How NYCDOE Eats Its Young Teachers

They Call Me Teacher could be a model for many of the young idealistic teachers flooding into the system, the heroic teachers who are expected to throw their lives into the job, to feel guilt and work harder no matter how kids or parents behave.

You see, all it takes is hard work and high expectations for all the kids and there will be no achievement gap. Don't even mention class size or think about it. That's just an excuse for failure. Keep your head down and just teach and don't let the socio-economic distractions or behavior issues (your fault) or lack of parent interest or their own helplessness (you don't call them enough) get in your way.

When you are ready to have a family or just burn out, you'll be cast aside and replaced by the next batch. Sort of reminds you of those war movies when the young recruits come up to the front lines to face the carnage.

I believe I met They Call Me Teacher at a blogger's social and couldn't be more impressed. Another blogger at that social went through her own hell and is now out of teaching and much happier. This just shouldn't be happening.

I know this will sound weird to some people, but I believe the answer and career saver is to get involved in the growing teacher/social justice movement where you get perspective on the bullshit being thrown at you and find compadres you will not find in your schools. I know it worked for me when I found such a group in 1970 in my 4th year of teaching. We met almost every week for over 10 years and it saved me as a teacher. (Many of the people from that group help found ICE 5 years ago).

Who needs meetings after school when you are exhausted? Ask some of the people we've been meeting with, who leave these meetings more energized than they came in, ready to go back to the fray with a better political idea of the how social forces shape education. No, the answer is not to just keep your heads down and teach. The fight to improve the lives of the kids lies just as much outside the classroom as in it.

In these excerpts from TCMT, I extracted the parts that indicate the toll high class size takes and the relief when it drops with a few kids out. I have no doubt that a concerted effort to reduce class size would save many of these teachers. The talk about finding a quality teacher first is a red herring. TCMT was a higher quality teacher on March 13 than on March 12. Also note the growing frustration with kids who just won't do the work and parents who seem helpless. The ed deformers say it is due to TCMT's not being a good enough teacher. Remember to keep your head down and not think of the parents. Focus man.

Make sure to read the entire posts.

March 12, 2009

could it get any worse

i'm miserable. beyond miserable. i've never felt so miserable.

this job is slowly torturing me to my death... and medication may be needed in my near future.
i just couldn't zone out the hell that surrounded me today.

my stomach has been in knots more often this school year than in my whole past life combined.

my class size increased by 25% because of changes in the grade level. the students are pissed off about being put in my room and therefore defiant and miserable and sharing it with the rest of the class. not only do they bring us down in the room, but we also are officially packed in tighter than sardines.

recently, i was grabbed, jerked to a stop, and yelled at by another teacher in front of students. i couldn't believe the situation and the true disrespect that was actually shown. i'm furious that people like this even work in a school around children. i'm not used to this. i've never seen this before. it shocks me at the way some people act. i only hope i don't turn into them. i only hope i haven't alraedy turned into them.

i have two students who are completely capable of learning. they just don't care. they don't do their homework, Ever. their parents don't do anything about it
i asked them both what they did instead of doing homework... what could be so important in a 10 year old's life that they have no time for homework, ever. ... television. i told them that i forbid them from watching tv anymore. yah... because i can say that. but again, whatever. something the parents should be saying.
i'm just frustrated by the laziness of some of these kids. they don't even care. i feel like we try so hard, of course, my teaching here in this school doesn't look like teaching i know i can do... there is something about this place that holds me back (probably the behaviors... the outbreaks, the yelling, the chaos, the disruptions)

i've learned my limitations. i cannot push myself too far. i cannot let this place ruin my spirit. lucky for me there is another teacher to help, even if we are both in shambles about to fall to pieces. at least i'm not alone, suffering.

days like today make me want to move home.
i'm scared i'll forget what teaching actually looks like.
i'm scared i'll forget how to teach those willing to be taught. those willing to listen, to behave. i'm scared i'll forget how much i love teaching. i already want to go back to school, to find something different. i won't though. i won't let this school kill my dream.

three and a half weeks until spring break. god help me survive.

Friday, March 13, 2009

When You Hit Bottom...

The only way to go is up. Yesterday was as close to the bottom as I'd ever like to go. Yesterday ranks up there on the list of as one of the worst days of my life, especially in my teaching career. I was dragging, depressed, angry, upset. I was insanely mad that this place is taking teaching and turning it into something I hate, something I dread... which is Not a feeling I've felt before New York.

Today was better. As I forced myself into positive thinking this morning all the way to work... I prayed it couldn't get worse. I prayed it'd be better. I needed better. I got it. There were quite a few students gone today, not really many behavior problem students but just downsizing the number of people cramped in our room made that much of a difference. We taught. We tried some new things. Our students were learning, involved, answering questions, discussing in their groups.

Has Your Favorite Unity Caucus Hack Gone Missing?

Why they're all up in Buffalo at the annual NY State United Teachers Convention. All 800 of them - at your expense. (They were elected in the 2007 winner take all Unity sweepstakes.) And know what they're doing? They're embracing reform. Oh, you know, the usual suspects. Things like merit pay. And charter schools.

"Obama recently pushed for even more reform — rewarding teacher excellence, holding teachers more accountable and promoting innovation, such as charter schools. Rather than considering those subjects taboo, we have been speaking of the same things."- Richard Iannuzzi, NYSUT President.

Klein Letter to PS 150 Brownsville Parents

Follow-up to our previous postof Klein's letter to PS 241's Harlem parents, which should be read in full with the Ed Notes' decoder annotations.

If you are following the saga at PS 241 in Harlem we posted earlier in the day, here is the similar letter Klein sent to PS 150 undermining that school. That these acts of sabotage of schools he supposedly is in charge of, are despicable, there is no doubt. There is no clearer example than these letters of the true agenda of BloomKlein – to pick of as many public schools as possible an turn them over to private, well-connected interests. For those who look to politicians for help, consider that people like state Senate leader Malcolm Smith started two charter schools. If you look to the UFT for help, they too started two charter schools and made deals with others (Green Dot), while proclaiming this weekend at the NYSUT convention in Buffalo how much they support charters. There is only one defense teachers and parents who will be left holding the bag of a wasted public school system have: organize.

Your Union Dues at Work: $10,000 a Year to Sharpton

“Nobody is supporting us more financially than Randi Weingarten,” Mr. Sharpton said.

Ms. Weingarten said that the union had given about $10,000 a year for the last eight years to the National Action Network, Mr. Sharpton’s civil rights group.

Education’s Odd Couple Do Their Act, and Provoke Controversy

By JENNIFER MEDINA
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/education/03eep.html?_r=1&ref=education

Tweed Undermines Law Suit "Win" on Zoned Schools

The epicenter of the battle over public and charter schools is Harlem, where public schools, long denied resources have been forced into unfair competition with charter schools with sleek advertising, supported by corporations making short-term investments with a long view of profits to be made off the privatizing of public schools. Most egregious is that the DOE, the very agency that has run these public schools under attack for the past 7 years, is lining up on the side of the charters.

No sooner did I write this in my previous post-

We've reached the bizarro stage where Eva Moskowitz, miffed that her real estate grab for publicly funded NYC school buildings went temporarily awry, incites parents in Harlem to demand the DOE close the local zoned school when the DOE rescinded its plan to close PS 241 after the NYCLU and UFT filed suit.

