E4E Sets Agenda at UFT Delegate Assembly--Screw Class Size, Ignore Poverty, and Hope for the Best

There are few things that upset me more than the pernicious influence of Bill Gates. Gates is why we have junk science as a regular part of our evaluation. Gates is why we moved toward small schools, which even he now admits was a bad idea. Gates is why the entire evaluation system was scrapped and why it's repainted and refurbished every year or two.

Of course leadership doesn't see this quite so clearly, and that's how Gates became a keynote speaker at an AFT Convention. Randi Weingarten seemed to embolden the troops as they ridiculed teachers who protested him. The Gates offshoot in the UFT is called Educators 4 Excellence, and it's run by a couple of newbies who gave up teaching almost immediately after forming it to do whatever it is they do on the Gates dime. If you want to know more about them, read Chalkbeat. E4E is their go to for quotes from teachers, or in the case of their leadership, ex-teachers.

Leadership got together with an E4E member and whipped up a resolution about incorporating innovative reactions to discipline as opposed to suspension. You see, a lot of people of color are suspended. A lot of homeless students are suspended. And in typical Gates fashion, we turn away from the root cause of of school issues, poverty.  Gates deems it too complicated to bother with, and focuses on school issues instead. Last night, we followed his lead and did the same. The fact that Gates has never done anything that actually worked is neither here nor there.

I'm all for using whatever works to solve issues. But the resolution we passed last night continues our longstanding policy of ignoring the issues and playing along with the reformies. This policy is precisely why teacher morale is so very abysmal. You don't really see that if you're spending all your time sitting around 52 Broadway.

I'm not E4E, and I wouldn't be in a million years. I'm merely one of half a dozen people elected by the high schools to represent them. Leadership's attitude toward the high schools, essentially, is go screw yourselves. I'm not particularly sure how they expect that to win members come Janus. For example, an issue near and dear to my heart is class size. While we alone can't address poverty, we could improve learning conditions for those who suffer from it. In stark contrast with the outlandish ideas Bill Gates pulls out of his wealthy ass, we know that more attention from teachers can actually help children.

I brought this up months ago. Howard Schoor said they'd be happy to meet with us. Despite reaching out multiple times, they were never happy enough to actually do it. A few weeks ago, at the Executive Board, we decided the hell with it and put up our resolution. We proposed that we push to follow the C4E law mandating smaller classes, as opposed to placing numbers in the contract.

UFT Unity chose to strike down the clauses in our class size resolution that focused on class size. The guy they sent up to propose the changes didn't appear to even understand what he was reading. They then voted, lockstep as always, as per loyalty oath, to remove those clauses. Why bother with voting your conscience, if you have one, or repping the members, as though they matter, when there are gigs to be had and conventions to attend?

Mulgrew was in a huge hurry to get through 7 resolutions in 20 minutes, and that's probably why he didn't even give me enough time to stand up when he was looking to debate the anti-suspension resolution. After I walked, they may have done the class size resolution. This one was last on the list, I believe. I'm not sure whether or not they considered it the least important, but I certainly did. Toothless as it was, it made no difference whatsoever. Maybe I'm going about things the wrong way. My approach was to run in a David and Goliath election for a seat I thought we had a shot at winning. When we won, I thought we'd be able to make a change.

One thing we do is stick member issues in their faces a few times each month. It's quite clear to me that Unity would sit around and do nothing but rubber stamp the leadership if we weren't there. Nonetheless, maybe running in democratic elections isn't the way to go if you want to influence leadership. Maybe, instead of fighting for rank and file teachers, we should just join E4E. Evidently, that's who leadership listens to these days.

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

Those were words spoken in the film The Fly, in which Jeff Goldblum transforms into a monster before our eyes. Of course, no one had ever seen anything like that before, not even in the movies.

It was pretty good advice. You don't want to face a human-sized fly. They aren't very sociable and haven't got the best of manners. They tend to destroy all creatures in their path without much regard for their welfare.

Thus, when Bill Gates bobbles up his head and talks about spending money, it seems like good advice. After all, who can forget Gates' initiative to create small schools, which he determined would be a panacea for education everywhere. Bloomberg and Klein embraced the initiative, and closed high schools all over the city. They replaced them with little academies, often staffed with newbies, and frequently lacking any union presence whatsoever. Thus a whole lot of "empowered" principals were able to do Any Damn Thing, contracts and welfare of students be damned.

Of course, Bill gave up on that, but Bloomberg didn't, and we were left with the consequences of just one of his baseless notions. Of course it wasn't only us, and after effects were felt everywhere he'd seeded a few bucks and traipsed out. That's what Bill does.

Who can forget going to the Delegate Assembly and hearing how wonderful it was that Bill was bringing Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) to the city and that we were lucky enough to participate? They came to my school, set up their cameras, and were unable to really tell us just what they were using them for. Soon thereafter, we saw Race to the Top, and a huge push to use junk science to rate and fire teachers. While Mulgrew and leadership sing the praises of this system, I get nothing but complaints about it. Of course, when you're sitting around an office all day, you don't necessarily see what's going on. Which brings us to this:

Good! Bill Gates will not abandon #publiced. Teachers need curriculum support & prof dev to build on the standards. https://t.co/7ESSQ8ANbD

— AFT (@AFTunion) October 21, 2017

This really leaves me wondering just how stupid we are. I use the word we with certain reservations. After all, I'm a UFT high school teacher. There are more of us than there are teachers in Philadelphia. Yet we have no democratically elected representation in AFT. That's a shame, because I know many, many high school teachers who'd have serious issues with trusting Gates. In fact, I'd wager that well-informed teachers at every level would have issues with him.

Here is how many teachers I know clamoring for professional development to meet the standards--zero. Here is how many teachers I know who want Gates to have a voice in such things--less than zero. That is, of course, until you start to count the patronage employees and loyalty oath signers in my union.  They believe whatever they're told to believe, whether or not it advances the interests of those they ostensibly represent, so long as they get to keep their $30 an hour gigs dispensing flawed advice at pension consultations. Or whatever.

Getting in bed with Bill Gates again? I don't know. After all the blithering nonsense he spouted, AFT foolishly allowed him to keynote their convention. They ridiculed the teachers who booed him. He thanked us a week later by going out and attacking teacher pensions. What the hell are they thinking over at AFT?

I can't answer that question. The only thing I know for sure is they aren't consulting working teachers before broadcasting such absolute balderdash.

Charter Logic

It's old news that NY State tends to give Eva Moskowitz a blank check for whatever. First of all, she doesn't need to follow no stinking rules for pre-K. Reformies make a big thing out of talking about "public charter schools," but the only time they're really public is when they've got their hands in your pockets. Once they have your money, they do whatever they damn please.

There's a whole lot of talk about mayoral control, and why or why not Bill de Blasio deserves it. I don't support mayoral control, as it's been an unmitigated disaster for city students and teachers. For years I attended PEP meetings where entire communities spoke in defense of their schools. Bloomberg's stooges sat there and played with their Blackberries as we wasted our breath. Meanwhile, the shell game of shuffling kids from one building to another and closing the schools they entered continued unabated.

When de Blasio was elected, I thought maybe mayoral control wouldn't be so bad. After all, he ran opposing charter schools. But when he denied the Moskowitz Monster increased space, the reformies brought suitcases of cash to Albany and bought themselves a law that NYC would have to pay rent for charters if it denied them space. So basically, mayoral control was absolute with a reformy mayor but modified when anyone not frothing at the mouth took the office.

In short, who needs it? Why does de Blasio even want it? He and Cuomo can complain about how irresponsible it is to have more democracy in school boards, and UFT leadership can join them in that chorus. But teachers and students are certainly not better off with mayoral control. Without it we may not have seen so many comprehensive high schools dismantled rather than improved. In fact, we wouldn't have seen such a weakening in union as schools were staffed with newbies justifiably afraid to stand up.

