Queens Teacher

Billionaires Rule Our Schools

2012-01-21T13:54:00.002-05:00

"The Banker" Explains It All

2011-11-05T10:34:00.003-04:00

The BankerHello, my name is Montague William 3rdAnd what I will tell you may well sound absurdBut the less who believe it the better for meFor you see I'm in Banking and big industryFor many a year we have controlled your livesWhile you all just struggle and suffer in strifeWe created the things that you don't really needYour sports cars and Fashions and Plasma TV'sI remember it clearly how all this begunFamily secrets from Father to SonInherited knowledge that gives me the edgeWhile you peasants, people lie sleeping at night in your bedsWe control the money that controls your livesWhilst you worship false idols and wouldn't think twiceOf selling your souls for a place in the sunThese things that won't matter when your time is doneBut as long as they're there to control the massesI just sit back and consider my assetsSafe in the knowledge that I have it allWhile you common people are losing your jobsYou see I just hold you in utter contemptBut the smile on my face well it makes me exemptFor I have the weapon of global TVWhich gives us connection and invites empathyYou would really believe that we look out for youWhile we Bankers and Brokers are only a fewBut if you saw that then you'd take back the powerHence daily terrors to make you all cowerThe Panics the crashes the wars and the illnessThat keep you from finding your Spiritual WholenessWe rig the game and we buy out both sidesTo keep you enslaved in your pitiful livesSo go out and work as your body clock fadesAnd when it's all over a few years from the graveYou'll look back on all this and just then you'll seeThat your life was nothing, a mere fantasyThere are very few things that we don't now controlTo have Lawyers and Police Force was always a goalDoing our bidding as you march on the streetBut they never realise they're only just sheepFor real power resides in the hands of a fewYou voted for parties what more could you doBut what you don't know is they're one and the sameOld Gordon has passed good old David the reignsAnd you'll follow the leader who was put there by youBut your blood it runs red while our blood runs blueBut you simply don't see its all part of the gameAnother distraction like money and fameGet ready for wars in the name of the freeVaccinations for illness that will never beThe assault on your children's impressionable mindsAnd a micro chipped world, you'll put up no fightInformation suppression will keep you in toeDepopulation of peasants was always our goalBut eugenics was not what we hoped it would beOh yes it was us that funded Nazis!But as long as we own all the media tooWhat's really happening does not concern you So just go on watching your plasma TVAnd the world will be run by the ones you can't see

Occupy the New York City Department Of Education

2011-10-27T21:20:00.000-04:00

The Global Assault on Teachers & their Unions

2011-10-10T09:33:00.003-04:00

Open Letter to Michael Moore

2011-09-23T19:07:00.000-04:00

Mr. Moore,

PLEASE do a documentary ASAP on what's going on with public education. Billionaires and hedge fund managers are pillaging our schools.

Our kids are SUFFERING.

Queens Teacher

Fuzzy Math Isn't Cuddly

2011-09-16T06:45:00.002-04:00

'FUZZY MATH' ISN'T CUDDLY
By MICHELLE MALKIN

Do you know what math curriculum your child is being taught? Are you worried that your third- grader hasn't learned simple multiplication yet? Have you been befuddled by educational jargon such as "spiraling," which is used to explain why your kid keeps bringing home the same insipid busywork of cutting, gluing and drawing? And are you alarmed by teachers who emphasize "self-confidence" over proficiency while their students fall further and further behind? Join the club.

From New York City to Seattle, parents are wising up to math fads like "Everyday Math." Sounds harmless enough, right? It's cleverly marketed as a "University of Chicago" program. Impressive, right? But then you start to sense something's not adding up when your kid starts second grade and comes home with the same kindergarten-level addition and subtraction problems - for the second year in a row.

Then your child keeps telling you that the teacher isn't really teaching anything, just handing out useless worksheets - some of which make no sense to parents with business degrees, medical degrees and PhDs in economics. Then you notice that it's the University of Chicago education department, not the mathematics department, that's behind this nonsense.

Then you Google "Everyday Math" and discover that countless moms and dads just like you - and a few brave teachers with their heads screwed on straight - have had similarly horrifying experiences.

Like the Illinois mom who found these "math" problems in the fifth-grade "Everyday Math" textbook:

A. If math were a color, it would be -, because -.

B. If it were a food, it would be -, because -.

C. If it were weather, it would be -, because -.

Then you realize your child has become a victim of "Fuzzy Math" - the "New New Math," the dumbed-down, politically correct, euphemism-filled edu-folly corrupting schools nationwide.

