LA Dreams Go Down in Flames

Coming soon to your local schools: the end of public ed.

LA has the highest concentration of charter and other schools managed outside the system.

When we were in LA last month meeting with teacher unionists, this was the big battle they hope to win.

They didn't have a chance.

The vote was 6-1 against.

LA school board approves school choice plan

Ever Wonder About NY Times Coverage of Education? Check Personal Link Between Klein and Middelhoff, Times Board Member

Middelhoff, Joel Klein's former boss, laughing at the joke of a NYC School system he helped bring about through his promotion of Joel Klein.

AT COUNTERPUNCH

Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter!

New York Times Director Probed for "Breach of Trust"

To the Sulzberger family that controls the New York Times he has been the ultimate Good German. High-flying Thomas Middelhoff took New York by storm, buying Random House for Bertelsmann, invited onto the NYT board, a member of its compensation committee. Read Eamonn Fingleton’s exclusive on how Middelhoff has crashed to earth and how the NYT has buried the story.

Who is Thomas Middelhoff? He hired Joel Klein at Bertelsmann and when Middelhoff was forced out in a scandal, with his protector gone, Klein was thrown the NYC schools as a lifeline and we ended up stuck with him.

If anyone tracks down the article send it along.

From Wicki on Middelhoff:
On June 5, 2009 several media reported that the German justice minister Brigitte Zypries had recommended that the state prosecution service look into allegations of fraud against Middelhoff, based on the fact that he and his wife allegedly held shares of an investment fund, which bought real estate from Arcandor and then leasebacked it to for unusually high rental fees. [3

In Wake of Bankruptcy, a German Executive Faces Two Inquiries‎

On another front, check out this article, especially for those people who think removing Joel Klein or Mike Bloomberg would set things right in education in NYC. The key to the nationwide onslaught has been the governance issue as a first step so as much public insight could be removed as possible.

Thus the key is to forget all the attacks on what went on in pre mayoral control years and figure out some way to design a system to take power over education away from these forces. Even if there were millions in the streets against them these forces would desperately cling on - (Clingons?). Expect them to point machine guns at the crowds.

And to return to a popular theme: the only organized force that was capable of resistance were the NEA and AFT/UFT. They didn't and they won't. Thus, the battle for public education must also include internal battles within the urban union locals to force a change in policy.

Neoliberalism, Charter Schools and the Chicago Model
Obama and Duncan's Education Policy:
Like Bush's, Only Worse

By DANNY WEIL

at http://counterpunch.org/weil08242009.html

Steven Brill Leads Major Assault on ATRs and Rubber Room

Whenever I have had the opportunity at PEP meetings where I could address Joel Klein directly, I have pointed out that as long as even one teacher was hounded into the rubber room for political reasons, he would have more difficulty in removing even those teachers who should be removed. I called on him to monitor these political cases carefully to protect the integrity of a process to remove teachers who should be removed. And let's make no mistake about it, there are teachers who should not be teaching. I always make the point that if teachers were given power over running the schools, these people wouldn't last long at all.

NOTE: Check comments section where comments on the article from listserves are inserted.

Was Steven Brill commissioned as a hit man on the rubber room and ATRs?

A long article in the New Yorker by Steven Brill (posted on Norms Notes Biased and One Sided Article on Rubber Room and ATRs) goes after the rubber room people and ATRs. Brill uses selective interviews with principal Anthony Lombardi and Joel Klein with comments thrown in by Randi Weingarten.

The article is clearly designed as the opening salvo in a PR blitz to pressure the UFT to give up some protections in the current contract negotiations. The problem for the UFT is how to do it without causing members to go crazy. One way out for the UFT is to put up a weak fight to keep tenure law from being weakened by claiming they couldn't stop the state legislature from wanting to get some of the Obama/Duncan stimulus money. The contract supersedes the state law I believe and was already weakened in previous negotiations (thus, teachers have less protections that they would under current state law).

We have been predicting the coming assault on the ATRs and rubber room. We laid out the plan for ATRs over the weekend: Creating ATRs a Key Part of Privatization Plan pointing to the various phases. Though expensive, Bloomklein made an initial investment by agreeing to pay ATRs for a period of time with the goal of using the press and public opinion to force the UFT to give up something in exchange for raises.

Clearly, Brill was allowed access to rubber rooms. (When filmmaker Jeremy Garrett of "The Rubber Room" movie attempted to enter Brooklyn's Chapel St.rubber room he was arrested.) He selectively interviewed certain people who could help make his case. He even attended an open hearing. Note that he did not attend the most famous and often advertised open hearing, that of David Pakter.

Let's look at the writer who is making these judgements.
Brill (I'm assuming this is the guy, but correct me if I am wrong) himself has had some controversy. Hamilton Nolan wrote this past June in The Persistent Failure of Steven Brill. Check the site directly for the links, but here is the text.

Steven Brill has a reputation for being a media wise man—a deep-thinking mogul who's always spotting the opportunities of The Future. Which is kind of strange, since the majority of his projects have been ostentatious failures.

Brill's latest company, "Clear," which was supposed to save rich people a half hour standing in security lines at airports in exchange for $128 a year, is shutting down. Let's do a quick and dirty balance sheet of Brill's successes and failures—keeping in mind that to do your best is all your mom really asks.

Successes

The American Lawyer: Brill launched what would become the nation's leading legal magazine in 1979. This is not an unqualified success, though, since American Lawyer Media (now Incisive Media) is having problems right now.

Court TV: Brill created the network (now truTV) in 1991. After receiving a huge popularity boost from the OJ Simpson trial, it was sold it to Time Warner in 1997. For which Brill got a tidy sum.

Emily Brill: Steven's daughter, the ultimate narrator.

Failures

Brill's Content: Launched in 1998, this mediacentric mag was supposed to capitalize on America's insatiable thirst for news about the news! Turned out not that many people really care about the news about the news. Not enough to pay money, at least. Stopped publishing in 2001.

Contentville.com: A website selling "a variety of content ranging from thesis papers to ebooks." Closed in 2001.

Inside.com: The legendary media site that launched the careers of many top media reporters and also failed to make any money. The magazine version of Inside was merged with Brill's Content, and the website was part of a convoluted plan with Primedia to corner the market on media trade publications, but the whole thing was shuttered in 2001.

Clear: In the post-9/11 world, Brill noticed, airport security sure was a hassle. People would pay to be "verified" beforehand so they could breeze right through! Right? 165,000 people did, reportedly, and Clear raised more than $100 million from investors, but now it's dead, unable to afford to keep going.

Brill also wrote a couple books which didn't sell all that well and a column for Newsweek, but you can judge those on their own merits. He's not out of the game, though—his other ongoing venture is Journalism Online, a company that plans to help various magazines and newspapers charge readers for online access. Bet on it!

Hmmm. Steven Brill with a persistent record of failure, now reduced to writing about rubber rooms and ATRs.

If they had rubber rooms for the things people like Brill do, he'd be writing about himself.


The hearing Brill doesn't want to cover:

3020-a Teacher Trial of David Pakter

Continues Sept 8, 2009

49 Chambers Street, 6th Floor, 10 AM
Please request Hearing Room of the Hon. Douglas J. Bantle, Esq.


Thanks to Jeff Kaufman for posting the article.

