At the Moskowitz Academy, Charity Begins at Home

Eva Moskowitz has made a career of telling the world how UFT teachers suck. We devote our lives to helping the city's children and that's an unpardonable crime. Only she has the secret sauce that leads to an amazing 20% of her students graduating over at the Moskowitz Academy. You might say, but Eva, we graduate that many on a very bad year. That doesn't matter because there are no excuses over in Moskowitz World. I mean no excuses for us.

And we know that she's right. Otherwise, why would hedge funders be taking suitcases of cash and buying off easy targets like Andrew Cuomo? Why would the last Democratic president have hired Arne Duncan to push charter schools and whatever programs flowed from the ample posterior of Bill Gates? Why would we all be bribed to Race to the Top and be judged via junk science? They must be right because they have all that money. Who cares if research fails to support their ideas, or if the American Statistical Association rates them as nonsense?

Now some people might say that the incredible churn of charter teachers is an issue. How can you have institutional memory when year after year you lose most of your people? How do kids feel coming year after year and seeing the teachers they may well love gone and never coming back? Is that how you do role modeling? None of that is important. Otherwise why would all those people with all that money keep supporting Eva?

Furthermore, Moskowitz Academies have high standards. No excuses. If you screw up, be prepared to suffer. Eva Moskowitz doesn't pay herself almost a million dollars a year to put up with your nonsense. They hire only the best teachers charter pay and working conditions can provide. The fact that they can't hold on to the overwhelming majority of them is only a testament to the selfishness of teachers. They aren't focused on the test scores because they want to have lives. Some of them want to get married and even have children.

But in Moskowitz World, there are no excuses. Make the kids pass the tests. No excuses and no time for that nonsense. Except for Eva, of course, who is in fact married with children. I wasn't actually aware she had children until I read Chalkbeat, the publication that covers All Things Moskowitz All the Time. It turns out that Eva has hired her 19-year-old son to teach economics.

A lot of people shook their heads in wonder when Eva and her BFFs wanted charters to certify their own teachers. I mean, shouldn't teachers graduate from college? In Moskowitz World, that seems not to be a prerequisite. This is particularly true if you happen to be Son of Moskowitz. Here's yet another innovation from Moskowitz World:

Michaud says Culver Moskowitz makes minimum wage, as he did last year as an intern at Success Academy Harlem East, a middle school. Santiago, Venner, and a former student said he taught eighth-grade math classes there last year.

Wow. Teachers making minimum wage. Betsy DeVos is probably rolling over in her coffin this morning wondering why she didn't think of that. And then there's that other tidbit--while reformy Chalkbeat is all over Moskowitz Junior teaching economics, this isn't the first time they've set him up as a teacher. Maybe they think teaching math while being totally unqualified doesn't merit mention, but teaching economics is beyond the pale.

Personally, I'd question the wisdom of having an economics instructor who worked for minimum wage. I see that as an extremely poor role model--unless, of course, your goal is to have students working for minimum wage. I have to think that's pretty much okay with the reformies. Otherwise, why would the Walmart Family be sinking so much cash into reforminess? If they were interested in helping working people, they could always pay their employees more, as opposed to fighting union tooth and nail and imposing notoriously awful working conditions.

Here's the truth--as reformies like Moskowitz make careers out of trashing us for our supposed low standards, our standards are consistently higher than hers. We take every kid who walks into our buildings. If they have issues, we don't place them on "got to go" lists. We don't make children do test prep until they pee themselves, and any teacher who did would be up on charges.

We also have standards for teachers. We insist they are certified. We insist that they've graduated college. Also, we don't pay them minimum wage. We don't wave our magic wands and make our children into teachers. In fact, we frown on nepotism.

Eva's standards and values seem to waver with her personal convenience. That's hardly what I'd call a leader.

No Special Ed. for You, Says Eva Moskowitz

There's a pretty amazing story over at the NYC Parents Blog. Evidently Eva Moskowitz deems it too difficult to find certified Special Education teachers, so she's telling special ed. students and their parents they can either piss off or be left back. How inconvenient it must be for Eva to follow laws and do her job. After all, she works for less than a million bucks a year and you can hardly buy a decent house in Queens for that anymore. From the NYC Parents Blog:

In June, I was contacted by two parents whose fifth-grade special needs children were in a self-contained 12-1-1 class at Success Academy Bed Stuy middle school. They told me how the principal, Rishabh Agarwal, had brought them individually into his office and told them that the school was getting rid of their 12-1-1 self-contained program, because the school didn’t know how to educate kids with special needs and it was too difficult to find a certified special education teacher. 

He said their only two choices were to agree to have their kids held back in a regular 5^th grade class or transfer them to a different school outside the Success charter network of 46 schools.

Can you imagine such a thing occurring at a public school? If your school did that, you wouldn't be reading about it on Leonie Haimson's blog. It would be all over the tabloids and your principal would be scrambling to keep her worthless ass at the job. Sorry, it's just too inconvenient for us to serve your kid. We can't be bothered looking for a teacher. Can you imagine that from a public school leader?

Of course it isn't from a public school leader, but rather from the self-appointed Great Savior of New York City's children, Eva Moskowitz herself. They make movies about charter schools, you know. All the reformies go out and sing their praises. They will finally help all the children that the evil public schools are failing. It's about time.

But as we learn more an more about them, what we find is that they cherry pick their students. Along the way, they lose most of those with whom they start out. They fully expect us to ignore such things and claim that 100% of those who graduate go to college. Sometimes they all go to four-year colleges. And that's fine, but it's no miracle at all, especially when you've lost the majority of your kids to the public school system, you know, the one that fails everyone because it's full of horrible indifferent teachers like yours truly.

Here we find a case of their blatantly ignoring not only the needs of the children they take our money to serve, but also the law. We haven't got room for you in the classes we see fit to create, so we're gonna hold you back a grade for no reason. If this isn't an attempt to intimidate parents to move their special needs kids elsewhere, I'm not sure what is.

Here's a fact of life--special ed. teachers are indeed hard to find. My school is one of the most desirable places to work in the city and I often see admin have issues. It's even harder now that they've upped the requirements and demanded that teachers be dually licensed. Despite these issues, no administrator has called a parent and demanded that students either get out of our school or be left back, not ever. In our school, we take everyone. We have an entire program of alternate assessment students in our school, students who will never graduate. That will be counted against us in our records, though it's neither our fault nor that of the kids. If you run into Eva, ask her how many alternate assessment students are in Moskowitz Academies.

The reason for this is that we are really a public school. Charter schools are public only in the sense that they take our money. Eva Moskowitz famously refused to sign the agreement every other New York City school did to offer pre-K, and slogged through the courts until she could weasel her way out of it. If she can't do what she wants, how she wants, she won't do it at all.

More and more we are learning the limits of Eva's educational miracle. She fails the overwhelming majority of kids who start her program, and a remarkable 80% don't complete it. One Moskowitz Academy principal got caught with a "got to go" list, a list of children they wanted to dump from the program. Moskowitz calls this an anomaly, but who knows how many other such lists there are or have been? It's remarkable, in fact, we even know about this one. We see awful treatment of children and are left to wonder just how frequent it is. I'd argue taking students to Albany as pawns to make a political point is child abuse. Moskowitz gets away with it because rules don't apply to her, but if I did that with my students I'd be fired, and justifiably so.

It's unconscionable that we let children be treated this way. It's a travesty that we allow any school to take a single dime from our tax dollars and then flip the public the bird like this. Of course, there are those suitcases of hedge fund cash that travel from DFER to Governor Cuomo, so he turns a blind eye, even while mustering the audacity to call himself a "student lobbyist." When Bill de Blasio dared to deny space to the Moskowitz Academy, Cuomo and the Heavy-Hearted Assembly passed regulations that, if he denied them space, the city would have to pay their rent anyway.