Meanwhile, the charters needed to get something. So what does Eva need? Evidently, the way to put children first is to get rid of all those inconvenient teacher certification requirements. Why should Eva's teachers have to bother learning how to write lesson plans when they just have them handed to them and do any damn thing they're told? After all, you're lucky if they last an entire school year, and with the incredible churn this makes for uniformity. Better to have someone following a recipe than actually creating a lesson. That's what you want from a role model for your children, isn't it? As long as they pass the tests?

Here's a fact you won't be reading in any of the NY papers--anyone who can't get a job working for the DOE gets one in a charter. Discontinued? No problem. Suspended without pay from the DOE? We welcome you with open arms. Now I'm not saying that people who are in these circumstances necessarily merit them (having seen seen the DOE go after people for no good reason once or twice) . But isn't it ironic that you read all this crap from Eva's astroturf buddies, "Families for Excellent Schools," about how awful we are, and how the DOE needs more power to get rid of us--yet when they do get rid of us, they're the first ones to grab us up and put us to work?

There is an effort to marginalize our profession. That's why outfits like TFA are happy to grab up Ivy League do-gooders and have them educate the bootless and unhorsed for a few years before they get Real Jobs administering Daddy's hedge fund, or whatever. That's why reformy Belweather, under the guise of helping us, unashamedly attacks our pensions with false claims. And that's a good part of why Moskowitz and her BFFs want to hire less qualified teachers even as they claim to be saving the children from the scourge of unionized career teachers.

The other part, of course, is that they don't want to deal with people full of independent thought. Better to grab them right out of college before they develop a voice. And I guess that's good if we're raising children to be complacent Walmart employees.

I want something better for our children, not only now but also when they grow up. That's why I support union and oppose charter schools. Trump and Obama and Duncan and Gates and all the folks who run schools can talk all day about charters and "choice." But the only choice I want for our kids is the choice to send them to the same kinds of schools to which our leaders send their own kids. I want schools with small class sizes, with ample supplies and decent facilities. I want schools that educate the whole child rather than test prep.

It needs to be about what our kids need, not just whatever Eva wants.

Rubric's Cube, or How Uniform Grading Policies Saved Western Civilization

Rubrics are perfect, or so you'd think if you heard the nonsense I do at meetings. And teachers have now lost quite a bit of discretion over how students are graded in city schools. There was a memo that went out from the chancellor, there was a meeting of the principals, and evidently this memo is tantamount to the Ten Commandments. Thou Shalt Tell Students Exactly What Basis Marking Has. Thou Shalt Not Have More than 49% in Subjective Measures.

I've always taken a holistic view of grading. Even as we entered an electronic age of grading, I was able to adjust percentages by counting some things more than others. For example, I am not unaware there is a whole lot of copying of homework. By assigning short answer homework a weight of 1, and written homework a weight of 2 or 3, I've been able to compensate a little for that. I also didn't think it was that bad that kids could earn high grades for simple completion. After all, if they failed tests and failed to participate, they simply didn't pass the class anyway.

My layout for grades has been 50% tests and quizzes, 25% participation, and 25% homework. I gave participation grades each semester. This has now been expressly prohibited by the geniuses at Tweed, who of course know better than those of us who fritter away our time actually teaching New York City's 1.1 million schoolchildren. So I will now have to give these grades more frequently and maybe write a rubric expressly explaining what it is for. This will result in more work for me and exactly the same grades. And frankly, short of posting Bill Gates-style perpetual video surveillance in the classroom, there will be no way to ascertain whether or not I am just making stuff up. (You know, like there's no way to determine whether or not supervisors make stuff up about the Danielson rubric.)

Our new department policy, if I recall correctly, is 50% tests, 10% quizzes, 20% participation and classwork, 15% graded homework, and 5% non-graded homework. This will help me not at all. This will help my students not at all. However, it will put uppity teachers like me in our place. How dare we presume to assess our students ourselves? Discretion is for professionals like Carmen Fariña, who made a brilliant success our of her school by hand picking all the students in a process nearly selective as that of Harvard. Me, I teach whoever they put in front of me. I try to do the best I can by them, my system worked fine, and now it's complicated for no good reason.

Why can't I make tests and quizzes one category and simply give tests more weight than quizzes? What if I think frequent quizzes are more important than tests and give me a better picture of where my kids are at any given point? Do I now need to test more frequently? And how can I do that when the school now says I can only test on certain days every week? And since supervisors are always quacking about formative assessment, why do tests now need to count for 60%? Isn't language, which I teach, largely about oral communication? Aren't there abundant tests in my students' home countries, don't they pass them and yet arrive here with little or no ability to communicate in English? Doesn't that argue that a test-based standard is not optimal? Do you judge the English ability of people you meet by how well they score on tests?

And let's go a little further into the woods now--do you think that I teach the same as everyone else? Do you want me to? If so, why not just stick a computer in front of the class? If not, why on earth would you think that assessing students subject to my voice is exactly the same as assessing students subject to another? Is it possible that I might, perish forbid, take the tack that actual day to day communication and survival are more important than how you do on the preposterous NYSESLAT exam about Hammurabi's Code? And if I actually do go the Hammurabi's Code route, how can you make sure the tests, quizzes, and whatever I give will make my students really know Hammurabi's Code?

Another argument I've heard is that teachers keep poor records and therefore need a tight rein so as to correct that. Let me tell you something--people who keep poor records do not need a more complicated and/ or convoluted grading system. If people keep poor records, under this system their records will get even worse. My nature is a little sloppy, but I've had college professors who sat on tests for 6-8 weeks, and then tested us on things without letting us know whether we understood the basis for them. I hated those teachers. For that reason, and also to cover my proverbial keester, I overcompensate. If I give a test, it's like a hot potato. I have to get it graded immediately, no matter what, and I almost always get it back to students the next day. I know if I don't do that they'll probably never be returned at all.

It's too bad that teacher discretion is given such short shrift. I very much believe teacher voice is a thing like writer voice, and that it varies teacher to teacher. Do some teachers work better for some kids than others? Yes, of course. But doesn't it benefit kids to learn how to deal with a variety of influences, even some they don't necessarily like?

Why does everything and everyone have to be exactly the same? How on earth does that help anyone, particularly in these times of "alternative truth?"

Chalkbeat Goes to Highest Bidder

Back before Chalkbeat went national, I used to write for it. That ended when I made outrageous assertions that Cathie Black, who was appointed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, represented billionaires. I also asserted that TFA courted people from Ivy colleges. Though these assertions were not even debatable, Chalkbeat had enough of my nonsense. This was kind of a relief because their editing process was like water torture.

Of course, even as I endured the third degree and found my voice edited beyond recognition, its resident E4E columnist voiced total nonsense with no restraint whatsoever. Reformy is as reformy does, I guess. I hear that person, who never managed to even get tenure as a teacher, got a nice gig somewhere as a school leader. Beats working, I guess.

Nonetheless they've moved past that, and no longer bother with pretense. Every time someone from E4E sneezes, they dutifully report it. If Eva Moskowitz stubs her toe, it's prominently featured. If UFT holds a rally, meh. Why bother reporting such trivialities? After all, UFT is only the largest teacher union in the country. It's not like they're Evan Stone and What's-Her-Name, the renowned former newbie teachers who run Gates-funded E4E.

Doubtless you're curious as to why this might be. Well, here's a small clue. Half a million bucks from the Gates Foundation. That's gotta keep a lot of lights on. Now Chalkbeat always insists that it's objective, but oh my gosh that's a lot of lettuce.

