The Shocking Teacher Shortage

It looks like Governor Cuomo's plan of painting targets on the backs of all teachers has not worked out as well as planned in NY State. Evidently there is a shortage, and to ease it, the geniuses in Albany are relaxing standards. Their thinking, evidently, is people from other states will be anxious for the chance to judged by Governor Cuomo's matrix, and potentially be guilty until proven innocent. After all, there aren't many opportunities like that in the United States.

Another point of view, of course, is that Governor Cuomo is bought and paid for by Eva Moskowitz's BFFs at Families for Excellent Schools, and that he pretty much jumps at their beck and call. Maybe that's why he was so happy to appear at Ms. Moskowitz's field trip, you know, the one where she boarded all her students on buses and dragged them to Albany to lobby for her own political cause. If you or I did that, we'd be fired. But of course we didn't, so that's not why there's a teacher shortage.

There's a teacher shortage because we're tired of being used as punching bags. We're tired of being vilified in the press, and by every tinhorn politician that takes suitcases of cash from DFER and FES. We're tired of hearing people like Cuomo enact rating plans to fire teachers, call them "baloney" when they fail to fire enough teachers, and revise them for the express purpose of firing more. We're tired of being judged by test scores which the American Statistical Association correctly asserts have little or no validity.

We're tired of being told the only way to teach is like this, like that, or like whatever Bill Gates wakes up and decides children other than his own must be taught. We're tired of endless testing and being forced to teach nonsense that does not help our children. We're tired of underlying assumptions by people with no credentials or credibility that the children we serve lack "grit" and must be treated with "rigor."

I'm particularly tired of so-called leaders who create problems and then try to solve them in ways that don't address the problems at all. When I started teaching, pay was particularly low. The city didn't bother addressing the huge disparity in pay between the city and surrounding suburbs. Instead, there were ads in the subways and on buses to try to attract teachers. There were intergalactic recruiting campaigns. It turned out, though, that people from other countries and universes just couldn't afford to live in NYC.

And then, of course, there is the issue of quality. I was one of the people who saw a subway ad and took a teaching gig. I had no idea what I was doing. On my ninth day of teaching, my supervisor wrote me up and said I had no idea what I was doing. But I had told her I had no idea what I was doing when she hired me. To this day I wonder why she expected more. She wrote that I should try to be more "heuristic" when I taught. Naturally that cleared up everything for me. Doubtless with excellent advice like that every teacher will become instantly excellent, no matter how much they raise or lower the standards.

Cuomo is an empty suit, with loyalty to no one but Cuomo. He just said he won't support his party in its effort to retake the State Senate. This is they guy Hillary's people have representing the DNC for New York. He has no moral center whatsoever, does whatever the people who pay him say, and happily supports whatever the privatizers tell him to. And, oh, if the people rise up and say screw your ridiculous tests, he can always make some empty gesture, like a partial moratorium, and say, "See? I care what you think, sort of."

This is step one in addressing a teacher shortage created by Albany. There will be more. But until they start listening to teachers and learning why people no longer pursue this job, they will be empty gesture after empty gesture, likely helping no one but those who see education as an opportunity for profit.

Fork in the Road

I don't know about you, but I'm horrified when I see racism coming from people who teach children. I didn't plan to go to the Garner march a few years back, but when I saw the comments on the UFT Facebook page I knew I had to stand up. Our job is to serve children, not white children, not black children, not green children, but all children. It's beyond the pale that people with our job should judge others by their skin color.

It's atrocious what's going on in our country today. No one should live in fear because of their skin color, and no one should be shot for being a police officer either. I can't see how any reasonable person believes otherwise. To stand up those who lose their lives for no reason is in no way a critique of police who do their jobs. To attack all police for the actions of a minority would be to condone what the reformies do to teachers. I'm kind of used to being stereotyped and I don't love it one bit. That's why I try really hard not to do it to others.

On this blog, if you post a racist comment, I'll delete it with a warning it's unacceptable here. If you do it twice I will ban your ass. You can go somewhere else and spew your vitriol. I'm not going to argue with you. One of the things I love about my job is that I see stereotypes disproven each and every day. I once had a boy in a beginning ESL class who was very smart. He further thought all people from his country were very smart, and told me so. But smart as he was, I remember a young girl from Colombia who outscored him on each and every test.

That didn't fit at all into the boy's worldview, what with her speaking Spanish, and being a girl, and he complained bitterly to me about it. But the Colombian girl couldn't have cared less. She did what she had to, achieved what she needed to, and didn't surrender one solitary moment of her young life to thinking about that guy. Her smile lit up the room and she was happy wherever she was. The guy, not so much. He could've learned from her but opted not to.

I don't know what UFT is planning, if anything, in response to recent events. But I won't hesitate to join them. I grew up the only Jewish kid in a Catholic neighborhood, and I got to experience discrimination as a child I will never forget. That was bad enough. Living in fear for your life is something else altogether.

When I see people murdered for no reason other than their appearance I'm not inclined to blame the victim. I'm inclined to blame the perpetrators. There's a great book by the late Jimmy Breslin called World Without End, Amen. Spoiler alert---If you're planning to read it, skip the rest of this paragraph. It's about an Irish cop who discriminates against children of color. As I recall, he goes to Ireland, where he finds he is the victim, then comes back to New York, evidently having learned little.

We need to learn all the time. Jack Nicholson said, "The minute that you're not learning I believe you're dead." I agree. If we are to inspire children to learn, we need to set an example. We need to be open to other points of view and we need to stand up and admit when we are wrong. In fact, by doing that in front of the kids we serve we're setting an example. There's simply no better way to deal with being wrong. And if you are judging children by skin color, religion, sex, language, or country of origin, holy crap are you wrong.

In fact, if we've gotten to the point where we are professional teachers and can't think any more clearly than bigoted galoots like Donald Trump or Rudy Giuliani, we need to take really close looks at ourselves and find jobs more suited to our talents. Despite all the crap foisted upon us by the reformies, teachers still deal with people.

Hey, it's part of my job to defend teachers who get in trouble, and I'm ready and willing. If you're in trouble, I will advise you as best I can, do whatever research I can, represent you to the best of my ability and absolutely enforce the contract. I'm not in love with Danielson, I don't believe there's a bit of objectivity in using rubrics, and I have as little respect for incompetent supervisors as anyone I know. But between us, if you can't judge kids based on what they do rather than who they are, you ought to find another line of work.

Mediocrity Rules

 Sometimes I think we need to teach our students what logical fallacy is. Lately I think that more and more. I often find myself debating with adults who quickly resort to ad hominem and strawman arguments. I'm really amazed that adults, teachers, and union leaders jump to name calling and nonsense so quickly.

It's like junior high school all over again. I thought I was past all the rank out sessions, but I'm not, evidently. As life is short, I cut these conversations as quickly as I possibly can.

But politics is kind of a third rail.I've gotten a lot of flack about my decision not to vote for Hillary. Thus far, no one's really addressed my reasons, but rather I've been accused of supporting Trump via my lack of support for his opponent. That's simply ridiculous, as is Trump. Trump is amoral and reprehensible, for my money absolutely unacceptable. On the other hand, I've long felt a whole lot of GOP pols were pretty much the same as Trump, but found little weasel words to avoid saying outright what Trump does. Trump shouts the bigotry other Republicans know to only hint at.

