Green Dots in Locke (and NYC)

Green Dot Charter Schools have taken over Locke High School in LA, and columnist Steve Lopez of the LA Times sees improvements already. Apparently they've dumped two-thirds of the teaching staff, instituted dress codes for students, and tightened up security considerably.

I work in what's considered an excellent regular high school, but it would be much better if administration were to accept no nonsense from kids. I don't accept it in my classes, but I really can't get involved in the halls as I'm dead certain I will receive little or no backup.

Public schools here are not permitted to mandate dress codes, as Green Dot apparently is. And while Chancellor Klein talks a big game about reporting illegal and dangerous behavior, there's little incentive for principals to cooperate as it may impact negatively on their ability to earn 30 grand in merit pay.

Lopez offers no evidence tenure and seniority for teachers would preclude what's described in the column, or that union contracts stood in the way of any of the changes mentioned. Certainly Chancellor Klein would love to have the option of firing two-thirds of working teachers and replacing them with shiny new Teaching Fellows, TFAs, and newbies at half the salary. After all, there are still stadiums to be built.

Here in NYC, he's got a willing collaborator in UFT President Randi Weingarten, who's partnered with Green Dot to open a charter in NYC. Ms. Weingarten and her Edwize minions insist that what they have at Green Dot is better than tenure. It's difficult for me to imagine that the newly-fired Locke teachers share her sentiments right now. In fact, Green Dot ejects not only tenure, but seniority rights as well. Here's what its website proclaims:

Key reforms embodied in the AMU contract include: teachers have explicit say in school policy and curriculum; no tenure or seniority preference...

Perhaps you're willing to trust the good graces of Green Dot. Perhaps you believe they won't dump you out on the street, as they just did to two-thirds of the teachers at Locke. Probably the teachers at Locke thought that too, or they wouldn't have invited Green Dot in the first place. After all, Green Dot's Steve Barr bought them pizza, so he must be a good guy. Right?

More remarkable than any of this is the fact that the United Federation of Teachers, whose job, ostensibly, is to stand up and negotiate for us, would invite this company into the city.

On May 17th, 2007, the LA Times ran an editorial which stated Locke teachers:

...are perfectly willing to loosen work rules and toss tenure out the classroom window...

I wrote about this story here on that very day, saying:

Green Dot charter schools are interesting to me. I was thrilled when Eduwonk featured its founder, Steve Barr, as a guest blogger. I thought unionized charters were a hopeful sign for innovative education. But it turns out there's no tenure in Mr. Barr's variety of union, and the LA Times urges teachers to toss it out the classroom window.

This provoked a typically vicious response from Leo Casey, Ms. Weingarten's internet mouthpiece:

From the “make up whatever facts fit today’s rant” school of thought, there is the assertion that Barr has thrown tenure out the window.

Mr. Casey, via his link, attributes the assertion to me. However, it was the LA Times who made the remark. Thus, Leo Casey, unelected UFT High School Vice-President, shows that he'd rather libel a working teacher than abide criticism of a charter school boss who explicitly rejects both tenure and seniority.


Working people have it very tough in the USA nowadays. It's simply unconscionable that union officials should be working at making things worse. And despite what the Unity/New-Action machine may tell you, Rod "The NEA is a terrorist organization" Paige admires UFT President Randi Weingarten but not because she's improved the lot of working people.

Leo Casey asks:

...why let the facts get in the way of a good rant?

Why indeed, Mr. Casey? Now that we have more facts about Green Dot, I have total confidence you'll ignore them utterly. You've got your gig, and your two pensions, and really, who gives a damn if generations of Americans will suffer for your willful and unconscionable refusal to confront reality?

PS: At Locke, Green Dot gets just just one more little advantage:

With the help of private donations, class sizes will be kept at about 28 instead of 40.

There's nothing like a level playing field, and Green Dot's sweetheart deal is nothing like a level playing field at all. Wouldn't it be nice if we had lower class sizes too? It's odd we don't. The UFT declared "Mission Accomplished" on class sizes back on April 12th, 2007.

Whatever I Want

That's what NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein says he wants to do with the funds from the 13-year-long CFE lawsuit. Why should he have to reduce class sizes if he doesn't want to? Why should underperforming schools get more funds when the Chancellor can simply close them and open new ones? Who cares if kids have to get on a train or bus at 4 AM because their neighborhood school is now the Academy of the Dark Arts?

And Mr. Klein now blames the city budget cuts on the state. Accountability, the Bloomberg-Klein mantra, never applies to them. After all, despite mandates, they've utterly failed to reduce class sizes in NYC. Who can even take seriously the preposterous claims of class reduction by .2 students per class, or whatever it is they're claiming? Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver has a message for Mayor Mike, and calls his finger-pointing a smokescreen. And that's indeed what you can expect from Mayor Mike and his entire gang of "accountable" number-crunchers.

When Joel Klein doesn't like a contract he himself wrote and agreed to, he demands it be broken. When Joel Klein gets money earmarked to improve education, he demands it be used for whatever he feels like. When the state cuts money, Joel Klein cries foul, but when the city cuts it, Mr. Klein takes no responsibility whatsoever, since Mayor Bloomberg must be spending it on more important things. Some role model.