It's really disappointing Chalkbeat chose to go this route, but hey, it's the American Way. Chalkbeat NY is simply doing its part to Make America Great Again by practicing journalism and pretending that a huge donation from the reformiest man in the world is not a blatant conflict of interest.

That said, I can't vouch absolutely that Chalkbeat has gone to the highest bidder. I honestly don't know just how high Bill Gates is. But given his outrageous and outlandish ideas about education,  I can only conjecture that billionaires get the best drugs money can buy. I remember hearing somewhere that Jerry Lee Lewis said the only reason he survived while Elvis died was that he couldn't afford the drugs Elvis got.

I wonder how high I'd have to be to donate to Reformy Chalkbeat.

Chalkbeat NY Stands Up for the Gates-Funded Little Guy

I was pretty surprised to read that the NY Regents are passing policy without the input of the public. I mean, that's a pretty serious breach of basic democracy, isn't it? On the other hand, I've been to a whole lot of public hearings about schools and school closings, and I've spoken at them too. Several were at Jamaica High School, closed based on false statistics, according to this piece in Chalkbeat.

The thing about public hearings is this--yes, members of the public get to speak. In fact, at Jamaica and several other school closing hearings, I don't remember a single person getting up to speak in favor of school closings. I've also been to multiple meetings of the PEP under Bloomberg where the public was roundly ignored. In fact, Bloomberg fired anyone who contemplated voting against doing whatever they were told. While he didn't make them sign loyalty oaths, the effect was precisely the same.

State hearings are different, of course. When former NY Education Commissioner Reformy John King decided to explain to NY that Common Core was the best thing since sliced bread, he planned a series of public forums. However, after the public said in no uncertain terms they disagreed, he canceled them, saying they'd been taken over by "special interests." The special interests, of course, were parents and teachers. He may have implied they were controlled by the unions, but of course the union leadership actually supported the same nonsense he was espousing.

In fact, the only meeting King went to where he found support actually was taken over by special interests, to wit, Students First NY. Only one non-special interest actually got to speak, and that was my friend Katie Lapham. Other than that it was a pro-high-stakes testing party. Doubtless this was King's view of a worthy public forum, and given that it's taken until now for Chalkbeat to stand up to the lack of forums, I have to question whether it's theirs too.

The big change Chalkbeat points to is a link claiming that the Regents "wiped out" main elements of the teacher evaluation law. If you bother to follow the link, you learn that this is a reference to the fake moratorium on high stakes testing, which the article itself later admits to be limited to the use of Common Core testing in grades 3-8. The fact that junk science rules absolutely everywhere else, and will in fact be increased in importance next year, is evidently of no relevance whatsoever.

While Chalkbeat acknowledges these changes were urged on by Governor Cuomo's task force, it fails utterly to make connections as to what forced Cuomo to start a task force, let alone pretend he gives a crap about education or public school teachers. This, of course, was a massive opt-out, in which over 20% of New York's parents told their children not to sit for tests that Cuomo himself referred to as meaningless. But rather than speak to any of its leaders, Chalkbeat seeks comment from a Gates-funded group I've never heard of called Committee on Open Government.

After all, why go to Jeanette Deutermann, or Leonie Haimson, or Jia Lee, or Beth Dimino, or Katie Lapham, when you can get someone who's taken Gates money? And just to round out the forum, Chalkbeat goes to Reformy John King's successor, MaryEllen Elia, who's taken boatloads of Gates money and is therefore an expert on pretty much whatever.

Chalkbeat also makes the preposterous assertion that the Regents allowing children of special needs a route to graduation should have been more gradual because schools were prepping them for tests they didn't need. While that may be true, this did not remove their option of taking those tests. Announcing the allowance this year and enabling it, say, next year, would've helped absolutely no one. You don't need to go to a Gates-funded expert to figure that out.

While it may have been nice to have public hearings, the fact is the public has gotten up and spoken, and without that, none of these changes would have occurred. It's remarkable that Chalkbeat NY doesn't know that.

UFT Unity and Corporate Values

Leonie Haimson is one of the smartest people I know, and I did myself a disservice by failing to pay close enough attention to her comment:

How dare MORE fight for professional autonomy and against a corporate driven agenda! Who do you think you are?

I'd been looking at the relative truthiness of the ridiculous Unity leaflet and didn't immediately recognize the precise words Leonie was referencing:

MORE urged students to opt out of the state tests as a means of protecting the professional autonomy of educators and fighting against a corporate driven education system. 

Now think about that. That is meant as a criticism. Sure, it leads to their nonsensical and misleading assertions about a reward program. But take it on its face, and think about what it implies--precisely what Leonie said it did. Why on earth would any reasonably informed teacher not wish to fight a corporate driven education system? Anyone who's read Diane Ravitch's books knows how destructive and counter-productive such a system is. 

So you have to ask yourself--has UFT Unity leadership bothered to read Ravitch? If so, why would they criticize us? Actually there's a whole lot of evidence that UFT Unity actively supports a corporate driven education system. Do you remember when Mulgrew told the DA that it was necessary for us to participate in the Gates MET system, the one that judged "good" teaching by test scores? 

Does anyone remember the Bill Gates sponsored MET program being a precursor to Race to the Top, which mandated junk science ratings for teachers? Do we remember Michael Mulgrew going to Albany, then coming back and boasting of having helped write the APPR law that made junk science part of our ratings? Do we remember his telling the DA last Wednesday that the "matrix" would take authority away from principals? Doesn't that just mean the junk science is a higher percentage of our rating? Why not just make teacher ratings 100% based on crapshoots? After all, recent research suggests that VAM is never accurate, reliable or valid. So, while it's fairly amazing to see the President of the United Federation of Teachers boasting that we're increasing its value, it certainly helps explain UFT Unity's disgust with those of us who fight against a corporate driven education system. 

Ravitch suggests in Death and Life of the Great American School System that mayoral control is a corporate tool to bypass and subvert democracy. Yet UFT leadership has endorsed it twice, and under uber-reformy Michael Bloomberg to boot. The second time, after it had proven virtually toxic to working teachers and community schools, UFT leadership demanded a few changes, failed to get them, and went ahead and supported it anyway. Now Mulgrew says he supports it, but not as is. Nonetheless mayoral control bypasses community. Those of us who oppose a corporate driven education system oppose it completely. 

The icing on the top of the cake, of course, was when AFT invited Bill Gates to be the keynote at its convention. I've given a lot of thought to what Gates represents, and it certainly isn't working public school teachers or the kids we serve. In fact, shortly after visiting AFT, Gates criticized teacher pensions, calling them a free lunch. I don't know about you, but I've been working for 32 years, and I've earned each and every penny of that pension. Now, with our legislature working on ways to take it away, I'm not seeing the wisdom of cozying up to those who hate us and everything we stand for. Every time we give them something, they want more. We support Gates and he comes for our pensions. We support charters and they come for our tenure. Appeasement didn't work for Chamberlain then and doesn't work for Mulgrew now. 

As for professional autonomy, that's tough to achieve when you're judged by a checklist. Naturally that checklist is endorsed by UFT Unity, because they love them some Danielson. And yet Danielson herself is backing away on it. UFT Unity, whose leaders have never been judged by Danielson, can happily pretend that a rubric makes everything fair, or that all administrators make low inference notes rather than obeying the voices in their heads. But those of us on the ground know better.

Interestingly, when my friend Julie Cavanagh opposed the 2014 contract, UFT Unity's Leo Casey accused her of being against teacher empowerment. This was because the contract contained the PROSE initiative, so Leo made a handy strawman which ignored Julie's real objections and substituted words she'd never uttered. You know, Julie couldn't possibly be talking about the fact that the contract enabled two-tier due process, got us paid a decade after everyone else, or dumped the worst pattern I've ever seen on our brother and sister unionists (considerably worse than those for which we'd criticized DC37 in the past). No, she must have been criticizing PROSE, which was absolutely perfect even though it had never been tested, let alone utilized.

