Abstract Portrait of a Chancellor

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

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

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

— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) May 3, 2014

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

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

— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) May 3, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Platitudes Ahoy from Hillary at NEA

Writer Dana Goldstein is highly impressed by Hillary's talking points at the NEA. She says it represents a new beginning for teachers, and calls her "the teachers' candidate." Yet she's also highly impressed by recent actions of the Obama administration.

Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued a mea culpa of sorts on the overuse of standardized testing, and his successor John King has drawn attention to racial segregation and overly harsh school discipline.

While it's nice that these guys have finally taken the crucial step of paying valuable lip service to these things, the fact is they've done jack squat on the testing front, and John King is, in fact, trying to subvert ESSA to ensure that more testing be done, spirit and letter of the law be damned. And despite the alleged philosophical evolution of President Obama, I haven't heard him raise a peep over King's disregard for the law.

You'll pardon me for not getting overly enthusiastic here, but I've watched our AFT President Randi Weingarten very carefully, along with our local President Michael Mulgrew, and I've heard a lot about what President Obama has said. Those words have not changed much for those of us who actually do the work. Things seem to get worse each and every year, no matter what they say. Here's more on our commander-in-chief:

Two years later, in a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Obama referenced teacher tenure more harshly, saying, “I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences.” If we could fire bad teachers and replace them with better ones, the thinking went, we could narrow the academic fissures between rich and poor children.

Obama wasn’t wrong about the excesses of teacher tenure.

I love that Goldstein feels no pressure to, you know, offer any evidence for that statement. In fact, tenure does not give teachers jobs for life. Tenure just means, or at least used to mean, that admin has to prove teachers are unfit before they fire them. Generally no one, including Goldstein, questions why these teachers received tenure if they were indeed unfit. And no one questions why administrators didn't bother to go after these teachers before. But now that Cuomo has managed to place the burden of proof on teachers to prove they are not unfit, a virtually impossible burden, perhaps writers like Goldstein find things improved. Who knows? She herself feels no need to even offer an explanation.

And while it's nice that Obama pays lip service to factors other than teachers, and it's nice that Hillary does as well, there's no evidence here that anything is going to change, and no promises to actually, you know, do anything about it. Were Hillary saying she was going to do away with all VAM junk science, it would be something worth talking about. But I didn't hear that, and Goldstein didn't report it. Here's the important part of Goldstein's argument:

I wrote a book on our historical tendency to blame teachers for society’s ills.

That's what you call an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy, if not a self-serving advertisement. I don't care if she's written ten books. Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein have written books too, and they're still still full of crap. Show me why I should listen to you. Here's what self-appointed expert Goldstein has learned:

Teacher accountability isn’t a bad thing; any functional system has mechanisms in place to remove low performers and, even more importantly, help them improve. 

You see that? It's more important to help them improve, but despite all the nice words about external factors from Hillary and Obama and her uncited sources, there's still that bad teacher floating around the pool polluting the water for everyone else.  And here's Goldstein's conclusion:

It’s safe to say it is a new day for the Democratic Party on education policy. But here’s hoping that Clinton’s turn toward the unions doesn’t mean she lets go of some of the Obama administration’s more promising recent ideas.

Despite the fact that Hillary was addressing an audience of teachers and clearly catered her remarks to evoke applause, despite the fact that this was a speech, not an act, and despite the fact that teachers booed her remarks about charters, which she clearly plans to support and expand, this writer, who "wrote a book," is  certain it's a new day. Frankly, I didn't even see how Hillary's promise of "a seat at the table" has any meaning whatsoever. I've been to many legally imposed public meetings where those who were supposed to listen had their minds made up and did whatever they came to do anyway. I've joined entire communities to speak at that table as Bloomberg's operatives played video games below it, ignoring us entirely.

If Hillary becomes President, it's incumbent upon activists like us and opt-out to keep the pressure on. We already know that AFT and NEA are content with status quo and unconditionally accept every word that comes out of the mouths of educational demagogues they wish to support. It's what they do, not what they say, and thus far Hillary Clinton has done nothing but sit idly by while her former boss followed each and every reformy druther of Bill Gates. She's accepted money and support from Broad and the Walmart family, and this teacher does not believe reformies are paying for any "new beginning" that involves improving the lot of public school teachers or students.

Go ahead and prove me wrong, Hillary. But don't take me for such a fool that, after decades of reforminess, I should just take your word things will be better even as you offer no specifics whatsoever.

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 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.

What Merriment Is the King Pursuing Tonight?

Modern-day ed. "reformers" invariably deal in inconvenient contradictions.  First, there was Rhee, former head of Students' First, jovially describing how she had her class tape their lips shut to the point of bleeding.  Then there are a whole spate of reformers who preach the Common Core, high-stakes tests and junk-science teacher evaluations, yet refuse to send their kids to schools that practice the same.  One such reformer is NY State Ed. Commissioner John King, now on his way to D.C.  King's kids had been schooled at a private Montessori in Greenbush, NY, dubbed Woodland Hill.

In the wake of the oxymoron, Susan Kambrich, head of Woodland Hill, attempted to explain it away.  According to her, "When I looked at the pedagogical shifts that are part of the Common Core, it felt like we were already doing those things."  She followed up, "Montessori education lends itself very well to the initiatives of the Common Core."  Not all agree.  Some are quick to point out that Maria Montessori was more about teaching to the whole child, allowing greater latitude for unstructured play and exercise.  She never would have stood for a punitive test-based learning culture.