The Things You Say in Class

You never really know the impact of the things you say in class.

Mr. Cantor, my 10th grade French teacher (spring of 1960) at Thomas Jefferson HS in East NY Brooklyn was a truly excellent teacher. He was very different from Miss Milstein the teacher we had from the semester before, who was a legend for the terror she created – she would call us up to the board to do grammar corrections and you had better be ready.

Cantor was genial, didn't stress grammar and focused on having us read and translate works of fiction and engage in rudimentary conversation. I might have actually learned French if that hadn't been my last French class.

He rarely spoke English to us. But I have a vivid memory of him telling us we would never be considered educated if we didn't read through most of the sections of the Sunday NY Times, which would at the minimum, allow us to touch base with the major cultural and news issues of the day time.

I don't remember if I actually followed but I sometimes repeated the story to my own classes.

One of my favorite students from the 1975 class kept in touch She went on to one of the specialized NYC high schools and then to a private college upstate. Though coming from a single parent, fairly poor home, she was marked for success from the first day she entered our school in pre-k. Though there was lots of scholarship money for college, she still struggled financially.

We got together soon after she graduated. "I never forgot what you told us about buying the NY Times," she said. "Every Sunday, even in the coldest days, I would make sure to have enough money and I would trudge through the snow from my dorm to buy the Times and drag that heavy thing back to my room."

If you knew teachers in a charter school who wanted to organize, would you recommend they call Randi Weingarten or Leo Casey?

I get people who ask me why so much non NYC stuff on this blog from places like LA and Chicago?

They are missing the essential national and international attack on teachers and their unions if they focus on the minutia of what goes on in NYC. See, the big picture gives the resistance a better ability to fight back. The UFT is actively working with many of these forces. Their basic strategy is to delay, followed by the avowed goal to organize charter schools, which actually puts them in the position of allowing the destruction of the public school system (and the union) in urban areas and then reorganizing almost from ground zero. Shades of the 50's and 60's. And they've done such a good job in the south.

If you knew teachers in a charter school who wanted to organize, would you recommend they call Randi Weingarten or Leo Casey? Hello, anyone home at the UPS union?

Charter attack in LA
I have some of these links on the sidebar I picked up from Perimeter Primate, but in case you missed them:

Diane Ravitch on charters in the LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ravitch11-2009aug11,0,4585380.story

And another fine piece from last week along similar lines:

http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_12985055?source=rss

And here's the June Graduation section from the Time's "journal"-type series about Green Dot's takeover of Locke HS in LAUSD.

Clearly, throughout the series, the writer is spinning for Locke the whole time, but has enough honesty (or carelessness) in this section to let some tellingly truthful details of actual student behavior slip out:

http://www.latimes.com/la-ed-locke25-2009jun25-test,0,2545367.story


Lackluster test results for Mayor Villaraigosa's high-profile schools and Locke High
The two highest-profile school-reform efforts in Los Angeles — the mayor’s schools and the conversion of Locke High into six charter schools — achieved lackluster results in state test scores released this morning.

The picture was mixed for 10 schools overseen by appointees of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. At one school, Markham Middle School in Watts, test scores declined slightly. On the brighter side, test scores bumped up strongly at 99th Street Elementary.

Overall, scores at these schools rose, but so did scores at most other district schools, and the mayor’s schools did not ostensibly separate themselves from the pack.

Creating ATRs a Key Part of Privatization Plan

What follows is similar to the same plan being put into place in urban areas nation wide, and indeed, around the world as part of the neo-liberal agenda.

The corporate forces looking to control public education have an executable plan only of the union cooperated. And the UFT sure did. And does.

We need to connect all the dots in the DOE ATR plan as it ties into the ultimate goal of privatizing the public school system and removing unionized teachers as a force. (Note that other than the US, teachers often are leading national struggles in many countries - see Mexico, Honduras, Puerto Rico.)

Remember the goal: to have a school system with as few union teachers as possible. Thus, closing numbers of schools, especially the large high schools, which have seen an influx of charter schools full of non unionized teachers (anyone have a big rat to put in front of them?) Or the UFT for being part of the process?

The other part of the equation is to have a massive influx of new, low salaried teachers and push out the high salaried ones.

How does the ATR situation tie in? They needed to kill the seniority system as a first step in their plan. Imagine if they closed all these schools under the old system? All the teachers would start bumping people all over the place, just as we all went through in our careers.

So, they took a temporary hit in the 2005 contract in the sense of agreeing to keep paying all these people as a temporary stage. Call it an investment in the long term goal of a non-unionized, privatized system.

Now we are going to phase 2, which we call the buy-out phase, where they will pay up front to get people to leave or pull a Michelle Rhee and offer big bumps in salary to teachers who agree to give up their tenure.

For those who don't jump, there are the public attacks on the ATRs by the New Teacher Project's Tim Daley, Klein and the press who will demand a Chicago system where ATRs get to sub for one year and if they have no job they are released.

But since there will be a continuous stream of ATRs as they close more schools, they need to modify the contract. They will do that in the usual way – bribe the UFT with salary, another short term investment since they know they will reduce the ranks of the union by huge chunks in the long run. Then we will see massive school closings for all kinds of reasons, like 12 kids sneezed. (All they have to do is make the tests harder for a year or two and fail more schools.)

Look for some little nudge in this direction in the new contract. It will be subtle to get people to vote for it but it will give BloomKlein a wedge to move their plans forward.

CIF Response on Parent/Community Organizing Blog Post

I've been having some very good conversations with some leading parent activists since the recent controversial post, Organizing Parents: Harder Than Herding Cats (Much), on the work of the Parent Commission.

I hope you read NYC parent Benita Rivera's comments in this post: Setting a Wild Fire Under Parent Activism.

I spent some time yesterday talking to lower east side activist and CEC One President Lisa Donlan, batting around ideas on getting teachers and parents at the ground level to work together. Lisa's organizing experience offers some excellent insights.

GEM has potential to become an umbrella group, but GEM is still a teacher based group and we have to figure out ways to make things workable.

I don't know Center for Immigrant Families (CIF's) Donna Nevel well, but CIF is already working with GEM. Donna had asked some GEMers to come up and talk to parents about mayoral control and Angel, Sam and Lisa had an excellent session.

When you get it right, No one seems to notice. But even when you screw up, good outcomes can result. If new links between parent and teacher activists are forged as a result, we may screw up more often.

Donna Nevel sent in these comments:

Hi Norm,

We read your blog on parent organizing and wanted to share with you a little about some of the organizing CIF does. CIF is a collectively-run organization of low income families of color and community members in uptown Manhattan. Our work is based on popular education so everything we do grows out of parents and community members' wisdom, knowledge, and lived experiences. Our goal in our work on public education is to build community power and to fight for justice and real structural and transformative change to our public education system. We believe that being rooted in the community and having our analyses and strategies for organizing emerge from that reality is critical and fundamental to the work we do. We understand the deep and profound connections between the local struggle and the larger struggle city-wide, nation-wide, and, indeed, internationally and engage in each of these areas.

We have worked closely with our allies in the social justice community on many different fronts and look forward to continuing to work together with others who share a vision of social justice and community self-determination that promote shared leadership, mutuality, respect, love, and dignity.