UFT Unity needs to fight dirty because it has no argument. I guess when everyone around you has signed a loyalty oath, you don't expect to ever need one. The only thing UFT Unity knows is that everything it does is right. When Bloomberg wants to use eight components of Danielson, it's an outrage. Unity fights for 22, which is ideal. When Unity pares it down to seven, it's a great victory. No more 22, which is awful. When we get artifacts added, it's a great victory. When we get them removed, it's also a great victory. And what they complain about is pretty much the only thing that's drawn Cuomo, at least ostensibly, out of his relentless assault on teachers.

The weird attribution of Opt Out to the MORE caucus by Unity. Insult to the parents' movement by @TeacherArthurG https://t.co/U4qtNuoXNO

— Carol Burris (@carolburris) June 17, 2016

Unity's arguments stem not from reason or practice, but rather from the outlandish assumption that everything it does is right. Therefore everything its opponents do must be wrong. The relative value or lack thereof of Unity positions means nothing. Their arguments come from backing themselves up no matter what, rather than from any basic value or standard. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to swap out positions as often as you or I change our socks. 

Now they've taken a stand against basic values set out by visionary education expert Diane Ravitch. I don't know about you, but I'm proud to stand with Ravitch, with activist parents, and with communities. Unity can continue to alienate all of us and paint itself into corners by making outlandish assertions simply to insult the most vibrant and thoughtful activist group in the UFT. 

But MORE/ New Action is just getting started. We will continue to speak the truth and Unity can squirm and spout its convoluted logic all it likes.

Or they can simply join us to improve our working conditions, which are precisely student learning conditions. Because whatever they choose, we aren't backing down and we aren't going away.   

Chalkbeat NY Misses Big Picture, Shows Outrageous Bias

I sent an email to the writer of this piece in Chalkbeat NY, but she has not seen fit to respond. Here's what I said:


Fascinating though it was to learn what Educators4Excellence thought about the UFT election, I saw no mention that MORE/ New Action, a group of real, non-Gates-funded working teachers, took the high school seats on the UFT Executive Board. 

This is significant to me because I won one of those seats, and ought to be significant to UFT members, who now have opposition voices at 52 Broadway.

Color me disappointed.

Sincerely,

Arthur Goldstein, UFT Chapter Leader/ ESL teacher
Francis Lewis High School

Of course it was important to note that Mulgrew got 76% of the vote, such as it was. They got that right. As you can see, I found other factors significant as well. Perhaps Chalkbeat did not notice. But it's kind of their job to notice, isn't it? I mean, they are reporters, at least ostensibly. In fairness, the Daily News didn't seem to notice either.

But Chalkbeat took it a step further by going to E4E for their opinion. Why anyone who doesn't actually take Gates money should care about their opinion is a mystery to me. But Chalkbeat values E4E opinion so much it once ran an piece about E4E garnering 100 signatures for something or other, perhaps more work for less pay. I can gather 100 signatures in half an hour, so when Chalkbeat promised to run a piece in which I did that, I sent them something in support of ESL students. Of course, I'm not E4E, so evidently keeping their word wasn't important, and they never bothered writing about that.

Another issue that bears looking at, another issue neglected by Chalkbeat, is the outrageously low turnout. While it's up from last time, we still have three out of four members failing to vote.  This should concern us all, and both Unity and MORE/ New Action should work to activate membership. Voting takes a moment, and perhaps a walk to a mailbox. If we can't rouse our members to do that, we are absolutely doing something wrong. Apathy ought not to win the election.

If you read this, you'll also note that among working teachers Jia Lee scored one third of the vote. That's very significant to me, at least. While Mulgrew can hop on a plane pretty much any time to go to Boca, or wherever UFT Florida is, Jia has to show up and work each day. She can't campaign to retirees.

But that's okay in a way. Retirees ought to have a voice on retiree matters, but ought not to be determining who negotiates contracts that do not affect them. To me, that's common sense.

Of course, they say common sense is the least common of all the senses.

At George Washington Campus, I Learn Opt Out NYC Needs Help

Last night I went to George Washington "Campus." Now there was a big sign in front of the school, etched in stone no less, that said George Washington High School, but that wasn't what it was. It was a "campus," because that's what I read it was.

Now I'm a little naive, I guess, from years of working in one of the few high schools that wasn't destroyed by Michael Bloomberg, so I kind of wondered what the hell George Washington Campus was. Was it a college? Was it a place where students hung out and sat on the lawn? Who knew?

In fact, I asked one of my colleagues, who used to be a cab driver what and where it was. I was trying to decide whether to take the train there or drive. He assured me if I drove I would find a space, so that's what I did. By a small miracle, a car pulled out of a space a block away from the "campus" as I was driving around. A friend I met there came in a cab, and her cab driver had trouble finding the place even though he had it on GPS. So I'm guessing the campus is not that famous.

Why am I talking about this place in a piece with "opt out" in the title? Good question. Our friend Michael Bloomberg thought the best way he could help schools get better was by closing them. Actually that's not precisely what he did. What he did was break them up into smaller schools, hiring four principals instead of just one, and having four sets of rules instead of one. This was better because Bill Gates said it was, until he decided it wasn't. But having already imposed his will on the NYC district, it stayed imposed, as do so many ideas that emanated from Bill Gates' abundant hind quarters.

The effect, of course, was to downplay any notion of community schools (thus downplaying any notion of community, valued by neither Gates nor Bloomberg). Parents now had "choice." They could go to the Academy of Basket Weaving, the Academy of Coffee Drinking, or the Academy of Doing Really Good Stuff. Of course by the time they got there the principals who envisioned basket weaving, coffee drinking, or doing good stuff were often gone, and it was Just Another School, or more likely Just Another Floor of a School, as there were those three other schools to contend with. (Unless of course Moskowitz got in, in which case it was A Renovated Space Better Than Your Space.)

Last night I learned that middle schools in NYC also are Schools of Choice. I don't know exactly why I learned this last night, because my friend Paul Rubin told me this months ago. I think I need to hear things more than once before they register with me, though. Anyway last night I heard from someone who told me that one of the schools her daughter might attend required test scores as a prerequisite. So if her family had decided to send their kid there, opt-out may not have been a good option.

I live in a little town in Long Island. My daughter went to our middle school, as did every public school student in our town. We are a community, and our community's kids go to our community's schools. If I opt my kid out, she goes to that school. If she scores high, low, or anywhere in between, she goes to that school.

That's not the case in NYC. And by requiring test scores from tests that ought not to even exist, these schools effectively deny the right of many students to opt out. So the question becomes, if the tests are not appropriate, and if even bought-and-paid-for tinhorn politicians like Andrew Cuomo say these tests ought not to count, why the hell are we counting them?

And the next question is, is there anything we can do about it? Opt-out brought us these mild, but not insane, modifications from Andrew Cuomo, even though he happily takes suitcases full of cash from the reformies. It also brought us Regents Chancellor Betty Rosa, who I went to hear at George Washington Campus last night. Dr. Rosa impressed me by being consistently Not Insane, even in one instance where I disagreed with her.

If we can have an educational leader who is Not Insane, is it possible we can work toward a middle school admission policy that is also Not Insane? Because for me, and I freely acknowledge I may be in the minority here, I feel that Not Insane is the way to go with educational policy.

Danielson Dials it Down

Charlotte Danielson, she of the Danielson Framework we all know and love, has penned a missive in Education Week. Danielson is concerned with the way teachers are rated. Let's get right to this jaw-dropping statement:

I'm deeply troubled by the transformation of teaching from a complex profession requiring nuanced judgment to the performance of certain behaviors that can be ticked off on a checklist.