Teachers at my school have also looked at the standards and remarked that we do all these things.  Some say it without realizing our kids will be Common-Cored alive in Global History and Geography come the Spring of 2015.  When it comes to pass (or in this case fail), perhaps we will be comforted by the fact that even Woodland Hill's fifth-grade class failed its 2013 State math test miserably.

That is what happens, I guess, when it seems you have been doing Common-Core-type things all along.  Like an unsuspecting deer, you walk into the headlights of a high-stakes test.  It is the equivalent of a rapidly firing machine gun.  You marched off to war with a bounce in your step, but when the guns fire, it's hit the ground and good luck!

Now, that King is on his way to D.C., he will have the opportunity to put his money where his children's mouths are.  Will he become a public-school parent?  Will he subject his kids to classes focused on test prep?  Will he subject his kids to tests made to drain the living spirit from them?  Will he subject his children to tests that academically drown even reputable swimmers?

Let me conclude with a quote by Maria Montessori.  Perhaps when King is considering into which school he should enroll his children, he will be thinking more of Montessori's sentiments than his own promulgation of the Core:

“We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child's spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.” 

― Maria Montessori

The King Is Dead. Long Live the King.

In one way, the list to the left rings true, but  in another, King has personally accomplished quite a few things. I've always been fascinated, for example, by the TV show The Sopranos. There you will find grown men sitting in lawn chairs at construction sites, and getting a pretty good salary for doing so. Beats working, you might say. And John King, while he didn't sit in a lawn chair, managed to spend his entire tenure not representing our children. Rather, he represented the moneyed interests that got him his job in the first place. While he didn't actually do his job at all, he did accomplish a few things.

For one, after facing the public for the first time, he labeled parents and teachers "special interests," canceled all future meetings in a snit, and managed to keep his job. Can you imagine what would happen to you if you decided your students didn't have valid concerns, canceled all your classes, and walked out? Do you think you'd get that commendation letter you've hoped for all these years?

For King, it was no biggie. So he made a mistake, He didn't face 3020a removal hearings as you would if you were outright derelict in your duties. That's for the little people. Forced to reconsider and actually face the public, he failed to say a word when a real special interest group monopolized one of the so-called public hearings:

In short, no one at the forum engaged in critical thinking about the new educational standards that are, purportedly, all about critical thinking.

He also got away with an outright lie, contending the Montessori schools his kids attend actually utilize the nonsense he advocates for ours. Clearly they do not. The "Do as I say, not as I do" mantra is a common one among the reformies, from King, to Bloomberg, to Klein, to Rhee, right up to and including our own President Barack Obama, he of the hopey changiness that has completely eluded American schools during his tenure.

John King taught a whopping one year in a public school, and went on to teach two years in a charter. How that qualifies him to head education in NY State I have not the slightest idea. Of course, people with money value reforminess far more than actual experience. That he managed to corral his NY State gig with such paltry experience and hold onto it despite his remarkably thin skin and outrageous hypocrisy is an achievement in itself.

Finally, despite his inability and unwillingness to sustain an argument against a thoughtful opponent, resorting to name calling rather than the critical thinking he claimed to be modeling, despite his woefully meager tenure as an actual teacher, despite his utter lack of helping our kids, he managed to wrangle a promotion. His credentials as relentless fanatical ideologue were sufficient for equally unqualified Arne Duncan to offer him a prestigious federal gig. One might assume he actually had achieved something beyond advocating for those who want to test our kids to death and destroy my chosen profession.

One would be laboring under a misconception, of course.

Saint Bill of Students First

It's not been the best of months for funnyman Bill Cosby. He's accused of drugging and raping a whole lot of women, and that doesn't particularly jibe with the whole Dr. Huxtable thing. But he hasn't been convicted of anything, and in this country you are presumed innocent.

Unless, of course, legal expert Campbell Brown and her hedge-fund gang are on the case. This is because the whole innocent until proven guilty thing doesn't apply to unionized teachers. Yet I haven't heard word one from Brown about Cosby, even though the things of which he's accused make all the nonsense she blabbers about teachers pale in comparison.

In this case, Cosby works with Students First, like Brown's husband Dan Senor, and that makes everything okay. I mean, you don't hear legal expert Brown complaining about Students First founder Michelle Rhee, who tapes kids' mouths shut to keep them quiet. And I'm not making a discredited accusation here--Rhee boasted about it to a receptive group she was addressing. They found it hilarious. Here in Fun City a teacher who sought such amusement would be subject to Chancellor's Regulation A-420, which prohibits corporal punishment. 

You might think Cosby might be a target of Campbell Brown because he's associated with education, having advertised his degree at the end of every Cosby show, but that's not the same thing as being some lowly teacher. Cosby holds a doctorate in education, at least somewhat earned via alternate means, like appearing on Sesame Street. Sounds less bothersome than all that sitting in a classroom stuff, but I wonder whether the NYC DOE would consider it rigorous enough to grant you or me a sabbatical.  Frankly, given his ready affiliation with Students First, it doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to question his expertise on public education.

There are differences, though, between Bill Cosby and embattled public school teachers. The most obvious, of course, is that Cosby is independently wealthy. Sure, he lost his new series at NBC and maybe a few live shows got canceled. But he won't be driving a taxi anytime soon. He won't be selling any of his homes to make ends meet.