I am all for the suit, but ultimately the DOE will figure out a way to force the "saved" schools into closing. This is all about real estate for charters, man. How about starving them of resources? Or putting in a lunatic Leadership Academy principal? A law suit has to be backed up by action. While the UFT might support individual school protests, it refuses to organize all the threatened schools into a force to demand the kinds of resources they need. When faced with yet another moratorium on school closings resolution, the UFT leadership removed the call for a meeting of all schools threatened with closing.

--than we received communications from teachers at PS 241. I thought it would take Tweed a few days to strike back. Yesterday, Moskowitz' gang struck organizing parents to demand PS 241 be closed. Today came the move by Klein to divert parents from enrolling in PS 241, the equivalency of police commissioner Raymond Kelly urging people in high crime districts to replace the NYPD with a private police force.

Before you read the letter from PS 241 and the letter Klein sent to parents, I wanted to mention the story a teacher from PS 242 in Harlem told at our conference to save public ed on Saturday. She talked about the horrors of 3 schools sharing her building, especially when PS 242 is playing the role of the unfavored step child of the DOE, forced to accept every child tossed from the charter schools in the building.


From teachers at PS 241 in Harlem:

Good Morning All-

As some off you may have heard- DOE will not be closing the school down- they have been put off by the lawsuit! This is not a true victory however.

Please read the letter being sent to the parents carefully.

Parents are still being bullied to send their students to other schools.

Harlem Success Academy will still be placed in our building.

Middle school will be phased out.

Where will there be room for HSA? We would only lose our grade 6 students. We will be attempting to get back all of our parents who were forced to apply elsewhere- but how will they all be housed? Sharing facilities with 3 schools- how? We already do not have use of our gym- and struggle to share the other common areas with another charter school in the building. We will lose classrooms, we will lose our art room, we will have to figure out lunch and breakfast times and children will be eating at all kinds of hours.

PS 242- has shown that three buildings cannot live peacefully and successfully in one facility without children suffering. Also- DOE says that if students come back to the school- and if 241 progresses well (by what standards and whose say so) we will stay open- otherwise we will still be closed. That means with HSA already in the building- they can take over. They will still have a way to rezone illegally in the future.

This must stop. This is not a victory- they have only shifted that battle.

We must come together to rethink how we will move forward.

Send this out to everyone- elected officials, the press, community organizations and let them know that this is not a victory. We are being swindled! I am sure DOE's press release will sound very different!


The letter from Klein to parents has been deciphered by Ed Notes code breakers. Here it is with annotations from our code breakers:

April 3, 2009

Dear parents of P.S. 241:

The most important thing I can do as Chancellor is to make sure that you have excellent school choices for your child [as long as they’re in schools I don’t have to run]. As you know, several months ago, the Department of Education (DOE) said that P.S. 241 had not proven [see, we don’t have to prove nuthin’] that it was preparing enough of its students for middle school, high school, and beyond. The school received a Progress Report grade of D, and only11 students are enrolled in its kindergarten class [heh, heh, heh- we made sure of that]. The DOE thus announced that P.S. 241 would phase out, not accepting kindergarten, first grade, second grade, or sixth grade students next year.

As you also know, after meetings with parents and community officials, the DOE issued a plan to provide a choice of six schools for parents whose children would be in kindergarten, first, and second grades next year. Five options were nearby DOE schools, [which we’ll get to closing down one by one in our version of dominoes] and one was Harlem Success Academy Charter School 4, which would relocate into the P.S. 241 building and would give students attending and zoned to P.S. 241 priority to attend [but only if their parents commit to attending every Harlem Success pep rally].

Already, 50 families residing in the P.S. 241 zone have signed up for Harlem Success Academy 4 and the surrounding DOE schools [after loads of slick advertising.]

Since that time, the teachers union and other parties have attempted to take legal action against the DOE for this plan. I think it’s important that we not confuse the already difficult process of choosing a school. So I’m writing to inform you of two decisions we have made that will impact your school choices for next school year:

1. Harlem Success Academy Charter School 4 will be located in the P.S. 241 building next year and will continue to give an admissions priority to families attending P.S. 241 or living in the P.S. 241 zone.

Children going into kindergarten, first grade, and second grade will also still have the opportunity to apply to P.S. 76, P.S. 149, P.S. 165, P.S. 180, and P.S. 185.

I think you should seriously consider joining the 50 other P.S. 241 zone parents who have already applied to one of these options [so we can claim no one wants to go to PS 241.]

If you do not have an application to Harlem Success Academy 4 or to the other DOE schools you are entitled to attend, you can obtain one from your guidance counselor or parent coordinator; [who are like prisoners in war camps who are made to dig the graves of their fellow prisoners] or you can find a Harlem Success application online at http://www.harlemsuccess.org/apply-to-learn.

As you know from the letters and calls you have already received, as well as the bulletins passed out around the school, the application deadline is Monday, April 6.

2. The P.S. 241 elementary school will not be phasing out starting this fall. The school will be open with all elementary school grades this fall. Rather than waiting to let the courts decide, we think you, the parents, will make the right elementary school choice for your child [meaning, no way choose PS 241, which we guarantee will be starved of resources so we can give the entire building to Eva, who has dirty pictures of me.] You can choose Harlem Success Academy 4, you can choose one of the other five DOE elementary schools, or you can choose P.S. 241. We will continue to support the school [ha, ha, ha] and will review its performance in the year to come [you know what to do Jimmy Leibman]. If zoned parents enroll in the school, and if the school serves children well, it will remain open [but watch out for the fire traps and asbestos that may be spread all over the place]. If it continues to perform at a low level [and don’t worry, we’ll make sure it does], it will not. Please also note that the P.S. 241 middle school will continue to phase out; all current 5th grade students have already applied to a District 3 middle school.

The Parent Coordinator at P.S. 241, the District 3 Family Advocate, and the Borough Enrollment Office have information about all of the schools you are entitled to attend, including Harlem Success Academy 4 and P.S. 241.

Joel I. Klein


RELATED: Report from ISO's Jeremy Sawyer on the March 28 conference
Defending public schools in NYC

Make sure to check the side panel for updates and other important information.

Tracking the Charter School Debates

Everywhere we go, the debate turns to charter schools and teachers and parents are starting to feel the impact in many parts of the city. Coalitions with various points of views are emerging, from, "charters are OK, but not in public school buildings," to "absolute opposition" to charters for numerous reasons.

Ed Notes and ICE are part of an emerging "Save Public Schools" coalition that organized the conference last Saturday. Teachers Unite, NYCORE, ISO, and TJC are also involved. We are now moving on to hold a charter school conference on April 27 and a rally on May 14. The coalition is also beginning to function as a support group for teachers and parents at schools threatened with closing or schools being shoved around by politically connected charter school operatives that steal space in public schools or lobby to have public schools closed down. (Some members of the group are meeting with a group of parents in Manhattan this week to discuss the issue.)

We've reached the bizarro stage where Eva Moskowitz, miffed that her real estate grab for publicly funded NYC school buildings went temporarily awry, incites parents in Harlem to demand the DOE close the local zoned school when the DOE rescinded its plan to close PS 241 after the NYCLU and UFT filed suit.

SIDETRACK: [I am all for the suit, but ultimately the DOE will figure out a way to force the "saved" schools into closing. This is all about real estate for charters, man. How about starving them of resources? Or putting in a lunatic Leadership Academy principal? A law suit has to be backed up by action. While the UFT might support individual school protests, it refuses to organize all the threatened schools into a force to demand the kinds of resources they need. When faced with yet another moratorium on school closings resolution, the UFT leadership removed the call for a meeting of all schools threatened with closing.]