It's ostensibly the job of a schools chancellor to stand up for kids. It's regrettable that in this era of mayoral control, New York's 1.1 million schoolchildren have, instead, a rubber stamp.

Where Will the Children Play?

In PS 48 in the Bronx, they need only walk to their schoolyard. That's because principal John Hugues decided it was a priority.

"He got fired up," parent leader Arshel Brown said of Hughes. "If we had more people like Mr. Hughes, we'd all be on the ball."

Playgrounds are a scarce commodity in New York. A 2003 City Council study found that half of the city's nearly 800 elementary schools had no playground at all.

Meanwhile, "reformer" Michael Bloomberg unilaterally attempts sweetheart deals to build playing fields for elite private schools. Fortunately for the kids of PS 48, their principal didn't see fit that they should wait till they could afford tuition at the Spence School.

Hughes got no help at all from Tweed, and tired of getting "the runaround" from so-called proper channels.

When Hughes took over the school in 2001, he sought funding from the School Construction Authority, but with classrooms squeezed into trailers all over the city and 100-year-old buildings clamoring for repair, playgrounds were not a priority.

No one disputes that playgrounds are not a priority in Mr. Bloomberg's New York. In fact, Mr. Bloomberg has no apparent problem dumping a bunch of trailers in a lot somewhere and labeling it a school. In Mr. Bloomberg's New York, the only thing that matters is test scores and accountability. Of course, despite the fact that Mr. Bloomberg has made no progress whatsoever with test scores he can't manipulate, the closest he's come to accountability has been the remarkable spectacle of Jim Liebman, chief accountability officer, literally running away from concerned parents.

"Reformers" like Mayor Bloomberg think the only thing that matters is test scores, and simply ignore the fact that their "reforms" fail to achieve even this narrow goal. Having observed really good schools, like the one my kid has attended, I see three constant elements:

1. Good teachers
2. Reasonable class sizes, and
3. Decent facilities

Despite Mr. Bloomberg's grandstanding about teacher quality, he's done little to address the first element. Actually, I'd say he loves bad teachers, because to him, "accountability" translates to passing the buck. Without bad teachers, he'd have absolutely no one to scapegoat.

As for two and three, it's fairly clear he ignores them completely. His claims of having reduced class size by .2 kids per class are laughable even if they're true. In my school, stuffed several times beyond capacity, class sizes regularly exceed 34, the highest class size limit in the state. And if Principal Hughes school doesn't demonstrate this administrations utter disregard for decent facilities, I don't know what does.

Slow Learners

Some people learn more slowly than others, and as such need special attention. Sometimes we give kids time-and-a-half on tests so they can keep up with their peers. Sometimes kids thrive when given the attention they need.

Unfortunately, some people never learn at all, and keep making the same mistakes over and over. When the UFT paper loudly declared "Class Size Victory," the details made it very clear that Mayor Bloomberg had the option to reduce class size by a fraction of a kid, or not at all, and that there would be no consequences whatsoever for any failure to do so. When class sizes were "reduced" by a fraction of a student, UFT leadership was shocked and outraged.

When Mayor Bloomberg followed his merit pay deal with a million-dollar panel, ostensibly to identify and eliminate bad teachers, the UFT leadership was shocked and outraged. How could he do such a thing? Isn't Mayor Bloomberg the same guy who, after forging a contract agreement, unilaterally denied sabbatical leave to all teachers for just as long as he could get away with it? As I recall, the UFT had to go to court to enforce the contract they had just negotiated. They were shocked and outraged, of course.

So when Mayor Bloomberg's double-secret plan to evaluate teachers based on student scores came out, how did the UFT react? They were shocked and outraged, again. Only it turns out, they knew about it in advance. Edwize writer City Sue sits on the panel that administers the plan. Like all UFT employees, she admits no fault, ever:

President Weingarten had angrily refused to endorse the project last summer and had won a concession that results would not be used to evaluate any UFT member.

Naturally. And when President Weingarten found out otherwise, I've no doubt she was shocked and outraged.

City Sue figured there was little cause for concern:

Still, to skip to the bottom line before I fill in the details, remember we have a signed contract until October 2009. By then Klein and Company will be packing their bags.

I'm not altogether convinced that a new administration will be the end of the shock and outrage. Only someone willfully ignoring history could come to such a conclusion. We can’t count on a friend in City Hall. I’ve been teaching for 23 years, and we’ve almost never had one. While I remember a brief flash of sympathy from Mayor Dinkins, he quickly turned his back on us, rather than defending education as important.

It’s high time for the UFT to become more proactive, more assertive, and less dependent on who may or may not be the next mayor, governor, president, or whatever. Governor Spitzer, for example (and I voted for him as enthusiastically as anyone), has just drastically reduced funds that could’ve been used to reduce class sizes in NYC.

It's time for the UFT to push a pro-teacher, pro-education agenda, to take charge for a change. We can't just stand around waiting to see what Mayor Bloomberg (or whoever) does next. Among other things, kids are packed into Mayor Bloomberg's crumbling testing factories like so many sardines. They can't wait any longer and neither can we.

Next time the Unity/New Action patronage employees visit you're school, cut them off when they tell you how shocked and outraged they are. Ask them what on earth they're doing to justify those double salaries and pensions. They'll probably respond with shock and outrage.

