The Meaning of "Education Reform" Laid Bare

There is a fascinating piece in Politico today. Evidently, we're somehow making some progress against reforminess. This goes hand in hand with a statement from Eduwonk, AKA Andy Rotherham of Bellwether Education Partners, referring to teacher unions:

In fact, these groups thwarted key parts of the Obama education agenda. 

Rotherham does not give any more detail, and with 12 years of blogging I still can't read his mind.  I'll therefore focus on the Politico piece, which is a little more explicit. Politico states that NY is no longer the ed reform capital, and as a New Yorker, that sounds like good news. Reformies are stalled in their tracks, evidently.

Yet here on the ground, I have never seen teachers so demoralized and worn down. Some of the most positive individuals I've ever met have left the profession. Some of them left from my school, a relatively good place. Why would that be, if we were so successful at turning the reformy tide?

One reason is that Politico looks at "reform" in a curious fashion. The word, to me, entails change, and hopefully for the better. That's why I question reformies, because what is their motivation to change? I mean, Betsy DeVos is as reformy as they come, and for all I can see, she's on a mission to destroy public education so her BFFs can profit from it.

You know, the wall idea is a good one. Why don't we just build walls around all public schools and privatize everything?

— Fake Betsy DeVos (@FakeBetsyDeVos) July 22, 2017

The march toward privatization notwithstanding, a great deal of the Politico article focuses on teacher tenure. Here's a blatant falsehood:

At Cuomo’s urging, the Legislature pushed through some reforms in 2015, tying tenure to teacher performance instead of time in the classroom...

In fact, I have firsthand experience with tenure being withheld for classroom performance before this "reform" was passed. Tenure could be delayed or denied for almost any reason before 2015. The city used this much more frequently after Bloomberg came in, but always had the option to do so. But why should education reporters bother knowing anything about history? (In fairness, Politico opts for the Chalkbeat model of not talking to working teachers, speaking with Gates-funded E4E reformies instead.)

A stronger focus of "reform," as per Politico, is the failure of New York to utterly eradicate due process, popularly known as "tenure." It seemed the prime directive of self-proclaimed education expert Campbell Brown to allow administrators to fire anyone they felt like, anytime they felt like it. To enable this, they went full-court press after what they called bad teachers--generally people who were accused of things but not found guilty. Brown went to the tabloids and blew up a few cases to stoke outrage, but it appears her efforts have stalled.

In fact, I knew the circumstances only one of the cases that Brown tossed about, and I knew it to be nonsense. I therefore doubted the rest of her allegations. I was very happy to write about the flip side of the coin, and how all teachers deserve due process. Hey, if I stink at my job, if I'm abusive to children, fine. Come after me. But if you're mad at me for standing up for the children I serve and making your job inconvenient, screw you. If you're mad at me for standing up for the rights of my colleagues, again, screw you.

Reforminess is something Trump is strong on, because he doesn't believe in protecting the rights of working people. With him, it's all about profit, hence Betsy DeVos, who's pretty much decimated public education in Michigan. They can wrap themselves in the flag all they want, and claim to care about the children. Those of us who wake up every morning to serve those children know better.

And then there is Andrew Cuomo, who first ran on a platform of going after unions, who appeared at Moskowitz rallies and frothed at the mouth over the possibility of firing as many teachers as possible. Cuomo could not possibly anticipate that parents would become informed and fight back against the nonsense that is Common Core. He could not anticipate that parents would boycott his tests in droves.

What reformies failed to count on was the opportunism of Andrew Cuomo. As a man with no moral center whatsoever, he is driven by rampant ambition. This year, he watched Donald Trump win the presidency against neoliberal Hillary Clinton. Cuomo decided to position himself as Bernie Sanders Lite and pushed a program to give free college tuition to New Yorkers (albeit with a whole lot of restrictions).

Cuomo is now best buds with UFT, judging from what I hear at Delegate Assemblies. While I don't personally trust the man as far as I can throw him, I'm happy if that works to help working teachers and other working people. So what is education "reform," exactly?

As far as I can tell, it's piling on, How miserable can we make working teachers? How can we arbitrarily and capriciously fire them? How can we give them as few options as possible, and as little voice as possible?

It's ironic. The MORE motto is, "Our teaching conditions are students' learning conditions." I agree with that. Take it a step further, and our teaching conditions are our students' future working conditions. When we fight for improvement of our working conditions, we are fighting for the future of our students as well.

Two of my former students teach in my school. They are the first of their families to be college educated, and the first of their families to get middle class jobs. I will fight for them, and for my other students to have even more opportunity. Betsy DeVos and the reformies, on the other hand, can fight to maximize profits for fraudulent cyber-charter owners and all the other opportunist sleazebags they represent so well.

Christie, Cuomo, and Teachers

I don't read Jersey Jazzman's blog as often as I should. He's got very sharp analysis of all things Jersey, and often goes beyond. He's gone in depth over the massive failures of merit pay, and the fact that politicians continue to believe in it, rely on it, and impose it despite a 100-year history of abject failure. His most recent blog is on Chris Christie's public criticism of a system he himself negotiated and passed. This is, in fact, exactly what Andrew Cuomo did, before revamping it to make it even worse.

In New Jersey, there is a case of a teacher who was late 111 times over a two-year period. His case was brought to an arbitrator, and the teacher wasn't fired. Now I'll go on record, as did JJ, to say that if you're supposed to be in at a certain time, or course you should be in at that time. And I'll also agree that 111 latenesses over two years is pretty outrageous. That's why it's got such attention-grabbing potential on Twitter.

The power of tenure: New Jersey teacher who was late for work 111 times keeps job http://t.co/MIPG8IERSi via @YahooNews

— Errol Louis (@errollouis) August 27, 2015

Wow, those teachers can get away with anything, huh? It's awful. Who needs any further detail before we pass judgment? Does it matter that most of the latenesses were only two minutes, or that he had to actually stand on a line to clock in every morning? What if, as I read in an ensuing interview, he never missed a moment of class? Does it matter that he was, in fact, rather severely penalized? He will be on unpaid leave until January. Could you afford to be without income or medical benefits for half a year?

In any case, as JJ points out, it was the arbitrator's call. As sad as it is, Christie sometimes has to follow the rules he helps make. I mean, it's tough to do that, just like it's tough to have to pay the state portion of the pension. After all, wouldn't that money be better used in the form of tax breaks for Christie's wealthy BFFs? But I digress.

The thing that I found most egregious about the clarion calls against tenure was that it took one flashy case, and painted all of us with it. For example, I was not late 111 times over the last two years, yet my tenure is being condemned on the basis of one person who was. That, dear readers, is what is known as a stereotype. For example, I'm kind of upset with Iowans this week, as they have an undue influence on who becomes President. If I find one Iowan drunk on the street, shall I condemn them all as a bunch of drunks? If one of them is cheap, or dumb, or promiscuous, or crazy, shall I do the same?