INCOMING INFO FROM PS 241: DOE ATTEMPTS TO UNDERMINE LAWSUIT. SEE OUR FOLLOW-UP POST

In preparation for the upcoming conference on charter schools to be held in NYC on April 27, we are listing some useful resources, which I am keeping up on the side panel, where I will add additional resources (send suggestions.)

Olson Online: They don't serve the common good. They benefit some students --usually the more advantaged-- at the expense of others. Bite the bullet: get rid of school choice.More pros and cons for charters and choice

Perimeter Primate: Comparing parent education backgrounds in charter and public schools opens a window on creaming.

Charter School Tactics

Charter Schools and the Attack on Public Education
LA teacher Sarah Knopp nails it.

Sara Mosle at Slate with a balanced view of KIPP
"What the Knowledge Is Power Program has yet to prove." http://www.slate.com/id/2214253/


MORE ON CHARTERS:
http://aplacetorespond.blogspot.com/2009/02/public-schools-outperform-private.html

Bloomberg to Host Charter School in Living Room

Hey Oakland, you’re being duped!


Make sure to check the side panel for updates and other important information.

Blogojevich to Keynote EEP Sharpton/Klein Fest...

...Ed Notes News is reporting
...Bloomberg to send personal jet to bring Rudy B from Disneyland to Sheraton for Educational Equality Conference.

"He is the most qualified to join Sharpton and Klein on the dais," said a spokesperson.

NO TO MAYORAL CONTROL COALITION

The NO TO MAYORAL CONTROL COALITION -- of which the Parent Commission on School Governance and Mayoral Control, iCOPE, Black Leaders for Educational Excellence, New York Coalition for Neighborhood Schools Control, ICE, among others are members -- will be gathering Friday to voice our opposition to the insidious bedfellows of public education and private money on display at the National Action Network/Education Equality Project's conference at The Sheraton Hotel at 811 7th Avenue @ W. 53rd Street.

@ 9:30 am -- Coalition members & supporters will be at the main lobby entrance of The Sheraton to distribute literature

@ 10:00 am -- Coalition members & supporters will attend conference panel "How to Ensure Your Child gets a Great Education" moderated by Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform (& former Daily News reporter unflatteringly featured in yesterday's Daily News article by Juan Gonzales.)

@ 11:30 am -- Coalition members & supporters will attend conference luncheon panel "A Conversation on Education" featuring (among others) Rev. Al Sharpton, Joel Klein, the mayors of LA, Sacramento, DC and former Bush administration US Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling.

Just in case you need some additional motivation to come out tomorrow, check out the following:

Wayne Barrett's blog in the Village Voice on Pols, Press Party with Sharpton and His Corrupt Network

The Wonkster (Gail Robinson)'s blog in the Gotham Gazette on Public Schools, Private Money

EEP, I'm Not a Crook Either

The money reportedly did not go directly to Sharpton but was channeled through Education Reform Now, a group Gonzalez said is headed by former Daily News reporter and charter school advocate Joe Williams, who also heads Democrats for Education Reform. Williams (another busy guy), who is president and treasurer of the Education Equity project, would not tell Gonzalez how the donation was handled or what it was used for.

Williams did tell his former colleague that the project’s board has not met in the 10 months since Klein and Sharpton formed it and city Education Department employees have so far made all day-to-day decisions.

More of the story from Gail Robinson
http://www.gothamgazette.com/blogs/wonkster/2009/04/02/public-schools-private-money/

Charter School Parents Have More Education

The Perimeter Primate investigates schools in Oakland and finds charter school parents have higher education backgrounds.

MUST READ:
Charter School Tactics

In Response to NYCLU/UFT Lawsuit, DOE Announces it Will Keep Schools Open

Gotham Schools has a report.

NYCLU Press Release at Norms Notes.

Ed Notes commentary to follow soon.

Curb Principal Power

From a public school teacher:

My principal would not let a visiting family view the pre-k rooms for no reason and when asked about the curriculum, could not articulate what we do! Needless to say that family said they didn't think this school was for them. It was a family who is part of the gentrification in the neighborhood. We lost a chance at some diversity.

I have heard from other teachers anxious to see more families diversify their public school. Many dictatorial principals fear outspoken, activist parents who might raise questions just as the don't want older experienced teachers who might question their fiats.

One of the major failures of BloomKlein has been the handing over of total power over schools to principals and the weakening of the union which served as a check and balance. We need checks and balances in schools, not only in a system of mayoral control.

Is the NY Times Asking, "Where is Hitler When We Need Him?"

Dave Leonhardt had an interesting piece on the impact of stimulus packages in the Great Depression in yesterday's NY Times.

More than any other country, Germany — Nazi Germany — then set out on a serious stimulus program. The government built up the military, expanded the autobahn, put up stadiums for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and built monuments to the Nazi Party across Munich and Berlin.

The economic benefits of this vast works program never flowed to most workers, because fascism doesn’t look kindly on collective bargaining. But Germany did escape the Great Depression faster than other countries. Corporate profits boomed, and unemployment sank (and not because of slave labor, which didn’t become widespread until later). Harold James, an economic historian, says that the young liberal economists studying under John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s began to debate whether Hitler had solved unemployment.

No sane person enjoys mixing nuance and Nazis, but this bit of economic history has a particular importance this week.

I was particularly taken with, "The economic benefits of this vast works program never flowed to most workers, because fascism doesn’t look kindly on collective bargaining."

Well neither does most of the American political system look kindly on collective bargaining. How about the attack on teacher unionism as the major obstacle to education progress, by the likes of Bill Maher and Nicholas Kristof and by many Democrats?

Remember the anti-strike Taylor Law?

How about Reagan's firing of the air traffic controllers, which opened the floodgates to antilabor sentiment in this country? The Obama administration's waffling on card check, which would restore a semblance of balance between labor and management?

One could claim that a key element in the financial crisis is this imbalance between labor and a powerful corporate oligarchy that basically controls the American government that has lead to the massive disparity in wealth. It was well-known that during the boom years, American workers did not participate in the benefits.

Remember the shouts of "more productivity" in exchange for raises from the likes of Giuliani and Bloomberg?

Take teachers in NYC, who got supposedly big raises, but for longer working hours and more working days, while paying more for health care. We paid beyond the pale for the 2005 contract which stripped teachers of so many seniority rights and created the ATR mess.

Young teachers, especially in charter schools like KIPP are being paid 20% more for 60% more work and with nowhere the same benefits as public school teachers. This is the new model of non-career educators with no families or other serious obligations outside the school door that is being so praised by liberals and conservatives alike.

Arguments that labor has massive power and influence over the American political scene by anti-worker propagandists are a joke.

This Leonhardt point is revealing:

Europe is doing less than the United States, but the gap isn’t huge. It just seems so because European stimulus tends to arrive quietly, from existing safety net programs. In this country, where the safety net is weaker, stimulus comes largely from new laws.

Yes, Virginia, we have a weak safety net.
Weak labor = weak safety net.
Low wage, non-union companies like Walmart and McDonald's, among our largest employers = a population mass that under financial crisis will not be able to afford a Big Mac = global financial meltdown.

Related
Orleans School Board suspends teacher raises, allows larger classes
Cutting teacher salaries in New Orleans can easily occur because they destroyed the union. How will that work out for stimulating the economy? How will the hordes of Teach for America recruits brought in handle that? TFA will encourage them to keep their heads down and think about the kids instead of their livelihoods.