Today, we need more.

The Vision Thing

Under the beneficent leadership of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, school principals are now required to have "visions" for their schools. The first time I heard our principal talk about vision, images of Carlos Castaneda eating mushrooms with the venerable Don Juan filled my mind, and I wondered how exactly our school would be affected.

But it turns out that "vision," in fun city, has everything to do with following the various dictates of Tweed without question, and applying what little variation is possible within those narrow limits.

"My vision is a 2% increase in test scores for every year of my tenure. When we reach 110% passing, I'll retire."

"My vision is to examine test results, and secretly use them to assess teachers rather than students."

Those are some great visions, and they bring comfort to our great leader, Mayor Mike. Certainly principals who've attended the Leadership Academy are well-schooled in which visions are appropriate. Notice that when their schools fail miserably, accumulate preposterously unacceptable safety records, or simply disappear altogether from this astral plane, their principals are always retained with vague words of appreciation:

"Ms. Wormwood did an extraordinary job under difficult circumstances, and is being reassigned to the central office."

They need to keep these principals, because they have "vision," which is necessary to achieve "reform." Principals who have not received this training are liable to abuse their visions:

"I want to reduce class size to 20 per class."

"This school was built to accommodate 800 kids, and we now have 3,000. Therefore, I want to reduce this school's population by 2,200."

"This building is crumbling before our very eyes. I want to repair it, even if it diverts money from valuable sports stadiums."

Such principals cannot be tolerated. They lack appropriate "vision," and as such, have no place in the "reform"-minded administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Another Proud Achievement for Mr. Klein

Halfway through the school year, NYC School Chancellor Joel Klein has managed to reduce the number of oversize classes from 4300 to a more manageable 1000+. Imagine, just a little over a thousand classes where kids don't have seats. Perhaps they should produce a TV commercial proclaiming yet another victory for the "reformers."

Now this is based on DoE data, which is completely reliable. That's the same data they use to tell us that test scores have improved since Mayor Bloomberg took over. Never mind that NAEP data indicates otherwise. In any case, there are good reasons for those oversized classes and overcrowded schools.

First of all, there are always sports stadiums in need of building and expansion. Second, it's important to take buildings owned by the school system and convert them into condos. Finally, it's vital to devote prime school space toward charter schools, and as charters need small class sizes, they need more space than public schools. In any case, there are various toxic waste sites around the city which will eventually be transformed into public schools.

So remember, everyone, it's sports stadiums first, condominiums second, charter schools third, and then it's check out the toxic waste sites for the children, because in Mr. Klein's New York, it's always "Children First."

Grading Mr. Bloomberg

The New York Sun features an op-ed piece by Diane Ravitch that confirms my worst suspicions about Mayor Bloomberg's short-sighted grading system. This is the same pattern the mayor used for his first reform, and he appears to have learned nothing from it.

The grading system itself is questionable because it awarded high grades to many schools on the state's and federal government's failing lists while stigmatizing some highly regarded schools with grades of D or F. More than half of the nearly 400 schools that the state or federal government has identified as academically weak received an A or a B. At the same time, 99 schools that are in good standing with the state and the federal government received a D or an F from the city.

The city's grading system produced some other odd results. For example, I.S. 289 in Tribeca, the only middle school in the city that was recognized by the U.S. Department of Education for its superior performance, received a D. And P.S. 35 in Staten Island, a school where more than 85% of students regularly pass the state tests, was labeled an F.

The reason for these strange outcomes is that the city gives greater weight to improvement than to performance. High-scoring schools are handicapped by what is known as the "ceiling effect." If their students score consistently well on the state tests, a one-year dip in the scores can get them branded with a D or an F.

What happens to a school in which 100% of the students pass these all-important tests? Well, if fewer than 100% pass the following year, under this absurd system, it could be "failing," just like the above-mentioned school in Staten Island.

A lot of local parents actually know which school are better and which are worse. That accounts for schools like mine, bursting at the seams and accepting additional students as though there were a place to put them. That accounts for the regular class size violations at schools like mine, and to a lesser extent, the little-known contractual loopholes that permit them.

But overcrowding and class size don't figure into this mayor's calculations. That's because you can't blame unionized workers for such ills, and under this mayor's grading system, they're the only souls accountable for anything. In fact, when Mayor Bloomberg's chief accountability officer has to deal with real parents, he picks up his briefcase and heads for the hills.

Mayor Bloomberg has devised an elaborate system of assigning blame that has little to do with accountability. It's his fault, entirely, that the dysfunction of this school system has yet to be addressed. Though he can continue to blame schools, even schools that are doing well, the fact is there's been no substantive improvement under his watch.

And expert though he may be at blaming others, the unconscionable overcrowding, the highest class sizes in the state, the wasteful hours spent at pointless meetings, the very worst school facilities in the area, and an unparalleled expertise at passing the buck will be his true legacy.

Eliot Doesn't Get It

After having supported Eliot Spitzer for governor, the UFT proudly declared on Edwize, "Eliot Gets it." I voted for him enthusiastically, as he'd done a lot of talking about class size reduction, which I've always supported. However, when he actually got into office, he started talking about menus---class size reduction or a longer school day or a longer school year. The whole bait and switch approach didn't much appeal to me.

