The Ever-Shifting Standard

It's fascinating to read the opinion columns in the New York Post. Yesterday they were all bent out of shape about waiving the current literacy test for incoming teachers. Evidently this test results in fewer teachers of color than white teachers passing. How good is the test? I have no idea. Now I personally think literacy is key for teachers, even though it appears unimportant in a President of the United States.To me, for example, when Donald J. Trumpp, uses the word tapp, it makes me think he's full of crapp.

But let's talk teachers. I certainly hope that we can model the use of English for our students. Let's assume, for the moment, that this test is a fair measure of literacy. Now I can't tell you exactly why we should assume that, since NY State created the NYSESLAT exam to test language acquisition, and in fact it measures no such thing. Also, the state has a history of moving cut scores to get the results it wishes. Wanna fail everyone and make teachers look bad? Raise the cut scores. Wanna pass everyone and make Bloomberg look like a genius? Lower the cut scores.

The problem is not necessarily this test. It's not impossible that this test is a precise measure that's absolutely accurate. Of course I have no reason to assume any such thing, but that doesn't make it impossible. The problem, in fact, is that this standard applies only to public school teachers. It does not apply to charter school teachers, who may be appointed despite not having teacher certification. And yes, that applies right here in good old New York State.

So my question is why doesn't the NY Post go after those substandard charter school teachers? If it's outrageous that public school teachers fail to meet this standard, isn't it equally outrageous that charters can hire people who not only don't meet it, but may fail in other areas as well?

I know people who've been banned from public schools, either temporarily or permanently. Where did these people find work? In charters, of course. Now I'm not saying these people are bad teachers. They were targeted by the lunatics at DOE, sometimes for bad reasons and other times for none I could determine. Sometimes I read about these teachers and sometimes I know firsthand that their charges are trumped-up nonsense. But you know what I never read? I never read that, oh my gosh, this charter school hired this awful teacher that isn't good enough to work in a public school.

Let's talk student teachers. I've had many, and most were great. There was one glaring exception, an ESL teacher who made fundamental usage errors on my board, errors some of my students noticed. She offered lessons I knew she couldn't have written, since she seemed not to understand them, and when I looked I was able to find them lifted in their entirely from the internet. Oddly, her college professor seemed not to notice. My student teacher also had a charming habit of trash-talking me for criticizing things like her differentiation of "might" and "may" in cases where there was none. My colleagues, none of whom liked her all that much, reported this back to me daily.

When this teacher asked me for a recommendation, I declined. I told her, truthfully, that I never wrote recommendations for student teachers. (Actually that was simply because no one had asked me.) She went and complained to my supervisor about that. I told my supervisor it was because she was incompetent, and the supervisor was happy to leave it at that. Actually there was nothing she could have done, since I'm not required to recommend anyone, even people l like.

Where did this student teacher end up after failing to score a gig at my school or any other public school? You guessed it. Last I heard she was at a charter school, saving the world from awful public school teachers like me and you.

So where's the standard? Well, to me it looks like Public School Bad, Charter School Good. When there's profit to be made from our kids, it's positive. When Eva Moskowitz can bring home a bundle of cash, somewhere around 500K a year last I checked, all is good with the editorial staff of the New York Post. I don't know whether Murdoch is losing money on this enterprise, but the important thing is to get the word out.

Whatever it is, it's our fault. I've grown fairly accustomed to such messages over the year. We've been found guilty of the awful crime of educating New York City's children, no matter where they come from, what their handicaps, or what their home lives are. And as long as the charters continue to select the students they want, dump those they don't, and hold a blatantly lower standard for the teachers they run through like chewing gum, we'll always be guitly. 

Teacher as Savior

Yesterday I spoke of a forum I attended in the Bronx. An interesting conversation ensued between audience and panel about recruitment for TFA and Moskowitz Academies. Evidently the pitch is that children of color must be saved and only you, the students, can get it done. Oh, and also we can give you a job after you graduate up to your neck in debt.

There are a number of striking points you could make about this particular argument. One is that there are plenty of public schools right there in the Bronx, and if you wish to branch out there are four more boroughs nearby with kids who could use your assistance. Another is that working in an NYC public school still beats the hell out of doing test prep for Eva and watching your hapless kids pee their pants rather than pause one moment from studying. She treats those kids a lot worse than I treat my dog (and in fact I love my dog, treat him well, and take him out whenever he asks).

Then, as one of the panelists pointed out, it's not exactly within our means to change everything. You know, there's poverty, there are learning disabilities, there is environment, and there are newcomers who speak no English. And make no mistake, Eva talks a big ballgame, but she doesn't take the same kids we do. 100% of the students I teach are beginners. They are most definitely not ready for intensive bathroom-free test prep, and that's not to suggest that anyone else is. If Eva takes ELLs, they are certainly on a higher level. Special education runs the gamut as well. Just because someone has an IEP doesn't mean she's alternate assessment, like a group of kids at my school. Alternate assessment kids are not expected to graduate. We take them to worksites and train them for jobs, and their stats count against us at year's end. And, of course, self-purported savior Moskowitz has a reputation for dumping kids that don't help her test-score-based bottom line.

As for TFA, sure you can have them pack you off to anyplace in the country. Sure you can help poor students whether or not you've got training sufficient to work in a public school. Maybe you've seen movies like Freedom Writers, where the actress what's her name (who, in fairness, has been in some good stuff too) singlehandedly inspires kids and saves them from their otherwise miserable destinies. Then there was the movie with Michelle Pfeiffer, where I think she shot a gun off in class, or jumped out a window or something, and didn't get fired.

One really cool thing about these movie teachers is they invariably have only one class. That's convenient, because you can focus on the handful of kids being saved. Most teachers I know have 170 students, and are pretty busy with things like, oh, grading tests and lesson planning. In my school, located on this astral plane, we now have grading policies so ponderous that teachers can barely find time for anything else. And don't get me started on gym teachers who have different classes every other day and are expected to perform this nonsense for 500 kids. I don't know how they even learn student names.

Of course teachers are a positive influence. Of course teachers, next to parents, are often the very best role models for children. And of course sometimes teachers can do incredible things, and there are extraordinary teachers. I know real stories about real teachers who reach out and change lives. I even know one who did this for years, who was threatened with an ineffective rating from a supervisor who appreciated this not at all, and who died alone one weekend only months before his planned retirement. I don't suppose that would make a movie script, as the protagonists tend to be gorgeous young white women.

The really cool thing about the teacher as savior model is it takes almost everyone off the hook for just about everything. Problems with your kids? The teachers suck. Failing the class? The teachers suck. Not graduating on time? The teachers suck. Teacher calling your house? He should handle it himself, that's his job, and he sucks. Why can't he be more like Michelle Pfeiffer or what's-her-name from Freedom Writers?

Not only parents are off the hook, but so are politicians. Arne Duncan, or John King, or Barack Obama, or Michael Bloomberg, or Joel Klein, or Andrew Cuomo (all of whom send their kids to private schools), can get up and tell some story about how a great teacher can change a life. That takes them off the hook for crumbling infrastructure, lack of a living wage or affordable health care, and allowing both parents to work 200 hours a week each to make ends meet. The implication is that a good teacher can change absolutely everything, and politicians are suddenly responsible for nothing, It's a WIN-WIN!

Thus you devise ways to fire teachers, like value-added, you devise ways to vilify teachers, like attacking their unions, and you devise ways to blame them for every ill of society. You even try to make a few films that drop the whole savior routines and stereotype public school, making charters the hero. You gloss over the whole pants-peeing thing because it doesn't make for increased popcorn sales.

Here's the thing--we do the best we can, each and every day, under incredibly challenging circumstances. We choose to go out and work with America's children each and every day, no matter who they are or how they come to us. We're not asking to be portrayed as super-heroes, but we don't deserve super-villain status either.