European Workers Rebel as G-20 Looms
At companies, including Caterpillar in France and Visteon in Northern Ireland, workers have occupied offices and detained bosses.
The Christian Science Monitor
America's press generally presents these people as left-wing lunatics, not as angry regular workers. I bet you can't wait to occupy your school and detain your principal and assistant principals.

I'm Not a Crook

Former Chancellor Harold Levy and Al Sharpton. Levy preceded Joel Klein as a corporate no-nothing about education chancellor, both having been granted waivers by the NY State Education Department's Richard Allen and the State Board of regents. The whole gang should be taken out with their coats over their heads.


Leonie Haimson to the NYC Education News listserve:

In today’s Daily news, Juan Gonzalez hits it out of the ballpark again – just in time for Al Sharpton’s big pow-wow this week w/ Klein, Bloomberg, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, and Mayors and charter school advocates from throughout the country – all singing the praises of Mayoral control and the wonders of charter schools. At the same time, according to the column, Sharpton seems to be disavowing his support for mayoral control, and expresses opposition to “privatizing schools and corporate payoffs in education."

Yet at the time when Sharpton joined up with Klein to form the “Education Equality Project”, some of us were rather suspicious, given that he had just come up with $1 million, enough to settle w/ the feds who were about the indict him for tax fraud.

Now it looks like at least half of these funds were provided by Plainfield Asset Management, the hedge fund of former Chancellor Harold Levy. This hedge fund is heavily invested in gambling and is lobbying the city and the state to acquire Off Track betting and Aqueduct race track. The funds for Sharpton were officially donated to a 501C3 organization that promotes charter schools, a “charitable” organization that allows the donors to take a hefty tax deduction, but then apparently funneled to Sharpton’s operation, which is a 501C4 lobbying group, with no tax-deductibility allowed.

At the time EEP was announced, we wrote on the blog the following:

Until recently, Sharpton was under the cloud of numerous investigations. Most prominently, federal officials accused him of owing nearly $10 million in payroll taxes, and threatened him with criminal prosecution. According to news reports, “Sharpton’s civil rights group had failed for several years in a row to file income tax returns, obtain workers compensation insurance, or disclose how much it was collecting in donations or paying its top employees, as required by law.”

Just ten days after launching the Education Equality Project, Sharpton came up with $1 million, which he promptly handed over to the IRS as a downpayment; in turn, the feds agreed to drop criminal charges if he paid back what he owed the government over the next few years.

….So where did he get the $1 million? As Sharpton explained to the Daily News, “"I make money, so I can pay." Another mystery is who is funding the Education Equality Project. Until recently, David Cantor, the chief communications officer of the DOE, was listed as the main press contact on all its press releases; now they are being sent out without any names attached. Is this effort being subsidized by tax dollars that should be going towards improving our schools? Or as Cantor recently announced to our list serv, is the source of funding an “anonymous” donor, but someone other than Bloomberg? If so, who might that be?

Mayoral control = lack of corruption? I don’t think so.

There is still the question of where the other half a million came from that allowed Sharpton to settle with the feds.

See Juan Gonzalez’s dynamite column.
Rev. Al Sharpton's $500G link to education reform

Striking Back at Sharpton/Klein/Bloomberg

AT LAST.
Community groups in the black community making a stand against mayoral control and the Al Sharpton/Joel Klein/Bloomberg unholy alliance. And stories are emerging about just how much money was funneled to Sharpton to buy him off. Word is he is very nervous about these protests and behind the scenes has been trying to make some deals. Once Sharpton is exposed within the community, his little cushy deals and exploitations could come crashing down. Don't let him off the hook. Our own emerging Save the Public Schools group is reaching out to these groups and we will talk about it at today's meeting. One day, who knows, we may actually hold a rally that may be smaller than the one the UFT held recently, but with much wider impact as we take on the true purposes of charter schools, something the UFT wouldn't touch because of its own involvement with charters.

If you're free Friday afternoon, or happen to be sick and take a day off, sign up- lunch is free and it's a duty free lunch at that. Other than booing, that is.


EDUCATION DEMOCRACY ACTION ALERT !!!!

ORDERLY CHALLENGE!!!

AGAINST MAYORAL CONTROL and Collaborators at the National Action Network--NYC Department Of Miseducation Conference—Luncheon Panel


FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 2009 11am

The Sheraton Hotel

811 7th Ave. (West 53rd St. And 7th Ave)

This convention, sponsored by the mis-named ‘Education Equality Project’ and the National Action Network, is orchestrated by Klein/Bloomberg/Sharpton.

The panel-luncheon spotlights Joel Klein, Mayor Bloomberg, Rev. Al Sharpton and others. They intend to keep the myth going that NYC is an educational “Miracle” under Mayoral Control rather than the DISASTER it actually is.

THE Panel AND THE LUNCH are FREE. But REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED FOR ATTENDANCE

WE MUST BE PRESENT IN NUMBERS AT THIS CONFERENCE. PLEASE SIGN UP TO ATTEND AND JOIN US. – at: http://www.edequality.org/AttendTheConvention

A NEWLY-CONSTITUTED GROUP CALLED NO TO MAYORAL CONTROL COALITION (NTMCC) - which BNYEE (Black New Yorkers for Edudation Excellence) and the New York Coalition for Neighborhood School Control (NYCNSC) are part of - IS PLANNING TO ATTEND ON FRIDAY TO HEAR THE PANEL BELOW AND EAT LUNCH TOGETHER.

IF YOU INTEND TO JOIN US, MEET IN THE LOBBY OF THE SHERATON AT 10:30. LET’S SIT AS A GROUP.

ATTEMPTS ARE BEING MADE TO INCLUDE A PARENT AND AN EDUCATOR ON THE PANEL BECAUSE AS PLANNED RIGHT NOW, THE PANEL ONLY CONTAINS THOSE IN SUPPORT OF THE BLOOMBERG/KLEIN TEAM.

WE KNOW THIS IS SHORT NOTICE BUT IT IS AN IMPORTANT OPPORTUNITY TO SEND A POWERFUL MESSAGE OF DISAPPROVAL ABOUT NYC’S EXPERIMENT WITH MAYORAL CONTROL -- where among numerous outrages of the past 7 years there are such educational fatalities as a 52% high school dropout rate!!! See the Fact Sheet below for more details of the “miraculous” bloomberg-klein regime.

AFTER YOU REGISTERED FOR THE CONVENTION PLEASE let BNYEE and/or NYCNSC know.

***********************

The Mis-education Mayor

In two terms NYC mayor, Bloomberg has made one of the most segregated and unequal public school systems, even WORSE. Through centralized Mayoral Control, Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Klein (Bloomberg-Klein) restructured the Public Schools into a mayor-chancellor-school principal educational dictatorship.

BLOOMBERG-Klein has…

1. …trapped most Black and Latina/o (B&L) students in a 21st century system of educational apartheid. You should know that in NYC:

· Many B&L students are ‘tracked” to dropout before 9th grade

· Less than 50% of B&L 9th graders graduate

· Less than 30% of B&L students graduate with regents diplomas

· B&L students in “gifted” programs have been reduced by more than half.

· B&L students comprise 72% of the school population, yet constitute less than 17% of the students in the specialized-test high schools

· B&L students are about 13 times LESS LIKELY than Asian & White (A&W) students to attend a specialized-test high school

2. …increased the suspension and criminalization of Black and Latina/o students in their schools; accelerating the genocidal school-to-prison pipeline.

3. …dismantled the district “School Boards” and disempowered the Community Education Councils (CECs) as well as the school leadership teams (SLTs).

