If Carranza's Concerned with Inequality, He Can't Ignore Part 154

There's an interesting feature on Chancellor Richard Carranza in the Atlantic right now. Clearly, in tackling inequality and segregation in our schools, he's got his work cut out for him. The writer, who seems to know nothing whatsoever about actual NYC education, compares him to Joel Klein. Were I Carranza, I'd sue for damages. We don't know that much about Carranza, but it's clear he's not a simple corporate mouthpiece.

The issue of segregation is a third rail, and no matter which approach you take, someone is bound to hate you for it. It's particularly tough in this climate, with a President intent on moving us back to the 19th century. No one knows that better than union. We're now clearly in the sights of the Koch Brothers and Walmart, who may as well make the rules for the astoundingly pro-corporate, anti-worker SCOTUS.

I see discrimination played out every single day in my work. No, I'm not complaining about my administration. I'm talking about the third year of CR Part 154, which reduces direct English instruction by 33-100%, and replaces it with, essentially, nothing whatsoever (or perhaps even less than that). In high schools, we used to be required to give beginners three full periods of English instruction daily. Now we can give them as few as one period a day. And once they aren't beginners anymore, we can reduce that to zero.

We replace these English classes with nothing. But for each one, we dump an ESL teacher into one of their "core content" classes. Alternatively, we can place a single dual-certified teacher in. So that teacher might take 45 minutes to teach fractions to a native English speaker. In that same 45 minutes, the dual certified teacher, or the pair of teachers, is expected to teach both fractions and English to English Language Learners (ELLs).

I have been teaching English to ELLs for decades. It probably won't surprise you when I say it takes more time, not less, to teach concepts to people who don't understand the language you're learning. The possibility of teaching both the concept and the language in the same time it takes for native speakers to learn the concept is remote indeed. Not only that, but it's a blatantly stupid expectation.

In fact, I'd argue it's discrimination. Of course it's not Carranza's fault, since he had nothing to do with the regulation. I don't think it was the intention of the Regents to discriminate either. The rationale I've heard from them has been that they wanted to make sure students were focused on actual subject matter, the implication being that English is not a subject. I wouldn't call that discriminatory. Of course it's completely wrong, if not totally idiotic, so that's not much of a defense.

A friend sent me this comment:

 ...the rationale is to keep foreigners in their place. Lock them into dead end jobs and shove them into certain neighborhoods. This is especially true if they are of color. All of those wonderful sentiments about coming to America for a fresh start, the Statue of Liberty as a great symbol of hope- are a thing of the past. These days, it is called “stay in your lane and ensure that your neighbors look like you.” If they cannot speak English or have access to education, that is the first step.

I don't think that was the actual intent, but the effect is not much different. I can't speak for the Regents, but I think their focus was not so much on black and brown as it was on green. There is a shortage of ESL teachers, and every five classes that disappear under Part 154 means one fewer ESL teacher is needed. That means schools save money, and that means the state saves money, I suppose.

The piece in the Atlantic mentions that Carranza learned English as a child. It's actually a lot easier to do that than it is for the high school students I teach. Language acquisition ability begins a rapid decline around puberty. That's why Carranza speaks unaccented English while my students may never do that. But the fact is they need more support, not less, and this has been affirmed by resolutions passed by both UFT and NYSUT.

If Carranza is truly concerned about inequality, he ought not to ignore the ELLs. They are his brothers and sisters, they are our children, and Part 154 is an abomination. Maybe it's time to sue the state for discrimination. If he needs someone to testify, I'm available.

Tom and His Five Co-Teachers

Things are tough all over, but few things are tougher than being an ESL teacher with a crazy principal in the new world of Part 154. I have a friend, who I'll call Tom, who works in a school with just such a principal. You see, many schools are not as gigantic as mine, and often they hire one ESL teacher for the entire building. This is because there are laws that say they have to have them. The fact that there are new students who need English instruction is neither here nor there.