That particular paintbrush is indispensable in the bigot's tool kit. I won't rehash ethnic stereotypes, but they're all based on the same old thing. I grew up with stereotypes. I didn't much like them when I was a kid, but I understand them a lot better now. My job entails dealing with kids from every corner of the earth. Few things upset me as much as one kid refusing to cooperate with another, because she comes from here or there, because she's this or that religion or color, because her accent is harder to understand than yours, or whatever. I tell the kids someone hates each and every one of us in this room just because of who we are.

I have patience for children. Bigotry has considerably less charm when it comes from adults. Adults are supposed to know better. I'm sorry, Chris Christie, that when you make agreements even you have to follow them. I realize how inconvenient that is. But I won't label all governors juvenile crybabies simply because it applies to you and Governor Cuomo. Because that would be a stereotype, and stereotypes are the refuge of the small-minded.

It's pathetic when politicians have to resort to such nonsense. You'd think, by 2015, we'd be past that. Sadly we're far from it.

On Keeping Young Teachers

Our school's a relatively good place. I'd argue that most of the administrators aren't even crazy. Yet the maniacal footprint of the reformies is everywhere, and there's no escape for a working teacher. This is brought home to me by a few of the people who've left us this year. And no, I'm not talking about retirees.

I was recently contacted by a teacher who stayed late every night writing lesson plans, not the first such teacher who's contacted me. I remember the last one I knew, who happened to be in my department. Because I'm chapter leader I keep very strange hours and stay late for all sorts of reasons. But this young woman stayed for hours after work each day, plotting out lesson plans in excruciating detail. I could not persuade her to do anything differently, and eventually she left. Perhaps she's a reluctant workaholic. Who knows?

What I keep hearing from teachers in trouble, from teachers not in trouble, from teachers who don't care one way or the other about trouble is that they're tired of being in a fishbowl. They're tired of thinking the boss could walk in at any moment and catch them doing something less than Danielson-worthy. They're tired of being constantly auditioned for a job they already have.

The teacher who just contacted me is taking a job elsewhere, and I often hear from teachers who are considering jobs elsewhere. It's heartbreaking to me because I think this is the best job there is. Don't get me wrong, I hate the new gotcha system as much as anyone. And given this blog's been up over a decade, I probably complain more than just about anyone. But the classroom and the kids inside of it aren't the problem at all. (This notwithstanding, I also know a bunch of other teachers who've left without sharing detail with me.)

Yesterday I heard a young teacher who I'd deemed almost a Renaissance man had left. This guy was conversant in multiple subjects, and had perhaps the most relentlessly positive attitude of any person of my acquaintance. I was certain the kids loved him, because it appeared everyone else did. Last year he surprised me by confiding how unhappy he was under this new system. I was shocked. He was the last person I'd have expected to complain about anything.

To me he's a bellwether of sorts. If a guy like this can't make it in a school like mine, how is any teacher to make it anywhere? Sure there will be a lot of young teachers who persevere and push through, but at what cost? Do we seriously want the people who are to be role models to our children to be constantly walking a tightrope and hoping for the best?

Even now there is a lawsuit to strip us of due process and render us at-will employees. Who the hell is going to speak up when special ed. kids are poorly served if they can then be fired for a bad haircut? Who's going to report safety hazards? Who's gonna bother calling the union about the moldy trailers? And for goodness sake, who's gonna want to take an already crazy job like chapter leader?

A former student of mine just took a teaching job in my school. This is a very, very smart and capable young woman. Will she make it, or will she wither under unreasonable pressure? I hope for the former, but I'd understand the latter.

We really need to make this job one worth having, not only for the teachers who come after us, but also for the kids they'll need to serve. People who believe Campbell Brown represents the children we serve are laboring under a serious misconception, and will need those reformy broomsticks surgically removed from their asses at the earliest possible opportunity. I only hope they have health insurance adequate to the task.

The Accountability Scam

Sean Crowley, my brother blogger from Buffalo, has a great column about how educational leaders are popped into place with no public input. A secondary point he makes is about accountability. This is the word we invariably hear when insane systems are initiated. Why should teachers be judged by test scores? Accountability. Why must every kid, no matter where he or she comes from, get the same test? Accountability. Why is our tenure and union under frontal assault? Accountability.

Reformy politicians love accountability. If you didn't know better, you'd think it warmed the remote nether regions of their ice-cold hearts. You'd think they care about the progress of our poor underprivileged impoverished children. You'd think that because that, in fact, is what they say when they pimp common core, value-added ratings, and firing as many teachers as possible.

But here's the thing--accountability does not, in fact, mean taking responsibility for real problems. It simply means passing the buck. If the problem in the United States is that children are not getting high enough scores on standardized tests (and it isn't, by the way), you can say, "See? Those lazy teachers aren't doing their jobs! They're sitting around and reading the newspaper while our children are suffering and failing!" That's what a whole lot of editorial and op-ed writers would have you believe.

The problem, though, is not in our stars, nor in ourselves. The problem is in our communities. Despite Governor Cuomo's valuable lip service that some workers in NY State will receive $15 an hour in a few years, a whole lot of people are just not making in in this country. When two parents work 200 hours a week each and still can't make ends meet, they don't have a whole lot of time for parenting. Unfortunately, the people who fund reformies like Andrew Cuomo are profiting enormously from low wage workers. Uber-reformy Whitney Tilson of DFER has no problems hyping and profiting from the likes of Walmart and McDonalds.

But the race to the bottom in American employment is in fact a huge factor in why kids don't do well on tests. Parents who haven't got a minute to read with their kids, who haven't got a minute to read themselves, who haven't got a minute to visit schools or teachers have serious problems. And the very reformies who vilify teachers not only contribute to this problem, but also directly profit from it. And as if that weren't enough, they've now got their fat grubby paws in charters, cyber charters, and various other schemes to divert even more money from those of us unimaginative enough to have to work for a living.

In America, we don't need circuses, because they're everywhere. Over a dozen GOP candidates debate and not one addresses minimum wage. They stand there arguing over how to defund Planned Parenthood and feign outrage when Donald Trump makes some juvenile crack about one of Fox's bleached blond talking heads. They present us corporate funded union-busters and rail about President Obama's program to bring health care to more people. You might leave one of those debates outraged over Obamacare rather than the fact that every other industrialized country offers its citizens health care as a matter of course.

Reformies love accountability only because they can dump it on us. By blaming unionized teachers for all the world's woes, they are held totally blameless for their miserable and perpetual failure to help working Americans. And for all the crocodile tears they shed for our children, they will soon grow up to be working Americans, and thus shunned and ignored by those who claim now to be their advocates.

And who is it who actually spends time and energy on these children?

That would be us, the educators. The tinhorn politicians and tone-deaf op-ed writers who vilify and libel us for a living profit off of the misery of those we serve every day. We can't afford to let them make us miserable too. It's our job to tell the truth, no matter how much it hurts Frank Bruni, Andy Cuomo, Arne Duncan, or any of the other demagogues who infect our media.

When any one of them or their ilk wishes to actually be accountable rather than toss the word around, it will be a miracle akin to the one pictured above. 

