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.

Reformy Chalkbeat Can't Find a Working Teacher Who Isn't E4E

When you read Chalkbeat, you know you'll get a diverse point of view. Whenever I want to find a broad variety of non-teacher opinions, say, about the new chancellor I go right there.

First, you get Michael Mulgrew. While Mulgrew is the head of UFT, he hasn't been a working teacher for some years now. Then, you get a deputy mayor, who I assume also does not teach either. (I don't see a lot of deputy mayors hanging around the lunchroom.)

Then you go to the person probably most quoted by Chalkbeat, Jenny Sedlis, Executive Director of Students First NY. Everyone knows that the way reformies put students first is by putting teachers last. Of course, teachers should be fired at will, because supervisors know everything. They never act out of vindictiveness. They are never failed teachers who moved up because they couldn't do the actual job. Most of all, they are never utterly unqualified, like Joel Klein, Cathie Black, Betsy DeVos, or any number of people who've run school systems. If Michelle Rhee says taping kids' mouths shut is the way to go, that should be good enough for anyone.

Naturally, you then pivot to James Merriman, the CEO of NYC Charter Center. Maybe Eva Moskowitz was unavailable. In any case, it's important to find out what charter school people think about the chancellor, even though they can't be bothered following chancellor's regs. Verbal abuse? Well, abuse on if that means they're gonna pass the standardized test. Corporal punishment? Let the kids pee their pants instead of leaving test prep because we're zero tolerance and we don't go for that human dignity nonsense. Oddly, I afford my dog more dignity than some charters afford their kids so I'll be walking him very early on this slushy and snowy morning.

Then you go to Houston Federation of Teachers President Zeph Capo and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten: Naturally you group them together, because who can be bothered to distinguish between teacher union presidents? It's not like they're Educators 4 Excellence, in which case you'd need to get each and every one of their comments. Of course neither one of them teaches, so you haven't muddied the waters too much with anyone who actually does this job.

 You then, finally, get to someone very important, to wit, former teacher Evan Stone, who runs a group called Educators 4 Excellence even though he himself hasn't been an educator for years. I mean, he was one for maybe five minutes, but now he's got this groovy gig taking Gates money, and he doesn't have to be bothered with the trivial nonsense of actually teaching children. Chalkbeat once ran a feature about how E4E managed to acquire 100 signatures for something or other, probably more work for less pay. I work in the largest school in Queens, and I could collect 100 signatures in 45 minutes. But since I don't take money from Bill Gates, like E4E and Chalkbeat, who cares what I think?

Of course you follow that up by interviewing an actual teacher. Since you are, ostensibly, a site about education, but neither know nor can be bothered to look up any actual teachers, you leave no Evan Stone unturned and ask him who he knows. And who would've thunk it, but the only teachers he knows are also Educators 4 Excellence. So you talk to that person and you've killed several birds with one Evan Stone. First of all, you haven't had to bother with the messy work of talking to any typical rank and file, because who knows what they will say? Certainly no one at Chalkbeat, and certainly no one who relies on Chalkbeat for information. On top of that, you've managed to sneak in yet another reformy view while presenting it as that of an ordinary teacher.

Best of all you don't have to worry about those nasty bloggers calling you a reformy rag. You interviewed a living breathing teacher and no one can say otherwise. Who cares if the one you found signed a pledge of allegiance to a Gates-supported bunch of reformies that has no business claiming to represent teachers? The important thing is you can tell yourself you spoke to a teacher, and when you get down to it, that should be good enough for anyone.

After all, teaching is already a calling, so why should you bother calling teachers?

Correction: Of course they interviewed Eva Moskowitz. I don't know if they added it or if I missed it, but no Chalkbeat piece would be complete without her opinion.

Chalkbeat Says Good Morning, and Waiting for Superman is Mainstream

I admit I read Rise and Shine from Chalkbeat every morning. It's kind of a cheat sheet to find out what education stories I might want to see every day.  Also, they email it to me every morning around 7 AM, when I'm sitting with my computer in a department office. I was struck by the part of the intro yesterday, which read exactly like this:

Plus, a new study estimates the cost to district schools when students leave for charter schools. Finally, are you wondering what Oprah would bring to the table on education policy if she ran for president? Chalkbeat has you covered.

What's a district school? Had you ever heard of such a thing in your life before charters existed? I'd argue this is a term they invented. Use of this term legitimizes charter claims to be public schools, but in fact we know that charters are public schools only when they want public money. Eva Moskowitz waged a war with City Hall over having to sign an agreement over pre-K. Moskowitz doesn't do agreements. Whatever Eva wants, Eva gets.

Here's another thing--you may have read about how Eva's students pee their pants rather than interrupt their test prep. That's outrageous and abusive, I'd say. In fact, not only do I say it, but Chancellor's Regulation A-420, which doesn't apply in Eva World, prohibits the use of physical force. As a parent, if you forced my kid to sit and work until she peed her pants, I'd want you charged with that. If that didn't fit, I'd want you charged with negligence, abuse or both. I'm absolutely certain if I were to make kids pee their pants I'd be up on some sort of misconduct. Maybe at Moskowitz Academies you get a gold star, a raise, a promotion, or all of the above.

Who knows?

Then there's Oprah. Of course Chalkbeat lets you know all about her educational policies. Let's look at the headlines they run:

She understands racism and poverty in America — and how schools can make a difference.

Yes of course. The only thing is, racism and poverty have yet to be ended by schools. If they had been, Donald Trump would certainly not be President. And here's the thing--Oprah is a remarkable success story. Painting her as the rule rather than the exception is ridiculous. It's like determining that because Bill Gates didn't go to college, your kid doesn't need to either. And Gates, who Oprah admires, has steadfastly operated on the theory that poverty is too complicated, so we'd best ignore it.

Then there's the talk about Oprah's school. It's not precisely all roses, as abuse,  sex scandals, and other things make you wonder whether you want this school in your neighborhood. And even if you did, how could you judge American education by schools in South Africa? I'm not an expert on South Africa, but if I were looking for a country that really addressed poverty, I'd look to Scandanavia. Sit while you wait for Chalkbeat to do that.