So my friend got his program for the fall, and he has two classes of one thing, two classes of another, and one class of another. To the principal, that's three preps. However, in the instances he has two classes, he's co-teaching with two different teachers. Tom has filed a grievance. The principal, being a self-serving bureaucrat with no interest in the problems of teachers, let alone students, says Tom is overreacting.

For Tom to be overreacting, each teacher of the same class would need to do the same thing every day. There would be no variation whatsoever, and no possibility of one teacher going slower than the other. No students would ask different questions that required different answers. No teacher would stress one topic more than another. All differentiation of instruction would be done in exactly the same way.

Also, Tom would not need to consult with all five of his co-teachers. That's a good thing because consulting with all five co-teachers is not possible. First of all, there's no time for it. Second of all, even if there were enough time, the likelihood of six schedules permitting such a thing is zero at best.

Will Tom prevail in his grievance? It's tough to say. Principals are required by contract, for example, to give complete programs the day before school ends, including periods and room numbers. One year I grieved when admin failed to do that, and won at Step One. The following year, the principal simply handed every teacher in the building copies of their current programs. When I grieved again, he said that was the best way to predict the following year.

A $1400-a day arbitrator agreed with the principal and said that was fine. Just do no work, no planning, hand out old programs, and screw the teachers who want to, you know, plan because they have children, or lives, or any unusual situation whatsoever. I took it in stride and wrote specific language into our SBO that teachers would get real programs the day before school ended. We did, but that doesn't negate the fact that the arbitrator understood neither the letter nor the spirit of the contract clause.

Let's be clear--it's demanding to work with one co-teacher, it's very difficult to handle two, and it's simply impossible to handle more. Giving Tom five shows callous disregard for not only him, but also for all the children he's supposed to serve. He'll walk into classrooms with no idea of the vocabulary or structures that will challenge the children, and rely on hoping for the best.

This may not have been the intent of the Albany geniuses who wrote Part 154, but it's certainly the widespread result. I wrote to the chancellor, applying for the job of deputy for ELLs earlier this week.  To his credit, he responded with the job of Deputy Chief Academic Officer. Evidently, in his reorganization, there is no Deputy Chancellor for ELLs. The new person reports to the Chief Academic Officer rather than directly to the chancellor. That's too bad, because ELLs are more important than that, to me at least. Here's what I wrote back to the chancellor's secretary:

Thank you for your speedy response. I will not be applying for several reasons.

1. The first requirement is a credential I neither possess nor have any interest in pursuing, and
2.  My primary interest is correcting the situation I described in my letter, not changing my job.

I have been on Telemundo discussing this situation, and I have written about it in Gotham Gazette and El Diario. Please thank the chancellor for referring the letter to you, and please tell him Part 154 is doing great harm to the students I serve. If he ever wishes to discuss it further, I'm always available. 

I'll let you know if I hear back. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm always hopeful. Of course if I do, I'll speak up for Tom and the hundreds of ESL teachers in his situation. I'll speak up for the ELLs who are so poorly served by this terrible program and even worse execution.

Mark Twain wrote "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."

That's just one reason you can't make this stuff up.

Dear Chancellor Carranza,

 We met at UFT Executive Board last month. It was a pleasure meeting you, and I was very impressed by your quick mind and instant recall.

I understand you no longer have a Deputy Chancellor for English language learners. I have no idea why that is, but I'd like to apply for the job. It is a very tough time for English language learners in New York State, and I'm sure you know that we have a great many of them here in NYC. I've been teaching ELLs here since 1984.

My sole interest in applying for this job is their welfare, and their welfare is at risk due to the latest revision of CR Part 154. I'm sure you know that the state feels the purpose of direct instruction in English is to prepare students for core content courses like math and science. It's hard for me to express the basic ignorance inherent in this assumption. 

