The Terrible Education Reporting of the New York Times

I have not always been involved in educational politics. Still, I remember some time in the eighties when we were granted a February break for President's week. The Times ran a story about how inconvenient this would be for parents, and how it would have been better if the DOE ran with keeping schools open. Absent in this story was the fact that the DOE was not, in fact, pressing to open schools. Rather, they wanted teachers to come in for PD, while all students stayed home anyway. Every teacher in the city knew that, but the New York Times didn't.

Some time later, I read a column about how, in the Bronx, children were being placed in bilingual classes that were not, in fact, bilingual. The writer claimed that anyone who wanted to learn English had to pay and go to a nearby Catholic school. I found that very curious. I had just gotten my first grade niece out of a similar bilingual class. I went to the school with her mom, and was met by a formidable secretary. The secretary advised me that it was unwise of me to ask for ESL placement, and that she was much better off where she was. I said I was representing the mom, who was with me, and that she had the absolute right to opt her child out. At that point, the principal came out of her office and helped us.

This process took about five minutes. The Times columnist said I was able to do that because I was an ESL teacher. The truth is I was able to do it because I knew the rules. The Times columnist could have let his entire readership know the rules, but chose rather to leave them with the fiction that the only way to avoid bilingual education that wasn't really bilingual was to go to Catholic school.

Now the Times is busy defending awful principals.  Amazingly, they reference Bill de Blasio's remark about a "hyper complaint dynamic." This was how de Blasio dismissed the bulk of sexual harassment complaints in the schools, and it's disgraceful. I am close to victims of sexual harassment and abuse, and dismissing them as cranks is just about the worst way possible to treat them. I'm very proud of initiating a UFT resolution standing against that nonsense.

Perhaps you wouldn't expect it, but the NY Post has much better education reporting. Sue Edelman digs for the truth, and if it falls on administrators, so be it. In fact, the Post just ran an editorial defending their reporting. The Times says Elvin was exonerated, but that's only part of the story.

DOE confirmed that the students were listed on class rosters and given “packets” of work but no actual instruction time by certified teachers. Elvin and others reportedly orchestrated the scheme in order to boost the school’s graduation rate.

Yes, a hearing officer dismissed the charges against her — not because they weren’t true. Rather, she claimed the central office had approved of her actions — and DOE refused to turn over the relevant records.

In short, it seems then-Chancellor Carmen Fariña was a de facto accomplice, rubber-stamping the sham credits — and DOE let Elvin skate rather than reveal the truth.

Then there is Santiago Taveras, who the Times says changed only three grades, but may have changed up to 900. It's galling that the Bloomberg "no excuses" types get into schools, the same ones they themselves would work to close, and push them to survive via systemic cheating. 

The Times goes to Shael Polakow-Suransky, a Bloomberg employee, who says all the principals are doing a great job and that it's just a bunch of cranky teachers acting up. Of course no one under Bloomberg ever did anything wrong except for those uppity whining teachers. 

Let's go back to the story about John Dewey, and how those awful teachers railroaded Katherine Elvin. Evidently Ms. Elvin just wanted to do the right thing, and rating over half the school developing or ineffective was part of her crusade for good. So what if there was a grade-fixing scandal? What's a few phony grades if we're targeting all those awful teachers?

One thing you won't see in the Times story is the fact that Dewey now has a new principal, and there is no mountain of complaints. I've been chapter leader of a very large school for nine years now. I don't know much, but I know this--there are complaints about me, you and pretty much everyone, but you don't see a pattern of complaints about a supervisor unless said supervisor is doing something really wrong. 

It's disgraceful that the Times would run such a shallow puff piece. More disgraceful still is their consistent lack of curiosity to uncover the truth.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All's Fair in Love and Teacher-Bashing

I'm a teacher, so I write about education. But if I were a NY Times columnist, I could write about hedge funds. I probably wouldn't write very well about them because I'm not really clear on what they are. But, like NY Times columnists, hedge fund guys are education experts no matter what, and turnabout is fair play, so there you go.

Frank Bruni used to be a food writer. I'm sure if you want to know where you can get a souffle, he's your guy. Now he's writing about tenure. Here's how he begins:

Mike Johnston’s mother was a public-school teacher. So were her mother and father. And his godfather taught in both public and private schools.