I want to support kids and help them to be happy, but I can't do everything. Politicians need to do their part too, instead of simply taking money from rich people, making their comfortable lives even more so, and ignoring those of us who actually work for a living. And we need to hold their feet to the fire.

The best idea would be to make folks who run schools patronize them. If the schools you run aren't good enough for your children, they likely aren't good enough for mine either. If Bloomberg or Klein had to send their own kids to public school, they'd eye very different reforms than the ones they ended up enforcing. You wouldn't have kids sitting in trailers, eating lunch before 9 AM, herded like prisoners, running around outside because there is no gym, or going years without glasses because even an eye check is unaffordable.

With Donald Trump as President, with demagogues like Betsy DeVos and Eva Moskowitz pretending to care about all children but giving in to the backward moves of this administration, our jobs become even more difficult.

Maybe we have to be super-heroes after all. Maybe we can. But our super-hero status will have to bring us outside the classroom and into communities, where we will be truth-tellers. Truth-tellers are in very short supply here in 2017.

Campaign 2016--the Choice for Educators

The Washington Post interviewed both major candidates about education, and I'm not jumping up and down about either. Trump simply offered a statement about school choice, meaning charters, vouchers, and pretty much anything that doubles down against unionized public schools. Hillary is more nuanced, but not precisely encouraging. For one thing, it's disappointing she isn't still shunning spawn of Satan Rahm Emanuel. But let's look at the issues.

Testing:

A lot of us don't believe in high-stakes testing, particularly since they tend to shed light on nothing but which zip code students come from. Here's what Hillary says:

To me, the solution is better, fewer, and fairer tests.  The bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act was a step in the right direction. By providing funding to states and school districts to audit their testing systems and reduce unnecessary and duplicative tests, the legislation can help us find the right balance on testing.

It's not a bad answer, but it's not a strong one either. This is the same rhetoric we always get from testing apologists, and it really rules out nothing whatsoever. We're always hearing about how there's less testing, about how tests take less time, even when they're untimed. It really makes no difference what the truth of the matter is. That's not a strong statement, but rather a middle-of-the-road thing that makes it hard to disagree. But where's the beef?

Common Core:

When states came together on Common Core, I thought that was a laudable effort. But, like many Americans, I have concerns about how the Common Core has been implemented.

This is sorely disappointing. This is the same boilerplate excuse we get from virtually every CCSS supporter. It's like an executioner stating the process would work much better if only the guillotine were better oiled. Hillary sent Chelsea to the same elite school Obama sent his girls to. It utilizes none of the nonsense that CCSS inflicts on our children. Close reading is discredited nonsense, and if it isn't good enough for Hillary's kid, it's not good enough for yours either.

Charter schools:

Quality public charter schools can provide parents with real choices for their children. In fact, many of the country’s best public charter schools are opening doors to opportunity for disadvantaged students. That’s why I have long been a strong supporter of public charter schools and an unflinching advocate for traditional public schools.

She supports them, in case that is not clear. And she uses the ridiculous term "public" charter schools even though the only actual part of them that's public is the funding. You won't see Hillary making a fuss when Eva Moskowitz decides rules that dictate funding are too inconvenient for her. And the distinction between non-profit and for-profit charters, while it may mean something somewhere, doesn't prevent the likes of Moskowitz from paying herself half a million per annum.

Teacher evaluation:

The Every Students Succeeds Act provides a great framework for supporting educators. And specifically on the issue of evaluations, the law helps us move in the right direction by providing states the flexibility to design holistic accountability systems.  That moves us closer to ensuring every student has a supported and effective teacher in the classroom.

What does that even mean? The question specifically asked whether or not she was for VAM junk science evaluation of teachers. There is no yes, no no, and for my money, no answer. Perhaps she's saying she's glad there are alternatives. Still, I want to know whether or not the next President of the United States supports junk science.

Poverty:

...schools alone can’t overcome the crisis of children living in poverty.  This is something we all need to come together to address as a country.  Because the truest measure of any society is how care for our kids. 

I like this answer. It's her best, for my money. But if she believes that, why won't she stand up and say we have to stop evaluating teachers with junk science? Now I'm going to vote for Hillary, but with very little enthusiasm. This is because the alternative is Donald Trump, and I think he need be as widely repudiated as possible.

When she is President, we will need to speak as loudly and directly as we can. We will need to move Hillary Clinton away from these weasel positions and demand she support us. Make no mistake, anyone who supports children must also support their teachers. We are their role models, and I don't go to work every day to model being a victim. We must also demand that our union leadership speak up for those of us on the ground.

I don't have great expectations of President Hillary Clinton. But I think together we have the potential to cajole, push, move or force her toward sanity.

Tons of Coverage, Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for Charters--We're on Our Own

I cannot believe the crap that passes for news nowadays. Families for Excellent Schools says any damn thing it likes on behalf of Eva Moskowitz, who terrorizes young people into peeing their pants over tests. She's celebrated in the pages of the tabloids and, of course, in Chalkbeat NY, which considers her every move worthy of a feature story. They just had another expensive customized t-shirt heavy rally for more charters.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting in a school that's been over 200% capacity for decades and we have no place to put kids. My inbox is full of complaints from teachers in rooms with no windows that may or may not have air sources. I myself am in a room with a sunny southern exposure on the top floor that gets so hot I can barely concentrate. There's a non-functional air conditioner in front of the room. I complain and I'm told it will be fixed tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

It's a dual-edged sword for public schools here in Fun City. If your test scores and graduation rates aren't where the city wants them to be, you're under one program or other, and now they don't close your school anymore. You simply rehire the entire staff, and everyone has to apply to keep their jobs or become one sort of ATR or another. A lot of teachers don't bother to reapply, as they don't want to jump through all the various hoops demanded by the city and state, and who can blame them? Root causes like poverty, learning disabilities, and lack of English are no excuse for low test scores, and the core problems are vigorously ignored by all levels of government, right up to and including Secretary of Education Reformy John King, who happily dumps hundreds of millions of federal funds into charters.

And make no mistake--charters are not public schools. We don't run them, and we don't get to make decisions about them. We are, however, graciously allowed to pay for them. There is no way Eva takes the kids I teach, the ones who arrived here last week from countries all over the world. There is no way Eva takes the kids my school does, essentially everyone, up to and including alternate assessment students who are not expected to graduate and are a drag on the all-important stats. There is no miracle whatsoever in selecting students, dumping those who don't measure up, and achieving high test scores. If you or I allowed a student to pee her pants in class, we'd be up on corporal punishment charges via CR A-420. Of course Eva doesn't need any stinking rules.

My school is the most requested in the entire city. Any kid who lives in our district, or can successfully pretend to live in our district, gets in. As such, admin scrambles to meet contractual class size, but whenever you push out of one class, you push into another, and it's almost impossible. Our class sizes are already too high and we can barely keep up. Even if we do, 100 kids can walk through our doors on any given week and we'll be right back where we started.

It's a disgrace that the media celebrates the moneyed charter school astroturfers while studiously ignoring the effect on public schools. The more they draw from our best students, the more they can vilify us for not attaining the scores that they've achieved. The more they ignore what's actually happening on the ground, the more the public uncritically accepts their nonsense.

I don't know about you, but it's pretty clear that critical thinking is not being propagated no matter how much Common Core Crap we hurl at our hapless students. If so-called Families for Excellent Schools can regularly feed the media soundbites and stories, why the hell can't we?

127,000 NYC Students Are Homeless

That's one in eight. It's not at all surprising because minimum wage workers can't afford to live here. If we raise the wage to $15, they still won't be able to afford it.

And still, reformies of all stripes get all agitated about how what we need is to fire the teachers, to establish charters, to give school "choice." Jesus, what about the choice to have a home? Isn't that just a little more fundamental than whether or not $500K-per-annum Eva Moskowitz gets to open up another charter school, or whether or not the city has to pay for it?

