Mayor Bloomberg and Merit Pay

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, after denying educators the 8-plus percent all other city employees got for the 2008-2010 bargaining period, is now touting a $20,000 raise for those teachers who can manage to be rated "highly effective" two years in a row. There are caveats, of course, including the fact that the evaluation system on which this is based does not yet exist, the tests that would help determine the evaluation do not yet exist, and the agreement with the union on which this would be based does not yet exist.

But none of those things matter to the papers, who plaster headlines about Bloomberg's big raise for teachers all over the place. You see how that works? You give away nothing and the whole world praises you for your generosity. It beats the hell out of actually doing anything.

There are, of course, other issues, like the fact that the last merit pay scheme failed utterly and was abandoned as a result. Now, as a teacher, if I try a new lesson and it bombs, it's not my first instinct to expand it into an entire unit. Of course, I'm not an indispensable genius like Mike Bloomberg, and I wouldn't thwart the twice-voiced will of the people in order to buy myself a third term either. Then there are those darn principals who find the entire evaluation process insane and unworkable, but that doesn't get in the way of Mayor Mike's plan.

Mayor Mike says it's absurd that regular teachers get paid as much as excellent teachers. Now certainly, there are those who say that neither Mayor Mike nor any of his Tweedie birds would recognize good teachers if they were beating them over their heads (which is not to say NYC Educator endorses this particular practice).  It's certainly true the biggest merit pay program, despite the nonsense in the NY Times, hasn't resulted in any gains in the only thing "reformers" care about--test scores. So now, with nothing in place to prepare for this system.

Mayor Mike and his minions insist that excellence is identifiable and tangible, and must be met with financial rewards. They say excellence or lack thereof is something that must be reflected in salary (though only in teacher salary, as it applies to no other municipal workers). An odd concept, considering it thus far applies to a system that largely exists only in the minds of raving anti-unionist NYC op-ed writers.

Still, it goes a long way toward explaining why Mayor Bloomberg gets paid one dollar a year.

What Do You Suppose Would Happen...

...if you were in a well-equipped classroom, with a capacity to make video, and had your students direct a propaganda film for your favorite cause, whatever that might be?

Yet a publicly-funded charter had a bunch of kids make a publicity film for Governor Andrew Cuomo, and aside from this piece in the Times, there is no consequence whatsoever.

A New and Radical Concept...

The Klingon Cloaking Device

Hi folks. It's me,  Bill Gates. I'm the guy who brought you Windows, the very best operating system you can get on a $400 computer, and I'm here to tell you that I've turned my expertise to education. Sure, some people say I know nothing about education, but they're a bunch of phony bastards, and I hate phony bastards.

So anyhoo, as you know, we've spent millions of dollars observing teachers and videotaping them in order to identify the best teachers so we can fire the other 99% of phonies. But we've had some problems doing that. That kills me.

It turns out that most of the teachers we saw were actually doing a good job. Since they're a bunch of phonies, there's only one explanation I can come up with. Clearly the teachers act better when being observed, and sit around reading comic books when our cameras aren't up. I was watching a TV show the other day when it came to me. That's why I've given my ace Microsoft team the task of coming up with a Klingon cloaking device with which to observe teachers. This caused a great deal of consternation amongst my crack team, many of whom suggested what we needed was an invisibility cloak, like Harry Potter has. Who the hell is Harry Potter? I'm Bill Gates, dammit, and I know what we need. We need a Klingon cloaking device.

Once I told those bastards, they got the message all right. So now, we will be able to creep in unseen, find out what really goes on in those damn classrooms, and fire the hell out of those unionized lowlife phonies. In fact, I get a chuckle when I think about all the things we can do. Since no one will see them, administrators could write up any damn thing, and use it to fire teachers, like those bastards at Pencey Prep.

In fact, once we fire them all, we can push charter schools in and finally have people turn a profit from this industry. Sure all the manufacturing jobs are gone, but why shouldn't someone make a damn buck from education? Or, preferably, a million bucks? With just a little seed money, we've been able to pretty much get the whole country racing to follow our agenda. The next step is to make the education system look like New Orleans, with 75% charters and rising. Who needs public schools? They're full of phonies anyway. I hate phonies.

We haven't figured out how to flood the whole country, but dammit, we're making good progress. Even if we can't control nature, controlling big-time politicians is child's play.