It's sad that our children's education is up for sale in Albany. On September 13th I will vote for Cynthia Nixon, Jumaane Williams, and Zephyr Teachout. None of them take money from Eva's stooges. I'm a registered Democrat so I can get a vote in these primaries. I hope you are too. Please don't be one of those people who sleeps in or gets a haircut that day. People like that are precisely why we have a blight of unaccountable charter schools taking our money and abusing our children.

Moskowitz Academy to Parents--Miss Work or We Kick Your Kid Out

All the details, of course are over at Chalkbeat, which might as well be called Moskowitz Minute by Minute. Can you imagine saying such a thing to a parent? Yet Eva Moskowitz has no problem with it. Come in on June 5th or we assume you aren't coming next year.

June 5th was a Tuesday this year, and a working day for a whole lot of New Yorkers. I guess, though, if I were one of the few parents who slogged through Moskowitz Academy all the way to high school, I must have felt it was important. I mean, it would take a lot for me to leave my kid, for years, in a program where test prep was more important than bathroom breaks.

That's ironic, because of so much talk about college and career readiness. The United States lags well behind most non-third-world countries in terms of basic human decency, but OSHA has particular rules about bathroom breaks. (If you run into Donald Trump, please don't let him know this.) Unlike Moskowitz Academies, employers have to have bathrooms available, and they have to allow employees to use them. Moskowitz Academies, were they public schools, would be in violation of chancellor's regulations. Of course, were they workplaces, they'd be in violation of OSHA rules. Then there's that whole human decency thing, but they seem not to place much of a premium on that.

Nowhere is that more evident than in this compulsory meeting thing. In one of the crappy corporate charter films, charters that deny basic human needs are presented as Superman. You know, we public school teachers suck, and all we care about is ourselves and our luxurious 89 Honda Accords. But charters are here to save all the underprivileged people who can't afford private schools, you know, the ones Bloomberg sends his kids to so they don't have to mix elbows with the people he claims to care about.

Now here's the thing--in New York State, unless you've got a contract that says otherwise, you're an at-will employee. If you, and/ or your spouse, work a minimum wage job at Taco Bell, you could be fired for missing a day. Like Eva's charter school teachers, low-wage employees are pretty much disposable and replaceable. So it's entirely conceivable you could be faced with either losing your child's place in the Moskowitz Academy or losing your job. There's a choice no working parent ought to face. But there are no excuses in the Moskowitz Academy. (Unless, of course, you happen to be Moskowitz.)

Evidently her high school is a mess. It turns out that high school kids do not respond well to minute enforcement of petty rules. You can imagine how shocked I must be, having taught high school kids for only the last few decades. I may, in fact, re-examine my policy of making rules for no good reason and either leaving back or expelling students who fail to follow them.

“What if I have all As? Are you going to hold me back because I’m wearing the wrong shoes?” a student asked, according to a video of the sit-in reviewed by Chalkbeat.

Those are tough questions. I've been teaching 34 years and I have never heard questions like that. You know why? Because I do not, in fact, make rules for no good reason. I don't hand out a page of rules on the first day, even if my department has one all printed and ready to go. I have one rule, which I explain as best I can to my ELLs:

We will treat one another with respect.

That's pretty much it. I'm not going to ridicule you if you didn't do your homework. I'm not going to fail you if you understand the material having missed a bunch of it, likely as not because your grandma makes you get up at 2 AM to help her deliver Newsday. I'm not going to make fun of how you dress. Evidently the principal of Eva's high school made the egregious error of moving in that direction:

Malone’s strategy was to offer more freedom than was typical in the network’s lower grades. Some Advanced Placement classes pushed students to complete research papers, not focus purely on test preparation, former teachers said. Students recalled he allowed them to wear colorful headscarves featuring African prints, even if they weren’t technically in line with the network’s dress code.

Oh my gosh it's the end of Western Civilization! Fear not. Eva dumped his ass. No idea whether he still works for Moskowitz Academies, but there will be no more of that nonsense in Eva's high school. The rationale is that in college no one will tell you what to do. Therefore you will be micro-managed throughout your high school career. Somehow, by being entirely dependent upon carrots and mostly sticks throughout Moskowitz Academy, you will be magically 100% self-sufficient by the time you hit college. Do you see how that works? Me neither.

Even by reformy Chalkbeat's account, the very few students who made it all the way through the Moskowitz Academies had a really hard time. Does that mean they're rethinking the high school program? Does it mean they're gonna tone down the bullying that seems to work so well on 6-year-olds?

“I could have said, look, I’m going to throw in the towel,” Moskowitz told them, adding, “I didn’t abandon you. I’m here.”

Nope. No excuses. She fired the principal, but she's here, making almost a million dollars a year for whatever this thing is she does. What incredible dedication it must take to lavishly compensate yourself while punishing others for whatever goes wrong. I guess if we're preparing our kids to be minimum wage Walmart associates this is a good program. If we really want self-driven, independent thinkers, this is the last program we should place our children in. There's a reason why 80% of those who begin don't make it through this program. 

I'm not sure why a 20% success rate is anything to brag about, particularly when they're looking to leave back even more students for missing a few homework assignments. But hey, I exclusively teach kids Moskowitz wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, so I guess I must be part of the problem.

95% Satisfaction With NYC Schools

That's what the survey says this year. Given that, are the editorial pages going to be full of praise for the work we do? Shouldn't the News, the Post, and the Times be doing cartwheels and telling the mayor to give us a substantial raise for our great work under often harrowing circumstances? Will they finally say, hey, let's revise the evaluation system so that it's something to support good teaching, as opposed to sneak attacks by Boy Wonder supervisors who couldn't teach their way out of paper bags?

Personally, I won't be holding my breath to read that. I know, though, that 55% of teachers approving of Carmen Fariña is extraordinarily high. You know what that says to me? It says that we are far more generous of spirit and understanding than those who make careers out of judging us. Sadly, I can't include myself among all those high-minded educators. I thought Fariña did an awful job, I said so on the survey, and it's nowhere more evident than in her declaration a raging blizzard was a beautiful day because Macy's was open.

Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of parents are satisfied with city schools. What can we conclude from that? For me, it's obvious. If parents are satisfied with public schools, it's time to celebrate and embrace them. It's also time to stop frittering away precious resources on reformy nonsense.

Exhibit A is Moskowitz and her plainly failed mission. The overwhelming majority of those who start with her finish with us. That's because we simply take everyone. We don't make ridiculous demands of children and their parents. We don't make parents come and work in our schools because we know they have to work elsewhere to make ends meet. We don't make children do test prep until they pee their pants, and we don't ridicule them if they need more time. We don't make "got to go" lists and we don't humiliate students by hanging up their names for progress or lack thereof. In fact, we don't even take our students on buses to Albany on school days to lobby for our self-serving interests.

And then we come to bullying. I haven't got a simple solution to that. Kids can be cruel. I will say, though, that charter schools ought not to practice bullying.  It certainly appears Moskowitz Academies do. Charter schools ought to follow chancellor's regulations. Not allowing a child to visit a bathroom ought to be considered abuse. We need not encourage that, even in the name of "no excuses."

In fact, charter schools ought not to exist at all. New Yorkers voted in Bill de Blasio overwhelmingly, and he ran on a platform of opposition to charters. Governor Andrew Cuomo, after having taken who knows how many suitcases full of cash from Eva's hedge fund BFFs, decided that was unacceptable. Cuomo hated Bloomberg for being the reformiest guy in the state, and here was his chance to claim the mantle, along with whatever financial rewards it brought. So Cuomo and the Heavy Hearted Assembly passed a bill that NYC would have to pay rent for charters it disapproved.