Nonetheless, every week there's another story about some study Eva's BFFs, the so-called Families for Excellent Schools, have done that proves that either City Schools Suck, Bill de Blasio Sucks, or ideally both. Where are our values?

I don't personally believe that standardized test scores are an indicator of much beyond family income. I don't think it's a coincidence that NY State took over the schools in Roosevelt but left Great Neck alone. But even if I did believe such a thing, there is no way I would prioritize test scores over living conditions. Self-proclaimed education guru Bill Gates has declared the way to defeat world poverty is for poor people to raise chickens.  Well, that's not an option if you live in Queens or the Bronx. Neighbors can be picky about having chickens running around in apartment buildings.

The fact is all schools targeted for closings contain high percentages of impoverished children. They contain high percentages of students with special needs. As long as we keep funneling children with proactive parents into charters, as long as we allow them to maintain and follow up on "got to go" lists, and as long as we allow them to dump kids back into public schools without replacing them we won't have any real "choice."

Sorry, reformies. If you gave a crap about children you'd stop attacking those of use who've dedicated our lives to serving them. You'd stop dragging them and their parents to Albany to maintain the substandard jobs you offer those who can't get UFT jobs. You'd fight to get kids out of poverty rather than putting your millions behind smoke and mirrors. You'd fight to make sure children had a future with middle class jobs rather than attacking teaching, one of their very best options.

You cannot ignore the fundamentals and make progress. One out of eight of our kids is homeless. That's not even considering the working poor, struggling to get by. Do you seriously think that parents working multiple jobs have time for parenting? Do you seriously think that homeless and overworked parents have the time to examine, apply for, and do the extra work hours charters can demand?

It costs $500 for an Epipen this year.  That's a 400% hike from what it was in 2008. Do homeless kids even know they need one? Have they signed the paperwork to help get one, if such paperwork is even available? I don't know, but I am certain that homelessness is a thing, that poverty is a thing, and that as long as we keep our head in the sand and worry about how many Moskowitz Academies we can open, or how many meaningless tests kids can pass, we're way off the mark in our priorities.

Abstract Portrait of a Chancellor

There's an interesting piece in Newsweek today. It's written by Alexandar Nazaryan, and ostensibly about NYC Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña. Full disclosure--I have a little experience with Mr. Nazaryan. He edited an op-ed I placed in the Daily News when he worked there, and it was a bit contentious. I can be picky about my writing, as anyone with whom I've worked will attest. Nonetheless, we treated one another respectfully. There was no personal animosity when we finished working together, at least none on my part or that I'd heard about.

That's why I was pretty surprised when, on Twitter, for no reason I could determine, Nazaryan accused me of being a UFT mouthpiece:

@TeacherArthurG @KatieOsgood_ @leoniehaimson @DianeRavitch Last I remember, Arthur, you were shilling shamelessly for UFT. That still so?

— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) May 3, 2014

That's ironic, because I'm wholly confident UFT President Michael Mulgrew, among many others, would spring to my defense and tell the world I have been doing no such thing. As if that weren't enough, after my response to that absurd statement, Nazraryan saw fit to attack me personally:

@TeacherArthurG People like you are the reason teaching isn't respected more.

— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) May 3, 2014

Now that's not simply a personal attack. It also utilizes what you call a stereotype. You see, whatever I do, or have done, or whatever Nazraryan perceives me to have done, is then attributed to all teachers. We are, therefore, in his view, disrespected. This is the same sort of thinking bigots of all stripes use to insult people of a given religion, race, nationality, or ethnicity. So yes, I absolutely believe the writer is prejudiced against us, and we therefore need to question his assumptions very carefully.

De Blasio, after all, is a self-styled progressive who promised “transcendent” change, surrounding himself with youthful advisers minted in the Barack Obama mold. Fariña, meanwhile, was coaxed out of retirement.

Now it's entirely possible that Nazaryan simply forgot, while writing that particular sentence, that Fariña had worked for Bloomberg. And it's entirely possible that Nazaryan doesn't know that a whole lot of Bloomberg people are still sitting at the DOE.  But being that he's writing a piece about the chancellor, it kind of behooves him to know that, doesn't it? I mean, here I am, a lowly UFT shill, disrespected by all for reasons known only to Nazaryan, and even I know it. Here's how Fariña is seen, according to Nazaryan:

Some see her as a defender of teachers, others as the pawn of teachers unions. 

That's not much of a choice, is it? I see her as neither, and I'd argue that this is a black and white fallacy. Lots of teachers do not feel the love for Fariña, and don't see her jumping to our defense. She let Jamaica High School wither and die, she is not shy about removing and/ or firing teachers, and is much ballyhooed for having done so in her career as principal.

Nazaryan devotes a good deal of time to speaking about himself and his brief teaching career. Perhaps he feels that gives him some cred while writing about this. Who knows? What I do know is he has no idea how working teachers think or feel. Even in the piece, Nazaryan outs himself as a supporter of right to work with no respect whatsoever for our union:

I was once a member of a teachers union and have long lamented its moribund conception of the teaching profession. (I was not a fan of the mandatory membership fees extracted from my paycheck either.)

I actually wonder how on earth Newsweek can present this as a portrait of the chancellor, or why their editors, if indeed they have any, deem Nazaryan's feelings about labor unions germane to what is, supposedly, a piece about the chancellor. Nazaryan is also clueless about the recent teacher contract:

Fariña said sensible things—that she wanted to bring joy back to the classroom and earn the teachers’ trust (a generous new contract with the United Federation of Teachers has helped). 

In fact, the contract gives us the 8% over two years that FDNY and NYPD got, but we don't actually receive it until 2020, a full decade after they got it. It then goes on to give us 10% over seven years, the lowest pattern in my living memory, and for all I know, in the history of the City of New York.

Nazaryan is also less than opaque about his own feelings on charter schools.

Her “old-school” tendencies are also responsible, I suspect, for an outsized antipathy to charter schools, which she shares with the mayor. Charters are public schools, and Fariña could have embraced them as a small but critical component of the education system, one that does an admirable job of educating poor kids of color.

For Nazaryan, there's no question that charters do an admirable job, but there's also no awareness of the fact that they shed students at an alarming rate, dumping them back into public schools, not replacing them, and thereby increasing their test scores. There's no awareness that they rarely if ever take students like I teach, or those with severe learning disabilities. As far as I can tell, there's not even awareness that the state pretty much decreed NYC would have to pay rent on charters of which it didn't approve. There are also a whole lot of us who dispute the characterization of charters as public schools.

There are rambling paragraphs about Moskowitz, Rhee, and all the reformy things they've done, and or tried to do. Then there's this, the conclusion:

This state of affairs is unfortunate but not surprising. We are not a small, monocultural nation like South Korea, or an autocracy like Russia where a history textbook might fall victim to Kremlin diktat. In America, school reform will always be a Hegelian contest between clashing visions, frequently maddening, infrequently productive. It is the only way we know.

There are always clashing visions, but reforminess has thus far reflected mostly one, and that has been pretty much whatever Bill Gates placed his many dollars behind. Small schools, charters, VAM, Common Core, and other such things proliferate. Despite Nazaryan's conversations with Diane Ravitch and Patrick Sullivan, and despite his limited experience as a teacher, he has no idea what goes on in city schools.

From what I can glean here, Nazaryan has little interest in finding out.

Smoke, Mirrors, and Charter Schools

I'm not the first to say this, and I'm sure I won't be the last, but Moskowitz sells snake oil and charters are a scam. They have no more credibility than the guys playing three-card monte on the corner. They show you how easy it is to find the red card, and it's obvious to you and anyone who's looking. Then, after you fill in the applications, agree to whatever extra things are demanded, show up to Albany when Eva says you need to, and dance as fast as you're told, your kid gets thrown out of school.

