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.

A Tale of Two Cartoons

The cartoon on the left is something that Hillary supporters have been posting on Facebook lately. I first saw it a few months back when the nomination was still in question. Evidently, if you're a Sanders supporter, someone who believes in universal health care, college for all, and other such trivial nonsense, you merit personal ridicule.

To me, this is not precisely the most persuasive tactic, and it doesn't really make me want to vote for Hillary. In fact, I don't much like being insulted for my beliefs. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that sentiment.

I still see people who I generally respect referring to us as "Bernie bros." Perhaps they feel by stereotyping us we'll be more likely to jump on the bandwagon. Or perhaps they'll deny this is a stereotype. Who knows? I see "Bernie bro" and I read "sexist thug." And I've read stories implying precisely that--those mindless Bernie bros went out and did this or that, and are therefore not worthy of consideration.

It's odd to be attacked like this, particularly since I've pretty much resigned to vote for Hillary anyway. A much more eloquent case for this position is given by Shaun King in the NY Daily News. Had I not already made my decision I'd perhaps have been persuaded by this one. It's a whole lot more persuasive than the arguments I've heard from Hillary supporters---that I don't understand politics, that I'm unrealistic, that I don't understand high school civics, or whatever nonsense is aimed in my direction this week.

Now cute as the above cartoon may be, it's actually not the original. It's copied, almost certainly without permission, and pirated from the

one on the right. As you can see, the original is simpler, and thus funnier and more effective. There's some irony here too. The original ridicules Wall Street types--you know, the ones whose money Hillary takes hand over fist.

I'm not exactly sure why those of us who want real change, rather than someone better than the awful Donald Trump, merit ridicule and abuse. I'm not sure why Hillary supporters want to be sore winners.

Here's what I do know. Right now Five Thirty Eight gives Donald Trump a 55% chance of winning the election if it were held today.  I don't know about you, but I find that pretty scary.

Some Hillary supporters come to curious conclusions. I'm not a mind reader, so I can only speculate as to why. Perhaps they think that by ridiculing us it will bring us around to their point of view. Actually it has the opposite effect. It makes us angry. No one likes being stereotyped and ridiculed. Maybe they just hate the fact that people see the obvious flaws in candidate Hillary. Maybe some of them are borderline fanatical and cannot tolerate differing points of view. Who knows?

Whatever the reason, if Hillary supporters want their candidate to win, if they really want to Dump the Trump, they're gonna have to start treating Bernie supporters with something akin to common courtesy. If the goal is to Defeat the Donald, that's a necessity. And if the goal is to actually pile on and reject him decisively, it's even more important.

To help Hillary or defeat Trump, this stuff simply needs to stop. But if the goal is to further alienate Sanders supporters, well, keep up the personal insults. Call us thugs. Call us selfish and immature. Try to get us to take out our frustrations with you on Hillary. Maybe you'll succeed. Maybe I'll even change my mind and vote for Jill Stein. And even if you fail to persuade me, you'll surely persuade others.

So if that's what you want, go right ahead. After all, when Trump is President, you can always blame us.

Stereotypes Ahoy in the NY Post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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