Why the Budget Agreement Doesn't Suck

Hi folks, it's me, your old pal "Punchy" Mike Mulgrew! Don't try and take my Common Core from me! I'll punch out your stinking face and push it in the dirt! But seriously, folks, let's talk turkey. First of all, don't believe anything you read on those blogs. I'll be nice, which is hard for me because I'm an ex-carpenter, a regular blue collar guy who can't help but walk around spouting obscenities for no reason. So I'll just say they're purveyors of myth, rather than call them a bunch of despicable liars.

Anyhoo, the new agreement does not suck. Cuomo wanted probation to take five years, and now it only takes four. And all due process rights remain in place, as long as you don't get rated ineffective twice in a row and need more than 90 days to prove your case, as long as you don't get rated ineffective three years in a row and need more than 30 days to prove your case, and as long as you aren't an ATR who needs more than one day. Sure tenure used to take three years, but you gotta admit four years sucks a full year less than five years. Score another victory for us!

Governor Cuomo demanded more charter schools, and whoopee! He didn't get them as part of the budget agreement! How much does that not suck? Instead, he'll negotiate it later! It would suck if they had done it now. Now, we will talk about it later and no one can say just how much it does or does not suck until then. So, in review, doesn't suck now. Another victory! Plus we've always supported charters, and we've even opened and co-located one, and the part of it that didn't suck is still open. Another feather in our cap.

As for placing schools into receivership, the Governor won't do that. Instead, local chancellors will choose receivers. How bad could it be if the city took over closing schools, or had someone take them over? That's much better than Cuomo doing it, and it sucks way less. Of course it's never happened and we have no idea what it will be like when it does, but it is our considered opinion that it will suck less. After all, what's a few thousand ATRs between friends, and who even knows if that will happen? Clearly the amount of suck cannot be quantified here, so, no suck, no foul.

As for merit pay, Cuomo wanted 20K in merit pay. But that won't happen. In NYC, we have master and model teachers, and the rat squad which goes out and determines whether the burden of proof to fire you is on the DOE or you, but that's not merit pay, just like our last failed schoolwide program wasn't merit pay either. And since merit pay sucks, that isn't merit pay, and Cuomo didn't give us merit pay, this also doesn't suck.

As for funding, Cuomo wanted to give 1.1 billion in increases if we sucked up his sucky programs, which would suck. We went out and demanded that Cuomo pay us the 5.6 billion he owed us from the CFE lawsuit, and even paid valuable lip service to the notion of taking him to court over it. But we got 1.6 billion in aid, which sucks a lot less than 1.1 billion and a bunch of sucky programs. Sure the bloggers will ask why we didn't go for the 5.6 billion, but screw them because they're a bunch of lying bastards and we will never, ever allow them to influence us in our mission to accomplish things that don't suck as much as they could otherwise.

As for evaluation, we have of late been suggesting that the 1-100 measure, the one we had Leo Casey defend passionately on Edwize, sucks, and that we're looking for something new. Of course we don't want 50% of your rating to be based on test scores, because that would suck. Instead we will have multiple measures, which we already have, which suck way less than the 50% Governor Cuomo wants. What will they be? Who knows? And sure you might get observed by strangers from the state, but who can judge your skills better than someone who doesn't know you from a hole in the wall? That doesn't suck, does it?

Like Governor Cuomo, we loved the current law when it came out, but when people started to suggest that it sucked, we listened, and dumped NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi, contending that he sucked for passing the law in the first place. And believe you me, if there are any further problems, we will step up and declare Karen Magee sucks and dump her too. We are not afraid to dispense blame for things that suck. Just bear in mind that nothing is ever our fault, and that every change is a victory in that it could have sucked even more without our valuable input.

So thank you for everything you've done. In retrospect, it sucked that we scheduled the rally for March 28th coinciding with the budget agreement. Perhaps it would have been smarter to do it a week earlier when we might have gotten massive press coverage and actually influenced someone. Believe me, I will blame someone for that, maybe the bloggers, maybe Karen Magee, but someone will pay. And maybe we should have actually endorsed someone against Cuomo when he was running for governor, rather than sitting on our hands and letting Zephyr Teachout lose twice. However, we have already decided to blame NYSUT for not making that decision, so again, it's not our fault and it doesn't suck. And those bastard bloggers won't mention this, but under my leadership we haven't had a catastrophic natural disaster in over two years.

So, in conclusion, things suck much less than they could suck, we've reduced suckiness to a bare minimum, anything that does suck is not our fault, a thousand points of light, and God bless the United Federation of Teachers.

Dueling Special Interests--Public Schoolchildren v. Andrew M. Cuomo

One of the most encouraging things, for me, at the recent Bayside forum to discuss Governor Cuomo, was that some of his minions were out distributing pamphlets defending his crappy programs. This means they are worried about us.

They're clearly pulling from the bottom of the barrel, which I suppose is the only way to go when defending the indefensible. Andrew Cuomo takes millions of dollars from hedgefunders and their ilk, battles to make sure they don't pay taxes to support our state, and finds the audacity to label public school parents and teachers special interests.

What's really sad is that, if people don't examine his claims, or if they read the op-eds, they may think he's right. They may believe that Andrew Cuomo, who enables the crushing Gap Elimination Adjustment that deprives most kids of substantial state aid, who concurrently makes it almost impossible for localities to raise taxes to compensate for it, is the student lobbyist he portrays himself.

First of all, Governor Cuomo boasts of "historic funding" for all schools. he offers 1.1 billion in aid if we get behind his voodoo. But as a result of the CFE lawsuit, he now owes us 5.6 billion. He's throwing us scraps and demanding not only compliance, but also gratitude. 

Governor Cuomo speaks of "better pay for our best teachers." Merit pay has been around the United States since 1920, and in England since 1865. It has never worked anywhere. That doesn't dissuade the governor, on marching orders from his hedge fund/ charter school pals.

He speaks of "fair teacher evaluations," but they're based 50% on test scores. Studies show teachers affect test scores by a factor of 1 to 14%. But no studies for Andy Cuomo. He's busy marching with Eva Moskowitz, who pays herself half a million dollars a year of NYC tax dollars. She is not a "special interest," because her BFFs have given Andrew Cuomo 1.6 million dollars. Anyone who hasn't donated is a special interest, and thus should be disregarded. VAM is junk science, yet another program Bill Gates pulled out of his ample ass and imposed on the entire country.

Cuomo boasts of job protection for our best teachers. Actually, what he means is he will deny due process to teachers who don't score "effective" five years in a row via Gates-imposed junk science. As far as I know, all he's doing is placing obstacles to tenure in front of already overwhelmed new teachers.

His next bullet point speaks of "fair due process," which is, in fact, the same thing as tenure. Cuomo speaks of teachers involved in "crime involving sexual or physical abuse." Governor Cuomo is perhaps unaware that criminals are subject to prosecution, and often wind up in prison. I'm not at all certain whether having tenure helps you out in a place like that, but apparently Govenor Cuomo thinks it does. I'm pretty sure you lose your job when you're sent to prison, but Governor Andy can't be bothered dealing with such trivialities.

