Monday, January 17, 2011

Wear Black and Take OUR Schools Back on Friday! Is Your School Taking Part?


See the big picture. Forming alliances with other schools is the long-term solution - by building a movement that grows with time we can force both the DOE and the UFT to move. Otherwise they will pick off one school after another. And there will be so many ATRs they will drum up a public vendetta by not putting them in the classroom on purpose so as to create an overcrowded situation.

Friday, January 21st - Join Public Schools Across the City to Advocate for Real Reforms that Will Transform our Public Schools.

 
-Please Share With Those Who Care-
To Particpate/Endorse (groups, schools, PTAs, CECs, chapters, individuals): email capeducation@gmail.com



Wear Black and Take OUR Schools Back!

Fight Back Friday

Stand Up For Public Education!

         School Based Actions to Fight the Attacks on Public Education                                               
Friday, January 21st Join Public Schools Across the City to Advocate for Real Reforms that Will Transform our Public Schools.

Press Conference @ 4:30 on the Steps of Tweed

Wear Black and Take OUR Schools Back!

Stop the Attacks on Public Education:
·         Stop Closing Schools, Fix Them.
·         Stop Charter School Co-Locations.
·         Stop School-Based Budget Cuts.
·         Stop Increases in Class Sizes.
·         Stop the Overemphasis on Standardized Assessment:  More Teaching, Less Testing.
·         Stop Teacher Data Reports Based on Narrow Tests and Faulty Data.
·         Stop Ignoring the Voices of Parents, Educators, and Students:  More Parent, Educator and Student Empowerment, Not Less.
·         Stop the Dictatorial Governance of Our School System:  Mayoral Control is Out of Control!
·         No Layoffs of Teachers or School Personnel:  Reduce the Bureaucracy and Fire the Middle Managers Instead!

Choose one or more issues that are important to your school community and take action:
·         Wear black and/or black arm bands
·         Hold a rally before or after school
·         Craft a form letter or petition on an issue important to your school
·         Pass out literature and education material before and after school
___________________________________________________________________

If you, your school, or your school community plan to participate in Fight Back Friday, let us know @ capeducation@gmail.com so that we can include you on our list of participants/endorsers and interactive map as well as provide you with a Fight Back Friday Toolkit!  The Toolkit will include literature and educational material, media information, stickers, and sample materials to assist in your school organizing efforts. Visit our Blog @www.fightbackfridays.blogspot.com, visit and post to our Facebook page @ fightbackfridays, and post and send in your school’s perspectives, testimonials, videos and pictures of Fight Back Actions. 

****Fight Back Friday will culminate with a press conference on the steps of Tweed @ 4:30.  If your group or a member of your school community (especially if you are a school facing closing or co-location) would like to speak, contact us and we will do our best to accommodate you.  Let’s stand up for public education together, and make our voices heard!****

Sponsored by:  Grassroots Education Movement:  www.grassrootseducationmovement.blogspot.comgemnyc@gmail.com 

UPCOMING ACTIONS

January 21st: Fight Back Friday- Stand Up for Public Education, Wear Black and Take Our Schools Back! (email capeducation@gmail.com for more information or to endorse). Press Conference on the steps of Tweed @ 4:30.

Endorsers and Participants

Sponsored by GEM



CEC1-unanimously endorsed
CIF- Center for Immigrant Families
Chris Owens- Democratic District Leader/ 52nd Assembly
NYCORE -New York Collective of Radical Educators
CAPE -Concerned Advocates for Public Education

Mulgrew to Speak to Restricted E4E Event

I posted this at Ed Notes this morning:

The Dudes Are Out at Educators 4 Excellence: Funded by Gates, A Fact Ignored by Gotham Schools

Now we get their invite to meet Mulgrew. But you have to sign the pledge and enter a lottery. Can you imagine - a lottery to go hear Mulgrew? This pledge commits you to support core E4E principles. Or you can't attend. But then again if you start scratching how the UFT has functioned you may end up there anyway. Maybe Mulgrew might even sign. Oh, yes, E4E is funded in part by Gates and other secret donors. Hmmm, Mulgrew should be right at home. Here's the pledge: As educators, we demand a system that:
  1. Recruits, retains, and supports the highest quality teachers by offering
    • A higher starting salary
    • Encouragement and opportunity for continued intellectual development
    • High level professional development and support
    • An evenhanded merit-based pay structure to reward excellent teachers
  2. Restores professionalism to education by
    • Evaluating teachers through a holistic and equitable system that incorporates value-added student achievement data as one component of effectiveness
    • Reestablishing tenure as a significant professional milestone through use of a comprehensive teacher evaluation system 
    • Eliminating the practice of "Last In, First Out" for teacher layoffs
  3. Places student achievement first by
    • Giving students and parents more opportunity to choose great schools
    • Displaying more transparency in both fiscal choices and decision-making processes
    • Implementing an effective system of evaluating administrators
    • Adopting higher standards for students and teachers
    • Opening the education reform conversation to the voices of teachers and parents
Some fluff here to cover up the real intention - read the code - end LIFO which really ends tenure.

You and the UFT: A Conversation with UFT President Michael Mulgrew
This is an extraordinary opportunity for teachers to meet, ask questions of, and hear from President Mulgrew of the United Federation of Teachers. This continues E4E's series of Q&A events with important policymakers. This speaker series is designed to give teachers direct access to the individuals who make decisions that impact our profession and our classrooms. We hope you can join us to share your voice!
WHEN: Tuesday, January 25th (6:00 - 7:30PM)
WHERE: Location TBA
RSVP REQUIRED: Please RSVP by clicking here
 *Due to limited space and the importance of maintaining a conversational atmosphere, we will be using a lottery system to select attendees for this event. Please RSVP as soon as possible to enter your name into this lottery. If selected, you will be notified by e-mail with further event details no later than January 21st. Thank you for your understanding.*



--

The Dudes Are Out at Educators 4 Excellence: Funded by Gates, A Fact Ignored by Gotham Schools






I wrote a post in June saying that they were getting funding from Education Reform now. http://gothamschools.org/2010/06/03/klein-celebrates-no-layoffs-hits-the-bar-with-young-teachers/

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Fergusan's 'Inside Job' Has More to Say About Education Than Guggenheim's 'Waiting for Superman' on school reform

As I watched Charles Ferguson's amazing movie "Inside Job" about the financial meltdown and how market based concepts were responsible, I thought he is the guy who could make a fabulous movie about the public education meltdown as a result of the ed deform movement which is based on the very same concepts that brought down the economy. I know. A lot of people have been hankering for Michael Moore (who ironically, the Real Reformers ran into Moore - scroll down for the RR video - on the way to rally at the opening of WfS). But Ferguson really nails it. Alas, without Ferguson or Moore we have to make our own film, The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, which we hope to release in a month or so.