Also, as you know, CIF has joined GEM and believes that building genuine partnerships among teachers, parents, and community members will greatly strengthen the work we are all doing.

Thanks for all the good work you do,

Center for Immigrant Families collective

Center for Immigrant Families (CIF) is a collectively-run and popular education based organization for low income immigrant women of color and community members in Manhattan valley (Uptown NYC). We build from an approach that recognizes the intersectionality of oppressions, and locate our most powerful resistance as one that can emerge from the strength of who we are as women, caregivers, economic providers, survivors, and, essentially, as the “glue” that holds many of our communities together. We work to unlock our collective imaginations, dreams, visions of the society we want for our families and communities to thrive. We organize to transform the conditions of injustice we face and their multi-layered impact on our own lives and that of our communities.

I just donated to CIF. Click here to do the same.

Setting a Wild Fire Under Parent Activism

NYC parent activist Benita Rivera sent us this insightful essay in response to some of the controversy generated by our post Organizing Parents: Harder Than Herding Cats (Much), which had to be revised because of a misunderstanding of the work of the Parent Commission. Sean and I received just a tad of criticism. Fortunately, most of the comments from parents opened up a serious dialogue and were generally very positive about the work we do. (We'll be posting some comments from Donna Nevel of the Center for Immigrant Families (CIF) as a followup later on. CIF has been working with GEM).

Benita chronicles a lot of the history, naturally from her perspective, of the work of the Parent Commission in its battle against mayoral control. If there are other points of view out there, share them in the comments section.

I have comments myself, especially on the role of the UFT, but don't want to clutter this post up too much. Just check the original organizing parent post for the section on how the UFT sold out the St. Vartas event. That event and its aftermath and the number of community groups that jumped in with the UFT instead of staying the course and following through with the May 1 rally set back the opportunity to build a mass movement that could have grown over the past two and a half years. I still believe that if that hadn't happened, the recent battles to kill mayoral control might not have ended the way they did. But the UFT and Tweed accomplished what they wanted: to split people apart and sow a level of mistrust. The Parent Commission to its credit was a regeneration of some of those activists but was not out to build a movement.

Benita leaves us with hope in her finale. It is worth sharing before you even read the entire essay:

...we really need to work differently from now on, better respecting varying approaches to skinning the fat cats, trusting enough to strategize TOGETHER from every angle-- in order to mobilize more people and make the kind of history that public education in this city, deserves. If we succeed in working differently-- but all together as public education activists and parents of all colors and incomes, I have faith that we can actually spark the fire of change in education policy our city needs. When that happens in the big Apple, I also believe all America will take a bite

That so many sharp, intuitive and active parents pushed back against the power of the massive BloomKlein machine, should be noted as a sign of the major failures of the education deform attempt to control the nations' schools. May they multiply exponentially. GEM and ICE are looking forward to working with them with open arms.


Dear Norm and Sean,

Wow! Seems my attempt to convey a radical opinion started a wild fire of controversy, huh?

So here I am again, respectfully responding to Sean's statement about the Parent Commission (PC), and for the record, giving more opinionated thoughts on them. (You have my permission to post this essay if you wish).

In some ways, Sean was right on, and in others-- just wrong. BUT he gets HUGE props from me for listening to the PC's co-founders, Lisa Donlan and Leonie Haimson's replies, and for being open to learning more. Both you and Norm get MAD respect from me for being the kind of men big enough to publicly admit an error in both mis-characterizing the PC, and then posting retractions.

In an attempt to clarify confusion about who and what the PC is for those who read the blogs and list serves, I'm making known another point of view about this group from a "colorful" perspective that's not often heard.

Please know that membership in the PC was (is?) open to all public school parents and to those who represented parents in education advocacy organizations. It is a completely independent, unfunded, parent volunteer entity and I'm one of its members. I joined in the beginning of the PC's formation and although I have argued some of Sean's very points, I've stuck with them. My position with the PC can best be described by Randy Schutt's Inciting Democracy. "Until you can see the truth in at least three sides of an issue, you probably don’'t understand it. And until you can convincingly argue all three perspectives, you probably can'’t work with a diverse group of people to find a mutually satisfactory solution."

Contrary to anyone who poo-poo'ed the Parent Commission's work, we DID and still DO oppose mayoral control. Only those at the meetings would be privy to knowing that we actually (round-robin) tallied each member's thoughts on mayoral control, and the result was that the Parent Commission was overwhelming OPPOSED. We worked to make that fact known; although at times, some of us were more vocal or got individually sought after for comments by the media, than others.

The PC meet once a month at first, then bi-weekly, weekly, then almost everyday through emails and conference calls. Our purpose was to submit recommendations on the future of school governance to the NY State legislature when the 2002 laws on mayoral control sunset in June of this year. In order to come up with recommendations, we held and actively publicized public learning forums on a host of school governance topics that took place every month before we ever decided anything.

We researched other systems of education and heard from panels of education experts working in a variety of fields, both in and out of NYC. Through these learning forums and by parent committees doing vast amounts of research, we all came to understand that historically, NYC's mayors have always controlled education in some form, simply because they control the budget and allocate the dollars. We discussed and debated the novel concept of having a "partnership" with the mayor rather than giving in to any idea about continued control. We realized that the very word "control" was problematic, and all the more fueled by what Bloomberg/Klein had done with it.

The Parent Commission's Report, recommendations for a completely NEW system, and lobbying efforts spanned a little more than a year of some very hard work. The legislative bill that was drafted by the PC, and sponsored by Senator Shirley Huntley, was written from our recommendations. It very specifically called for an END to mayoral control. The passage of this original bill would have replaced the governance system of "control" with one that recognized and respected all parents as real partners (and that hateful buzz term "stakeholders") in the public educations of our own children.

In answer to Sean's comments about the PC not being representative (enough) of the diverse voices and concerns of Black and Latino parents, I agree.

Could we have done better in outreach, inclusion and representation of the majority of Black/Latino parents in NYC public schools? Absolutely YES.

Did we struggle internally with how to make that happen? YES. Did the issue of race and institutionalized racism as a structural construct in education come up for us over and over? Absolutely YES.

Did any of us have the personal skills or training required to really talk to one another about this, and how it affected our group work and individual thinking? NO. Did many of us try? ALL THE TIME.

Did the PC wind up becoming a core group of well educated, highly articulate, parent-wonks? I think so.

Was that done to purposely exclude any particular group of parents? Absolutely Not.

Was/Is the PC an elitist all White, primarily District 2 group of parent leaders, as some continue to accuse us of being? Absolutely NOT.

A third of my fellow commission members in the core (active) group are Black parents of varying means and backgrounds who hail from Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Bronx. Regrettably, our numbers in the PC remain in the minority, but we STILL counted. (Four of us from the PC made up the seven Black "Ambassador Moms" who twice got some minor notoriety in the press for our citywide prayer and fasting vigils for the end of mayoral control). The PC has a small, but solid group of parents of color that in my opinion, ought to be viewed among this city's many unsung heroes.