4. …thoroughly disenfranchised parents and community residents from their human right to shape public school policy.

5. …systematically “disappeared” Black teachers & administrators (student role models) into “rubber rooms” or completely out of DoE.

6. …aggressively recruited and funded a large majority of new, untrained white college graduates to teach predominantly B&L students.

7. …silenced the UFT leadership and the CSEA leadership.

8. …squandered billions of taxpayer dollars in contracts, and millions in jobs to Wall Street cronies to maintain a racist system. Yet NYC DoE eliminated ALL Black and Latina/o public school vendors by requiring a minimum of $5 million in sales to do business.

9. …failed to comply with state and federal legislation requiring the (teaching and) learning of Black History by all students.

10. …refused to allocate the Campaign For Fiscal Equity (CFE) Funds equitably.

11. …deceived many parents by portraying NYC’s generally mediocre group of charters as an honest path to educational equity. Since less than 1-in-25 students can even attend a charter, Bloomberg-Klein’s disinformation has simply served to confuse some parents and weaken solidarity on the powerful demand: “Educational excellence for ALL.”

Two Terms have been too many! He CAN’T have Three!!!

Bulletin Boards 'R US

The following interchange on bulletin boards either affirms the need for extensive teacher contracts or makes the point that no matter what they say, or don't say, they are often irrelevant. I always found that there was much fuzzy language that could be exploited by admins. At one point the UFT was able to get away with stuff. But under BloomKlein, principals have received training and advice in how to go around the contract and chapters have been devastated.

Take the ironclad language of a guaranteed duty-free lunch period. This has been violated constantly through "lunch 'n learn" meetings. The UFT response: make believe it isn't happening. Note Woodlass' advice includes the proviso of whether the UFT would back such a grievance on bulletin boards. My bet is it won't or only do so tepidly because the UFT strategy has been to hope there are places where the contract is being followed and a loss on the grievance would open up the door. Not a winning or aggressive long-term strategy. But what else can we expect from them?

Posted to ICE-Mail:
Hi Group,

What exactly is the story with bulletin boards and the UFT contract?

My admin says ( in *writing*): "Bulletin boards in the hallways and cafeteria must display current ( name of school) themes and be updated by the second Friday of each month."

Note the word "must". A slew of other specifics follows.

OTOH, the Know Your Rights section of the UFT website contains the following:

Bulletin Boards
If you are required to do classroom or hall bulletin boards, their format is up to you. In a right won recently, your principal cannot dictate how they look or discipline you for their format.

I told my supervisor of the apparent contradiction; she said she was not aware that the contract spoke to this issue. Actually, I can't find in in the contract either, but it IS most definitely on the UFT website as quoted.

May seem minor but is NOT. These out-of-classroom ex-teachers OBSESS about bulletin boards. Form AND content; to the most *minute* detail. It is a HUGE distraction from real teaching.

So who's right? Me or the admins?

Thanks.

Woodlass reply:

Bulletin boards are mentioned in the contract in Art. 21.A.6, below.
But notice it says the FORMAT, not the CONTENT.

The way I see it is this:

The only way to resolve this ambiguity (if you see it as ambiguous, it may be really concrete and NOT grievable at all) is if the union backs you at Step II (which is up to you to convince your DR to go for it), and then hope it gets it to the arbitrators. They don't pick up every Step I and take it all the way. I try not to file a grievance unless I know they're going to back it at Step II. Step II we always lose, but if it gets to Step II and loses, you might be able to convince union to take it to Step III, which is then arbitration. There are only limited slots for arbitration, so I don't know they'll go the whole way with you.

ARTICLE TWENTY-ONE: DUE PROCESS AND REVIEW PROCEDURES
A. Teacher Files
Official teacher files in a school shall be maintained under the following circumstances:
6. The following issues shall not be the basis for discipline of pedagogues: a) the format of bulletin boards; b) the arrangement of classroom furniture; and c) the exact duration of lesson units.


Thanks, Woodlass. We're not at the grievance point yet. Apparently this is a "right recently won" ( the UFT website) and it is likely that the admins are not up to date.

OTOH, if they lose the authority to micromanage bulletin boards I'll be damned if I know what they'd come-up with nest.

They have to do *something*. Or appear as though they are.

I'll make the rounds with the aforementioned 21 A6, and see what kind of reaction it elicits.

I'll keep you posted. ( BTW, yes.... too bad "format" is not defined; hard to distinguish sometimes from "content".)

Thanks again.

Public Schools in District 14 under assault

Norm,

Yesterday my daughter received a letter and an application soliciting her to apply to Williamsburg Charter HS. She is a sophomore at another high school. I have no idea how they got her address! She never applied there as a freshman. Then today letters were sent home to parents about the D14 CEC meeting. A charter school person is the slated guest. A new charter school is going into PS 297. These charters are desperate to recruit. There are small charter schools all over the district.

Don't forget to check the side panel for updates and other important information.

Fusing the Human Atom

Trying to both report on ed events in NYC and being part of them as an organizer surely gets confusing. I don't operate on any high-minded principals or with much of a plan, which is a good insight into the disorganized nature of my life. Instinct and the inability to say "NO" seem to be the driving force. I'm just as happy to sit in the backyard and read. Or make videos of just about anything that moves. Or doesn't move. (How about still life videos as an art form?)

I guess the one operative principal has been in the belief in releasing the latent energy inherent in not the splitting, but the uniting of the human atom. People fusion.

I was thinking about the enormous energy released when the atom is split and the analogy to the energy generated when masses of people become politically active. I have always believed if a mass movement of politically conscious teachers became active in alliances with parent and community groups and took this alliance beyond education into other unions (many parents are union members too, or would like to be) the energy released would be enormous, creating a sort of atomic social movement by bringing people together. Would the BloomKlein education deformers have gotten away with all their crap if such a movement existed?

A true union would be doing this but with the UFT AWOL, the only way for this to happen is to do it ourselves. This is where I part ways with some of my colleagues in ICE and other critical voices within the UFT. I think they spend too much time addressing the structures set up by the UFT/Unity Caucus leadership, time that would be better spend organizing in their own schools and beyond. But I seem to be in the minority. And there is a point to be made to use the union structures to pressure the leadership. My issue is I have no faith in the leadership to do anything but mislead.

This leads me to the "Save Public Education" conference we helped organize this past Saturday and the building of a coalition to fight back against the education deformers. We looked at it as a beginning of building a grass roots movement, not as a one-time event. The break-out sessions worked on future strategies and we're holding an organizing meeting (see side panel) tomorrow to follow up.

About 80 people came out on a rainy Saturday, mostly teachers, but some parents and representatives of community groups, like Time Out From Testing and students like Global Kids (two of them spoke and were extremely impressive.) Pretty interesting. Just as interesting was the organizing efforts behind it.

My experience as a teacher/activist certainly worked for me. In the 1970's I was part of a group that met almost every week and we were enormously active. While teaching was tiring, I walked out of these meetings energized for both my job and the other activities. So many teachers feel isolated in their schools, the boost they get from meeting with like-minded people has a positive effect on them on the job and in dealing with the political mind field school politics can so often turn out to be.

Now I know that things are very different today, as the DOE has turned schools into sweat shops and teachers are exhausted. But I've also seen the way teachers we've been meeting with feel as a result of these meetings. And it seems to be a good thing.