Me too, actually. Maybe they don't have irony in Charlotte Danielson's neck of the woods, but she actually wrote the damn checklist and took a pile of money for having done so. I'm not altogether impressed by her crocodile tears years after the fact. If she's so troubled, she could always give the money back on principle and insist her framework not be used in this fashion.

My former co-blogger Arwen wrote a fabulous piece comparing the old process and the new one. It's quite clear which offers more value to a working teacher, and it isn't Danielson's model. A thoughtful and helpful supervisor could evaluate a lesson and offer valuable advice to working teachers. Of course, like many teachers, I would not take it for granted that supervisors are thoughtful or helpful. Danielson, of course, fails to consider that and why should she? It's not like she has any familiarity with or experience in the system she helped create, or even the largest school district in the country, the one that's using her system.

Where does Danielson go when she needs information? In her article she cites only only a few sources. One is TNTP, formerly The New Teacher Project, formed by Michelle Rhee, and another is Bill Gates, who funded a project called Measures of Effective Teaching, or MET. I've found TNTP to be less than thoughtful or credible, but of course I'm a New York City teacher, and unlike Danielson, I'm familiar with the system upon which she's inflicted her framework. I've also seen Gates MET program up close and personal, and found it less than impressive.

Charlotte Danielson doesn't look that closely at such things. She takes them at face value. Has she read Diane Ravitch? Who knows? What we do know is whose opinions she values. Those of us living through this reformy era know precisely what those opinions are worth.

In fact, the overwhelming majority of principals and supervisors have never taught under Danielson's system. Some may understand it, but there's really no evidence to suggest they do, or how many do. With Carmen Fariña openly advocating its use as a gotcha system, there's no reason to presume its validity. Fariña actually instructed some principal about a teacher she wants gone. Does any reasonable person think that teacher is going to get a fair observation, rubric or no rubric?

Full disclosure--there's a lot to like about the Danielson rubric, in my opinion. But it ought to be used as a growth tool rather than the gotcha tool it's become. That is, in fact, how Danielson first conceived it. For her to complain now, after having sold her idea for a whole lot of cash, that it's being misused, is the height of hypocrisy.

Again, if she really wants to impress us, let her give back the money she took and fight to withdraw the right of New York City to use her framework as a tool to fire teachers.

Staying Ahead of the Curve

I don't  know much about the writer of the quote at left. Oddly, I found it on Facebook, posted by the writer himself. I'm wary of people who quote themselves, but I love this sentiment. Look at Andrew Cuomo, with no moral center, doing any damn thing his contributors want. He only rolls it back when his popularity is swirling the bowl, and even then, not nearly enough to change much of anything. NYSUT and UFT leadership appear not to notice, and spend millions of our dues dollars on what appear to be pro-Cuomo commercials.

Thinking teachers and parents are paying close attention, though, and don't buy the "moratorium" nonsense that rolls back just a little bit of the test-based drek that passes for teacher evaluation in New York State. Our kids are still taking the same number of tests, including the ones that now seem to count for nothing whatsoever.

It's surreal that we live in a country where Bill Gates can dictate that test scores dictate the life and death of schools (not to mention the careers of teachers). Yet Gates sends his own kids to schools that aren't subject to his whims and caprices. Reformy folk like Gates, Rhee, King, Obama, Cuomo and Bloomberg opt their kids out of programs they impose by opening their wallets. When we do the same by declining to allow our children to take the tests, it's an outrage. The taxes we pay for our children's schools can be withheld, they say. Our children will suffer, they say, because we didn't conform. That's not taking care of those in their charge.

Of course, the folks above appear interested in taking care of only their own children. Otherwise, why would they impose a system they deem unfit for their own children on our kids? Of course there is hope for our kids. Opt-out is burgeoning in New York State, despite the druthers of test-happy zillionaires and the politicians crawling through their pockets. Parents and teachers aren't blindly accepting this nonsense anymore.

Classrooms don't need to be test-prep factories. Classrooms can be windows of kindness and encouragement in a tough world. A test-obsessed America makes that tougher each and every day. How can you be kind to children when you're gonna lose your job if they fail that test? It's an awkward balancing act, and every thinking teacher I know feels that pressure pretty much every moment.

Despite that, most of the kids know whether or not we care about them. Most of the kids know whether or not we have their interests at heart. It's harder for us, of course, because we're subject to all sorts of external pressures that have little to do with their welfare (not to mention ours). I can't imagine being a new teacher today, and trying not only to learn a very complex job, but concurrently dealing with all the red tape and nonsense that make actually doing the job a near impossible dream.

It's a balancing act, a juggling act, and it's really getting tougher to maneuver every single day. It's too bad we can't just do our jobs, help our students and give them that little bit of guidance they need. It's too bad these kids will lose so many people who could help them due to myopic to outright hostile leadership.

But we stand, we stay, and we care. How we broadcast that message over the Gates-propagated noise machine is just one more issue for us.

The Song of the Bigot

It turns out that undocumented immigrants are not the scourge Donald Trump says the are after all. In fact, over the last decade, there have been fewer and fewer of them. That need not bother the Donald, for whom objective reality has little or no meaning. He can still hate them, and his supporters appear more than ready to do so, particularly if they're Muslims. There aren't ever enough forums for people longing to hate, and now Donald's got Sarah Palin, you betcha, to urge them along with him. After all, you can't expect Ann Coulter to do that job all by herself.

In fact it's gotten to the point where so-called mainstream Republicans are trying to distance themselves from overt bigotry. David Brooks, evidently, is reveling in trying to blame Trump and Cruz for the natural evolution of the GOP. Brooks, evidently, thinks the old-fashioned unspoken kind was preferable. Brooks' column more or less sings to me:

Gimme that ol' time racism,
Gimme that ol' time racism,
Gimme that ol' time racism,
It's good enough for me. 

Let's keep our hatred under wraps, pretend it doesn't exist, use the same old code words we've been using since Nixon. Let's talk about law and order instead of actually calling out those groups we hate so much. After all, it really pisses us off to be working crap jobs and have huge medical expenses. In fact, even if the medical expenses have gone down somewhat due to Obamacare, let's keep calling him a Muslim and a traitor. Let's work, therefore, to repeal Obamacare even if it hasn't hurt anyone.

Sadly, the Democrats are not much better. Bigotry flourishes in an atmosphere of oppression, and we always need someone to blame for it. Obamacare, though far from perfect, was the best the President could get in a Congress with obstructionist Republicans who would rather accomplish nothing than help the American people. But Obama didn't take much of a stand for working people, and sat in his office while they were screwed in Wisconsin and all over the country. Now SCOTUS, at the behest of their corporate overlords, is about to deal a blow to public union from which it will be very tough to recover.

Hatred is easily redirected, as Orwell was fond of noting. If you're comfortable because you're white, because you're born in the United States, and you aren't a member of a currently embattled religion, don't get all that comfortable. Another group that repressive societies like to go after is teachers. After all, they're out there telling the truth, no matter how inconvenient that is. In fact, there are a whole lot of teachers right now failing to accept the ideas of Bill Gates. Well, not all of them, but Diane Ravitch, the American Statistical Association and a lot of teachers reject his value-added mantra as junk science.

Make no mistake, we are also a target. We have been, we will be, and things can always get worse. No bigot is a good bigot, and we support the likes of Trump and Cruz at our peril. When Hillary babble inanities about closing schools that aren't "above average," I'm not convinced she's a whole lot better. She's certainly not a whole lot better informed.

Michael Mulgrew Said "Thank You" for Longer Hours and No Seniority

In Buffalo, the new state receivership law is being tested. It's an important test, because teachers there are expected to work longer and dump seniority rules. This is in direct conflict with the Triborough Amendment to the Taylor Law, which states that if a new contract is not negotiated, old contract terms remain. The BTF will have to sue if it wishes to maintain its current contractual terms.