This week, however, Cuomo is posing as Bernie Sanders Lite. He's now the bestest friend labor unions ever had. Given that, maybe it's time for him to renounce Moskowitz and her rich pals. After all, it's becoming pretty trendy to reject tainted money. Zephyr Teachout may well take the Attorney General nomination, solely with contributions from people like you and me. Who knows? Maybe Cuomo's finger, perpetually up in the air to see which way the wind is blowing, will direct him to represent, you know, people instead of money.

It's pretty clear, though, that if 95% of parents are happy with their schools, it's time to stop bashing working teachers. We must be doing something right. Maybe it's time for the editorial pages to slow down all that bluster about how incompetent we are and how much we suck. Maybe it's time to allow educators to make decisions about education. Maybe it's time to step back and trust us a little bit.

That is, unless editorial writers have some interest in an agenda that does not actually reflect the beliefs and interests of the public. That couldn't be, could it?

Time will tell.

No Excuses for You, Multitudes for Moskowitz

In yet another piece about its favorite subject, Eva Moskowitz, Chalkbeat runs Eva's answer to her critics. Fortunately for Eva, nothing she does is ever wrong and it doesn't matter at all that she's managed to leave behind 78% of her students. Also, in a single year she's managed to shed most of her high school teachers, with over 2 of 3 moving to greener pastures. This also makes no difference whatsoever. Despite this, for some reason Eva felt the need to write the parents.

It's disappointing to lose your favorite teacher. However, some did not quit out of desperation. Some were not fired for what we call incompetence, and what other people call inability to work 20 hour days or have a life. And if they were incompetent, and we hired them, it's not our fault. After all, nothing is.

You see, at Moskowitz Academies the important thing is to give the very best quality education. Evidently you do that by shedding all the losers who don't measure up. It's not our fault if your kids are losers. After all, dumping losers is how many charter schools manage to get those incredible 100% 4-year-college admissions. You'd better believe anyone who didn't make it to that four year college didn't make it out of the four year high school either.

So this, evidently, is how you make miracles. This is how you trod all over a public school system, grasping and taking whatever you wish, displacing neighborhood children, stealing libraries, and keeping your noses so far up in the air that a good rain would drown you instantly. The other part of the miracle, of course, is an educational leader who's willing to play ball. For a long time, that was Mike Bloomberg, who tolerated Joel Klein's hot line to Eva.

When Bloomberg left City Hall to try to buy his way into becoming President of the United States, Andrew Cuomo grabbed the mantle, stood with Eva in Albany, and made it impossible for Bill de Blasio to oppose charters without paying their rent. And there were all the miracle stories. They passed the test. They had higher percentages than those crappy public schools. It was a civil rights issue. Eva herself echoed GW Bush, speaking of "the soft bigotry of low expectations," in her letter to parents.

Evidently, it does not occur to Eva Moskowitz that a 22% graduation rate is an indication of abysmally low expectations. It appears to me that Moskowitz Academies take no responsibility whatsoever for their students. Were they really running on the magic they claim, they'd graduate 100% of their students. There would be no "got to go" lists.

Last year I had terrible troubles with some of my students. I had a class of 34, par for the course in Fun City. Yet several of them were not keeping up. There were various reasons for this, the most common of which was that the students were SIFE, or students with interrupted formal education. This could easily mean the students had not been in schools in their native countries in years, if at all.

Ask me how many SIFE students are in Moskowitz Academies. Ask me how many beginning English language learners are in Moskowitz Academies. Anyway, I had seven students who could not keep up, seven students who'd certainly have failed. Despite the proven wisdom of Moskowitz Academies, we did not write up a "got to go" list. We did not call up the parents and ask them to move their kids elsewhere. In fact, we didn't even make them sit and do test prep until they peed their pants.

What we did was find an empty classroom, a minor miracle in itself for us. It was a very small room, but that was okay because we only had seven students. I taught the class, took all the kids back to square one, and moved very slowly. I gave fewer tests than I usually do, but I spent a lot of time making sure these kids knew material well before doing so. And rather than drill them to death, I was consistently kind to them.

Every one of those students passed that class. Several thanked me for giving them a class they could understand and follow, unlike others they were taking. I could have taken the approach Moskowitz seems to favor, judging from her letter. Hey, it's a tough world, so you just have to do whatever I force you to do. That's the only way to prep you for college, which is going to be even worse. This, of course, is to prepare you for life, which is going to be even more miserable.

Here's the thing--even though Moskowitz musters the temerity to label her test prep factories "success academies," they fail four out of five who enter. This is nothing to boast about. The papers can praise them in editorials from now until doomsday, but the fact is we public schools, even the ones closed by the city, have better records than Moskowitz.

I, for one, value academic achievement. Nonetheless I'd rather see my own kid, and probably every kid I know, fail in a public school than be tortured in a Moskowitz Academy.

Moskowitz Academy Retains Only 20 of 67 Teachers, Graduates 22% of Its Students

Why is that? Did they all suck? I mean, that's what Eva mostly says about us. We all suck. That's why we need Moskowitz Academies. After all, they will start off with 73 students and graduate 16. That's a stunning success record, isn't it? Wouldn't your principal offer you a raise and a bonus if you managed to pass 22% of your students?

Of course, now we're talking about a 12-year record. So they managed to hold on to that many kids. What happened to the other 80%? Well, for all you know, they're in your class. Are they passing? Who knows? But if they aren't, then you suck. They aren't Eva's problem anymore.

That's a pretty sweet deal, isn't it? I mean, Eva makes five times as much money as your principal, she has a 22% graduation rate, and the media treats her like a movie star. Hillary Clinton will stand up in front of God and everybody and tell the AFT we can learn from "public charter schools." Here's a hot tip--the only thing "public" about public charter schools is that they take our tax money. We get no say in how they're run, and if New York City dares tell Moskowitz she needs to sign the agreement everyone else did to run pre-K, she'll sue and win.

After all, she's got a 22% graduation rate. Who the hell are we to tell her what to do? OK sure, the school you worked at for twenty years had a considerably higher rate, and Mayor Bloomberg turned it into five Basket-Weaving Academies. But that's neither here nor there. Whatever Eva wants, Eva gets.

Mercedes Schneider, ever the optimist, finds light in the darkness:

At least the percentage of returning SA high school teachers is higher than the percentage of students who made it all the way through from first grade to high school graduation in 2018.

That's true, of course. On the other hand, we're talking about a one year turnover here. Should this rate continue, over the time these students had, we'll have a 360% teacher turnover. Now that's not bad for Moskowitz Academies. I believe that all lessons are pre-written, by Eva herself for all I know, so it doesn't really matter who teaches. Maybe a group of well-trained rhesus monkeys could do the job, literally work for peanuts, and solve the whole institutional memory issue. Who knows?

I doubt it, though. It's pretty cruel to make kids pee their pants because they're doing test prep. I love animals, and I'd never ask an animal to encourage a practice like that. City kids need people who understand and encourage them. City kids need people who accept them as they are. The Moskowitz Experience is an abysmal failure, propped up by incurious reporters who don't think things through, and politicians interested in just how many suitcases of cash DFER and all the hedge fund reformies can deliver.

Those of us who spend our lives serving the children of New York City are regularly vilified in the press for the offense of serving the children of New York City. The Moskowitz Model is unsustainable not only for children, but for adults as well. Grownup teachers are role models. They need to be able to pursue lives and happiness. Being a veritable slave in a test-prep factory does not afford that pursuit.

I want my kids to be happy, and the only way I can encourage that in them is to reach down deep and find it somewhere in myself. While I certainly hope they pass The Test, whatever it is, and while I will help them do that if that's what they need, happiness is more fundamental, and will lead them to success well beyond what "Success Academy" offers. In fact, "Success Academy" appears to fail the overwhelming majority of its students.