She has given to education initiatives that cross partisan divides

Well that's all nice and well, but anyone following education knows that there are very few partisan divides. The Democrats suck, and the Republicans suck a little bit more. Charter schools are not viewed as a panacea by people who follow education. Of course, these people get little representation by Democrats or Republicans. Here's the thing--they get none in Chalkbeat either, even though it portrays itself as non-partisan. Maybe Chalkbeat failed to notice that Hillary, representing Democrats, failed to support universal health care, a living wage, or college for all. Maybe they failed to notice that the majority of Americans support these policies, and that they had no representation from the Democrats or Republicans. Who knows? The only sure conclusion is that Chalkbeat deems reforminess universal.

They're wrong, of course.

She’s also aligned herself with heavyweights of the ‘education reform’ movement

It's ironic they use the word also here. After all, they just said she was bipartisan because she supports charter schools. Who can forget the show she devoted to reformy Waiting for Superman, with Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee, Geoffrey Canada, and whoever else was the reformy flavor of the month? Last I heard, Canada walked away from his charter school, Rhee was hawking fertilizer, and Gates was still hammering away, undeterred by his record of utter failure.

Maybe ignoring poverty and blaming teachers for all of society's ills isn't the way to go after all. It depends what's important to you. Do you want to actually help the children of the United States? Then you're gonna need a new approach. On the other hand, if your goal is enriching Betsy DeVos and her billionaire BFFs, just keep reading Chalkbeat and chugging along the way we are now.

If you're looking for well-thought-out local information, though, you might want to check out Diane  Ravitch or Gary Rubinstein. They don't assume charter schools are better than public schools, and they don't assume charter schools are public schools, because they aren't. They are private schools that take public money.

Of course, that's my opinion. The difference between this blog and Chalkbeat is that I'll freely admit this blog represents my point of view. I'm paid by no one to write this. Chalkbeat takes money from Gates and Walmart, just to name a couple. They claim to be unbiased but they present the reformy view as though it's the Gospel.

President Oprah is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. Running a TV show is one of the worst qualifications for President I can think of. Of course, accepting reforminess as Gospel is just another. I wouldn't vote for Oprah on a bet. If she wants to do the country a service, she can take all that money she has, buy Fox News, and try to slow down the national plague of willful ignorance.

This notwithstanding, I won't be holding my breath.

Alice in Reformyland

I don't link to the 74, but the reformy Gates-funded make-believe teachers over at Educators 4 Excellence are making a stink over the ATR. It seems they and their reformies care a great deal about students in so-called failing schools, the ones full of poverty, health issues, and homelessness. Since their Dear Leader, Bill Gates, has already decided to ignore those problems, the former untenured teacher who runs E4E has decided to go a different way. the same way StudentsFirstNY went.

They're asking all sorts of questions about the ATR, like which ones were removed for disciplinary charges. You see, in Reformyland, charges are the same as convictions. It doesn't matter if said charges led nowhere, and by the way, all of them did. Otherwise these teachers they want to know about would've been fired rather than retained. This is mentioned nowhere in the 74, which is just one more reason there's no link.

Why are the former teachers who run E4E all in a tizzy over the ATR? I can't read their minds or look into their souls (which have likely as not been sold for Gatesbucks anyway). They're probably all excited for the same reason Klein was--this is a key to breaking union and putting us out on our own. One thing UFT leadership did right was hanging tough on giving ATRs a time limit so they'd face dismissal. That happened in Chicago, if I'm not mistaken, and has been a disaster.

We are all ATRs, whether or not you know it. It's just a matter of being in the wrong place at the right time. I work just a few miles south of Flushing High School, and just a few north of what was Jamaica High School. Am I a better teacher because I happen to work at Lewis? Of course not. In fact, I came to Lewis from John Adams High School in 1993. Back then there was a UFT transfer plan and we could pick a new place. Had I stayed at Adams, I'd have had to reapply for my job and quite likely would've become an ATR. It can happen anywhere. You never know. The only thing you can be sure of is that the teachers will be blamed.

There's a reason why reformies are harping on ATRs, and that reason is they want working conditions for union teachers as tenuous as possible. That way they can build more non-union charters and make more teachers work 200 hours a week with no rights. You don't want to teach the extra class? Screw you. You don't want to take parent phone calls until 10 PM? Screw you. You don't want to take a bus trip to Albany in which you teach a lesson on the bus? Screw you. You have no tenure and you're fired. We can always open up another can of teachers, especially now that we don't have to bother with that pesky school certification.

Getting rid of the ATR means fire at will, folks, and it's likely as not that you and I will be the ones fired. Don't buy into the stereotypical nonsense about ATR teachers. It's not their fault their schools were closed. It's not their fault there are cute little academy schools full of newbie teachers where no one wants to take on a veteran salary. It's not their fault that whatever nonsensical charges, likely as not pressed by Bloomberg and his flunkies, failed to stick.

It's certainly not their fault that publications, up to and including the NY Times, choose to baselessly stereotype them. I'm not sure what's happening over at the Times. They just did a feature on a lovable, pasta-cooking Nazi next door type. I do know this, though. We need to protect the ATR with everything we got, because whither they go, so go us all.

That's exactly what the reformies are counting on.

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

Those were words spoken in the film The Fly, in which Jeff Goldblum transforms into a monster before our eyes. Of course, no one had ever seen anything like that before, not even in the movies.

It was pretty good advice. You don't want to face a human-sized fly. They aren't very sociable and haven't got the best of manners. They tend to destroy all creatures in their path without much regard for their welfare.

Thus, when Bill Gates bobbles up his head and talks about spending money, it seems like good advice. After all, who can forget Gates' initiative to create small schools, which he determined would be a panacea for education everywhere. Bloomberg and Klein embraced the initiative, and closed high schools all over the city. They replaced them with little academies, often staffed with newbies, and frequently lacking any union presence whatsoever. Thus a whole lot of "empowered" principals were able to do Any Damn Thing, contracts and welfare of students be damned.