What Mr. Bruni has here is an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy designed to make us accept an argument whether or not it has merit. And there's more of that here.

Arne Duncan, the education secretary, praised the decision. Tenure even drew scrutiny from Whoopi Goldberg on the TV talk show “The View.” She repeatedly questioned the way it sometimes shielded bad teachers.

Well, if they think so, then it must be true, right? After all, they're famous, so they must know. Is that a good argument, or another appeal to authority? Or is it the bandwagon fallacy--Everyone's doing it, so it must be right. Let's take a look at the background of Colorado State Senator Johnston, on whose say-so Bruni appears to have determined tenure is no good:

Johnston spent two years with Teach for America in Mississippi in the late 1990s. Then, after getting a master’s in education from Harvard, he worked for six years as a principal in public schools in the Denver area, including one whose success drew so much attention that President Obama gave a major education speech there during his 2008 presidential campaign.

There's an expert for you. After all, he spent two whole years as a teacher. (That's almost as long as Reformy John King, who spent two in a charter and one in a public school.) Now me, I'd suggest that's not nearly enough time to be a qualified principal, let alone an expert on teachers or tenure. The fact is most teachers love the classroom, and want to be there. I know I do. I question the dedication and ability of anyone who needs to get out after two years.

Take a look at how vague that paragraph is. Six years as a principal, including one that was, supposedly, very successful. First, he was not principal of any single school for six years. Second, who knows how long he was principal of this successful school, who knows whether he was principal when Obama showed up, and who really thinks Obama, who hired DFER stooge Duncan as Education Secretary, knows or cares what a good public school is? Doesn't Obama send his own kids to Sidwell Friends, where they aren't subject to the reformy nonsense he and Arne impose on the rest of us?

And isn't this entire paragraph yet another appeal to authority--authority that is plainly questionable? Isn't TFA a political organization that sends five-week teachers to public schools, an organization that happily sends its young dilettantes to take the positions of Chicago teachers who've been dismissed by Rahm, an organization that got Arne Duncan to declare its five-week wonders were "highly qualified?" I'm left questioning not only Bruni's appeal to authority, but the authority with which we're presented. Let's take a look at what passes for actual argument in Bruni's piece:

“Do you have people who all share the same vision and are willing to walk through the fire together?” he said. Principals with control over that coax better outcomes from students, he said, citing not only his own experience but also the test scores of kids in Harlem who attend the Success Academy Charter Schools.

We've already explored Johnston's experience. Now let's take a look at the Moskowitz academies he so reveres. They have fewer kids with special needs than public schools do, and when kids don't meet expectations, they simply get rid of them. If you let public schools pick and choose, their test scores will go up too. What neither Bruni nor his expert understand is that we serve all kids, we take them as they come, and we don't dump them simply because they struggle, or misbehave, or whatever.

“You saw that when you could hire for talent and release for talent, you could actually demonstrate amazing results in places where that was never thought possible,” he said. “Ah, so it’s not the kids who are the problem! It’s the system.”

And yet, even disregarding Johnson's limited experience and poor grasp of Moskowitz schools, as well as his and Bruni's total lack of documented evidence, this entire concept is an anecdote. We don't even know what he bases it on. But it's the same reformy boilerplate--no excuses. We'll ignore poverty and just focus on the test scores. Was Johnston's school consistently successful? If so, how? If so, why? Who knows?

We need to pay good teachers much more.

Note that it's not "teachers," but rather "good teachers." There are several assumptions implicit here. One, of course, is that of the zombie plague of bad teachers that threatens both mom and apple pie. The other, of course, is that we need merit pay. This indicates that Bruni has not bothered to research merit pay, which has been rearing its ugly head for a hundred years and has never worked anywhere.

Here is Johnston's brainchild, the model to which Bruni sees us aspiring:

I sat down with Johnston, a Democrat who represents a racially diverse chunk of this city in the State Senate, because he was the leading proponent of a 2010 law that essentially abolished tenure in Colorado. To earn what is now called “non-probationary status,” a new teacher must demonstrate student progress three years in a row, and any teacher whose students show no progress for two consecutive years loses his or her job protection.