The younger people are, the better language learners they are. This means my students are often tasked with helping their parents. They have to go to lawyers and doctors and act as translators. Aside from helping their parents, they need to help themselves. They need to know how to order a pizza, ask for directions, and hopefully make friends. They need to be happy. That's more fundamental than acing that math exam.

Of course, a better command of English will lead to better performance on all exams. In New York State, we've taken away direct English instruction by a factor of 33-100%. Despite this cut, students have received no extra time to compensate. In fact, when we cut direct instruction, we expect core content teachers to teach not only content, but also English.

Imagine that I am a social studies teacher and my goal is to have students understand the Battle of Gettysburg. Imagine that it took me 45 minutes to accomplish that with native English speakers. Under CR Part 154, in those same 45 minutes, I'm expected to teach ELLs not only everything I taught the native speakers, but also all the English that's required to comprehend and appreciate it.

That's an impossible task. It doesn't matter if I'm certified in both social studies and ESL, and it won't help if I have both a social studies and ESL teacher in the room. ELLs need more time to grasp both English language and concepts in core courses. We are giving them less. If our goal is to help them, this makes no sense. 

Another issue I'd address is that of ESL teachers doing impossible tasks, like working with five co-teachers. This may be convenient for some principals but it's impossible for teachers and counter-productive for ELLs. If a principal cannot manage to keep co-teachers down to two, already one too many, the rest of that teacher's day should be devoted to direct instruction.

New York State no longer appears to see the value of comprehensible input in language instruction. I'm not sure why that is.  Evidently, they're in the thrall of some studies that see test scores rather than comprehension as a goal. That was the flaw that sunk Common Core, and we ought to be able to learn from our mistakes.

Our job is to make students love English, not fear or hate it. If a student comes here this morning from El Salvador, or anyplace, it's not smart to hand that student a three inch thick science textbook, dump an ESL teacher into her class, and hope for the best. It's our job to support and encourage these kids. We shouldn't be sitting around in offices fretting over why they don't do well on tests. If you or I were to go to China tomorrow and take tests, we probably wouldn't do well either. We need to help these kids rather than blame them.

Learning a language takes time, and it's an egregious error that we cut direct language time. There are some in the state who see direct English instruction as a non-subject. The fact is that the structure of language is fundamental, and if you don't acquire it as a baby you need chances to learn and practice it. Were the notions behind this revision of Part 154 sound, we'd just teach social studies in Spanish, math in Korean, and science in Arabic, thus producing an entire city of polyglots. Of course that's ridiculous, as is Part 154.

This is a terrible time in our country. The first and best advocates for these children ought to be their parents, yet many of them live in fear. Someone has to stand for them, and that someone needs to be us. I'm prepared to do that, and I'm prepared to do it full time.

I'm available to come in for an interview at your convenience.

Leadership Academy Is Dead. Long Live the Leadership Academy!

I've spent quite a bit of the last year mystified as to why I needed to spend hours, days, months and perhaps years fighting blatant violations of the UFT Collective Bargaining Agreement. Given that we can no longer grieve letters to file, you'd think that the few exceptions we know about would be respected. 

For example, the CBA says incidents not reduced to writing within three months cannot be later placed in the file. I think my school has three grievances outstanding over that. There are others, but I'll spare you for now.

Why does Mayor de Blasio hire a legal department that has no respect for the contract he's agreed to with teachers? Is he mad that UFT originally supported what's his name, the guy who told the Daily News editorial board that teachers didn't merit the same raise police officers and firefighters got? I mean, we did support de Blasio after what's his name lost. 

Personally, I supported de Blasio before what's his name lost, despite a series of phone calls urging me to do otherwise. He seemed like the perfect alternative to Bloomberg. He opposed charters, was going to slow them down, and won a pretty persuasive mandate. Of course, when he actually tried to stop charters, he learned that Andrew Cuomo was willing to push laws forcing the city to pay rent for charters it rejected. Maybe that's what changed.