Of course, Bill gave up on that, but Bloomberg didn't, and we were left with the consequences of just one of his baseless notions. Of course it wasn't only us, and after effects were felt everywhere he'd seeded a few bucks and traipsed out. That's what Bill does.

Who can forget going to the Delegate Assembly and hearing how wonderful it was that Bill was bringing Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) to the city and that we were lucky enough to participate? They came to my school, set up their cameras, and were unable to really tell us just what they were using them for. Soon thereafter, we saw Race to the Top, and a huge push to use junk science to rate and fire teachers. While Mulgrew and leadership sing the praises of this system, I get nothing but complaints about it. Of course, when you're sitting around an office all day, you don't necessarily see what's going on. Which brings us to this:

Good! Bill Gates will not abandon #publiced. Teachers need curriculum support & prof dev to build on the standards. https://t.co/7ESSQ8ANbD

— AFT (@AFTunion) October 21, 2017

This really leaves me wondering just how stupid we are. I use the word we with certain reservations. After all, I'm a UFT high school teacher. There are more of us than there are teachers in Philadelphia. Yet we have no democratically elected representation in AFT. That's a shame, because I know many, many high school teachers who'd have serious issues with trusting Gates. In fact, I'd wager that well-informed teachers at every level would have issues with him.

Here is how many teachers I know clamoring for professional development to meet the standards--zero. Here is how many teachers I know who want Gates to have a voice in such things--less than zero. That is, of course, until you start to count the patronage employees and loyalty oath signers in my union.  They believe whatever they're told to believe, whether or not it advances the interests of those they ostensibly represent, so long as they get to keep their $30 an hour gigs dispensing flawed advice at pension consultations. Or whatever.

Getting in bed with Bill Gates again? I don't know. After all the blithering nonsense he spouted, AFT foolishly allowed him to keynote their convention. They ridiculed the teachers who booed him. He thanked us a week later by going out and attacking teacher pensions. What the hell are they thinking over at AFT?

I can't answer that question. The only thing I know for sure is they aren't consulting working teachers before broadcasting such absolute balderdash.

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.

Same ATR Attack, Different Day

In the Daily News, there's yet another hit piece on ATR teachers. This one is unique in that it's written by a public school parent. However, it fails to distinguish itself beyond that. It contains the same tired old arguments that every other hit piece has.

I have to trust that the principal is picking the best teachers and holding them to high standards.

Well, actually you don't. There are some awful principals around. Two of them were just bounced very publicly--the one from CPE 1 and the one from Townsend Harris. And if you read Sue Edelman over at the Post, you hear about all sorts of hijinks from these figures. In fact, assuming that principals are infallible is almost as offensive as assuming ATRs are "dud teachers." But it's equally ridiculous.

They land in the ATR — sometimes for a short period, sometimes for a long one — because they are unable or unwilling to find full-time teaching positions after losing their placements.

Actually quite a few land in the ATR because their schools close. A whole lot of schools were closed by Michael Bloomberg for test scores. In a game of musical chairs, he ended up closing even new schools he'd opened to replace original closures. With Mike Bloomberg, nothing was ever his fault. The buck stopped with the ATR teachers.

We've always known it was tough for older teachers to find jobs outside the city. We cost more money, and we know our rights. A lot of principals, the ones the writer deems infallible, would rather deal with more pliable newbies. And under so-called fair student funding, schools have to pay actual teacher salaries. Principals might think twice before laying out extra tens of thousands of dollars. Of course, that wasn't contained in this, or indeed any hit piece on ATR teachers.

In a rational world, if a teacher couldn’t find a job somewhere in our massive school system, he or she would be cut loose. 

I'm gonna have to make an inference here that the United States, led by Donald Trump, is somehow representative of a "rational world." In Europe, unions are more powerful and seniority rights mean a lot more. In New York City we gave them up in 2005. I know because when I was a new teacher, I got bumped out of several schools. If placing hundreds of teachers in limbo for no good reason is rational, if firing them for no reason is rational, I shudder to imagine what is not.

We know that in 2014, a third of the teachers in the ATR had unsatisfactory ratings and a quarter faced disciplinary charges.

What we don't know is why they had unsatisfactory ratings. Was it because they didn't do their jobs well, or was it because they reported malfeasance by the principal? I know people who fit that description. Or was it because the principal was exercising a personal vendetta? I've seen that too. As for disciplinary charges, they are just that. Were they proven? What were they? I know a person who had to pay a fine for missing one meeting and asking someone else to place a sign on an office door. Does that make him incompetent? You'd think so if all the info you had was this article.

But all the mayor seems to care about is rewarding the teachers union during an election year. So instead of fighting to protect public-school kids, he is focused on building support for his reelection campaign.

That's what you call a strawman. Until and unless this writer can establish to me that she can read the mind of Bill de Blasio, it's nonsensical. You might just as easily assume that the city is telling the truth when it says it wishes to put ATR teachers to work. Of course, in the "rational" world of this writer, people are fired based on unsubstantiated accusations. Hey, it's just as likely de Blasio believes people are innocent until proven guilty. I read somewhere that was the American way.

Parents should trust that only quality teachers can stay in the system, but the ATR pool is evidence of the opposite.

This is an odd conclusion, since the writer has offered absolutely no evidence that ATRs are not quality teachers. That's one of the disadvantages of basing arguments on stereotypes rather than facts. You could just as easily substitute any racist or bigoted conclusion here. People of this color, this religion, this nationality are all terrorist, drunk, cheap, stupid, or whatever. Allowing them in our country keeps us from making it great again.

More than half of them had stopped even applying for teaching jobs, meaning they weren’t so interested in being in the classroom. 

Yet another foray into mind reading. Now I'm not sure how many doors you need to have slammed in your face before you stop knocking on them, but people are intelligent and learn from experience. In fact, the DOE places black marks on certain ATRs and warns people not to hire them. And even if they didn't, now that fair student funding enables principals to hire on the cheap, no one's surprised to see that city principals are now picking and choosing just like Long Island principals do.