I certainly hope that we offer them something better when they come to us. It would be pretty hard work to offer them anything worse.

Poor Eva Needs Space

I was pretty surprised to see a link in today's Chalkbeat newsletter to a piece about how Eva needed space for a new Moskowitz Academy. Eva, who makes $782,000 a year, is in a real pickle. Evidently the city is reluctant to close another school so she can push her way in. It's tragic. What awful discrimination. Where are kids going to sit to pee their pants during test prep? Where is Eva going to store the extra sweat pants to give the kids who pee themselves?

I don't link to the 74, where the article is, but it was hard for me to cry for poor Eva. I mean, why doesn't she take a few of the millions she raises from her hedge fund supporters and buy a damn building? In fact, why is she taking tax money at all? She can't be bothered to sign the pre-school agreement every other provider signed. Once she does that, she can't do Any Damn Thing She Feels Like, and that's a great injustice somehow.

As part of a school that's obliged to follow chancellor's regulations, as part of a school in which denying students' basic biological urges constitutes corporal punishment rather than Just Another Day, it's hard for me to muster sympathy for Eva Moskowitz or her mission to take space away from us, the community.

It's particularly egregious because I've been teaching in real public schools since 1984. The one I've been in since 1993, Francis Lewis High School, suffers from rampant overcrowding and has done pretty much as long as I can remember. While I don't make students sit until they pee themselves (because I'm evidently not dedicated enough to be Moskowitz Academy material), I have been experiencing outlandish overcrowding situations since well before Moskowitz Academies even existed.

One day shortly after 9/11, an assistant principal walked into my half-classroom, really angry.

"Why didn't you observe the moment of silence?" he demanded.

"What moment of silence?" I asked.

"We just announced a moment of silence for the victims of 9/11," he said.

"Well we don't have a loudspeaker so we don't have the announcements," I told him.

He didn't like that. He tried approaching the situation from another angle.

"Why are those kids sitting on the radiator?" he asked.

"They don't want to sit on the floor," I told him.

I followed him out of the room and asked us to help us get a better room. That, evidently, was not as important as the moment of silence or the unacceptable seating arrangement. He stormed off without answering my question. He was soon promoted to principal.

Another time I was in a bowling alley-shaped room. It opened onto several fragrant dumpsters. There were twelve rows of three seats each. Once, after a test, the AP security came in and started screaming at one of my students. The student was wearing earphones. He had finished the test and was bothering no one. The AP dragged him out and wrote him up. I complained to the AP that he should have spoken to me first. The AP gave me a dirty look. He was also promoted to principal, though not quite as soon.

I did a year in a music room. It was very large. We had a piano, and a board with musical staffs on it. It was OK, expect when the music teacher next door decided to play Flight of the Valkyrie at top volume. However, he generally did that no more than once a day, every single day. I politely asked him to close the door. The first time or two, he complied. Then he decided the hell with it, everyone needs to hear Flight of the Valkyrie each and every day, or what's the point of life itself? One day I'd had it, and I walked over and slammed the door so loud it was perceptible above Flight of the Valkyrie.

The music teacher was horrified by this. He complained to his AP, who called me into her office and screamed at me for ten minutes. I defended myself, explaining how being polite had not proven effective, and she told me I had no right to do what I did. I referred to the situation as "bullshit," and she was horrified by my awful language. She went on about that for a few minutes before throwing me out of her office. She retired before they could promote her to principal.

I also taught maybe twelve years in crumbling trailers. I'd walk in to find the floors covered with sheets of ice. Sometimes some genius would leave the AC on all night and all the seats would be wet with some sort of AC mist. Sometimes there'd be no heat. Sometimes there'd be no AC, and you can't imagine how hot it would get in those oversized tin cans. Sometimes the custodians would be in a wacky mood and throw snowballs at us through the broken windows. Sometimes the marching band would come by playing Louie Louie while my poor students tried to take a test.

Twenty years later, the city is building an annex for us. When it's finished, maybe we'll get some relief. It took a little longer because I haven't got a hot line to Joel Klein so he can give me Whatever I Want, Whenever I Want. I had to get elected to the UFT Executive Board and get Ellie Engler to call up the school building authority. It's not a perfect solution because we all know well the city, rather than utilize this to help us, could simply overcrowd us further to make things even worse.

However, I don't feel sorry for Eva Moskowitz, who manipulates her kids to protest in Albany on school days, who terrorizes children to artificially boost her stats,  holds "got to go" lists, boasts of how wonderful her schools are, sheds the majority of her students well before they graduate, and blames our public schools for their lack of progress when they return.

I'm sorry for the poor teacher who had to write that thing. Maybe she doesn't know any better. Who knows? Maybe she's drunk Eva's Kool-Aid and thinks she's doing God's work. Maybe she'll become a principal for having written this thing. Maybe she wrote it of her own volition.  Maybe she doesn't understand the shelf life of a Moskowitz Academy teacher, and maybe she doesn't understand the value of due process.

Still, I don't feel sorry for the Moskowitz Academies. Screw Eva Moskowitz. Screw Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein, who enabled her. Screw the propagandists who sing her praises while ignoring the overwhelming majority of her students, and ours, who she ends up hurting. If Michael Bloomberg had to send his kids to public schools, there'd be no overcrowding anywhere. Instead of engineering giveaways to developers, we'd be building schools for the children of New York City. Instead of helping Eva with her corporatist self-serving shell game, we'd be improving education for all.

Make no mistake, that's what we'd be doing if we had a collective conscience.

The Mariachi Chancellor, El Rey

I honestly don't know a whole lot about Richard Carranza. I see good and bad things. On the plus side, he's a former English Language Learner, or ELL. This gives me hope that he might see through the miserable Part 154 that robs ELLs of both direct English instruction and also core content instruction. In 2017, we ought to offer our most needy kids something better than sink or swim.

Also, he seems to be an advocate for public schools. The last guy the mayor picked, Tom Carvel or somebody, looked like an advocate for school choice in the Jeb Bush mode. Florida's not where I would go to model public schools, though the weather seems pretty nice. Alas, Carvel not only failed to bring the weather over, but also failed to show himself.

On the other hand, there are the stories about Carranza, largely in the Daily News, from his failure to perform miracles, to creepy treatment of female subordinates, resulting in a 75K payoff. I'm not personally too put off by the miracle thing, because miracle stories, like accomplishments of Texas and Michelle Rhee, usually turn out to be outright fabrications. Carranza seems to have a thing for TFA, while I think he'd be better off finding local talent. In fact, I wonder why the mayor couldn't find anyone in NY. The mayor said mayoral control was all about him doing what he wanted to do, but that's not really true.

When de Blasio was elected, he not only stated opposition to charters, but also blocked a Moskowitz Academy or two. Cuomo and his Heavy Hearted Assembly rapidly passed a law that NYC would have to pay rent for charters of which it didn't approve. This said to me that mayoral control was valid only if the mayor was a reformy. They never passed laws against Bloomberg. Evidently, de Blasio hasn't put that together just yet.

Carranza says there's no daylight between his vision and that of the mayor, but I have no idea what the mayor's vision is anymore. When he first ran, he seemed great. He opposed charters and reforminess. He was the anti-Bloomberg. I supported him even as the UFT was pushing that guy, what's his name, who told the Daily News that teachers didn't deserve the raise cops and firefighters got.

These days I have no idea what the mayor stands for. He left a whole bunch of Bloomberg's people in place, so we still lose at step two hearings even when we're 100% correct. He left a bunch of scumbag lawyers in "legal" who believe in doing whatever the hell they feel like and think screwing UFT members is the national pastime. He picks an outright reformy to be chancellor and then immediate turns around and picks a guy who appears to support public schools. Though the NY Post thinks de Blasio's Che Guevara, he negotiated the lowest pattern bargain in my living memory for city workers.