Just one example of someone undeserving of dismissal is Rosa Flores from Sunset Park. Her efforts to get other Spanish speaking parents to join her in signing petitions, speaking out at meetings across the city, testifying and representing the too often, unheard concerns of Latino immigrant parents, was nothing short of heroic. Fighting for public school excellence, equity, respect for human rights, democracy and dignity---Rosa was, and still is, a core member of the PC-- and what she stands for matters.

Just in case you don't know, I'm a Black woman who birthed and raised proud Black/Puerto Rican children in a low income household no different than a million others. My son graduated from a failing Title 1 school in a high poverty community and I need to think that my activism, both within and beyond the PC, matters. My concerns to represent the Black and Latino community never ceased to be in the forefront of my fight. And no different than any other PC member, I spent time and energy in communities outside of where I live, like Flatbush, East Flatbush, Brownsville, Bushwick, Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy, East New York, Fort Greene and the Lower East Side, outreaching to involve more parents of color.

It could very well be that the PC's "wonkishness," was one reason why we didn't excite and mobilize masses of parents, or have more of us of color actually attending the PC's monthly meetings. Some might conclude that we were off track with this heady governance stuff, and thus, our efforts were for naught. But there are hundreds and hundreds of petition signatures gotten from parents in communities of color supporting the PC's recommendations, AND MORE importantly, consciousness raised about imperative school governance issues, and what is really at stake with politicians and corporate types ruling over our children's public school educations. (And internal consciousness about Black and Latino parent concerns was also raised for PC members as well!).

The Parent Commission doesn't deserve to be bashed for its efforts. We lobbied, called, wrote, emailed, testified and protested mayoral control with every ounce of energy we had-- and that goes ditto for those of us in the racial and income-level minority who chose to stay with this wonky-group, believing that OUR united efforts on behalf of system-wide change, had importance.

Have we suffered from organizational pains? No doubt. I can speak for myself, knowing that I sought inclusion for, and from every fellow, parent activist of color I know outside of the PC. I reached out to you-- Sean, asking you to consider coming back to the Parent Commission to help us. There was always room for the PC to improve and expand. I think we really needed the kind of brilliance, activism and leadership Sean and others like him bring to any group.

As far as talking with the UFT is concerned, the Parent Commission ought to be applauded. Cutting to the chase, if all this fuss with governance and school business is really about educating children, then teachers and parents are natural allies. For me, it was about time that we just talked to one another as equally interested parties. Regardless of how the system of education was, is or will be governed, we all know parents and teachers are the ones who make education work. I'm happy that the PC initiated a VERY preliminary conversation and every parent of color (except for one who had to work that afternoon) in the PC attended.

Am I a fan of the UFT's politics and leadership? Nope, not in the least. (In fact, the very morning of that talk, I stood with other Black activists outside of a Brooklyn Rubber Room and participated in a press conference denouncing both the UFT and the Chancellor Klein for permitting this abhorrent, embarrassing, emotionally and financially-hideous practice to even exist. Then I went to Trinity Church and prayed to have the peace of mind to participate in a no-deals- made-discussion about how, going forward, teachers and parents can be the allies our children need us to be). If a fish stinks from the head like my mom always said, I just don't see why talking to the "head" in an attempt to bridge some very big and historic divides THEY helped to perpetrate, should be seen as problematic.

Confusing too, is the intel reported on the amendments the PC lobbied for when the hand-writing was on the wall, obvious that the electeds would cave in to Gloom-berg's pressure, power and money. Some PC members did fight bitterly to try to salvage something from Albany for NYC's parents. Added to the efforts made for mandating the DoE to obey all city and state education laws, pleading for a short sunset on the new bill, term limits for the PEP, ELL and Special Ed parents on all DoE councils, a no-waiver-education experienced chancellor, an inspector general, am ombudsperson, a funded, independent Parents Union (IPO), and an Education Constitution that would be result from a citywide, public consensus on the purpose and goals of public education, turned out to be pretty fruitless, but worthy efforts nonetheless. Especially now, in light of a very bad bill the city's children, parents and teachers seem to be stuck with until 2015.

Detected from Sean's response to my original posting mentioning the PC, was a jab at Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters and the nyc parents blog. Whatever the beef, I don't think it has anything to do with the Parent Commission. Make no mistake-- I readily defend Leonie and her organization for the spirited fight to reduce class size for the good of ALL children and teachers. )When some very illegal stuff was happening at my kid's school, I didn't know her-- but reached out anyway and got great support. Lisa Donlan, another hard-core, well respected fighter, helped tremendously as well). I give full credit to them both for linking up to start the Parent Commission in the first place. They are both fearless, feisty mothers who took the initiative to do something major. I don't always get along with them, don't always see eye to eye because they just can't look at issues from my poverty stricken, Black view point, but I still praise them as visionaries for seeing the need in this city for an independent, action oriented, parent group think-tank, and being brave enough to DO SOMETHING to get it off the ground. Mad love is given to them for that.

But whoever and whatever their foes, fans, flaws or hot buttons.... be they class size, district control or even relationships to education experts (like Diane Ravitch), none of that defined the Parent Commission I worked on, fought for, fought with, and now, have the need to defend.

Every PC member was diligent and committed to doing the work we each felt was important. All members are different. Some income privileged, and many more, not so much-- especially in these days. Some came with delivery styles, views on politics, and personalities I didn't like, and that's vis-versa for how they felt about me, too. Bash us for being top heavy with egos and high I.Q.'s and you get no argument from me. BUT trust when I say that not a single individual or personal cause was ever bigger, or more important than that of NYC's public school parents, their children and futures. No one person ever got to define who we are, what we stood for... and with more support from fellow parents, community and education activists... could have been. But I'm proud of them, and the work we did together. Every one of these people I discussed ideas or brain-banged with, is committed to fighting for educational excellence in every school, for every child, of every color, in every zipcode of this city.

What will become of the PC now that mayoral control is again in place? Don't know, can't yet say.

As individual activists, we all have much to learn. Rev. Dr. David Billings of the Anti-Racist Alliance says that when Black people mobilize, the whole nation moves forward. The PC didn't heed that message, and Sean is absolutely right about the Black/Latino clergy and pols being bought and bound by billionaire bucks. Albany's power brokers would NOT have succeeded if a hundred thousand Black and Latino parents had boarded buses bound for the capitol, stopped traffic on all arteries leading to City Hall, and took to the streets demanding the end of mayoral control. Maybe the tipping point would have even been just 500 of us showing up at any place, many times over in the last three months. My opinion is that the PC should have done better, but that wasn't their mission and even if some of us could have convinced them to do so-- without real training, no one knew how to target the apathy, indifference, ignorance and fear that every other activist group is hampered with when trying to organize and mobilize the masses for social change.

It seems us parent and education activists still have a heap of heavy lifting to do, and that starts with how we perceive one another.

Finally--- what makes this on-going battle over education so very personal to me is the hurt I carry about my youngest being royally screwed by this system's control over his educational opportunities. In a few years, my grandbaby will enter the same system, likely judged as just another poor, Black kid attending a mediocre public school. I continue to confront race and income bias as the root of all evil, and recognize that no single group will ever be able to eradicate the achievement gap and obliterate the inequities by themselves. And so, I remain a soldier with like minded others in the Parent Commission, iCOPE, Neighborhood Schools for Community Control, 3-R's Coalition, BYNEE, GEM, ICE and the Coalition for Public Education. I pray that unity in our common cause will prevail.