Now, certainly, there could be other factors. One might be his senior education policy advisor, Karin Goldmark. Who is this person? Well, she used to be the Vice President of the NYC Leadership Academy, And why shouldn't she be instrumental in training principals? I've read she has three years of teaching experience.  She also seems to have worked for Tweed in some other capacity. So what if she's never been principal herself? You don't have to be a dog to read Call of the Wild.

I was pretty surprised to learn this. It might explain why de Blasio has never cleaned house at Tweed. I mean, if his senior education policy worked there before he got there, is she gonna say, "Hey, I have a great idea. Why don't you fire me and everyone else who worked here for Michael Bloomberg?" Alas, it doesn't appear that idea crossed Ms. Goldmark's mind.

We've all heard the horror stories about Leadership Academy principals who know everything despite having little or no experience. Goldmark seems to personify that. It's kind of remarkable that a senior education policy advisor can have as little (or less) school experience as Leadership Academy grads, some of the worst principals anyone's ever seen, but that's evidently good enough for Mayor Bill de Blasio. 

Is it good enough for new Chancellor Richard Carranza? I suppose it had better be, since he serves at the pleasure of the mayor. You can tell how smart Carranza is just by listening to him speak. He has a great memory and thinks on his feet. Yet he repeatedly says charters are public schools, and that's just not true. Charters are public in the sense that they take our money, and that's pretty much it. How many times do public school leaders bus children to Albany to push their agenda? How many public schools don't follow chancellor's regulations and therefore allow kids to pee themselves rather than take a test-prep break? How many public school leaders refuse to sign city agreements over pre-school? 

Eva Moskowitz does all of the above and more, and Carranza says she's running a public school. Hey, it's a pretty good deal to take public money and be answerable to no one.

I really have no idea what role, if any, Karin Goldmark plays in any of that. But I was pretty shocked to learn that a former Leadership Academy big shot is advising Mayor de Blasio in education. It really explains the "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" feel so many of us have these days. 

Bloomberg's gone, but judging from teacher morale you'd hardly know that. Does Carranza want to change that? Will de Blasio let him? Is Karin Goldmark keeping all of Bloomberg's pawns in place even as de Blasio deludes himself that he's making a mark?

Only time will tell, but de Blasio's had four years to leave an imprint on Tweed. Thus far, few if any teachers are feeling the difference.

Another Day, Another Abusive Administrator

I've been hearing about Rose Marie Mills and adult education for some time now.

The adult education teachers have been getting the runaround from the city at least since last school year. UFT has gotten involved, but the adult ed. teachers don't seem to have tenure, and they've been dropping like flies at the hands of a leader who seems to confuse herself with a fly swatter.

Fired adult ed. teacher Roberta Pikser has been coming fairly regularly to Executive Board meetings. I've gotten to hear a lot about this firsthand. A lot of what I hear seems outright scandalous, so was pretty happy to read about it today in the Post. They say sunlight is the best disinfectant, and this particular branch of the Department of Education seems infected to the core.

Last June, the city Department of Education settled for $362,000 a suit from an office director, whom Mills had terminated after he was diagnosed with a medical condition requiring brain surgery.

That's not enough for DOE to act, of course. You may remember that the city didn't reassign the principal of John Bowne until settlements over sexual harassment allegations hit 830K. Teachers, on the other hand, might face termination if they sell students copies of Frankenstein for $2 a copy. It doesn't matter if such things are common practice in your school. Once someone important at DOE finds out about horrible infractions like these, they leap into action.

People wonder what makes Boy Wonder supervisors. Wonder no more. Superintendents like this, evidently, seem to not only encourage, but also require them.

One former OACE assistant principal, Luckisha Amankwah, has filed a suit claiming Mills demoted her for refusing to give bad reviews to two teachers whom Amankwah believed didn’t deserve them.

