Another Day, Another ATR Hatchet Job

The NY Post today has yet another assault on the Absent Teacher Reserve. Naturally, all blame is cast on the United Federation of Teachers and those who find themselves stuck in the ATR. No blame whatsoever is assigned to Michael Bloomberg, Patron Saint of Reforminess, who had an equal hand in creating this monstrosity.

Like reformy Chalkbeat, cited in the editorial, the Post bemoans the salaries of teachers without regular assignments, and also goes on to complain when the teachers are actually assigned. The clear implication is that teachers should be fired without due process. That's a slippery slope because we are all ATRs.

It's important to note that any teacher can be brought up on charges at any time, and that even if the charges are nonsense it's likely some minor one will be sustained. Maybe you used your phone in the school, or did something equally inconsequential. That's enough to fine you a few thousand bucks and place you into the ATR. Then you're doomed, if the Post gets its way.

Note also that the Post harps on salary. Teachers make too much money and it's best, evidently,  to fire them and save it. That's an odd argument for a piece purporting to be concerned about children. Do you want your children to grow up and be fired because their salaries are too high? It's not hard to infer the Post is fine with that. Those of us who actually care about children want decent working conditions for them.

...the ATR crowd averages 18 years of tenure — which means their salaries are too high for many principals’ budgets.

Yup, it's the money. I'm not sure how the Post expects to recruit the quality teacher it claims to want for less. NYC has tried that for decades and it's resulted in various intergalactic teacher searches. I myself got this job as a result of a subway ad. The utter lack of respect for experience in teachers shows how little the Post appreciates education, as well as a cynical lack of expectation that with age comes wisdom.

Another issue this brings up is so-called fair student funding. The fact is principals were not always tasked with worrying about teacher salaries in their budgets. This needs to change, and I hope UFT leadership moves toward making that happen. Doubtless the Post, which seems to hate the idea of teachers being compensated for their work, would cry bloody murder.

The Post offers absolutely no evidence for their main premise, that children will suffer as a result of being taught by ATRs. Make no mistake, this is a stereotype, promoted and reinforced by reformy Chalkbeat and others. If there are some ATRs who shouldn't be teaching, there is a process to remove them. Precisely zero of these ATR teachers have been removed by this process. The Post may or may not know this, but I do, and now you do.

Bernard Gassaway, former Boys and Girls HS principal, tweeted one test of that: “If ATRs are truly qualified top teachers, then place them at the highest performing schools where vacancies exist. No exceptions!”

It's interesting that the Post uses an argument from the leader of a school that, by Bloomberg standards, failed for many years. Also interesting is the fact that Gassaway himself took no responsibility for it, instead blaming the city. Then there's the strawman argument that UFT says ATRs are "top teachers." I have no idea whether or not that's true, and I'd argue, rather than stereotyping ATR teachers for better or worse, we should judge them individually.

All I'm saying is, by the DOE's own standards, no ATR teachers have been deemed unfit. Therefore firing them is beyond the pale. This is particularly true because Gassaway and the Post gleefully spread stereotypes about them. Not only that, but the DOE actually has a Scarlet Letter thing on the records of many, warning principals not to hire them even if they want to.

If the Post likes arguments like Gassaway's, I have one for them. Why not have the charter schools, which they say perform miracles, take all the low-performing, impoverished, non-English speaking and learning disabled students and work their magic? I mean, since we all suck and they're so wonderful, why not? On this actual astral plane, a whole lot of charters weed out students they find difficult, dump them back into public schools, and then pretend they don't exist. It's no coincidence that some Moskowitz Academy got caught with a "got to go" list.

I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of arguments that pit us against kids. I go into work every day to help New York City schoolchlldren. The Post represents the interests of privatizers hoping to profit off of them. The Post cried for years that ATR teachers weren't placed. Then when there's finally a program to place them, they cry even louder.

What the Post really wants is to see people fired without justification. It wants the erosion of due process. And with that, who will stand up for things that really help children, like reasonable class sizes and decent facilities? The Post? Reformy Chalkbeat?