And then you feel like the subject of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" as you take on the seemingly futile task of waking up other parents and fighting the edu-cracy to restore a rigorous curriculum in your child's classroom.

New York City teacher Matthew Clavel described his frustration with "Everyday Math" in a 2003 City Journal article: "The curriculum's failure was undeniable: Not one of my students knew his or her times tables, and few had mastered even the most basic operations; knowledge of multiplication and division was abysmal . . . what would you do, if you discovered that none of your fourth-graders could correctly tell you the answer to four times eight?"

But don't give up and don't give in. While New York City remains wedded to "Everyday Math" (which became the mandated standard in 2003), Texas just voted to drop the University of Chicago textbooks for third- graders. School-board members lambasted the math program for failing to prepare students for college. It's an important salvo in the math wars because Texas is one of the biggest markets for school textbooks.

Meanwhile, grass-roots groups such as Mathematically Correct (mathematicallycorrect.com) and Where's The Math? (wheresthemath.com) are alerting parents to how their children are being used as educational guinea pigs. And teachers and math professionals who haven't drunk the Kool-Aid are exposing the ruse. Nick Diaz, a Maryland educator, wrote a letter to his local paper:

"The proponents of fuzzy math claim that the new approach provides a 'deep conceptual understanding.' Those words, however, hide the truth. Students today are not expected to master basic addition, subtraction and multiplication. These fundamental skills are necessary for a truly deep understanding of math, but fuzzy math advocates are masters at using vocabulary that sounds good to parents, but means something different to educators."

If Fuzzy Math were a color, it would be neon green like those Mr. Yuk labels warning children not to ingest poison. Do not swallow!

No Child Left Behind: The Scam of the Century and How Students Are Paying the Price

2011-09-05T08:00:00.003-04:00

By Jim Arnold
Superintendent of Pelham City Schools in Mitchell County, Georgia

We’ve done it now. Eleven years we had to educate the public, to register our protests and do everything in our power to warn people what was coming, and we blew it. We knew the moment would eventually come and we hem-hawed, looked at the ground, kicked at the dirt with our shoes and failed to look the opposition in the eye and face them down. All of us saw this coming, but very few took a stand and now we – and our students – are paying the price. We could have been prophets but failed the test.

We allowed the proponents of NCLB to control the discussion from the beginning. They wrote the language, sent out the media notices and explanations, wrote the definitions of AYP, Highly Qualified and leaned heavily on the fact that none of us would dare protest anything to do with a name that implies we would be providing a high quality education for every single child in America. They were right. We chose not to speak out, not to fight against a system we knew from the beginning would set us all up for failure, and instead, in our best Dudley DoRight impersonations we set about to change the way we taught and measured and tested and graded and thought.

We knew from the outset that NCLB and its goal of 100 percent – every child proficient in every area as determined by a single test on a single day each year – was patently, blatantly and insidiously absurd, but we took no concerted action. We knew Adequate Yearly Progress was a sham, and we literally and figuratively rolled over and tried our best to meet whatever impossible goals they set for us and our students. We knew that Federal law in NCLB was a violation of Federal law in IDEA but we went along with the insanity of testing Students with Disabilities based on chronological age rather than by IEP.

We learned very quickly and much to our chagrin that some student scores – usually the lowest ones – were counted not once, not twice, but often as many as three times, but we went along to get along. All of us were aware that Highly Qualified, for all the high rhetoric that went along with it, only served to make certification as much of a barrier as humanly possible for Special Education teachers regardless of degree or experience. It seems the teachers we needed most were subjected to the greatest roadblocks to reaching the nirvana of HiQ certification.

We tried our best to play the game but the game was rigged from the start. When the AMO’s were low it was pretty easy for most schools. When the AMO’s went up and more and more schools were labeled “failing” we looked around in a panic for help. Surely nobody believed a school deserved the failing label because two or three kids in a subgroup didn’t pass a test? Yes they did. Yes they still do. We let them make the definitions and apply the labels, even when we realized the absurdity of it all.

We actually pretended to believe that it was important for us to make sure that every child was tested on those all important test days so none could escape the trauma we inflicted upon them. We even learned in some places to game the system and hold back those kids we feared might not pass the test or might raise those student numbers to create a subgroup in areas we really didn’t want to see a subgroup or, God help us, to cheat or to make sure that we could hold out two or three or four of “those kids” on test days so their poor scores wouldn’t have a negative effect.