But we really need to work differently from now on, better respecting varying approaches to skinning the fat cats, trusting enough to strategize TOGETHER from every angle-- in order to mobilize more people and make the kind of history that public education in this city, deserves. If we succeed in working differently-- but all together as public education activists and parents of all colors and incomes, I have faith that we can actually spark the fire of change in education policy our city needs. When that happens in the big Apple, I also believe all America will take a bite.

Peace.

- Benita Rivera

Washington DC: How to Wipe Out a Public School System

When we met in Los Angeles last month with teacher activists from NY, Chicago, LA, San Francisco and Washington DC, the DC crew gave an excellent presentation on the charter school movement in DC area.

Notice in the chart how currently there are 46,000 public school students and 26,000 charter school students. Projecting the chart, the numbers will equalize within two years. They are certainly reaching the point where the charters will be fighting it out with each other instead of the public schools for kids to cream.

Your math problems of the day:
In what year will the entire Washington public school system no longer exist?

Make a similar chart for your city and project a) when will the numbers be equal and b) when will there no longer be a public school left in your city?


Another part of the presentation was an analysis of the differences in charter school laws in Maryland and Virginia. I put it up on Norms Notes.

Charter Schools in Washington DC and the Surrounding Areas

For up to date information on what's happening in DC, check out Candi Peterson's
The Washington Teacher

Her latest post is very revealing, and familiar to us in NYC.

The Proposal To Sell Out DC Teachers - Did AFT Prez Randi Weingarten and WTU Prez George Parker Cut A Deal With Rhee ? Guess what an insider told me about teacher contract negotiations. If it is...

On Teacher Power - and we don't mean the power of union leaders

Teacher unions are being assailed for having too much power. But since I started teaching in 1967, at no point did I think I had any power. Classroom teachers who spend all day teaching are at the lowest rung of power and if I had to name the major focus of my activism it has been towards more power for classroom teachers, sadly to little success. So how come this disparity between an influential and powerful leadership and a disempowered membership? I can't really answer that question fully, but this exchange might offer some clues:

Question posed by FK on ICE-mail after Angel Gonzalez posted an excerpt from a book on teacher power:

How do we get power within a union which won't grant us any? And the UFT has positioned itself as a kind of "reasonable person facing new realities" -- and the public hates teachers anyway. The UFT makes it seem as though we compromise or nothing. The public thinks we are not compromising enough and that we don't do our jobs. Even with national tests contradicting our local ones, people don't challenge Bloomberg. We need leverage from somewhere. The parents aren't enough because they are not an active enough body of constituents. Plus they are scattered around the city and they don't all vote together. We need help, I think, from other unions, at the very least. DC 37 no longer has the power it once did. Who does? Why would they help us -- except that they can see the destruction of a major section of the civil service is almost a foregone conclusion. If we lose security, who's next? Still I don't feel support from neighbors who work for the MTA or Postal service. On an individual basis, they see teachers as the enemy. I feel like the entire city does.

Angel's response

You raise important concerns/questions that face our entire labor movement and many rank&file groups are grappling with. So we aren't alone in the frustration with our sell-out union bosses... It is a cooptation of labor that has gone on for decades and the USA excels in keeping labor in deep check.

Transformation and victories will be a long haul process. In Puerto Rico, for example, it took progressives, thru bottom up organizing, over 30years to take over sell-out AFT local and then in '05, this new FMPR seceded successfully from the AFT . Last year the FMPR had a successful 10 day strike that stopped charter school from rootingin PR....but I'm sure this charter battle will resurrect given the colonial govt's cancellation of all public sector labor contracts....

Anyway, this concept of unionism isn't new....It is called democratic social justice unionism and is juxtaposed to what we have in the uft/aft, bureaucratic business unionism. It can't be changed through the top-down efforts but rather by organizing from the bottom-up .... in our schools...in our communities ....with our rank and file ....

Some tenets of social justice unionism:

• struggles to be democratic on all levels (in its caucus and at the schools-the base structures)
• is a bottom up democracy built from with the rank&file membership
• defines issues of our members & fights with and for them
• union officers get paid no more than what s/he would get at the workplace
• transparency
• accountability of officers to the rank & file through a regular reporting system
• labor & community solidarity - where our issues are defined and explained so that others can understand the importance of our teacher-worker issues as quality of education issues as well. (e.g. good schools need small class sizes and well compensated teachers).
• respect for the constituencies we service (i.e. students, parents, community)
• lots of educational work targeting our membership and communities (we need to counter that Corporate-Govt media misinformation)
• lots of organizing and mobilizing (our rank&file caucuses must grow quantitatively and qualitatively to challenge to business union beast as well as the well financed corporate govt/media.
• and more that I don't recall and am researching....Labor notes and other left literature I am sure has lots. And I am sure Latin America union movement (in Spanish) will have more for us. Unfortunately, today I think only FMPR and Union of Electrical Workers may be the best living models to study.

In Gem, I and others are pushing a social justice union conception, but like everything new, it will take a long process of struggle, discussion, debater and time....GEM has begun to talk about a study group to discuss Steve Zeluck's document called '"Toward Teacher Power" (c. 1980) [copies are being made] which addresses our uft business unionism.

I did 2 youtubes with Rafael Feliciano, Pres. of the FMPR in English which I think are important contributions:

http://www.youtube.com/user/pitirrefili#play/uploads/11/htwt1McsGhM (part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/user/pitirrefili#play/uploads/10/Zk9Na_p-Av4 (part 2)

Bob Peterson of Rethinking Schools wrote an article on Social Justice Unionism which I've been circulating also.

I think that we, as organizers for union change, we need to study and analyze this monster, the uft/aft "service union". We need to know what we are fighting and accordingly propose the organizational alternative. We can't just do those analyses only about the schools, curricula, governance, etc and promote alternative visions and not do the same regarding our "union" [if you can call it that].

We have a long struggle ahead and thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I am taking the liberty of sharing our exchange with ICE-members because I think our dialogue will be important contributions.

Collectively, we can come up with solutions to take us out of this morass that we have inherited.

en lucha,

Angel

Joel Klein on TV in Oz

Our Aussie contact Trevor Cobbold sent us the latest on the adventures of Joel in Oz.

Hi everyone,

You might be interested that Joel Klein re-appeared on Australian national television this week after a long absence.

I have attached the transcript. It can be accessed directly at: http://news.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/index/id/102#transcript.

Background on the program is at: http://news.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/index/id/102

This appearance was in the context of a vigorous debate going on in Australia about the imminent introduction of national reporting of school results and the publication of school performance tables in a couple of newspapers recently.

For more information see: http://soscanberra.com/league-tables

Best wishes

Trevor Cobbold

National Convenor

Save Our Schools

http://soscanberra.com/

Incoming- DUCK

Excuse the sloppy formatting. There is so much stuff coming in and I'm really falling behind. Here are a bunch of links to check out, many of which I haven't had time for so far.

Also, make sure to check out the new link I added on the side panel to my Los Angeles list - The Charter School Invasion in Los Angeles - (all the links make lovely reading) on tepid results for Green Dot and other schools in LA.