Please.

NY Post Hates You and Everything You Stand For

Yesterday I noticed four pieces in the Post that were distinctly targeted at us. The first was a cheery little piece about how well NYC schools are funded. The second was about how test scores went up because exams were easier. The third was about a ruckus between a couple of top people at UFT. (Evidently Donald Trump is not the only person who has to worry about leaks these days.) Then, of course, there's the obligatory anti-ATR piece.

Before I say anything else, I have to add that I am a frequent fan of Post education writer Sue Edelman.  Sometimes I disagree with her columns, but she has a knack for finding and exposing crazy principals., Every time she exposes some principal wearing her fur coat while ignoring her job, or pushing all the teacher desks out on the street, I silently applaud.

Now I can't read the minds of the writers, so whatever I say here is guesswork. But when you compare New York City spending with that around the nation, I figure you ought to include cost of living. I mean, I'm not personally all that shocked that we spend 10% more than Syracuse, although it's presented as an outright scandal. Naturally, our salaries are also to blame. It turns out we have a very high salary compared to teachers elsewhere. Never mind that a whole lot of states pay teachers so poorly they run off in droves, or that we can't really keep them here either. And forget about the fact that teachers in our immediate surrounding area earn well more than we do, and have done so for at least the three decades I've been teaching.

As for test scores, I distinctly recall, when they went up under Bloomberg, the general conclusion in the press was that he was a genius, and his reforminess was working. Diane Ravitch was skeptical, noting that the NAEP scores did not parallel the gains. It took years before the NY Times caught up with Ravitch, and I doubt the Post ever did. (I stand corrected here, because Sue Edelman actually wrote several pieces about this.) Of course, with Bill de Blasio in office, there's no giving credit for test scores.

The fact is that the scores, the ones around which schools live or die, are nonsense. My students are rated by the NYSESLAT, which they took months ago, and which we scored months ago. Yet we have no idea how our students will be placed because they set the cut scores after students take the tests. Can you imagine what your principal would say if you pulled something like that? Sorry, Mr. Principal, but I can't give grades until I figure out how to pass exactly 81% of my students. Miss Grundy passed 80% and I need to do better. No wonder the state believes we're such crooks that we can't grade our own students. They think we must be as bad as they are.

The big scandal in UFT brass looks to be between Howie Schoor and Ellie Engler. I know them both from UFT Executive Board. The very first time I got up to speak there, Ellie Engler set up a meeting with the school construction authority. Because of that, my school will get an annex to address our rampant and chronic overcrowding, so I'm a fan. (Norm speculates Ellie was not a friend of Debbie Poulos, in which case Ellie's misjudged. Debbie is an aggressive and creative problem solver, and she's helped my members more than once. If I ran UFT, I'd have her cloned and send at least one Debbie to every borough office.) I know Howie only because he runs the meetings and regularly offers a range of cursory, off-the-cuff, to outright mystifying answers to my questions. It's nuts the Post goes so crazy over a typo in an email, but I really wonder who leaked it and why.

Yet leaks are problematic, says Post columnist Michael Goodwin:

Leaks, leaks, leaks are Exhibit A. Why they continue, and why nobody has been fired for bad-mouthing the president to the media, ­remain a mystery. Why does Trump put up with it?

 
You see the discrepancy here? Leaks in Trump's White House are bad, and there needs to be retribution. Leaks in the teachers' union need to be celebrated, and we need to do feature stories on them even if we barely understand what the hell they are about.

Naturally there is a piece about how the astroturf group StudentsFirstNY managed, with the bazillions they get from Gates, to assemble 20 parents to protest ATRs. It's always nice to see an organized group indulge in mindless stereotype, and it's not surprising that the Post manages to interpret this corporate-sponsored act of ignorance as "ripping deBlasio apart." That's so stupid I won't give it any more attention. And for my ATR friends wondering when UFT was gonna say something, here is Mulgrew's response. When Mulgrew wonders whether anyone will print UFT "rebuttals "about ATRs I wonder whether UFT has submitted op-eds for publication. If anyone can clue me in, the comments are open.