When All Else Fails, Write Your Essay in Your Native Language?

Like most other high school English teachers across the city, I spent yesterday scoring the English Regents exam. Specifically, I ended up grading many of the exams of our IEP and ELL students, who receive testing accommodations like extra time, having the test read aloud to them, and having a scribe record their answers for them.

Some of the results were pretty good. I had seen some of the students at Saturday school. For some of them, it was the third or fourth time they were taking the exam, and they were determined to get it over and done with.

I'm always amazed, incidentally, by how boring the reading passages on the Regents exam are. I suppose the Board of Regents has to avoid offending thousands of people on these exams, but still, there is so much great and compelling writing in the world that kids might actually find themselves engaged with reading. Imagine a Regents exam that had, for example, an excerpt from Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried paired with one of the Great War poets like Owen or Sassoon. Or one of Jane Austen's most sarcastic commentaries on female behavior paired with a feminist poet like Audre Lorde or Adrienne Rich. Just in case I'm still not supposed to talk about what was on this year's exam, I'll refrain from being more specific, but let's just say that I found the reading passages uniformly dull and unengaging (at least through the eyes of, say, a sixteen-year-old young man from Brooklyn), with the possible exception of the nonfiction piece.

BUT ANYWAY. The point I really wanted to make is that, while grading these exams, I came to a critical lens essay written entirely in a student's native language. I stopped dead in my tracks and consulted with the IEP teacher about whether or not this student had an accommodation. No, I learned, the English Regents must be written entirely in English. Other exams have accommodations for translation, but not the English Regents.

Which makes sense, on one hand, I suppose. But on the other, this student was clearly not ready for the challenge of writing an entire essay in English. It was someone's decision in Albany, someone who has never met this child or knows anything about what it's like to be forced to sit for 4.5 hours (with extended time) and take an essay in a language one understands well enough to slog through a fairly insulated and well-supported school day, but not enough to write a whole essay with absolutely no assistance.

I believe in high standards. I really do. But I don't believe in crazy ones.

Doesn't Ring Nobels

Yesterday I read a piece about Alfred Nobel 3 times to a group of ESL students. It was a pretty interesting read, for me. Of course, I've been speaking English all my life. Did the kids I read it to understand? Tough to say. I'm a pretty enthusiastic reader, yet I observed one kid incessantly tapping his foot to the point I considered asking him to stop (I didn't), and another on the verge of nodding out, then waking, then fading out again.

I always wonder what it would be like if I were sitting in China and someone were reading some clever and informative piece to me. Would I tap my foot? Would I fall asleep? Or would I politely feign understanding and hope for the best? After all, I know a few words in Chinese. Of course, I couldn't write Chinese to save my life. A character for every word? That's a lot of characters, far more than the 30 or so to whom I was reading.

I certainly hope they pass. If they don't, they'll be taking it again in June, and maybe again in August. There used to be these alternate tests they could take if they screwed up, but now we're getting tough and squeezing newcomers by the neck until English pops out. Not the most enlightened approach, but what can you expect in a state where Andrew Cuomo passes for a Democrat?

It's not a whole lot of fun teaching kids who desperately need instruction in English how to pass a test that won't aid them to learn it. But hey, no excuses. So what if you don't know English? We need to know how well you fill in these dots. In the old days, they gave people who didn't speak English IQ tests, in English, and determined by their scores they were mentally deficient.

These days, we give non-English speakers tests in English, and pretty much demonstrate the mental deficiency of those who design and mandate the tests.

The School Report Card Twilight Zone

There is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between superstition and politics, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of Mayor Bloomberg's imagination. It is an area which we call the NYCDOE Twilight Zone...

***

I'm doing my semester grades right now, and unfortunately, I have to fail some of my best students.* I know, it seems really unfair. Some of them have 80s and 90s in my class, and they worked really hard to improve their grades that were in the 60s and 70s. But that's the way it goes, you know?

They're pretty upset, as you can imagine. They don't get it. "But Miss Eyre," they're saying, "I did everything you told me to do. In fact, the last time you talked to me, you said I was doing so much better and that I was getting an A in your class. So why am I failing now?"

"You don't know how this is going to mess me up!" some of them are protesting. "I'm going to be off track for graduation! I thought I was doing okay! I mean, come on, look at my average! You told me this was going to be more than enough to pass!"