From Patrick Sullivan
(Patrick as the Manhattan borough parent rep has been the lone voice of opposition to BloomKlein on the PEP - the joke of a NYC board of education.)

I've read the Obama Administration's proposal for the 4.5 billion dollar Race to the Top Fund and find it disturbing. I've written two posts for the [NYC Parents] blog here and here.

I encourage everyone to read it and provide a comment on the official form on regulations.gov. There is a pdf version which is best for reading here.

http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#documentDetail?R=09000064809fdd04

Patrick is one parent who gets it as he comments:
I see the main thrust is about holding teachers accountable for student performance using high stakes tests. With parents in the mix then things get messy, someone might actually suggest we are accountable. Better to just focus on the teachers.



From Susan Ohanian's daily updates (you really should subscribe). Yesterday she compiled quite a list. Use her comments to pick and choose. Susan continues to be one of the major voices of the resistance.

This is another posting that got away from me. Sorry there are so many.


There are a lot more articles here that are outrageous almost beyond belief, though these days we know that nothing is so outrageous that the people on
Arne's team won't do it.

Meanwhile, I hope you will send me news of your activism so I can post it at
www.stopnationalstandards.org

Susan
susano@gmavt.net

PO Box 26
Charlotte, VT 05445

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Are charters schools a price of entry to reform?
Donna Gordon Blankinship
Associated Press
2009-08-17
http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8808

So why would these 11 states participate in the Common Core Standards if their lack of support of charters takes them out of the running for Race to the Top
bribes?

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Tutoring tots? Kids prep for kindergarten
Jacqueline Stenson
MSNBC
2009-08-18
http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8807

An article on skills tutoring for pre-kindergartners sets Ohanian toreminiscing. And there's a funny aside about the ads that appear on Amazon.com.

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Veteran teachers treated unfairly in competitive job market, some say
Sarah Carr
Times-Picayune
2009-08-18
http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8806

In the most competitive market for job-hunting teachers in New Orleans in recent
memory -- perhaps ever -- some worry that veteran educators have received short
shrift.

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Education Equality Project Continues Strong American Schools' Mission
Joel I. Klein
Education Equality Project
2009-08-18
http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8805

An e-mail from Joel Klein, you know, the fellow who claims to be building a
civil rights movement.

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Why Most Schools Don't have the Nerve to Ask Third Graders for an Evaluation
Don Perl with Cade
Coalition for Better Education
2009-08-17
http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8804

A third grader starts school and writes and evaluation.

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Oprah Promotes Michelle Rhee
Staff
O Magazine
0000-00-00
http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8803

O Magazine's first ever O Power List. 20 remarkable visionaries who are flexing
their muscles in business and finance, politics and justice, science and the
arts.

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Connecting Anxious Parents and Educators, at $450 an Hour
Susan Dominus
New  York Times
2009-08-18
http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8802

Find out what book wealthy New York parents of pre-schools are buying.

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Obama Pushes States to Shift on Education
Sam Dillon
New  York Times
2009-08-17
http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8801

That aggressive use of economic stimulus money by Education Secretary Arne
Duncan is provoking heated debates over the uses of standardized testing and the
proper federal role in education, issues that flared frequently during President
George W. Bush’s enforcement of his signature education law, called No Child
Left Behind.  NOTE: The two national unions have not formally commented on the
proposed rules.



And California residents need to get on Gloria Romero's case.

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California Teacher Takes Criticism of Race to the Top to the Union
Virginia Tibbetts
Stop National Standards
2009-08-10
http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8800

Isn't it time for every union member to demand some answers and some action from
their union?

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To the editor
Juanita Doyon
News Tribune
2009-08-19
http://susanohanian.org/show_letters.html?id=1067

Three cheers for Juanita Doyon, who helps activist causes throughout the country
with custom-made buttons and advice when she's not writing letters to the
editor.

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Open Letter to Arne Duncan
Herbert Kohl
The Progressive
2009-08-18
http://susanohanian.org/show_letters.html?id=1066

Herb Kohl says Arne Duncan misread his book and offers to send him another copy.

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To the editor
Stephen Krashen and Susan Ohanian
Newsweek
2009-08-16
http://susanohanian.org/show_letters.html?id=1065

Ms. Clift, a professional political writer, and Mr. Duncan, a former
professional basketball player, have not spent enough time with children and
teachers, and neither they nor their staffs are familiar with the vast research
literature that says that children are not programmable robots.

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An Open Letter to NCTE Members about the Common Core State Standards
Kylene Beers, President NCTE
NCTE
2009-08-17
http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=582



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Gates Gives 15 States an Edge in Race to the Top
Michele McNeil
Education Week blog
2009-08-18
http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=581



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Connecting the Dots
Jay Spuck and Susan Ohanian
Business Week, Wireless PR, & Chicago contract
2009-08-17
http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=580



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Dear DOE
Diane Ravitch
Race to the Top Public Comments
2009-08-17
http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=579



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Reinventing No Child Left Behind
Stephen Lendman
The People's Voice.org
2009-08-19
http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_atrocities.html?id=3688

NCLB's real aim is to commodify public education, end government responsibility
for it, and make it another business profit center. Obama plans to reinvent a
failed policy, give it a new name, and claim it will fix NCLB's shortcomings.

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Race to the Top won't get students any further ahead
Mike Schutz
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
2009-08-18
http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_atrocities.html?id=3687

You want to know how best to spend time and money to provide kids with the best
possible learning experience? Ask a classroom teacher.

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Against National Standards:Let the states decide what to teach- they'll do less
harm.
Liam Julian
Weekly Standard
2009-08-10
http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_atrocities.html?id=3685

A conservative argues that the quality of the product, and the possibility of
developing excellent standards shouldn't be sacrificed for the sake of middling
countrywide uniformity.

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Educating for individuality
Lynn Stoddard
Ogden Standard Examiner
2009-08-15
http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_atrocities.html?id=3684

Lynn Stoddard warns: Now you have a choice. Do nothing and get national
standards for student uniformity imposed on your schools. OR .....

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Freedom in Education Meeting
Joe  Lucido

2009-08-19
http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_stories.html?id=399

Fresno is the place to be on August 29. Come organize for resistance.

(Revised) Organizing Parents: Harder Than Herding Cats (Much)

Updated Aug. 18, 10 PM

I was chastised on a number of issues related to my earlier posting of this piece and number one was my confusion regarding the exact position vis a vis mayoral control of the Parent Commission. A lot of information floating around was conjecture and rumor and it took a few comments, emails and phone calls to clarify some things. But that has been done before and I just plain forgot. And probably will again. The arteries are hardening faster than I thought. Pretty scary when my almost 92 year old dad remembers lots more than I do.

What's a CPAC?*

This was a question asked by teacher Nicola DeMarco on the NYC Education Listserve, where NYC parent activists weigh in (the listserve is carefully monitored by Tweedles).

Parent commenter Benita, who has a vision for parent resistance, tell her story:

Officially, CPAC parents selected from the President Councils are there to represent the interests and concerns of parents' citywide to the Chancellor-- who in turn, is supposed to seek out and listen to their collective advice.

But Nick-- you are so ON POINT to question what CPAC really is.