It's pretty simple, actually. Once Moskowitz gets rid of your inconvenient child, there's no replacement. Since your kid is dragging down scores, demanding attention when there's test prep to be done, or has special needs other than getting high test scores, there's an extra name on the got to go list. And once that happens, your kid is bound for one of those awful public schools. Those schools are so bad that they take everyone and throw almost no one out!

By status quo standards, a good school is a school with high test scores. Charters are designed specifically to become "good schools," and if indeed that is the standard, it's not that hard to reach. All you have to do is stock your school with kids who get high scores. One way is to make sure that every single student has proactive parents. By proactive, I mean the kind of parent who will bother to fill out an application. That in itself is an extra step, weeding out those who won't even bother with such a thing.

The students I teach will not end up in charters. That's because they don't speak English at all. Their parents are unlikely to seek out charters and I'd be surprised if even one beginning ELL were in a Moskowitz Academy. Then there are those will special needs. By charter standards an IEP is an IEP, but special needs students are an extremely broad category. Some need a little extra time to take tests while others are certain never to graduate. Guess how many of the latter are in Moskowitz Academies. My school takes them all.

So where do the castoff Moskowitz kids end up? In public schools of course, where they continue to get the same test grades they did in Moskwitz Academies. And the papers look at their grades and say, "Oh my gosh, those public schools suck and need to be closed. We need new Moskowitz Academies right away!"

In fact, Moskowitz herself can then place a column in the paper stating that the test score rises, which are meaningless to begin with, are significant only in the charter sector. Lots of people will read that uncritically and believe it. But charters are not a silver bullet. They are an outright fraud, designed to undermine public schools and remove those inconvenient unions, with their blah, blah, blah, we want to get paid if we work.

In Moskowitz land, teachers are nothing if not replaceable, and those who last a few years can become principals and more. Now me, I wouldn't want to work in a place where we let kids pee their pants rather than visit a bathroom, just for the sake of test prep. I'd also argue that, while we are subject to ridiculous rules that preclude us from grading papers from our own schools, Moskowitz Academies need not follow these rules. In a culture where testing is more important than basic human biological needs, it's entirely conceivable that grading may be something less than objective.

But the charters have got a lot of wealthy supporters who toss out suitcases of cash as you or I might toss away a Kleenex. They've got Andrew Cuomo and Barack Obama in their hip pockets. They've got an entire chain of reformy websites called Chalkbeat that write features every time Eva, Families for Excellent Schools, or EFE sneezes. (Even today Chalkbeat is recycling the same old quote from the state on how the test scores are valid, while their Rise and Shine newsletter features a whole bunch of stories suggesting charter schools outperform public schools.) They've got an entire chain of Gates/ Walmart think tanks that provide appropriate quotes for journalists everywhere.

Now it's great that NAACP has finally gotten hip to this nonsense. But UFT and AFT still support them, blind to the fact that what may have been a benign notion from Albert Shanker is now a full-fledged Frankenstein monster wreaking havoc on our educational village. There was barely a peep at the AFT convention when Hillary Clinton suggested we could learn from public charter schools, whatever the hell they may be.

What can we learn? To exclude the neediest children we serve? To let children pee their pants rather than visit bathrooms? To toss children out on their asses if they don't get scores that make us look better than they are? To juke the stats and cheat? That the ends justify the means?

That's not what I want to learn, and it's certainly not a lesson I wish to teach children I serve. Personally, I'd like to teach union leadership exactly what it is we support when we support charter schools.

Eva and Me

by special guest blogger Colocated Teacher
 
A friend of mine sent me the following account of working inside a Moskowitz Academy building. I'm gonna share it with you today. If you have experiences in Eva's buildings, please feel free to share them in the comment section.

Working on the 4th floor of a building with no elevator, I had lots of exercise this past school year. My health aside, the school building was shared with the city’s largest charter school system, Success Academy. A product of Eva Moskowitz, Success Academy has schools distributed all throughout New York City. I got to see the teachers, the students, and how the school operates on a daily basis. Some of Success Academy’s practices are fairly standard from an educator’s perspective but some were truly surprising. This was the first time I got to see how a charter system works.
   
Success Academy occupied the entire 2nd floor along with half the 3rd floor of the school. The rest of the building was used by 3 different public schools. Success kept their section of the building pristine. I witnessed how well they maintained their facilities when I was walking through the hallway one morning. There was a broken floor tile on the 3rd floor and a carpenter with a hammer, tools, and a blowtorch, was on his hands and knees fixing it by noon. That type of response is almost unheard of in NYC schools. I don’t know how or why, but it even smelled different when you entered their section. This applied even to the shared 3rd floor. The minute you cross into Success Academy side, the air quality changed. How they do that is still a mystery to me.
   
The first thing noticeable about the faculty is they are all relatively young. Ninety percent of the staff looks to be in their 20’s or 30’s including the principal. The few occasions where I had seen someone that looks over the age of 45 were guys in suits with clipboards that are not at the school on a regular basis. The teachers arrive very early in the morning, and are there well after I leave in the afternoon. It seems they have a much longer workday than public school teachers. All of them are very well dressed.
   
Discipline and structure also seems to be a major focus for the staff. The floor tiles were not different because they looked better, but because they were color-coded markers every 5 feet. When Success Academy students walked through the hallway as a class, they were instructed to move from one tile marker to another. I use the term “instructed” very loosely because I have witnessed classes getting scolded for stepping past the designated tile by 1 step. In fact, public scoldings and corporal punishment was not at all uncommon. I would regularly see students with their tables out in the hallway working alone, or standing outside the classroom as punishment. Sometimes a teacher could be heard yelling at a kid from down the hallway while I was in my classroom. This was such a shock for me because public school teachers would have had been disciplined for any of those disciplinary actions while this was happening everyday at Success Academy. Naturally, the students at Success were very well behaved.
   
Success Academy was a relative oasis within a building shared by a D75 special education elementary school, public middle, and high school. The hallways are cleaner, the classrooms look better, the teachers are younger, kids are in uniform, and they march through the hallway in neat little rows of two. Compared to the three public schools that can be loud, argumentative, and constantly in trouble with the DOE, Success Academy to may appear successful indeed to an outsider.
   
Look a little deeper and things start to get a bit controversial. The question is--do the ends justify the means? The school is very orderly and successful with standardized tests, but at what cost? Is developing the ability to pass a state test worth having kids getting publicly disciplined for taking one step too many down the hallway? Is getting the students Common Core ready worth having them humiliated by their teachers in front of the class? I’m not sure I’d like to see my kids treated like that.

Also, if charter schools are publicly funded, how is it every Success teacher is issued a new Macbook while public schools need to wait months just to have a broken air conditioning unit fixed? Why is there a different standard for a public school and charter school? It’s still the same tax dollars leaving our pockets.

And finally, where are the older teachers that have built up decades of knowledge and experience? I can hardly believe that young teachers are the only ones that apply to work in charter schools. Yet I never saw one single older teacher

I’ll leave it you to determine how successful Success Academy is. However, if my tax dollars support it, I’d like more transparency. Success Academy historically has not been very cooperative about it, nor are they very open about the practices I see going on inside their schools every day.

Teachers--Guilty Until Proven Innocent

The NY Post knows a failing teacher when it sees one. Anyone who wasn't hired back at John Adams, to the NY Post, is a "failing teacher" and "inept." One good thing, for the NY Post is this--they make these assertions with no evidence whatsoever, and evidently the libel laws in this country are lax enough that they do so with impunity.

I worked at John Adams for about seven years. I transferred because my supervisor gave me an ultimatum. She had a Spanish teacher who threw kids out of the class all the time and I never did that. So she wouldn't have to be bothered with the kids being tossed out, she wanted me to teach all Spanish. Otherwise she was going to give me a schedule late enough that it would preclude the second job I had taken to pay my mortgage. I left on a UFT transfer.