Well, here is the article by Kevin Welner I've been hoping to write for the past few months or so about "Inside Job." It's great to be scooped. Saves so much time. Valerie Strauss introduces it at the Answer Sheet.
Why 'Inside Job' bests 'Waiting for Superman' on school reform

By Valerie Strauss

One can only assume that the critics in the Broadcast Film Critics Association who bestowed their 2011 Best Documentary award to Davis Guggenheim's Waiting for Superman did not know how tendentious the film is, or else they might have honored a film that was more straightforward, in the tradition of classic documentaries. Superman is up for a Golden Globe Award, too, and is on the shortlist for Academy Awards in the feature documentary category.

Here a comparison between Waiting for Superman and a competitor, called Inside Job. Though the latter film isn’t about education reform, Kevin G. Welner, the author of the following piece (which appeared on Huffington Post), writes about why Inside Job better explains it than does Superman. Welner is a professor of education policy and program evaluation in the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and director of the National Education Policy Center.

By Kevin G. Welner
Over the past couple months, I’ve been asked to participate in a few panel discussions about Waiting for Superman. The film presents a stark, moving portrayal of the denial of educational opportunities in low-income communities of color. But while the movie includes statements such as "we know what’s wrong" and "we know how to fix it," viewers of the movie are hard-pressed to identify those causes and solutions -- other than to boo and hiss at teachers’ unions and to cheer at the heroic charter school educators.

So in the panel discussions we try to make sense of that simplistic black-hat/white-hat story. We argue about whether the movie offers a fair and complete picture (it doesn’t even come close, unfortunately). But we never get to deeper issues about what’s wrong and how to fix it.

I thought about that when leaving a showing of the other prominent documentary currently showing, called Inside Job. It offers an explanation of how the current economic crisis came about, describing the securitization of mortgages; the extraordinary leveraging of assets; the regulatory capture by Wall Street leading to minimal enforcement of federal regulations -- a deregulation intended to spur innovation; and the fraud, greed, hubris and general belief among hedge fund titans and others in the financial services world that they are infallible.

The film also points out the growing and now extreme inequality of wealth distribution in the United States. "The top 1 percent of American earners took in 23.5 percent of the nation’s pretax income in 2007 -- up from less than 9 percent in 1976."

Consider those final three items: (1) the advocacy of deregulation in order to free up innovation, (2) hubris and general belief among hedge fund titans that they are infallible, and (3) increased wealth inequality.

If Superman had explored these issues instead of bashing unions and promoting charters, moviegoers might have walked away understanding a great deal about why the families it profiled and so many similar families across America face a bleak educational future.

The movie certainly showed scenes of poverty, but its implications and the structural inequalities underlying that poverty were largely ignored. Devastating urban poverty was just there -- as if that were somehow the natural order of things but if we could only ’fix’ schools it would disappear.

Rick Hanushek is put forth, saying that if we fire the bottom 5 to 10 percent of the lowest-performing teachers every year, our national test scores would soon approach Finland at the top of international rankings in mathematics and science. But no mention is made of the telling fact that Finland had, in 2005, a child poverty rate of 2.8 percent while the United States had a rate of 21.9 percent. That gap has likely gotten even bigger over the intervening five years.

Rather than addressing these poverty issues, Superman serves up innovation through privatization and deregulation. We’re shown charter schools that give hope to these families. But what we’re not told is that the extra resources and opportunities found in these charters are funded in large part with donations from Wall Street hedge fund millionaires and billionaires.

Problems of structural inequality and inter-generational poverty are pushed aside in favor of a ’solution’ grounded in the belief that deregulation will prompt innovation, all the while guided by the infallible judgment of Wall Street tycoons. It’s no wonder that Inside Job better explained the school crisis than did Waiting for Superman.

Follow my blog every day by bookmarking washingtonpost.com/answersheet.
 UPDATED: Jan. 17: Note comment below from "In the trenches" and link to site, which I added to the blogroll.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Chatty Cathie: NYC"s Wind-Up School Chancellor Doll

BLACK IS BLOOMBERG'S FAILURE AND WILL COME BACK TO HAUNT HIM MORE THAN THE SNOWSTORM!

I had a link up a few weeks ago from an ed deformer (Mike Petrilli I think) predicting that Cathie Black would be out of there by April. Accountable Talk figures April Fool.

How about this Wednesday (Jan. 19) at her first PEP meeting? Come on guys, get on down and join the Real Reformers as they try to give Cathie a great welcome - it is after the UFT Delegate Assembly - or concurrently - I am going there first to hand out some leaflets and then on to Brooklyn Tech by 5:30.

We just can't keep up with all the comments on newly Chattie Cathie (remember when we called her Unchattie Cathie when she wouldn't talk to the press - maybe she was right) after her birth control and Sophie's Choice comments. We can only pray she says some more wonderful things at her first PEP on Weds. Jan. 19 but I wouldn't be surprised to see her show up with a muzzle.