Were I in Ohio or Florida I'd think twice about it, but if Hillary's NY race is competitive enough that she needs my vote, chances are she's lost anyway. Our Electoral College system is bizarre and undemocratic, and votes in my state are just not worth that much.

I'm a public education advocate, and if you want my vote you'd better either share that priority or be so good on everything else that I'm willing to overlook it (as was Bernie Sanders). I'm sorry that people are so upset about this, and I fully expect UFT to run an all-out, no-holds barred push for Hillary over the next few months. I believe that Hillary will likely not be as awful as Trump, but I fail to understand why we didn't extract significant concessions before going all in.

I voted for Barack Obama in 2008, he broke my heart, and I made a personal decision not to vote for reforminess anymore. When Cuomo ran on a platform promising to go after unions, I voted for Green Howie Hawkins. In 2012, I voted for Green Jill Stein for President, and I expect to do so again in November.

But I'm really shocked at some of the pushback I've gotten lately. A local union President from somewhere or other got on my Facebook page and called me names. That's not argument at all. I mean, if you can show me that Hillary will really work for us, you might persuade me. Personal insults are the province of people bereft of ideas, and we need to do better. You know, we're teachers, role models. Are we raising our children to thoughtlessly insult one another?

That's not the first time I've heard such nonsense, and I'm sure it won't be the last. Though there are a handful of people I really respect in leadership, I'm not seeing that as a rule. I have no problem engaging people, and I respect people's opinions. What amazes me is people approaching me with no argument whatsoever and absolute conviction that they are right. Why are they right? Well, they went to a meeting and someone told them this was right, and that's good enough for them. How can they be like that?

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. ~Upton Sinclair

When people tell me what a threat Trump is I understand. He would be an awful President, full of bluster and baseless ideas. And those who follow him blindly are really dangerous, as they could follow him into some pretty bad places. I found it ironic that someone, in defense of Hillary, would call me a "loser," as that's what Trump calls everyone and anyone who disagrees with him. What does that even mean anymore?

But I wonder how a leader of teachers can skate by with an inability to muster an argument that rises above juvenile name-calling. What does that say about us? I've met a whole lot of chapter leaders who got the job simply because no one else wanted it. I see places where the gig appears to be passed around like a hot potato. That's kind of understandable. Who's crazy enough to argue with the principal?  But someone has to do it.

Why can't we get good people? There are reasons, of course. One is that our system kind of encourages and perpetuates mediocrity. I mean, UFT leadership takes a stand, sort of. They supported mayoral control. When it came up for renewal, they asked for changes, didn't get them, and then supported it anyway. Now Mulgrew says they support it, but not as is. What does that even mean? If they don't support it as is, why the hell did they support it ever?

Leadership sort of sits on the fence on testing. Mulgrew's gonna punch all our faces out if we don't support Common Core, but they complain about the rollout, which is the same nonsense Cuomo rationalizes it with. They're against excessive testing, but when opt-out actually does something about it, they spout the same crap as Reformy John King. When opt-out places fear into the alleged heart of the Cuomo, and inspires him to make a few superficial changes, they declare it a victory (and take credit). But as they declare absolutely everything a victory, that's got kind of a hollow ring.

They attack everyone and anyone who disagrees with them. If they can't think of a good argument, they dredge the bottom of the barrel, and spit out whatever they come up with. Who cares if it's accurate or not? Anyone who's signed a loyalty oath will believe it or lose their free trip to Schenectady next year. Or maybe an after school gig. So they don't contradict it, and just as likely don't even bother to think about it.

What is the quality of representation you get when you hire people who won't and possibly even can't think? What is the quality of representation you get when no one is allowed to question the Great and Powerful Oz, and everyone just runs around pretending how mysterious he is?

Sadly, you get what we've got now. You get some very good people, and a lot of others who blindly do as told and fully expect never to have to explain it. When put in uncomfortable positions, they blurt out whatever nonsense comes into their heads.

If you read this blog I have to assume you know that we, teachers, are under assault. We are the last vestige of vibrant unionism in these United States and as such folks hate us. Some of those folks are Eli Broad and the Walmart family, and they donate heavily to candidate Hillary Clinton. Well, if Hillary is so great for teachers, why the hell are the reformies-in-chief donating to her?

Hey, if you want to vote for Hillary, go right ahead. I won't call you names. But if you want to be a leader, if you aim to persuade, you'd better be prepared to stand up and explain why you do what you do. There are certainly plenty of capable people. But we're not gonna inspire them to work with us if we're represented by those who behave like 12-year-olds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also in fairness, they do acknowledge another view:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Platitudes Ahoy from Hillary at NEA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Boy Wonder Writes a File Letter

Another grievance. This wasn't right, that wasn't right, blah, blah, blah. When I was a teacher I never filed a grievance. I just did whatever the hell I could to look good, and in two years I moved out of that crappy classroom, not that I ever wanted to be there anyway.
 
Look at this. Oh man this sucks. How the hell can anyone put up with this crap? That bastard Chapter Leader got Walsh's letter removed to his file just because it wasn't a file letter! What the hell is up with that? He was all, "Oh, they have to write a Counseling Memo, and oh, the teacher has to sign and say I understand a copy of this is going to my file." What a bunch of crap. I can do whatever I want!

Give me a break. Who the hell needs to write Counseling Memos, with all that extra gobbledygook on the bottom? Do they think I have time to search for that template instead of just using a blank one? Don't they know I have observations to do? What, do they want me to use this template instead of that template? I tell you, in the small schools they don't have these stinking Chapter Leaders to say do this and don't do that. 

It was just an oversight. Just a little note to let Walsh know what an asshole he was for leaving the voluntary mandatory meeting five minutes early. How the hell am I supposed to run a voluntary mandatory meeting when people think they can leave five minutes early? There's a lot of important stuff going on at those meetings, and if they don't do those things I will have to do them myself. And I'm busy!

In fact, right now I could really go for one of those Italian heroes. They call them The Godfather and it's on this amazing semolina bread. They put mortadella on those things, but I tell you, to me it tastes like bologna. Not that it's a bad thing. But what the hell is really the difference other than the big slices with that funny looking stuff in them?

Anyway, I just checked a bulletin board he put up and there's no rubric on it. Who the hell wants to look at a bulletin board without a rubric? How are we supposed to impress the superintendent if there aren't rubrics all over everything? I will show that bastard. I'm writing a file letter now. I'll have a meeting with him, listen to whatever crap they have to say, date the thing after the meeting and put it in his damn file.

I know, they're gonna be all blah, blah, blah, it's no big deal. Walsh is a big hero, and the newspapers wrote about him. Well I don't care. I will get that son of a bitch one way or another. As soon as all the hooplah dies down I will rate his sorry ass ineffective again. Meanwhile, I'll write this letter, staple the old one to it, and then they will both be in his file. I'll say it's all about his attitude. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Let Chapter Leader blather on about progressive discipline and whatever crap there is in the contract. It's all the same to me. "This is what I choose to do," I'll say. Maybe I'll say, "with all due respect" first. It always sounds better when you say "with all due respect,"not that I give a flying hoot what it sounds like.

What does it feel like to mess with me and have it blow up in your face? You will know, Walsh, and no stinking Chapter Leader is gonna get in my way. It's like in my favorite song:

We hope Neil Young will remember Southern men don't need him around anyhow.

This will teach them to mess with folks from the South Shore of Long Island. We don't stand for that kind of guff from losers who can't make it past school teacher.