The majority of parents and residents in NYC don't have a clue about it, or what purpose it really serves. In schools, many, many parents don't even know (or much care) that there are "Presidents" Councils and that as hierarchies go, they feed into CPAC.

I am a perfect example. I was at the end of my personal battle with the DoE, and graduating out as the PA president when I learned that there was even such a body as CPAC. I only learned about it when there was "in-fighting" between its representative panel members-- apparently, political/ego power plays pitting them against one another, were at hand. Not unusual. The co-President of the Manhattan High School Presidents Council (MHSPC) was appointed as "interim" Chair or temporary president of CPAC, and although I knew her well, I never ventured to one of CPAC's meetings. Participating in the MHSPC every month was enough of a waste of time for me. I got nothing from them that could be filtered down to positively affect, or help in any way, the parents in the failing high school I diligently went there to represent.

This last Spring when CPAC either could not, or would not come out in support of the Parent Commission on School Governance and Mayoral Control's written report of recommendations, and when they did NOT join the fight to end mayoral control, I dismissed this body as another useless waste of energy and time. It is just one more vehicle the DoE uses to point to "Parent Involvement" and claim it's alive and well.

Sometimes, I think a total boycott of every single DoE-designed parent involvement group, CEC, CDEC, District Leadership Team, Special Education Council, Citywide High School Council, SLT, parent committee and association ought to be enacted. Imagine what a planned citywide walk-out by parents-- joined by community protests of every different kind of education related council meeting-- would say to the DoE and the legislators who think we're satisfied with the "new" bill on school governance.

I think it would scare the superior pants off them. At some point, parents have to recognize their power. At some point, parents have to decide they've had enough and just STOP being the political pawns of an autocratic system who continues to wind them up, dictate the regulations they are to follow, and constantly sends them into a maze of endless meetings and time-spent-talking (and also reporting), that ultimately, has little to NO effect on improving public schools, children's learning, or stemming the government's push for privatization.

Having said that-- I am also now an outsider; a parent without a child currently in the system to protect, so being a radical is easier for me. I recognize it is not so easy for others and thus, sincerely applaud Muba and like-minded parent leaders, for their dedication to the process. Maybe the purpose of CPAC is to keep abreast of the "beast" from within. Maybe knowing the moves of the DoE from the inside, and then adding that knowledge to the community pressure from the outside, will eventually result in change.

Unless there is concerted effort to assume radical, non-violent actions as taught by those freedom fighters around the world who have successfully resisted dictators--- for our children and city's sake-- we can only hope that change will come.

- Benita

I like Benita's fighting spirit. But she does touch on the problem with trying to get parents organized into a force. They age out as their kids leave the school they go to and eventually the school system.

That is why I have always believed that over the long run a progressive movement of career teachers, who have the longest view (mine was 35 years) of the system, can have the most impact. But never without an alliance with parent activists. The problem in NYC has been that there has been no consistent parent group to work with. The Parent Commission did seem to be a start, but their mission was to lobby for changes in the governance bill, not to build a potent and sustained parent movement, something for which I and others have (unfairly) criticized them.

BloomKlein bought off many parents in their initial charge into the system.

Historical diversion
Search the ed notes blog for stories on "Martine Guerrier" as example #1. Martine was the former Brooklyn rep on the PEP (which replaced the old central board) appointed by Boro pres Mary Markowitz and I admired her for her willingness to question many of the early policies. We had numerous conversations and she seemed to be an ideal parent leader. But I could see her turning before my very eyes as Markowitz became more and more of a Bloomberg hack.

Then came the day of the famous anti BloomKlein rally at St. Vartan's church on Feb. 28, 2007 (see videos here and here) where every anti-BloomKlein activist in the city gathered, including some leaders of the CPACs.

It was the first time I met Patrick Sullivan and Diane Ravitch. Leonie Haimson and her listserve played an extremely active role in getting people out. After pressing Leonie to start a blog for quite some time, she informed me that night the NYC Parent blog was a "go"- see Leonie's report in one of her first blog posts: Rally to Put the Public Back into Public Education. The idea that came out of that event was to organize a massive rally on May 1, 2007 to show the world, which had been praising BloomKlein, there was serious opposition.

But the UFT organized the Feb 28 event, which could have turned into a major springboard to oppose the mayor. The threat the May 1 rally threat brought Tweed to the table. But both Tweed and the UFT are never to be trusted and the rally was cancelled in exchange for crumbs and even these agreements were violated.

One of the shocks of that Feb. night was the announcement earlier in the day that BloomKlein had appointed Martine to a $150,000 a year post as "chief parent engagement officer." HELLO! Tweed had come up with what they hoped would make it seem they were listening to parents. (See my report Say It Ain't So Martine which led to a nasty email from NY Times ed reporter at the time, David Herzenhorn, who objected to my critique of his coverage of the appointment where he termed her "a persistent critic" to make it appear this appointment was a sign of BloomKlein's willingness to appoint critics.)
End historical diversion

The Grassroots Education Movement has the potential to work with parents and has begun doing so recently, especially in the black and Latin communities. GEM differs from ICE and TJC in the sense that, even though a group of progressive teachers, it is not a caucus in the UFT but is attempting to build a movement beyond the UFT by allying with parent and community groups. And student activists too. But GEM, only six months old, is still too new to judge. Human resources in terms of teacher/activists are in short supply, but GEM has attracted some new people to the work. And there's an awful lot of that to do. Come to the next GEM meeting on August 25 and join in the festivities (see the GEM blog for details).

Postscript
In my hurry to post the earlier version of this piece, I also confused CPACs and CECs and Lisa Donlan and Leonie Haimson took me to task for this fundamental error. Blame it on the hot Rockaway sun. Or just plain carelessness and stupidity if you don't buy that excuse. Or those darn arteries again.

*CPAC Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council

On the DOE web site: The Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council (CPAC) is comprised of presidents of the district presidents’ councils or their designees. CPAC consults with the district presidents’ councils to identify concerns, trends, and policy issues, and it advises the Chancellor on DOE policies. [and have all such concerns, trends, policy issues and advice given ignored and disparaged].

CECs replaced the elected district school boards abolished when the mayor was given control. Now they are known as advisory panels. (Lisa Donlan, an Ed Notes favorite, is president of CEC District One – Lower East Side.) Emphasis on "advisory." Meaning, no power. But that is mayor for life Michael Bloomberg's mantra: No power to anyone other than him. If you don't like what he is doing, then don't elect him – if you can come up with a few billion dollars of your own.

Guessing Your Way to a Third (and Fourth) Term as Mayor

Diana Senechal's piece at Gotham - Guessing My Way to Promotion - has caused some comments. Her research shows you could score a level 2 and get promoted merely by guessing. Let's skip all that test prep and just tell kids to choose "c" all the way without bothering to read the exam. Then spend the rest of the year really teaching.

Julie chimes in with:

What the big deal is about Standardized Tests has always eluded me.

When you teach "performance" subjects — in my case music but it holds true for sports, auto shop, sewing, pottery, etc. — you still have to produce something viable at the end of the term.