A few days ago, I was speaking to a music teacher I respect a lot who said the new chancellor was a great singer. I later found a video over at Leonie Haimson's site, which I've posted below. He is a very good singer, and he also plays the violin. You have to respect that. Maybe I'm culturally biased or something, but his choice of song is pretty unusual as far as I'm concerned. It's called El Rey, or the king, and it seems like a tribute to machismo or something:

Con dinero
Y sin dinero
Yo hago siempre
Lo que quiero
Y mi palabra
Es la ley 

That says, roughly, if I'm rich or if I'm broke, I do any damn thing I feel like, and my word is the law. It's the kind of song Donald Trump might tweet if he had any music in his miserable, barren soul. El Rey is about a man whose "queen" appears to have dumped him for his miserable attitude, a man who's learned nothing whatsoever from it. While it's tongue in cheek, I'm not at all sure I'd teach it in a class. Given Chancellor's Regulation A-421 about verbal abuse, I'd be very nervous about it. You know, it might make some student feel uneasy. 

I might be sitting in the principal's office being accused of sexism and getting a letter in my file for sharing that song, but there's our chancellor, with an orchestra full of students, performing it. Putting the potential sexism aside, the notion of being the king is the kind of thing I'd expect from Bloomberg or Trump, not an educator. Does the new chancellor have a sharper sense of humor than I do, or is he broadcasting the future?

Only time will tell.

Chalkbeat, Elizabeth Green, and Eva Moskowitz

I was once thrilled with Elizabeth Green. She wrote for a small NYC paper and was hands down the best education journalist around. I don't remember exactly what she wrote about, but I remember she was the only one doing it. She cut through the nonsense and noise and reported the truth, something in short supply both then and now.

I remember when Chalkbeat began as Gotham Schools. It quickly became a go-to for those of us obsessed with education. I was pretty excited when Elizabeth called me and asked me to write for them. She said something about my being a natural writer, which I took to mean that, despite never having attended some fancy private school, I was able to think clearly anyway.

One of my first pieces was about a Harlem elementary school being invaded by a Moskowitz Academy. I attended a public school rally there and reported what I saw and heard. Several parents said they only accepted students with higher scores. I was excoriated in the comments (They may or may not still be there. On several of my Chalkbeat pieces, comments have mysteriously disappeared.) by people claiming that wasn't the case. After that, I was subject to a really draconian editing process, more unreasonable than any I've been subject to anywhere. In fact, they let me go from this non-paying gig for suggesting that Cathie Black was sponsored by a billionaire (named Bloomberg), that TFA recruited from the Ivy League, and some other non-debatable point I no longer recall.

Later, when Chalkbeat ran some nonsensical piece about E4E getting 100 signatures on a petition for some ridiculous cause or other, I challenged them to do the same for me, and they said sure they would, no problem. We have 300 members, and it takes me 90 minutes to collect 100 signatures. I followed up, and collected 100 signatures on a petition demanding equity for ELLs in our school. Someone from Chalkbeat called me to follow up, but no article ever appeared. (So much for equity between reformies and public school activists.)

For years I've watched Chalkbeat follow every Momentous Moskowitz Moment, and often ignore activities by the UF of T. So I wasn't entirely surprised when Norm Scott pointed me to this piece by Andrea Gabor about how MSM slobbers all over Moskowitz like she's the second coming. And surprise, surprise, Elizabeth Green is among the prime offenders:

While Green notes that Success Academy students “regularly trounce their peers all across New York on state tests” she never actually gives you the scores. Rebecca Mead does—more on her New Yorker story below: On the latest tests, 95 percent of Success Academy students achieved proficiency in math and 84 percent in ELA; the comparable citywide scores are 36 percent and 38 percent, respectively.

This is important for several reasons. One is that the sole factor in considering Moskowitz Academies superior to public schools is test scores. I think it was Alfie Kohn who said that test scores measure nothing more than zip code. In any case, in a country like the United States, afflicted with extreme poverty, there are a whole lot of reasons why test scores suffer. In NYC, with 10% of its students literally homeless, that's far from a minor issue. With Moskowitz Academies keeping got to go lists and making students test prep until they pee their pants, I wouldn't send my kid (or yours) there on a bet.

Even if you accept the preposterous notion that test scores are the sole factor in determining the quality of a school, Andrea Gabor offers the following devastating tidbit:

We do know that attrition at Success charters is very high with the most compliant students, and the best test-takers, surviving. (Mead, in her New Yorker story, points out that Success Academy’s first high school will graduate just 17 students next spring, down from 73 first graders.)

This means fewer than 25% of the students who started in the Moskowitz Academy have stuck it out. This calls into question their proficiency rates as well. Once we account for the various unfactored losses, Moskowitz Academy percentages fall below those of the dreaded public schools who are supposedly sitting around Waiting for Superman. So despite all the highly compensated, hedge fund supported Moskowitz Mouthpieces, we outperform them in the only area they deem noteworthy.

If you also consider the facts that we do not treat our students like lab rats, that the public has input in how we run our schools (flawed and constricted though mayoral control renders it), and that teachers are not systematically squeezed like overripe tomatoes to be unceremoniously discarded like trash, there are various conclusions here that, alas, have escaped Elizabeth Green. That's a shame because, for my money, Elizabeth Green is as smart as just about anyone I've ever met.

What's worse is that, with Green and others pushing the unexamined Legend of the Moskowitz Academy, a whole lot of people subscribe to the corporate charter myth. There's a whole lot of money and power behind them too.

Just about the only things we have going for us are superior numbers and the truth.

Eva Gets a Small Whiff of New York City

I'm really flabbergasted to read Eva Moskowitz crying and moaning that she hasn't got enough space. She holds galas that earn her millions of dollars, and spent years with the Chancellor of NYC Schools in her hip pocket. Now she trashes Bill de Blasio because he won't give her what she wants. And make no mistake, she wants it all and she wants it now.

Eva is more important than you, and more important than me. She cannot wait. She has to have everything right away. And her students are more important than my students. Otherwise, why would my students be in a building at 200% capacity? Why do they have to struggle through the hallways to get to their classes? Why would they need to go through a 10-period day simply because there isn't enough space to accommodate them in a more reasonable fashion?

Moskowitz makes it a point to call her business a "public charter school," but all that means is she takes our money. takes our space, and demands more of it. She can call her school high-achieving, but that only refers to test scores. It fails to take into account Charter 101--you take a hundred kids, end up with forty, and all your kids are excellent. The other 60, the ones in those awful public schools, are not doing well at all. Clearly it's the fault of those pernicious unionized teachers.

Her "public charter schools" can't be bothered with any stinking rules. When de Blasio had an agreement that every pre-school signed, Eva decided she wasn't gonna make any agreement and her hedge fund backers fought the city in court. Now Eva can open any damn grade any damn way anyhow she feels like. "Public charter schools" don't need no public accountability, thank you very much.

My school has been overcrowded for well over the nine years I've been chapter leader. For a while we were able to control it but it's once again burgeoned out of control. Here's the thing--when you are really a public school, you take the public as they come in. When you are really a public school you take everyone. It doesn't matter if they just arrived from El Salvador yesterday and don't speak a word of English. It doesn't matter if they have disabilities so severe you know they will never graduate from high school.

How many of those students does Moskowitz take? Zero. Maybe she takes some ELLs that are advanced enough to sit around and test prep until they pee their pants. And maybe she takes students with IEPs, but there are IEPs and there are IEPs. Some students have IEPs simply because they need more time on tests. Some have a period of resource room for extra support. Others need to be in self-contained small classrooms. Some are labeled alternate assessment. At our school we bring them to worksites to learn trades.