Familes for Excellent Schools Does an Analysis

I'm always amazed when E4E finds 100 signatures demanding more work for less pay and Chalkbeat NY's subsequent article reports it as though it indicates something that isn't painfully obvious. I can garner 100 signatures on a petition in 90 minutes. Not only that, but if I do such a thing, it's to actually help students rather than advance the druthers of Bill Gates or some other billionaire.

That's why I'm kind of amazed when so-called Families for Excellent Schools, well-known BFFs and staunch supporters of Eva Moskowitz, does one of their studies and it ends up in the Daily News. In fairness, the News specifically portrays them as a pro-charter group, which is a lot better than what Chalkbeat does when they blather about the latest adventures of E4E.

You don't need to be a genius to know that they aren't necessarily families, or that their idea of excellent schools is whatever Eva wants, or whatever Bill Gates happened to pull out of his abundant and fruitful hind quarters on any given morning.

Nonetheless, I read with interest the results of their most recent revelation in today's Daily News.

More than half of all charter schools located within public school buildings are overcrowded compared to only 16% of district schools they share space with, according to the analysis of data conducted by the pro-charter school group Families for Excellent Schools.

The group’s look at city enrollment data also shows that more than half of all charter school students attended overcrowded schools in the 2014-15 school year, compared to only 17% of students in co-located district schools.

Naturally, I'm shocked and stunned. Why aren't the public schools overcrowded? I can only conjecture that's because the city decided not to place charters in overcrowded buildings. Can you imagine? The audacity! But by counting only the buildings containing colocations, the astroturf group misleads the public, and the public are likely to not make this important distinction.

Nonetheless, I can think of several ways to alleviate the issues raised in the piece. If 16 or 17% of the public schools are overcrowded, throw the charters the hell out so that our public school students can have some damn space. What moron decided to overcrowd the schools? Said moron should be fired. And if it's Governor Andrew Cuomo, so much the better.

Families for Excellent Schools CEO Jeremiah Kitteredge says the numbers show that Mayor de Blasio is swindling students of privately run, publicly funded charter schools.

“Even with 150,000 empty seats, this administration chooses to discriminate against public charter school students by granting them less space,” said Kittredge, referring to the number of empty seats projected in a city tally of public schools from 2015.

The notion that de Blasio is giving preferential treatment to public schools, though I wish it were true, is a pants on fire lie. As I pointed out, the FES figure does not take into account public schools that do not have colocations. My school has been over 200% capacity for most of the 20 plus years I've worked there. I have very little sympathy for the largely fabricated and wholly misleading plight Mr. Kittredge bemoans. What, exactly, constitutes overcrowding in a charter? And being as charters commonly shed students without replacing them, haven't they got the means to relieve it? Why the hell don't they if they care so much?

The answer, of course, is they take as large a group as possible, keep the ones they like, and dump the ones on the got to go list. As someone who works in a school that takes everyone, from the high achievers to the alternate assessment, as someone who teaches high-needs kids who wouldn't make it into a Moskowitz Academy on a bet, I have little sympathy for the poor rich charter schools.

The piece refers back to the last revelation FES had, that there are supposedly 150,000 empty seats somewhere in the city.  I have no idea what sort of biased nonsense FES may have utilized to reach that conclusion, but if there are any empty seats, Jesus, send them to us. We have kids sitting in trailers, in converted book rooms, in gyms with basketballs bouncing off the walls, and pretty much everywhere and anywhere we can find space. How about giving our kids a break?

Let Eva Moskowitz take the 35 million bucks she raised and buy a damn building. Why the hell aren't we reading about their spring benefit in the News, the Post, or for Christ's sake in Chalkbeat NY, which writes a feature every time Moskowitz sneezes or E4E announces a bathroom break?

The complaints manufactured by FES are self-serving and ridiculous. Why are they able to play the media like a violin while our leadership sits on its hands? Perhaps because leadership is so busy fighting genuine activists they haven't got the time or inclination to fight our real enemies or reach out to make sure the real story is told.

We certainly can and should do better.

UFT Unity's War on Logic

An interesting by-product of joining the Unity Caucus and signing the loyalty oath is you have to rationalize everything Unity Caucus does. OK, well not everyone has to. But if you want to move up and impress those who need impressing, you'll do any logical contortion necessary to make their actions appear rational.

A very good example of that was their attack on MORE at the last Delegate Assembly. When you're sworn to defend anything by any means necessary, you aren't restricted by things like truth, logic, or common decency. You say any damn thing and as long as it makes you look superficially good, that's good enough. Unfortunately for Unity there are people like Jeanette Deutermann, who actually think about things before accepting them, and they are liable to publicly call you out.

Even worse, there are entire organizations intent on facing reforminess with truth, and one is NY State Allies for Pubic Education, or NYSAPE. And boy, is it inconvenient to lead a teacher union and be called out by a grassroots education group:

In addition to providing your members with false information, you have demonized the brave and outspoken NYC educators who have encouraged opt out. You have inexplicably labeled these educators as “reckless and feckless”. This begs the question, why would an experienced educator and union leader dismiss and insult a historic act of civil disobedience? Surely, you are aware that the opt out movement has yielded the only successful means of resisting harmful “test and punish” policies that hurt not only your members, but all educators and students around the state.

It is no secret that you have failed to support efforts to reject the increased focus on test scores in the new teacher evaluation plan (3012-d), or that you have publicly vowed to defend the common core standards (standards that even the Governor’s skewed CC task force found to be flawed) with violence, if necessary. In addition to your disparaging comments aimed at those who support the opt out movement, your actions as president of the UFT would appear to reveal whose side you are really on.

When teachers, students, and unions were being abused, demonized, and demoralized, a call to action rang out from grassroots parent and educator organizations. Many teachers and local unions heeded the call. Progressive caucuses within the UFT such as MORE and the statewide caucus Stronger Together immediately stepped up and worked alongside parents to fight for the best interests of our children. Where were you? - See more at: http://www.nysape.org/nysape-mulgrew-response.html#sthash.oxAFE1tA.dpuf

In addition to providing your members with false information, you have demonized the brave and outspoken NYC educators who have encouraged opt out. You have inexplicably labeled these educators as “reckless and feckless”. This begs the question, why would an experienced educator and union leader dismiss and insult a historic act of civil disobedience? Surely, you are aware that the opt out movement has yielded the only successful means of resisting harmful “test and punish” policies that hurt not only your members, but all educators and students around the state.

It is no secret that you have failed to support efforts to reject the increased focus on test scores in the new teacher evaluation plan (3012-d), or that you have publicly vowed to defend the common core standards (standards that even the Governor’s skewed CC task force found to be flawed) with violence, if necessary. In addition to your disparaging comments aimed at those who support the opt out movement, your actions as president of the UFT would appear to reveal whose side you are really on.

When teachers, students, and unions were being abused, demonized, and demoralized, a call to action rang out from grassroots parent and educator organizations. Many teachers and local unions heeded the call. Progressive caucuses within the UFT such as MORE and the statewide caucus Stronger Together immediately stepped up and worked alongside parents to fight for the best interests of our children. Where were you?

Not particularly flattering, and a hell of a question for people whose jobs, ostensibly, entail representing those of us who work in public education. And that's not even an aberration. A recent Unity propaganda effort was a strawman, that is, because MORE opposes teachers being judged by junk science, they therefore must favor principals having 100% power. This, of course, ignores the fact that principals can sink evaluations in the current system anyway.