Oh sure, some of you stuck your necks out and said something to the effect of “NCLB forced us to take a closer look at ourselves, and we are better off for that” in spite of the fact that it was our students that were suffering the consequences. What balderdash. What hubris. Our kids were the ones whose education was stilted by our submission to the belief that one test could effectively distill and determine the depth and extent of an entire year of a child’s education. They are the ones whose time was wasted by “academic pep rallies” and “test prep” and by the subtle and insidious ways we told them the test was “important” and put pressure on them to “do their best because our school is counting on you.”

They were the ones that did without art and music and chorus and drama because we increased the amount of time they spent in ELA and Math. They were the ones that had time in their Social Studies and Science classes cut back more and more so schools could focus on the “really important areas” of ELA and Math. They were the ELL’s that couldn’t speak English but still had to take the test. Their teachers were the ones that were told “your grading of the children in your classes doesn’t count any more because standardization is more important to us that the individual grades you provide.” This told them in effect that their efforts at teaching were important but only if they taught using “this” methodology or “this” curriculum, then, when things started to go badly, they were the first to be blamed for the failure of public education. They were told to teach every child the same way with the same material but make sure to individualize while you’re at it. Hogwash.

After a couple of years of this insanity, the “NI” status began to take its toll. Someone somewhere invented the term “failing schools” and, unsurprisingly, the label stuck. Students were given the opportunity to transfer to more test-successful schools, but at a price. Schools that did not meet AYP standards, oddly enough, were often those with high minority populations and high poverty. Nobody seemed to notice the zip code effect that left predominantly white schools meeting AYP standards and minority schools caught by the “failing” label. Oh surely, we reasoned, our government would not want to put public education in a situation it could not win………..or would they?

I struggled with the rest of you as to why NCLB would go to such great lengths to make public education appear to be such a failure, to set up a system that would guarantee failure for practically every public school as we advanced toward that magical 100 percent level and provide no tangible rewards for success and such punitive actions for not meeting arbitrary goals. On top of all of that, I failed to recognize why our nation’s legislators so nimbly avoided even the discussion of reauthorization to change what everyone knew was a failed policy. One day it finally hit me.

They didn’t want to change the policy, because the policy was designed in theory and in fact not to aid education but to create an image of a failed public school system in order to further the implementation of vouchers and the diversion of public education funds to private schools.

I am not usually a conspiracy theory guy, but this was no theory. These were cold hard facts slapping me in the face. We failed in our obligations to protect our students from one of the most destructive educational policies since “separate but equal.” We did not educate the public on the myth and misdirection of Adequate Yearly Progress, and we allowed closet segregationists to direct the implementation of policies that we knew would result in our being the guys in the black hats responsible for “the failure of public education.”

Now we are paying the price. AYP is here to stay in one form or another, and the vast majority of our parents and public really believe the propaganda that it actually measures a school’s educational progress. If we try to convince them otherwise we are “making excuses.”

Vouchers – especially for private and charter schools exempt from the same restrictive, destructive policies we are forced to endure – are a part of every legislative session in almost every state. High stakes testing for all public education students is considered a necessary reality and teachers are leaving the profession in droves. Student test scores will soon determine teacher pay in some places even with no data to support the correlation. Students that do not graduate high school in four years are labeled as dropouts, even if they graduate in nine or 10 semesters.

Only first-time test takers are considered in the grading system for schools regardless of how many students ultimately pass the test. It will take years to undo the damage done to science, social studies, fine arts, foreign languages and other academic electives. Generations will not be enough to rid ourselves and our students of the testing mania neuroses created by our attempts to quantify the unquantifiable.

I hope the generation of teachers and administrators that follows has learned something from the failure of our generation to ward off those determined to destroy public education. We didn’t stand up to be counted, we didn’t stand in the schoolhouse door and tell them they couldn’t do that to our kids, and we didn’t educate the public about what a gigantic failure another one size fits all education policy would be. In the words of that great educator and philosopher Jimmy Buffet: “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”

We have all been left behind.

The Threat of Accountabalism

2011-09-03T08:26:00.001-04:00

The Threat of Accountabalism

Phillip C. Schlechty

This practice has worked its way into public education, and now it's gobbling up our young.