It's nice that Eva can write editorials about how awfully victimized she is. What I'd like to see is Bill de Blasio, or Carmen Fariña, or someone in charge write about what it's like for the real public school children of New York City. Alas, the papers are all full of trashing the ATRs and there's no space for that.

Eva's line is ridiculous. Her students aren't more important than my students. They don't deserve better space than my students. Shame on the public servants who bow down to her preposterous demands and ignore the overwhelming majority of city children.

The Audacity of Eva

I'm sitting in my packed-to-the-gills high school right now, with 4700 students attending school in a building designed for about half that. We have rooms that are converted closets, rooms in which there are portable AC units that are so loud you can barely teach when they're on. A whole lot of teachers turn them off rather than utilize them.

Meanwhile, Eva Moskowitz, funded by hedge fund zillionaires running an expensive ad campaign for her, is crying that the city is discriminating against her students. Naturally I'm broken hearted that her private hot line to the chancellor no longer operates as previously, but that is chutzpah. For those unfamiliar with this term, it's when you murder your parents and plead mercy in court because you're an orphan.

In fact, Bill de Blasio ran on a platfrom opposing charters and supporting public schools. He's been elected overwhelmingly not once, but twice. While I don't support mayoral control, it's been doled out to him in dribs and drabs rather than for years at a time as it was to Bloomberg. That's specifically because he doesn't give charters a blank check, and it saddens me when he makes concessions to Moskowitz Academies so as to retain it.

Eva's just off of winning the right to not sign any stinking agreements when opening pre-Ks. That's nothing. In 2014 she got Governor Cuomo to pass a law saying that NYC had to provide rent to the likes of Eva when he denied her schools. That's not only outrageous, but also against the will of NYC voters.

I teach ELLs. I teach them when they've just arrived here. How many newcomers does Eva serve? I'd wager none. You can't just take a newcomer and set him up in a test prep factory. You have to teach him English first. In my building, we serve a whole lot of alternate assessment kids who will never graduate. They will never take the tests Eva has kids peeing their pants over. We sent them to local businesses and they are trained for work they can actually do. How many of those kids does Eva take?

We take everyone, and in exchange are packed to double capacity. We serve all children. If the city is discriminating against Eva, they're most certainly discriminating against us. My kids need and deserve more space. They need and deserve every advantage denied them by selective institutions like the Moskowitz Academies. Real public schools, the ones who follow rules, the ones who follow chancellor's regulations, the ones run by elected officials deserve first attention.

I say put Eva last in line.

Reformy Chalkbeat Peddles the Moskowitz Book

A few years ago, I used to write for Chalkbeat, nee Gotham Schools. I wrote a review of Diane Ravitch's book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, which I loved. There was a very lively comment section, and for reasons not shared with me, Chalkbeat deleted it. I recall that UFT employee Peter Goodman counseled me in the comments that there could be repercussions for expressing myself. I'm a chapter leader, and I advise people all the time. I'm trying to think of a circumstance under which I'd do that in a public forum, and my mind is a blank.

Someone else questioned why the post went up when it did. Evidently it was during school hours. Someone from Chalkbeat had to explain that they put up the posts, not the guest writers. I was, of course, let go by Chalkbeat when my point of view failed to jibe with their mission, ostensibly to show all points of view without bias. You know, Fair and Balanced. Except the pro-teacher, pro-public education point of view, which somehow didn't fit. Go figure.

When Diane Ravitch wrote a book, they allowed me, a guest, to review it. But when Eva Moskowitz wrote a book, they get one of their paid writers to do a feature. After all, Ravitch is only the most outspoken and thoughtful living advocate of public education, so dump her on one of the guests. Moskowitz is a charter chain mogul, and thus merits Chalkbeat's undivided attention.

It's all about values. What do we learn about the Moskowitz book?

Moskowitz really wants you to know she’s human.

 
Well, that's illuminating. It never occurred to me to point out that Ravitch was human. I've seen her speak several times, and she's never made a big deal about it, so I didn't either. I mean, don't get me wrong, I adore animals. I'm particularly fond of dogs. Nonetheless, I've known very few who could write books. There is this extraordinary canine named Thor Michaelson who runs a spirited campaign against vacuums, but even Michaelson has yet to paw his autobiography. When he does,
maybe I'll write, "Michaelson really wants you to know he's a dog."

Of course, this could be figurative. It could just be that she wants to come off as less cold and calculating. I mean, when you let kids pee their pants, when you drag your students, their parents and your staff to Albany to campaign for your own cause, when you have a privileged relationship with a reformy chancellor, when you make lists of students who've "got to go," you may get, you know, an unfavorable rep. Maybe she wants you to know she's human, but let's face it, a dog wouldn't do any of those things. Maybe being human is nothing to boast about after all. In any case, you won't be reading about those things in reformy Chalkbeat. Instead, you'll read that, "Chalkbeat tried to understand why Moskowitz was such a lightning rod." This notwithstanding, it might be obvious to those who get their information from places other than Chalkbeat.

After reading a story by Juan Gonzalez, instead of asking, "Holy crap, how does she get away with this?" reformy Chalkbeat wonders why everyone is ganging up on poor Eva Moskowitz. That's the kind of coverage you get when Gates and Walmart subsidize the education press. You get "theories" as to why Moskowitz might be a controversial figure.

Look, I'm sure if I wrote a book about myself, I'd try to make myself look good too. But I'm just a lowly public school teacher, not a charter school mogul. That's why reformy Chalkbeat would never focus on the likes of me. Or you. Or the overwhelming majority of students who we, not Eva Moskowitz, serve.

What's next for Eva Moskowitz? Reformy minds want to know, and Reformy Chalkbeat is more than happy to oblige.

Open Up Another Can of Teachers

Chaz has a great piece pointing out the hypocrisy of the NY Post editorial board, which cries bloody murder when teacher certification requirements are reduced, but also supports charter schools who basically want to hire just about anybody. You know, it's too inconvenient to run around looking for certified teachers, so basically let us certify anyone we feel like.

I read that over at Eva's place teachers don't write lesson plans. They have them, they give them to you, and you do any goshdarn thing they tell you to. There's no scrambling for the right textbook. There's no worrying whether you should skip this part or emphasize that. You just look at what day it is and do whatever the hell they tell you to do. Teacher voice? Give me a break.

And hey, if that's not enough, the gazillionaire who runs Netflix wants to just stick every kid in front of a computer, and expand charter schools like they've never been expanded before. He uses New Orleans as a model, where 90% are charterized. I'm surprised it isn't 100. So basically, teachers become non-unionized, at-will employees doing any damn thing they're told. That's a great role model for our children, of course, if you want them to become non-unionized, at-will employees doing any damn thing they're told.

I think this is one of the last really good jobs there is. It's not because the pay is fabulous or the hours are short. Like a whole lot of my colleagues, I work well beyond what the clock requires. Honestly, though, the day they tell me they have scripted lesson plans for me to follow will probably be the day I retire. Let them teach a monkey to read and get him to do the job. A big plus would be they could pay him in bananas.

There's this steady drip, drip as teachers become less teachers and more technicians. Sit the kid in front of the computer and have the computer decide what chapter she's on or what question she gets to answer. That way she'll get a better score on the test that measures the questions the computer has decided to ask. And sure, it's not exactly fun to learn that way, but it's probably not fun working at Walmart either. The people who run Walmart probably fund all this reforminess for that very reason.

And while this wave has not yet enveloped NYC public schools as a whole, there are plenty of principals obsessing over it. After all, the principals get rated too. In case you're wondering why you're assigned to some teacher team, New York City has decided that teacher teams are the bestest thing since sliced bread, and that your principal sucks if your school hasn't got them.