This is entirely based on value-added, judging from what Bruni says. This method is dubious at best, and junk science at worst. Regular readers of this blog know I see it as the latter. Bruni also bemoans job protections many Americans would envy. I don't blame them. I'm reminded of the story where one farmer says of another, "He has a cow, and I don't. I want his cow to die." For goodness sake, wouldn't it be better if both farmers had cows? My favorite argument in the column, though, comes from newly self-proclaimed education expert Whoopi Goldberg:

“Parents are not going to stand for it anymore,” she said. “And you teachers, in your union, you need to say, ‘These bad teachers are making us look bad.’ ”

This reminds me of nothing so much as the favored argument of bigots. "The bad ones spoil it for the good ones." Why not apply the same logic to criminal justice? Some of those criminals are just bad, so no due process for them. Just toss them in jail without any costly and inconvenient jury trial, because Whoopi Goldberg and Frank Bruni think it's OK.

Another argument bigots favor is, "I'm not a bigot. I know some of those people."

And waddya know, Johnston has teachers in his family. So he must be totally objective. And Bruni writes for the NY Times. So he must also be objective, with no ax to grind whatsoever. Doubtless it's mere coincidence that he was a guest at the wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Campbell Brown, and that he failed to disclose it.

After all, Campbell Brown herself forgot to mention that her husband was a bigshot at Students First, so stuff like that raises no question whatsoever in what passes for journalism these days.

Update: From Leonie Haimson--you left out the most pathetically outrageous thing Johnston said: 

"[Tenure] has a decimating impact on morale among staff, because some people can work hard, some can do nothing, and it doesn’t matter.” 

You see, tenure is what hurting teacher morale, see, not widespread teacher bashing by policymakers and the media, and their insistence that bad teaching is to blame for low student achievement, and/or the concomitant move to diminish their autonomy, disrespect their expertise, and take away their job security, pension, etc.

Where's the Liberal Bias I'm Looking For?

The New York Times, always staid, always calm, ran a featured editorial about the need of public workers to sacrifice. While the Times has a reputation for liberalism, like all papers, it's had to deal with unions.  And that's not always easy. My uncle was an accountant for the Times, and he hated unions. When the News unions struck, he made it a point to buy the scab paper on the street every day.

So when the NY Times speaks of sacrifices public employees need to make, I'm not surprised they neglect to mention Andy Cuomo just dispensed a 5 billion dollar tax break to New York's Richest. I'm not surprised they forget how Barack Obama just extended the Bush tax cuts, the ones he specifically promised to cut if we voted for him. I'm not surprised they conclude being overly generous to union workers is breaking the bank.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Times forgets how many of us worked for lower salaries than our private counterparts for so many years, and that whatever benefits we accrued were directly related. It was pretty much understood that teachers, for example, would never get rich, but that we had better pensions and health benefits than many of our private counterparts.

Now, of course, our friends in private industry are hurting. And the right, joined by faux-Democrats, sees an opportunity. There was no problem in us making less money all these years. That's particularly egregious to longtime city teachers, constantly paid far less than our suburban counterparts. While it's not quite so outrageous as it once was, I will never forget meeting a teacher from East Meadow with 10 fewer years than I had making 10K more than I was.

We were never the money-hungry, self-serving slobs the media has portrayed us to be, and that hasn't changed at all. I'm not saying anyone else has to do this, but I'm at work an hour early almost every day. I stay late on a regular basis, for various reasons. I know many of my colleagues do the same. I can't and don't stop thinking about my job when the final bell rings.

Yet I'm certain Mayor4Life Bloomberg would fire me if he got half a chance, and hire someone making half my salary. And please, don't even get me started about merit. If this mayor gave a damn about merit, he certainly wouldn't have hired Cathie Black as Chancellor. He wouldn't overcrowd schools, and he wouldn't make phony unenforceable deals about class size reduction. If he gave a damn about merit, he'd offer city kids the same sort of education his kids, Joel Klein's kids, and Cathie Black's kids got.
In fact, if Michael Bloomberg gave a damn about merit, he wouldn't be talking about layoffs at all. There's no merit in that notion whatsoever, and class sizes will explode even further if there are fewer teachers.

I don't suppose the editorial writers from the Times read this blog. Maybe they're too busy poring over PR from Tweed. In any case, the result is the same. The "paper of record" has little notion of, let alone interest in what's going on in education. I can only speculate on what that means for those who rely on it for national, international and political news.