This is not anything Mulgrew didn't know. I watched him tell the Delegate Assembly that this new law, if passed, meant the receivers could pretty much do anything they wished. He told us all that, under receivership, collective bargaining agreements would be null and void.

As of now, the decision about whether to allow the hacks who run Buffalo schools to violate contracts is in the hands of MaryEllen Elia, hardly a voice of reason. Even now, her Gates-funded, budget busting program in Hillsborough is being dismantled. That does not appear to have diminished Elia's enthusiasm for junk science teacher rating. It's hard to imagine she will do the right thing here, but we will soon see.

There are reasons why kids do poorly on tests. Sometimes the tests are inappropriate. If you insist on giving millions of kids the same tests regardless of their background, that's gonna happen. Kids with learning disabilities are different from those without them. Kids who speak English are different from those who don't. And kids with parents who need to work 200 hours a week, each, may need a different sort of attention from those who actually see their parents every now and then.

But Bill Gates has declared he can't deal with poverty or its effects. He has therefore decided to focus only on standardized tests. And because Bill Gates druthers are more important than the needs of millions of American children, that's where we are today. What's truly shocking is that UFT President Michael Mulgrew has not only accepted the premise that kids must be judged by test scores, but that he's also bought into the notion that schools must be judged on them. He's repeatedly told the DA that we are going to fix the Renewal schools and show it can be done. Unfortunately, the only metric for this "fix" is higher test scores. So far, the only way I've seen that raises test scores is choosing which students take the tests. That's not helping kids, and that's not improving education.

Worst of all, Mulgrew actually thanked the Heavy Hearts Assembly for passing the bill that enabled receivership. That is insane, and I find insanity a very poor quality in a leader. That's why I'm glad I have a choice this spring. I've going to vote for Jia Lee, the candidate who is not insane, for President of the United Federation of Teachers.

If you agree with me that it's time to have a President who is not insane, you'll vote for Jia too.

Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is MaryEllen Elia

 I was pretty shocked when NY State Regents unanimously nominated MaryEllen Elia to be NY State Commissioner of Education. For one thing, I had heard Michael Mulgrew speak of the great hope he had in the Regents to modify the new and draconian APPR law. Given that, I was surprised they'd select someone with such enthusiasm for testing, junk science, and all things reformy. It makes me really wonder exactly how much interest (if any) the Regents have in doing the right thing.

It's true Elia gave lip service to being a teacher, and to seeing herself as a teacher. But every teacher I know abhors the new system that judges us, now even moreso, on student tests. It's not even a secret anymore that the state takes these tests and manipulates the cut scores so they show whatever it is the state feels like proving that week. The only teachers I know of who support this stuff at all are those in Educators 4 Excellence, you know, the ones who take Gates money just like Elia did in Florida. And while their leaders, Evan Stone and Whoever the Other One Is, were briefly teachers, they aren't anymore.

And that's exactly who Elia went to speak to yesterday. And let's be clear--that is a political statement. If Elia wanted to speak to teachers, she could have tried for an audience with NYSUT or UFT. There's certainly precedent for reformies getting audiences with unions, like Gates addressing the AFT. (When that happened, Randi Weingarten seemed to encourage the troops in ridiculing the protesters. Gates thanked AFT by trashing teacher pensions just days later.)

.@MaryEllenElia says she is a commissioner who will never bash teachers #e4eNY

— Ben Chapman (@NYDNBenChapman) August 20, 2015

That's great to hear. I hate it when politicians, op-eds and editorial boards bash teachers. I'm acutely aware of it because it happens almost every single day. Teachers don't want to be accountable because they object to having their jobs dependent on junk science. Teachers shouldn't talk to one another in teacher lounges. Teacher unions should be punched in the face.

Of course, the clever politicians who bash us often differentiate between teachers and teacher unions. "I would never bash teachers. I love teachers. My mother was a teacher. Yes, I had a mother." They blather on as though only Satanists are in teacher unions, and they only hate Satan. I suppose someone should inform those pols that teachers are in teacher unions, and that when they punch unions in the face they punch us in the face. Of course Elia hasn't yet broadcasted her intention to punch teacher unions in the face. Instead, she came up with this little gem:

.@MaryEllenElia says any teacher who encourages opt-out is unethical #e4eNY

— Ben Chapman (@NYDNBenChapman) August 20, 2015

Now, here's the thing about stereotypes--they are always hurtful, and they are always wrong. It doesn't even matter if they're positive. And make no mistake, Elia's statement is not positive at all. She's calling me and thousands of my brothers and sisters unethical. She's saying Diane Ravitch, Leonie Haimson, Carol Burris, Jeanette Deuterman, Beth Dimino and Jia Lee are promoting evil. And yet it's Elia herself who takes a salary several times that of any working teacher to carry out an agenda based on junk science.

It's Elia who supports giving every child in New York the same test. It doesn't matter to Elia if that results in a developmentally inappropriate curriculum. If the kids have learning disabilities, if they don't speak English, if they're malnourished, if their parents both work 200 hours a week, if they live in rotating shelters, too bad for them. The State has spoken.

Just because you're selective about the group of teachers you bash, you're still a teacher-basher. And with all due respect, I've seen absolutely no evidence that MaryEllen Elia is in any position whatsoever to lecture anyone about ethics.

Frank Bruni Waxes Poetic on the Teacher Shortage

It must be great to be Frank Bruni. One day you're a food columnist, and the next you're an education expert. Today Frank is all upset about the teacher shortage. After all, his own paper wrote a big story about it. Nowhere did they bother acknowledging that teachers are pretty much under nationwide assault, but hey, why sweat the details when you're writing for the Paper of Record? The fact that they print the column should be good enough for anyone.

As it happens, Bruni himself is a prominent teacher basher. He believes passionately in junk science rating of teachers and can't be bothered to do the most fundamental research. Who cares if the American Statistical Association says teachers change test scores by a factor of 1-14%? What's the big deal if they say use of high stakes evaluation is counter-productive? He knows some guy who likes it and that should be good enough for anyone. Bruni does other important work, like spitting out press releases for Joel Klein's latest book.

But now he's amazed no one wants to be a teacher. Naturally, being a New York Times reporter who has access to pretty much anyone, he goes right to the source, the very best representative of teachers he can muster:

Teachers crave better opportunities for career growth. Evan Stone, one of the chief executives of Educators 4 Excellence, which represents about 17,000 teachers nationwide, called for “career ladders for teachers to move into specialist roles, master-teacher roles.”

“They’re worried that they’re going to be doing the same thing on Day 1 as they’ll be doing 30 years in,” he told me.

This is what Frank Bruni interprets as vision. Let's make one thing clear--Evan Stone is not a teacher. He was for a few excruciating and clearly unrewarding years. But once he learned all he could from that dead end job, he started this glitzy new E4E thing and got his hands on Gates money. Now he gets to make pronouncements to distinguished NY Times reporters like Bruni. Meanwhile, the rest of us are stuck actually teaching children. Naturally Bruni doesn't ask us what we think. After all, given our obvious lack of ambition, what could we possibly know?

Bruni has gala luncheons to attend, fois gras to critique, and he can't be bothered.  Still just because Evan Stone's E4E got 17, 000 people to sign papers in exchange for free drinks doesn't mean they actually represent those people. I happen to know, for example, a UFT official who signed the paper just to see what was going on at one of those meetings.

In fact, there's no evidence to indicate anything E4E says is based on anything beyond Bill Gates's druthers. Their support for junk science and calls to actually worsen already tough working conditions border on lunacy. Their acceptance of reformy money and embrace of a reformy agenda mean they do NOT represent working teachers.