If I hadn't done that, the NY Post would likely be calling me inept and failing. I don't think anyone with a choice would hire me as a teacher. While I don't get complaints about my actual teaching, I am fairly confident my principal would back me up when I say I am a pain in the ass. Seriously, who wants to deal with the likes of me when you can pick and choose anyone you wish? It's a lot easier to run a school when you can just ignore the contract and do whatever the hell you like.

Actually I was not such a pain in the ass when I worked at Adams. My then boss had no reason to be upset with me. But the fact that I love teaching English, as well as the fact that I am much more competent in English than Spanish meant nothing. I was gonna teach Spanish, because it was convenient for her, and that was it. Decisions like those don't factor into the equation, as far as the NY Post. So what if teachers are assigned where they are not their best? Administration is not to be questioned, and anything wrong in the building is the sole province of the teachers, who suck and must be called out for it.

Naturally the Post enlists the opinions of pro-charter folks. Their opinions are of paramount importance because they, unlike us, know how kids should be treated. Clearly children should pee their pants doing test prep and not be subject to namby pamby liberal gobbledygook like bathroom passes.

“Shuffling ineffective teachers from one school to another isn’t a sign that the administration is willing to prioritize students above the bureaucracy,” said Jeremiah Kittredge of Families for Excellent Schools, a charter backer.

Isn't it cool that you can say stuff like that with no evidence whatsoever? In fact there is an agreed-upon standard for declaring a teacher ineffective. Well, there's one in the public schools. Charters aren't subject to that, opting to do any damn thing they please. They aren't subject to chancellor's regulations about corporal punishment, verbal abuse, or pretty much anything. They can dump students, not replace them, and not include them in their stats either. And despite their claims, lotteries are most certainly not random. A parent has to be proactive enough to apply, and agree to whatever extra demands the charters have.

But hey, FES says we suck, and if that's not enough for Post readers, they round it off with some predictable blather from the same Students First NY mouthpiece who seems to comment on everything.

In fact, public schools take everyone, every kid, every special need, every kid who doesn't know a single word of English, every kid with interrupted formal education. They are then subject to the baseless and abusive comments like those of Mr. Jeremiah Kittredge, likely as not taken as gospel by readers of the NY Post.

I'm fairly confident that John Adams wouldn't want me back either. Maybe I'd be an ineffective Spanish teacher, though I'm appointed to teach ESL. And even if I weren't, I would fight to enforce our Contract. Well, who needs that? Not charter school supporters, who generally can't be bothered with union. Here's what the NY Times says about Moskowitz Academy teachers: 

For teachers, who are not unionized and usually just out of college, 11-hour days are the norm, and each one is under constant monitoring, by principals who make frequent visits, and by databases that record quiz scores.

Why are they usually just out of college? Doesn't that suggest that their predecessors didn't last? Doesn't that mean, by NY Post standards, that their predecessors were failing and inept? And if the new teachers don't last, as history suggests, aren't they failing and inept too? Heavens to Betsy, how can that be, with the high standards FES and all the reformies hold so dear?

We're on a merry-go-round of arbitrary standards and random vilification. If we want people to become teachers and hang around longer than they do at the Moskowitz academies, we're gonna have to start treating them like human beings rather than convicted felons.  By their standard, I'm as failing and inept as any teacher labeled by the Post, and so are we all. 

The Shocking Teacher Shortage

It looks like Governor Cuomo's plan of painting targets on the backs of all teachers has not worked out as well as planned in NY State. Evidently there is a shortage, and to ease it, the geniuses in Albany are relaxing standards. Their thinking, evidently, is people from other states will be anxious for the chance to judged by Governor Cuomo's matrix, and potentially be guilty until proven innocent. After all, there aren't many opportunities like that in the United States.

Another point of view, of course, is that Governor Cuomo is bought and paid for by Eva Moskowitz's BFFs at Families for Excellent Schools, and that he pretty much jumps at their beck and call. Maybe that's why he was so happy to appear at Ms. Moskowitz's field trip, you know, the one where she boarded all her students on buses and dragged them to Albany to lobby for her own political cause. If you or I did that, we'd be fired. But of course we didn't, so that's not why there's a teacher shortage.

There's a teacher shortage because we're tired of being used as punching bags. We're tired of being vilified in the press, and by every tinhorn politician that takes suitcases of cash from DFER and FES. We're tired of hearing people like Cuomo enact rating plans to fire teachers, call them "baloney" when they fail to fire enough teachers, and revise them for the express purpose of firing more. We're tired of being judged by test scores which the American Statistical Association correctly asserts have little or no validity.

We're tired of being told the only way to teach is like this, like that, or like whatever Bill Gates wakes up and decides children other than his own must be taught. We're tired of endless testing and being forced to teach nonsense that does not help our children. We're tired of underlying assumptions by people with no credentials or credibility that the children we serve lack "grit" and must be treated with "rigor."

I'm particularly tired of so-called leaders who create problems and then try to solve them in ways that don't address the problems at all. When I started teaching, pay was particularly low. The city didn't bother addressing the huge disparity in pay between the city and surrounding suburbs. Instead, there were ads in the subways and on buses to try to attract teachers. There were intergalactic recruiting campaigns. It turned out, though, that people from other countries and universes just couldn't afford to live in NYC.

And then, of course, there is the issue of quality. I was one of the people who saw a subway ad and took a teaching gig. I had no idea what I was doing. On my ninth day of teaching, my supervisor wrote me up and said I had no idea what I was doing. But I had told her I had no idea what I was doing when she hired me. To this day I wonder why she expected more. She wrote that I should try to be more "heuristic" when I taught. Naturally that cleared up everything for me. Doubtless with excellent advice like that every teacher will become instantly excellent, no matter how much they raise or lower the standards.

Cuomo is an empty suit, with loyalty to no one but Cuomo. He just said he won't support his party in its effort to retake the State Senate. This is they guy Hillary's people have representing the DNC for New York. He has no moral center whatsoever, does whatever the people who pay him say, and happily supports whatever the privatizers tell him to. And, oh, if the people rise up and say screw your ridiculous tests, he can always make some empty gesture, like a partial moratorium, and say, "See? I care what you think, sort of."

This is step one in addressing a teacher shortage created by Albany. There will be more. But until they start listening to teachers and learning why people no longer pursue this job, they will be empty gesture after empty gesture, likely helping no one but those who see education as an opportunity for profit.

A Message from Governor Andy on Why You Have to Register Your Certification

Hi, it's me, your old pal Andy Cuomo. I just want you to know that a lot of you may think I hate teachers, but that's not the case. In fact, my mother was a teacher. So that should be proof enough. But no, all you Gloomy Guses are all, "Well, why did you have to judge us by test scores?" and "Why did you say your own system was baloney and then up the test scores?"

Well, I hear you, and I hear all those folks who opted their kids out of the tests. It made me look so bad that I agreed not to count Common Core tests in math and English from grades 3-8. Now a lot of you are saying that implies those of you with other Common Core tests can go screw yourselves and let me say, right at the outset, that I am a great believer in individual freedom. So of course you can go screw yourselves! That's your right and I shall defend your rights to the bitter end.

But a lot of you are complaining about why you have to register with the state. Now that's an important consideration, and I want to be absolutely up front with my response. Now Sandra and I don't get a whole lot of time off, but after eating one of her delicious Kwanzaa cakes, there's nothing we like better than watching a little television in our house. In fact, we've got a whole TV room there that we built, and those county home inspectors will get in to see it over my dead body. No way are we gonna pay taxes on that! But I digress.