It's different for lifelong teachers, smeared by allegations that the DOE couldn't even get past an arbitrator. Letters in their files, dismissed by arbitrators as baseless, are rehashed in tabloid news stories. They're exiled to the Absent Teacher Reserve with scarlet letters on their files, warning principals not to hire them. Celebrities who don't know a classroom from a green room condemn them on national TV. They say the most reprehensible and stereotypical things, like the bad ones spoil it for the good ones, and suggest we strip the "bad" ones (Who decides who they are, by the way?) of due process, so they can be fired for no reason.

Worst of all is when our union leadership accepts such standards, as they did when they wrote a second-tier due process for ATR teachers into the most recent contract. Mulgrew says it will make no difference, but also says ATR teachers can face 3020a for two incidents of shouting in the hall. In my overcrowded school, it's virtually impossible to communicate during passing without shouting in the hall. I know teachers who've lost their jobs for no reason at all, and I worry about them a whole lot more than I worry about Cosby. Their struggles are a whole lot worse than wondering whether or not they'll be able to get another sitcom.

Is Cosby guilty? Not yet, not in the United States. But it's remarkable to watch Whoopi Goldberg defend him while excoriating unionized teachers. She's clearly got a different standard for teachers than she does for comedians. Can you imagine what she, not to mention Campbell Brown, would be saying about a public school teacher accused of serial date rape?

Of course there should be standards for teachers. Of course no one who harms children belongs in a classroom. I fail to see, though, why we should be stripped of our jobs based on innuendo, while we're chided for even discussing allegations against wealthy entertainers who presume to be education experts and role models.

On Being Unhindered by Inconvenient Reality

It must be great to be Joel Klein. You can simply blame the UFT for everything. There's that awful contract that restrains you from doing all the wonderful work you aspire to. Never mind that you signed it and had a hand in writing it. And the best thing about it is that even if stuff isn't in the contract, you can just make it up and get it printed in the Atlantic. There's prestige for you. And in fairness, why should New York Times columnists and editorial writers corner the market on reforminess?

Klein laments that he could not meet with teachers because the contract prohibited it. I find that odd because I teach in the largest school in Queens and for his entire eight-year tenure the Kleinster did not see fit to set foot in our school even once. I've read the UFT Contract and I haven't seen the part that says a Chancellor may not enter the school building. In fact, both Cathie Black and Dennis Walcott visited my school and I didn't even file a grievance. Walcott and I actually spoke on several occasions.

But Joel Klein is different. He has deep and abiding respect for clauses in the UFT Contract, even if they do not exist. That's just the kind of guy he is. The union was completely uncooperative when Joel tried to reach out. Just look at how hostile then-UFT President Randi Weingarten looks in the photo above. You can just sense the absolute enmity between the two of them. Clearly she isn't cooperating with him at all.

Odd that Klein was so respectful of the Imaginary UFT Contract,  but had multiple issues abiding by the actual UFT Contract. If I'm not mistaken, one year he decided to deny all sabbaticals. I believe that was taken to arbitration and he lost. Odd that someone absolutely willing to unilaterally ignore the real contract would be so upset by clauses hindering his options under the imaginary one.

What's truly odd to me, though, is that several times I directly spoke to Klein at the PEP. Not only did he fail to utter a single word in response, but he appeared to be playing with his Blackberry and utterly ignoring every word I said about the then-massive overcrowding at Francis Lewis High School. I watched him do the same to James Eterno as he spoke the outrageous conditions at Jamaica High School. In fact, though Eterno emailed Klein about the false assumptions used to close Jamaica High School, that didn't stop Klein from going ahead and closing it on those very assumptions.

But of course that is reality, and Klein can't be bothered with such things when telling his story. That's what enables reforminess, actually. You can't get up and say there are billions of dollars in education and Eva Moskowitz needs to get her taste. You can't say you want to close neighborhood schools and make profits for your BFFs. You can't get up and say you're determined to ignore poverty and cut taxes for people who don't send their kids to public schools. Really, you can't get up and say, "I'm Joel Klein, or Mike Bloomberg, or John King, and I choose not to send my own kids to the schools I make up rules for."

Rather, you can write books about the way you choose to remember things. Because Eva Moskowitz, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan and the other people who read such books are highly unlikely to fact-check or read blogs like this one. 

As Education Commenter, Frank Bruni Is a Great Food Critic

by special guest blogger Harris Lirtzman

Time Magazine’s most recent issue offers for its readers the picture of a perfectly round, deep red apple about to be squashed to a pulp by a judge’s gavel with the warning:  “Rotten Apples: It’s nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher. Some tech millionaires may have found a way to change all of that.”

Evidently, the article is not as terrible as the visual, though the writer couldn’t be bothered to find a single working teacher to talk to as part of her reporting.  But we all know that thousands of grocery shoppers and patients in doctor’s offices very often see only a magazine cover and magazine editors know that.  Score another for the “education reformers” in their campaign to demolish the integrity and hard work that almost every teacher I have ever known brings to his or her job every day.

The other day, the New York Times columnist, Frank Bruni, recently its restaurant critic, wrote a “thought piece” called “Towards Better Teachers.”  I know that the pressure of writing two eight hundred word columns a week can bring any author to his knees so Mr. Bruni decided to offer his readers a book report instead of his usual opinion piece.  Bruni sat down with former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to puff his new book Lessons of Hope: How to Fix Our Schools.  During the interview, er, transcription, of Mr. Klein’s words, Bruni offered "But they [teachers] owe us a discussion about education that fully acknowledges the existence of too many underperformers in their ranks. Klein and others who bring that up aren’t trying to insult or demonize them. They’re trying to team up with them on a project that matters more than any other: a better future for kids."

 Joel Klein has never, ever, not once during or since his Chancellorship "tried to team up with teachers to build a better future for our kids."