Here's something no one told Frank Bruni--teachers who want to "get out of the classroom" make the very worst educational leaders there are. How many of us have worked under supervisors who don't love our job, who can't do our job, but who don't hesitate to tell us all the ways we do our job wrong? How many of us know the, "Do as I say, not as I do." mantra well enough it might be tattooed on our foreheads?

Yes, Frank Bruni, there is a teacher shortage. And yes, there are reasons for it. Some reasons are your BFFs like Joel Klein, Campbell Brown, and Gates-funded astroturf groups like E4E. They spout nonsense-based corporate ideas designed to destroy public education and union. You talk to them and can't be bothered with us.

Another big reason is mainstream media, which hires people like you. When people read nonsense like the stuff you write, they may not know that fundamental research is something you consider beyond the pale. They may not be aware that your piece does not entail talking to working teachers. They may think we don't love our jobs and we don't love working with and helping children. They may not know that merit pay, which E4E is pushing in one form or another, has been around for 100 years and has never worked. They may even think that Evan Stone knows what he's talking about.

But he doesn't, Frank. And neither do you. That's why you're a big part of the problem.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

For years I've felt the NYT has provided us with the very worst education reporting in NY. There have been exceptions, like Michael Winerip, but in general they seem way too highfalutin' to bother with what's actually happening in NY. I first noticed this years ago, when some genius reporter criticized us for the February break, saying the city didn't want it. Actually the city wanted non-attendance days for kids and us in school, and had the reporter bothered to speak with a single teacher to prepare his article, he'd have known that.

Occasionally, though, there's a ray of sunlight in the morass of nonsense and reforminess. In fact, this particular ray of sunlight focuses on a truth many teachers know--that it is income and not teacher quality that is a general predictor of standardized test scores. Not only that, but the gap has widened considerably since Ronald Reagan became union-buster in chief. In fact, this disparity affects not only test scores:

These widening disparities are not confined to academic outcomes: new research by the Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam and his colleagues shows that the rich-poor gaps in student participation in sports, extracurricular activities, volunteer work and church attendance have grown sharply as well.

So if we're really serious about helping kids, perhaps we ought to address poverty and income disparity. Maybe we should, you know, help struggling families rather than just spouting the same old reformy talking points. Maybe the fact that, after decades of reforminess, we still have all these so-called failing schools indicates that we ought to try something new. Instead, we hire MaryEllen Elia, who walks around pretending to listen to people and promises more of the same anyway.

On the other hand, there's this article marveling at the impending teacher shortage. They're looking everywhere, they're taking anyone, they're lowering standards and you don't even have to bother with credentials, you know, like a degree. Learn as you earn. Who cares?

It is mind-boggling to me that a reporter for the paper of record fails to account for the reforminess that's led to an unprecedented attack on teachers. I see this ignorance amplified over at Eduwonk. Nothing to see here, it's the economy. All this reformy stuff we're doing has no effect whatsoever.

They're wrong, of course. Teachers are being judged by test scores. There is no reliable research to suggest that standardized test scores reflect teacher quality. In fact, the American Statistical Association suggests teachers have precious little to do with these scores. But what's a reformy to do? Bill Gates has invested a gazillion dollars in a Measures of Effective Teaching study. UFT leadership supported it, told us how important our participation was, but its result was a nation of teachers judged by junk science.

There are few things I find more inspiring than seeing my former students become teachers. One of them is now teaching math in my school, and I could not be prouder. I love this job and it's brought me great gratification. I can't promise, though, that it will be the same for my students. We're on the third new evaluation program in three years, and I see no evidence of improvement. Teacher morale is the lowest I've seen in 30 years, bar none.

We are regularly trashed in the media. NYT's Frank Bruni likens us to pigs at a trough as his BFF Campbell Brown attacks our tenure. (In fairness, Bruni's job entails coming up with 800 words not once, but TWICE a week, so who can find time to do fundamental research?) SCOTUS is now looking to break our union.

We are standing against a wall with targets on our backs. The ignorance of professional reporters who don't know that is simply mind-boggling. If they're purposely wearing blinders, that's even worse. Either way, it is them, not us, who are incompetent.

Of course, it's easier to forget about the truth and blame teachers. Bill Gates said poverty was too tough to deal with, so he, along with the happy NYT reporter, ignores it and goes on his merry way. And you can't fire parents or children, so why not just blame the teachers and whistle a happy tune?

This is the new paradigm in education. We need to change it. And if leadership just keeps going along to get along, we need to change them too.

Double Whammy

For years we've had the APPR system hanging over our heads. Gates thought it was a swell idea, and the UFT participated in the MET program that enabled it all over these United States. But since VAM is based on nothing resembling science and has no validity whatsoever, the geniuses who enabled it decided to balance it with actual ratings from supervisors. Since VAM is pretty much a crap toss, and pretty much rates students rather than teaching, it's supposed to be objective. The subjective balance is the supervisor rating.

Of course, if your supervisor has an agenda counter to yours, hates you and everything you stand for, or gets peeved when you report her for grade-fixing, that part of your rating could end up swirling the bathroom bowl. In fact, the DOE recognized just such a case and has demanded that several poor ratings be reversed.

When the junk science APPR first came into effect, I complained loudly at a UFT meeting that it was nonsense. A district rep. I do not know get very angry with me. He said that if the principal gave him a bad rating, that maybe the test scores would bring his rating up. (That's unlikely since district reps teach only one class and are not included in junk science ratings.) I did not bother stating the obvious--that if his principal gave him a good rating, that maybe the scores would bring it down. The argument, though, endorsed a crap shoot for a high-stakes teacher rating. A colleague remarked it was akin to telling people to smoke cigarettes, because maybe they wouldn't get cancer.

But there is, in fact, a cancer in our system, and it is the high-stakes testing system Gates pushed, and we, the UFT and NYSUT, swallowed hook, line and sinker. It claimed another fatality last week but the casualties are too numerous to count, and are everywhere. Neither teachers nor supervisors ought to be in a position where they need to falsify test scores to satisfy nonsensical quotas.

But as long as we are, not only are the test scores unreliable, but the supervisor ratings are as well. For example, I am clearly a terrible teacher. My students, having arrived from every corner of the world yesterday, last week, or six months ago, don't even speak English. There is no question whatsoever but that they will fail every single English-based test they attempt. And since the tests have nothing whatsoever to do with the basic English I teach, there is no way I can ever get a good rating.

So what is my supervisor to do? If I get a good rating, if she thinks I'm a good teacher, she must be wrong because my kids failed the tests. If she gives me a bad rating, how are we to know she isn't just covering her own behind so as to shirk responsibility for the miserable test scores of my students?

Mulgrew defended the system to the DA, suggesting that those of us who criticized it, like me, like Diane Ravitch, were simple-minded and contrary, fretting that the sky was falling. After all, only a small percentage of us got poor ratings. There were a couple of points he forgot, though. One, of course, was the high stakes attached and that those with poor ratings were looking at job loss. Another was the consequence of the paucity of poor ratings, to wit, the draconian Cuomo/ Heavy Hearts plan facing the entire state. It was rolled out for the express purpose of firing more teachers, and if it fails it's likely as not we'll see an even worse plan.

The entire system stinks. The test scores are meaningless as to actual teacher quality, and the supervisors are under so much pressure to produce test scores that they simply cannot be objective. Can you imagine being a supervisor in a school with poor test scores and fighting for the careers of teachers whose kids got them? It would be like wearing a big red "Kick me" sign. Or, more likely a "Fire me" sign.

Rubrics most certainly do not guarantee objectivity, not for supervisors, not for teachers, and especially not for kids. It's insane to take all kids, no matter what learning disability, no matter what home environment, no matter whether or not they know English, and say, "You're 12 years old, and therefore must know A, B, and C." It's even more insane to say if the kids don't know A, B, and C that their teachers are incompetent and must be fired.