One of our favorite shows is The Walking Dead. I don't know if you watch it, but it's pretty terrifying. I mean, all the good people are united against those brain-eating zombies. My gosh, they are just awful. They just run around killing everyone and eating brains. As you surely know, I am the student lobbyist, and I just cannot allow zombies to victimize school children. I have observed the zombies very carefully, and we think having teachers register online is the best precaution. I mean, how many zombies are gonna register? So most registered teachers will not be zombies. And should they become zombies over the next five years, once their registration dates come up, they will not register. Or at least they probably won't. You can never be too sure with zombies. But we're gonna try to fix that.

In fact, while we've neglected this question up to now, preferring to focus on whether those who register are facing disciplinary or criminal charges, our next revision will ask people, under penalty of perjury, "Are you a brain-eating zombie?" Now there was a lot of debate at the most recent gala luncheon where it came up. Will zombies tell the truth? Honestly, I can't guarantee you they will. But nonetheless, if they lie they will be up on perjury charges. One thing Andrew Cuomo will not tolerate is some lying zombie. 

You see, this proves I love public schools, because charter school teachers don't need certification and therefore will not have this protection. Of course, if individual charter schools decide to pass anti-zombie rules they're free to do that. In fact, when Eva Moskowitz calls me today I'm gonna make a very strong suggestion that she carefully screen all new teaching candidates, and that she not hire zombies unless there's really no one else they can get. But Eva is a great gal, and if anyone can handle zombie teachers she can, so hey, if she's good with it I'm good with it.

Now sure, a lot of my critics are on my ass because we haven't really fired the volume of unionized teachers we'd been aiming for. But we're working on it. And please, just because I want to fire a lot of teachers doesn't mean that I don't like teachers. I'm just trying to economize, and that's why I'm only targeting those who are unionized. And if there are any zombie advocates out there, let me say that while it's true I'm preventing zombies from working in public schools, there may still be golden opportunities in charters.

After all, who the hell else really wants to teach in places like those?

Mayoral Control, but What About Evaluation?

Every year is a carnival. What new and more convoluted ways will the government find to catch us in the act of doing our jobs and fire us? Will it be another rubric for supervisors to follow, or the same one? Will it be the same parts of the rubric? Are we assumed to be so stupid that we believe every supervisor follows the same rubric in the same way?

Are we gonna get surprise visits from people who don't know us, don't know our students, and don't know anything about our schools so as to make things fair, as defined by NY Governor Andrew Cuomo? Will he then look at said program, declare it "baloney," and set about constructing a new one that will fire more teachers? No one really knows.

Because Albany deems Bill de Blasio to be a hippie commie weirdo, perhaps due to his opposition to charter schools, he's only gotten a one-year extension of mayoral control. This places him in the position of having to renegotiate it next year as he runs for re-election. That will be convenient for whichever pawn Eva Moskowitz selects to run against him. After all, if there were a mayor who'd rubber stamp whatever she wanted, like Mike Bloomberg did, Albany would have no issue granting a multi-year extension. (And if he'd pull a million dollars in loose change our of his pocket to keep the Senate's GOP majority, like Bloomberg did, that wouldn't hurt either.)

It looks like there are some goodies in there for those with the corporate driven agenda UFT Unity criticizes MORE for fighting.

The deal also will allow charter schools to more easily switch between authorizers. That could mean the city’s education department, which oversees a number of charter schools but no longer accepts oversight of new schools, could see some of those schools depart for the State University of New York or the state’s education department.

After all, charters need more freedom to do whatever the hell they see fit, and be authorized by whoever the hell they see fit, in case more restrictive authorizers say, hey, you can't do whatever the hell you see fit. Because whatever Eva wants, Eva gets. After all, charters don't need no stinking rules, and the Times offers this:

Charter schools can be authorized by three agencies — the State Education Department, the city’s Education Department and SUNY — but all operate according to the same state law. Although the announcement of the agreement did not offer details, the Senate’s proposal would exempt SUNY schools from the usual state standards and free to set their own rules, two officials with direct knowledge of the negotiations said.

But here's where, as a public school teacher subject to all those rating regulations charters can't be bothered with, I really wonder what the hell is going on here:

Lawmakers also agreed to give districts until the end of the year to negotiate the details of new evaluation systems for teachers and principals. according to Assembly spokesman Michael Whyland. Districts, including New York City, have been facing a Sept. 1 deadline to develop systems that complied with an unpopular 2015 law.

So let's see-- we have until the end of December to negotiate a new evaluation system. Therefore, we could conceivably start with one system in September only to find it completely revamped in January. We could, for example, then train teachers in January to prepare them for what was expected of them in September. That makes sense, doesn't it?

Well, it seems to have passed muster with the Heavy Hearts Assembly that passed the draconian evaluation law demanded by Andrew Cuomo. Of course that law was passed before Tough Andy became the Softer, Gentler Andy, worn down by the opt-out movement so reviled by UFT Unity. This notwithstanding, UFT Unity had no problem taking credit for the superficial changes in tone, and has no problem treating a partial moratorium on Common Core tests and Yet Another Great Victory.

And where does that leave those of us who actually have to go to work every day in New York City's public schools? I'd say pretty much rudderless and confused. After all, UFT Unity is led by Michael Mulgrew, who boasted of helping write the APPR law that brought junk science to teacher ratings. Mulgrew just boasted at the DA that junk science would count even more in our ratings.

Now Mulgrew may say that the junk science ratings help teachers more than they hurt them, and for all I know, he may be right. After all, some people are luckier than others. But I happen to know a very smart teacher who got an ineffective rating solely because of her MOSL scores. I have to think if I know one, there must be many more. But regardless of this, one is too many.

If the judgment of principals and assistant principals is so bad that the quality of their ratings is improved by a virtual coin toss the issue is not how much authority they do or do not have. The issue is not the optimal percentage of junk science we blend in to ameliorate that. The issue is the competence, or lack thereof, of those in positions to supervise us.

Until and unless the United Federation of Teachers faces up to that, there will be no system worth looking at. I've said it before and I'll say it again--the optimal percentage of junk science in a teacher evaluation is zero. If anyone wants to dispute that, I'm all ears.

Mike Bloomberg and the Magic Mirror

Carmen Fariña is talking about consolidating her some schools. This is a direct reversal of the signature policy of her former boss, Mike Bloomberg. Bloomberg, of course, had to look in a mirror every morning and ask it who was the reformiest of all, and as long as he kept closing schools it said,

Working teachers drop and crawl cause you, Mayor Mike, are reformiest of all.

Now Bill Gates, whose assful of wonders produced the small school initiative, backed up on it when he found out it didn't work. But because NYC is the first to adopt the worst ideas, and the last to drop them, Bloomberg plodded on regardless. I mean, why have one principal in a building when you could just as easily have five? And why have students abide by one set of rules when you can have five? As an added bonus, you could always dump in a Moskowitz Academy, have the whole thing refurbished, and make students in the other four schools feel like total crap because they aren't worthy.

But that's not the only benefit of small schools as far as Mayor Mike is concerned. After all, with Fair Student Funding, whatever that is supposed to mean, the fact is that every school has to be concerned with teacher salary. After all it now comes out of the school budget rather than central. So wouldn't you know it, principals with very small schools tend not to hire teachers with big salaries.

That's just part of it, though. I talk to teachers in schools that have inquiry teams that meet each and every day. Every single person in the school does that. Now there's supposed to be a C6 menu, and if you don't get one of your first three choices, you get another three. That means there should be six choices, at the very least. So could it be that every single person in the school happened to make the same choice? That's quite a coincidence.

Actually, this tends to happen when there is no chapter leader and no knowledge that there is a contract, or rules, or any of those messy things. And if you start a school with 20 teachers, all of whom are untenured rank beginners, you tend not to have a whole lot of union activism. After all, being chapter leader can be like swimming in a pool of sharks, and you're unlikely to opt for that when you have yet to master the doggie paddle. Also, while I've seen untenured teachers as chapter leaders, I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone. After all, when you can be fired for a bad haircut (and new teachers are unlikely to find time to seek out a good one), you might not want to be bringing multiple grievances to your principal. Also, you may want to spend time learning your job rather than going to Multiple Meetings About Everything.