Public education in the United States is slowly being overwhelmed by what business consultant David Weinberger calls accountabalism.1

According to Weinberger, accountabalism is "the practice of eating sacrificial victims in an attempt to magically ward off evil." He goes on to write,

Because accountability suggests that there is a right and a wrong answer to every question, it flourishes where we can measure results exactly. It spread to schools—where it is eating our young—as a result of our recent irrational exuberance about testing, which forces education to become something that can be measured precisely.

For accountabalism to take hold of schools, the accountabalists must first be convinced that we can accurately measure important results of education—and then they must convince others of this. Many policymakers and business leaders believe that precise measures of school-based learning are possible, and many school board members, superintendents, and principals have been persuaded that this is so.

A Narrow Agenda
The unfortunate fact is that relying on standardized test scores as a primary tool for holding schools and teachers accountable encourages policymakers to frame problems in the simplest possible terms. For example, as I listen to boards of education and some journalists speak of the challenges of underperforming schools, I come away with the sad impression that many of them have erroneously concluded that the problem with these schools is quite simple: Too many students are marking the wrong answers.

Defining the problem in this way leads to an equally simple solution: Provide incentives—monetary and otherwise—to encourage the development of strategies, procedures, and programs that result in more students marking more right answers. There's no need to worry about whether students are learning more or whether they can retain what they learn to pass the test. What's important is to focus on improving test scores—learning will take care of itself. Unfortunately, such nonsensical thinking guides much of what nowadays passes for school reform.

The consequence of this folly is that more and more teachers are succumbing to the pressure to focus on the test rather than on students and on what they want students to do, learn, and become. And more and more students are spending increasing amounts of time in "test prep," learning the most effective techniques for gaming the test—such as discarding obviously wrong answers and getting the number of remaining options down to a reasonable number so they can place a bet on an answer with a fair chance of winning.

Many teachers with whom I talk feel bad about being forced to do this. But like the shaman in a primitive tribe who is secretly dubious about the power of the rain dance to bring rain but who does it "just in case," many teachers engage in much that their schools prescribe out of fear that if they fail to comply, the gods may frown on them or accuse them of the "soft bigotry of low expectations."

Many educators sincerely believe that given time, resources, and community support, we can improve the level and quality of student learning in dramatic ways; these same educators also seriously doubt that the present accountabalist mantra can improve the quality of schooling. Too few, however, have the time to consider the kinds of innovations that would produce the desired ends. Why? Because they're pressured by the accountabalists to concentrate on getting a few more students to mark a few more right answers. Making sure that every student has a quality learning experience will need to wait for another day—at least until after students take the test.

Accountabalism has other deleterious consequences as well. Developing young people who grow up to be men and women who take pride in their work and believe in the intrinsic value of what they do is not on the accountabalists' agenda. Pride, after all, is difficult to measure, as are commitment and many other human sentiments that teachers once felt duty-bound to nurture.

The Real Accountability Problem
Accountabalism also encourages bureaucratization and fragmentation. Indeed, because of the ascendancy of accountabalism, state and federal mandates have supplanted the authority of the local community in shaping how to run its schools. Consequently, local schools that were once viewed as sources of community pride are increasingly being seen as extensions of the government, judged more by nameless and faceless "experts" located in think tanks in Washington, D.C., than by local community leaders.

No longer are the public schools accountable to the public. Rather, they're accountable to government officials—and this means to government bureaucracies.

One of the problems with this approach, of course, is the growing concern that the government is not as accountable to the public as it should be. As distrust of the government increases, so does distrust of the schools. Community trust is an essential ingredient in school success. Rather than putting government officials between the public and the schools, we should find better ways to make local schools accountable to the public and to ensure that the standards that the local community upholds are of value to students and society.

Historian David Tyack has observed that there was a time when "locally controlled school districts were almost a fourth branch of government."2 I continue to view them this way. In the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, I believe that we should view education as a public function and that schools should belong to the public just as the other branches of our government do.

Like the legislative branch and the executive branch, the "education branch" is under the obligation to live within the context of both the federal and state constitutions. The courts can and do intervene when local education practices run counter to those principles. However, schools should not be accountable to either the legislative or the executive branches of the federal government, and state constitutions should tread lightly on the right of citizens to run their schools. Governments should encourage local communities to establish great schools, but great schools are more likely to exist when they're run by—and accountable to—the citizens they're intended to serve rather than when they're accountable to bureaucrats in the state house.