Finally, the governor claims he will give support for our struggling schools. The way he proposes to do that is by placing them under receivership. State takeovers of schools have not worked here in Roosevelt NY or in Newark NJ, but since history means nothing to Andrew Cuomo, he's not bothering with it. Schools are the beating hearts of neighborhoods, but Governor Andy would happily rip them out and hand them to self-serving demagogues like Eva Moskowitz.

When Sandy hit my community we gathered at our high school. Though our homes were in shambles, this was our place. We didn't have to ask Eva's permission to get together there. We, the community, ran the school and ought to continue to do so. It ought not to be for sale to those who contributed most to Andrew Cuomo's most recent campaign. 

Does Eva take kids like those I serve, who arrived from Egypt, El Salvador, China, Korea, and Colombia yesterday? Does she take the alternate assessment students my school serves, the ones who will never get a Regents diploma, the ones we teach to deal with jobs they may get when they leave us, the ones whose stats count against us? Hard to know. Although charters will boast they take this or that percentage of ELLs or special ed. students, a source reports they fail to let us know what level these kids are, and routinely ignore FOI requests to fill us in.

Cuomo's right about one thing. We, the public school teachers and parents are indeed a special interest. Our special interest is the children of New York. But Governor Cuomo is also a special interest. His special interest, and clearly his only interest, is the advancement of Andrew M. Cuomo.

Which side does NY want to take? Time will tell.

DA Report

Mulgrew preached gloom and doom to the faithful on Wednesday night. Cuomo, having taken millions from reformy types, appears to wish to eviscerate union. While this is really nothing new, Mulgrew has decided it's time to take action. To wit, he asks us to:

a. Sign up for a UFT action alert campaign, entailing joining Twitter and using a few pre-approved hashtags,
b. Like UFT on Facebook, and
c. Follow UFT on Twitter.

This, in the view of the President of the United Federation of Teachers, will somehow help to halt Andrew Cuomo's attempt to circumvent tenure and collective bargaining by placing troubled schools into receivership. This will help stop him from eliminating the charter cap. This will further, hopefully, prevent merit pay, pension deterioration, and five year renewable so-called tenure. None of that old-fashioned mobilization nonsense for us, particularly since over 80% of us can't even be bothered voting for leadership.

Mulgrew pointed to the odd NY State legislative laws, and said that if the budget is rejected Cuomo would have enormous power to enact changes via executive order. He pointed to Cuomo's planned tax refunds, which will lock in a whole lot of suburban legislators. Everyone loves getting money in the mail, and Governor Cuomo has no issue buying off whoever needs buying off.

Mulgrew says we will not fight over evaluation, because then Cuomo will contend we didn't want it. This is an odd position, in my view, because there's now a movement, supported by our insane governor and private-schooled Merryl Tisch, to make state measures 40%, and to rate any teacher ineffective who doesn't meet the junk science standard. A large tenet of the Revive NYSUT campaign to overthrow leadership was that Iannuzzi had initiated the APPR law. They always seemed to forget that he did so with the express cooperation of Mike Mulgrew. The problem, of course, is that teachers really don't want a junk science evaluation system. Evidently, what teachers want is not a factor we consider during a substantive battle.

Another big idea from UFT leadership is to improve the perception of struggling schools. Such schools have large populations of ESL and special needs students. Mulgrew says if we do that, something that's never been done, we will immensely enhance our credibility. I did not hear arguments about addressing, for example, poverty. Nonetheless, given that we heard very similar arguments about UFT charter schools, and given they have not proven to be the magic promised, I'm not sure precisely what fuels the President's rampant optimism.

Mulgrew says Cuomo does not wish to fight over school funding and exploding class sizes, and that this will therefore be a more promising area in which to fight. This is curious to me, since we've done absolutely nothing to improve class sizes in my entire 30-year teaching career. Every chapter leader knows the only instrument that really regulates class size is the UFT Contract. Mulgrew himself just negotiated his first contract, and while we were successful in getting us the raise most city employees got ten years late with no interest, we did absolutely nothing to improve class sizes. I'm not sure how credible we are making class size demands.

Mulgrew referred to a pretty well-bandied about fact--Cuomo is angry about his pathetic margin of victory, and vindictive that we and NYSUT failed to support him. He clearly failed to appreciate our bizarre tactic of failing to oppose him. The largest threat to Andrew Cuomo would have been a serious opponent on the left, to with, Zephyr Teachout on the Working Families Party. Unions, including UFT, were adament that WFP support Cuomo, threatening to withhold support of the party altogether if it didn't.

And, of course, when Teachout redirected her energies to opposing Cuomo in the Democratic primary, AFT President Randi Weingarten made robocalls for Cuomo's running mate, Kathy Hochul, after the NY Times endorsed Teachout's running mate, Tim Wu. Oh, the ingratitude of Andrew Cuomo. He even vetoed his own initiative for a temporary safety net for teachers against the results of the Common Core tests that fail 70% of our students.

So was it a bad idea for us to usher in mayoral control that closed almost every comprehensive high school in the city? Should we not have supported the failed quasi-merit pay program, charter schools, Common Core, colocations, and the ATR? Will a bunch of UFT-endorsed tweets stop Cuomo from bribing the taxpayers and appeasing his multi-million dollar contributors?

If we hadn't done all that, would it now be as easy for Cuomo to push his odious corporate agenda on a misinformed public? Tough to say for sure, but I've seen no evidence our go-along-with-whatever policy has helped anyone but the reformies who bought and paid for Andrew Cuomo.

You Don't Need the Amazing Kreskin to Know Which Way the Wind Blows

A lot of people are upset about paying union dues. After all, it's a thousand bucks a year or so, your roof needs fixing, and that could make for a hell of a night out. And there are legitimate complaints. For one thing, I'm paying NYSUT and AFT to represent me, but in fact they do not. I represent the largest school in Queens and we get no voice at all. In fact, the only way I could get us a voice would be to sign an odious loyalty oath promising to support whatever I'm told, and if I did that we still wouldn't have a voice.

NYSUT put up a poll asking what we'd like from them. I told them I'd like democracy. My union brothers and sisters from PJSTA essentially said the same thing, but in far greater detail. After all, their locals can't pick who they'd like to represent them because of the UFT's massively huge rubber stamp. UFT-installed President Magee and her newly double-pensioned pals know if they support local representation they'll get booted out just like their predecessors. If it's a choice between democracy and going back to that classroom, we can guess pretty accurately where they're headed.

And yet there is a necessity for union. Though ours is inept, falling for one reformy thing after another, though they've watered down our Contract time after time to save their ridiculous seat at the table, it still protects people, and we still can have a voice where we work. Just about any day I'd rather be union than depend on the tender mercies of Michael Bloomberg, Joel Klein, and their merry band of fanatical ideologues.