We often hear stories of supervisors giving ridiculous and unfair observations. This suggests that, in the cesspool that is still Michael Bloomberg's Department of Education, they are directly told to do this. I remain incredulous at Mayor de Blasio's failure to not only clean house, but also his evident lack of awareness that a house cleaning is necessary.

Reached by phone, Mills told a reporter, “Have a wonderful day,” and hung up.

Abusive administrators couldn't care less, evidently. You're gonna report on my actions? Fine. I haven't cost the city 830K yet, so what, me worry? The arrogance and indifference is palpable. It's disgraceful that, four years into his term, Mayor de Blasio has allowed Michael Bloomberg's ghost to linger at Tweed and set the tone. Screw teachers. We are in charge, we know everything, you know nothing, and that's the way we do things here.

“I want blood,” Mills allegedly told a former principal, the teachers’ lawyer, Bryan Glass, wrote last month to the state Division of Human Rights, which is investigating.

You can't win with people like that. Some supervisors blame others for everything and take personal responsibility for nothing. As far as I can tell, that was the way to go in Michael Bloomberg's New York. Is new chancellor Richard Carranza going to step up and change the tone? Or will we continue with supervisory abuse and the lunatics at DOE legal advising administrators to wipe their asses with the UFT Contract?

Only time will tell, but I've yet to see any action or statement from Carranza that indicates a new deal or even fresh eyes. It serves neither us nor the 1.1 million NYC schoolchildren to have teacher morale at such a low ebb. Hopefully, someone at Tweed, or better yet, someone in the mayor's office, will wake up and smell the stupidity.

Measuring a Chancellor

I got to see Richard Carranza up close and personal the other night. I'm not going to write exactly what happened at our meeting, because I've pretty much agreed not to. I will say he took some pretty tough questions and answered most, if not all, very well.

I'll go out on a limb and predict there will be no gaffes on the level of, "It's a beautiful day. Macy's is open." He's very smart and has instant recall of more statistics than anyone really should.

Here's what I'd like to see from the Chancellor--I've spent the entire year fighting grievances that ought not to exist. I've heard so much preposterous blather from the cowboys at DOE legal that I'd just as soon fight it out with them face to face at the OK Corral. Of course that won't happen, because it's their job to sit around in offices giving principals telephone advice on how to get around the UFT Collective Bargaining Agreement. Here's how they do it--by blatantly disregarding clear and unequivocal language.

It's not necessarily a bad strategy, particularly if it's your goal to let people know you don't give a golly gosh darn about violating their rights. I mean, I file a grievance, the principal listens. The grievance might be about a letter to file. Letters to file are tough ones, because you aren't allowed to grieve them simply because they're outright false. And yes I have seen letters that are outright false. I've also seen letters that paint nothing as though it's something, and you can't grieve the letters simply because they are preposterous beyond belief.

So what are you left with? You're left with things like the right to remove letters from file after three years. You're left with the right to remove letters if they fail to consult with you about them. You're also left with the right to remove letters if they describe occurrences over three months old. I've been at Gold Street fighting all of the above.

Now here's the problem. Step One is with the principal. The principal is right no matter what the contract says, because legal says it's perfectly okay to interpret things that aren't at all open to interpretation. So that's all good. Then you go to Step Two. You take a whole day and go downtown. You're with a UFT rep, and I've been with some pretty aggressive ones who were very much on point. Although DOE has lawyers, they don't argue any better than teachers.

On the other side of the table is a rep from the Chancellor, who presides over the hearing. There's also a representative of the superintendent. The principal does not actually have to show up, and can call it in, literally. After all, who do you think the DOE is gonna side with? You or their own? In fact, the person supposedly judging the hearing might rationalize things to the principal, and say you did this because of that.

What's the principal supposed to say. "Yes of course I did this because of that. The only reason I would do this would be because of that." You walk out thinking, well, the decision will come back and say the principal did this because of that. After all, who wouldn't do this because of that? Then you think, wait a minute, it's still a violation of contract, and neither this nor that has any relevance.