David Bellel came up with this graphic at his blog inspired by a post from Perdido Street
Cathie's Choice: New Yorkers Comment On Cathie
Some very interesting comments on the latest Cathie Black gaffe in which she suggested birth control as a solution for school overcrowding and compared "tough decisions" she has to make on school funding and placement to sending children to a Nazi death camp:
A word of advice, Cath. You need to build up a modicum of credibility before you start with the wisecracks. Despite what you may believe, you have none when it comes to the educational system.
Well, what do you expect from a Waspish Park Ave matron? It's just a matter of time before her views on eugenics become public.
Come on, you guys. She was absolutely right. A little birth control would have been a great thing. Pity her own parents didn't use it...........
Here are more posts from RBE at Perdido:


Cathie's Choice: The ATR Solution


Cathie's Choice: To Open A Charter Or Take A Trip To Auschwitz

Cathie's Choice: Even The NY Post Hammers Cathie Black For "Nazi Death Camp" Reference

Wow - you know Cathie Black is hitting bottom when even the NY Post editorial writers are hammering her:

Cathie's Choice: Clueless Cathie Black Puts Her Foot In Her Mouth Again

Cathie Black might possibly be one of the most clueless people in the education reform world today - and given who inhabits this world, that's really saying something:
And of course NYC Educator: Dear Cathie Black, and South Bronx School: Cathie Black's Choice Of Birth Control.

Jamaica HS: The Play WAS The Thing

Jamaica HS Chapter Leader James Eterno posted this at the ICE blog. See the zines I posted that the students produced: YOU'RE INVITED TO SEE THE BANNED PLAY AT JAMAICA HS.
We are hoping to get some of the performers down to the Jan. 21 4:30 press conference at Tweed and/or the Jan. 27 rally.

ALSO - COME TO THE JAMAICA HEARING ON THURSDAY JAN. 20 TO SHOW SUPPORT. HOPEFULLY THERE WILL BE SOME PERFORMANCE ART GOING ON. I HOPE TO GET THERE TO TAPE.

Note: If you have no access to Facebook, we will post the link when it goes up on you tube.

PREMIRE DAY AT JAMAICA!

Kids performed their play criticizing school closings at Jamaica yesterday. Take out the word Jamaica from the script and replace it with John F Kennedy HS or Norman Thomas or Beach Channel or Tilden, or Lane or Canarsie or many others and you could perform this piece all over the city. In fact you could show it in many cities across the country.

Below is a facebook link to a pretty good quality recording that one of the students made. I hope it works so you can judge for yourself what all of the fuss was about. Also, here are links to the current Daily News and NY1 stories on the play.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1747656686320&comments

In addition to the News and NY 1, there were a number of other media people in attendance at Jamaica yesterday including the NY Teacher and Anna Gustafson from the Jamaica Times. Councilman Leroy Comrie, a representative from Mark Weprin's office, Ken Cohen from NAACP and his wife, John Lawhead and Joan Seedorf from ICE, my wife, mother in law and daughter, plenty of Jamaica teachers as well as retirees and hundreds of students and free speech lovers were all in the audience. I guess it is the closest we will get to an opening night on Broadway at Jamaica. There was a great buzz in the place.

I hope all of you can see the play. Maybe the students and their teacher from CUNY, Brian Pickett, will put on more performances in other venues.

On a related note, January 20 at 6:00 p.m. is this year's Joint Public Hearing for Jamaica. Come on out as we are easy to get to (F train to 169th Street; exit at back of station and walk up the hill two blocks on 168th Street.)

Friday, January 14, 2011

Add Your School to the Jan. 21 Fight Back Friday List: Goal is 50 NYC Schools Taking Part

Hi all,

I am writing to let you know that on Friday, January 21st, GEM, in coalition with NYCORE, Coalition for Public Education, Teachers Unite and other groups is calling for a school based FIGHT BACK FRIDAY! (www.fightbackfridays.blogspot.com)
Sam Coleman
If you've been following Ed Notes and other blogs, you are aware of the daily assault on public education, blaming teachers and their unions for all the problems that exist, closing schools, moving kids and teachers around like chess pieces, and so on. Just take this item I put up on the sidebar last night:

Bloomberg Takes Aim on Senior Teachers

"Amongst the reforms, Recommendation #20 may cause the most outcry, as it would authorize the Department of Education to retain the most effective teachers -- as opposed to just the most senior teachers -- during downsizing."

Bloomberg Set to Shake Up Union Hiring and Firing Practices: http://bed-stuy.patch.com/articles/bloomberg-set-to-shake-up-union-hiring-and-firing-practices

I don't have to tell you that the UFT has been ineffective in fighting for the public schools - how many have been closed and are slated to close - a clear attack on and has even cooperated in areas like merit pay for performance, experimenting with the value-added measurements of teachers, supporting mayoral control, protecting teachers and public schools from charters (how can the UFT battle co-locations when they themselves have 2 charters co-locating?) and on and on.

Thus, the battle is in your hands. And I have been meeting a wonderful group of next gen activists - new leadership, along with some of the people I've met through blogging moving to the next step of activism. The Grassroots Education Movement is trying to fill the gap and has been joining in coalition with other groups around the city to begin to forge a fight back. A year ago we organized the rally at Bloomberg's home and it drew 400 people. A drop in the bucket you might say, but the bucket is filling, slowly, but filling.

An ad hoc committee to fight closing schools has been formed (meetings are open - next one this Tuesday, Jan. 18, 5pm at CUNY, 34th and 5th Ave, rm 5414-bring ID) and is organizing so many activities I get tired just thinking about it. The key events are: Jan. 21 Fight Back Friday and Jan. 27 rally at Tweed. And attending all the PEP meetings coming up on school closings while also sending reps to as many school closing and charter co-location rallies, hearings, etc.

That is why your help is needed to bolster the forces of The Resistance. There is so much to do and so few people to do it. I can attest that recently adding a batch of people has made an enormous difference (setting up blogs, creating leaflets, etc. takes man and woman power).

Now, you may be saying to Sam, one of the dynamic next generation activists we have been working with, "Why should I get my colleagues to engage in this action? Hasn't the union done this in the past? What did it get us?"
I don't have easy answers. But this is something growing from the grassroots, building school by school. Last June 4 Fightback Friday we had 25 schools. Now we're aiming for 50. Or more. It is no longer a matter of saving one school. The idea is to create a mass movement of resistance that consistently battles the ed deformers on every front. Imagine if one day hundreds of schools start joining in. Or come out to a rally. Jan. 27 will not be the last one. We must continue to build pressure. Classic bullies like Bloomberg historically buckle when the heat is on. Putting thousands in the street one day who are not there because the UFT paid and organized them would scare the hell out of the ed deformers. The only way is to build one block of a movement at a time.