In fact, it's likely newer and smaller schools have no chapter leader. I've been to class size grievance hearings where I've met teachers from small schools who weren't chapter leaders. They'd tell me their principals asked them to go. Now I will grant you it's a special kind of principal who will appoint people to grieve school class sizes. And given that, I'd suppose that most of them just go unreported.

If you have no union presence, it's a Principal's Paradise. Do whatever the hell you wish, and no one raises a peep. Will the young teachers get tenure and decide it's time to rise up and enforce the contract? Or will they simply become accustomed to doing Whatever the Hell the Principal Wishes and stay that way?

Bloomberg's magic mirror told him this was the way to go, but I'm not sure teachers who just follow instructions and question nothing are ideal role models. Isn't it our job to not only teach, but also model critical thinking? How can you do that when you aren't permitted to question anything, let alone criticize it?

Fariña is looking at a more practical problem. Why is she paying all these people to do all these things that are redundant, wasteful, and unnecessary? Of course consolidation is a reasonable solution, and hopefully she'll see fit to restore community schools, and even communities themselves. I mean, sure her boss is still pushing mayoral control, which does the exact opposite, but maybe this is a baby step in the right direction.

So if we put together five schools, will one competent chapter leader emerge? Will one principal who truly understands leadership rise to the top?

Only time will tell.

Fariña Wants to Fire Her Way to Success

I've read and heard a lot from Michael Mulgrew and his Unity Caucus about how fabulous the new teacher evaluation system is. Obviously Mulgrew cannot be bothered lowering himself to mix with rank and file teachers who haven't signed his caucus loyalty oath or he'd be hearing a different song altogether. But they have their talking point set, and they're sticking with it.

This is the talking point--if you oppose the junk science/ Danielson system, you therefore want to place 100% of the rating power in the hands of principals. The junk science somehow mitigates the principal evaluation even though it's largely a crap shoot. So, therefore, ipso facto, shut up and stop complaining. That shut up and stop complaining theme is very popular among Unity folk. It's pretty much their greatest hit, and I've personally been hearing them sing it since 2005.

But then along comes Michael Mulgrew's BFF, Carmen Fariña, and she's singing another song altogether. In fact, she's talking about "purging bad teachers," counseling them out or firing them, whatever it takes. Now this runs counter to the Mulgrew talking point. Mulgrew says only 700 teachers were rated ineffective this year, as opposed to 2,000 unsatisfactories under the previous system. We are, therefore, supposed to spring up on our hind legs and applaud wildly.

The problem is, though, that teachers don't much feel like applauding. Teachers feel the Sword of Damocles over our heads. We feel tremendous pressure to do all sorts of things that may or may not benefit our students. We worry that we will be fired for no reason. While Mulgrew can boast about the wonders of junk science and how it mitigates the judgment of those awful principals, I personally know a great, smart young teacher who was rated ineffective last year solely on the basis of test scores. Had this teacher not moved schools last year, another such rating could've led to a dismissal hearing.

On one issue, I think Mulgrew is right. A lot of supervisors are incompetent. I know plenty of people working for various Boy Wonders, and their lives are a misery. I mean, if you're a vindictive, small-minded, self-serving narcissist, it's unlikely you'll inspire great work, let alone enable or encourage it. And the fact is teachers with figurative guns to their heads are not likely to be of the very best service to children we serve.

But here's a fun fact--Mulgrew and his Unity Caucus have done absolutely nothing to improve the quality of administrators. It doesn't seem all that well-known that it's the  job of administrators to help teachers improve. Adminstrators seem shocked when I bring that up at meetings. Rather than help those who need it, adminstrators walk around checking off boxes and consigning teachers to Danielson hell. I know supervisors I very much doubt could perform better than the teachers they relentlessly criticize. People driven by ambition rather than care for what they do are not necessarily "effective." Those who rose in the ranks to "escape the classroom" weren't good teachers, and can't be good leaders of teachers either.

I question whether Fariña, who is on a mission to fire rather than support teachers, is really contributing either. It's pretty well known that this was her MO when she was a principal, but the fact is she not only selected the teachers, but the kids as well, rejecting 6 of 7 applicants.  I am unimpressed with those who lead highly selective schools and then boast of their results. For those of us who teach in community schools and serve everyone, it's apples and oranges. If Fariña, or Moskowitz, or anyone reformy wishes to impress me, let them go to Detroit and work their magic on a crumbling school full of high-needs kids.

Until they do that, this whole blaming the teachers thing isn't going to make me jump up and down, let alone actually help children. And as long as Fariña is trying to fire her way to the top, Mulgrew's happy talk isn't going to resonate with those of us on the front lines. Maybe it's time for Mulgrew himself to be "counseled out," and turn over the reigns of our union to a working teacher.

The Magic Formula

Sue Edelman has a piece in the Post about how several schools have avoided takeover. Evidently whether or not a school gets taken over entails graduation rates, Regents passing rates, and whether or not you are in the bottom 5% of schools. So these schools dodged a bullet, but the article suggests they are still not doing that well.

I wonder what the difference is between a school in the bottom 5%, which appears to be bad, and the bottom 6%, which somehow is not. What makes schools only in the bottom 7% so much better? I can't really say, but I guess if you live by the numbers, you die by the numbers.

When you reaize that test scores pretty much all coincide with income or lack thereof, you might determine we should simply close all schools that poor people attend. Under that model, which is pretty much status quo anyway, we could judge the students by income. For example, we could find out how many students qualified for free lunch and simply expel them. That'll get those test scores up in a hurry.

Of course the solution to so-called failing schools, according to Governor Cuomo, is to place them under receivership. Let the state run them. That's worked out fabulously in Roosevelt New York, just a few miles north of my home in Freeport. A young woman who took my blood pressure at a doctor's office went there, and told me many stories of what the high school was like under state control. I'm surprised my blood pressure didn't spike right then and there.

Now the state does not necessarily have to take over these schools with high percentages of poor people. Perhaps we could let Eva Moskowitz in to work her magic. Of course, a lot of charters have not done so well under that particular paradigm. Locke High School was taken over by Green Dot, Randi Weingarten's favorite charter chain (UFT partnered with them to bring them to NYC), and they didn't fare all that well.

But the important thing is to take these schools away from their communities, which are too poor to have or run their own schools. And once we get rid of that bottom 5%, there'll be another bottom 5% to worry about. Maybe if we keep attacking public schools 5% at a time, eventually there'll be so few left that the hedge funders will be able to drown union in a bathtub or something. That's something folks like Broad, Gates, and the Walmart heirs have wet dreams about.

Until and unless we attack poverty, like Finland did, there are going to be a whole lot of schools our insane system deems failing on the basis of tests that may or may not measure what's important.

It's too bad we've been vilified and libeled so widely and for so long. I'm no genius, but I can write tests for my kids a whole lot better than the companies getting paid millions to assess them.

Charter or Public?

Anyone who actually follows reality knows charters don't outperform public schools. Even Waiting for Superman, that steaming pile of propaganda, acknowledged that only 17% of them actually outperformed public schools. And the big secret, not so secret anymore, is that charter students that do better tend not to reflect the same demographics as a public school. My public school takes everyone that walks through the door, no matter what disability, and no matter if they speak not a single word of English. I don't need to check very thoroughly as to how many Moskowitz Academy students just got here yesterday from El Salvador.