It's unfortunate that superficial nonsense like this is what passes for argument nowadays. But in a country quite literally run by mediocrity and worse, that's what you get.

Today's Class

Today, after having given our Regents exams, after having finalized and turned in all our grades, NY City high school teachers will face our students. Well, that is, we will face the students who bother to show up. All the students know grades are in. This is an innovation created by Dennis "Waffles" Walcott, reformy extraordinaire.

Personally, I don't believe that grades are everything. I think there's more to education than passing tests. We have a lot of interactions that aren't recorded, and we do a lot of things that are not actually required by contract. Of course we get no credit for these things, not on the Danielson rubric, not on the junk science ratings, and our supervisors don't even know when we work things out for kids. But we're teachers and that's what we do.

Nonetheless, high school students are not coming in today expecting help with non-academic issues. They're not coming in expecting help with academic issues either. In fact, a whole lot of them are simply not coming in at all, and I don't blame them. I mean, it's nice to come and say hello to your teacher and friends. However, when I was a teenager, if you told me that the grades were all in and there were no consequences for my non-attendance, you'd probably find me at the beach.

I teach ESL, and a lot of my students will show up. I'll show up too, because, you know, it's my job and I get paid and stuff. But it's not a productive use of our time. If we all have to come in, and the grades are a fait acompli,  the reformies who devised this should have found a better way for us to spend our time. Maybe they could send us all to a baseball game or a play. Maybe we could visit a college. Maybe there is something we can do other than sit in a classroom when class time is effectively over.

Actually I know they'll never do that, so here's my real idea--why not just push the Regents exams forward one day, and have us teach one day before the Regents exams? Wouldn't a class day be more productive if the students thought it were actually worth showing up?  Now I realize I'm just a lowly teacher whose paycheck is a mere fraction of Dennis Walcott's. And I've never been to a Leadership Academy or even an administration school (though he hasn't either). But naturally, by virtue of his innate reforminess alone, his idea is much better than mine. Still, I have no idea why.

My kids are great, and I'm sure they will pose no problems for me or anyone. But what if they weren't? What if they really didn't want to show and their parents forced them? What if they know their grades cannot be lowered, they can't be suspended, and it's highly unlikely there will be any consequence for any actions that aren't specifically felonious?

Dennis Walcott wasn't worried about things like that, because he wasn't a teacher. Who cares if Johny commits an atrocity in Miss Grundy's class? It's not like the AC was gonna break down in Walcott's  office, or the window air conditioners in Bloomberg's SUV were threatened. It's not like he was gonna have to eat whatever was left over on the last day the school cafeteria was open. And this certainly was not gonna result in bad service at his gala luncheon at the Plaza.

So if you're sitting five periods in a classroom that looks like the one above, consider sending a thank you note to Dennis Walcott. The thing about reformies is they're all about wasting your time. They don't really care about the quality of education. They have their eye on opportunities. After all, Eva Moskowitz is barely pulling in 500K a year, and you can barely buy a house with that these days. There are more charters to be built, and cyber-charters that don't even have to technically exist to rake in the bucks.

If you and your kids have to spend your time sitting around doing nothing for no good reason, well, that's a small price to pay for all this progress.

127,000 NYC Students Are Homeless

That's one in eight. It's not at all surprising because minimum wage workers can't afford to live here. If we raise the wage to $15, they still won't be able to afford it.

And still, reformies of all stripes get all agitated about how what we need is to fire the teachers, to establish charters, to give school "choice." Jesus, what about the choice to have a home? Isn't that just a little more fundamental than whether or not $500K-per-annum Eva Moskowitz gets to open up another charter school, or whether or not the city has to pay for it?

Nonetheless, every week there's another story about some study Eva's BFFs, the so-called Families for Excellent Schools, have done that proves that either City Schools Suck, Bill de Blasio Sucks, or ideally both. Where are our values?

I don't personally believe that standardized test scores are an indicator of much beyond family income. I don't think it's a coincidence that NY State took over the schools in Roosevelt but left Great Neck alone. But even if I did believe such a thing, there is no way I would prioritize test scores over living conditions. Self-proclaimed education guru Bill Gates has declared the way to defeat world poverty is for poor people to raise chickens.  Well, that's not an option if you live in Queens or the Bronx. Neighbors can be picky about having chickens running around in apartment buildings.

The fact is all schools targeted for closings contain high percentages of impoverished children. They contain high percentages of students with special needs. As long as we keep funneling children with proactive parents into charters, as long as we allow them to maintain and follow up on "got to go" lists, and as long as we allow them to dump kids back into public schools without replacing them we won't have any real "choice."

Sorry, reformies. If you gave a crap about children you'd stop attacking those of use who've dedicated our lives to serving them. You'd stop dragging them and their parents to Albany to maintain the substandard jobs you offer those who can't get UFT jobs. You'd fight to get kids out of poverty rather than putting your millions behind smoke and mirrors. You'd fight to make sure children had a future with middle class jobs rather than attacking teaching, one of their very best options.

You cannot ignore the fundamentals and make progress. One out of eight of our kids is homeless. That's not even considering the working poor, struggling to get by. Do you seriously think that parents working multiple jobs have time for parenting? Do you seriously think that homeless and overworked parents have the time to examine, apply for, and do the extra work hours charters can demand?

It costs $500 for an Epipen this year.  That's a 400% hike from what it was in 2008. Do homeless kids even know they need one? Have they signed the paperwork to help get one, if such paperwork is even available? I don't know, but I am certain that homelessness is a thing, that poverty is a thing, and that as long as we keep our head in the sand and worry about how many Moskowitz Academies we can open, or how many meaningless tests kids can pass, we're way off the mark in our priorities.

A Lesson for Common Core Enthusiasts

Someone sent me an interesting link from the Gates-funded Center for American Progress the other day, about how we could all do fabulous close reading things with the Common Core standards. Believe it or not, just about every organization that's taken money from Gates has fallen head over heels in love with Common Core, on which Gates spent a whole lotta cash. Go figure.