And then you wait. They have 48 school days to write a decision. But they don't, because rules are for the little people. Rules are the things they use to give UFT members letters in file. Actually, they don't even need rules. They can say they didn't like the tone when you said good morning to the security guard, place a letter in your file, and leave it there for three years. Then you can have it taken out, and they can just put it back. I mean, how the hell would you know? And if you checked and found it there, well, that's another grievance, another 48 school days, and another decision to await.

So the thing happened more than three months ago? No problem. They can say the thing that happened wasn't an occurrence. After all, just because it happened, it doesn't necessarily follow that it occurred. You understand that, right? Yeah, neither do I. Of course they don't have to do that. They can simply say that the thing didn't become an occurrence until the principal found out about it. You see the beauty of that?

This way, if you said good morning the wrong way to the security guard, and it was twenty years ago, but the principal found out about it yesterday, you still get a letter in file. That makes sense, right? No? Well it makes sense to DOE legal, and when the chancellor affixes a signature to it, you have to figure it makes sense to the chancellor too. Who cares if it's a rubber stamp and the chancellor never actually read the thing? If the chancellor's signature is attached, that's pretty much approval.

The issue is, though, that these things tend to be overturned in arbitration. Of course, you may not get to arbitration for a year or more. You have to be really determined to fight this sort of nonsense.

Let's say the arbitrator reads on at least a fourth grade level, and thus dismisses these nonsensical letters. Still, you've placed members through a year of hell for no good reason, and that's a win for the DOE. More importantly, when things that are not entirely ridiculous come up, when there's a gray area, maybe the arbitrator rules for the DOE, just to balance things out.

And maybe that's the game. Here's the thing, though--it's a dirty little game, and a chancellor who respects working teachers simply will not play it.

Carmen Kills Annualization

What's that, you ask? Annualization is the process, in high schools at least, of changing January grades to reflect June grades. We have two semesters, and students get one credit for each. In our school, if you give a grade of 55 in January, and a passing grade in June, the January grade converts to 65. The student gets credit for the entire year. I'm sure we're not the only school that does that.

This year, Carmen "It's a Beautiful Day" Fariña decided that this was no good and had to go. How horrible to grant a full year of credit to high school students simply because they were passing the class at the end of the year. It's an abomination, evidently. So next year we can't do that anymore.

I don't really know how this affects every discipline. For mine, if a student is proficient in June with the English level I taught, that student ought to get the full credit for the year. If that student can write, read, speak and understand at the same level as the other students, why not? I guess it could be different in an ELA class. I mean, what if the student had read Catcher in the Rye but not Ethan Frome? (I've read both and I'd have been happier to have read neither, so perhaps I'm a bad example.)

Maybe it's not fair to the students who do well in the beginning but screw up in the end. Or maybe it encourages students to ignore the first half and aim for the second. To me, we were doing the right thing. I mean, we always read about how this percentage of kids is ready for that, or how that percentage of kids is ready for this. And always, whatever percentage is ready for whatever, we're at fault because it should have been higher. Or lower. Or different.

But hey, I'm the teacher, and my judgment ought to count for something. Under this system, if I give a kid a 55, I'm saying I think the kid can pass for the year. I'm not issuing a guarantee, but I'm telling the world that it's possible. In fact, I might even tell the kid that. Don't they want us to encourage kids to improve? Isn't that kind of our job?

This is a lot different from sitting the kid in front of a computer and having his smart girlfriend answer a bunch of questions so he can get credit. This is the teacher saying, in January, I think this kid might pull it out in June. And if the teacher doesn't believe that, the kid gets a 50, fails, and that's it. Of course I'm not Carmen Fariña. I haven't got the ability to determine it's a beautiful day simply because Macy's is open. I require further evidence, like, say, the weather report, or the capacity to drive home in fewer than four hours. But I digress.