Now I know the Post's positions are probably not big news to any teacher who reads the papers. But I'm kind of tired of hearing how awful I am for drawing a salary. I teach the children of New York City and therefore perform a more valuable service than President Trump, who appears top devote himself to golfing, decimating union, getting tax cuts for himself and his BFFs, and taking away health insurance from tens of millions of Americans.

I'll sit while I wait for the Post to share my opinion.

Time On, Time Off

There's an interesting discussion about how much time kids should spend in school over at the Atlantic. Various viewpoints are elicited, notably including that of NPE director Carol Burris. Burris, unlike a whole lot of other people who write and talk education, looks at and considers research before forming opinions.

The myth that American students spend less time learning than students in other industrialized nations is not true. It is also clear from studies that increasing school time is very expensive and there is little return in achievement. Reductions in class size and peer tutoring, for example, have been found to be far more effective.

This will be surprising to people who read op-ed pages, which spout baseless nonsense and rely on astroturf groups like so-called Families for Excellent Schools for information. A lot of people attack the summer break, saying it causes some sort of learning loss. You'd think kids contracted Alzheimer's for two months a year. But Burris says affluent kids continue to learn in the summer while poorer kids may experience a loss.

And this, once again, points to our core problem--allowing so many of our children to live in poverty. In fact, it appears the majority of our students suffer from poverty. Meanwhile, we're sitting around debating the summer vacation. The NY Post is trashing the mayor for not closing enough unionized schools and opening more charters. Of course, charters cherry-pick their students, target those who've got to go, and send them back to public schools. We are then vilified for their test scores, as they must be our fault.

Some schools, like mine, give kids summer assignments. We then pat ourselves on the back for having dealt with the learning loss that supposedly takes place. My daughter has had teachers who'd give her assignments over school vacations. I hated those teachers. I'd help her with projects and wonder why the hell they couldn't just give her a week off.

Learning is 24/7, 365 days a year. If we do our job right, we won't need to put guns to our kids' heads to make them learn. We won't need to make up crap for them to do in the summer, or make them answer stupid questions, or make them write reports to prove they read the assignment. If we do our job right, kids will form interests and follow them.

Unfortunately, as long as we place our heads in the sand and pretend we can place some kind of band aid on poverty, that's not gonna happen. Giving kids nonsense to waste time during the summer isn't gonna change anything. At best kids will comply and hate our guts for wasting their time. At worst they won't comply and will still hate our guts for trying to waste their time. Or maybe it's vice-versa. The result is not substantially differeent.

In France, there's a 35-hour work week and everyone, not just teachers, gets 5 weeks off a year. Oh, and no one goes bankrupt paying medical bills, because like in most of the developed world, they have single payer health care. In American, we're obsessed with filling time. God forbid anyone should get a day off. Maybe the kid will select B instead of C on the multiple choice test.

Meanwhile, we're spinning our wheels solving the wrong problems.

Teachers--Guilty Until Proven Innocent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Everything But the Truth

That's what I see in this article from the NY Post. It's so pointed I almost cut myself reading it. That mean old UFT is attacking charters, and holy crap, it's about time. Where the hell were we when Moskowitz imposed rent for charters upon NYC? Of course, we aren't fighting that (moderation in all things when you want that seat at the table), but rather the percentage of high-needs students in charter schools.

What the Post sees is that percentage is going up, but it doesn't focus on the clear fact that it still is not the same as that in public schools. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out, but you do have to be a critical reader. (Of course neither I nor anyone else reading this cuts the mustard because we haven't been Common Core trained in close reading.)