A worse factor of the new APPR is that the burden of proof is no longer on the DOE--they need not prove you are incompetent. Under the current system, if the UFT rat squad determines that the principal is right, burden of proof shifts to the teachers, who must prove they are not incompetent. Lawyer friends of mine tell me that proving a negative is very, very tough, and it isn't very hard for me to see why that's correct.

Of course if you're Unity, it's your job to rationalize everything Unity does. I know of several Unity folks who defended this saying it's better that we own it. This hasn't appeared in any official Unity publication yet because first, they don't publicly acknowledge the shifting of the burden, ever, and second, I suppose, because it's an incredibly stupid argument that even the idiots who write Unity propaganda can't bring themselves to use. Here's what Eric Severson, UFT Chapter Leader at Clara Barton, commented:

No it's better that I've been imprisoned without trial and presumed guilty, now I can own it!

Because, in fact, this makes teachers guilty until proven innocent. To me, that's fundamentally un-American. But to great minds of UFT Unity, intent on rationalizing absolutely anything leadership does, it's a gift!

It's remarkable that Unity propagandists are so inept at argument, though it explains a lot about why they negotiate contracts the way they do. I certainly hope they keep placing their collective feet so firmly in their mouths. It's fabulous for blog material. Better, though, would be for them to get off that high horse and work with us toward improving education for teachers, students and communities.

Only time will tell whether UFT Unity will risk its "seat at the table" to work with real activists like us and NYSAPE. But hope springeth eternal.  

In addition to providing your members with false information, you have demonized the brave and outspoken NYC educators who have encouraged opt out. You have inexplicably labeled these educators as “reckless and feckless”. This begs the question, why would an experienced educator and union leader dismiss and insult a historic act of civil disobedience? Surely, you are aware that the opt out movement has yielded the only successful means of resisting harmful “test and punish” policies that hurt not only your members, but all educators and students around the state.

It is no secret that you have failed to support efforts to reject the increased focus on test scores in the new teacher evaluation plan (3012-d), or that you have publicly vowed to defend the common core standards (standards that even the Governor’s skewed CC task force found to be flawed) with violence, if necessary. In addition to your disparaging comments aimed at those who support the opt out movement, your actions as president of the UFT would appear to reveal whose side you are really on.

When teachers, students, and unions were being abused, demonized, and demoralized, a call to action rang out from grassroots parent and educator organizations. Many teachers and local unions heeded the call. Progressive caucuses within the UFT such as MORE and the statewide caucus Stronger Together immediately stepped up and worked alongside parents to fight for the best interests of our children. Where were you? - See more at: http://www.nysape.org/nysape-mulgrew-response.html#sthash.oxAFE1tA.dpuf

Happy Independence Day to All

Wishing everyone a very happy and healthy fourth. From what I hear outside my door it started yesterday. Let's be careful out there.

Chalkbeat NY Stands Up for the Gates-Funded Little Guy

I was pretty surprised to read that the NY Regents are passing policy without the input of the public. I mean, that's a pretty serious breach of basic democracy, isn't it? On the other hand, I've been to a whole lot of public hearings about schools and school closings, and I've spoken at them too. Several were at Jamaica High School, closed based on false statistics, according to this piece in Chalkbeat.

The thing about public hearings is this--yes, members of the public get to speak. In fact, at Jamaica and several other school closing hearings, I don't remember a single person getting up to speak in favor of school closings. I've also been to multiple meetings of the PEP under Bloomberg where the public was roundly ignored. In fact, Bloomberg fired anyone who contemplated voting against doing whatever they were told. While he didn't make them sign loyalty oaths, the effect was precisely the same.

State hearings are different, of course. When former NY Education Commissioner Reformy John King decided to explain to NY that Common Core was the best thing since sliced bread, he planned a series of public forums. However, after the public said in no uncertain terms they disagreed, he canceled them, saying they'd been taken over by "special interests." The special interests, of course, were parents and teachers. He may have implied they were controlled by the unions, but of course the union leadership actually supported the same nonsense he was espousing.

In fact, the only meeting King went to where he found support actually was taken over by special interests, to wit, Students First NY. Only one non-special interest actually got to speak, and that was my friend Katie Lapham. Other than that it was a pro-high-stakes testing party. Doubtless this was King's view of a worthy public forum, and given that it's taken until now for Chalkbeat to stand up to the lack of forums, I have to question whether it's theirs too.

The big change Chalkbeat points to is a link claiming that the Regents "wiped out" main elements of the teacher evaluation law. If you bother to follow the link, you learn that this is a reference to the fake moratorium on high stakes testing, which the article itself later admits to be limited to the use of Common Core testing in grades 3-8. The fact that junk science rules absolutely everywhere else, and will in fact be increased in importance next year, is evidently of no relevance whatsoever.

While Chalkbeat acknowledges these changes were urged on by Governor Cuomo's task force, it fails utterly to make connections as to what forced Cuomo to start a task force, let alone pretend he gives a crap about education or public school teachers. This, of course, was a massive opt-out, in which over 20% of New York's parents told their children not to sit for tests that Cuomo himself referred to as meaningless. But rather than speak to any of its leaders, Chalkbeat seeks comment from a Gates-funded group I've never heard of called Committee on Open Government.

After all, why go to Jeanette Deutermann, or Leonie Haimson, or Jia Lee, or Beth Dimino, or Katie Lapham, when you can get someone who's taken Gates money? And just to round out the forum, Chalkbeat goes to Reformy John King's successor, MaryEllen Elia, who's taken boatloads of Gates money and is therefore an expert on pretty much whatever.

Chalkbeat also makes the preposterous assertion that the Regents allowing children of special needs a route to graduation should have been more gradual because schools were prepping them for tests they didn't need. While that may be true, this did not remove their option of taking those tests. Announcing the allowance this year and enabling it, say, next year, would've helped absolutely no one. You don't need to go to a Gates-funded expert to figure that out.

While it may have been nice to have public hearings, the fact is the public has gotten up and spoken, and without that, none of these changes would have occurred. It's remarkable that Chalkbeat NY doesn't know that.

RIP Jimmy Moore

Not all teaching happens in the classroom. I learned a lot from the man at the center of this photo with the big old dreadnought guitar. I met him at a bluegrass festival maybe 15 years ago in Windgap, PA. Everyone was saying, "You have to go meet Jimmy Moore." I went, but I wasn't at all sure who the hell Jimmy Moore actually was.

He was sitting with his camper bus, the one he said you could actually watch the gas gauge go down with every inch it moved. I was a reformed guitar player who had just started focusing on the fiddle. After all, absolutely everyone seems to know how to play the guitar, and few are crazy enough to bother with a fiddle.

I sat with Jimmy, who told me, "Play it like this," and, "Kick it off it like that." He had very strong ideas about how I should play everything, and it was his way or the highway (or the next campsite, or something). He'd stop me and hum something, and I had to reproduce it until it matched the sound in his mind. It wasn't always easy, because his humming didn't sound a whole lot like a fiddle. But he was persistent, and didn't give up until he heard what he wanted.

Jimmy was a brave man, because I'd hardly been playing at all, and very shortly thereafter he asked me to play fiddle with his bluegrass band in public. which no one else had ever done before. There's a joke:

"How do you make a million dollars playing bluegrass music?"

"Start with two million." 