Over the long term, the number of people involved in active organizing, call it a core, is the key to creating change. I realized the importance of an active core after the last UFT general election in 2007 and was resolved not to do that again unless a core of committed activists emerged. it doesn't have to consist of an enormous number of people because the energy released in the human fusion process is enormous. But countering the massive Unity machine requires such a core. Thus, after that election, my attention shifted towards working to build a core. I knew we wouldn't get anywhere without tapping into the new teacher social activist group and trying to bring the older, union conscious people together with them.

With Teachers Unite aiming at reaching the newer teacher crowd and creating a higher level of union consciousness along with a social justice viewpoint (register for the 4 week course at the TU website) and the increasing interest of some members of NYCoRE in the union, there was a natural affinity to merge some of the work we were doing in ICE and Education Notes. Thus, for the first time, various scattered forces began to come together, like circling rocks in a pre-planet stage beginning to coalesce in a very loose manner. I would say it's still in the Saturn ring stage, but the conference was a sign that some rocks are sticking.


That the March 28 conference was well-organized and actually worked like we planned is somewhat astounding. I generally expect things to go wrong all the time, sort of like sitting on a cliff waiting to be pushed off. But having people like Angel Gonzalez and Sam Coleman pulling things together taught me a great deal about how to get things done. You know, that old dog thing was operating here.

I won't get into all the details of the conference at this time. I spoke on ATRs and seniority and being forced to organize my thoughts coherently into a 6 minute presentation was very valuable. I will post something soon. Sam did a great job on the high stakes testing issue and Michael Fiorillo nailed the grand unification theory of the attack on public ed in his usual brilliant way – hey Michael, how about a written account? TAGNYC and some rubber room people were also involved as well as other independents. (Read Pissed Off Teacher's report on the conference.)

As interesting as the event itself was the process behind it. Process over product is way more important I believe. Think of the way the ed deformers take the opposite, bottom line approach which is so ruinous to education. So let's look at the process.

We started with an ICE ATR committee in January focused on just that issue. I remember John Lawhead taking it beyond that at an ICE meeting, fusing the concept of high stakes testing and the emerging closing schools issue. John's points unlocked the narrow view I held and allowed a broadening concept to emerge. This group started to meet regularly and put out a few leaflets and we made contacts with people at closing schools, along with people active in the Ad-hoc ATR group that did such a good job organizing the November ATR rally (see the part 1 and 2 of the video I did showing the UFT selling out the rally The Video the UFT Doesn't Want You To See: The ATR Rally).

At the same time, we've been involved with the Justice Not Just Tests subgroup of NYCoRE and we've been passing around a petition to stop the use of teacher data reports and the misuse of tests. We've also been doing work on the merit pay issue. We got 200 signatures at the March UFT Delegate Assembly (see pics in the previous post to this), with even some Unity Caucus people signing it.

It seemed a natural step to merge the work of the ICE ATR committee, which renamed itself ASC-ICE (ATR/School Closing) and we started holding joint meetings.

Concurrently, Angel Gonzalez and I took a labor study course given through NYCoRE and we worked closely with the organizers of the study group, giving a presentation on the union at the culminating event a few weeks ago to a group of mostly young teachers. Since this was on a Friday night, a bunch of us went out to a bar afterwards, where fusion really works over a few beers. (I was over 2 times older than most of them, so I was pretty well fused.)

Some of the work of that group became incorporated into the committee planning the conference. A few teachers connected to ISO and TJC also became involved in the planning committee.


Beside being able to pull off a successful event, it is just as important for the core to keep coalescing and there's no better place to let gravity work than in a bar.

Thus, after a long day of conferencing, ten of us retired to a local bar Saturday to do some coalescing. That this is not a pre-planned group but anyone who felt like going makes things very open ended. No matter how many meetings you attend together, the socializing after is often more important in building bonds and trust. Unfortunately, this bar charged $7 a beer and food was expensive, so we did some quick bonding and trust building and headed off for the rest of the weekend, only to gather again tomorrow afternoon at CUNY to plan the next steps. Ahhh, there's nothing like some good old Core knowledge.

The only thing that bummed us out was that a bunch of our compadres in NYQueer held another conference the same day, which went pretty well I hear. (Organizing to Create Safer Schools for LGBTQ Youth)

Next time we will double check our calendars. So much organizing to do, so few troops.

Emerging coalition to defend public education: The Grass Has to Have Roots

The coalition of ICE and NYCORE had a very successful conference this past Saturday. The energy and turnout were great. To keep the momentum up we are having a followup meeting to continue planning events and actions around the issues of testing/school closings/ATRs and Charter schools.

This is a great chance to get involved, there will be lots of new people and lots of new energy. We are connecting to parent and community groups and hoping to get lots of teachers involved in the struggle.

The grass has to have roots!

WHAT: Emerging coalition to defend public education meeting!

WHERE: CUNY grad center, room 5409 (bring photo id)
N,Q,R,W,B,D, F,V to 34th street. Grad. Center is on 5th ave.
between 34th and 35th street.

WHEN: Wednesday, April 1st, 5:00-7:00

Who: Everyone interested in defending public education from the falsely labeled education "reformers" and their corporate, for profit, agenda!

Pics of Protest

Our High stakes testing petitioning at UFT DA last week
Have you circulated the Justice Not Just Tests petition in your school calling on the UFT to take a stand against teacher data reports and the testocracy?
(More photos)















Protest at PS 153 Washington Height, NYC (More photos)


Don't forget to check the side panel for updates and other important information.
TODAY: PROTEST BUDGET CUTS AT GOV PATTERSON OFFICE, 5:30

Duncan Appoints 7-Year Old as Top Aid

The pendulum in the country has swung too far to adults – Arne Duncan

Ed Notes Foundation to Fund Microsoft Reform

The Ed Notes multi-billion dollar foundation has announced a software reform movement with the aim of getting Bill Gates' Microsoft corporation to produce software that won't cause your computer to want to pack its bags and head off to Australia.


"Since Microsoft resists the expansion of competitive operating systems, browsers and other software that would lead to higher quality products and Microsoft monopolists resist measuring and rewarding effectiveness, this is a long overdue reform effort," said Ed Notes spokes animal Pinky, the cat.


Ed Notes spokes animal, Pinky

"In fact evidence shows no connection between the quality of Microsoft software and most of the measures used to determine the pay of its employees, who appear to be compensated by the length of computer code they write, rather than how well it works. The quality and superiority of software from companies like Apple -- these all are mostly irrelevant to the market place, with Microsoft using ruthless tactics like sending blue screens of death that have been one of the leading causes of computer suicides."

New measures of measuring the effectiveness of Microsoft's software engineers will be implemented. One purpose of measurement would be to deploy the best software writers to the neediest departments of Microsoft, and pay them accordingly; another, to fire the worst. "But the main point," Pinky said, "is that effective software engineering can be taught: The biggest part is taking the people who want to be good -- and helping them."

See Norms Notes Bill Gates is as Ignorant as Bill Maher

Related: The Bill Gates Joke Page

Voices of Brownsville: The Rally at PS 150

Parents and teachers rallied at PS 150 in Brownsville Brooklyn on March 18, 2009 to protest the closing of the school and its replacement by two charter schools. Here are some of the people from the school community who spoke. There will be a follow-up edited version, A Tale of the Two Rallies - the scary Harlem Success event later that night and this home-grown event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-z4FavNfUI

"Shut Down Tweed" Says Charles Barron

Parents and teachers rallied at PS 150 in Brownsville Brooklyn on March 18, 2009 to protest the closing of the school and its replacement by two charter schools. NYC City Councilman Charles Barron spoke at the rally. The strategy of Tweed to divide the community is causing a push back. Later that evening we went up to the Harlem Success rally, a slick event I chronicled on my previous video. After I put up some more speeches from PS 150, I will do a short juxtaposition of the contrasting rallies, the PS 150 pro and slick Harlem Success anti-public education rally.

