Laptop Per Child offered a 2 month "Give One Get One" deal where for $400 you get one and so does some kid in the third world, as a tech freak, I jumped at it.

Mine arrived last Thursday and it is so cute - little green and white thing with a 7 inch screen. And so light and rugged. Just toss it into a bag and go. I took it to a meeting the other day and when we needed a bit of info I found a wi-fi link in the restaurant and googled it. It comes with a bunch of stuff that kids will get a kick out of but we shouldn't expect the tech savvy kids in this country to love it more than the stuff they already have. But to a kid in Combodia, it is way cool. You can even charge it up like a windup toy. Check out the OLPC web site for info.

Kids in the Andes in Peru using the XO.
Photo from the NY Times article.

Enter the Evil Empire
Saturday's business section of the NY Times has a very informative article written by John Markham, titled "Intel Quits Effort to Get Computers to Children."

"The project has been a lightning rod for controversy largely because the world’s most powerful software and chip making companies — Microsoft and Intel — had long resisted the project, for fear, according to many industry executives, that it would compete in markets they hoped to develop."

Maybe it was all pie in the sky when former MIT Media Lab boss Nicholas Negroponte started the One Laptop Per Child in an effort to bring inexpensive technology deep into the third world by producing and inexpensive laptop that costs $200. I'm a fan of MIT Media Lab because of the work they've done with tech ed, including developing the prototype of the LEGO brick we use in robotics. And I love the constructivist ideas (ok, I'm out of the closet) of Seymour Papert and was a big fan of the Logo programming environment he developed at MIT.

The XO laptop uses a processor from Advanced Micro Devices instead of Intel's chips and the Linux open-source operating system. Microsoft’s Windows and Office software are nowhere to be seen.

Is this idea a threat to industry giants Microsoft and Intel? You bet it is. Intel wants to sell their own $350 version and it's sales force around the world has been trashing the XO. And of course, Bill Gates, that paragon of virtue when it comes to ed reform (in many cases with the twist that Windows and Office are part of the package) – well, don't expect any of the Gates money to go to places where the XO is used. A $200 laptop with software for schools in the US where you could equip an entire classroom for about $5000 instead of 5 or 10 times as much? What kind of ed reform is that where the business world can't make a buck or 2?

One of the hidden costs of the BloomKlein takeover of the NYC public schools has been the catastrophe visited upon whatever tech program existed in the schools before they came on the scene and the enormous amount of money Intel and Microsoft have walked away with. I know where too many bodies are buried to go into depth on this and won't write much about it until everyone I know is clear.

Markham writes:

“They played another dirty trick in Peru,” [Negroponte] said. “It’s a little bit like McDonald’s competing with the World Food Program.”

In Peru, where One Laptop has begun shipping the first 40,000 PCs of a 270,000 system order, Isabelle Lama, an Intel saleswoman, tried to persuade Peru’s vice minister of education, Oscar Becerra Tresierra, that the Intel Classmate PC was a better choice for his primary school students.

Unfortunately for Intel, the vice minister is a longtime acquaintance of Mr. Negroponte and Seymour Papert, a member of the One Laptop team and an M.I.T. professor who developed the Logo computer programming language. The education minister took notes on his contacts with the Intel saleswoman and sent them to One Laptop officials.

In a telephone interview Friday, Mr. Tresierra said that his government had asked Intel for a proposal for secondary-school machines, and it had responded with a proposal offering the Classmate PC for primary grades.

“We told them this is a final decision, we are running the primary-grade project with the XO,” he said. “She wasn’t very happy.”

He said the decision to purchase the XO had come after the government had run a pilot project with the computers. “We were very happy with the results,” he said.

I think I will be too. The XO even has a little camera that can take stills and short videos. Last night me and the guys were watching the football games at my friend's house with the XO logged on to a neighbor's wi-fi. Need to know who Joe Namath's backup was when the Jets won the Super Bowl? Babe Parilli. And the XO took pics of all the chips, dip and Chinese food we consumed. I won't share and gross you out. Urp!

More on ATRs' from Pissed Off

Pissed Off Teacher after reading out item below about Klein going after ATR's has this report from the trenches:

Excerpt (go to her blog to read the entire item):

An ATR in my school came to the cafeteria today visibly upset about something. When pressed, she told us that she had been called down to the APO's office. It seems APs, deans and school aides have been complaining about her classroom management. It is interesting that this incident came about today, the day after the above story came out. This woman has been in the school since September and in all this time has only had two classes that she could not handle. The classes she could not handle are classes that give their regular teacher a hard time. Yesterday, she had the class from hell. One AP walked into the room and got the kids to settle down for a little while. Unfortunately, this pompous a** did not show his face until the last twenty minutes of the period and did not stay around for long.

A coincidence?

Last week we had our Shanker fest and talked about the '68 strike and how the UFT framed it as a fight for due process after a bunch of teachers were transferred. It is way more complex than that but the enormous amount of people under attack while the UFT sits by makes for an interesting contrast.

A follow-up comment from Ira on ICE-mail:

I really think this sums up quite succinctly exactly what they are doing -- ATR's can never be expected to control difficult classes so they are going to make sure they get them as often as possible and then they will probably be observed when they are in one of those classes.

Eduwonkette Goes to Washington...

....figuratively, that is. Jimmy Stewart better duck [for old movie buffs.]

Eduwonkette's blog is migrating over to the Education Week at this new address.

"I will not be an employee of Ed Week - they'll just be hosting the site. They're not responsible for my views, nor I for theirs."

That's good news, though we'll miss the funky pink atmosphere. The national exposure Ed Week can provide should be a plus for the good guys. Not bad for a blog a little over 3 months old.