This is stenography. This is not reporting.  Joel Klein spoke. Bruni wrote.
Bruni feels sorry that we teachers had our feelings hurt by the recent Time article
My feelings aren't hurt that the man who was the Times restaurant critic until two years ago now takes dictation while Joel Klein pontificates about teachers. I am simply angry. I am simply tired that restaurant critics, technology entrepreneurs and hedge fund managers now make policy for public schools and for public school teachers.

But that's OK. Andrew Cuomo, our governor and likely to be our governor for the next eight years, declared early this week to the NY Daily News editorial board that public schools are "one of our only remaining public monopolies" and that he feels obligated to break that monopoly by going to war with public teacher unions in order to increase the number of almost entirely unregulated and unsupervised charter schools in the state.

Mr. Bruni opines, with help from his keepers.  Mr. Cuomo rules, with no apparent help from anyone. And though Mr. Cuomo is a fearful man there are brave teachers and parents and students who will resist his determination to turn public schools over to private oligarchs, restaurant critics and former Michael Bloomberg autocrats.

Many of you may believe that public schools need to do better and are angry that teachers have pensions and tenure. Yes, public schools need to do a better job but public schools have always played an important role in forming citizens who function in a democratic society and teachers struggle every day to teach children who speak dozens of languages, have special needs, come from dispossessed communities with limited resources and require extraordinary and skillful work to make them proficient in language and math and history and science. Taking away tenure will solve none of these problems and Joel Klein and Campbell Brown and Michelle Rhee and David Boies and John King, all of whom send their children to private schools, have never once extended a hand in partnership to teachers to work together to improve public schools. They just want teachers to be humiliated and frightened enough so that they will not fight for public schools or for the preservation of their unions and well-earned but not profligate salaries and pensions.

Mr. Bruni, I hear there's a really good salad being served at Per Se and a wonderful Chateaubriand available at Eleven Madison Park. May I reserve a table for you so that you and a few of your closest hedge fund manager and Silicon Valley friends can think of a few new ways to save black and brown kids in Brownsville and Corona Park from the hands of yet another grasping dolt of a teacher?  After all, my friends who’ve been doing this work for more than twenty years “don’ know nothin’ about teachin’” public school students and eagerly await your latest prescriptions for forcing them do their jobs better by taking away their basic work-rights and job protections and destroying their union. That will, I’m sure, spur them onto great and glorious feats of teacherdom not possible without the new paradigm of private management of public schools promised by our Silicon Valley experts, restaurant critics and education-warrior of a governor.

Wayne Barrett Is Shocked, Shocked

It's important to Wayne Barrett that you know he is progressive.

I am a progressive, 

How can you argue with that? After all, that's clear. You are, therefore, supposed to take his argument against union that much more seriously. But that's not all:

...have been one since the 1960s, when I became a New York City public school teacher for a few years and learned that my union, the United Federation of Teachers, was much better at representing my interests than those of the kids I taught. It shouldn't have come as such a surprise.

Wait a minute. Is Barrett stating that the United Federation of Teachers represents the interests of (gasp!) teachers? Now I'm shocked too! But what Barrett also does here is advance the meme that the interests of teachers are counter to those of students. Why aren't we out rallying for more work for less pay? After all, isn't that what the children of America need?

Despite Barrett's boast of how amazingly progressive he is, teacher v. student is precisely the argument you'll hear from Michelle Rhee, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Bill Gates, Chris Christie, and virtually all other supporters of corporate reform. Are we to determine, then, that there is no possibility they could be wrong? That appears to be the conclusion. Were Barrett to oppose abortion, gay rights, or a woman's right to choose, I can only suppose there'd be universal opposition to those issues as well. Barrett continues:

Seen through a progressive lens, all that should matter in these school skirmishes is whether a charter, a contract or an employment rule benefits students. Whenever progressive Democrats instead choose teacher power over the futures of minority kids, they are putting a big bucks lobby ahead of a core but comparatively powerless constituency.

It's pretty remarkable that Barrett forgets all the money billionaires Gates, Broad, and the Walmart family have invested in charters. Does he seriously expect us to entertain the outlandish notion that they are powerless? Does he expect us not to realize all the power and money they put behind charters? Does Barrett expect us to ignore the fact that their money dwarfs that of unions, or that Gates' has basically imposed his agenda on the nation, with the full cooperation of President Barack Obama?

Does he expect we don't know the attrition rates of charters? For example, the fabled Eva Moskowitz Academy just graduated its first class. Over half of its students not only disappeared, but were not even replaced. Are we to ignore that, as uber-progressive Barrett did?

You may, for example, have gotten the impression, when the WFP appeared poised last month to nominate charter foe Diane Ravitch to oppose Gov. Cuomo, a charter champion, in his reelection bid, that these nonprofit-run public schools are a Republican hedge-fund conspiracy. That's what the WFP, a sometimes-blunt instrument exploited by the interests that bankroll it, and 75-year-old Ravitch, the adopted guru of the UFT and de Blasio administration, would have us believe.

I wonder why Ravitch's age is of any relevance to Barrett's argument. Nonetheless, it's one of the most preposterous arguments I've ever seen, particularly if Barrett is as progressive as he claims. There's no evidence whatsoever that Ravitch was poised to win the nomination, and if that's not clear to you, you can ask Zephyr Teachout. Teachout lost the nomination, and it's pretty clear the teacher union did not support her.

