Hey folks: Get ready...to rock the boat! You know you want to!
#auditions #Theatre #musicals #acting
Sunday, March 29 at 2:00pm
Written and edited by Norm Scott: EDUCATE! ORGANIZE!! MOBILIZE!!! Three pillars of The Resistance – providing information on current ed issues, organizing activities around fighting for public education in NYC and beyond and exposing the motives behind the education deformers. We link up with bands of resisters. Nothing will change unless WE ALL GET INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE!
32,000 teachers have left city schools to take their talents elsewhere or have exited the profession altogether since 2002. Among mid-career teachers with six to 15 years of experience, the number of resignations per year leapt from 500 to 900 between 2008 and 2013...While the UFT ignores, the Indypendent takes on the issue of principals from hell.
March 11, 2015
When discussing how to improve public education, Governor Andrew Cuomo likes to complain about how difficult it is to fire “bad teachers” and the need to reduce job security for classroom educators. He is not alone in this. The Partnership for Educational Justice, a well-funded nonprofit fronted by former CNN host Campbell Brown, is pursuing a lawsuit in a Staten Island court that seeks to scrap teacher tenure protections. Both New York City tabloids, meanwhile, never miss a chance to promote a lurid teacher sex scandal and then denounce the teachers union for protecting the right of the accused to a fair hearing.
But what if the real teaching crisis in New York is not the inability to get rid of bad teachers, but the failure to keep experienced and highly capable teachers and allow them to do their jobs?...
Baptiste told The Indypendent she had been too busy meeting during after-school hours with the families of troubled children in her class — including some who did not have stable housing — to keep on schedule with entering data, which she described as “garbage.” Still, she recognizes her actions put her career in peril.
“If you get enough of these letters in your file, you can be brought up on charges of incompetence and you can lose your livelihood,” said Baptiste. She has switched to teaching second grade, where students are tested less frequently.
Principals From Hell
“My assistant principal was absolutely disgusting. I walked in on him cornering a special education teacher in the library,” Thurman told The Indypendent. “He would even eye students who came into his office. I started encouraging teachers, who started coming to me, that I could be a witness for them, but as a young teacher there’s so many fears, not just sexual harassment.”
At 6PM Friday night - HS kids still at it |
The Pits: Where the 80 teams hang out |
Like my flannel shirt? That's where to find me |
Check out the high school field |
My photo of Lauren at the Dist 15 rally at Cuomo's office captures what she is all about - |
PS 20K and Arts and Letters |
Hi, I thought you might like to see photos, speaker list, and the press release from this morning's action involving hundreds of families stretching around our schools today by two co-located schools Arts & Letters and PS 20 in Ft. Greene today among the 60+ schools that are participating in this action today: #protectourschools.Please see below for link to professional photos you have permission to use to document today's Hands Around Our Schools event available with attribution to photographer Julie Hassett Sutton ( Julie at juliehassettsutton.com ):Speakers from PS 20 & Arts and Letters co-located public schools human chain & rally today:PS 20 PTA President Vascilla CaldeiraArts & Letters PTA co-President Ayanna BehinArts & Letters Teacher John AllgoodLetitia James, Public Advocate NYCJoseph Yanis, legislative director Assembly Member Walter T MosleyPtahra Jeppe, chief of staff Assembly Member Jo Anne SimonJim Vogel, representative Senator MontgomeryPress Statement:Contacts: Marnie Brady 202-492-4719 cell // Vascilla Caldeira: 347-706-5621 cellHundreds of Parents and Teachers from Co-located Schools Unite in Citywide Action to Stop Cuomo’s Education Proposals:Hands-Around Our Schools to Protect Public Education#protectourschoolsOn the morning of Thursday, March 12th the communities of two co-located public schools, P.S. 20 and Arts & Letters (A&L) in Ft. Greene, Brooklyn, along with Public Advocate of the City of New York Letitia James and representatives from offices of Assembly Member Walter T. Mosley, Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon and New York State SEnator Montgomery, created a human chain hundreds of people and families long around their school building with a united message to stop Gov. Cuomo’s education plans. Parents said the governor’s proposals will harm their children’s education, and cause unilateral damage to the public schools families have worked so hard to support.Parents and teachers oppose what they call the governor’s “hostage tactics,” holding back $2.2 billion in court-mandated funds owed to NYS public schools while imposing detrimental policy changes into the April 1 budget. These changes include basing 50% of teacher evaluations on state test results, and the diversion of public education resources into private hands. Parents are taking action with social media, and emergency meetings with state representatives.One A&L parent, Kimberly Bliss, who is took off work on March 11th to join other public school parents in Albany, explains: “Our governor is bullying our teachers and our schools with high stakes tests that have been proven to be ineffective. So we are giving a lesson to our children in how to stop a bully: we are joining hands to protect our beloved schools from Cuomo's dangerous "reforms". We stand