Anyway, no matter how good we may or may not read, there's some critical info sorely lacking in the Post piece. Let's make one utterly hypothetical example. Bill has 100 ELLs in his school, and Eva has 100 ELLs in hers. (I know, hard to believe, but humor me.) Bill's ELLs get miserable scores on the NYSESLAT, while Eva's are through the roof. The NY Post has orgasms and writes about it every day for a week, and harps back on it endlessly.

But if we take a closer look, there are things we hadn't noticed, and probably because no one saw fit to tell us. Most of Bill's students came here from, say, El Salvador recently, escaping particularly ugly times, and a whole lot of them have missed a lot of formal education. Most of Eva's students, while ELLs, are not newcomers. They already speak English and have been here for several years. Apples and naranjas?

Let's look at the special education students. Again, Bill has 100 and Eva has 100. Bill's students are alternate assessment. In fact, Bill knows the moment they enter his school that they will never graduate with Regents diplomas. Not only that, but they will be counted against his stats come graduation time. Eva's students just need a little extra time on tests, which is just dandy, because Eva is pretty much all testing all the time anyway. And who's to say that just because Eva starts with 100 ELLs or special ed. students she will end with them? In fact, who's to say she will even release those figures, or that they'll be valid when she does? 

The thing is, when you look at percentages, charters were behind, are behind, and will remain behind. But if you look at the actual students they've taken, you'll find that even those percentages don't show the whole picture, let alone an accurate one. 

Stereotypes Ahoy in the NY Post

In the NY Post this week, former NY Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey trotted out the old reliable model minority stereotype to let us know that Asians are all doing the right thing and the rest of us all suck. Evidently, good parenting trumps poverty, learning disability, lack of English, and everything else is excuses. It's all about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, the clarion call of pretty much everyone who wants us to ignore the insidious and growing wealth gap in these United States.
 
McCaughey suggests an example for us all:

As Dennis Saffran explains in “The Plot Against Merit,” some Asian-American eighth-graders practice for two years for the test, while their parents toil in laundromats and restaurants to pay for exam-prep classes. 

I have read The Plot Against Merit, to which McCaughey refers, but to which she fails to link. If you read it too you will note that it cites one individual case, which McCaughey multiplies to give the appearance it's a regular thing. Now I could write a column suggesting that because Bill Gates, or any number of successful people, didn't go to college, your kids shouldn't go either. I could even suggest it has something to do with Gates' race, religion, or sex, find others who share those qualities, and develop it into some sort of column.

One thing that seems to have eluded McCaughey is the great difference between a seven-year-old English language learner, like the one cited in the article she mentions, and a teenage one. Younger students acquire language much more thoroughly and quickly. My teenage students have a much harder time. And my Asian students (like all my students) are being actively hurt by New York's insane Part 154, which cuts direct English instruction by a factor between 33-100%. This doesn't bother McCaughey, who's happy to perpetuate stereotypes and have us judge an entire group via a single example she read in an article somewhere.  I've known Asian kids who, like me, did not have a whole lot of talent in math. Can you imagine a math teacher applying the model minority stereotype, and issuing lower grades simply for bigoted expectations?

As a matter of fact, I work with a whole lot of Asian students. Some of them are indeed driven, and some of them have very involved parents. I've known some to fit the stereotype to a T, but most have not. In fact, I've known Asian parents who brought their kids here precisely to escape the extreme educational pressures in their countries. I've known Asian kids who attended after school academies every day with no benefit whatsoever. I've known others with tutors who did their homework for them, always with no benefit to the students, who had no understanding, and I've frequently seen tutor work done quite imperfectly.

I've known kids with tutors who showed them how to cheat on Regents exams, assuming English teachers could not discern between the writing of ESL students and hack writers on the Internet. (I once had a supervisor chide me after I identified a plagiarized paper and its source, saying, "Only you would have noticed this." I disagreed but took it as a compliment.) Parental pressure and tutoring are not magic bullets, there are no magic bullets, and there's a distinctly ugly potential to pressuring children toward academic achievement above all things. 