So naturally this was not a paying gig. But Jimmy Moore was the real deal, born in North Carolina (where he still kept a summer home), a great singer with perfect timing. I knew I had to play with him. On the Sunday he called a rehearsal, I was really sick with a fever. I dragged myself out of bed, drove to Jimmy's house in Marlboro NJ, anyway, and we went through his set. I went there again the following week, from where we drove in his white van to Albert Hall in Waretown, New Jersey.

To this day I have no idea why he took that gig. Jimmy hated the Albert Hall. He reminded me of that for the entire hour we spent driving there (and back). "They used to give you a hot dog. A hot dog. Now, they hand you a ticket and all they give you is a cup of coffee." He had this habit of elbowing me for emphasis, and he had strong opinions about everything. Jimmy, unlike a lot of bluegrass musicians I've met, leaned left politically, had serious issues with then-President GW Bush, and had op-eds in local newspapers giving chapter and verse as to why. Fortunately, all the other gigs we did were paying, he was a lot happier, and I didn't have to feel the wrath of that elbow anymore.

Jimmy didn't only write op-eds; he also wrote songs. Great songs. He wrote bluegrass songs and country songs. He won songwriting contests around the country. He had his songs recorded by various bluegrass artists, but alas, no big country hits. We'd play his songs at gigs and they were as good as the classic material with which we supplemented it.

You'd be on stage and Jimmy would ask you to kick off a song you'd never played before. It didn't matter to him. He decided that's how it would be, on the spot, and that's how it was. He'd ask me to play a fiddle tune I'd never played before. I'd say hey, man, I don't really know it. It didn't matter to him. You just had to do it, and you would. How could you not? Jimmy had decided you knew it, and so you did.

Jimmy ran through a whole lot of musicians over the decades he performed. I'm honored to have been one of them. I went to his memorial service on Wednesday night, full of musicians he'd influenced and with whom he'd performed. We heard from them and his children and grandchildren. One thing his granddaughter said really resonated with me. She said Jimmy had told her that if she loved what she did, she wouldn't work a day in her life.

This is an idea I try to teach my students. I love my job, and I'm talking about my primary job as teacher. I love my secondary job as chapter leader, which I may or may not devote more time to than teaching. I also love my job playing fiddle, although I do it a whole lot less than I did when I wasn't chapter leader. There are just so many hours in the day, and I want to spend one or two with my family now and then.

But I've never worked with a singer quite like Jimmy. He had a house full of musical instruments, and he could and would play all of them. He'd call me up and play me an instrumental he'd written on the mandolin. He'd instruct me to work out a fiddle part. He'd tell me about a CD he'd heard that I just had to hear, and I'd always find it on the net and order it, right after I got off the phone.

I'm very sad I won't be getting those calls anymore. It's too bad more people didn't get to hear him. But if you want to, here's a tune he recorded a long time ago. I'm thinking the sixties, but I really don't know. This is Jimmy, giving directions as usual, in this case, to play a little bluegrass music.

Is Reading the Magic Bullet?

Well, of course it isn't. There is no magic bullet. But here's a great piece from the New Yorker presenting the idea of reading as therapy, with a particular emphasis on fiction. I'm a great fan of fiction, and if left to my own devices, that's mostly what I will read. Because I love it, I also love to teach it. Now it's not my favorite thing to teach--I love to teach beginners English, and watch them move rapidly through utter confusion toward muddling through toward mastery, but it's my second favorite thing.

Some of my most gratifying moments were when students came to me and said, "Thank you for forcing me to read that book. I never thought I could read a book in English." And I am relentless in browbeating kids to do that work. Of course I'm not always successful. I really believe reading is a solitary pursuit, and while I will try to motivate kids by reading paragraphs here and there, I make them do the bulk of it outside the classroom, and do that so we can discuss it in class.

There are some books I won't teach. I'm a great fan of Steinbeck, but I won't teach Of Mice and Men, because I don't want to be the person who introduces my newcomers to racial epithets. Maybe that's lazy thinking on my part, and maybe I could make kids understand them better, but I want my classroom to be a place where those things simply do not exist. I don't want anyone to remember my class as the place they learned that stuff.

I think the way to trick kids into loving reading is to carefully select stories to which they can relate, stories that mirror or expand on their own experiences. As such, I'm very fond of The Joy Luck Club. This is a book full of brilliant interwoven stories of people overcoming the situations into which their thrust and making something of their lives. A great extra, for me, is that it's all about several generations of Chinese women. And although neither I nor a whole lot of my students are either Chinese or women, these are stories that everyone can relate to.

Of course my students are all newcomers, which is kind of a hook for this selection, but they're also facing all sorts of personal difficulties. I think just being a teenager is an almost insurmountable problem in itself. Add to that being in a new and strange country with limited use of the dominant language, and things become challenging indeed.  But people rise up from the most awful situations, and a book like this, I hope, gives my teenagers the notion that they too can overcome their troubles, no matter how awful they may appear right now.

This approach is in stark contrast with that of Common Core, that no one gives a crap what you think or feel. Jesus, who even wants to live in David Coleman's world, where no one gives a crap what you think or feel? While I will grant that I honestly don't give a crap what David Coleman thinks or feels, that sentiment does not extend to my students.  I want them to feel cared for in my class, and I want them to know that I care what they think. That's why I'm always asking them what they think and fairly thrilled when they tell me. I spend a great deal of time trying to open up kids who've been told to sit down and shut up all their lives.

The Common Core approach of answering tedious questions about a text out of context actively discourages love of reading, and is precisely the wrong approach, counter to everything we know about how kids learn. There is certainly a time and place for plodding through tedious text, but that's not how we start our kids. And those best equipped to deal with tedious text are people who love to read.

I gotta admit, I read a lot in college, and there were things I just did not love. Moby Dick, classic though it may be, wasn't my favorite. I had the misfortune of reading Beowulf for not one course, but rather two. By the second course I had learned not to tell the truth when the instructor asked us to write our impressions of this classic work. In my job I'm constantly perusing the Contract and looking through regulations to determine just what is and is not kosher, and I sometimes have to counter the preposterous interpretations of the folks the DOE "legal," whatever that is. I'm fortunate in that a whole lot of folks at UFT have already interpreted the bejeezus out of these things, and that they are always right while "legal" is always wrong. Honestly, I think they just make stuff up and hope for the best.

I developed a love of reading early on. I still remember the first book I read, and being amazed that I'd cracked the code. I moved from there to comic books, and from there to the paperbacks my mom had lying all over the house, and from there to whatever grabbed my attention. Once I found an author I liked I sought out everything that writer produced.

I was lucky because reading, in the high school I attended, entailed mostly reading books aloud. You read page one, the girl behind you reads page two, I read page three, and so on. It's a great gig for an English teacher who doesn't actually want to do anything, and even better for a lazy student like me, who only had to pay attention when the person in front of me was reading. The only books I was asked to read in high school independently were The Incredible Journey, about a dog and a cat running around doing something or other, and The Good Earth, which everyone in my social studies class found fascinating. None of us could get over the notion of arranged marriage, though we were perhaps only one generation away from it.

But not every kid grows up in a house full of books, and for those who don't, teachers are the best bet to pick up the slack. It's tragic that Common Core gives kids precisely the opposite of what they need, and will likely lead them to despise reading rather than simply be indifferent to it. Reading is power, and without it, our kids will be swept under those who possess it. Our system is designed to create and maintain drones rather than thinkers.