So when I see things like this on Facebook, I know what they really are. How could the union use my money for politics? In fact, it's the union's job to try to influence politics. Anyone who thinks otherwise is nuts. Our union, of course, does a terrible job, picking Thompson four years too late, after he demonstrated his utter lack of conviction by telling the Daily News editorial board that the city couldn't afford to give teachers they raise everyone else got. And in the end, by delaying the raise ten years, the crack negotiators of UFT managedto make sure we didn't get it. They sold out our brother and sister teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve, managing to give back without even getting an equitable contract. As if that weren't enough, they managed to dump the worst pattern in my living memory on every city union. Anyone remember how we felt about DC37 when they dumped the zeroes on us? I do.

What the article is pushing, and it's not at all subtle about it, is right to work, and in California no less. This is a system in which you pay union dues only if you feel like it. While those who push it will tell you it's about your individual freedom, it's really about decimating union so they can do whatever to you and your brother and sister unionists, along with the non-unionists who want representation without paying for it. They don't like all those stinking rules, and would just as soon fire you over a whim as look at you. But some people will be fooled.

Now me, I still pay into COPE, even though I have grave reservations over what the UFT machine does with my money. And I'd probably continue to pay dues even if they became optional for as long as the union could hold out. But that would likely not be very long. UFT members are not like CTU members, and won't hit the streets en masse to support a union President who wants to punch us in the face and push us in the dirt if we touch his Common Core. Few are inspired by people more interested in free trips or patronage gis than doing their jobs, and there are all too many such people.

Since the UFT has enabled mayoral control, since it's enabled junk science and two-tier due process, since it sat silently while almost every comprehensive high school was closed, since it did nothing when Cuomo and Eva Moskowitz betrayed mayoral control under de Blasio it hasn't got a whole lot of street cred with the reformies. That's why they're coming full speed ahead after tenure. 

And don't fool yourself. They'll push right to work in NY in a New York minute. It would be nice for UFT and NYSUT if the most active members in the city and state would stand with them and support them. But it's a two-way street and our leader is not Karen Lewis, but rather a guy who will punch us in the face if we fail to support his favored corporate reforms.

This notwithstanding, it would be smart politics if they simply stopped building brick walls around activists moved by conscience rather than perks. People looking for free trips will not inspire the membership, dispirited and discouraged from decades of nonsense from these very cynical hangers-on.

Are our leaders so juvenile they cannot bear to entertain opinions that vary from their own? Do they really need to conceal themselves inside some massive echo chamber in which their notions are never challenged or even openly discussed? I find when you listen to others, you sometimes learn they're right, adjust your opinion accordingly, and do better.

Look where the echo chamber has gotten us. You don't need to consult the tarot cards to see where it's headed.

Common Sense vs. Tenure Reforminess

In Spanish, they say, “Common sense is the least common of all the senses.” Nowhere is that argument clearer than in the arguments against teacher tenure, most recently played out on the cover of Time, the paragon of publishing that matched Michelle Rhee with her broom and declared Hitler "Man of the Year."

There are all these arguments about bad vs. good apples, but they ultimately seem absurd to me. Basically, the argument is tenure protects bad teachers, and it therefore should not exist. Self-appointed education expert Campbell Brown repeatedly dredges up a few cases and pastes them all over Twitter and any paper that will print her.

What shall we do, then? Shall we eliminate tenure so as to make it easier to fire the so-called bad apples? Or should we simply take tenure away from them and leave it with the better apples? And if we do that, who gets to decide who deserves it and who doesn't?

In fact, UFT leadership moved, again, to weaken tenure in the last contract. There is an unfounded but popular prejudice against ATR teachers, and leadership reinforced it by adding a second-tier due process for them and making them easier to fire. Endorsing insane notions like this one gives reformy demagogues like Campbell Brown fodder to plod ahead with their absurd arguments. After all, if punchy Mike Mulgrew thinks ATR teachers deserve fewer rights than others, there must be something wrong with them. And therefore the reformy hordes can ask for fewer rights for other questionable apples.

But that’s not, in fact, the argument they’re using this year. The argument is that no teacher should have tenure. Instead, we should trust in the good graces of those people who failed to identify and/ or fire the alleged bad apples before giving them tenure. After all, since accountability applies only to unionized teachers, no administrator can possibly have made the remotest mistake, ever.

So with that assumption in mind, they plod ahead. It makes no difference if kids live in poverty, don’t speak English, or have severe learning disabilities. The only reason they fail standardized tests is that their teachers suck. Therefore, we must remove all job protections for teachers and fire at will.

Aside from the preposterous assumptions implicit in this argument, there’s something quite reminiscent of bigotry here, that the bad ones spoil it for the good ones, and therefore none of them should have rights. In fact, were you to take this argument and apply it to the country at large, it would suggest once the police picked you up for something, you were guilty. Certainly some people rob banks, commit atrocities, and do various other things that fail to merit the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, and you could reason that stripping everyone of basic due process would make it harder for the bad apples to get away with such things.

Then there’s the argument that other Americans don’t have tenure and can be fired for a bad haircut. Diane Ravitch tells the story of two farmers. One says, “My neighbor has a cow and I don’t. I want his cow to die.” That’s the sort of thinking that goes behind attacks on tenure, and also attacks on health benefits. Somehow, we’ve managed to become one of the only non-third world countries that doesn’t offer health care as a basic right. We’ve also managed to pretty well decimate union nationally, and corporate frauds like Fox News can sell Americans on the concept that this is somehow a good thing.

This blog may or may not be meaningful to you, but without tenure you would not be reading it or others like it. And it’s important for teachers to speak out. Take a historical look at societies that have attacked teachers and you may not find we’re in such good company.

Make no mistake, the reformy zillionaires don’t give a damn about you, your kids, or your students. If they did, they’d be protesting low tax rates that starve school districts, rather than giving cash to demagogues like Cuomo or Astorino. They’d be using their money to fight poverty rather than the teaching profession.

The proposition that working teachers need fewer protections or benefits is an attack on what remains of the American middle class. The sooner we wake up, realize that, and put a stop to it the better off we’ll be.

Really Bad Things and the American Way

Campbell Brown makes me sick. Her method, picking out a few stories and tarring all of us with them, is simply reprehensible. Doubtless she'll be out today with some story saying the allegations against the Brooklyn Tech teacher mean none of us should ever get tenure again. That's a preposterous argument.

In fact, the accused teacher is in police custody, enjoying the hospitality of the state while he awaits trial. There's no one bickering over whether or not this man ought to be placed in a classroom tomorrow. I'd argue that anyone who sleeps with students has fundamentally broken the trust we place in them as teachers. There's simply no defense for such actions. People who do things like that belong in prison.

Nonetheless, in the United States of America, people charged with crimes are entitled to trials. They're entitled to defend themselves against those who charge them, and face their accusers. That's a necessary step, because sometimes their accusers are incorrect. If that's the case, they ought to be able to prove it.

It's the American way.

It ought to also be the American way that we refrain from firing people without cause. Teachers have been fired for their political beliefs, their sexual orientation, and even the offense of getting pregnant. Were it not for tenure, such things would be happening right now. I've no doubt Campbell Brown and whoever finances her would jump for joy. The history of countries that have targeted teachers is not a particularly proud one.