united with our teachers to protect quality education based on inquiry, innovation, problem-solving, collaboration and community. We demand our state assembly members fully commit to voting no on Cuomo’s proposals.”P.S. 20 PTA President Vascilla Caldeira states: “We stand hand in hand as schools because we are determined to be the change we want to see. Parents & teachers demand fiscal equity for the common core to be implemented successfully. We're standing for the kinds of authentic evaluations that will uplift the teachers who commit their skills and time to make our children life-ready. Testing makes our kids into clones instead of the creative people they are meant to be."Opal Morrison, a P.S. 20 teacher, opposes Cuomo’s evaluation plans to replace much of the observations carried out by principals with outside evaluators: “Outside consultants coming in who have no idea who our students are is not helpful or fair. As a special education teacher, I spend my before school, lunch, & after school time supporting my students. Test scores & outside evaluators can’t capture my students’ struggles and achievements. It’s just disrespectful, not only to us teachers but to our children.”Arts & Letters teacher John Allgood is also concerned about the increasing focus on state tests: “High stakes standardized tests necessarily narrow the curriculum so that children learn less. These tests do not give teachers any substantive information about what students know and need to learn.”Parents throughout NYS are considering refusing state standardized tests scheduled for April. Last year, 3rd grade parents at Arts & Letters prevented the use of the state test results for teacher evaluation purposes through a mass opt-out. For more information about additional citywide actions, contact Maria Bautista at the Alliance for Quality Education:212-328-9217 ##
MORE's Lauren Cohen, Co-chapter leader, PS 321K |
PS 24 was in the house |
Massive contingent from PS 261K, MORE's Melissa Torres, CL |
From MORE's John Antush:Yesterday District 15 teachers had a large turnout at Cuomo's Manhattan office - amazing from one district in Brooklyn.
March and Rally with us against Cuomo.
Speak out in Wash Square Park.
Even one person from a school is significant.
We have a permit for the park until 5pm and a Sound permit.
We can use this rally to build solidarity in our schools.
You mean THE UNBIASED Manhattan Institute? With this DN headline?CHARTER SCHOOL MYTH
Low-performing students are just as likely to leave a charter school as a traditional district school, according to Marcus Winters, the author of a new Manhattan Institute report exploring charter school attrition rates.
My hope is that one day soon, this will be the mantra of teachers as well as students:
http://susanohanian.org/cartoon_fetch.php?id=1000
Refuse
http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_cartoons.php?id=1077
Another cartoon:
http://susanohanian.org/cartoon_fetch.php?id=999
I'm so ticked that I didn't get a copy of the book for which I wrote a chapter that I'm posting the chapter here. In it I take on academics, the press in general and the NY Times in particular. As you will see if you read it, people who write chapters to accommodate the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation receive $30,000 and up. Yes, for one chapter.
http://susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=1207
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Why some students are refusing to take the Common Core test
John Merrow with Ohanian comment
PBS NewsHour
2015-03-11
http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=790
This NewsHour segment moderated by John Merrow featuring New Jersey OptOuts is worth watching. I provide transcript here.
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5 Crappy things about the PARCC
Julie Vassilatos
ChicagoNow
2015-03-06
http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=787
Read this and ask yourself why any parent--or teacher--would inflict Common Core testing on children they care about.
And for whose well-being they accept responsibility.
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Digital Learning Companies Falling Short of Student Privacy Pledge
Natasha Singer with Ohanian comment
New York Times
2015-03-06
http://susanohanian.org/data.php?id=582
Cambium's data security called into question. If a child I cared about came home with an assignment to do anything associated with Cambium products, I'd worry a whole lot in addition to data security.
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When a Public Intellectual Speaks Out But No One Hears Her, Does She Exist?
Susan Ohanian
2015-03-08
http://susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=1207
This is a book chapter in which I take on the press and assorted academics.
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To the editor
Bruce Chadwick
New York Times
0000-00-00
http://susanohanian.org/show_letter.php?id=1751
The New York Times publishes some criticism of standardized testing.
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Hedge fund executives give 'til it hurts to politicians, especially Cuomo, to get more charter schools
Juan Gonzalez
New York Daily News
2015-03-11
http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1933
Here's documentation of Andrew Cuomo's big bucks ties to charter school lobbyists.
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Stop Spying on Wikipedia Users
Jimmy Wales and Lila Tretikov
New York Times
2015-03-10
http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1932
Wikipedia is filing a lawsuit against the National Security Agency to protect the rights of the 500 million people who use Wikipedia every month.