We can surely do better. We're kind of pinned under the yoke of ridiculous, arbitrary measures of "college readiness," and we begin to measure such things at absurdly young ages. I don't think Hillary Clinton knows that, or much of anything of what is good education for our kids (as opposed to her own, who attended an elite private school that used none of this nonsense) and sadly, I don't think Bernie Sanders does either.

But as long as we do, it's our job to get the word out.

Boy Wonder Does an Observation

Man, I hate this guy. He is always complaining to Chapter Leader about my mandatory voluntary meetings. He thinks just because they're voluntary he doesn't have to go. Doesn't he even know what voluntary mandatory is all about? The bastard. And then Chapter Leader runs to the principal saying I've raised the bar on lowering the bar. What the hell does that even mean?

I'm walking around sticking my face in every notebook. Casting a critical eye and looking for the grit and rigor. These lazy kids. Where is the grit?

You know what I could go for? One of those chicken fried steak thingies. Only place I know I can get it is maybe 45 minutes away. And a 22 ounce draft in a frosty mug. Will anyone notice if I'm out of the building for like three hours? Man I really want that chicken fried steak. With that white gravy. Maybe with mashed potatoes. I think they have a $9.99 special if I get there before 6. Maybe I'll just eat and go home. Who's gonna know?

One kid not writing anything. Two. Three. Four kids in room not writing anything. Therefore no one is participating. Ineffective. Let me write that in my low inference notes on this swine. And as I walk around, sticking my face into every kids paper and every kid's face, I can see they are afraid of something. Probably the teacher. Ineffective. Low inference notes on that son of a bitch reflecting that.

Man this room is really well done. Beautiful. Look at all that art around. Student work everywhere. Very colorful. Someone really cares about this room but it can't be the teacher because there are no rubrics. Ineffective.

Let me check if he has a lesson plan, that son of a bitch, let me check all the papers on the desk, move them around, shuffle through everything, make a big show to let everyone know who's in charge. (Me.) Look at that. What a mess this desk is now. How can anyone find anything? Well, I'm the boss so I don't have to clean it up.

"Where's your lesson plan?"

"It's on the computer."

Cheeky bastard. An answer for everything. Man, the arrogance. I wanted that copy right now. Can I confiscate his laptop? After all, I'm the boss. It's my right. Would that principal back me up? Or would he be, oh, it's his property, and stuff. I tell you, we have to nip this stuff in the bud. Nip, nip, nip. In the bud! You mollycoddle these damn teachers and they're all, the contract says this, and the contract says that. Well screw the contract. I'm the boss and I can do any damn thing I want.

Look at these kids. They're all frozen, in fear or something. None of them are answering questions, let alone volunteering. They act like some alien from outer space has walked in here and they're all too shocked to speak. Ineffective. This bastard teacher, in my low inference opinion, is a total piece of crap and needs to be fired. Another year and I can make it so. Man, I can't wait for that next Star Trek movie. I wonder if I could get tickets online in one of those places where you reserve the seats. You can't begin that stuff too early. Let me write that in my low inference notes.

What is up with those UFT validators and they keep saying the teachers who I say suck actually don't suck?  Shouldn't the fact that I think they suck be good enough for anyone? After all, I've been to supervisor school and Danielson training. I've learned how to look at these reprehensible morons in a totally objective fashion. Have these teachers done that?

I mean, Jesus, I taught for two whole years before I moved out, and I'm ready to move up and out of this craphole first chance I get. Man, this teacher doesn't look happy. He's all nervous and stuff. What the hell is wrong with this jerkwad? Ineffective.

Look at that piece of garbage on the floor. I ask a kid to pick it up and he refuses. Man, what an uncooperative class. And when I ask the kids to pass the can around so everyone can pick up garbage they refuse again. Clearly this teacher has not trained these children properly. Ineffective. 

Man, what an awful atmosphere in that classroom.  And that idiot told me it was his best class.  But every time I walk into any classroom it's like this. You know I never see a good atmosphere when I walk in a classroom. What could be making the kids act so uptight?

Gotta be these lowlife teachers, of course. Ineffective.

A Message from Governor Andy on Why You Have to Register Your Certification

Hi, it's me, your old pal Andy Cuomo. I just want you to know that a lot of you may think I hate teachers, but that's not the case. In fact, my mother was a teacher. So that should be proof enough. But no, all you Gloomy Guses are all, "Well, why did you have to judge us by test scores?" and "Why did you say your own system was baloney and then up the test scores?"

Well, I hear you, and I hear all those folks who opted their kids out of the tests. It made me look so bad that I agreed not to count Common Core tests in math and English from grades 3-8. Now a lot of you are saying that implies those of you with other Common Core tests can go screw yourselves and let me say, right at the outset, that I am a great believer in individual freedom. So of course you can go screw yourselves! That's your right and I shall defend your rights to the bitter end.

But a lot of you are complaining about why you have to register with the state. Now that's an important consideration, and I want to be absolutely up front with my response. Now Sandra and I don't get a whole lot of time off, but after eating one of her delicious Kwanzaa cakes, there's nothing we like better than watching a little television in our house. In fact, we've got a whole TV room there that we built, and those county home inspectors will get in to see it over my dead body. No way are we gonna pay taxes on that! But I digress.

One of our favorite shows is The Walking Dead. I don't know if you watch it, but it's pretty terrifying. I mean, all the good people are united against those brain-eating zombies. My gosh, they are just awful. They just run around killing everyone and eating brains. As you surely know, I am the student lobbyist, and I just cannot allow zombies to victimize school children. I have observed the zombies very carefully, and we think having teachers register online is the best precaution. I mean, how many zombies are gonna register? So most registered teachers will not be zombies. And should they become zombies over the next five years, once their registration dates come up, they will not register. Or at least they probably won't. You can never be too sure with zombies. But we're gonna try to fix that.

In fact, while we've neglected this question up to now, preferring to focus on whether those who register are facing disciplinary or criminal charges, our next revision will ask people, under penalty of perjury, "Are you a brain-eating zombie?" Now there was a lot of debate at the most recent gala luncheon where it came up. Will zombies tell the truth? Honestly, I can't guarantee you they will. But nonetheless, if they lie they will be up on perjury charges. One thing Andrew Cuomo will not tolerate is some lying zombie. 

You see, this proves I love public schools, because charter school teachers don't need certification and therefore will not have this protection. Of course, if individual charter schools decide to pass anti-zombie rules they're free to do that. In fact, when Eva Moskowitz calls me today I'm gonna make a very strong suggestion that she carefully screen all new teaching candidates, and that she not hire zombies unless there's really no one else they can get. But Eva is a great gal, and if anyone can handle zombie teachers she can, so hey, if she's good with it I'm good with it.

Now sure, a lot of my critics are on my ass because we haven't really fired the volume of unionized teachers we'd been aiming for. But we're working on it. And please, just because I want to fire a lot of teachers doesn't mean that I don't like teachers. I'm just trying to economize, and that's why I'm only targeting those who are unionized. And if there are any zombie advocates out there, let me say that while it's true I'm preventing zombies from working in public schools, there may still be golden opportunities in charters.

After all, who the hell else really wants to teach in places like those?

God or Alcohol?

I was talking to some teachers the other day, and like many of us, they are freaked out of their minds. They say they got into this job because they'd expected a modicum of security, and they're just not feeling it these days. Everywhere you have to dodge falling pianos, and anyone who gets crushed by one is deemed ineffective. (In fairness, it's tough to be an effective teacher after a grand piano has fallen on  your head.)