And yet now, in 2015, that is precisely where we find ourselves.

The Perks of Privilege

It seems every time I pick up the NY Post, some principal is committing an atrocity. The latest is from PS 120 in Flushing, which ran a carnival during school hours last week. That sounds nice, doesn't it? Except the price for this carnival was ten bucks, and if you didn't pay, you didn't get in. So 90% of the kids were outside having big fun while the rest sat in the auditorium watching a movie.

If I were to offer extra credit to Mary but not John, and John's Dad called the principal, I could be looking a disciplinary action. Maybe Mary has a 64 average and John has a 94 average. It doesn't matter. I don't get to pick and choose, especially if some parent complains. Of course I'm not a principal.

If I were principal, I could drive around in my BMW and wear a fur coat while the school crumbles around me. Or I could have sex with an AP on my desk. I could give teachers ratings for lessons I'd never seen, even on days when said teachers weren't even in the building. Maybe I'd get my hand slapped. Maybe they'd ship me off to some office where I could count paper clips. Who knows?

There's no Campbell Brown going after principals. Students First and Families for Excellent Schools and all the other groups that are one and the same don't run commercials about them. But you have to ask yourself--if indeed there is a zombie-like plague of bad teachers, who hired them? Who granted them all tenure? Who failed to observe them and write them up for their myriad sins? Well, it wasn't me.

So I guess I'm a little jealous. Except for these occasional tidbits in the Post, I feel like I'm Public Enemy Number  One. Apparently what I do each and every day is destroy the lives of children, and the only remedy is to place them in Moskowitz Academies where they will pee their pants, fill in endless bubbles, and wear t-shirts that say, "Don't Steal Possible." Me, I've got bags full of Possible, all stolen from hapless children.

 I had no idea that was what I was doing until I started watching the commercials. Apparently the best way to help children now is to give tremendous tax credits to private schools and break the Public Monopoly that Governor Cuomo finds so egregious. I'm a little curious how they're a monopoly since there are private schools all over the country. Otherwise, how could Governor Cuomo, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, John King, Michelle Rhee and Barack Obama send their children to them?

The bill gives huge tax credits to billionaires, but a stinking 500 bucks to families making less than 60K if they want to send their kids to private schools. That way, they won't be hobnobbing with the children of the Important People mentioned above. It's Montessori for them and Common Core for you.

I can't believe principals get away with such nonsense. But it's even harder for me to believe any sentient being thinks Andrew Cuomo is a Democrat.

Bonus perk: principal spends 145K of public funds and keeps job.

Could Anything Good Ever Come from the Crappy Ideas of Ed. "Reform"?

A student first informed me of this story--which turns out to be true.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation financed a successful program to convert poop to drinkable water.  Using a machine called the omniprocessor, high levels of heat are applied during a purification process, seemingly defying common sense, but apparently not science.  The result:  fresh water made from shit.  I give Bill Gates credit.  Not only did he finance this project, but, he, himself, drank some cups of it.  Glug, glug!

The analogies to ed. "reform" are only natural.  The Gates Foundation has had a battery of crappy ed.-"reform" ideas, including smaller schools, high-stakes tests aligned to the Core, linked strongly to teacher evaluations.  It seems schools have been forced to drink crap for a decade or more now.

If Gates would personally "drink" some of this shit, perhaps serving as a teacher in a classroom for a few years with the guillotine of ed. "reform" hanging over his head, he might realize that much faster that these are just more failed ideas--to add to his long list.

So much for turning public education into Stanley-Kaplanesque test prep.  So much for smashing student self-esteem at the earliest ages.  So much for killing kids with tests politically engineered to let us know we are all failures.  So much for disregarding the worthy aspects of a well-rounded education.  So much for thinking you can end poverty and social ills by blaming teachers.  Will "better" tests help Baltimore?

Too bad his seemingly limitless wealth allows him the luxury of experimenting on our children and potentially making the lives of some intensely crappy.   Too bad he really believes this shit!

Do "Failing" Schools Mean Failing Teachers?

There's an interesting point of view in the Daily News. Apparently, the issue with the "Renewal" schools in New York City is that they have an inordinate percentage of "lower quality" teachers. This assumption, of course, is based on the research of reformy Chalkbeat NY, nee Gotham Schools, which finds it noteworthy when E4E can muster 100 signatures on a petition demanding more work for less pay, but can't be bothered to cover a massive demonstration against Cuomo's policies.

First, let's look at the definition of a "lower quality" teachers. This particular person is someone who scores developing or ineffective on a rating system even Andrew Cuomo labels "baloney" (notwithstanding his enthusiastic support for it at its inception).  Unlike Cuomo, those of us who actually believe in science and research called it junk science from the start. That includes people like Diane Ravitch. In fact, even Randi Weingarten, who ran around the country helping to negotiate crap evaluation systems eventually admitted "VAM is a sham."

These systems are all a result of the Gates MET study, a convoluted piece of crap that set out to prove yet another theory emanating from Mr. Gates' fruitful hind quarters--that we need to replicate whatever teachers do in classrooms in which students receive high test grades. This, of course, is the central theory behind reforminess. Public schools, Gates theorizes, are no good because kids don't score well enough on standardized tests.

The fact is, though, that every so-called failing school contains high concentrations of high-needs students. There are kids who live in poverty, kids who have special needs and kids who don't speak English. And please, before some preachy moron gets the notion I'm giving up on those kids, the fact is I spend every day of my working life trying to help those kids. And what my kids need is help learning English, not help passing a test.

I spent a few years teaching ELLs how to pass a test. Some genius in Albany declared that it didn't matter whether or not kids knew English, and in order to graduate high school they needed to pass the English Regents exam anyway. I was drafted. I made kids pass and didn't teach them fundamentals of English language because it wasn't necessary for the test. Kids who passed may have assumed it meant they knew English, but I can assure you they did not. It meant they knew a highly formulaic four paragraph essay good for nothing but that version of the test, and it meant they knew how to look for correct A, B, C, D answers in Regents texts. It meant absolutely nothing more.

I was happy for kids who passed, but I did not fool myself for a moment that it was because I was a great teacher. It was because I made them write until their hands fell off. It was because I made them rewrite everything, no matter how tedious, and it was because I read and critiqued every word they wrote. It was no fun, neither the kids nor I liked it, but they tended to pass the stupid test in higher numbers than they would have without it. Of course their actual writing was no better than before, and they surely failed college writing tests in droves.

Here's the thing--if you are the principal, charged with running a so-called failing school, are you gonna say yes, the school is failing, and all the teachers are excellent. It is therefore an anomaly, a veritable miracle of nature. Are you gonna say the students are no good? Are you gonna tell the truth, that you in fact have high concentrations of high needs kids and there is really nothing you can do about it? Is that gonna get you that desk job at Tweed that will afford you the much-needed time to work on your oragami? Those paper airplanes are not gonna fold themselves, after all.

Of course not. You're gonna observe the teachers and blame them. It's remarkable, in fact, that the negative observations are a mere 20%. Now, you can accept the observation system as the Ten Commandments and assume principals in troubled schools have no self-interest whatsoever.

Or, you can face the actual issue of rampant poverty in NYC and the United States. You can face the fact that non-English speakers tend to settle in cities, where there is work. You can face the fact that most of them cannot, in fact, afford to live in Scarsdale. You can face the fact that the necessity of working 200 hours a week to support one's self and family is not conducive to thoughtful and thorough parenting.

Or, you can accept Bill Gates' formulaic solutions, which are to education as my ELLs' four paragraph compositions are to writing. That is what much of the public does, and that is what many editorials, up to and including those of the NY Times, encourage.

It's on us to get the truth out, and we have our work cut out for us.