It's certainly true a lot of Americans are "at will" employees, and can be fired for a bad haircut. People will ask why teachers need special privileges. I'd argue that we shouldn't have special privileges, but rather everyone should have some degree of due process. I'd also argue that it behooves us, as role models, to speak the truth and act in our students' best interests. To do that, we have to challenge a lot of the mythology that passes for educational philosophy.

We're living in interesting times, where hedge funders exploit the system, corporations often pay no taxes, and teachers are public enemy number one. Only in a system like this could a parasite like Campbell Brown thrive. If we really do bad things, there ought to be consequences. But they ought not to be meted out by our accusers, as Brown seeks. If we break the law, we ought to face the consequences there too. But even teachers are entitled to a trial.

Regardless, painting all teachers by the actions of one, or a few, is not only absurd, but also unforgivable and downright bigoted.

Beseiged at Every Angle

It's pretty fun to watch Mona Davids and Campbell Brown bicker over who is best to curtail the right of working teachers to due process. Who wins the prize for hating working teachers more? I read that Mona was passing out fake money with Campbell Brown's face on it. After all, how dare Campbell Brown be more famous, have more money, and get more attention than Mona? Who the hell does she think she is?

It's amusing to see someone like Mona fighting money and influence. After all, causes she espouses would not even exist without it. There is no teacher crisis. There is no need for insane and incomprehensible rating systems to fire teachers. And the fact is, even if the handful of examples Campbell Brown walks around reciting like a studious fourth-grader were true the remedy would not be curtailing the rights and academic freedom of all.

In fact, it's a pretty well-established practice in bigotry to use examples of the few to tar the many. Let's not even focus on an ethnic or religious group and rather look at actual criminals. It's a fact that they exist. Were we to extrapolate the Davids-Brown philosophy, we'd eliminate the court system altogether because the guilty are sometimes acquitted. Let's stop coddling the accused with trials and lawyers. If some cop says you're guilty, that's good enough for us. That's pretty much what the teacher-bashers advocate when they say you should be left at the tender mercies of a tool like Dennis Walcott. And the more I see of Carmen Farina the more I wonder whether she's much of a step up.

If you really hate teachers, isn't it enough that you make them sit through 80 minutes of faculty meetings every Monday? If there's a hell, Mona and Campbell will sit through them for all eternity. But that's little practical consolation as they drag us through the press in their quest to make us chattel.

At a recent chapter leader meeting Mulgrew asked whether the PD was like a faculty meeting, and the CLs agreed it was. He stated it ought not to be that way, and spoke of committees, and asserting what's written in the contract. But here's the thing--he can spin the 80 minutes of teacher torture as a victory. When it crashes and burns and they find some other way to waste the extra time they inserted into the day, he'll spin that as a victory too. After all, it was a victory when every aspect of Danielson was included in evaluation, and another victory when it was cut down.

It's so tiring to wonder whether or not the people we pay to represent us will be standing with us or those who'd destroy us. I know that Mulgrew wants to punch me in the face because I oppose Common Core. For now, he's defending our due process. But he seriously weakened it when he helped write the APPR law that can place the burden of proof on us rather than administration.

I sometimes think Cuomo is a better governor than Astorino would be because he has to at least pretend to be a Democrat sometimes. On that basis, I'll have to grant that Mulgrew is a better union president than Campbell Brown would be.

This notwithstanding, I see room for improvement.

All's Fair in Love and Teacher-Bashing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We need to pay good teachers much more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Campbell's Wonderland

Examine the two compositions carefully.  If you think the resemblance is purely coincidental, read on.  

Campbell Brown is queen of a second lawsuit aimed at cutting down teacher tenure in NY.  With all the experience that comes from teaching English for a single year in Czechoslovakia, she seeks to destroy for all teachers the due-process protections that allow academic freedom over the span of a career.  These same protections also give teachers the ability to better assure students receive their legally mandated services, safe learning environments and a sound education.

If Campbell wins, do you wonder what her post-tenure world might look like?  Look to the pages of Lewis Carroll and his relentless logic.  The imperial finger will point at all of us.  

Too much homework!  Off with their heads!

Too little homework!  Off with their heads!

Too many fail!  Off with their heads!

Too many pass!  Off with their heads!

Putting a hand on a student's shoulder?  Off with their heads!

Cold and uncaring!  Off with their heads!

Students said you said, "...."!  Off with their heads!

Red pen?  Off with their heads!

Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Black pens!  Off with their heads!

You won't coach the cheerleaders?  Off with their heads!

You want to coach the cheerleaders?  Off with their heads!

Health and safety concerns?  Off with their heads!

A student entitled to services?  Off with their heads? 

Your Common-Core test grades rot!  Off with their heads!

Too expensive to employ!  Off with their overly experienced heads!

How can we prevent this nightmare world of reform?  My simple solution.  Don't let Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum set the terms of the debate!  Recognize that students' basic rights to a sound education are being denied, but it is not by their teachers.

Before You Buy Campbell's New Line of Soups, Don't Forget to Check the Label!

Imagine a line of soups sponsored by Campbell Brown, set to destroy the due-process rights of teachers,

cut down the hard-won rights of workers

and promote the privatization of education, promising great profits to those very same people who would secretly fund her attacks.  

Kudos to Campbell Brown for becoming the new face of this campaign to strip teachers of their dignity.  Ever wonder why it's not Michelle Rhee?  You can't mask the hypocrisy with tape!

Campbell Brown's Law

I try to help kids every day, but they're all different. I'd like them all to pass, but they don't. It's funny because I feel very bad for many of those who don't. Yet NY State assumes that I want to pass them all for no reason and thus does not allow me to grade their standardized tests.

On the other hand, I was once at a meeting where we brainstormed ways to pass everyone. It was ridiculous. It's somewhat understandable, because when you instigate a culture in which you close schools based on test scores, in which you send teachers out as wandering subs, Campbell's Law says corruption will ensue.

But Campbell Brown's Law is different. Campbell Brown's Law says whatever goes wrong in school is the fault of the tenured teachers. If you fail, it's because the teacher had tenure and therefore failed you. Absolutely everyone is a great parent, so that has nothing to do with how children behave. Campbell Brown's Law says parents have no influence whatsoever on their children. If parents have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, that will have no effect. If they provide no supervision because they aren't around, that won't affect kids either.

Campbell Brown's Law says kids themselves are not responsible either. If they don't study, that isn't their fault. The teacher should have made them study. If they fail tests because they didn't study, it's a crime and the teacher should be fired. Under Campbell Brown's Law the only obstacle to studying is if the teacher has tenure. This is unacceptable and it is therefore the reason that the parents work 200 hours a week. It's also the reason the kids didn't study. The kids figured they didn't have to study because their teachers had tenure.