The UFT praised class size legislation as a major victory, though careful reading of its own article indicated there were no real consequences for failure to deliver, or reduction of less than one student per class. Now, months after this dubious accomplishment, the UFT is calling for class size reduction in schools that need improvement. This is a huge step backward, particularly in comparison with the "victory" it loudly declared all those months ago.

What else has our pal "Eliot" got in store for us? Well, the NY Sun reports the following:

The city's schools, which just received their first letter grades from Mayor Bloomberg, next year could receive a whole new set of judgments — this time courtesy of Governor Spitzer.

To be considered to have met federal No Child Left Behind benchmarks, New York schools now must only prove to the state that their students are scoring at a certain level. The new formula being developed in Albany — called a "growth model" — would require they also show improvement from one year to the next.

Now everyone wants improvement, and everyone wants their kids to do better in school. How many of us have not met the parent whose kid got a 99 and who wants to know why the hell she didn't get 100? And therein lies the problem.

In my school, 90% of the kids might pass the English or math Regents exams. But if we fall to 88% the next year, such a system might determine we are failing. In fact, under the first Bloomberg/Klein reorganization, and for just such a 2% drop, we were selected as a school in need of supervision. But other schools with much lower passing ratios were declared to be improving.

We might go up to 92% next year--who knows? But it's normal to have a little ebb and flow. I happen to think there are factors other than grades that speak to a school's quality (or lack thereof), but systems that rely on test scores need to recognize consistent excellence (or consistent mediocrity).

Certainly parents know. That's why my school is at over 250% capacity and growing by leaps and bounds, while some "improving" schools have plenty of space.

But where would you send your kid--the school that's gone from 90 to 88, or the one that's gone from 60 to 64? If you were basing you decision solely on test scores, the answer would be simple.

If you were looking for reasonable class size, you might want to check into a school labeled as failing, because they appear to be the only ones slated for attention right now. And even so, I wouldn't hold my breath while waiting.

What A Bargain!

According to Sol Stern, the New York City public school system budget has increased by $7.2 billion dollars since Mayor Bloomberg announced his Children First reforms in January 2003.

Back in 2003, the school financing budget was $12.5 billion dollars, including pension costs and debt service. In the current fiscal year 2008, the budget is $19.7 billion dollars, including pension and debt costs.

The additional $7.2 billion dollars is a 50% funding increase in the last five years.

When Bloomberg first gained total control of the New York City public school system in 2002, he said that he was going to “make sure we get the most value for the school system’s dollar.”

Stern decides to take Bloomberg up on his challenge and see.

Stern examines the release of the 2007 Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) of the federal government’s National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), which compares the fourth and eighth grade math and reading scores on the NAEP exam of 11 of the nation's largest urban school districts, to see just what the extra $7.2 billion dollars has bought.

Stern finds not much.

As has been noted here and elsewhere, New York City students showed little-to-no improvement on the tests.

New York City was the only 1 of the 11 urban districts to show no improvement on eighth grade math scores from 2003 to 2007. In fact, scores remained flat for every ethnic and racial subgroup in the city.

Fourth and eighth grade reading tests were even worse. There was no significant change in proficiency on the fourth grade reading tests between 2003 and 2007 while the reading scores for eighth graders actually fell from 2003 to 2007.

Only fourth grade math scores increased from 2003 to 2007.

Stern concludes:

These results may surprise people who have heard so much over the past five years from the Bloomberg administration and some of the media about New York City’s “historic” gains on the state’s math and reading tests. But the NAEP doesn’t lie; it measures achievement far more accurately than state tests do. No doubt the administration will put the best face on the latest test data. But the reality is that $7 billion in extra education spending has so far produced only pennies’ worth of academic improvement in most grades. The sooner the city faces up to the bottom line, the sooner we can start speaking honestly about how to remedy the situation.

So the additional $7.2 billion has bought a slight increase in fourth grade math scores, a slight decrease in eighth grade reading scores and no significant change in fourth grade reading or eighth grade math scores.

What a bargain!

So, what did Bloomberg spend all the extra money on?

Well, clearly some of it went to teacher compensation. By May 2008, the United Federation of Teachers says teacher salaries in New York City will have increased 40% between 2002 and 2008.

While the editorial writers at the Times, News, Post et al. like to call that increased compensation "raises," the truth is that teachers have given up days, time, a sixth class, grievance rights, seniority rights and other job protections to win the extra compensation.

Nonetheless, it is true that some of the $7.2 billion has gone to salaries for personnel.

Where did the rest of the money go?

Decreased class sizes?

Nope. In fact, Bloomberg and Klein fought the state to use additional state education money on anything but reduced class size:

City educrats have agreed to reduce class sizes in 75 failing, overcrowded middle and high schools in order to collect $258 million from Albany.

The state money was the subject of a dispute between the city and state until a final deal was announced Monday.

Gov. Spitzer had insisted the "Contracts for Excellence" money could be used only to reduce class sizes or support four other state educational priorities, but city officials wanted to support Mayor Bloomberg's agenda, including a program that gives kids standardized practice tests 10 times a year.

Now of course reducing class sizes in 75 schools is, as Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters told the Daily News, "totally inadequate compared to the critical need," but the fact that the state had to take on Bloomberg and Klein to force them to use the money on reduced class sizes in critically overcrowded failing schools goes to show just how little they care about the issue.