There has been a lot of nonsense put in place to help students get credit. Ridiculous "blended learning," which entails having kids sit on computers rather than interact with humans or books, has been used to give students credit for, of all things, physical education. I'm not exactly sure how reading passages about basketball and answering a few questions is a substitute for playing basketball, but of course I'm not one of the great minds behind blended learning either.

Of course, neither am I a policy maker. I'm just a guy who spends each and every day in the classroom trying to teach. Oddly, I think that makes me the number one most qualified person to decide whether or not my students deserve credit for my course. I'm the one who issues assignments, I'm the one who assesses them, and I'm the one who observes student performance each and every day I go to work.

But Carmen Fariña, who sat in an office deciding just how beautiful the days were, was the Schools Chancellor. Who the hell am I to assess the students they hired me to assess when she has a better idea? So starting next year, your students and mine who've mastered the material we've taught will need to go to summer school, night school, or some credit recovery nonsense in order to graduate.

And make no mistake--because the city has limited the number of credit recovery courses students can take, fewer will graduate on time. Do you think anyone will blame Carmen Fariña or the incoming mariachi chancellor? Neither do it.

As always, working teachers will be stereotyped as having failed children. It's ironic, because a whole lot of us would be fine with simply passing those who've mastered the material. But why ask teachers what they want when there are so many people sitting around air-conditioned offices who are paid many times our salaries and are 100% certain they know better?

Adios, Carmen Fariña, and thanks a lot for saddling us with this legacy.

Mariachi Chancellor Thinks Opt-Out is Extreme

I was pretty surprised to see that incoming NYC Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza deemed opt-out an extreme reaction to the standardized testing that has plagued and poisoned our educational system. First of all, this implies the parents who mounted a statewide protest to resist making widgets of their children are somehow taking the wrong approach.

Carranza probably doesn't remember when Reformy John King announced that very few New York children met his exacting standards, and almost immediately thereafter fewer than 20% NY children rang the big Common Core bell in Albany. He probably doesn't recall the statewide protests of these tests. He must not remember even the Great and Powerful Andrew Cuomo shrinking at the sight of Jeanette Deutermann and Beth Dimino. He probably doesn't remember that there is a moratorium on actually using any of these test scores for much of anything.

In a way, you can't blame the guy, He wasn't around when any of this was happening. On the other hand, if Carranza wants to be el rey, the king, he's gonna have to do a little bit of homework. Specifically, he's gonna have to educate himself on what opt-out is, who was in it, and exactly how powerful the tsunami of parent power was that accompanied it. Kings get to sit on a throne, but only so long as no one topples it. Andrew Cuomo was comfortably ensconced in his reformy castle until opt-out raised its formidable head. Now he acts like he's our good buddy, and he pretends to be a Democrat instead of going after unions.

A key rule in writing and teaching is know your audience. I can't give the same lesson to an AP English class as the one I present to a group of newcomers from El Salvador and China. I mean, I could, but it would fall on deaf ears a good portion of the time. Carranza, by talking off the top of his head, has failed to consider his audience. I hope he's a quick learner, but thus far he's shown no evidence he is.

This is not necessarily a fundamental or irreversible error. Here's a guy who's learned how to play a violin. That's not an easy process. You have to endure sounds no human ought to before you coax a sweet tone from this instrument. We have to hope the tortured sounds we're hearing now are only practice.

Still, if Bill de Blasio scoured the country for the best, it's hard to understand why he couldn't find someone who, you know, read a few articles about opt-out before venturing toward such an outlandish comment. It's possible that Carranza thinks, as el rey, that any questioning of his actions is beyond the pale. I certainly hope not.

Opt-out remains one of the great hopes for quality education, as opposed to the reformy slice-em, dice-em, rigor and grit crap that Broad, Gates and Walmart would impose on our children.

Which side are you on, Mr. Chancellor?

The Mariachi Chancellor, El Rey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only time will tell.