I also work with a whole lot of kids who are not Asian, and there's good and bad in every group. I once worked with a boy who felt his particular ethnic group was the smartest and best, and treated pretty much everyone else with contempt. He did well on tests, but was horrified by a young South American girl who consistently did better. It did not fit with his limited worldview. He would ask her how she did it, but she just smiled and ignored him.

I'm happy for kids who get into Stuyvesant, but not so much for people who have to "toil in laundromats and restaurants." I'll bet you dimes to dollars Betsy McCaughey never did any such thing. But if she's willing to lead by example and work 200 hours a week in a laundromat for a few years, I promise to take her more seriously the next time she places a piece in the Post.

On Inconsistent Agendas and Shifting Scores

A young woman writes a piece in the Post expressing outrage that she graduated. After all, she barely attended one of her classes. There was just no way she deserved to pass. But when it comes time to go to college, she's right there.

“I don’t think I did anything bad,” she said.

I don't think so either.  But her own story suggests outrage:

New York City gave me a ­diploma I didn’t deserve.

It may seem odd that I’m speaking up, but it’s only because I’m fully aware I didn’t deserve to pass a course that allowed me to graduate.

You know, it's not like the young woman couldn't have done something about it. She could have read a book, sat for a test, written a paper, or done something to ease her anxiety. Her teacher also spoke to the Post, saying she passed the young woman because she was under enormous pressure. This pressure, though, is nothing particularly new. The teacher is not jumping up and down with pride over this decision:

But if we set the bar higher, we would be a failing school.

That's pretty much the case, from all I see.  And what exactly is a failing school? Well, there are several metrics. One, of course, is the graduation rate. In a perfect world, every student would graduate in four years, without exception. In this world, though, there are all sorts of messy things that get in the way. Maybe the kid doesn't speak English. Maybe the kid has a severe learning disability. Maybe the kid's parents work 200 hours a week, offer no supervision, and the kid has no sense of discipline. Or maybe the kid, like the one in this story, just didn't bother coming to class.

In 2015, all of that is the teacher's fault, and all of that is the school's fault. Never mind that these things occur with great frequency only in high poverty areas with high concentrations of kids with high needs. The NY Post editorial board can't be bothered hearing about such things. Better to blame Carmen Fariña, as though this didn't even exist for the interminable years their BFFs Mikey Bloomberg and Joel Klein ran the city.

Rather than rely mainly on test scores, grades and other clear measures to see if a student is ready to advance, Fariña OK’d “a comprehensive evaluation of student work using multiple measures.”

Actually, NY Post, that was based on state regulations. But don't expect to see them asking Tisch or Cuomo to step down any time soon. But the Post editorial board loves test scores. They'd feed them to our children for breakfast, lunch and dinner given half a chance. The fact that state tests seem to get worse with each passing year is neither here nor there.

Where was the Post's outrage when Bloomberg's scores miraculously went up as the state dumbed down the tests? Did they ask for Klein to step down? Did Post chief Murdoch refrain from giving Klein a megabucks corporate gig on his DOE departure? Did they ask for Bloomberg's resignation? Of course not.

There is an agenda at the Post editorial department, and it has little or nothing to do with ensuring our children get a great education. Murdoch saw, long ago, that there was tons of cash to be made off the backs of our children. Therefore public education is bad, teacher unions are a menace, and anyone who isn't simply trying to crush union must be humiliated at each and every opportunity.

The series of Post stories are open to interpretation. Mine is that teachers and schools ought not to be under such pressure to pass absolutely everyone. We should teach students that there are consequences when they fail to be responsible. It's not Carmen Fariña's fault that there is ridiculous pressure to graduate as many kids as possible. It's not her fault the Heavy Heart Assembly passed an insane bill that will place public schools into receivership. And it's certainly not her fault that there is such ridiculous pressure on school administration that things like this occur.

The Post is already running gleeful articles suggesting this could be the end of mayoral control. I'd be fine with the end of mayoral control, but the Post only wants the end of de Blasio's control. And let's be honest, he hasn't got all that much anyway since Cuomo took Eva's money and forced NYC to foot the rent whenever she feels like expanding her company.