So if Bloomberg hasn't used the additional education funding for reducing class size or reducing populations at severely overcrowded schools, what has he used it on?

Well, there is the $80 million dollar ARIS computer system and the additional 8-10 standardized tests New York City public school children will be required to take every year starting in February 2008.

And of course you can't have 8-10 additional standardized tests a year without a testing contract handed out to McGraw-Hill to create those 8-10 additional standardized tests a year.

So far, nobody at the school level actually knows what these 8-10 additional standardized tests a year will look like or what they will test, but I'm sure they'll be great.

What else did the mayor and the chancellor spend the additional education funds on?

Well, there was the constant reorganization of the school system (we're now on our third reorganization in the past five years), the closing of the school districts and the opening of the school regions and then the closing of the school regions and the reopening of the school districts.

Then there was the city-wide reading and math curricula that were added after the mayor took total control of the schools in 2002. The rationale here was that every child in every classroom in every school across the city should be learning the same problem at the same time on the same day as every other child in the same grade.

The key to these curricula changes was "sameness."

So we had the city hire people to measure bulletin boards to make sure the margins were "regulation" and investigate classrooms to make sure they had reading rugs (teachers with irregular bulletin board margins or without the proper reading rugs were written up.)

The reading and math curricula have since gone away and were replaced with a mania about data.

DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA!!!!

The mayor and the chancellor brought in an outside entity to conduct "school quality reviews" that were heavy on the "what are you doing with your data" variety.

The mayor and the chancellor also took the $80 million dollar ARIS computer system and ran the testing and graduation rate data along with student, parent and teacher surveys through it and kicked out school report cards that managed to give D's and F's to many schools that did very well earlier in the year on the "school quality reviews." Many of these schools also have very good test scores, but the report cards measure "progress," not "performance," so schools with excellent test scores in math and reading still managed to receive very low or failing report card grades.

The 8-10 additional standardized tests to be added next year will be added to the ARIS stew and used for the school report cards in the future.

At least until the next mayor comes in and cleans up the mess this one has created.

But to get back to the matter at hand, the mayor has also spent budget money on merit pay for teachers and merit pay for students, closing large overcrowded schools and creating lots of small overcrowded schools in their place, turning toxic waste dumps into school buildings, doling out no-bid contracts to cronies like the Snapple company, holding teacher fairs to alleviate the high teacher turnover problem and let's not forget adding lots and lots of public relations to win over the public and the media to their reforms.

That's a ton of stuff that Bloomberg has spent education money on in the last five years and he sure has little to show for it.

The ironic thing is, if he had taken the $7.2 billion dollars and spent it on lowering class size, reducing overcrowded schools, fixing the existing school infrastructure and providing new and safe school infrastructure for the future, retaining quality veteran teachers and attracting new teachers who learn their profession and stay in the system beyond 3-5 years rather than hiring a bunch of Teach For America/Teaching Fellows missionaries who are trained for 3 months before they're tossed into the classroom to sink, Bloomberg could have done a whole lot more to improve the school system and the NAEP test scores.

But of course Bloomberg and Klein didn't really come in to improve education in New York City.

They came in with an ideology that what the public sector - especially public education - needs to improve is market-based, privatization solutions that will convert the public sector into a quasi-private sector run with a corporate mindset that privileges quarterly results, constant "progress", and ruthless efficiency over long-term results and realistic progress.

Let's call it the "Walmartization" of public education

Never mind that children shouldn't be treated like widgets and quarterly test scores cannot be used to measure school effectiveness the way quarterly profit margins can be used to measure a corporation's performance.

Never mind that constant reorganization of the school system and constant changes to the curricula hurt children who need stability and constancy the most.

Never mind that the Jack Welch/Mike Bloomberg way of treating employees (make them fear for their jobs) has created an environment of hostility and anger in the system rather than forged a partnership between school administration officials and teachers to try and move schools forward together.

You see, when you have billionaire businessmen, failed anti-trust lawyers and their wealthy private sector cronies making 100% of the calls on education policy with no say from anybody outside of their narrow circle, you get a school system that is heavy on the spending, heavy on the p.r., and heavy on constant change, but pretty light on actual results.

Oh well.

The mayor knows that nothing improves a school system better than additional money spent on public relations efforts to fool the public and the media into thinking the smoke and mirror reforms are working.

With Bloomberg set to run for president in '08 as an independent, you can bet we'll see a lot more TV commercials and print advertisements lauding Mayor Bloomberg's education reform record.

But it's all phony.

As Sol Stern and other education experts like Diane Ravitch have noted - the NAEP results don't lie.

There has been little-to-no progress since Bloomberg and Klein started their dog and pony education reform show back in 2002.

NYC Leads the Way

In North Carolina, they'll give you a $10,000 bonus if you can teach Algebra 1. I did fairly well in Algebra, though I'm not sure all that mountain air would agree with me. In NY City, they're offering 5000 bucks to help you get settled if you're a new math teacher (If you're already in, too bad).

The retirement of thousands of baby boomer teachers coupled with the departure of younger teachers frustrated by the stress of working in low-performing schools is fueling a crisis in teacher turnover that is costing school districts substantial amounts of money as they scramble to fill their ranks for the fall term.