Campbell Brown's Law is demonstrated in charter schools, where teachers don't have tenure. All kids excel in charter schools, except for those who don't. That explains why, in some charter schools, that all the students who graduate are accepted to four-year colleges. It's neither here nor there if two-thirds of the students who began ended up getting insufficient standardized test scores and getting dumped back into public schools. That's not the fault of the charter teachers, because they don't have tenure and are therefore blameless. Campbell Brown's Law says so.

In fact, as long as the teachers don't have tenure, it's OK for kids to fail in charter schools. And once again, all kids pass in charter schools, except for those who don't. That's why charter teachers, like students and parents, have no responsibility whatsoever. Also, under Campbell Brown's law, the charter owners aren't responsible either, and may continue to collect their half-million dollar salaries. That's not part of the problem because it's important for charter school owners to hobnob with the well-to-do. You can't just waltz into an Eva Moskowitz gala fund raiser in some tux you rented from the Men's Wearhouse.

And you'd better watch out if you teach ESL, like me. If your kids don't speak English and arrived in the United States five minutes ago, that's your fault too. Of course if you're a charter, you almost certainly don't accept kids like that so you're blameless. It's not Eva Moskowitz' fault she doesn't take those kids because she, after all, is not a tenured teacher and therefore earns every cent of her 500K salary. She can expand as much as she likes because Governor Cuomo says so, and not only does he not have tenure, but he also fires anti-corruption committees at will just because he can. 

In short, if you're a tenured teacher, you are an impediment to Excellence. The only way you can help children is by getting rid of your tenure, standing up straight and walking to Arne Duncan in Washington DC and saying, "Please sir, I want to be fired for any reason. Or for no reason. I want to take personal responsibility for all the ills of society. Neither you, society, poverty, parents, nor children themselves are responsible. I'm ready to be dismissed at the whim of Bill Gates or the Walmart family and I agree with you that Katrina was the bestest thing to happen to the New Orleans education system."

Me, I'm still a tenured teacher, and teaching teenagers can be trying sometimes.  Still, none of them seem to entertain theories remotely outlandish as those of Arne Duncan or Campbell Brown.

Random Families File Lawsuit Demanding Bazillion Dollar Raise for Teachers

Exclusive--Seven families have filed a lawsuit in Albany claiming that their children received an excellent education due to teacher tenure. The parents are claiming that if the teachers had not had job protections they may not have taught their children. They further claim if their children's teachers did not have the freedom to make decisions regarding the education of their children the quality of education may not have been the same.

"There's no reason my kid should not receive an excellent education," said one of the parents. "The law should be changed to give teachers a larger voice in policy. Why should we tie their hands with Common Core nonsense when we could let teachers work with our kids depending on their individual needs?"

"Who the hell is Campbell Brown and what the hell do we need her for?" asked another. "She's clearly a publicity hound who doesn't know anything about our kids. How the hell can she consider using a parent who's on the payroll of Students First?  We trust our teachers."

When asked about news stories regarding the Campbell Brown lawsuit, another parent picked up the paper and read the following:

The complaint does not name the allegedly incompetent educators, but argues that tenure laws lead to bad teachers, a claim supported by some research.

"First of all, these claims are just hearsay. There's no evidence whatsoever to suggest these stories are true, and even if they are, there's none to suggest that only teachers are responsible. Even worse, the reporters just write 'a claim supported by some research.' They don't say what research. Is the 'research' the unsubstantiated stories told by the kids in the lawsuit? Who wrote the research? Who funded it? Is the research credible? How do we know the reporters didn't just make it up, or take the word of Campbell Brown? Where does Brown get her funding?"

Since the reporters have seen fit to neither address nor answer any of these questions, it's a mystery. But since the word of seven carefully-chosen families is apparently sufficient to change laws, the lawsuit demands that teacher tenure not only remain on the books, but also that all teachers get a bazillion dollar raise.

When your correspondent pointed out that bazillion was not a real number, a parent replied, "Campbell Brown is not a real public school parent. We don't know who's in her group and we don't know where she gets her money. There are a bazillion reasons we don't need her or any of her uber-wealthy pals claiming to care for our kids. We need them messing with our schools even less."

Does Killing Tenure Equal a "Sound Education?"

No surprise!  Campbell Brown has recruited and sponsored six NY students to legally challenge tenure and seniority laws on the basis that they violate the Constitutional right of children to a "sound education" by protecting ineffective teachers.   Doubtless, Brown and her team hope to secure a decision similar to that in the Vergara Case in California, soon to fall under appellate jurisdiction.

One of the NY plaintiffs is Jada Williams of Rochester, the author of a seventh-grade essay complaining about ineffective teachers.  It is nice to know that the testimony of a seventh-grader holds so much weight.  One wonders how much of the world this seventh-grader has seen.  One wonders how much she understands about cuts in school budgets, over-sized classes, the social and emotional issues facing some of her peers, any learning disabilities, language deficiencies, etc.    

In the words of Jada's Mom, "When a child is educationally neglected, that's a criminal act."  I agree, only the entire framework of the debate needs to be redefined.   

I must state the obvious, even if it spoils the day for union-busting millionaires who hope to cheapen labor and simultaneously profit through the privatization of  public education:  


When classrooms are OVERCROWDED, children are being denied their Constitutional right to a basic "sound education."

When some children are banished to TRAILERS to learn and others are squeezed to the limit by CHARTER-SCHOOL CO-LOCATION, children are being denied their Constitutional right to a basic "sound education."

When classrooms are UNDERFUNDED, children are being denied their Constitutional right to a basic "sound education."

When children are either excluded from or kicked out of publicly-funded CHARTER SCHOOLS, children are being denied their Constitutional right to a basic "sound education."

When KIPP students are sentenced to padded cells, children are being denied their Constitutional right to a basic "sound education." 

When experienced teachers trying to educate children living in POVERTY are blamed for their low test scores and summarily fired, children are being denied their Constitutional right to a basic "sound education."

When CHARTER SCHOOLS increase SEGREGATION, children are being denied their Constitutional right to a basic "sound education."

Sell Your Tenure And You Sell Your Soul

As public education is increasingly pushed into the arms of private business, market-minded individuals seek to end tenure.  They argue tenure protects the incompetent and strips students of their civil rights.  The war against tenure is presently being waged in Los Angeles in the Vergara Case.  

Some argue if tenure doesn't work for private business, it can't work for public schools.  Small businesses cannot afford to absorb losses generated by inferior employees.  In general, the entire argument might go:  "What's good for General Motors is good for the country."  Of course, in defense of Charles E. Wilson, I would like to point out that he actually said something far more sensible and quite distinct from this.

People who frame the debate in these terms fail to understand that public education and private business are two very different birds, despite the best efforts of some to meld them into one.  Public education is a public trust.  No individual (or party of individuals) holds a monopoly upon the truth, or upon a single superior curriculum, not even Pearson with its Common-Core aligned standardized state tests, despite any product claims they may make to the contrary.  

Good teaching demands academic freedom. Teachers need to be able to broach a variety of topics in the classroom.  Teachers should encourage debate.  Students need to hear both sides of issues and learn how to make their own informed decisions.  If there is no student on the other side of a debate, the teacher must be that person who helps students understand how someone might think differently.