Should we get another reformy mayor, the Post will once again be enamored of mayoral control, and passing kids for no reason will no longer be a problem. The names change, but the agenda remains the same. It's tough keeping a level head with people trying to punch us in the face all the time, but that's still our job.

We'll have to let the crazies do their thing while still striving to keep our eye on what's important. And in case you don't know, that's our kids. One day they will have to work for a living just like us. We need to fight the crazies at least long and strong enough to make that possible.

Best Gig Around--NY Post Editorial Writer

Sometimes people criticize this blog. They say it only presenta one side. They're entirely right. This space is entirely subjective and pretty much at the whim of whoever writes it, generally yours truly. Why don't I present the POV of Michael Mulgrew? I'd argue that's his job, not mine. I don't see him broadcasting my opinions anywhere. I paint what I see, and if you see otherwise, you can do the same.

Mulgrew's point of view, that the new budget agreement represents some sort of victory, that we've pushed back Cuomo, has little or nothing to do with mine. Amazingly, we've managed to move backwards at the behest of a governor at the low point of once massive popularity.  Cuomo wanted more teachers fired and more schools closed, and it's very hard for me to see how his new budget doesn't achieve that.

At the NY Post, things are different. The Post's POV is based on something, but I have no idea what. Reading it, you'd think Mulgrew was all-powerful, laying down rules for the city to follow. This piece says teachers ought to reject Mulgrew because he's turned on us, supporting the new suspension regulations. I agree with the piece that the new regs may make our jobs more difficult, but I don't see that as reason to reject Mulgrew.

Were Mulgrew the omnipotent force described in the Post editorial, we wouldn't have gone six years without a contract, and we wouldn't have foregone the 8% increase most other city workers got between 2008-2010 for 10 years without interest. Teachers with permanent licenses would not have to reregister to renew them. We wouldn't be looking at mandatory failure of 5% of schools statewide, expedited dismissal procedures, a higher dependence on junk science, or any of the other nonsense our leadership failed to stop, let alone acknowledge in a recent email that now appears nothing short of delusional.

The Post argues that teachers have gotten more money for less time in the classroom, as though teachers are dancing in the streets over spending hours at tedious and wasteful meetings. I'd rather be with the kids, and I don't know a single teacher who feels otherwise. Of course, there's no evidence the Post bothered to consult a single teacher before writing this piece.

The Post continues, offering teachers an alternative to Mulgrew's selfish ways. We can work in charter schools, unencumbered by union. In the Post's universe, charters don't unionize because they don't want to pay dues or abide by those darn union rules. Who wants due process? Isn't it better to let Eva Moskowitz fire you outright because you have a bad haircut? Who wants to stand up for special needs kids who aren't served? Isn't it better to ignore the fact they don't get what they need at risk of losing your job?

The Post, evidently, has never heard of people being afraid to unionize. The Post has never heard of people being afraid for their jobs. In Post-land, Americans are happy to work at Walmart and Target for sub-living wages, with crappy or no benefits. In Post-land, teachers love bringing home cell phones to take parent calls on their own time, and there isn't enormous teacher turnover in charters. In my world, student teachers go all out to get jobs in public schools, and only resort to charters as a last resort.

The Post trots out the old canard about pervert teachers being protected by UFT, as though we are out on the streets cheering child abuse. No one wants that, and the Post doesn't bother with clauses in the UFT Contract that mandate immediate removal of anyone involved in inappropriate contact.

The Post plays into the widespread lie that there is some zombie plague of bad teachers that needs to be eradicated. It says it is nearly impossible to fire teachers, and conveniently ignores the new evaluation system, too young to even have been tested. It ignores the exodus of hundreds of ATR teachers as a result of the new contract, as well as new regulations that place those who remain at risk for no good reason.