But that's the way it is. Why should they work with one set of predictable, consistent, fair standards? Better that they learn that the goalposts are constantly shifting in life, and that people in responsibility don't have to keep their promises. After all, that's real life, right?

*obvious hyperbole, I hope

***

Sounds crazy, right? Except that's exactly what's happening at schools across the city that earned As and Bs on their report cards but are nevertheless facing closure. If these report cards are supposed to be our gauges of school quality, how can anyone trust them when schools that allegedly make great progress and are rated so well are threatened with closure?

Merit Pay for Reporters?

In an article that's largely a clarification of the nonsense that passes for news around here, a NY Times reporter still drops the ball in a large way. There is acknowledgement that the brouhaha over the evaluation system is not, in fact, over the system itself. The system, of course, is flawed in that it revolves around value-added, which has no basis of success either in research or practice. Personally, I'd hope a NY Times reporter would do enough research to know that, but here I'm asking for the moon.

A more fundamental error is the reporter's apparent ignorance that, since 2008, everyone but educators received an 8% plus increase over two years. Why does no reporter in NYC seem to know that? This leads to the outrageous contention, made by this reporter, that Bloomberg has offered substantial raises to teachers.

In fact, he's done no such thing. He's tossed 20 thousand dollars into the air and asked teachers to jump for it. The likelihood of getting it, for real live teachers, is remote at best. Principals tear out their hair every year when the annual budget cuts come out. How the hell are they supposed to meet Bloomberg's ever-shifting capricious demands when they haven't even got the means to run their schools? How is everyone supposed to perform the tunes demanded by our corporate overlords when are schools are run-down, crumbling, overcrowded, and class sizes are capacity or higher?

All due respect, it really behooves education reporters to be well-informed, particularly if they have the audacity to say, or even imply unknowingly, that teachers ought to be judged on so-called merit.

Today's Cartoon

How Would Newt Have Replied?

Is it Real, or Is it Corporate Media Crap?

Take heart, my brother and sister teachers, and don't believe all the nonsense they plaster all over the papers. Were you to do that, you'd need to believe:

Hedge fund managers care about kids. Teachers don't.

It's kind of amazing to watch the people who put the economy in the toilet, where it still is, lecture us on yet another topic about which they know nothing. I mean, you'd think that once these people failed so miserably in their own field, they wouldn't presume to jump into another. Still, there is great allure in breaking what is likely the last bastion of vibrant unionism, to wit, us, and creating a generation of employees the caliber of McDonald's and Walmart, on both of which Whitney Tilson is bullish. The money we don't get could then fill their considerable pockets. Nonetheless, I fail to see how an ocean of crappy jobs with low pay, no security and no benefits helps those children they shed all those crocodile tears over.

There is a crisis in education that must be fixed this very minute.

There's mixed news here. With a large number of Americans living in poverty, a national disgrace, it's not surprising that a lot of kids don't do well in school. When you struggle to put food on the table, you don't always have time to make sure your kid does homework, let alone stress and reinforce its importance. And make no mistake, when both parents work 200 hours a week, the next best role model is not, in fact, the hedge fund manager who wouldn't set foot in your neighborhood on a bet. It's the teacher. It's you and it's me who care about these kids. For that offense, we are vilified daily by every tinhorn corporate whore of a politician, and by every newspaper in NYC.

The UFT is holding up the evaluation model because it doesn't want one.

This is ridiculous. In fact, I don't like the new evaluation model because it contains value-added, which is total crap. It can label excellent teachers as sub-par and has wild margins of error. Plus no one even knows what the hell the tests will even look like. Despite that, it was Mulgrew who went and made the deal with Albany. And DOE walked out not because of the evaluation, but because they would not bend on an appeals process that finds over 99.5% of U ratings worth sustaining. Principals make mistakes, even if Michael Bloomberg refuses to believe it.

Principals can't observe teachers unless they make an appointment.

Nonsense. My principal walks in on me whenever he likes. And over 27 years, I've had many supervisors and principals walk in unannounced and do formal observations. Where Bill Gates and the papers get this stuff is a mystery to me. There's nothing in the contract that precludes supervisors from walking in on teachers formally, informally, or whatever. Whether or not they choose to do so, of course, is another matter, and certainly not the fault of teachers.  You can and should ask for pre and post-observations, but that's pretty much it. A supervisor will work with you on improving your lesson beforehand, assuming the supervisor is good, or capable of constructing a decent lesson or controlling a class. I would assume none of the above, but I always hope for the best.