During the 2014-15 school year, more high school seniors read the young adult-oriented books The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent than Shakespeare’s Macbeth or Hamlet, according to a report that tracks what K-12 students at more than 30,000 schools are reading during the school year. These books are generally self-selected, making it not all that surprising that students would prefer to read a contemporary New York Times bestseller than a 17th-century play written in early modern English. And while some of the books that students select are thematically targeted to a mature audience, they are not particularly challenging to read for the average high schooler. The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent, for example, have the readability of a fourth- or fifth-grade text in terms of sentence structure and word difficulty.

God forbid that students should read stuff they enjoy. The end of the world is nigh. What we should value, according to this logic, is difficulty rather than content. Allowing students to self-select has a negative connotation in that paragraph. I'd argue the opposite. If students love to read, they will practice it without guns to their heads. Then, when they are presented with difficult readings, they will figure out how to get through them and deal with them. Forcing them to plod through Shakespere if they don't wish to is not how you get motivated readers. They continue:

Three of the top five most commonly assigned titles in grades 9 through 12 are To Kill a Mockingbird, The Crucible, and Of Mice and Men. All three books, while classics, are not particularly challenging in terms of sentence structure and complexity

Can you imagine that? Those crappy teachers are assigning books because of depth of theme, and they have no regard for how rigorous they are. It doesn't matter what sort of discussion or independent thought those books inspire. The important thing is how big the words are, how complicated the sentences are (all the better if they're in non-standard English) and whether or not the kids can muddle through them and pass a test.

You know what I never think about, and what most readers don't think about? We don't think about the grade level of what we're reading. We read for information, we read to learn, we read to be entertained, and we read for a lot of reasons. But we don't read simply to encounter big words and complicated sentence structure.

I was never taught any of this stuff and I miss it not at all. I was motivated to read myself and never expected other people to tell me what words meant. That’s what dictionaries are for. You'd think what 5-year-olds need is to work on unlocking complex text. That will make them love reading for sure. No more blowing bubbles in their milk and none of that Cat in the Hat nonsense anymore. We're raising a generation of test-takers who have SAT-oriented vocabularies.What more could any country want?

Now I actually have nothing against encouraging vocabulary. Vocabulary is a tool, and we use it as we need it. Were it up to me, I'd teach kids more about logic. I'd let them know what logical fallacies are. I'd let them know what bad arguments are made of. I'd let them explore and detect lies, like, for example, Common Core was developed by teachers, or that it's research based and field tested. I'd want my kids to know that health care is available to all in most non-third-world countries and few outside the United States go bankrupt paying hospital bills.

In fact, I'd like folks who advocate Common Core, like Reformy John King, to stand up and defend his ideas just like he wants our kids to do. That would be a whole lot better than cowardly canceling meetings because he can't muster a coherent argument. It's disgraceful that someone who advocates logic would call parents and teachers "special interests," and get all huffy when we ask why he sends his kids to schools that don't utilize the methodology he demands for our kids.

I also do not think it’s necessarily of value to use big words. Communication is about reaching as many people as you can with the correct words, words that inform, words that are appropriate and most easily understood, not words that impress. People who try to impress with big words end up doing precisely the opposite, even if they use them correctly.

One of my favorite series of books is The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. It's beautiful, lyrical writing. It's simple and universal. I've taught it to ESL students and they've loved it. It's about a woman in Botswana who's very smart, who's suffered greatly, but who's determined to make something of herself. It's about how she makes things happen by outsmarting those around her. It's not about how difficult the books she reads happen to be.

I don't love to read because I went to school and some teacher shoved big words and/ or complicated sentences down my throat. I don't love to read because some teacher handed me The History of Cement and made me close read it.  I love to read because of the very smart people who've taken the time to write. And if I have to plod through The History of Cement, I can do it because reading is natural for me.

The Common Core folk have got everything ass-backwards. And it's not because they weren't taught via Common Core. I wasn't taught via Common Core, and I can see right through all of their reformy nonsense. They'd love it if only we'd keep ignoring the fact that over half our country's children live in poverty. If we can get them to pass standardized tests here and there, that validates the reformies, and that's good enough.

Let them eat sentences.

When Chalkbeat Needs an "Expert," They Consult Students First NY

I am consistently amazed at what Chalkbeat regards as expert advice. Evidently, if you have enough cash to start an astroturf group, or if Bill Gates gives it to you, that's good enough for them. I found this tidbit in my email today, courtesy of Chalkbeat:

COLLEGE READY? City officials are hoping to ensure at least two-thirds of its graduates are "college ready" but experts disagree about how exactly readiness should be measured.

Wow. Who are they gonna ask? Aaron Pallas? Longtime principal Carol Burris? Ravitch herself? Here's the very first "expert" opinion Chalkbeat offers:

...StudentsFirstNY, in a report released last week, argues the city should include in its calculation students who don’t make it to graduation, which would knock the citywide rate down to just over one third.

Now that's very interesting. It's particularly interesting because I'm always reading about these amazing charter schools at which 100% of their grads go to four-year colleges. Incredible right? But what these stories don't say, ever, is precisely which percentage of the students who started these schools didn't finish. (That includes the ever-popular Dr. Steve Perry. I don't like to brag, but he recently banned me on Twitter because I retweeted something critical of him. How dare I?)
 I mean, if you start out with 100 kids, and 50 don't graduate your high school, doesn't that mean that half weren't college ready even if the other half ended up in 4-year colleges?

But I don't read these stories on Chalkbeat. I generally see them on Gary Rubinstein's blog. You see, while Gary is a full-time teacher at Stuyvesant and a father of small children, when he gets a story he doesn't just go to Students First NY and ask what they think about it.  He does research,  crunches the numbers, writes graphs and charts to make them accessible to folks like me who wouldn't understand otherwise, and presents a picture we wouldn't have otherwise.