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Announce@susanohanian.org
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Old bucks 4 new schools No doubt you have many questions about the pro bono-ists’ civil-rights-based challenge to the state’s cap on the number of charter schools. Such as *from whence does the expression white shoe law firm come?* As always, I am happy to shed light. You see the phrase derives from *white bucks,* laced suede or buckskin shoes with a red sole, long popular in the sorts of Ivy League colleges that our pro bono-ists no doubt attended. What? You want to know how it is that civil rights can be used to argue for more charter schools, when, according to a growing body of case law, students in charter schools don’t actually have civil rights? Or how, in the course of four decades, *civil rights* could go from a fierce battle over desegregating schools and diversifying the teaching force to the fresh new right of students to attend more segregated schools and be taught by young, mostly white teachers? Or why our pro bono-ists seem so charmingly ill-informed, not just about the state’s charter schools, but about all of the schools that are publicly attended? All mere trifles, reader.
...droves of students from across the city testify about the appalling conditions of their schools. Like expired milk in the cafeteria, four students sharing a single text book, bathrooms that don’t work, computer labs that still run Windows 98, and 400 students sharing a single guidance councilor. The most powerful testimony came from students who talked about the *plague of failing* in the Boston schools, and described the deterioriation of their own schools after being relocated into *failing* spaces. *Why are schools in Newton so much nicer than our schools?* asked a parent who testified, quoting a question put to them by her own child.
Good question, Boston Public Schools student.
In fact, if I’m not mistaken, you have just asked what we might call a *civil rights* question.
Anyone know where these kids can find a lawyer—or three?
Black and Hispanic students are scoring much higher on the NAEP, the widely-praised, constantly-cited “gold standard” of domestic testing! But very few people have ever heard these important, encouraging facts.
In a nation scripted by corporate elites, it seems to be against the law to let the public hear this.
For whatever reason, our upper-end journalists seem committed to keeping these score gains under wraps. In a truly appalling display, our pampered, privileged, overpaid professors play along with this practice. We’ve discussed this topic many times at this site. To state the obvious, we liberals simply don’t seem to care about this important topic.Read full piece.
We don’t seem to like or admire our nation’s superlative black kids. We’re happy to keep running our black kids down—except when one of these kids gets shot, in which case we start stampeding around and inventing facts, our way of pretending to care.
Farina new program to wipe out teachers |
THE FARINA METHOD FOR PURGING THE D.O.E. OF BAD TEACHERS—Capital’s Eliza Shapiro: “Carmen Fariña has been talking a lot about bad teachers recently. The chancellor, who defined her first year on the job as a mission to restore ‘joy’ and ‘respect’ to the classroom, has, of late, been encouraging hundreds of city principals to identify and get rid of their weakest teachers. In an interview with Capital last week, Fariña said asking principals to weed out their weakest teachers has been her “first statement when I get into any school visit...I repeat it over and over again." Removing ineffective teachers has been one of the Department of Education’s most intractable problems, and decades of mayors and chancellors have advanced their own reforms on how to get it done with the looming presence of the United Federation of Teachers.There you have it. Inviting the significant core of psycho, racist, vindictive principals to go after any teacher who makes too much noise or don't line up like a lemming loyalist.
“In a series of interviews and principals’ conferences over the last few weeks, Fariña has been promoting her own tried and true method for getting rid of bad teachers: relentless monitoring of problem teachers, rounds of conversations convincing teachers that they are in the wrong profession. The desired result: settling either on inventive alternatives for teachers willing to be cajoled, or forcing out the ones who aren't. ‘There is an opportunity to leave gracefully or not so gracefully,’ Fariña said. According to Fariña, and to well-documented Upper East folklore, that method was effective at P.S. 6, the Manhattan school Fariña ran in the 1990s, which has long been considered one of the city’s best public schools. Now, she’s telling principals it can work for the city’s roughly 1,799 other public schools, too.” http://bit.ly/1E6YaAQ
Fariña has appointed a D.O.E. official whose primary role is instructing principals on how to properly write letters about certain teachers to keep in their files.Some principals spend more time talking to DOE legal than running their schools.
No co-loco at PS 157 - I'm heading over now |
The Proposed Re-siting and Co-location of Beginning with Children Charter School (84K703) Grades K-5 with P.S./I.S. 157 The Benjamin Franklin Health and Science Academy (14K157) in Building K157 Beginning in the 2015-2016 School Year
Attention NYC teachers. PS 157 needs your help.
We are wondering why this co-location is even being considered when the recommendations to the Blue Book have not been addressed by the DOE as yet.
PS 157 had a co-location many years ago which caused problems and we didn't have our JHS at that time. We have a large number of special needs children in the school from Pre-K to 8th grade. We also have a high English Language Learner population. Our small classes help us educate our students with the special attention they need to learn. With this co-location we will not be able to grow as a school community. Our JHS student population was limited because of the adult ed program. Now that they will be leaving, we have the opportunity to bring in more students who have requested our school. This won't happen with a co-location.
Please come to this hearing to show your support and to give your testimony. PS 157 is located at 850 Kent Avenue in Brooklyn.