At a concert, for example, the kids have to start and stop at the same time and do some nice things in the middle. The audience has to be able to hear a tune and a recognizable beat. Failing these, the concert fails: it sounds bad and makes the people listening to it feel uncomfortable. It's nearly the same for auto shop (the engine has to run), home ec (the food's got to be edible and safe, and you have to be able to wear the apron you've just sewn up on the machine), or sports (know your moves, work as a team, play your best).

No one questions that "success" for any of these is measured in effort, attendance, the acquisition of some knowledge, and the achievement of some skills (very dependent on the individual talent/s and brain gifts you're born with). Those who come to the class with more talent, musicality, dexterity, or brainpower are expected — and asked — to push for deeper/higher levels of comprehension, execution, and expression.

A kid does well in these subjects with practice, a good work ethic, and a capacity to focus. These are real skills for an adult world.

High-stakes standardized tests may have their place, especially for entrance exams, licensing and the trades, but passing them off as markers of "success" or "achievement" is just politically driven and a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Julie

And this from Arjun, a high school teacher. High school teachers and elementary school teachers seem far apart on the social promotion issue, since I assume teachers in high school blame social promotion for allowing kids reading at the 3rd grade level to reach 11th grade. Not so simple. We find kids who left us in 6th grade reading at say 4th grade (maybe after a year or 2 of being held back) are still reading at not much higher years later. And then there's the research.

Smoke and Mirrors vs. Dealing with Reality

One of the few things some of us credited Michael Bloomberg for was ending routine social promotions. He did this, not by educating the public and building a consensus, in democratic fashion, but simply by firing those on the Board who had objections. This was typical dictatorial CEO tactics, unsustainable and unproductive in the long run, and setting a precedent for future mayors that they could use for the narrowest of ends. Nevertheless, it seemed to finally cut through the Gordian knot of obfuscation that had established mindless social promotion, and had made it into a coverup for serious problems as well as contributor to them.

This is not to say that routine social promotion should be replaced by routine holding back of students who cannot pass a test. The issue is a complex one, and either extreme practice violates both practical common sense and human considerations.

Now it seems that it has all again devolved into smoke and mirrors. Read below. Meanwhile, the city has been trumpeting the "increasing scores" on these tests, and papers like the New York Times are pointing to it as proof of the virtues of mayoral control. The rampant grade inflation that is contributing to that apparent rise is not mentioned.

By the way, the same trend is observable at State level, with many of the Regents' examinations. The Regents' curricula appear increasingly impressive, though incoherent (and unteachable, owing to extent, in the allotted time, especially given students' academic handicaps). But the scoring system for the tests (which incorporates a "curve" that varies from year to year and keeps ballooning in most subjects, often adding twenty or more points to student scores in critical parts of the score distribution) makes all of this an even sadder joke.

The impatient CEO culture in the business world often sought to solve a problem by simply firing the staff in an ailing wing, and hiring fresh talent. (This was before they became preoccupied with inflating stock values and in engaging in, or or fending off, takeovers that squeezed out short-term profits while devastating both the employees and the long-term prospects of the affected industries.)

However, there is another branch of human endeavor that is engaged in nurturing and building up that "talent". This is the business that parents, communities, schools, colleges, and, indeed, entire nations, should be focused on. This is a long-term endeavor, in which there are no easy shortcuts. This country had the luxury of waves of immigrants feeding the engines of industry. These included both highly educated professionals, as well as the millions who benefited from the quality and accessibility of the public schools.

The blot in this picture was the systematic exclusion, in the past, of certain minority communities, especially African Americans. However, many of the members of these communities, beset with generations of chronic unemployment and lack of opportunity as well as community support in the cities, fell into self-perpetuating social pathologies that continue to plague them as well as destroy their local public schools.

In addition, the schools themselves, over time, developed serious structural problems that were never attended to, in part because of wave after wave of misguided "reforms" that created chaos and distracted attention from the real problems.

In more stable communities, the diligence of average students and teachers is able, to a large extent, to ensure that some degree of meaningful teaching and learning proceeds, despite these structural problems. Ways are found around them, extra time and resources are provided, etc. Teachers and students do not have to deal with frequent, even chronic disruptions that make focus and continuity almost impossible. The majority of students still continue to pay attention and take notes in class, and study and do written homework in non-perfunctory fashion at home.

In more troubled communities, the social pathologies, the lack of respect and focus, added to the pre-existing structural problems (continually aggravated by well-intentioned but increasingly cosmetic drives to "raise standards" at city and state levels) creates a situation akin to hell on earth for those students and teachers who remain sincere. The only survival route is mental disengagement, while proceeding onwards mechanically. Those who dare to question or take initiatives cannot survive.

Arjun 2009 Aug 18th, Brooklyn

ICE Throws it Down for the 2010 UFT Elections

ICE/TJC presidential candidate James Eterno throws it down in his post at the ICE Blog.

An excerpt from Eterno's post:

We are posting this so we can start to emphasize to the readers of this blog how difficult it will be to unseat Mulgrew and Unity Caucus.

The NY Teacher is a house organ and as such it is a very efficient propaganda newspaper, spinning a positive message about the state of our union and its leaders. In addition, Unity has money as people who accept their invitation to join have to pay a fee.

Since being in Unity has guaranteed victory in UFT elections, Unity has a very deep treasury; they will use it to smear us in the general election in 2010. They are extremely adept in one area: keeping themselves in power. They count on member apathy. Sadly, the vast majority of teachers do not vote.

Unity even has a loyal subsidiary group called New Action. The traditional opposition party has not run a candidate for UFT President since 2001 and yet they remain on the ballot in UFT elections. Their purpose appears to be to confuse people who want to vote for something different. Their reward has been union jobs.

If we want to see real change in the UFT, ICE-TJC can lead the movement. We have union passion. Many in our group are experienced chapter leaders, delegates and activists. Some of us have even sat on theUFT Executive Board. We have served on the inside so we can clearly see how to repair the Union.

If elected, we will protect every member and Chapter as fully as possible. No UFT member should ever feel that the UFT doesn’t completely have their back.

More from James Eterno at 2010 Campaign Kickoff: We need YOU to Help Us Form a Real Union

Ed Notes Commentary

I learned a term in Los Angeles a few weeks ago: an organizing union vs. a service (or lack thereof) - the UFT/Unity top down model. In practical terms, this means that instead of sitting back and telling people to call the union when you have a grievance (and most of the time they tell you it is a waste of time) - the quasi service model – an organizing union is proactive and out there organizing the members into an active force that functions effectively at the school level.

The UFT/Unity model can't and won't implement an organizing model because that requires an open democratic, bottom up system. They fear their own members' activism because an active membership would be aware of the kinds of scams the leadership is pulling and threaten their control.

The Independent Community of Educators, ICE, in its almost 6 years of existence, has struggled to build itself in a way that doesn't emulate Unity.

ICE bends over backwards to implement democracy internally and must do so if it expects to implement an organizing union. But as you can imagine, democracy can get messy and we always don't get done what we feel we should get done. But it's worth the mess.

ICE believes that the key to a well functioning union that can serve and protect the members is through the most democracy, not the least. If ICE were to function in a top down, undemocratic manner, I would be the first to criticize.

I'll be writing a lot about Ed Notes views concerning organizing and elections in the UFT. What I say should not be construed as ICE/UFT positions as I don't always agree 100% with where ICE stands but I support the organization 100%.