And it's not only in NC, but all over the country that people are having this problem. They can't seem to get all the highly qualified teachers they need. Historically, NYC has always known how to deal with such crises, and the rest of the country could easily follow suit.

1. Raise class sizes. If you have more kids in any given class, you'll need fewer teachers.

2. Forget all this "highly qualified" nonsense and make the gym teacher teach algebra. If the kids get out of hand, he's got a whistle.

3. Start programs to train teachers. Let them "earn while they learn."

4. Ask the state to lower teacher standards for your district. Tell them it's just for a while, and when a while passes, ask them to do it again.

5. Squeeze as many kids as possible into every corner of every building there is, and save a few bucks on school construction.

6. If teachers fail basic competency tests, or fail to meet requirements, keep them on anyway. Just make sure their salaries are capped at step 4, and it's like two for the price of one.

Do these things, and the whole supply and demand thing won't remotely affect you. And if anything does go wrong, just blame the teachers.

Rudy Stands Up

Ex-education Mayor Rudy Giuliani has taken a strong stand for vouchers for private schools. Rudy, of course, has strong credentials in education. Under his tenure, every time the state raised aid to city schools, he reduced city aid by an equivalent amount (Mayor Mike was forced to abandon this practice in order to gain mayoral control).

It was also the reason a judge determined that the city could be compelled to pay a portion of the CFE lawsuit. Mayor Mike doggedly refused until the award was cut by 75%. He then declared the severely reduced award a great victory for the city since it entailed no mayoral oversight.

Rudy was also the architect of a plan to force welfare recipients to work in public schools. Rudy felt people chronically unable to find work were adequate adult role models for the city's 1.1 million schoolchildren. After all, his kids went to private school anyway, so what did he care?

Under Rudy's tenure, teachers were the lowest paid in the area, standards for hiring teachers were the lowest in the area, conditions were the worst in the area, and class sizes were the highest in the area. So Rudy knows a little about running public schools. He knows how to run them right into the ground.

When Rudy talks education, he hopes people think 9/11. Here in New York, everyone knew he was a bum on 9/10. Some of us have yet to change our opinions.

Mr. Bloomberg Puts Up 5 Million Bucks

Wow, that's a lot of money. And Mayor Bloomberg is sending it to 50 low-performing middle schools. That's 100,000 per school, enough to hire two new teachers for each (as long as you keep them only one year).

He acted as the City Council released a report detailing problems in the city’s middle schools, including teacher retention difficulties and large class sizes, and issued a number of recommendations to address them. The council report noted that the percentage of eighth graders who perform at grade level is just 45.6 in math and just 41.8 percent in reading. Those were sharp drops from elementary school.

So Mayor Bloomberg appeared with a number of important city officials to report this incentive, including UFT President Randi Weingarten. There will be more advanced-level courses in these schools, as many as 100K each can buy, I suppose.

But the mayor shied away from adopting the most far-ranging changes recommended in the reports, like significantly reducing class sizes, creating a special middle school academy to train teachers about early adolescence, and removing police officers from city schools to create a more welcoming atmosphere.

Unfortunately, you can't significantly reduce class size at that price. And sadly, price is everything in Mayor Bloomberg's New York.

5 million bucks buys a lot of PR, though. While it goes a long way to sustain politicians, it will do far less for NYC's 1.1 million schoolkids. Had Mayor Bloomberg really wished to revolutionize education in this city, he wouldn't have reduced the CFE award by three-fourths through his monumental intransigence.

Cerf's Up!

Here's Chris Cerf, Deputy Chancellor of the NYC Department of Education, on teacher effectiveness:

But let's hope we are past the point of evaluating success based on "inputs"– how much we care,

Note that one of the first things Mr. Cerf rejects is how much teachers care about students. Personally, it's impossible for me to condone hiring a teacher who doesn't care about kids, nor would I want such a teacher in charge of my own kid. Teachers who don't like kids, in fact, are the very worst teachers there are.

Now caring alone does not guarantee a good teacher. Still, it's an absolute prerequisite, and does not bear belittling.

whether a particular program or approach appears compelling,

This is an ironic comment from one who represents the DoE, with a history of mandating programs and abiding no deviation from the programs it's prescribed.

how many students in a class feels like the appropriate number,

Note how Mr. Cerf mildly ridicules and completely repudiates lower class size. Money, the most important factor in this administration, dicates leaving class sizes as high as they are now, the highest in the state. This is a strong indication that this administration plans to continue making superficial and meaningless changes, to give the appearance of progress rather than actually make any.

how many degrees or certificates our educators possess, etc.

It's always fascinating to see people who clearly don't value education running education systems. I realize there's a lot of crap taught in higher education (as in other fields), but that ought to be corrected rather than flushing college down the toilet. Perhaps Mr. Cerf prefers less costly McTeachers , who can be used a few years, and then discarded.

Personally, my MA in Applied Linguistics was very valuable. I certainly know more about language acquisition than US Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, or indeed many of those who design the tests that quite inadequately test the English ability of my students (Kids who barely speak routinely pass New York City's LAB test).