As Sam says in his email:
The protest can be big or it can be as small as a few teachers/students/parents outside fliering. The slogan is: Wear Black, Take our Schools Back! 
We need pictures, video, reports from your school. It would be great if you can send a school rep  to the press conference on the steps of Tweed at 4:30 on the 21st. And get people out for the Jan. 27 rally at Tweed. If you are doing a Fight Back Friday at your school email CAPE: capeducation@gmail.com and CC me: normsco@gmail.com.


I'll let Sam take over.
JAN 21st!

What's a Fight Back Friday?

Individual schools all over the city will have some sort of action to protest the attacks on pubic education.

NOTE: You can NOT be written up by your administration for any action you carry out off school property. Please email me if you are concerned about this (sam_p_coleman@yahoo).
com

The protest can be big or it can be as small as a few teachers/students/parents outside fliering.

The slogan is Wear Black, Take our Schools Back! 

So, naturally we are asking people to wear black.  I am attaching some stickers(eng/spa) that can be printed out and given out on the day of. You can get black ribbons or arm bands to give out with the stickers. You can use the sticker for ideas for signs.
I am also attaching five fliers written on 5 big issues in education. We are in the process of translating them into Spanish so look out for that or contact me if you need the translations. These can be modified to fit your needs, they are in word.
Please contact: capeducation@gmail.com to let us know your school will participate! 

The movement is growing! Get your school community involved and aware!

I am attaching a flier with more details but here is some of the pertinent info from it:

If you, your school, or your school community plan to participate in Fight Back Friday, let us know @ capeducation@gmail.com so that we can include you on our list of participants/endorsers and interactive map as well as provide you with a Fight Back Friday Toolkit!  The Toolkit will include literature and educational material, media information, and sample materials to assist in your school organizing efforts.
Visit our Blog @ www.fightbackfridays.blogspot.com, visit and post to our Facebook page @ fightbackfridays, and post and send in your school’s perspectives, testimonials, videos and pictures of Fight Back Actions.  
****Fight Back Friday will culminate with a press conference on the steps of Tweed @ 4:30.  If your group or a member of your school community (especially if you are a school facing closing or co-location) would like to speak, contact us and we will do our best to accommodate you.  Let’s stand up for public education together, and make our voices heard!****

thanks
sam
NOTE: The 5 leaflets Sam is talking about can be viewed and there are links for downloading at the GEM blog.

Fightback Friday Informational Fliers for January 21, 2011
Download at: http://www.scribd.com/full/46864057?access_key=key-ptivdl0qry389dstkxw

TODAY: YOU'RE INVITED TO SEE THE BANNED PLAY AT JAMAICA HS

Jamaica HS chapter leader James Eterno reports on the ICE blog:
Friday at 4:00p.m. at 167-01 Gothic Drive is the time and place to see "Declassified; Struggle for Existence; We Used to Eat Lunch Together" The link below is to a Jamaica Times story on the play.

http://www.yournabe.com/articles/2011/01/13/queens/qns_jamaica_high_folo_20110113.txt

I went to the Beach Channel Joint Public Hearing tonight. It was worse than last year's.

One of the kids at Jamaica was talking to me today and he said that they should not call these hearings because the DOE people don't hear anything we say. Can't argue with that.
The students have a Zine that can be downloaded as a pdf in 2 versions.

Here is the read version:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/46651868/Antigone-Declassified-READ

Antigone Declassified READ

For print - fold for use. at http://www.scribd.com/full/46651798?access_key=key-16co463vnu6wsi6ca5kl (Below)

Antigone Declassified at Jamaica HS

Jackson Potter: Reformers in Chicago Teachers Union Grapple with Leadership Challenges

When I was in Seattle in July at the AFT convention, I kept asking the new leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union from the CORE caucus who has been elected only weeks before and had taken office a few days before heading to Seattle what is going on in Chicago and why so little seems to be going on in NYC in terms of opposition to Unity Caucus style union leadership. "You need a Jackson" or "We'll send you Jackson" was what they often said. Jackson is Jackson Potter, who is the new staff director of the CTU.

I understood exactly what they meant. I got to hang with Jackson and a bunch of CORE people, along with a great group from the LA teachers union, Candi and Nathan from DC (new leaders of the WTU) and Sally Lee and Megan Behrent from here in NYC in July 2009 in LA where we broke bread and shared ideas. On my last day there I toured around LA with the CORE group and we got to speak of many things about organizing. At that point, winning the election was merely a gleam in their eyes.

But what was clear was that Jackson was a kind of glue or connector who knew everyone and put the pieces together that became CORE. And we certainly could use a Jackson Potter type here in NYC.

Here in a new article in Labor Notes Jackson talks about the challenges facing a caucus that suddenly found itself in charge of the entire union. Here is a short excerpt outlining their program, which is so different from where Unity Caucus and the UFT stands.
CTU has initiated a community board composed of the biggest, strongest community organizations in the city. With these allies CTU can reach out directly to parents, door-knocking and phonebanking.
Together with the community board we’re demanding a superintendent with an education background, instead of another corporate-oriented schools “CEO.”
We’ll fight for an elected school board composed of parents, teachers, administrators, students, and community leaders, as an alternative to the current mayoral control of the schools.
The union has a plan to stop the expansion of charter schools and turnarounds this winter. (The district “turns around” a school by closing and reopening it, firing the entire staff in the process.) Charters receive tons more public resources than public schools, destabilize neighborhood schools, displace students, and don’t provide a better education. We’ll create area hubs that meet, train, and plan with affected communities.
Read Jackson's entire piece: http://labornotes.org/print/2010/12/reformers-chicago-teachers-union-grapple-leadership-challenges

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Yes, Virginia, They Do Undermine Schools on Purpose

The Riverdale Press has an article which describes the process by which DOE policies have contributed to the failure of many large high schools, especially, but not exclusively, in the Bronx.