As if that's not enough, the fact is the UFT, far from labeling them a "Republican hedge-fund conspiracy" not only supports charter schools, but has opened and co-sponsored them. AFT made Bill Gates the keynote at its convention. UFT and Ravitch differ on not only issues like charters, but also mayoral control, Common Core, and VAM ratings, all of which UFT has supported and Ravitch has opposed.

It's remarkable that someone as "progressive" as Barrett fails to comprehend the corporate influence on the modern Democratic party.

Even Zephyr Teachout, the Fordham professor who ran unsuccessfully against Cuomo for the WFP designation after Ravitch dropped out and now plans to challenge him in a Democratic primary partly because of his "support of corporate school reform," is the protégé of new charter school backer Howard Dean.

This is classic guilt by association. Barrett, despite acknowledging her opposition to Cuomo's corporate reform, sees fit to extrapolate Teachout's positions from those with whom she's acquainted rather than her actual words criticizing Cuomo's education positions or the obvious act of her opposing him.

Aside from the pyrotechnics involved in constructing Barrett's arguments, it's pretty disappointing that the self-styled progressive appears to oppose higher wages for those of us who, unlike him, have chosen to continue to educate all of New York's children, whether or not they meet the selective standards of Eva Moskowitz. I'd say one bottom line for anyone progressive is supporting working people. And lest Barrett shed further crocodile tears for the children he sees as well-served by charters, they will grow up and need jobs too.

It's my hope that we can offer our children something better than what Walmart has spent millions and millions creating for them. And like many of my colleagues, I'm poised to support real progressives to counter the Walmart message.

Attention Daily News and Legal Expert Campbell Brown!

To keep informed, I read all the education articles in the Daily News, and I've noticed a common theme. They are terribly concerned about "pervs" and "sex creeps" because they worry about how our students are treated. As I read the stories, I can't help but notice that they pick the most sensational details from only a handful of cases. In fact, the majority of cases they mention have already been resolved, and the teachers in question were not guilty. While they don't actually bother to get the teachers' versions, I can only assume they'd concur on the lack of guilt thing.

However, I've finally come across a case in which we've got the teacher's point of view. The teacher herself, in fact, admits it in her own words. Far from being repentant, this teacher seems to find it hilarious that she taped students' mouths shut to keep them quiet, and that the kids bled when they removed the tape. Not only that, but she seems to ridicule the way these children speak.

I'd have to say, here in NYC, that these are clear violations of Chancellor's Regulations A-420, corporal punishment, and possibly, given the gleefulness with which she tells the story at the children's expense, A-421, verbal abuse. This may perhaps also violate A-830, given that she seems to express great glee in mimicking the speech patterns of these children.

Since the Daily News and legal expert Campbell Brown are so concerned with protecting our children, I think the least they could do is launch a full-blown investigation. While it's true the incident in question occurred in another municipality, the fact is the teacher in question, Michelle Rhee, has launched groups to promote her ideas. One of them is called Students First NY, and is located right here.

Do we want NYC's 1.1 million schoolchildren subject to the whims of an awful teacher like this? Do we want our children physically abused? Can we tolerate people who not only abuse our children, but also boast and joke about it in public forums?

I say no. And therefore, since these charges are not only sustained, but freely acknowledged by the teacher in question, it's time for self-appointed protectors of decency to stand up. Therefore I call on the Daily News and legal expert Campbell Brown to stand up and take on this horrifying case. The public needs to know.

They'd surely enhance their credibility by taking on a case they could actually prove. I await their response, and offer them whatever support they may require in this quest.

The Unwritten Word on Fake Student Advocacy

It's interesting to read the piece in Gotham Schools about Students First NY. You wouldn't know from the piece that this was a Rhee-sponsored reformy entity, since that doesn't merit mention. What is mentioned, of course, is that this article is about a complaint that has not actually been filed. The most outrageous thing is the headline, which blares the preposterous conclusion that the astroturf group is now a Bloomberg adversary.

Ostensibly, the group's complaint is that there are more teachers rated unsatisfactory in low SES schools. This, they contend, indicates that there are, therefore, more bad teachers in these schools than others. Ironically, they're one of the most outspoken opponents of the S/U system they're now trusting made decisions worth complaining about. But when it will garner them an article in Rupey's NY Post or Gotham Schools, who cares about principle?

Of course, when your national leader is someone who finds it hilarious to duct tape the mouths of young children, principle may not be what motivates you anyway.

I didn't realize these schools were dispensing more U-ratings, but it's fairly easy to guess why. For one thing, there is a direct correlation between low-SES and school closings. Schools with high percentages of high needs kids tend not to get high test scores and are therefore considered failing. It's the school's fault the kids have learning disabilities, and it's the school's fault the kids can't speak English. No excuses. Just because the kid arrived from the Dominican Republic four days ago, that's no reason he can't write that essay about American history.

In any case, should you be unfortunate enough to be the principal of one of these so-called failing schools, you are sorely in need of a scapegoat. Since you can't blame the scores on the fact that the kids don't know English, someone has to take responsibility. Now it can't be you, or you'll be working at Kinko's next week. Therefore, it has to be those teachers. If Mr. NYC Educator's kids can't speak English, it must be his fault, so give him a U-rating. That'll show Chancellor Walcott you're tough.

After all, Mayor Bloomberg has publicly bemoaned the dearth of U-ratings for teachers. He wants more, and you'd better deliver. This is particularly urgent if your test scores are nothing to jump up and down about.