Mr. Cerf then explains that the single most important factor in student achievement is the teacher. Having taught and studied for many years, I disagree. The single most important factor is the student's background. The teacher is simply the second best bet for that kid (a strong argument for quality teachers), and it's very tough to turn around a 17-year-old with a lifetime of bad habits. Experience is our best asset for dealing with these kids. You learn to approach kids, you make mistakes, and you get better. You get far more effective.

And it's much easier to control such a kid and stop the spread of such behavior in a class of 25 or less than one of 34 or more.

And you can indeed make progress, but that may entail getting the kid to sit down, to stop interrupting constantly, to be friendly, or at least tolerant of you and the other students. It's simply idiotic to discount such progress, and it's woefully ignorant to imagine one could significantly raise test scores without achieving all of the above. Regrettably, that does not occur with a snap of the fingers. And I haven't even gotten to home contact, let alone persuading the kid to study.

It's not all about "designing data systems," Mr. Cerf. When you discount time, education and discipline in learning to teach (or learning anything whatsoever), that represents something other than wisdom.

Children Fourth

Well, it's money first, of course. You need multi-billion dollar surpluses before you begin to deny a million-plus kids good teachers and reasonably-sized classes. And it's hard to stretch that cash when you're openly planning twice as many seats in sports stadiums than you are in public schools.

Next, of course, is PR. You're only as good as you look. Since the press takes a largely uncritical eye toward reform, you can pretty much change anything any way you wish and they'll hail it as genius. Forget about that good teacher-small class nonsense, which is expensive and not nearly as sexy as a reorganization. Or a second or third reorganization.

Third is to squeeze maximum time and effort from working people for as little compensation possible. That darn teachers' contract, despite all the givebacks, still says you have to pay veteran teachers a whole bunch of money (Never mind that it's still less than the surrounding suburbs). Plus, if those nasty teachers stick it out, you have to shell out for pensions. Why can't they eat dog food like the other seniors on social security (and jeez, when are we gonna get rid of that program)? How can you build sports stadiums and luxury boxes when you have to focus on such frivolities?

Now those charter schools are a great thing. No pensions, no veteran teachers, a lot of turnover, and more money for what's important. So let's keep closing schools and dumping charters in the spaces we create. Never mind good schools, like mine, operating at 250% capacity. If we keep shoveling kids into schools like that, we can close them too, and create even more charters. This way, we not only save money, but avoid any and all accountability for what goes on in the schools. They're privately run, so how the hell are we supposed to know what's going on?

After all that, if anything we do helps the kids, fine. We have no problem with that.

Thanks to Norm

You Take That Mush, and Eat It

Well, they had a meeting over at the Ross Charter School. That's the school run by billionaire Courtney Ross. As you may recall, Ms. Ross did not care for the digs first offered her by the city, so they decided to push her school into the NEST school, the one parents had spent hundreds of thousands of their own dollars fixing up. As those nasty NEST parents fought Ms. Ross in the press, of all places, there was no choice but to relocate them.

So the DoE placed them in their state-of-the-art facilities at Tweed. I often think of them in my trailer. After all, who knows if they could fit 34 kids in a state-of-the-art classroom? Who knows if Ross kids could do without AC, or computers, or soap in their bathrooms? You have to be a real man to put up with that sort of thing (even if you're a little girl).

You'll be happy to know that the Trustees (Ms. Ross was not in attendance) determined to keep class size at twenty.

While your classes may appear to still have 34 (or more), in actual fact they will only have 33.5. That's because of the great strides we've made in class size, and don't doubt that in five or ten years you'll only have 33.2.

And stop whining. In Mr. Bloomberg's New York, it's all about rugged individualism.

The New NYC Primer

See Joel talk.

Talk Joel, talk.

See Joel say a .6% class size reduction is good.

Good, Joel, good.

See Joel sit in a big air-conditioned room while classes of 34 children are in closets, trailers, half-rooms and bathrooms.

See Joel talk.

Talk, Joel, Talk.

See Patrick Sullivan question the status quo.

See Joel's cyborg suggest that genuine class-size reductions would force principals to hire sub-par teachers.

See the rubber stamps support Joel.

Support, stamps, support.

Thanks to Sol.

Something You Don't See Every Day

Deanna Hassell is up in arms because her son's being promoted to eighth grade. He was absent 55 times and managed to pull a 60% average (and this almost certainly indicates he has teachers who didn't see 55 absences as grounds for failure).

Ms. Hassell, however, is frustrated. Having told her son his evil ways would result in losing a year, she's been proven wrong by Mr. Bloomberg's new and improved system. Apparently, passing two tests at the end of the year (and not by much) is more important than getting decent grades or actually showing up for school.

A real concern for any would-be role-model is to ensure that there are consequences for the actions (or lack thereof) of those you'd presume to lead. By ensuring there are none, Mr. Bloomberg has challenged the authority of this mom.

As for Mr. Bloomberg's moral authority, he's promised to lower class size, and is now doing so, lowering average class size by 60% of one student per class. In this country, apparently, such achievements merit a run for the White House.

No wonder Ms. Hassell is frustrated.

I'm Shocked and Stunned

For over 30 years, New York City paid teachers the lowest wage in the area. They spanned the universe looking for teachers, Austria, Jamaica (not just Queens), Spain, Mars, scoured the ocean bottom for ex-pirates who could breathe, or give the appearance of breathing. They instituted 800 numbers and ran job fairs. They offered to pay the tuition of anyone who'd take a few courses and come on in.