Leonie Haimson: 
This is an excellent article; I hope all read it.  Congrats to Nikki who is doing an excellent job at the Riverdale Press. http://riverdalepress.com/stories/Did-DOE-set-up-JFK-for-failure,47860

Lynne and others: I will never forgive them for how they closed the automotive repair shop at Kennedy, which had a huge waiting list and guaranteed good paying jobs for grads right out of HS, to make more classroom space after the new small schools had taken floors from Kennedy.  It was exactly the sort of valuable program that should have been saved and replicated, instead of destroyed.

I remember Bob Hughes (New Visions) testifying before the Council that his schools didn’t push anyone out, but just used “underutilized space” for their schools, Hah!  But these guys have no shame.

Check out this column by Sam Freedman of the NY times about this.  God knows how many kids’ lives were damaged by this one decision.

Retired UFT Bronx HS District Rep Lynne Wynderbaum:
"While I have always felt that HS of Law and Finance is one of the better small schools, the impact of its introduction into the JFK campus with 4 other small schools on Kennedy HS cannot be minimized as Evan Schwartz states in this article. "The small school coming into Kennedy had nothing to do with the problems that Kennedy had" is at best revisionist. Aside from the thoroughly documented space squeeze and overcrowding that started in 2003 and worsened each year that each school added a grade, the contention that they weren't complicit in the shift of high-needs children to Kennedy HS is quite debatable. He acknowledges that they did not accept Special Education students for the first two years but says that was because they did not have the teachers. This is putting the cart before the horse. Special Education mandates say that if you accept students who are in need of mandated services, you must provide the program (i.e. hire the teachers!). Using lack of qualified teachers as a reason to not accept these students would mean that any school that didn't want to accept such students would simply not have to hire the appropriate teachers! But the fact is that they got the reprieve for a totally different reason: the DOE gave all their new small schools a two-year waiver to not take Special Education students. That happened everywhere, not just JFK. So between 2003-2005, no small schools at the campus had to accept Special Education students and large Kennedy HS gladly did. We had over 400 Special Education students at the time and they were provided with all the mandated services. So overcrowding, space encroachment, shift of high-needs populations, and disproportionate budget benefits from their New Visions grants, all had an impact at the time and began the irreversible impact on Kennedy's data and fate.

Just one correction to the article. I never said that supply closets were left unlocked when academic departments were eliminated under Mr. Rotunno. I explained that one of the problems this caused was that material and books formerly stored in department offices and bookrooms were now scattered throughout the building and difficult to locate for instructional use. Some books were even piled up in unused classrooms. But the corruption and disorganization came well after the initial damage to Kennedy caused by the DOE policy to bring in small schools and relegate Kennedy and its students to second-class citizen status."

Lynne
NYCDOE maintained a flagrantly illegal policy of allowing new small schools to exclude kids with IEPs and ELLs for the schools' first 2 years.  Someone(s) filed a complaint re this policy with US DOE's Office for Civil Rights.  NYSED actually came out with some "data" purporting to show that the NYCDOE's new small schools had lovely percentages of kids w/IEPs and ELLs, in an attempt to protect NYCDOE, but nobody in his/her right mind believed the NYSED data since NYCDOE admitted its exclusionary policy publicly.  From what I gathered, there was a back channel deal with OCR - NYCDOE ended the illegal exclusionary policy and OCR allowed NYCDOE to get away without having a formal finding of unlawful discrimination made against it.

The rationale the NYCDOE gave for the illegal, exclusionary policy was appalling, btw.  I was surprised that they actually had the temerity to say it publicly.

Dee Alpert
__._,_.___

Gates Report Touting "Value-Added" Reached Wrong Conclusion

Gee, expect an honest accounting from anything associated with Bill Gates? This comes from Susan Ohanian and is worth reading. Also check out my piece on value-added in the Indypendent, which seems to have gotten a number of hits beyond the usual. (My Article on Teacher Value-Added Data Dumping in The Indypendent.)


NOTE: After reading my introduction here, please click through to the National Education Policy Center site. Rothstein's review reads better there. I post it  here, for historical purpose. My intent, as always, is to keep a record of assaults on public schools. But go read it at the National Educational Policy Center site. They are doing excellent work on the behalf of public schools, and we want their "hits" to soar.

In a wowser of a technical review, Rothstein finds that The Gates Foundation study on teachers' value-added performance "is an unprecedented opportunity to learn about what makes an effective teacher. However,"there are troubling indications that the Project's conclusions were predetermined." [Emphasis added.] This, of course, comes as no surprise to teachers across the land, but it's good to have a respected scholar, somebody with no horse in the race, say it. Rothstein finds:
In fact, the preliminary MET results contain important warning signs about the use of value-added scores for high-stakes teacher evaluations. These warnings, however, are not heeded in the preliminary report, which interprets all of the results as support for the use of value-added models in teacher evaluation.
And more:
The results presented in the report do not support the conclusions drawn from them. This is especially troubling because the Gates Foundation has widely circulated a stand-alone policy brief (with the same title as the research report) that omits the full analysis, so even careful readers will be unaware of the weak evidentiary basis for its conclusions.5
Rothstein characterizes the Gates report conclusions as "shockingly weak" and points to how the part they released to the press hid this weakness.

Is it any surprise that the Gates study doesn't even bother to review existing research literature on the topic? When one's results are "predetermined," (Rothstein's term), such a review would, of course, be a waste of time.

AND "[T]he analyses do not support the report's conclusions. Interpreted correctly, they undermine rather than validate value-added-based approaches to teacher evaluation."[emphasis added]


Review of: Learning About Teaching
by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
December 10, 2010
Reviewed by Jesse Rothstein (University of California, Berkeley)
January 13, 2011

Summary - MORE
http://susanohanian.org/show_research.php?id=39

Check out Norms Notes for more on this issue.

Ross Launches Missile and Goes Ballistic

If you've been reading a lot at Ed Notes about Ross Global Charter and its founder Courtney Sale Ross, (Chutzpah Courtney Keeps Complaining in the Midst of RGC Chaos,  Treat Public Schools Like Ross Global Charter) this is because as Lisa Donlan put it, Ross is "the allegory of its time." When even slugs like Whitney Tilson and DFER's Joe Williams say Ross should be closed, we are in a battle royal. And even Tweed's attack dog Natalie Ravitz points out:
that more than 40 percent of Ross’s teachers left each year, including 77 percent last year....Ross Global Academy, a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school with 400 students, was on its sixth principal during its brief existence.
“Ross Global Academy has failed to serve its students well — it has high turnover in its student body, very high teacher turnover, very high principal turnover, and it made the least progress of any lower school in the city last year.."