Now in fairness, Chalkbeat also went to "Research Alliance for New York City Schools, a nonpartisan center based at New York University." 30 seconds of research revealed they were funded by Gates and Walmart. So you get both sides of the story at Chalkbeat. Reformy Students First NY, and a Gates funded entity that Chalkbeat calls "nonpartisan." We should take their word, right? (The fact that they didn't bother to label Students First as partisan should count for nothing, I suppose.) They also ask someone from Gates-funded "Achieve." So if you want a real spectrum of Gates-funded views, Chalkbeat is your go-to.

Also in fairness, they do acknowledge another view:

Yet some critics argue that test scores are not the best way to judge whether students are ready for college. Studies show that a student’s GPA is often a better predictor of success in college than his or her SAT scores, for example, though GPA isn’t standardized across schools.

You see that? "Some critics argue," they say, though they can't be bothered to cite a single one. And though it says "studies show," it doesn't mention who made them, or interview a single person who believes it. But then we resolve this issue.

Meanwhile, groups like StudentsFirstNY believe a metric that counts only graduates, rather than all students who start in ninth grade, artificially inflates the numbers.

Of course you have to not only give the last word to the astroturfers, but also fail again to mention they are partisan. Because journalistic standards. 

Though there are tens of thousands of teachers, though said teachers have a union, Chalkbeat New York could not be bothered asking them. Though Gary Rubinstein actually is an expert, and though he actually does research, they haven't bothered asking him either.

Chalkbeat NY's double standards are showing, and it appears they can't even be bothered to pretend anymore.

Platitudes Ahoy from Hillary at NEA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Social Justice Isn't Crap

All due respect to my friend Chaz, you can't discount social justice. We are not living on a remote island. We are part of a community.

Hey, I love to get a raise. I want a new Mac, pretty much all the time. I have a kid and she is expensive, what with going to college and stuff. And man, life in general is expensive, what with property and school taxes and fixing stuff. I live 23 miles from my workplace and without a reliable vehicle I'd be hitchhiking back and forth. Pretty sure my principal would be less than sympathetic if I missed classes because I couldn't thumb a ride.

But my job is serving the children of New York City. I advocate for them collectively and individually. I'm very proud that UFT VP Janella Hinds and I were able to put our differences aside and produce a resolution at the DA to support the kids I serve. Our resolution, in supporting kids, also supports teachers. And I am trying to build on this. Aixa Rodriguez and I were on television talking about it. I'm trying to get Regents Chancellor Betty Rosa to get involved, albeit without much success, and I'm working on reaching out to multilingual communities to fix what hurts us and our students.

The very "reforms" that Chaz and I abhor are an affront to social justice. In fact, by making working conditions so awful for teachers we are gradually robbing our children of a great opportunity--that of doing the best job there is. I don't know about you, but I want my kid and my students to have opportunities other than making eight bucks an hour at the BJ's cash register. One of the surest ways to support that is by supporting union. Union itself, in fact, is a form and facet of social justice.

One of my former ESL students is now a math teacher in my school. She comes from a family that works very, very hard just to get by. They scrimped and saved and put her through Queens College. She's as smart as anyone I know, and for all I know in a few years she'll be my boss. She is the American Dream personified, and I want her story replicated. That's why I support social justice.

The opt-out movement, in my view, is the most important movement there is against the insanity that is reforminess. John King could run around, spout baseless ideas, and refuse to subject his own kids to them, sending them to a Montessori school. He could even walk out in a snit,  refusing to defend his ideas to the public, dismissing teachers and parents as "special interests." But the parents were demanding social justice for their children by attacking the ridiculous tests that labeled not only their children, but also their children's teachers. The activist parents in New York State are our best friends and our most ardent supporters. If we demand better conditions exclusively for ourselves, we will lose that support.

And let me add that I absolutely support better working conditions for teachers. I absolutely oppose the ATR and the conditions imposed on teachers stuck there. I've been writing about the ATR since its inception, and if you search this blog you'll see it mentioned literally hundreds of times. I advocate for ATRs and several of them are now permanently employed in my school. Fighting for them is, in fact, fighting for social justice.

We fight such things not only because they hurt us, but because the very existence of such idiocy hurts our children as well. We are part of something larger than ourselves, and if we fail to acknowledge that, we cut ourselves off from our community.

And community is vital. When I attended multiple sessions at Jamaica High School and others, I saw communities up in arms. It wasn't just us alone. When I held demonstrations at my school, I did so in coordination with our PTA. On a small level, when my students have issues and run into red tape, I run interference for them. I don't have to wait on lines the way they do.

Social justice is standing up for our communities, and it's a win-win. If we don't stand with them, why should they stand with us? And if we don't stand up for those we serve, how are we even doing our jobs? We are role models. Do we want to foster a generation that cares only for itself and no one else?

I don't know why everyone does this job, but I want to make a difference. If all I cared about were imparting subject matter and making kids pass tests, I'd support the reformies. But we are something more, and we do something more.

Again, this is the best job there is. But it's certainly not because it's the best paying or easiest job there is. It's because we make a difference, right there in the classroom. And if we think about keeping this job the best job there is, we have to think about improving our communities. We have to fight folks like Bloomberg, folks who care only about folks like Bloomberg. It may not be laid out in black and white in the UFT Contract, but that's part of our job too.

Update: Chaz answers that social justice is crap indeed. My response is below:

You'll pardon me, but I am a strong advocate for smaller class sizes, and have been for years. And I've spoken out about the contract all over the place. When Mulgrew said bloggers were "purveyors of myth" on health care, he was certainly talking about me. He turned off Eterno's mike as James said we'd negotiated the lowest pattern in history, something he's yet to refute.

I read the comments on the UFT Facebook page on the Garner march. They were overtly racist and I was disgusted. I joined the march and I'm proud to have done so. And far from being "strangely silent" on the discipline code, I had a piece in the New York Daily News a week or two ago absolutely opposing it.

Most importantly, by painting everyone with MORE with one brush, you do us a great disservice. We don't sign loyalty oaths, and we are free to believe as we wish. We are not a group of fanatical ideologues, and we are diverse in our beliefs. Saying we believe this and that is nothing but a stereotype, and you've actually not addressed anything in my blog post. I'm pretty shocked you seem not to know me better than that.