Clearly this complaint is ridiculous. Even if it had merit, which it certainly does not, it's based on a system that no longer exists.  Bloomberg will not spend one moment being upset about this. Anything that makes teachers look bad works for him. Anything that degrades and discourages them is just fine in his book. And make no mistake, that's precisely what Students First exists to enable. Students First means Adults Last, and when the kids they shed those crocodile tears over grow up, they'll be just as screwed as the rest of us.

Hardly something to aspire to, if you ask me.

Rhee: Unionized Teachers Cause Poverty

Michelle Rhee today explained why she and her reformy buds were so reluctant to address the poverty issue. "We really didn't want to say this, because we're very sensitive about hurting the feelings of teachers. We have deep respect for teachers, which is why we want to fire so many of them and make the rest work in non-union charters, where they can either grow quickly or lose their jobs."

"Anyway, like everyone, we've been troubled by the fact that all the failing schools contained high percentages of students in poverty. This correlation has been used by our enemies, like Diane Ravitch, to conclude that poverty causes poor test scores. Bill Gates has repeatedly stated that he can't cure poverty, and everyone knows that anything Bill Gates cannot do simply cannot be done. After all, he has all that money, and he knows absolutely all there is to know about mosquitoes and toilets."

"In any case, despite his reluctance, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done a new study, and this study has found a 100% correlation with high-poverty schools and the presence of unionized teachers. Sadly, there is no other conclusion but that unionized teachers cause poverty. That's why Students First is now beginning a campaign to remove unionized teachers from our schools, and thus cure poverty.

"It's become crystal-clear that only hedge-fund magnates, rich folks like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walmart family care about poor children. In fact, the Walmart family consistently offers them opportunities to make over ten bucks an hour when they get out of schools. Education advocates like Newt Gingrich are trying to tear down barriers that keep them from earning money before they're 16. After all, couldn't we save precious tax dollars if we had our children cleaning floors and removing asbestos, rather than paying expensive unionized custodians?"

"We're making great progress. Michigan, traditionally a bastion for unions, is now a right-to-work state. And in New York, Reformy John King has finally given us the opportunity to fire most of those poverty-causing NYC teachers. Once we get rid of them, we can devote our time to getting our students into 200-hour a week charter schools, where kids can learn valuable skills that will help them when they get 200-hour a week jobs in Taco Bell or Walmart.

"We did not really want to make this connection public, but now that we have, we're certain you'll be reading more about it on tabloid editorial pages. We certainly hope this provokes the necessary outrage it takes for America to trust the education of its children to demagogues like me, because I assure you, I place your children first. They will be the first to get jobs at Walmart, the first to collect food stamps, the first to get fired at will, and the first to work the longest hours ever for the shortest wage we can muster."

HT to Michael Fiorillo

Being Reformy Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

Reformy Rhee is besieged by suggestions Erase to the Top was bigger and badder than she'd ever acknowledged. The smoking memo has been released, and she's all Scarlett O'Hara: "What? Little old me? Well I never saw any blessed memo. Let them look at it tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day."

Apparently, her successor, Kaya Henderson never saw the memo either, yet now deems it to be flawed. One of the great things about being reformy is this--whatever goes wrong, it isn't your fault. It was an emergency! Children were suffering. We didn't have time to do any stinking research! How could we possibly have anticipated people would cheat?

And that's a good question. After all, they had choices. They could raise test scores and get bonuses, or fail to raise test scores and get fired. In Rhee-world, there are No Excuses. How could she possibly have anticipated that people would cheat and get bonuses rather than tell the truth and get fired? After all, she not only never saw the memo, but she also never heard of Campbell's Law.

Who would've thunk principals and teachers would invest heavily in erasers rather than get fired, lose their health insurance, be homeless, and get the jobs at Walmart for which Rhee and her minions wish to train our children. I say our children because Rhee's kid, like Bloomberg's, like Rahm's, like Klein's, like John King's, goes to an elite private school where nonsense like this does not apply.

In a perfect world, Rhee's DC would get a thorough investigation just like the one conducted in Atlanta. However, with Rhee BFFs Obama, Duncan, Gates, Broad and the Family Walmart, I'm not altogether optimistic we'll see one anytime soon. It's ironic, because a big Rhee theme is no excuses. Too bad if your kids don't speak English, if they have learning disabilities, if they have no support at home, if they have no home, or whatever. Thus spake The Great and Powerful Rhee.

I leave you today with the tale of Rhee the Reformer, Dr. Seuss-style, as only brilliant Teacher Sabrina could tell it.

If You're Reformy and You Know It, Tell a Lie

There have been some incredible stories coming out this weekend, not the least of which is that of uber-reformy Michelle Rhee. Rhee proudly boasts of being a public school parent, but it appears one of her kids attends an elite 22K per year private school. This would not be of any consequence whatsover, but for two things. One, of course, is that she lies about it. The second is the school she chooses for her kids does not indulge in the high class sizes or relentless testing she champions for our kids.

Had I sent my kid to a school with small classes and no high-stakes testing, I'd be working to ensure others got it as well. As it happens, I am a real public school parent, and my kid suffers through all the nonsense Rhee and her minions inflict on our country. They are aided and abetted, of course, by leaders like Duncan, Cuomo, and Bloomberg, all of whom seem to value lower taxes on their BFFs above the welfare of American children.

Not only that, but yet another reformy "miracle," like the one on Texas, and the one in NYC, has turned out to be an utter fraud. Beverly Hall worked her magic in Atlanta, and was widely praised for the incredible progress she made. It turned out, though, that most of the magic was not done in the classroom, but in offices stocked with abundant erasers.