What other lies have you seen in the media? Feel free to list and/ or refute them in the comments.

Getting Even?

There are many good reasons for teachers not to bully children. First and most obviously, it's wrong, followed closely by the fact that it is illegal and you could lose your job if you engage in it. We as educators are meant to build the capacities of children, be honest with them but also fair and kind, and if we humiliate, belittle, and hurt children, those very basic goals are not going to get accomplished. We can all agree on that, right?

Because I'm wondering what teachers along the way damaged some of our elected leaders so badly that they seem bent on spending their adult lives getting even. The latest example is Gov. Christie, across the water in New Jersey, calling (again) for dismantling tenure and for voucher programs. This follows hot on the heels of Gov. Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg deciding that schools can't be trusted to come up with evaluation frameworks that are fair and comprehensive and that such a system needs to be in the hands of Tweed/Albany/Trenton/etc. bureaucrats. Apparently supervisors in every other walk of public life are perfectly capable of evaluating even unionized--yes, unionized!--employees, but principals and schools can't swing it.

I emphasize that because I feel that, although, yes, we're still getting S and U at the end of the year, my supervisors give me frequent, specific feedback that is helpful and positively affects student achievement--not because someone who's never spent five minutes as an educator handed them a checklist and told them to, but because they care about our students and about my development as a professional. I don't know if my supervisors are just administrative Super-people or what, but yes, it's possible. I still feel that my rights are respected and considered while giving me the chance to improve.

But anyway, colleagues, just make sure you're nice. Don't let your babies grow up to be governors.

I Remember

Sometimes I get nostalgic for my former students. A few years ago, I had this girl in my class who was awfully smart. In fact, ESL student that she was, she came up to me and said, "I smart than you." I made her say "I'm," showing her how she needed to close her mouth. Then I showed her the comparative "smarter," and finally she was able to repeat, "I'm smarter than you."

I told her I didn't need to be smarter than her. I only needed to know more English than her. She loved to argue with me. She would raise her voice and scream at me, I can't even remember about what, and I was game to scream back at her, "Now you're in BIG TROUBLE!" She knew she wasn't, and clearly couldn't care less. My largely shy students were amazed anyone would talk to a teacher like that, but loved seeing it done.

She had an odd habit. Whenever I turned my back, or was busy doing something with another student, she would sneak up to the board and draw rabbits, or hamburgers, or SpongeBob, or just about anything. She really had a good eye. The kids really seemed to admire her.

I'm certain of this because I often walk around to watch what kids are doing, and several of my kids felt it very important to copy what was on the board. Quite a few of my students would have sentences I'd written on the board punctuated by the odd hamburger. Perhaps they were hungry, though that may not explain why they copied the cute little rabbits. (I suppose some people eat rabbits, but not the cute ones.)

Have you got an unforgettable student? Tell us about him/ her/ them in the comments.

You Can Fool Some of the People...

On the heels of NYC Educator's excellent post yesterday about the linking of MLK's legacy with education "reform" comes, (in)appropriately enough, Mayor Bloomberg again co-opting MLK celebrations to discuss his "reform" agenda. Only this time, even fewer of the people of this city are swallowing his line. King believed strongly, most certainly, in equality of educational opportunities for all regardless of race, economic status, or other factors. But he also would not have stood for the denigration of public workers or for union-busting.

King's legacy is often linked with that of Abraham Lincoln. Both were imperfect men who nevertheless summoned, again and again, great courage during seemingly impossible battles. Both, of course, are connected to the ongoing struggle for equality in this country. And while reading of yesterday's protests--protesting not only educational inequality, but also "stop and frisk," gun violence, and other pressing and terrible concerns--I couldn't help but think of the quote often attributed to Lincoln: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

New York City voters, parents, students, teachers--you know, the ones who don't have millions at their disposal and aren't close personal friends of the mayor--can't be fooled anymore. More and more people are realizing that what Mayor Bloomberg is selling isn't going to magically fix all of our problems--and we're not willing to trade away yet more of our rights, and venture blindly into yet another snake-oil solution, this time a new evaluation system, in hopes that we can look like the good guys and then take the blame when it doesn't work.

Let's revisit this one on Presidents' Day in a few weeks and see if more people have taken Lincoln's words to heart.