How Natalie comes to the conclusion that Ross has served its students well given her litany of limitations of RGC is beyond me.

The NY Times I'm quoting from above jumped into the Ross Charter School controversy with both feet ((NY Times on Ross Global Charter).
When the city provided a home five years ago for the Ross Global Academy, a charter school founded by the widow of a media executive, its opponents complained about what they considered preferential treatment for a member of the moneyed elite. But last month, the Department of Education announced that the school would be closed because of poor performance.
The attempts by Courtney Sale Ross, widow of Time Warner media magnet Steve Ross, to keep her failed charter school open is getting uglier and uglier as she launches missile after missile at other charter schools and their political influence. Which is very funny when you consider that Ross got her school in the first place due to political influence - supposedly Joel Klein's wife's friend. Which is why Joel was afraid to close them down years ago - afraid of his wife. Maybe that is why he resigned - so he won't be around to face the wrath of Ross. This section of the Times piece reveals the extraordinary influence Ross had with Klein.
The city has given free space in existing public schools to many charter schools, and in 2006, when Ross was created, the city originally planned to place it in a Lower East Side building belonging to a magnet school for gifted children [NEST]. Parents of that school opposed the move, and Mr. Klein relented, allowing Ross to temporarily use space inside the Department of Education headquarters on Chambers Street [Tweed]. After Ross was given space in another public school building on East 12th Street, it poured more than $3.5 million into renovations, which might now be inherited by Girls Prep.
Let me expound on this a bit. Ross tried to jump into the elite NEST school on the lower east side and really stepped in it as she came face to face with another diva [Celenia Chevere - except Chevere was a self-made woman while Ross just made Steve]. The NEST story is covered in NY Mag writer Jeff Coplon's amazing July 2007 piece of writing (NEST+m: An Allegory), truly a must read. Jeff describes the founding of NEST, an elite K-12 school by Chancellor Harold Levy in 2000. Here is Jeff's intro into diva 2:
The chancellor knew that his brainchild would need a lightning rod, a leader driven and unyielding. He chose Celenia Chévere, a petite firebrand with boundless energy, a blinding smile, and a hair-trigger temper. From her start as a lowly teacher’s assistant in the late seventies, she’d become one of the most coveted—and controversial—principals around.

After raising two daughters as a single mother (enrolling the younger one, at great sacrifice, at Calhoun), Chévere knew the value of a superior public school. In 1986, when a freestanding gifted program sounded radical, she founded Lower Laboratory in District 2. Ten years later, on East 106th Street, she opened the Young Women’s Leadership School, an oasis of Oriental carpets and nunnery quiet against the raging picket lines of now and the NYCLU. Yet despite her brilliance as a “starter,” Chévere never stayed in one place too long. She ran a building like Hubie Brown coached a basketball team, with an overbearing manner that soon wore thin. “If you did not conform,” says a source who worked with her in East Harlem, “she would destroy you.”
The 3 year old Coplon article is an attack on an elite concept of schools that often turns racial, but that is not the point of this blog post. I'm interested in how Chevere, who had been a Klein target - he went after public school diva principals of both sexes while loving charter school diva operators -  was brought down by her conflict with Ross, which on first look she won, but ended up losing the war. Coplon writes:
And then...came a more-formidable invader: Ross Global Academy. The battle was great theater while it lasted, class warfare behind a scrim of cognitive dissonance. In one corner, the platinum-coiffed Courtney Ross, two-time member of the Forbes 400, now paladin of the Lower East Side families she’d recruited for her charter school; in the other, NEST’s pugnacious principal, a generation removed from poverty in Puerto Rico, now raising the moat at her middle-class bastion.

Playing their zero-sum game, the NEST community jitneyed to picket Ross’s school in East Hampton and stalked the mayor at City Hall. More than 500 parents and students banged drums and maracas outside Cipriani Wall Street, where Klein was keynoting the black-tie Graham Windham Bicentennial Ball. The PTA officers filed a lawsuit—not merely to challenge the “hostile takeover,” but to revoke Ross’s charter.
Can you imagine how livid Joel Klein was at Chevere for going after his wife's supposed pal Courtney's guts? (I'm not taking Chevere's side here as she was also a piece of work.)
When the DoE’s auditors came to check the school’s capacity last spring [that would be 2006], according to Tweed, Chévere shuttled students from class to class, à la Mack Sennett, to show there was no room at the inn. It became clear, Klein says, that the principal “was not leading the school in good faith. Look, nobody likes to share space, but we have space needs—we’re in this as a city.” Improbably, NEST had made Courtney Ross an underdog. Even those allergic to charter schools wondered if NEST’s parents, deep down, feared that their darlings would get jostled en route to algebra by some poor black and Latin children. (It didn’t help when a reporter overheard a young NESTer ask his father, “Will the Ross kids be loud?”)

The game was up when NEST enlisted its godfather, the one person who could trump Bloomberg and Klein: Sheldon Silver. By a matter of yards, NEST fell inside the Assembly Speaker’s home district—geography turned destiny once more. With Silver controlling the fate of a bill to lift the charter school cap, a mayoral fixation, Klein couldn’t afford to antagonize him. (According to Armstrong, the line in the sand was drawn at a tense meeting in the NEST library: “Shelly stood up and pointed to Houston Street and said, ‘My district ends here, Joel.’”)

Finally, the chancellor blinked, sticking Ross into a guest room at his Tweed Courthouse. Victory, though, was Pyrrhic for NEST. “The chancellor was so pissed at Celenia that she was gone,” says a former Chévere supervisor. “How can you run the system if a principal can defy you like that?” Last June [2006], the DoE disclosed that Chévere had been charged with misconduct—in connection with her building’s audit—and that her tenure at NEST was done.
OMG. Klein had to insert Ross Global right into the belly of his own building. And what a mess that turned out to be. When I was at Tweed for press events I witnessed just how wiggy a school RGC was. When people who worked there looked at you their eyes would sink deeper into their heads. Klein finally tossed Ross into another space on E. 12 St.