When tenure time came around, they gave it to everyone. Whoopee! After all, if you didn't, you'd have to find someone else to do the job, and that person could be even worse than the one you already had. Shuffle 'em along, nothing to see here, move on. So what if the Spanish teacher can't speak Spanish. It's not his fault. He's licensed in phys. ed. Can't you see that whistle around his neck?

Up spake the mayor. The teachers stink. We need merit pay. We need vouchers. We need charters. We need teachers to work more days, teach more classes, teach classes that we can't call classes, we need to suspend them without pay based on unsubstantiated allegations.

The suburbs, which paid teachers well, didn't need any of those things.

Go figure.

For over 30 years, UFT leadership paid no attention to class size, 34 last I looked. A word here or there, a solemn shake of the head, a tsk, tsk. But not one solitary word in the union contract. Although the contract was the only thing keeping classes as low as they were, further reduction simply couldn't be done. How would they get raises (Never mind all those years they didn't get raises anyway)? Sometimes they were compensated with little contractual perks, but they tossed them all in the trash for less than cost of living in 2005.

Gee, now that we have none of those things left, wouldn't it have been better to go with class size? Oh well.

But wait. Here's this group, Class Size Matters, and they're getting mentioned in the press. Its leader is writing op-eds in the local papers. People like this class size thing. So they get on the bandwagon, but they don't oppose mayoral control, and they don't protest against reorganization schemes that hurt working teachers. After all, if they do things like that, they might not look moderate. Celebrities like Rod Paige might not write such nice things about them anymore.

Better to wait until they get a piece of legislation with more holes than Finlandia Swiss, and declare victory. By the time it's enacted, nobody will remember. Now, when class size is not actually reduced, they say "Heavens to Betsy, that's not nice at all."

The suburbs, which simply keep class sizes low, have no such drama going on.

Go figure.

Where Are They Now?

For months I've been making sarcastic references to the travesty of class size reduction which appears to be all that remains of the CFE lawsuit. I'm very sad to report that my comments were far closer to the truth than anyone could have suspected. The NY Times reports:

Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein announced yesterday how the city school system plans to spend $228 million in new education financing from the state, including allocating nearly half the money to reduce class sizes.

That money, $106 million, will allow the city to add 1,300 teachers to cut class sizes, and officials say they will concentrate on the most crowded classrooms with students most at risk of failure.

That sounds good, doesn't it? After all, a hundred million bucks is a lot of money, perhaps almost as much as they spend redoing Tweed so it could house a charter school run by a picky billionaire. So what effect will that money have?

...if the new money were distributed equally it would result in an average reduction of only 0.3 students per class in kindergarten through third grade; a reduction of 0.8 students in fourth through eighth grades; and a reduction of 0.6 students per class in high school.

This clearly means, for the overwhelming majority of kids, it will have no effect whatsoever. Furthermore, it appears you'll have to be extremely needy for this money to reach your classroom. The fact is, many schools are so overcrowded they couldn't reduce class sizes if they wanted to--there's simply no place else to put kids.

With schools hovering over 250% capacity, it's a disgrace that this mayor gets away with labeling what now amounts to a drop in the bucket as a major improvement. It's even worse that the UFT has chosen to function as his echo chamber, heralding nebulously worded regulations as brilliant achievements. Despite Ms. Weingarten's current criticism, the UFT loudly hailed the regulations that provided little or no oversight over a mayor who's basically passed the buck on this issue since day one.

I knew better, and she should have too.

It's predictable that optimal results do not occur in overcrowded, decrepit buildings with the largest class sizes in the state. What surprises me is the dearth of parents storming city hall with torches and pitchforks.

The Naked Truth

UFT Vice President Richard Farkas, on page 6 of the May 10th, 2007 edition of NY Teacher, wrote a thoughtful article about the plight of ATR teachers in NYC. Apparently, the Daily News bemoaned the fact that hundreds of teachers were working as substitutes, but receiving much higher pay than regular subs.

As of now, there is no working link to the article at the NY Teacher website.

Mr. Farkas explains that many of these teachers are tossed into the ATR pool through no fault of their own. When Mr. Bloomberg closes a school, they're left to their own devices, and cannot get a job without a principal's say-so. Though they try, it's no dice for many of these folks.

Now the UFT does provide job security for these folks, at least until contracts are renegotiated. That's a good thing.

Of course, it would be a far better thing if the UFT had not given up the UFT transfer plan, or seniority transfers. The UFT categorizes it as an urban myth that the new "free market" plan is not an improvement over the UFT plan, the one I used. They come to this conclusion because more people transferred under the new plan. Typically, they're unwilling to respond to a single question about how many teachers were refused positions.

However, hundreds of ATR teachers are stuck in limbo. The ones who've contacted me were understandably less than enthusiastic about the new free market plan.

Under the old system, there would be not hundreds, but precisely zero ATR teachers. And anytime the Daily News, or even the DoE, wants to do something about this, they can insist that new classes be created, old ones be reduced, and all those ATR teachers get back to work.

Unless they're just looking for something to complain about, of course.

Thanks to Schoolgal