This, of course, is what happens when you have a real investigation, rather than the cursory one Rhee had in DC. The question is, will Rhee BFFs like Obama and Duncan demand a real look at what happened while the reformiest of the reformy was in charge? And the answer, of course, is almost certainly no.

Meanwhile, the witch hunt against working teachers continues. The NY Times appears to bemoan the fact that only a small percentage of teachers are being labeled failing under new junk science-based evaluation systems. This is dangerous on two levels. First, reformy folks like John King, who will likely as not impose such a system on city teachers, is likely to ensure larger numbers are ensnared in his Flat Earth net. Second, it reinforces the myth of the ubiquitous bad teacher.

Now I'm not saying there are no bad teachers, but I am saying it is not the epidemic reformy hedge-funders and newspaper owners would have us believe. There are certainly means of dealing with them, and creating a system where disingenuous self-serving demagogues like Rhee and Bloomberg can indiscriminately fire inconvenient teachers will not represent any improvement whatsoever.

It's amazing that people like Rhee are permitted to continue targeting working teachers for conditions well out of their control, while dodging any accountability whatsoever. Equally amazing is that pockets of the press are beginning to take note.

Let's hope this trend continues.

It's Not Value-Added! It's Growth Model!

The latest round of negotiations to bring junk science to New York City is about to begin, and boy do they have surprises for us! One is that yes, your Regents exams will indeed be used to determine whether or not you are fit to keep your job. I'd previously been under the impression that since these tests were not designed to determine whether or not we add value, they would not be used for that purpose.

Boy was I wrong! It turns out the city can make up some pre-test, then give the Regents exam at the end of the year, and figure out how well you did. And that's not value-added because there's no complicated mathematical formula attached to it, and no one's fretting over how many high-poverty students you have, or how many ESL students, or how they're disabled. It's just straght scoring.

If anyone watched the Michelle Rhee Frontline piece, you can see how well that worked out. There was Rhee, in front of everyone, declaring the amazing gains schools had made under her brilliant guidance. And that made a great deal of sense until all those erasures started showing up, and people said things like there was a better chance of winning the lottery than posting such incredible gains so quickly. So there you go. If you want to do well under the growth model, do it the old-fashioned way--cheat. Hopefully whatever merit pay that entails will be spent before anyone finds out.

Seriously, I have made inquiries, and my understanding is the growth model has no more validity than value-added. In fact, because it fails to consider external factors, it could indeed be worse. That's what the UFT is discussing with the DOE right now, and it's entirely possible they could come to an agreement before Cuomo's January 17th deadline. This is because a potential 1% cut in the city education budget is very important. What is of no importance whatsoever is the UFT contract, which expired over three years ago. Also of no urgency is the fact that educators have not had a raise in four years, despite the 8% raises all other city employees got.

So don't worry about those things. Just remember, as UFT officials will tell you, under the current system, principals have way too much power. The way to correct that, of course, is by making your evaluation 20%, 25%, 40%, or possibly 100% junk science and hoping for the best. So what if hundreds of DC teachers were fired as a result of a similar system? So what if good teachers get fired for no reason? So what if it's abundantly clear the only reason reformy types like Gates and Rhee even float these evaluation systems is so they can fire as many teachers as possible?

The important thing to remember is that, since value-added has such large margins of error as to be completely unpredicatable and unreliable, you may get a good value-added rating, even if you're the worst teacher on God's green earth!

So stop being such a Gloomy Gus, and start hoping for the best!

Rhee Rheedux

Hi, I'm Michelle Rhee. At a time like this, I think it's only fit we redouble my efforts to ensure our reforms reach every student in these United States. After all, people as wealthy as Broad, Gates, and the Walmarts are paying good money for these reforms, and if they weren't very, very smart, why would they have all that money?

Of course every student deserves a good teacher, and the only way to determine whether or not the teacher is good is by the test scores of students. Here at Students First, we don't believe in all that touchy-feely nonsense about role models and self-image. We believe in good teachers, and we have absolute faith in them, except that no matter how good they are, they can't be trusted to write tests themselves. That's just one reason we ignore everything they say or do that isn't related to test scores.

In New York City, where we've just opened up a chapter of Students First, we're pushing heavily for an evaluation system that will get teachers fired if their test scores don't measure up. In fact, rather than spending money on wasteful nonsense like reducing class sizes or paying teachers, we're spending hundreds of thousands in corporate cash to ensure that we have a system that will get teachers fired when they need to be, and that is as soon as possible.

The only real way to keep students safe is to make sure we test them all the time. We know, of course, that this will not reduce gun violence or poverty. But let's be honest--in times like these, we have to do what we can. Our corporate sponsors, frankly, are not interested in widespread efforts to curb these problems. By firing teachers, by weakening their unions, by keeping their pay down and tossing about nonsensical and ineffective merit pay schemes we can keep people from focusing on these things, make millions for corporations that might otherwise be wasted on classrooms, and keep people from thinking too much about how awfully little our sponsors pay in taxes.

That's why I'm able to come to you today and say there are no excuses. If test scores don't go up, heads of unionized teachers will roll and the public will feel something has been done. People who work in Walmart for less than sustenance wages will no longer have to curse teachers for having benefits or reasonable salaries, because we'll put an end to that as well.

If kids are undernourished, if they have interrupted formal education, if they don't speak English, if they have special needs, diagnosed or otherwise, rest assured that we will put Students First by closing their schools and firing their teachers. While this will not actually prevent or discourage any future tragedies, we're certain that people will feel much better if their anger can be redirected at unionized teachers.