Teachers need to be able to stuff their schools' suggestion box, so to speak, without fear for their job security.  I can think of one example.  I remember a certain professor with a Princeton Ph.D. who questioned mandatory attendance of the college body at chapel services in the early 1960s.  Unforeseen divisiveness ensued. Without tenure, he was dismissed.  He moved onto a more open-minded academic institution.  I would hazard to say all turned out for the best.  And, of course, that original employer no longer demands attendance at chapel services.

Tenure protects teachers who hold their students to high standards.  During the Bloomberg years, I witnessed a significant lowering of standards in order to meet his demands for increased graduation rates.  If teachers did not have tenure, they might be fired for offering a more challenging course.  Given a choice of an easier teacher or a harder one, most students would choose the easier one.  Without tenure, teachers who ask for more might very well be fired because student demand is low. Adam Smith's supply and demand doesn't function well in this part of the public sector.

If teachers did not have tenure, principals might operate their school as a huge patronage system.  New principals might fire an entire staff and stock the school with their cronies, regardless of public interest.  As it stands now in N.Y.C., principals must pay for their staff out of their school budgets.  When it comes to hiring ATRs, this system, beyond a doubt, discriminates against older teachers.  

Teachers also need tenure to fortify any whistle-blower protections.  In public education, teachers are charged with the task of helping to protect and secure an environment which allows students to thrive, mentally and physically.  Teachers need tenure as an added layer of protection given the important role they play in protecting their students' interests and health.  Teachers do not need to face firing, disguised as something else, for pointing out potentially hazardous conditions.

I would argue teachers hold a job which in many ways makes them particularly susceptible to false accusations.  I would say the boldest of these assertions today is that teachers cause poverty.  Given that teachers may interact with upwards of 150 teenagers per day and are charged with the task of evaluating and grading their work, it makes them particularly susceptible to spiteful accusations.  Even as far back as 1934, Lillian Hellman exposed this concern in her play The Children's Hour. I also think of Arthur Miller's 1953 play, The Crucible, in which accusations by young girls fly across the Salem sky like imaginary witches on broomsticks.  

When teachers are accused of inappropriate behavior today, they are immediately removed from contact with children.  This is a "no brainer."  From all I've read, the next thing to happen is that Campbell Brown wants the teacher axed without due-process rights.  Tenure guarantees due process.  It doesn't guarantee perverts a job.  It does not protect the incompetent from being fired.   It only helps to protect those who are falsely accused. 

I am saddened that V.A.M. seems to be just another attempt to skirt teacher tenure. If my students do poorly on a test, I may be out the door--without much regard to the validity of the test or the quality of my teaching.  Petty administrators may stock some teacher's class with the worst test takers in the building and then sit back and smirk at the impending doom.  It could be a cheap and simple formula for dispensing with highly paid teachers.  A vindictive class of teenagers might decide to up and fail a test on purpose.  Currently in NY state, students know their high-stakes standardized test scores do not count against them.  They may put in next-to-no effort, unintentionally making a martyr of their teacher.

Despite the protections of tenure, many teachers are not retained.  Many teachers are weeded out during student teaching or during the years it takes to earn tenure. Others lose their jobs either because of incompetency or inappropriate behavior.  I have seen a number of teachers come and go in the space of my career, some for reasons I understand and others for reasons not fully grasped.  I realize it is costly and time-consuming to offer teachers their due-process rights, but it is better than summarily dismissing teachers without due cause.  It is intensely important for administrators to exercise good judgment when granting tenure.  It is important for teachers to be forced to prove themselves for a significant period of time first.  It is also important, however, to make teaching an attractive profession that will act like a magnet for the best and the brightest.  I would say right now, due largely to current educational reform, there are two negative poles in the profession.  

For those like Michelle Rhee who would seek to encourage teachers to sell their tenure for promises of possible merit pay, I say, "put down your pitchfork."  Sell your tenure and you sell your soul.  This is no private business.  This is the public's welfare at stake.  

Here's What Tenure Really Does

There's a lawsuit claiming tenure discriminates against children. They say the worst teachers teach the most needy kids in the most needy areas.

I teach the most needy kids, so I must be a terrible teacher too. For goodness sake, my kids can't even speak English. What could be worse than that? The answer is fairly simple. What's worse than that is that they tend not to do well on standardized tests. The only logical conclusion, as you'd infer from NY newspaper editorials, is that I'm a thorough incompetent. I should be fired and replaced with a TFA expert with six weeks of valuable training. You won't see that person hanging around for 30 years and demanding a pension.

And it is, of course, mere coincidence that there is a high percentage of high needs kids in these areas. Rampant poverty in these areas is just an excuse. A good teacher could surely teach them some grit and make them forget that they wake up at 3 AM to help their mother deliver newspapers. A qualified teacher would make them forget that their parents are in another country. A highly effective teacher would make them pass all the tests even if they just arrived from China six weeks ago.

The only answer, as far as our reformy friends see it, is to eliminate teacher tenure. It's important to be able to fire teachers for any reason, or indeed for no reason. And naturally, that's entirely fair. Principals and assistant principals are very wise and never, ever, exercise personal agendas that have nothing to do with learning. And private enterprise hires at will employees, so why isn't that good enough for teachers?

I'd argue it isn't good enough for private enterprise either, but that it's even more important for public school teachers. The fact is that there are rules on how we deal with children. I know someone, a probationer without tenure, who was fired for the offense of asking that special ed. regulations be enforced. And I myself would have been fired for the offense of talking to a Times reporter if I hadn't had tenure.

I once identified two students who spoke fluent English but were in my ESL classes. Neither ever wrote anything. One consistently refused and was belligerent when I demanded he do anything beyond writing his name on a test. Another was friendly, overcompensated by participating orally, but could not decode words like "home," or "mother" when I wrote them. His first language was French, and my genius ex-principal would not accept the kid was illiterate until he had him try to read in French. While pronunciation varies, the French alphabet is essentially the same as ours.

I called his house, his grandmother told me he had a problem, and asked if I could help. My research, though far from extensive, uncovered no program to help high school kids who didn't read (though my school now has precisely such a program).

When that principal received a fax from the DOE with my name on it, it was as though the world had ended. I was constantly called into the office. I was asked to check in at the end of my day, and I was made to wait while the principal did whatever Very Important Business it was he had to attend to. In fact, my students were denied books I'd requested for a full year until I discovered somewhere we were contractually entitled to supplies. I casually threatened my then-AP with a grievance, and the books were magically ordered the next day.

I know people who were sent to the rubber room for less. I was perhaps fortunate because my report kept us all busy with scores of meetings, all of which I was forced to attend. At not one of these meetings was the welfare of the kids discussed. It was did we follow the rules, have we covered our asses, and can we get into trouble for this. The consensus was they did, they had, and they could not get into trouble.

As this went on, both kids stopped attending school, and helpfully solved administration's problem.

But I have no doubt whatsoever, had it been an option, that this principal would have fired me outright for telling the truth about these kids.

Has tenure saved your job?