And here is where it starts to get even uglier (and so much fun.) The NY Times article is more than a little revealing as Ross targets another sleazeball charter operator - Girls Prep.
In a letter to state education officials this week urging a reversal of the city’s decision, the school says that its newly renovated building on East 12th Street has been promised to Girls Prep, another politically connected charter school on the Lower East Side that has long been yearning for better real estate. The letter also questions whether there was any connection involving Girls Prep’s chairwoman, Sarah Robertson, the daughter-in-law of the prominent financier Julian Robertson, and $25 million in contributions made in recent years by the Robertson Foundation to three entities closely associated with the former schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein.
the school’s decision to publicize its fight throws into the open, in raw and awkward fashion, the tight relationship between the city, which has promoted the creation of charter schools in general, and the wealthy patrons of some of those schools.
An internal Department of Education planning document indicates that the intermediate grades of Girls Prep, a single-sex school whose lower grades are located in a public school on East Houston Street, would indeed assume Ross Global Academy’s space by September. The girls prep middle school is currently in temporary, rented space
But the city vigorously denied any kind of ulterior motive.
 Now this is where it gets delicious:
David M. Steiner, the state education commissioner, is weighing the petition by the academy to overturn the city’s decision not to renew the charter. To bolster that petition, Ross Global Academy notes that from 2003 to 2008, the Robertson Foundation donated $5 million to the Department of Education; more than $11 million to the New York City Charter School Center (on whose board Mr. Klein sits); and $8 million to the Fund for Public Schools, which was established by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Mr. Klein. Information on donations for 2009 and 2010 was not available.
Remember old Julian Robertson and his son Spencer (Sarah's hubbie) who was given part of PS 15 in Red Hook for his PAVE charter school? Our pals from CAPE became activated by all of this and have been firm GEM allies, so it was not all bad. CAPE has pointed to these donations for years but were ignored. But when Courtney makes the charge, the NY Times jumps. 
CAPE/GEM's Julie Cavanagh comments:

Well this is truly ironic. Wonder if Ms. Ross and her PR/legal team are interested in defending ps 15 (in Red Hook, BK)... Robertson's son is squeezing out our SUCCESSful public school from our building and no one was interested when we cried foul and preferential treatment or even raised an eyebrow when we brought up Robertson's contributions. (Of course in Ross' case the claim is baseless bc their school is clearly a horrible place for kids.) Also, are we calling our schools "lower schools" now a la Cathleen Black? (See Ratvich statement) No thanks.
Followed by Lisa Donlan
Irony of ironies- they could all have avoided this mud slinging, mud wrestling, tattle taleing pr battles in the media, temper tantrum meltdowns, protests and wrenching apart of communities if they'd JUST BUY OR RENT THEIR SCHOOL BUILDINGS. Sure goes to show that just because these guys got rich doing business does not mean they are smart or even strategic (look at Bloomberg!).

But the blame goes right on Klein and his team who offered the lure of "free" rent to these monied start ups.
So, now we are witness to a pissing contest between the rich spoiled clueless CMO's duking it out over market share and a real estate shortage ( and another 100 charters to go), while they find innovative ways to make money off of other people's money and other people's children.
Don't you miss the days when education reform was about teaching, learning, pedagogy, educational philosophy?

Couldn't you really enjoy a good old fashioned polemic overmath manipulatives or inventive spelling just about now?

 We are so far into the world beyond the looking glass we may never get back to kids and helping them learn about the world.

 Data, data measurement.  data warehousing, data manipulation, technology, innovation, school of one- NOTHING BUT SNAKE OIL, FOLKS. Isn't this really another way to separate the fools from their wallets, just like always?

We been had, and we been had bad.
And then there's this from charter school parent and leader of the independent NY Charter Parent Association Mona Davids, who comments on this point made in the Times piece about James Merriman:
Ms. Ross was deeply disappointed in James D. Merriman, chief executive of the New York City Charter School Center, whom she had consulted as recently as a month ago about the fate of her school. “She had no idea at the time that this was all about getting her building to Robertson’s daughter-in-law,” Mr. Little said. “She feels betrayed by Merriman because she had regarded him as a confidant and a supporter of the school.”
A spokeswoman for Mr. Merriman, Kerri Lyon, said, “The conspiracy theory suggested in the letter is a sad and desperate attempt to divert attention from the fact that there are legitimate questions about whether this school should remain open.
Mona says:
James Merriman tried his best to hijack NYCPA and when he couldn't get it, tried his best to undermine our organization, even creating a fake grassroots organization run by the charter center. He opposes PA/PTA's in charters. He says it erodes the autonomy of charters. There's no need for the charter center to exist anymore other than to pay Merriman's salary. There are many consulting companies and the NY Charter Schools Association which provide support and services to applicants and school leaders.
Oh, what fun this is turning out to be. Remember when Mona was part of the crew favoring PAVE just 15 months ago and has now become a staunch ally and resister and one of Julie's and Lisa's best pals? Wait till the Harlem charter schools not part of the favored Democracy Prep, Harlem Success or KIPP start to get squeezed out of the picture. We may have to push our new allies off the resistance boat with a stick.

Build the Movement

Some people have laughed at the idea of yet another rally to stop closing schools and charter takeovers amongst other things. What they aren't getting is that this is about organizing - getting people out to become active in some way - to build the forces of resistance - to get a group of people to channel their energies towards building a movement. Will this rally stop school closings? Most likely not. But the idea is to build a movement to a point where the forces are big enough and loud enough to become a difference maker. And yes, to make the activists involved feel good about doing something with other people from multiple schools on the target list, something the UFT refuses to lend its support too (the whys go far and deep and are best left to another time) while being perked up by the sense that they have the support and concerns of a wide variety of people - not only teachers, but parents and community leaders from around the city. What a boost that can be for not only schools under attack but for people who are not under attack but still understand that they can be one day or at least have a basic understanding of the ed deformers- that they are not fooled by phony appeals that closing schools is about education and not politically, ideologically, economically and real estate motivated.