Remember, we're here whenever you feel like blaming teachers for education, or indeed whatever you like. Condaleeza Rice and Joel Klein just put out some study saying it was a matter of national security. We have high-priced consultants who can rationalize pretty much anything.

Thank you America, and remember our pledge--we will continue to put Students First right until their 18th birthdays.

What Teachers Get

As bad as things are in Mayor Bloomberg's New York, they're looking even worse in Chicago. Fred Klonsky highlights the offer teachers over there are looking at. Here it is:

■ A 2 percent raise in year one.
■ A pay freeze in year two.
■ Raises based on “differentiated pay’’ in years three to five. A joint district-union committee, to be seated in January, would decide how “differentiated pay” would work but it could reward teachers of high-need subjects, in high-need schools, or in teacher leadership positions, or those who rate highly in a new teacher evaluation system that is tied, in part, to student growth.
■ Elimination of “step and lane’’ increases for extra years of seniority and added certifications.
■ A longer school day that, under a new law, does not require union approval. The elementary school day will increase from 5 ¾ to 7 hours, and the high school day will increase from 7 hours to 7 ½ hours four days a week, with an early dismissal on the fifth day.

This is amazing. Even Burger King employees get 15% more pay if they work 15% more hours. Chicago teachers are expected, perhaps, to be too stupid to notice. Goodbye to increases you've gotten for sticking it out and staying with the kids for 20 years. Hello to "reformers" deciding whether or not you deserve a raise. Did you raise test scores? Did you wash the principal's car? Did you spend Tuesday afternoon in Motel 6 with your AP?

So many things to consider. It's not surprising that the CTU is holding a strike authorization vote. "Reformers" are always complaining that the system is strictly for adults, and this is the problem. How dare teachers demand wage increases, better working conditions, due process, or pensions? They should give it up, focus on serving the kids, and eat cat food in their twilight years.

 A lot of Americans watch folks like Gates, Rhee, and Bloomberg, and say, yeah, screw those teachers! If my life is crap, why shouldn't their lives be crap too? And sometimes, arguments like those win over disgruntled Americans. But times like these there are other questions that need to be asked.

Is that the kind of career you want for your children? Just because your job sucks, just because your boss is nuts, just because you work 200 hours a week, should your kids do the same? Because really, this is not about you, and it's likely not about teachers who've been doing this for a long time.

It's about the future. It's about leaving this job and this world a little better for those who will take it after we're gone. Perhaps the more work for less pay thing is not optimal after all. In any case, if we're too stupid to know that what we do here is what we're leaving for our children, we deserve just about everything these demagogues are trying to leave us with.

Here in NYC, we've been without a raise for four years. Doubtless if we gave up the ATRs, Mayor Bloomberg would dig into whatever he has in lieu of a heart and grant us one. But we are all ATRs, and if the UFT gives in, we'll all be subject to Bloomberg's fondest desire, random dismissal. That's unacceptable not only for us, but for our students as well. While most societies value experience and wisdom, "reformers" look at teachers and see only price tags. Let's dump that old teacher and buy two shiny new ones. In fact, this will not benefit the kids for whom "reformers" shed all those crocodile tears.

Giving up the ATRs leads us right where Chicago teachers are right now. I only hope we're smart enough to learn from their experience, forge a better direction, and lead rather than continue to get sucked into the endless vortex of "reform."

President Obama Makes a Stand, Sort Of

President Obama made a historic announcement supporting same-sex marriage the other day. I agree. Why on earth is it any of my business, or yours, who marries whom? So good for you, President Obama. Yet there's this:

The president stressed that this is a personal position, and that he still supports the concept of states deciding the issue on their own. 

So if your state is inclined toward narrow-mindedness and bigotry, this President is okay with that. You can vote for him and still discriminate against your fellow citizens for their sexual orientation. He personally feels you should not be a simple-minded, ignorant galoot, but this is America, and you absolutely have that right.

Oddly, he does not feel the same way about education. His signature program, Race to the Top, dangles dollars in front of cash-starved states and offers them money only if they agree to baseless nonsensical mandates favored by the likes of Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walmart Family, and Michelle Rhee. I should not be surprised. In a debate with Maverick Johny McCain, Obama called Rhee a "wonderful new superintendent." I figured he would learn on the job and went and voted for him anyway.

Of course now, after having watched him give GW Bush a third term in education, I won't be making that mistake again. I can no longer vote for people simply because they call themselves Democrats. Our unions have made the egregious error of endorsing him while extracting nothing in return. The rationale,  that Romney is even worse, resonates somewhat with me. I shudder to think of a Supreme Court that will once again take the election from the people, as it did with Bush v. Gore. And I do like Obama's health care program better than what we had before.

But one of his promises was to get us out of these wars, and that's not done. Another was to repeal the Bush tax cuts. A very significant broken promise was to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. He not only failed to pass it, but as far as I can tell, never even advocated for it. Most importantly, he reneged on a promise to the NEA to do things "with you, not to you." My state now faces an evaluation system seemingly designed to randomly pick off working teachers based on junk science, another outrage supported by our unions for reasons utterly unfathomable to me.

Obama sends his kids to a school with small classes and little high-stakes testing. He paid lip service to overtesting at SOTU but his policies belie his words. At this rate, his legacy will be the degradation and destruction of one of the best and most important jobs in the country, a job I love and would like to urge my students to follow.

I simply can't and won't vote for that. I'm thinking very seriously about Dr. Jill Stein. I realize her chances are not very good, but I no longer care.

Who are you voting for, and why?