Worst, it suggests, with no evidence whatsoever, that Cuomo is the best hope for schools. Personally, I have enormous issues with Mike Mulgrew as President of UFT. But I wouldn't resolve them by affiliating with an astroturf front group like E4E, or volunteering a slave to Eva Moskowitz. Like Governor Cuomo, the Post has not the slightest notion what it is to be a working teacher. This happens when you live in a bubble, taking in what you like and ignoring everything else. Post writers ought to spend more time with real working teachers.

So should Mulgrew. If he thinks there's anything good about the state budget, he needs to head for a classroom and talk to working teachers who aren't on the UFT Unity gravy train.

I am proud to be UFT, and I support my brother and sister teachers.  Our union can do way better, but it's still our union. 80, 000 of us together do better than we would one at a time, with bowls in hand, asking Eva Moskowitz, "Please, ma'am, may I have some more?"

But that's exactly the Post's vision for working teachers. It's not good for us, and it's not good for the kids we serve. Who stands up for the kids? Who will fight for them, ALL of them?

UFT teachers will. That's our job, and it's on our minds every moment. There are reasons to reject our leadership. A big one is its abject failure to work against Cuomo during the election. Another is its ridiculous strategy of opposing him only on the budget, and failing to be aggressive on all the issues that came back to haunt us today. Yet another is its miserable inability to perceive what opt-out is or represents, let alone act on it.

I don't think Mulgrew shares the Post's vision of working people striking for more work and less pay. But for much of last night I wondered what sort of happy pills he must have taken before he wrote that outlandish email painting the state budget as a victory.

Teacher Season Begins Nationwide

In the wake of Vergara, corporate reformers are smelling blood in the water, and see this as the time to pounce. How else would you explain the sudden return of education expert Campbell Brown to the tabloids, and the banner article on the cover of yesterday's Post? (I'm not linking to it.)

The recipe is quite simple. Take a few cases, sensationalize them, and apply them to every member of a group. This sort of argument resonates with the public. I hate that group of people. They get too many privileges. Who the hell do they think they are wanting to sit in front of the bus?

And no, I do not see the distinction between using this line of argument against teachers or against racial or ethnic groups. I'm honestly not certain the Post, or the DOE even knows what a bad teacher is. Thus, they grab whatever they can find, blow it up to define the teacher they pick, and then display that image as representative of all teachers. That's simply ridiculous.

When demagogues like Bloomberg pack children like sardines into trailers, hallways, bathrooms and worse, these self-appointed protectors of our children are completely silent. When money-grubbing parasites establish virtual charters in which kids don't even turn on their computers, you hear crickets. When the saviors of the universe, the charter school owners, fail to take in kids with extensive special needs, when they make parents jump through hoops, when they indulge in practices that exclude those who need the most help, that's fine as long as Eva Moskowitz can be compensated at a higher rate than, say, the President of the United States.

This is only the beginning. And unfortunately, PR is one area in which the UFT is even worse than other areas. I've repeatedly asked UFT to step up and work with the press, but they tell me they're afraid it will backfire. In fact, it's tough to imagine worse PR than what we get nowadays. I can find an outrageous misrepresentation, give it to the UFT, watch them do nothing, and write about it myself. Mind you, they actually pay people to deal with the press.

When my school was in danger, I courted the press. We were covered in every major paper and even made the nightly news. Bloomberg and Klein even acknowledged us on TV. Sure, they lied and twisted the truth, but that's what demagogues do. These things can be done.

The only thing is they can't be done by timid people whose concept of doing the right thing revolves around loyalty oaths and gala luncheons. It's rather pathetic that none of the brain trust at 52 Broadway can conceive of anything better than what is, for all intents and purposes, nothing.

Media Mendacity--NY Post Covers the MTA Contract

I'm always amazed at the audacity with which the truth is twisted in our media. The MTA came to an agreement with Governor Andrew Cuomo over a five year contract, and the Post is upset because they view it as costly. Evidently paying people to work is an inconvenience that ought to be avoided at any cost. But here's how the Post sees it:

...the 34,000 TWU members who work for the state-run MTA just got a great deal from Gov. Cuomo: five years’ worth of raises, plus a bunch of new goodies.