*****FORWARD WIDELY******
Join a rally to....
Stop the school closings!
Stop charter takeovers
Defend public education
Say no to privatization


Mayor Bloomberg's Department of Education plans to close 26 more schools this year.  Despite the DOE's claim that these school closings are aimed at reforming schools, they have instead opened the door to privately-run charter schools and have limited school options for those affected.  According to the accounts by parents, students and teachers, DOE policies have had the effect of sabotaging the schools that are slated to be closed, not "fixing" them.

Bloomberg has played a shell game with our most vulnerable children, shuffling them around from closing school to closing school.  This process has disproportionately affected students of color, only serving to further perpetuate a separate and unequal school system in New York City.

In addition to closing schools, the DOE plans to grant more public school space to charter schools through co-locations, undermining public school resources and pitting school communities against each other. 

We demand quality resources and support for our public schools, not closings and privatization!

Join parents, students, teachers and community members at a rally to stop school closings.
January 27 4:30 - 6:30 p.m.
City Hall Plaza near the Brooklyn Bridge
Trains:  4, 5, 6, 2, 3, R, A and C

(Lists in formation)
Sponsored by: the Ad Hoc Committee to Stop School Closings and Charter Takeovers, Grassroots Education Movement NYC (GEM), New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE),Coalition for Public Education (CPE), Green Party NYC,
Dee Knight

Endorsing Organizations:
Green Party of New York, Teachers for a Just Contract (TJC), Class Size Matters, Concerned Advocates for Public Education (CAPE), Independent Community of Educators (ICE), Center For Immigrant Families (CIF),
The Puerto Rico Solidarity Network - PRSN NY, People Power Movement, Renaissance School of the Arts-M377(UFT Chapter), City Wide Coalition for Educational Excellence Now, South Bronx Community Council, Black Women Against Urban Violence, Teachers Unite (TU), NYwith UPR (NY with University of Puerto Rico), Dee Knight, The Independent Workers Movement/Movimiento Independiente de Trabajadores, District Leader Chris Owens (52nd Assembly District, Brooklyn)

Help plan the protest!  Join the meeting on Tuesday, January 18 at 5 p.m. in room 5414 of the CUNY Graduate Center, located at 34th Street and 5th Avenue.

Contact
gemnyc@gmail.com for more information.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

UFT's Leo Casey Fights School Closings

If you like to sing and dance, and would be interested in some flash mob actions around the closing schools, let me know




Thanks to David Bellel for photoshopping.

Afterburn
The UFT paid Randi Weingarten nearly $200,000 for unused sick days after she left. (WSJ)
I have no problem with Randi getting paid for sick days she didn't take. I had 140 days divided by 2 over 35 years. Interesting question: did Randi get half her days like teachers do?

Chutzpah Courtney Keeps Complaining in the Midst of RGC Chaos


Dictionaries have been updating their graphic for "chutzpah" with Courtney Sale Ross. Let's see now. Six principals, all of whom needed byouts, 75% teacher turnover, parents pulling kids out in droves, the use of one public building after another (including the use of Tweed handed over by Ross' pal Joel Klein), public tax money supporting a wasted institution, etc, etc, etc.

For a howl of a read, check out the New Yorker. Courtney even blames the UFT.

Here is Lisa Donlan's take:

Blue print for fighting school closings:
1. be sure to have a gazzilion dollars to throw at lawyers

2. Use your power, money and connections to generate lots of media stories (even if they make you sound loopy or paranoid!)

3. Blame everyone and everything for your poor management- except your own Board/leadership!

BUT, since our schools have no money or power or connections at the top-

1. Sue, sue, sue and sue- mayoral control is governance by lawsuit (thanks to Sens Squadron/Padavan and the rest of the legislature that passed this most recent flawed version).

2. Use the media to explain how inept DoE is, how they are unable to support schools, and how closing a school makes little sense if the charters that were designed to live/die by accountability get second chances, via legal loopholes and reprieves.

It means no one believes that closing a school is a solution- not even the folks who have made fame and fortune peddling this so-called "accountability."

3. Rather than blame the DoE, the UFT, the hedge funders with connections and everyone under the sun, look closely at the school's successes and challenges. There is surely a narrative beneath the data that needs telling/clarification.

If CSR would look at the results her school has produced in terms of the schools demographics, she would see that RGA has indeed done a lousy job running a school as compared with schools with many greater challenges.

The teacher/students/principal turnover tell a tale of a culture of fear and blame; a lack of support; an arrogance and a lack of caring.

The fancy furniture and works of art are not a replacement for a solid pedagogy, collegial collaboration, support services for all kinds of minds, a safe and predictable environment and consistent vision.

Lisa

------------
Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on right for news bits.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

It's Going to Snow: What Will Black Do?

Thanks to Jeff Kaufman for sending this blast from the past

Check this out, one year ago.

February 9, 2010, 11:55 am

Schools Closed Tomorrow
By
LIZ ROBBINSUpdated, 2:47 p.m. | New York City public schools will be closed on Wednesday, the Department of Education announced on Tuesday in a pre-emptive decision one day before a significant winter storm is due to hit the region.

Some courts and city offices will also be closed, as will Catholic schools.

Nearly a foot of snow is expected Wednesday in the metropolitan area, with most of the heavy accumulation anticipated in the afternoon. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg urged everyone who works in the city to take mass transit, even if the morning commute seems doable, echoing comments by schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

"While travel conditions to school in the morning may not be difficult, the weather is expected to worsen as the day progresses, complicating dismissal," Mr. Klein stated. "We are making this decision today to give parents as much time as possible to make alternative plans for tomorrow."

This was only the third time since 2004 that schools were closed, the previous citywide closure coming on March 2, 2009.

Most private schools in the city were likely to close Wednesday as well. Trinity on the Upper West Side called off classes, as did Collegiate, according to e-mail messages sent to parents. There was no word yet from the head of school at Horace Mann in Riverdale. Elsewhere in Manhattan, the Calhoun School announced on its Web site before noon that it was closing, but by 12:30 p.m., Friends Seminary hadn't yet decided. St. Ann's School in Brooklyn Heights keeps a standard note on its Web site: when New York City public schools are closed, it is too.


Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry