From NYC Educator's Mailbag

I can't vouch for their validity, but here's a list of excuse notes that were supposedly given to teachers.

Have you seen notes like these?

1. My son is under a doctor's care and should not take PE today. Please execute him.

2. Please exkuce Lisa for being absent she was sick and I had her shot.

3. Dear school: please ecsc's john being absent on Jan. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 and also 33.

4. Please excuse Gloria from Jim today. She is administrating.

5. Please excuse Roland from p.e. For a few days yesterday he fell out of a tree and misplaced his hip.

6. John has been absent because he had two teeth taken out of his face.

7. Carlos was absent yesterday because he was playing football. He was hurt in the growing part.

8. Megan could not come to school today because she has been bothered by very close veins.

9. Chris will not be in school cus he has an acre in his side.

10. Please excuse ray Friday from school. He has very loose vowels.

11. Please excuse Lesli from being absent yesterday. She had diahre dyrea direathe the shits.

12. Please excuse Tommy for being absent yesterday. He had diarrhea, and his boots leak.

13. Irving was absent yesterday because he missed his bust.

14. Please excuse Jimmy for being. It was his father's fault.

15. I kept Billie home because she had to go Christmas shopping because I don't know what size she wear.

16. Please excuse Jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday. We thought it was Sunday.

17. Sally won't be in school a week from Friday. We have to attend her funeral.

18. My daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the marines.

19. Please excuse Jason for being absent yesterday. He had a cold and could not breed well.

20. Please excuse Mary for being absent yesterday. She was in bed with gramps.

21. Gloria was absent yesterday as she was having a gangover.

22. Please excuse Brenda. She has been sick and under the doctor.

23. Maryann was absent December 11-16, because she had a fever, sorethroat, headache and upset stomach. Her sister was also sick, fever an sore throat, her brother had a low grade fever and ached all over. I wasn't the best either, sore throat and fever There must be something going around, her father even got hot last night.

Revisiting Steinbeck

One novel that gets taught a lot is The Pearl by John Steinbeck. It's a very simple story about man vs. the establishment, and sadly, man does not win.

On an essay yesterday, though, at least half a dozen kids explained to me that the protagonist, Kino, was a hero since he managed to save his family in the end.

"But the baby dies," I told one kid. The kid was shocked.

"But I read it twice, Mister."

"I'm sorry to tell you, then, that you didn't understand it either time," I replied.

Later on, a girl in another class told me the same thing. She not only read the book, but she saw the movie too, and in the end, the baby was still alive.

"Then it was a terrible movie," I told her.

Later, the girl told me that her former English teacher had read much of the book aloud to the class. When the teacher tired of doing this, she simply showed the film. It's so much easier than actually making kids read, I suppose. And then the girl explained that they never got to the end of the book.

I'm not really happy with a teacher who presents half of an American classic and then opts for the movie version. It's particularly egregious since this movie, which I've neither seen nor heard of, apparently plops a Disney ending onto the story. It's even worse considering how very, very short the story is.

This reminds me of those people who take Beethoven and tack on a disco beat. They belong in jail. And don't get me started on Demi Moore and what she did to The Scarlet Letter...

Mr. Klein Names a School

NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is naming a school after incumbent Republican State Senator Frank Padavan. Why bother with all that time-consuming and costly campaigning when you can just have your buds name buildings after you?

How Much Do Suburban Schools Pay?

You have to wonder, what with frequent UFT claims we've caught up to the suburbs.

A few years back, I wrote a post comparing Nassau salaries to NYC salaries. Nassau teachers get credit for 60 credits beyond the MA, and often for a doctorate as well. With our much-vaunted 5% raise bringing UFT maximum to 100K, I thought it would be a good time to compare salaries as of November 2007 in Nassau. I'm using the measure of 60, not 30 beyond the MA as comparison.


Most of these districts pay a few thousand extra for teachers who have doctorates, so factor that in if you're one of the few and the proud. I think I have the MA plus 60, I'm certain I'm at least close, but I'm sure I'd have it if I were paid, and I'm assuming you would too. For MA plus 30, you can deduct a few thousand from most of these.

Bear in mind that these are only the latest figures I could find, and that they may have gone up by now.

Right now:

NYC 43362-95285

As of May 19th:

NYC 45530-100049

What were teachers earning last November in Nassau? I'll tell you:

Bellmore 49632-108208
Bellmore-Merrick 50842-115864
Bethpage 49018-111529
East Rockaway 50784-110989
Farmingdale 45292-109928
Floral Park 50834-110387
Franklin Square 47312-107757
Great Neck 51801-120632
Herricks 51207-115841
Hicksville 48677-105723
Island Park 53685-123221
Lawrence 47528-117767
Levittown 51579-111745
Locust Valley 52797-119054
Lynbrook 49603-112941
Malverne 52304-112976
Manhasset 53378-119224
Massapequa 50526-115280
North Merrick 47015-116763
North Shore 50115-118861
Oceanside 54797-113785
Plainedge 50956-115916
Port Washington 51449-115760
Seaford 45874-103762
Sewanhaka 50140-107909
Wantagh 49710-113382
West Hempstead 45790-111396
Westbury 47788-110443

Doubletalk

That's what you'll find in the Daily News, where hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson is once again sharing his expertise with us, the bootless and unhorsed. At a time when working people in this country are losing their jobs, their homes, and living hand to mouth, Mr. Tilson suggests fewer options for them is the way to go.

Naturally, it's those goshdarn unions again. If only working people would stop demanding pay, demanding rights, and demanding benefits, we'd have a utopia. The specific problem today, according to Mr. Tilson, is that it's simply too hard to fire teachers.

Mr. Tilson gives the UFT Charter School as an example. He praises the UFT for having opened it, but laments the fact that a teacher grieved being fired, and was reinstated. He hopes the UFT will thus learn the folly of protecting working people. And Mr. Tilson certainly puts his money where his mouth is, investing heavily in companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald's, which have rich histories of exploitation. Mr. Tilson muses that government should follow in the footsteps of his highly profitable investments:

...I do hope that everyone involved takes the opportunity to learn a critical lesson about what makes charters - and, indeed, all public schools - successful: that principals need the authority to manage their schools, especially the ability to hire and fire all staff. At times, this can lead to conflict with teachers' "rights" tokeep their jobs, but in such cases, it's the manager's job - and should be his or her right, within certain boundaries - to make a decision and stand by it.

A key difference between Mr. Tilson's outlook and mine, I suppose, is his utter disregard for facts in evidence. Perhaps Mr. Tilson is simply unaware that all public schools in nearby Nassau County are unionized, and that all teachers here are also subject to state tenure laws. Perhaps Mr. Tilson is unaware that, unlike the city, existing tenure laws are actually enforced here. More likely, he consciously chooses to ignore these facts, as does the Daily News.

Mr. Tilson goes on to cite Green Dot as an example of a school with a more reasonable contract. Here, he's got some support from the UFT aristocracy. But neither Mr. Tilson nor libelous Leo Casey has been able to provide a single example of the Green Dot contract protecting a teacher. In fact, since Green Dot proudly rejects both tenure and seniority rights, I've yet to hear a single example of their "just cause" clause ever having been exercised. Doubtless Mr. Tilson delights in a contracts where working people can be discharged "just cause" it suits the administration's whims.

Actually, what makes good schools successful is not a principal's option to fire whomever he pleases. In fact, it is these very principals who've been routinely assigning tenure to anyone with a pulse. And while Chancellor Klein can complain from now till doomsday about tenure regulations, existing rules work much better in schools where they're actually enforced. Would Mr. Klein do better with better principals? Perhaps. But his track record makes it doubtful he has the remotest notion what a good principal is.

Mr. Tilson is certainly free to admire the Wal-Mart/ McDonald's model. But he's sorely mistaken about what constitutes a good school. Good teachers, reasonable class sizes, and decent facilities, not "reforms," make up the recipe. It's tough for principals, however good they may be, to rise above a lack of ingredients.

Endless work for little reward may have pleased feudal lords, but working people today need more, not fewer options. And it behooves us not to degrade the job of teaching, but to improve the jobs of working people everywhere.

Our children deserve a future with options well beyond those of simply enriching the likes of Mr. Tilson.

Thanks to Schoolgal

Counting Votes is Too Expensive

So sez the GOP.

Buckle Up

It's a funny country we live in. The President is firmly anti-abortion, dedicated to protecting fetuses worldwide. Once the beloved children are born, to help them get on their feet, he denies them health insurance. It's too expensive. After all, we're already borrowing 3 billion a week to fight the Iraq war, which is much more important than keeping our children healthy, apparently.

Conspicuously absent from the NY Times today is the story about British teachers and other civil servants walking out today, in a one-day job action. Working people taking a stand for themselves appears to be of no consequence whatsoever to the United States of America. But the British feel differently:

"We're tired of inflation going up and our salaries not meeting that rise," said Leanne Hahn, a primary school teacher from north London, one of the several thousand who marched through the capital's streets waving placards saying "No to paycuts" and "No extra unpaid hours."

"We're struggling to get mortgages and to get onto the housing ladder. We just can't afford to live," she said.

However, Councillor Ivan Ould, chairman of the National Employers' Organisation for School Teachers, said children and their parents would suffer as a result of the strike.

"Children so close to their exams will lose out on invaluable study time and parents will lose out as they are forced to take unnecessary holiday to look after them," he said.

I'm always touched by the arguments about the children. Apparently they're the British government's first concern. When they grow up, and their real salaries have declined, and they can't afford the same standard of living as their parents, well, then they can go to hell, I suppose. The government will be worried about their children then. With luck they'll have learned to sit down and shut up, much as American workers do.

Here, there's little worry about strikes, or even one-day job actions by teachers, since there are so few unions. For those that somehow remain (like us), penalties for strikes can be draconian. In the United States, the concept of working people standing up for themselves is just pure evil. In fact, George Will seems to feel that teachers negotiating contracts represents the end of civilization as we know it:

After 1962, when New York City signed the nation's first collective bargaining contract with teachers, teachers began changing from members of a respected profession into just another muscular faction fighting for more government money.

It's always illuminating to be lectured to about money by prominent pundits who make many times what we do. Apparently, it sets a bad example for the multitudes when working people stand up and say they need to be paid a living wage. If such trends were to continue, perhaps everyone would demand a living wage. And that, of course, would be bad for the children. The ones we love. The ones we teach toughness by denying them health insurance.

Not only that, but what have we got to show for all this collective bargaining?

...shopworn panaceas -- larger teacher salaries, smaller class sizes -- were pursued as colleges were reduced to offering remediation to freshmen.

Well, we've got larger salaries. But we've also got a larger workload, and with energy prices having quadrupled (not to mention prices of everything else), those larger salaries lag well behind cost of living. And here in New York City, despite all the talk, we've made no progress whatsoever on class size (not that this concerns Mr. Will).

Mr. Will believes, aside from the perfidy of teachers, that families are to blame:

No reform can enable schools to cope with the 36.9 percent of all children and 69.9 percent of black children today born out of wedlock, which means, among many other things, a continually renewed cohort of unruly adolescent males.

It's refreshing that Mr. Will rejects "reforms." It's odd, though, that he blatantly rejects collective bargaining for working people. You'd think a better standard of living might make people's lives a little more stable, and might even result in their behavior becoming more stable as well. It's tough to live the pristine lifestyle Mr. Will might prescribe when you have mortgage payments and crushing medical bills.

It's even tougher when you can't get debt relief for catastrophic medical emergencies, the no. 1 cause of bankruptcy in these United States. In Canada, where there's a social safety net, I've seen people place locks like those on my bathroom doors right on their front doors. I don't know anyone in New York who'd do such a thing.

And as long as the likes of George Will, George Bush, or, yes, John McCain are dictating social norms in this country, you'd better get a good strong lock for your front door. Consider barring your windows as well.

You can't be too careful these days.

Thanks to reality-based educator, Greg, and Abigail

Baltimore Jonny and the Rest of Us

Stories like this one (if you use that link, scroll down to see it) are beginning to seriously freak me out. World-class fiddler Jon Glik from Baltimore had been ill for quite a while. Online appeals for medical funds and benefit concerts had popped up to help him, but it's really tough when you don't have medical insurance in the US of A, and it's not easy for people who work as musicians to afford insurance.

Now sure, you might say, people shouldn't be musicians, and they should work in factories or oil drawbridges instead. I'd argue that musicians add something to our society even if they don't make as much money as, say, hedge fund operators. So as I encounter these various tales of ailing musicians, and I hear plenty, I feel ashamed that we're the only industrialized country in the world that doesn't routinely take care of our own.

Jon Glik was lucky. As a much-beloved musician, he'd met someone at a square dance (of all places) who was able to help him out. Also, he qualified for a state program that helped him out when he was set to get the liver transplant he needed. A few weeks ago, I worked with a musician who was not so lucky. He'd been having chest pains, and he ignored them (having no health insurance). Several days after I saw him, he had a heart attack and died.

And you and yours (and me and mine, and our neighbors) might not be lucky either, if you haven't got insurance. If you're middle-class or anything close to it, you'd have to divest yourself of pretty much everything you have before you qualified for Medicaid. Also, catastrophic medical emergencies are now no longer grounds for debt relief under bankruptcy, thanks to the credit card companies, the US Congress, and George W. Bush.

Some argue against national health care. Some point out shortcomings in the Canadian and European systems. I've no doubt there are shortcomings. But we can do better than this. It behooves us to do better than this.

Listen to Jon:

If You Can't Beat 'em, Buy 'em

Or "When in doubt, buy it out."

Those are a few of the homilies that grace the Bloomberg breakfast table, and Mayor Mike likes to practice what he preaches, sometimes. That's why he's contemplating the purchase of The New York Times. After all, weren't they the ones who printed the story suggesting Bloomberg didn't fare well with test scores he couldn't manipulate? Aren't they the ones who had the originally had the temerity to print Mike Winerip's column suggesting good teachers plus small schools equals quality education?

Not only that, but there's that awful Sam Freeman who actually writes about the rampant overcrowding in high schools. If enough people find out how much of that is really going on, they may begin to doubt the well-circulated Bloomberg myth about "Children First."

Of course, if Michael Bloomberg buys the paper, the likelihood of finding stories like that will decrease substantially. And with Murdoch owning the Post and trying to buy Newsday, the likelihood of New Yorkers encountering writers like Winerip and Freeman may substantially decrease as well.

Don't Miss the Carnival...

...of education, this week at The Education Wonks.

Our Mascot

Perhaps they should've used a dancing bear instead. The Warboys Community Primary School in England is giving up its symbol because they say it's discouraging potential teachers and students. Though the village was the last in England to hang witches, the emblem is no longer the selling point it once was.

Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200.

Go directly to the rubber room. That's what the city told Harlem math teacher Mike Thomas last week. Mr. Thomas received some unexpected support from his students, who demonstrated outside the school in protest.

"He's very dedicated, will stay after school. He's always there for tutoring, organizes the chess club," said student Stevon Garcia.

A source told NY1 that Thomas and another teacher are under investigation for possibly looking at certain school records without permission...

Does that allegation sound like something that requires immediate removal from the classroom? Are they worried Mr. Thomas might look at other records? Couldn't they just lock the file cabinet?

I know of someone who had to sit in the rubber room for a year for the offense of using a DoE fax machine. She was eventually sent back to work, but it does seem wasteful to have made her sit there. The costs of the investigation seem a little over the top as well. Perhaps they could've simply billed her for the call (and even for the wear and tear on the machine). I'm fairly certain she would've willingly parted with a quarter, or even a dollar, to avoid sitting in limbo for a year. The city could've turned a neat little profit on this incident, rather than wasting a year's salary.

Now perhaps Mr. Thomas is a modern-day John Dillinger, posing as a schoolteacher during the day to collect health benefits. Who knows? But if that were the case, it may have been better to notify the police (even if it adversely affected his school's grade). Meanwhile, Mr. Thomas' students have no idea why their teacher is gone, and it's entirely likely, despite NY 1's source, that Mr. Thomas has no idea either.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to require the DoE to at least tell people why they're in the rubber rooms? It seems somehow un-American to order people out of their workplaces without even letting them know why.

Thanks to Just a Cog

It's Your Lucky Day!

Download The Living Sea to your PC for free.

Freedom of the Press (and Zit Cream)

Personally, I'm all for it. In fact, I often wish reporters would wake up and take advantage of it.

For example, if you were visiting from another planet, and watched recent Democratic debates, you'd think that the biggest issue facing the voters was flag lapel pins. You'd think, like Charlie Gibson apparently does, that a typical middle class income was 200 thousand dollars a year. And of course, since inflation is apparently not an issue in this country (nor is health care, the mortgage crisis, the war in Iraq, or disappearing jobs), Charlie, out of touch as he is, may soon be right.

Closer to home, we see our local press napping rather than thinking. The coverage of the city's bombastic claims about tenure is a good example. Let's give an entirely hypothetical scenario and say we have three dermatological patients--Nassau, Suffolk, and Joel. Each of them suffers from zits. The dermatologist prescribes a zit cream that costs a hundred bucks. Nassau and Suffolk use the cream and the zits clear up. Joel says the price is too high and refuses to buy it. Six years later, his zit is bigger than his head.

Joel then calls a news conference to declare the zit cream, the one he's never used, is totally inadequate. The press prominently covers the news conference, and rails against the zit cream. Joel then demands untested surgery for any future zits he may get, and the local op-ed pages applaud him. They deplore the hypothetical governor, whom we'll call David Paterson, for opposing the untested surgery. And no one asks or wonders why Joel didn't or shouldn't try the zit cream.

Let's get out of our entirely hypothetical scenario, and take another look at a more recent event, to wit, the hugely hyped opening of Eva Moskowitz' new school. From what I can glean, 3,600 kids applied for 600 openings. It was a huge event, attended by Joel Klein and Governor David Paterson. The press, of course was there, and pronounced in articles and op-eds how wonderful and marvelous it was.

Now let's say, for the sake of argument, their apparent assumptions are correct--that the schools in Harlem are so awful that children need desperately to escape. Let's say that Ms. Moskowitz' school, which hasn't even opened yet, is a fantastic alternative.

This would clearly suggest that Chancellor Klein has failed over 80% of the applicants to the Moskowitz Academy. It also means he's failed all the other residents of the community, the ones who didn't apply. It also begs this question--what on earth has he done to fix those apparently awful schools he's stuck these folks with? Aside from cutting their budgets, it's tough to say.

And maybe NYC parents need consistently good schools, rather than a highly-rated PR game show in which the odds are strongly stacked against them.

Why do none of these things cross the minds of our crack press corps? Maybe it's too much Sominex.

Don't Miss This

Here's my favorite ex-presidential candidate making me wonder, once again, why anyone ever voted for anyone else:

When the Angels Sing

Some People Look For the Quickest Way Out

Some don't read between the lines. Others just read very selectively.

I specifically told Kevin Carey of The Quick and the Ed that the city has been negligent in enforcing existing tenure rules for over thirty years, that neighboring districts do things much differently, and that it was entirely within the city's discretion to do as its neighbors. I'm disappointed he chose to ignore that, using my post on bad teachers to bolster the entirely hollow argument that Chancellor Klein needs more ammunition to enforce tenure.

Chancellor Klein can enforce existing rules today, and could have done so the day he walked in, but opted not to. In fact, despite all his bluster about tenure and quality teachers, Mr. Klein went to Albany where he successfully lobbied for the right to hire and retain thousands of teachers who'd failed a basic competency test, often dozens of times. For Mr. Klein to now try to place the onus on the UFT for the teachers he himself hired and granted tenure is the height of hypocrisy.

If he chooses not to do his job, it's on him. And the truth is both he and his predecessors have neglected it for decades. Shame on the chancellor for obfuscating by demanding new tools while pointedly ignoring those at his disposal. It's disappointing his defenders fail to see the obvious--that this city, its frequent finger-pointing notwithstanding, was and is indifferent to how it treats kids. Rampant and unconscionable overcrowding is just one little extra way Tweed expresses its priorities.

My kids and I work every day half in a vermin-infested closet and the other half in a dilapidated trailer. This would not happen in my home district, and not a single one of the teachers I described would be hired in my home district. Furthermore, where I live, if some blitheringly incompetent administrator were to neglect the Prozac and hire one of these people by mistake, the mistake would be corrected long, long before any discussions about tenure ensued (I'd refrain from placing any bets on that administrator's tenure either).

Those who accept Chancellor Klein's public position on tenure either don't know what goes on in Mr. Bloomberg's New York or don't care to find out.

The 50 Worst Songs Ever Written...

...are here, according to Blender. I actually like a few of them, but agree for the most part.

But how did they miss this one? There's a story about the late, great jazz violinist Joe Venuti. It seems he rarely asked for requests, but one night he did. Someone shouted, "Play Feelings!"

"That's the worst song ever written," said Joe, before launching into Sweet Georgia Brown. Go ahead, search the list. Rack your brain. Is there, anywhere, a song worse than Feelings?

Update: Here's a little MacArthur Park for all you bad song enthusiasts:

The Maven

Wally could help you with just about anything. When Mr. Housepoor's boiler stopped working, the guy from the oil company terrified him. He said the boiler was dangerous, and might blow up the entire block any moment. It wasn't safe for a second in that house, and the only thing Mr. Housepoor could do, if he valued the health of his family and community, was to buy a new boiler for ten thousand dollars.

Wally came over Mr. Housepoor's house with a tool kit, fiddled with the converted coal boiler for ten minutes, and it lasted another fifteen years, right up to the point where he sold it. The person he sold it to, unacquainted with Wally, quickly bought a ten-thousand dollar boiler in order to save humanity and the world as we know it.

Do you want a dog? Papers say you have to pay thousands for certain dogs, but Wally, who knew someone, could get it for you at a fraction of the price. Do you have a problem with your car that the mechanic wants an arm and a leg to fix? Wally will invite you to his house, where he'll fix it for you free. And if you had anything he couldn't fix, he knew someone who could.

But that wasn't Wally's main talent. His best talent was teaching math to kids who couldn't seem to learn it from anyone else. "You don't know anything," he would tell them, "so we'll start from the beginning."

Kids would rave about him. "I sat there in math class for years, and never understood anything. I copied notebooks full of math, and none of it ever made sense. But there in his class, I'm doing it, and I know what I'm doing." I honestly wished I'd had him for high school math.

Now he's retired. He looked at the 2005 contract, decided the job would never be the same, and put in his papers. I miss him a lot. He knew everything, and I've yet to encounter his like.

Runaround Mike

Mayor Bloomberg, in yet another brilliant educational move, has installed trailers in Brooklyn Heights.

"The school has been a victim of its own success," said Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn Heights).

It certainly has, and now Mayor Bloomberg will be able to send scores of kids to this school in perpetuity. When he closes surrounding schools, he can just send more kids to the Heights, and endlessly overcrowd the school just as he's done with 75% of the city's high schools.

Eventually he can run the school to the ground, blame the teachers and close it. Then he can send them to the previously closed but now renamed schools, or "academies," as he likes to call them. The beautiful thing is "accountability" is still laid 100% on those awful unionized employees, and Bloomberg's minions can claim they're "doing something." Never mind if they're not doing anything effective.

When they come to your town, remember this---politicians come and go, but trailers are forever.