But I digress. We started talking about the end-term party. I used to go every year, feeling some sort of sacred obligation as chapter leader. But, truth be told, I'm not a huge fan of blaring disco music, and I wasn't fond of being with a bunch of people I really couldn't talk to. I used to go there for a while and quietly slip out when I thought no one was looking. The next day, people would ask, "Hey, did you slip out of that party when you thought no one was looking?" My ninja moves are not as slick as I'd hoped.

But my friends were more excited about it than I was. They were gonna dance. I don't always feel like dancing, although maybe after a few drinks I could be persuaded. The thing is, I have to drive home from this place, and I won't have more than one drink if I'm driving. I spent my wayward youth playing music at bars, and I'm the only musician I know who hasn't been arrested for DUI. I'm trying to keep my record intact and, you know, not get killed or kill anyone while driving home.

But my friends had a plan. They had a designated driver. So it was OK. Then they talked about bringing a flask. I said there was an open bar, so why bother? They countered it was only beer and wine. One of them, evidently, had some sort of liquor that was almost pure alcohol, and no matter how much you drank you could not get a hangover. I was pretty impressed, but not overly tempted. I still would have to drive home, and I still would have to listen to disco music.

But I had to ask--why did they need to drink such intense stuff? Well, you know, the stress of the job. I asked if everyone in their department was an avid drinker. They said no, but that some had found religion. They lived it, breathed it, talked about it all the time. There was no getting away from it. There were two ways to deal with this job, and I needed to choose one right away.

Then we started talking about children. "For God's sake, you're not gonna let your kid be a teacher, are you?" The only reason they hadn't quit yet was because their AP wasn't crazy, but that could change at any minute, and then they'd be at the mercy of Charlotte Danielson and the deranged mind of some random administrator. It was too gruesome to even contemplate.

I'm always sad when people talk about this job as something our children should avoid. I'm very proud when my students tell me they want to do my job. One of my former beginning ESL students is a math teacher at my school, and I smile every time I see her. I'd hate to think we'd left her in a worse position than I was when we began. That's kind of on us, isn't it?

Anyway, according to my colleagues, there were only two ways to deal. You either embraced religion and trusted in divine providence, or embraced alcohol as a way to place it our of your mind. I'm gonna make it my mission in life to try to forge an alternate path.

Impress Your Friends with Pretentious Language!

Actually there are a whole lot of people who fit the description of ultracrepidarian. What DOE reps don't love explaining things they don't understand? In education, they flourish. It's almost a requirement for reformies, who traffic in untested, unproven, misleading, or utterly discredited ideas. As an added benefit, it has the rings of something ready to fall apart at any moment from either physical or moral decay, like Andrew Cuomo.

As my Facebook friend Christina Cortes pointed out, this is a perfect description of Bill Gates. Bill's latest adventure entailed telling underdeveloped countries to raise chickens. Evidently Bill thought they'd never heard of chickens until he informed them of their existence. Next he'll be regaling them with tales of how well they can eat if only they'll vacation at all-inclusive resorts.

Of course if you want to see ultracrepidarianism at work up close, all you need to do is check your rating form. It's a checklist, and when you get it you have to ask yourself this--does it reflect your teaching style or your supervisor's observation style? Is it based on classroom performance or the personal prejudices of your 28-year-old supervisor, his two years of non-Danielson teaching experience, and his mother's important DOE gig?

That, of course, may not be the case. While I'm really outraged by incompetent supervisors, I do know a whole lot of reasonable and thoughtful ones too. So let's say you have one and the first 60% was fine. You looked at the checkboxes and they said you Don't Suck. However, that's not the end of your rating. You have to wait until September, when the junk science portion kicks in. That, of course, is pretty much anybody's guess. Maybe you'll get lucky, and move from Doesn't Suck to Really Doesn't Suck, and thus be observed next year only three times instead of four. That's pretty life-changing, isn't it?

Mulgrew proudly told the DA that most ratings were brought up by the use of junk science. That's good, I suppose, unless you happen to be among those who were not. What if, for example, your MOSL score dragged you from Doesn't Suck all the way down to Really Sucks? Well, that would really suck. You might get visits next year from the UFT Rat Squad, and if they don't like what you see you may have to prove at 3020a that you Don't Suck.  If you can't, you could find yourself working around the block at Arby's, selling curly fries to your former students. I happen to know a very smart and capable young teacher whose rating went down to Really Sucks because she happened to be working at a school with low test scores. She did better this year, but that doesn't make up for the abuses of the idiotic system under which we work.

Perhaps you're asking yourself this--is Mulgrew, who loves this system more than sliced bread, an ultracrepidarian? As far as junk science, I'm gonna have to say no. To his credit, Mulgrew openly admits that he doesn't understand the junk science. He says he has people who do, but no matter what they're telling him, I doubt it. Diane Ravitch says she doesn't understand it. My principal is kind of a data guy--he explains it better than anyone I know, and deals with it pretty well. Despite that, I'm not persuaded anyone on God's green earth actually understands it. I'm not sure it's even meant to be understood.

But Bill Gates acts like he understands it. So does Andy Cuomo and the New York Post. They love them some value-added ratings. We live in a country where Donald Trump is a serious candidate for President and we rate our teachers via a methodology that has no more credibility than voodoo.

I'm not gonna pretend to understand that.

Where Are We Without Union?

Yesterday commenter Bronx ATR remarked on the weak UFT presence in some schools. The letter at left is a pretty good example of what happens when union isn't around. In this case, the administration demands that teachers work after school, on Saturdays, on breaks, and pretty much whenever the hell they are told.

I love the sentence beginning, "I will follow the contractual agreement between the NYC DOE and UFT but..."

I'm reminded of a Shakespeare teacher I had in college. To be honest, I can't remember anything he had to say about Shakespeare but one thing he said, a thing I share with my students, is once anyone says but, you may forget everything that preceded it. I tell my students when your girlfriend says she really loves you but...it's time to look for a new girlfriend.

We will follow the contract but...means we will not follow the contract.  There is no me in team and there is no but in contract. If you wish to alter the contract, there is always the option of an SBO. Until then, there's Article 20, matters not covered, to wit, the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, specifically prohibiting involuntary servitude.

My UFT source tells me the District Rep. was able to dispense with this non-contractual letter fairly easily. I'd still worry, though, that letter or no letter, the administrators who run this place will bully their teachers all over the place. I've gotta seriously doubt there's much of a UFT presence in this school, or this letter would likely not exist. Just because the folks who wrote it agree they won't hold people to it doesn't mean the lowly teachers in their school aren't off on that weekend getaway to the Catskills to do test prep on an outdoor blackboard at the campsite, rain or shine. It doesn't mean they're gonna wake up tomorrow and say, "Hey, you know what? I can have a life!"

Someone has to stand up, ideally everyone. We are role models, and we aren't teaching children how to be chattel. If kids haven't got suitable role models at home, we're the next best thing they have. How do we model character if we're afraid to show it? If we're miserable, how do we model joy? If we hate our jobs, how do we get children to love their lives?

These are not questions that cross the minds of people who write letters like the one above. You may recognize one of the names of the noble, selfless, altruistic and dedicated administrators named in the letter from this piece. Hmmm. If that's true, he has spare time to pursue his interests.

Why shouldn't the teachers who work for him?

I hope the UFT District Rep. read these folks the riot act, and I hope there will be follow up. After all you know what they say. An unprincipled self-serving administrator doesn't change its stripes. OK, they don't say that. But I'm saying it now.