You want to build some charter schools, then go buy your own building.
Parental choice? Let me tell you, you don't choose the charter school, the charter school chooses you.
They're lucky we're rallying in Brownsville. The next rally, we should go down and take over the Tweed building and let them know we're not going to stay in the neighborhood.
They turned our schools into test taking mills.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8aBdcJfLD0

Jay Mathews: KIPPer Minister of Information

UPDATED Graphic:
Photoshopped by David Bellel

Jim Horn at Schools Matter reports:

When he is not shilling for Kaplan's dominance in the child testing industry (Kaplan being that part of the Washington Post Company that pays more than half of the company's profits), Jay Mathews functions as the chief propagandist for the mind and body control camps of KIPP...

Mathews's recent book, Work Hard Be Nice, celebrates the excellent education adventures of KIPP's infantilized bully founders, Davey Levin and Mikey Feinberg, whose bare-knuckled pedagogy is presented as the innocent over-exuberance of two irrepressible young uber-educators. The moral lapses, ethical breaches, and illegal acts by the terrible twosome (at least the acts that have been publicly exposed) are given the Mathews treatment, which is to say a Cliff Notes version of reality done up in etherized prose.

More at:

KIPP Information Minister Continues to Ignore Abuses and Ethical Meltdown

Matt Taibbi on The Big Takeover

Select quotes from Taibbi's scathing piece in Rolling Stone

...this was a casino unique among all casinos, one where middle-class taxpayers cover the bets of billionaires.

People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

AIG is what happens when short, bald managers of otherwise boring financial bureaucracies start seeing Brad Pitt in the mirror.

The Democrats, tired of getting slaughtered in the fundraising arena by Republicans, decided to throw off their old reliance on unions and interest groups and become more "business-friendly."

Paulson used the bailout to transform the government into a giant bureaucracy of entitled assholedom, one that would socialize "toxic" risks but keep both the profits and the management of the bailed-out firms in private hands. Moreover, this whole process would be done in secret, away from the prying eyes of NASCAR dads, broke-ass liberals who read translations of French novels, subprime mortgage holders and other such financial losers.

the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. In the age of the CDS and CDO, most of us are financial illiterates. By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system — transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below.

Illustration by Victor Juhasz

A MUST READ
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/

Related: Naomi Klein's Nov. 08 piece, The New Trough

Ravitch Savages BloomKlein - Again

Check out our NYC parent blog: video of the March 26 downtown forum on Demystifying Mayoral control; including

• Paul Hovitz on the incompetence of Tweed
Paul Hovitz on the incompetence of Tweed

• State and city laws routinely flouted by this administration.
State and city laws routinely flouted by this administration

• Demystifying Mayoral control: Diane Ravitch on mayoral autocracy...

Demystifying Mayoral control: Diane Ravitch on mayoral autocracy

And don’t miss:
• Announcing a new Mayoral control troll in town! Heeeere's Abby Sugrue of secretly funded pro Bloomberg Learn NY revealed Announcing the new Mayoral control troll in town!

All the above if you missed the individual links at:
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/

thanks to David Bellel as always….

Leonie Haimson

Credit Recovery and Drive-By Diplomas in NYC

Teachers have been screaming about credit recovery and the drive-by diplomas that result as a cheap BloomKlein tactic to pump grad rates. See Jamaica HS CL James Eterno testimony last week on the ICE blog. ICE Members Testify at State Assembly Education Committee Hearing in Brooklyn

This winter, Jamaica High School has followed other schools by starting something called “Credit Recovery.” A pupil who has failed a class can make up an entire course by showing up for three mornings for three hours during winter or spring break. The academic standards have fallen so much that teachers now joke that vehicles better roll up their windows when they pass by our school or they will have a “drive by diploma” thrown in their car. We understand why the SAT scores are down. Standards are virtually nonexistent. Kids are smart. They know this. We know we are not alone and that what is happening at Jamaica is occurring in many other buildings. We are told by administration that if the graduation and promotion numbers don’t improve, the DOE will shut down our school and get rid of us.

Below is a fascinating discussion between Leonie Haimson and David Bloomfield who heads the principals' academy at Brooklyn College, a NYC parent and major critic of BloomKlein, though he does support the concept of mayoral control.

Leonie Haimson writes:

Thanks so much, David; this is truly fascinating stuff.

I’m not sure who Mr. Marino means by “They have tried to stop this action but as I see it, it is still occurring. “ If this refers to DOE, I would doubt its veracity.

In extended questioning at the Brooklyn Assembly hearings last week, Eric Nadelstern passionately defended the current practice of credit recovery and also claimed this it was a long-standing policy of the NYC schools, even before the current administration came into office.

As he was seated with Marcia Lyles, Chris Cerf, Deputy Mayor Walcott, Jim Liebman, and the entire top brass of DOE except for Klein, and Michael Best was seated just behind him (the chief counsel of DOE) and none of them contradicted his remarks, one can only conclude that the DOE very much supports the current policy, whatever they may have stated to SED to the contrary.

Indeed, this comment from SED is reminiscent of their recent statement to the press about the class size increases in NYC schools this year:

"Although the New York City Department of Education made measurable progress in the first year of their Contract for Excellence, we required them to take corrective actions this year. Both the State and City are working together to fully understand this new class size information and decide what further actions are needed to address this situation."

Either the state is more naïve than one would think possible, or another interpretation is in order.

About the following statement in Marino’s email that you reproduce below: “NYC DOE did publish a statement from the Office of School Improvement that Credit Recovery was not acceptable for students to earn credit other than the way I mentioned.”

Could you possibly ask Mr. Marino if he could forward you a copy of this statement, and ask him where and how it was published by DOE?

I have not seen it in the Principals weekly or otherwise. I wonder how it was circulated.

Thanks,

Leonie Haimson

From David Bloomfield
To: nyceducationnews@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [nyceducationnews] credit recovery

I thought people might be interested in a post by a NYS Education Department official about credit recovery, posted on the Long Island School Leadership's listserv for aspiring administrators:

As an Education Associate for the New York State Education Department there is no such item in the Commissioner Regulations as 'CREDIT RECOVERY' and this is a misconception. The only way a student can earn credit for failed courses is that the student have the 180 seat time in the course and go to a summer session for 5-6 weeks and then take the appropriate test at the end of the summer course. Anything less, is a violation of the commissioner's regulations and a school can be sanctioned for this. Hope this is clear to you!

Peacefully,
Sal Marino

Mr. Marino went on to state, in response to whether "component retesting" is possible to allow students to pass a course (i.e., if they flunk the course, could they would only then have to "pass" the parts of the course that they failed in order to receive credit):

The answer to your question is no! If the course let say is Integrated Algebra and the student fails different topics of the course and has a failing average of the course, then he has to repeat the course. I think your thinking of component retesting. That is totally different from course elements. If a student has the seat time in a course and fails the regents exam twice with a grade of between 48 and 55 then they can take the component retest in specific topics and if they get enough credit on this test the scale score is added to the regents grade to help them pass the regents, but not the course. They can pass the course without passing the regents exam. I hope I have made this clear. I also believe that this may be the last year for component retesting.