It's kind of amazing. If we could make rules that demanded parents participated in our school, if we get rid of students who were inconvenient, if we could harrass parents into withdrawing students who didn't get high scores, we'd have even better stats. Now that's not anything I want to do. As a matter of fact, of the kids I teach, approximately zero of them would make it into the much-coveted Moskowitz Academy. That's better for my kids, because I don't make them pee their pants so they can get in a few minutes of extra test-prep. It's better for them because I can actually teach them English rather than make them close-read tedious crap that they would surely hate.

But it's better for me too. For one thing, I don't work for Eva Moskowitz. No one makes me get onto buses and go to Albany and rally for miserable, no-excuses conditions for kids. No one makes me use lesson plans written by people who have no interest in anything but test scores. No one makes me live in fear that I must abuse children for scores rather than make them love learning. No one makes me march children around like they're little martinets, or make them submit to tedium and "rigor" that no children ought to endure.

Young teachers are acutely aware that public schools are better places to work than charters. Right now, for example, it isn't all that easy to get a job teaching in public school. And every single charter school teacher I've ever met, without exception, is there because there were no available public school jobs. Who on earth wants their jobs to be subject to the caprices and whims of Eva Moskowitz? Basically no one.

So if your kid is in a charter, even if your kid is far away from those scary public school kids, your kid has teachers who, for whatever reason, are unable to get public school gigs. Now I know some very good teachers who've had to teach in charters. After all, insane public school supervisors, of which there are plenty, can and will fire untenured teachers for petty personal reasons, or to make themselves look good. The bad luck of these teachers is the good luck of charters.

On the other hand, I'm gonna doubt that's the majority of charter teachers. I recall a particularly inept student teacher I had a few years back. She demanded a reference, which I declined to give, and them complained to my supervisor about it. I'm not exactly sure what she thought my supervisor would do. Would she place a letter in my file for not recommending an incompetent teacher? In any case, she did not.

But that student teacher, after an exhaustive search failed to yield a public school gig, ended up in a charter. This teacher placed things on the board that my students recognized as incorrect. I hope her charter students are as perceptive as mine were. If not, well, too bad for them. In fairness, she doesn't work for Eva.

But it's hard for me to imagine why anyone would rather work a charter than a public school. We serve everyone. That's our job. If you don't think it's yours, maybe you shouldn't have gone into this whole teaching thing in the first place. I'm sure there are good charter teachers, teachers who are there by choice. Maybe they aren't crazy. But I don't think those teachers ought to work under those conditions, and I don't think the kids I serve should grow up to face those conditions either.

Mulgrew and the Secret Sauce

When I read articles like this one, by Campbell Brown, I feel a little like Michael Mulgrew were a contortionist, busily painting targets on his own back. The best part about this article is the Post's description of Brown's group as "nonpartisan." For someone who isn't partisan, she's certainly got a pretty extreme opinion. I'm certainly partisan. I think she's a tool of those who wish to destroy us, and that's why she (or whoever writes for her) writes such blather.

But the fact is, along with Mulgrew, we're also to blame for this. The reformy playbook says schools are failing and need to be fixed. It says the problem is the teachers, that we have too many job protections, that we are awful, and whatever else the papers constantly berate us for. The solutions, of course, are to rate us by rubrics, give tests, and get rid of the teachers whose students don't do well enough on said tests.

Bill Gates, guru to the reformies, has pretty much admitted that poverty is too much for him to tackle. Instead, he imposes his will on schools by waving money around. He encourages charters, junk science ratings, Common Core, and endless testing. To Bill Gates, a test score is the only indication of progress. For him, it's something we should all be striving to improve. And via targeted money he and his reformies enabled Race to the Top, which pretty much compelled the entire nation to submit.

Our leadership, unfortunately, buys into this narrative. That's why they started UFT charter schools and actually co-located them just like Eva Moskowitz does. Brown, of course, condemns UFT for not taking a representative portion of high-needs children, though she has not one word of objection when Moskowitz does precisely the same. I haven't heard a peep from her about the blatant abuse of children in Moskowitz schools, recently available on video. So much for her "non-partisan" nonsense.

Now I may have a discouraging word or two about Mulgrew and his pals in leadership, but I don't think they'd condone the sort of abuse that goes on in Moskowitz schools. Well, too bad for them, because that's how you play the charter game successfully. We ought not to be in in at all. We ought not to be emulating those who want us to disappear. We ought to recognize the value of public schools and advocate for programs that help all the kids we serve, rather than placing band aids here and there and hoping for the best. It's particularly egregious because the charter game, as played these days, is designed precisely to enable invidious comparisons between public and private schools.

As if that's not all, I've been hearing from Mulgrew for months about his plans to turn around so-called failing schools in the city. Despite his inability to resuscitate ailing UFT charters, he musters the hubris to proclaim he has the secret sauce that has eluded the reformies forever. We bought their faulty premise and are playing their rigged game. That's why we fail to step up and support opt-out, the most powerful support for NY students at this time. That's why, when ESL students are robbed of instruction by Part 154, UFT leadership does absolutely nothing to help. That's why we give Campbell Brown ammunition to make faulty arguments proclaiming that the UFT Contract is the source of school failure.

I have a message for you, Michael Mulgrew. The people you call smart and tactful each and every month are not nearly so smart as you think. That's why we are where we are. If you were smart, you'd stop playing the reformy game, which is rigged even more than the upcoming UFT election.

Whatever Eva Wants, Eva Gets

The big story in reformy Chalkbeat NY's Rise and Shine, of course, is Eva Moskowitz. Moskowitz is under fire for the documented cruelty of one of her teachers. Alan Singer points out that this teacher is not actually certified but a Moskowitz mentor teacher nonetheless. Moskowitz, who refuses to sign the standard agreement for her pre-K program, can apparently certify anyone she wants however she pleases.

Chalkbeat links to a number of stories stating that this sort of behavior would not be acceptable in wealthier schools. Doubtless that's true. I certainly would not want my child in this teacher's class, and it's hard to imagine parents who feel otherwise. In fact, the NY Times report suggesting students regularly pee their pants rather than asking for a moment less test prep leads me to believe this behavior is not, as Moskowitz claimed, an anomaly.

The fact is Chancellor's Regulation A-421, against verbal abuse, would have landed this teacher in a ton of hot water. In NYC public schools, you simply are not permitted to address children in an abusive or hostile manner. In fact, the wording is such that pretty much anything that makes a kid feel uneasy can be construed as abuse. If you say, "hello," and it makes the kid feel bad somehow, a crazy principal could bring you up on charges.

Nonetheless, I do not condone what this teacher did to this first grader. A teacher ought to be supportive rather than abusive, and anyone watching the video can see what's going on here. Children make mistakes all the time. I make mistakes all the time. We are human and ought to allow for children being human too. In fact, being children, they have a much better excuse than we do for mistakes. It isn't just private schools of the well-to-do that wouldn't put up with this nonsense. No public school principals worth their salt would accept this behavior.

Here's the thing--charter schools are not subject to chancellor's regs. Abusive to children? Well, if it helps you get high test scores that's fine. Traumatized kids? Too bad. As long as Eva gets her test scores it doesn't matter. Does Eva have to follow the rules we do, the ones that say we can't grade standardized tests of our own students? Who knows? Rules don't apply to revolutionaries. After all, she's on a mission to privatize education and get it out of the hands of those nasty unionized career teachers. Certification? Bah humbug. Trained teachers might not know how to terrorize kids into high test scores with all that touchy feely stuff they learned at "college."

At the end of the day, Eva says she's sick of apologizing. Sick of apologizing for her "got to go" list, sick of apologizing for the kids who pee their pants, and sick of apologizing for the downright abusiveness of her staff. Of course she hasn't apologized for her failure to sign the pre-K agreement.

And why should she? Under a law her BFF Andy Cuomo passed, the city has to subsidize her schools whether or not they want them. She didn't get where she was by following rules, and if she has to abuse and terrorize kids to get what she wants, that ought to be good enough for anyone.