I don't actually know much about restorative justice, but someone on my blog yesterday told me it entailed tolerating assaults on teachers and students peddling drugs. Seriously? You're gonna tell me this is what I support? I write and work in defense of members every day of my life. I advocate for ATRs on multiple levels, and have helped several to get hired permanently. I'm not always successful, but it's not for lack of trying.

I take it very seriously when members are abused. That's not any kind of justice, and I'm not at all shy about standing up for members. Being chapter leader of the largest school in Queens is not precisely a walk in the park, and I take the implication that I tolerate such nonsense as a personal insult.

The Song of the Bigot

It turns out that undocumented immigrants are not the scourge Donald Trump says the are after all. In fact, over the last decade, there have been fewer and fewer of them. That need not bother the Donald, for whom objective reality has little or no meaning. He can still hate them, and his supporters appear more than ready to do so, particularly if they're Muslims. There aren't ever enough forums for people longing to hate, and now Donald's got Sarah Palin, you betcha, to urge them along with him. After all, you can't expect Ann Coulter to do that job all by herself.

In fact it's gotten to the point where so-called mainstream Republicans are trying to distance themselves from overt bigotry. David Brooks, evidently, is reveling in trying to blame Trump and Cruz for the natural evolution of the GOP. Brooks, evidently, thinks the old-fashioned unspoken kind was preferable. Brooks' column more or less sings to me:

Gimme that ol' time racism,
Gimme that ol' time racism,
Gimme that ol' time racism,
It's good enough for me. 

Let's keep our hatred under wraps, pretend it doesn't exist, use the same old code words we've been using since Nixon. Let's talk about law and order instead of actually calling out those groups we hate so much. After all, it really pisses us off to be working crap jobs and have huge medical expenses. In fact, even if the medical expenses have gone down somewhat due to Obamacare, let's keep calling him a Muslim and a traitor. Let's work, therefore, to repeal Obamacare even if it hasn't hurt anyone.

Sadly, the Democrats are not much better. Bigotry flourishes in an atmosphere of oppression, and we always need someone to blame for it. Obamacare, though far from perfect, was the best the President could get in a Congress with obstructionist Republicans who would rather accomplish nothing than help the American people. But Obama didn't take much of a stand for working people, and sat in his office while they were screwed in Wisconsin and all over the country. Now SCOTUS, at the behest of their corporate overlords, is about to deal a blow to public union from which it will be very tough to recover.

Hatred is easily redirected, as Orwell was fond of noting. If you're comfortable because you're white, because you're born in the United States, and you aren't a member of a currently embattled religion, don't get all that comfortable. Another group that repressive societies like to go after is teachers. After all, they're out there telling the truth, no matter how inconvenient that is. In fact, there are a whole lot of teachers right now failing to accept the ideas of Bill Gates. Well, not all of them, but Diane Ravitch, the American Statistical Association and a lot of teachers reject his value-added mantra as junk science.

Make no mistake, we are also a target. We have been, we will be, and things can always get worse. No bigot is a good bigot, and we support the likes of Trump and Cruz at our peril. When Hillary babble inanities about closing schools that aren't "above average," I'm not convinced she's a whole lot better. She's certainly not a whole lot better informed.

When in Doubt, Double Down

I am always amazed by those who exclaim we're in crisis, that our teachers suck, that our schools suck, and that we must act now. In New Jersey, because everything sucks, because the reading scores are too low for the pols' comfort level, they've decided that the suckiness must end now. In their particular case, they've decided the conclusive way to end it is to blanket the state in even more suckiness by extending the school day.

That way, surely poverty will end, and by the time these kids get home they will have forgotten that no one paid the electric or heat bill. After all, what with mom and dad working 200 hours a week each at minimum wage, there's no one they can tell about it anyway.

So the kids will sit in the cold and the dark, forget absolutely that the last good meal they had was hours ago in school, and do their homework via telepathy, which they will have acquired via those extra hours in school. This, of course, also applies to the kindergarteners, who will magically learn to read via those two and a half extra hours sitting in that terrible school with the terrible teacher who caused all those problems in the first place.

The important thing to note is it isn't the fault of the people who administrate said schools. From the hyper-local level up, they are blameless. After all, haven't they come out every single year with a new program to lessen the influence of those awful teachers who caused poverty the problem in the first place? And from the state right down to the school, each and every administrator has worked hard to enforce every new policy, every year, and they've worked just as hard to bury last year's failed policies, the ones that were indispensable at the time.

So basically, it's a WIN-WIN. We've done the charter schools, the school closings, the Common Core, the mayoral control, the new evaluation system, the newer evaluation system, the newest evaluation system, and you betcha we're gonna do the one after that as well. We've done just about everything we've been asked, and we've made sure not to engage the rank and file teachers at all, since they suck.

And now, right here in New York, there's some new committee that Andrew Cuomo started, and folks like Mulgrew are kvelling about what great work they do, even though the changes are decidedly superficial, unlikely to change anything, and certain not to discourage opt-out as intended. Now Mulgrew's got street cred, because he endorsed and approved absolutely every piece of crap reform cited in the last paragraph. And after all, why should school administrators listen to teachers when the most powerful union president in the country can't be bothered?

This is a top-down mistake that's passed from the national level, where Mulgrew's AFT endorsed the reformiest President in history for re-election, to the state level, where we couldn't even be bothered to oppose a governor who ran on a platform of going after unions, to a local level, where alleged commie Bill de Blasio managed the lowest pattern bargain in my living memory (with the explicit help of Punchy Mike Mulgrew).

And, of course, this attitude trickles down to your school and mine, where teacher voice is roundly ignored. It's unfortunate that no one thinks to consult with us, the people who actually spend time with kids each and every day, but I understand the phenomenon. There's the widely accepted premise that teachers and students are somehow in opposition, that our goals are somehow antithetical to theirs, and that teachers care only about themselves. That's absurd, of course. Our teaching conditions are their learning conditions, and what we gain or lose is what our kids will have when they grow up.