The good news (though don't hold your breath) is that Mr. Marino states, in response to my question about whether SED will make the DOE crack down on the practice and track credits obtained in this way, he stated:

At the present time the NYC DOE did publish a statement from the Office of School Improvement that Credit Recovery was not acceptable for students to earn credit other than the way I mentioned. They have tried to stop this action but as I see it, it is still occurring. At the present time the legal department of the state and city are working on something, for students to recover credits but it has not been published. Yes you may pass on the information I sent as a reply and I hope others will read this and see that there is no such item as credit recovery in the commissioner's regulations!!
Sal Marino

-David

PRESS RELEASE: DEFEND PUBLIC EDUCATION: COUNTER THE EDUCATION DEFORMERS

Conference/Strategy Session on fighting testing/school closings/ATR

WHEN: SATURDAY MARCH 28 FROM 12-3 PM.

WHERE: JOHN JAY COLLEGE, RM 1311 NORTH HALL BUILDING, 445 W 59TH ST
A,C,D,B, 1 TRAINS TO 59TH ST

Will charter schools and small elite schools drain away the highest performing students, leaving the public schools and the teachers in them to be branded as failures because they are working with the students who need the most help but are denied the resources to do an effective job? Have we seen the end of the zoned neighborhood schools in poor urban school systems? As school after school is closed, often for nefarious reasons, will we end up with a corps of teachers forced to move from school to school teaching in subject areas for which they were not trained in what is fast becoming a dead end career? And a corps of children and parents shut out of their own neighborhood schools?

We see this conference as a first step in building a coalition of teachers, parents and students to plan campaigns to take back public education from the privateers.


Angel Gonzalez, Sam Coleman and Norm Scott, three of the organizers of the "Stop the School Closings/Defend Public Education" Conference at John Jay College on March 28 appeared on WBAI radio Thurs. Mar 26. at around 7:40. Education At The Crossroads WBAI - 99.50 fm with Basir Mchawi http://archive.wbai.org/files/mp3/090326_190001eatcrossr.MP3

See the video ad produced by Education Notes for the March 28 conference to save public schools at John Jay College in NYC, is a prime example of the manipulation of the community by charter school advocates. Harlem Success, led by Eva Moskowitz has pushed its way into public school spaces with the support of the NYC Department of Education. The push by Bloomberg and Klein to support charter schools is a prime example of their failure to solve the problems that exist in public schools. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEp7rg_L5JI

The CONFERENCE SPONSORED BY:
THE INDEPENDENT COMMUNITY OF EDUCATORS AND
THE NEW YORK COALITION OF RADICAL EDUCATORS

Endorsers: ATRs-School Closings Committee of ICE/UFT, Justice Not Just Tests (JNJT), Federacion de Maestros de Puerto Rico – Support Committee of NY, Teachers for a Just Contract - TJC/UFT, Teacher Advocacy Group NYC – TAGNYC, Teachers Unite, People Power Coalition, Center for Immigrant Families

Conact:
Norm Scott: normsco@gmail.com, norscot@aol.com, 917-992-3734
Angel Gonzalez: asc-ice@gmail.com, 718-601-4901
Sam Coleman: sam_p_coleman@yahoo.com

An ATR Writes

(Another reason to attend the Mar. 28 conference at John Jay College on closed schools, atrs, high stakes testing and other pressing issues.)

3/27/09

Why can't Article 17 be utilized. Also, why is it that special education teachers with no general ed background are being forced to teach general ed classes and the UFT is doing nothing about it. Special Ed Teachers and General Ed teachers are not the same. I am a special ed teacher and it is not fair to me that for ten years I taught in my license with 12 students. Now I am being forced to teach 20 - 30 students at a time as well as other content area subjects that I am not trained in like gym, science, music, drama etc. This is not what I signed up for and I agree the DOE will not stop what they are doing until we (Teachers) get this out to the media. We have to expose what is being done to us because the UFT is not going to do it.

Why is the UFT turning a deaf ear to teachers complaints. Guidance Counselors that were displaced are placed in their titles, ESL Teachers are placed in their titles as well as speech teachers but why not special ed teachers. I have addressed this before with the UFT with no response.


See Marjorie Stamberg's report of the Mar. 23 UFT Exec. Bd meeting is at Norms' Notes. Attempts have been made and are still being made to create pressure on Micahel Mendel who has been placed in charge of the atr issue.

ATR Issue Brought to UFT Executive Board

Derrick Townsend assistant principal at PS 154 in the Bronx has been reassigned

Report from an Ed Notes stringer at PS 154x
(Become a stringer for ed notes reporting on your school)

It has been learned that Derrick Townsend the assistant principal that assaulted a 9 year old last month and left bruises on her arm and leg has been reassigned to the Teacher Reassignment Center otherwise known as the "Rubber Room."

This action was taken immediately after a swarm of investigators descended upon PS 154 this week and were looking into Derrick Townsend for having allegedly dragged the girl up to 20 feet when she refused to stop crying and come with him.

The investigation is ongoing as is the investigation into Principal Linda Amill-Irizarry's alleged cover-up of the assault.

A criminal complaint against Derrick Townsend have been filed with the NYPD and the investigation is ongoing.

We have seen countless teachers sent to rubber rooms over trivialities. I heard from a friend today who was totally cleared after spending 6 months in the rubber room, sent there by an abusive principal on trumped up charges from a kid who said she made a racial slur. The principal left the system and gets off scot free (there are still teachers from the school in the rubber room after years).

Our reporter touches on an important point. The principal protected the AP and he was allowed to remain in the school despite the fact that people have been reporting the actions of the AP for many months. It was only after the story came out in the press that the incident was addressed by the DOE. Klein was sent letters about Townsend months ago. Leaving a supervisor accused of these acts in the building for months amounts to criminal behavior. I've often said Klein would one day be led out of Tweed with his coat over his head. Now's as good a time as any.

Why We Need to Defend Public Education? The Harlem Success Pro-Charter School Rally

This ad produced by Education Notes for the March 28 conference to save public schools at John Jay College in NYC, is a prime example of the manipulation of the community by charter school advocates. The Harlem Success Schools led by Eva Moskowitz has pushed its way into public school spaces with the support of the NYC Department of Education. The push by Bloomberg and Klein to support charter schools is an admission of their failure to solve the problems that exist in public schools.

PRINCIPAL PROBED IN BIZARRE BUDDHIST 'HATE CHANTS'

If we really want to improve teacher quality to the extent that one day - maybe in the 23rd century - we would be able to take a few billion off the corporate bailout packages to produce enough quality teachers to reduce class size, Buddhist chanting seems as good a way to accomplish this as any discovered so far. All we need is a value-added measurement as to the effectiveness of the chants.

NY Post

Organizing to Create Safer Schools for LGBTQ Youth

Ed Notes has been urging people to attend the conference to save public schools this Saturday at John Jay College.

I wanted to alert you to another conference on the same day. "Organizing to Create Safer Schools for LGBTQ Youth" is an important event that our colleagues at NYQueer (NYCoRE) have planned in conjunction with other groups. This event, the third in a series, was planned before ours, but with the pressure of closing schools and the vacation coming up, we had few dates available.

Check out the flyer. I posted the schedule on Norm's Notes

Organizing To Create Safer Schools for LGBTQ Youth Saturday, March 28th 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM

ICE/NYCORE Conference Organizers on WBAI Thurs. Eve

Angel Gonzalez, Sam Coleman and Norm Scott, organizers of the "Stop the School Closings/Defend Public Education" Conference at John Jay College on March 28 will speak on WBAI radio Thurs. Mar 26. at around 7:15.

Education At The Crossroads (show starts at 7pm)
WBAI - 99.50 fm with Basir MChawi