In our school, we gave up one day of C6 for teacher team, and in exchange we got one day back for teacher-directed Other Professional Work. It seemed a fair exchange, and our members voted for it overwhelmingly as part of an SBO. In other schools with weak or no union presence the principal just says, "Everyone is doing a teacher team one period a day," and that's pretty much it, And in charters? Hey, when Eva comes in and says everyone is going on a bus to Albany tomorrow you don't bring up your carsickness. You ask Eva for permission to use the bathroom on the coach bus while the kids do homework. Or maybe you puke on the floor, just as the kids pee their pants.

Who knows?

Actually we should have high standards for our teachers. If we don't, it means we don't have high standards for our children either. We also need to preserve this profession as one of people serving people. I don't want to place kids in little cubicles with computers working out little problems to prepare them for tests. It's not my job to teach them how to adapt to cubicles. I already have a job. I complain an awful lot, but never about actual teaching, and never about the kids I serve.

We need to model a better way for children. We do that not by making them little tin soldiers, and certainly not by being bigger tin soldiers ourselves.

Reformy Chalkbeat Can't See a Public School

You have to see the headline here--After Blasting Success Board Chair Chancellor Rosa to Visit Success Academy on the First Day of School. Over at reformy Chalkbeat, it's Moskowitz now, Moskowitz later, and Moskowitz all the time, because that's what's important over there. Here's the thing--PS 55 is mentioned in passing:

“Chancellor Rosa selected two schools to visit in her hometown community in the Bronx, P.S. 55 and Bronx [Success] Academy 2, which are co-located in the same building,” said department spokeswoman Emily DeSantis. “These schools collaborate to provide the best learning environment possible for students in the school community. As chancellor of the Board of Regents, it is Chancellor Rosa’s duty to serve in the best interest of all schoolchildren.”

 That's a quote, of course. After that, the reporter goes back the Chalbeat beat--everything you ever wanted to know about the Moskowitz Academy. They rehash recent history, and fill us in on everything we read over the last two weeks. The writer says not one word about PS/ CS 55. For all we know from reading the article, it may as well be a lamppost. 

But I know for a fact that this is a very special school with a unique and activist principal. I met PS 55 principal Luis E. Torres at Fordham when we were on a panel together. I didn't agree with everything he said (what with his being a principal and all), but it was quite clear to everyone in the room that Torres was a passionate educator willing to go the extra mile for the students he served.

Torres has been principal since 2004, and seems to have turned his school around without resorting to the endless test prep that characterizes Moskowitz Academies. Torres runs a public school and you won't see kids there peeing their pants because they're fearful of abandoning test prep. You see, in public schools, they consider denying basic human needs to constitute corporal punishment. (Of course, Chancellor's Regulations don't apply in Moskowitz Academies. They're public schools only in the sense that they take public money.)

I'm pretty sure that Torres doesn't simply toss kids out when they don't pass tests. For one thing, he seems to have been underestimated when he was a kid. Some counselor told him he wasn't college material. I cannot imagine that Torres, after having made a career of proving the counselor wrong, would treat kids the way that counselor treated him. Also, what with his school being public and all, he can't make up "got to go" lists.

I'm not a professional reporter. I'm just a lowly schoolteacher. So ask yourself this--how come I know about Luis E. Torres and Chalkbeat doesn't? Isn't it their job to know whether the school has a health, wellness and learning center, for example? Shouldn't they know if he won awards? I'm absolutely sure that Torres has done a whole lot of things I don't know about. But here's the thing--I did five minutes of research and I know more than Chalkbeat does.

If you read the Chalkbeat piece, you'd probably mistake PS 55 for a 99 cent store, or a laundromat, or something. I mean, it isn't a charter school so why bother doing even the most cursory research on it? And really, what's the difference between Luis E. Torres and Iggy Wochuck? You never heard of Iggy Wochuck? Well, reformy Chalkbeat has never heard of Luis E. Torres.

By focusing on charters and ignoring what's great in public schools, Chalkbeat ignores the vast majority of what's going on in New York City education. The writer goes to Moskowitz for a quote, but doesn't bother speaking to Torres. It's all about Eva over at Chalkbeat World.

I don't speak for Chancellor Rosa, and I can't read her mind. But what about this--could it be that she wishes to see PS 55, it happens to be in the same building as the Moskowitz Academy, and she's therefore visiting that too? I really don't know, but it's just as possible as any other explanation.

If you relied on Chalkbeat for education information, that thought would never cross your mind.

All the Cluelessness That's Fit to Print

A few days ago, Diane Ravitch wrote about the NY Times and Trump. They oppose him, both on their editorial and op-ed pages. Ravitch gives particular attention to Charles Blow. Sometimes I like him, but not always. Ravitch herself wrote about him and how misinformed he is on the topic of reforminess. For me, once people spout reforminess, it's hard to take anything they say seriously. This is especially true when being well-informed is a crucial factor of their job description.

Of course Blow is not the only Times op-ed writer who adores all things reformy. Nicholas Kristof, like Eva Moskowitz, doesn't favor teacher certification. Now we all understand Eva wants cheap, replaceable teachers. If she could simply open up a new can every time she needed a few fresh ones, surely she'd be happy. Kristof, on the other hand, is ridiculous and illogical to the point of contending that teacher certification kept Meryl Streep and Colin Powell from becoming NYC teachers.

Have you noticed Streep and Powell coming to your school asking for work? Are their CVs on your principal's desk? Hey, I know it's a strain for Kristof to bang out 700 words twice a week. That's one heckuva burden. Perhaps all that work has addled his brain. Or maybe, just maybe, we need to be united in something more than opposition to Donald Trump.

Every reformy I know of opposes Trump. Even hyper-opportunist Eva Moskowitz was shamed into saying something negative about him after he vilified people who oppose white supremacy. But we have to be careful before we determine they're our friends. A while back I was Facebook friends with a whole lot of people who opposed Common Core. It was pretty clear, to me at least, that a lot of right-leaning people who opposed it would've embraced it had it not been pushed by Barack Obama. I mean, it was nice agreeing about Common Core, but all in all we don't see eye to eye.

I have a similar issue with opinion writers who oppose Trump but embrace all things reformy. These are people who either can't be bothered with cursory research or choose not to accept it. What's the fundamental difference between them and the climate change deniers? How are their beliefs more acceptable than those of people who think the earth was created 600 years ago, or whatever?

They don’t like Trump. We don’t like Trump. But they go along with nonsense like Common Core and charters. This is pretty much what Hillary did, and what she ran on. And this watered down wimpy nonsense is precisely what placed Donald Trump in the White House. Now they're all on their high horses, telling us how bad he is.

Truth is not a box of chocolates. You don't get to bite into one and place it back into the box half-eaten if you don't like it. There are no "alternative facts." You have to pretty much take it all, whether you like it or not, and deal with it. I voted for Hillary against Donald Trump, but I was sickened by her failure to embrace universal health care, college for all, and a living wage. Most Americans favor it, and a whole lot need it.

The point is we’re gonna have to do better in providing a vision for the future, because theirs has failed spectacularly. You can't come into an election with half-assed warmed-over platitudes and say, "Trump sucks so vote for us." More importantly, you can't present yourself as an authority and then pontificate on topics about which you know nothing.

A free press is vital to a democracy. The outrageous ignorance of NY Times columnists is most definitely one of the things that's brought us where we are today. On education, at least, their editorial staff is no better. Their education reporting, with notable exceptions, can be the very worst of any NY paper. On ATRs, it's little better than reformy Chalkbeat.

If we want to educate our children, and if we want to beat Trump and his merry band of white supremacist apologists, we're gonna need better from the "paper of record."

Steve Bannon and Eva Moskowitz Trash Talk Trump

Everyone's heard of what rats do on sinking ships, so I guess it was bound to happen. Steve Bannon, maybe on borrowed time after Trump's odd comments about him, called up a left-leaning publication on record. He said some things that make sense, i.e., that Seoul would not last very long at all in Trump's fire and fury. He also said he hoped the left kept protesting nazis, thinking it would hurt them in the polls. I didn't agree with that. I almost never watch cable news at all, but the other day I couldn't even see support for nazis on Fox News.