That sounds great, doesn't it? Who wouldn't want a great deal? I haven't had a raise in over five years, and I certainly want a great deal. But then you come to this:

...they can expect 8.25 percent raises over the five years between 2012 and 2016. That’s likely to run only slightly behind inflation.

Wait a minute.  It's running slightly behind inflation? I'm not an economist, but doesn't that mean MTA members will effectively be earning less by the end of this contract? I grant that it's only slightly less, but how on earth does making less equal a great deal? I'd have thought earning more would be a better deal, and earning less, even a little less would not be a good deal at all. Yet the Post editorial board thinks it's great. But there's more:

The average transit worker can expect to earn above $75,000 with this $6,000 or so raise — and will only have to pay $400 more in annual health-care costs in return.

So they actually get even less. Sure, 400 bucks a year probably won't fundamentally affect your lifestyle. But when you're already making effectively less money it doesn't particularly help either. Here's another thing that upsets the NY Post:

They’ll now have two weeks’ paid maternity and paternity leave, plus better dental and eye care, as Samuelson said yesterday.

Wow. That's awful. How can we give new parents time with their children? What if everyone had dental and eye care? That would be awful! Why should we encourage working people to take care of their eyes and teeth? How does that help our country? And why should we care whether or not they're healthy? Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?

It's a little scary that if you read this uncritically, you'll think that it's reasonable. If you read David Brooks uncritically, you'll think that Common Core is reasonable. Does anyone seriously believe that the corporate interests that pimp Common Core want our kids to question the bilge that passes for commentary in the Post?

What's reasonable is leaving an America with more, not fewer, opportunities for our children. And that means, at the very least, casting a critical eye on the sloppy nonsense Rupert Murdoch would have us accept as journalism in our beloved US of A.

Examined further at Perdido Street

No Reality Needed Here

Rupert Murdoch's money-losing rag, the New York Post, has run yet another illuminating editorial about teacher evaluation, this time criticizing Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Let's put aside the fact that VAM, as a part of evaluation, has no scientific validity. Let's forget about the stories of excellent teachers being rated poorly, or wild year-to-year variations with the same teachers. Let's not even discuss the notion that students themselves bear no responsibility for their own test scores, good, bad or otherwise. Because we're so good-natured, we'll also forget about the massive flaws in the standardized tests themselves.

Let's simply focus on the Post's thesis that unions block the evaluation system because they don't want teachers held accountable. I can't speak for every school district in the state, but I'm pretty familiar with the largest one, New York City. Here's one fact about it--for better or worse, the UFT President was instrumental in pushing the plan that made VAM part of new evaluations.

A more important fact is this--it isn't the UFT blocking implementation of this plan, but rather the Post's hero, Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It was he who introduced a ridiculous turnaround plan to protest the lack of a framework between the city and the UFT, and it was he who persisted with this plan even after a framework was agreed upon. The fact that his plan was very publicly scuttled by the courts is not even relevant here.

The important factor, either unknown or willfully ignored by the Post's crack editorial staff, is that it's Mayor Bloomberg, not the UFT, blocking enactment of an evaluation system. In fact, Mayor Bloomberg would need to write the system into a contract, and that would entail coming to an agreement with the union. I don't suppose it's escaped the attention of 80,000 teachers that all city employees but educators got an 8-plus percent raise between 2008-2010, and that Bloomberg unilaterally declared we alone would not get it.

Meanwhile, the puppets at E4E request that a system be imposed upon us. They care so much about the professionalism of working teachers that they don't give a damn whether or not we ever get a raise. Nor do the saints over at TNTP mention that when they pontificate about the retention of teachers.

Personally, I'm not at all persuaded a raise would be worth taking on the new system. It's hard for me to see how good teachers will not be fired on the basis of junk science. But it's a blatant falsehood to contend that the union is blocking any evaluation system.