Do you think things will change much at this school? What do you think it will take for small schools to develop union presence? If Fariña merges schools will that help? And how many administrators are simply doing this stuff without writing about it?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Comment from Facebook: No mitigating circumstances. Goodness. That covers everything from accidents with a chainsaw to tornadoes, alien invasions and leprosy. Not to mention every day things like, "My water just broke," "My father died," and "I'm waiting for the firefighter with the jaws of life."~Michael Lambert

Yes, Virginia, APs Can Face Consequences

A big frustration of being chapter leader is to see callous and cruel people working as administrative leaders. Often they get away with murder. I can't say literally, because I haven't got sufficient knowledge to affirm that, but it wouldn't surprise me. Sometimes, though, principals say they've had enough and seem to do things about it.

Early on I worked with an AP who had an odd management style. He would call me into his office and show me people's files. He would tell me they did this, that, and the other thing and try to elicit my sympathy. It was pretty odd, because my job was representing these people, I knew it, and I wasn't going to stop doing it just because of something I saw in a file.

I would get called into his office, he would close the door, and we would get into these circular discussions. He had a very hard time dealing with my repeated failures to accept his point of view. He would refer to me as administration, which was bizarre. I can only suppose by doing that he thought I'd be flattered and go along with whatever nonsense he saw fit to enact. Our meetings would often end with him screaming about something or other. I would excuse myself and walk away.

On one day, he decided that teachers in my school ought to start clocking in. I told him that was unacceptable, as I actually recalled when we stopped doing so, and knew that it wasn't simply because every administrator decided to be kind and forgo the whole clock thing. I called my DR, who found me a copy of the regulation, from sometime in the 80s, that declared schools would set a policy to preclude teachers having to clock in. It said that schools would negotiate a policy.

The AP got an idea. He asked me how I knew we didn't already have a check in policy. I told him if we did that he should show it to me. He handed me a copy of some school rule book. I asked him if it was in there and he said those were all the rules. I didn't find anything relevant, and told him it was on him to find the rule if there was one. He told me it was on me to prove there wasn't one. We went on and on.

After a number of these sessions they became boring to me.  I had better uses of my time than arguing about things we would never resolve and started avoiding him. But when I was directly called into his office I went. Once he asked for an expedited posting for something or other. I gave it to a staff member who was a little upset with him, told her to look ever so carefully at the posting, and told her not to bother getting back to me until she was sure it was absolutely perfect. The AP haunted me, coming into my classroom to ask about it. But my agent wasn't finished checking, and you know, you just can't be too careful these days.

He called me in a second time to resolve the issue of teachers checking in, which was very important to him. Why I have no idea. This discussion became pretty lively and ended with him shouting, loudly enough that people could hear him behind the closed door, "I can do anything I want!"

At my request, we met with the principal. The principal informed him that he could not, in fact, do anything he wanted. There was a contract, there were regulations, and there were laws, and we were all bound by them. I was a new chapter leader and was not expecting a whole lot. I was pretty happy the principal acknowledged the obvious.

Eventually this AP was let go. I was amazed. I thought supervisors from hell just stuck around forever. But this one was sent to another school as, oh my gosh, a teacher! Oh, the ignominy. Oh the injustice of it all! To be reduced to such a lowly status, after having had it all, and after having bought all those suits to look important while having it all. (Full disclosure--I wear suits too, and as a result had to listen in great detail while this AP described his suit size and purchasing process.)

Nonetheless, he bounced back at least twice from what I can deduce. I am amazed at the number of administrators who are able to rise via force of naked ambition. Though they may lack leadership, compassion, common sense, and whatever, they simply crawl above enough people and there they are, making an extra 20K a year or whatever it is, and playing God with that Danielson rubric.

There is that C30 thing, where a panel of teachers, parents and students sit and ask tightly regulated questions, but in the end principals do whatever the hell they want. And if they want someone who will just walk over everyone and anyone, then that's who they get.

I actually do know some teachers who used to be APs, but none of them seem crazy to me. It's hard for me to imagine any of them being that unreasonable, and a few have even told me stories that made them (and me) not want to be an AP. In fairness, that's not a tough argument to sell me, because I've never wanted to be AP in the first place.

I guess if the only important thing in your life is rising up and advancing, you do it one way or another. But people who are about that and nothing else make awful leaders, and they are a big problem for those of us who have to deal with them day to day. They're an even bigger problem, long-term, for those of us who actually care about education and working people. And make no mistake, most, if not all of our students are gonna become working people very soon. They've got enough to deal with without warmed-over Dilbert characters as bosses.

Mr. Mulgrew Writes Me a Letter About Certification

Because I'm a very important guy, Michael Mulgrew, UFT president, wrote me a letter. OK, actually he sent me the same email he sent tens of thousands of other UFT members. But that's not the point. What's the point? Well, the point is more what he didn't say than what he did.

When my students show unwillingness to get up and ask questions, or move into groups, I tell them that I'm an old man with one foot in the grave, and if I can do it, they can too. So maybe that explains why I'm in the situation I'm in.

What exactly is that situation?  I hold permanent certification, and in three areas. I used to use only one, but now that Part 154 demands dual-certified teachers, I use two. Anyway, in August I'm gonna be even older than I am now, and that means I'm gonna have to register. After all, how will NY State know that I exist unless I let them know? There are excellent reasons for this. For example, if a piano were to fall on my head this afternoon, they'd need to make sure I didn't come back as a brain-eating zombie and endanger those with whom I teach and work. But do I have to register three times? President Mulgrew didn't tell me, and no matter how important I deem myself, he can't be bothered answering my email.

Now if I were a more recent teacher, I'd also need to register. But those with more recent licenses also have to count PD hours. What we still don't know is what PD hours actually are. I mean, it's great that we can start the count from zero and not worry about the last few years. Nonetheless, we have no idea what will be counted as PD in the future. Will the school PD, the ones so adored by Carmen Fariña, the ones memorialized into the Memorandum of Agreement, count toward the 20 hours? Will some of them? Will newer teachers have to take online courses? Go to approved PDs? Write a paper on the History of Cement? Who knows?

And while we're at it, how the hell are we going to be evaluated next year? Chalkbeat NY reported that we need not even come to an agreement until December 31st. This is really troublesome. For example, who, if anyone, is going to observe classes? Will it be our supervisors? Outside observers? Will Andrew Cuomo observe the classes himself to ensure they aren't "baloney?" What if Preet gets his ducks in a row and puts Governor Andy in a cell with his pals Dean and Shelley? Will they observe us via remote? Who knows?

It's nice that Mr. Mulgrew takes his valuable time and writes us a letter. I know he's got many other important things to do. But the letter answers one question while leaving many unanswered. A defect I see all too often in UFT leadership is a fervent unwillingness to say, "I don't know." But that's actually the best answer you can give when you don't know. A lot of people have issues admitting that. Maybe it's worse with teachers, as we're expected to know everything.

But I get questions about this stuff every day. I do indeed say, "I don't know." It must be a great burden to have to pretend to know everything all the time. I'm really glad not to have that problem.

Actually, I'm a lot more impressed with people who tell me when they don't know something. While Mulgrew has simply avoided the topic, I've been at meetings with UFT employees where they seem to make stuff up. It's very inconvenient. My default mode is to trust people until they give me reason not to. Maybe I'm naive.

But once I get burned by someone, I don't make the same mistake twice.