Of course, the other Trump enthusiast to distance herself was Moskowitz, Count on reformy Chalkbeat to shadow her every move, whether jumping on or off the Trump bandwagon. Moskowitz was under consideration for Education Secretary, because Trump needed the reformiest people, and needed to be so reformy that people would get tired of all the reforminess. (In fairness, it seems he's achieving that.)

Of course Moskowitz needed to distance herself from him at this point. Of course, she didn't need to distance herself at other points. For example, before the hoopla of the presidential campaign, Trump spent a great deal of time in his quest trying to prove our first black President, Barack Obama, was not born in the United States. In fact, even when Obama produced his birth certificate, that was not enough for Trump. It's not too hard to see this effort as overt racism, particularly since there was no basis for it whatsoever. But I digress.

Eva Moskowitz was not put off when Trump said Mexicans were rapists and murderers. I was, because I understand the odious nature of stereotypes. In fact, I grew up in a Catholic neighborhood and got to experience them very young. People who traffic in stereotypes ought not to be around children, let alone teach them. But hey, it's okay with Eva Moskowitz, and she runs a bunch of schools.

Moskowitz didn't mind when Trump incited his supporters toward violence with those who disagreed with them. It was fine when he got a bunch of angry thugs all excited. After all, it isn't like they hate her students and everything they stand for, is it? Actually, given that they're white supremacists, nazis, KKK, and whatever, it kind of is. But that didn't temper Eva's support. Go figure.

Trump didn't think a Mexican-American judge could be fair to him. He expected the judge to be just as predudiced as he was. He acted like he didn't know who David Duke was. Forget that three weeks ago he was telling police to hit the heads of suspects on their cars. No innocent before being proven guilty for him, and no issue for Eva.

Then there's that Muslim ban. Trump said we needed to stop them from coming in until we figured out just what the hell was going on. I found it odd that he was running for President and didn't already know. I mean, you kind of look to the President to tell you what the hell is going on. The President has top-secret briefings and info not available to the rest of us. Of course, Trump was too busy read those briefings, opting instead for feel good stuff about himself twice a day. So it's no wonder he doesn't know what the hell is going on.  I's kind of our job to be role models, and it's kind of our job to help kids figure out what the hell is going on. But ignoring that was good enough for Eva Moskowitz if if got her favorable treatment.

And who could forget the "grab them by the pussy" moment, followed soon by Trump's claim that no one respected women more than him. My first thought was that women are in pretty deep peril if no one respected them more than some guy who was grabbing them by the pussy. A lot of us thought that was the end for Donald Trump, but there's the PT Barnum quote that, "Nobody ever lost a dollar by underestimating the taste of the American people." And then there's the fact that Trump actually got three million fewer votes than his opponent, which kind of put the kibosh on any arguments this was a democratic election. None of that mattered to Eva Moskowitz.

Moskowitz is used to manipulating politicians for her own interests.  We all know that Joel Klein, while closing public schools rather than helping them, was at her beck and call. Of course, he's gone now. And we all know that whoredog in chief Andrew Cuomo would appear at a charter rally just about anytime as long as those suitcases of cash came barreling in. But Cuomo sensed the mood was shifting sometime during the last few years of opt-out, and decided to change his image to Sanders Lite.

So there was Eva, all alone. Who could she turn to? There was Trump. You knew he didn't give a damn about opt-out. I mean, a man who refused to criticize white supremacists and KKK was unlikely to come out against standardized testing. It seemed foolproof.

But then came the day that not even Fox News would rationalize his actions and Eva knew she'd made a mistake. So she wrote a letter. Now I can only assume she's now good with herself. She should have been "more outspoken" against all the things she evidently found completely acceptable. She also she has a book to sell.

I can't wait for reformy Chalkbeat to tell us how wonderful it is.

Super-Reformy Chalkbeat Gives Both Reformy Sides

Naturally, I'm impressed that Chalkbeat went the extra mile, quoting not only Eva Moskowitz, but also the so-called Families for Excellent Schools, an astroturf org whose primary function appears to be supporting Moskowitz. Sometimes it's not enough to only get Eva's side, and it's important to also know how her professional cheering section feels. (In case you're wondering, they support her.) That way, we get a more thorough understanding of the pro-charter side of the issue.

What might you lose when you go out of your way to focus on both reformy sides? A commenter at Chalkbeat offers a taste:

This Chalkbeat article left out the information that Mayor de Blasio offered space to some of these charter schools and the charter schools rejected it because it was not in the expensive neighborhood where it would be much easier to market to the affluent students they prefer to teach.

Odd how the ace reporters at Gates-Walmart funded Chalkbeat forgot that part. Essentially, the story says that charters wish de Blasio to show his good will by giving up and surrendering space. Given the comment, I guess it can't just be any space. After all, Eva needs to be particular. And she can't really complete her rampant expansion plans without  precisely the right space for her private schools that can't be bothered following city regulations. So why shouldn't the taxpayers foot the bill so she can go wherever she goshdarn pleases? You can't expect Chalkbeat to delve too deeply into questions like those, because you know, their reporters are busy, and haven't got time to think about all that stuff.

The important thing, though, is that Eva get her space. After all, Mayor Bill de Blasio ran on an anti-charter platform and won an overwhelming victory, but screw him and everyone who voted for him (and don't even mention that, ever). Governor Cuomo mounted his white steed and rode to Eva's rescue, passing a law that NYC had to pay for Eva's charter schools whether the city wanted them or not. (And for the record, I don't recall UFT leadership raising a peep in protest.)

Not to belabor the point, but Chalkbeat reporters have a lot of things to do. It isn't easy running a Gates-Walton funded operation. They don't have time to find answers to nagging questions,  let alone speak to lowly teachers. If you read yesterday's comment section, you'll see they actually don't even know any, so they asked a commenter who teaches in LA whether he could put them in touch with NYC teachers. Because, you know, they're Very Important, and he's a teacher. Therefore he has nothing better to do than find them contacts in their own town. That's the sort of bold, proactive journalism we've come to expect from Chalkbeat.

In fact, because they pay a whole lot of people a whole lot of money, the charter folks have gotten this story out to a whole lot of local press. You'd think maybe Chalkbeat, with its sole focus on education, might provide a little more depth to the story, but you'd be wrong. From reading Chalkbeat, you'd think there was space all over the city, just waiting for Eva to appropriate it.

Evidently, Chalkbeat is unaware of issues like oversized classes and overcrowding, because honestly, who cares about that stuff? Not Walton and Gates, who fund Chalkbeat. So why should they bother looking into stuff like that? I mean, how would that help Families for Excellent Schools or Eva Moskowitz? How would it help E4E, the Gates-funded group Chalkbeat turns to when it needs the vital opinions of former teachers?

Here on planet earth, I work in a school that overcrowded to the point of bursting. We're slated to have over 4,700 students, more than ever, and I have no idea how we are going to accommodate them. With the help of UFT, we were able to negotiate an annex that will provide us with ten extra classrooms after we lose the trailers. But that will take a few years, and while we wait the DOE has generously provided up with hundreds of extra students, pretty much canceling the value of the extra space before we even get it.

But hey, why worry about that? The important thing is that Moskowitz get her space, and that paid charter shills drown out the voices of those of us who actually do this work. Why on earth would we give extra space to actual public school students? Who lobbies for them?

Actually I do. So do people like Leonie Haimson, Diane Ravitch, Carol Burris, Jeanette Deutermann and others. So do a whole lot of working teachers. What do they think about this?

If you're relying on Chalkbeat for information, you'll never find out.