It's important for us to reverse the reformy canard, but it's an uphill battle to turn around such a widely accepted myth. What we want is for our kids to be happy. It's bizarre that it's so important for so many people on so many levels to spend so much time ensuring that we (and they) are not.

And if we aren't, what the hell sort of role models do they expect us to be? It's a shame our voices are neglected in favor of those of reformies. Between us, reformies are pretty much the worst role models for children I can imagine.

Why I'm Not Donating to Chalkbeat (And You Shouldn't Either)

For the last few days I've been receiving missives from Chalkbeat NY, nee Gotham Schools, to contribute money. They want me to support the great work they say they're doing. I have actually been following them pretty much since their inception, and I still get their daily Rise and Shine, which I occasionally find useful.

They used to have something called Nightcap, which gave alternate points of view, like blogs, but now it's pretty much all from reformy MSM sources. They used to feature comments on the front page, back when it made a difference what conmmenters thought. And it used to be easy to read, before they instituted their new and largely ponderous format.

I was solicited to write for them. The first piece I did was a report on a PS 123 rally. I reported what the speakers said and was attacked for the speakers being inaccurate. It had not occurred to me that for my salary, nothing whatsoever, I was supposed to investigate their statements. After that, I was subject to the most brutal editing process I've ever experienced. Everything was pretty much gone over with a fine tooth comb, sometimes for the better, but not always.

After battling for months, I submitted this piece. Chalkbeat objected that I'd labeled Cathie Black as billionaire-sponsored, though Michael Bloomberg had appointed her. They objected to my saying TFA favored Ivy diplomas, though at the time they certainly did. I don't recall the third objection, but I do recall that it wasn't even debatable. That was the end of my tenure at Chalkbeat. Truthfully I'm more interested in using my voice, rather than have it watered down to be more acceptable to the reformies.

I later objected when they decided to place a piece about 100 E4E members signing some petition for more work for less pay, or whatever nonsense they were pushing that week. Gotham told me they would happily run a piece if I got 100 signatures. I wrote a petition asking that the ESL students in all schools school have their Regents exams graded by ESL teachers.  This was the policy for schools containing high percentages of ESL students. Although my school had lower percentages than some of these schools, we in fact had higher numbers. I didn't understand, if indeed that was an advantage, why my students weren't entitled to it.

I wrote the petition in five minutes and had 100 signatures within an hour. Just for the heck of it, I added the signatures of most of our School Leadership Team. I submitted it to Chalkbeat. A Chalkbeat reporter called me and we talked. She asked for the name of another teacher who could address it. I gave her one. Then I never heard anything of it again.

I've been to UFT rallies that haven't received mention in Chalkbeat, even though every time Eva Moskowitz blows her nose they report what color Kleenex she used. When I wrote them to complain, they gave me a snide response about how they were giving their reporters the summer off. You know, like us lazy worthless teachers. But this particular lazy worthless teacher was at the Manhattan rally that day, the one Chalkbeat didn't see fit to report. You'd better believe if E4E had a rally it would make the cut.

That's why I'm not giving a dime to Chalkbeat. Instead I made a donation to Class Size Matters, an organization that works for things we believe in (as opposed to things zillionaires want). If you'd like to follow my example, and I very much suggest you do, you can do it right here.

The Moskowitz Anomoly

Eva says the "got to go" list was an anomaly, one of those wacky things that happens once in a blue moon.  Yet there have been stories for years of kids pushed out of Moskowitz Academies, for inconvenient behavior, low test scores, whatever. Eva is now demanding public funding for the Moskowitz pre-K but refusing to submit to required oversight by the city. Rules are for the little people, and that would be us, the people who serve all children.

If there's an "anomoly," it's the fact that this particular list was placed in writing.

@campbell_brown @SuccessCharters @NYCSchools next time they will not make the mistake of leaving a paper trail.

— Gary Rubinstein (@garyrubinstein) October 30, 2015

Eva's test scores are no miracle. They're a product of the drill and kill method she favors that values test scores over children. How else do you explain children soiling themselves as a matter of course under the abusive leadership she fosters and defends. In a public school, this would be considered child abuse. If you didn't allow a child to go to the bathroom and that child soiled herself, you'd be guilty of corporal punishment under CR A-420. When my dog asks to go out, I jump up and take him. Therefore I treat my dog better than Moskowitz treats the children under her care.

Anyone who tells you Moskowitz is an amazing success story is ignorant, willingly or otherwise. There is no way I'd subject my kid or yours to the ridiculous and joyless discipline inherent in her test factories. There is also no way I'd equate a Moskowitz Academy with "Success." In my view, success entails a certain degree of happiness. Creating compliant drones is great for companies like Walmart which pay poorly for lives of drudgery. Doubtless that's why the Walmart family is all in for charters. Nonetheless I want something much better for the children I serve.

That's just one reason I don't work for the likes of Eva. A better reason is I have a better job. I serve all high-needs kids, none of whom will get a great standardized test score, and none of whom would be accepted into a Moskowitz Academy. Despite recent reforminess, I still have better working conditions than Moskowitz teachers ever will. I want my kid and yours to have better working conditions and therefore reject the preposterous claims that we somehow oppose "excellence." If "excellence" entails forcing working people to demonstrate publicly against their own interests, like Eva just forced her teachers to do, who needs it?

Moskowitz Academies take public money, but are not public schools. Public schools serve the public, and do not discriminate against ELLs or kids with disabilities. They don't write "got to go" lists about kids whose scores will hurt the bottom line. The stakes attached to scores are there because Eva and her BFFs are waging war against us, the last bastion of unionism in these Unitied States.

It's an important war, because if we really cared about "excellence," we'd want our kids to have excellent lives, as opposed to excellent test scores. Hobbling union deprives our children of opportunity and makes it more likely they'll spend years of drudgery in service of Eva's BFF the Walmart family.

Moskowitz is a demagogue and I applaud NY Times reporter Kate Taylor for shedding further light on her misleading and unethical practices.