Creating the Citizens We Need
An educated citizenry is the major check against government tyranny. To turn schools into government instruments is to present a too-tempting target for those who would use them to advance their particular views and ideologies rather than use them to develop the critical skills students need to evaluate those views and ideologies. Public education in the United States is a bulwark of democracy only as long as it serves the interest of the public—and only as long as the citizens who make up that public have the skills, understandings, and habits of mind that will ensure that the other branches of government do the same.

This idea is important to remember in times when lack of civility and reasonableness are all too common in the halls of Congress and in legislative chambers throughout the United States. As James Madison's "Federalist No. 10" reminds us, factions and interest groups will destroy democratic institutions unless we guard ourselves against them. One of the chief protections against the damage they can do is an educated citizenry committed to, and active in preserving, the common good.

We will not develop the kind of citizens we need in schools that are dominated by impersonal rules and regulations and that serve ends prescribed by the government. We need schools that are vital learning organizations embedded in strong, vibrant, and concerned communities. We can create these schools only when local communities once again assert their right to run their schools.

Endnotes
1 Weinberger, D. (2007, February). The folly of accountabalism. Harvard Business Review, pp. 24–25.

2 Tyack, D. (2003). Seeking common ground: Public schools in a diverse society. Boston: Harvard University Press. p. 2.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Phillip C. Schlechty is founder and chief executive officer of the Schlechty Center, Louisville, Kentucky.

The Melting Middle Class

2011-08-26T12:47:00.002-04:00

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont explains how the super rich are putting this country in a downward spiral.

Two Teachers and a Microphone

2011-08-24T22:32:00.001-04:00

Duncan really has to go.

Shame on the Puppets

2011-08-19T08:31:00.000-04:00

Bronx High School Principal Resigns From "System Not Designed to Support Children or Educators"

2011-08-17T13:01:00.003-04:00

From EdVox blog
————————————–

Dear Faculty, Staff and Friends of Banana Kelly,

It is with a heavy heart that I announce my decision to resign as principal of Banana Kelly High School.

This decision has been a very difficult one as Banana Kelly has been an integral part of my life for the past 12 years.

The Banana Kelly team, students, faculty and community partners have been an inspiration and my greatest teachers. I am incredibly proud of the work we have done together and all that we have accomplished. What I am most proud of is that we have created a school community that is willing to take sides and the side we have taken is the side of children.

This team has made tremendous sacrifices to stake out that ground and insure what we do is in service of children. People here stay late, work long after hours on a regular basis and have devoted tremendous energy to building a learning platform for children who are otherwise often pushed out, discarded or ignored.

Many of you recognize that our current educational system is not designed to support these children nor the educators who work with them. Yet you have chosen this noble profession and the South Bronx as your venue. Your efforts, energy and intellectual contributions are nothing less than heroic and I am very proud of all that we have accomplished.

The past few years have been extremely difficult, filled with new policy mandates in programming and accountability and changes in our student population. These came without the bare bones minimums in the extra resources and faculty that we and so many other schools serving poorer communities clamor for. In spite of this, we did not blame the children, who are some of the neediest in the city. We rolled up our sleeves and did the work that was required – supporting students as best we could – academically and emotionally. And we continued to build important partnerships, such as Elevate, Build-On and HS Squared. Students spoke out on behalf of our school and the community continues to support us.

In the face of the urgent needs of schools in the city’s poorer communities our educational system chose to create a mix, or portfolio of charter schools, schools for the gifted and talented, exam schools and others that screen out the neediest students, the ones most in need of help.

That ‘creaming’ strategy created and continues to create a greater number of schools for students who are already doing well. But the ‘portfolio of schools’ strategy fails to provide the additional resources, personnel and commitment, needed for poorer schools in underserved communities, such as ours in the South Bronx. Although Banana Kelly was able to do well for most of the past 12 years, we were consistently denied the resources and expertise required to make substantial academic and social gains with the children assigned to our care

In fact the strategy had allowed and even encouraged the racial re-segregation of NYC schools and revived, in practice, the failed and illegal doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ struck down decades ago by the US Supreme Court.

This past year Banana Kelly found itself in an increasingly difficult position. In seeking to meet the arbitrary and unreasonable targets set out by Federal standards, the new policy mandates coming from NY State did not account for all the progress our students have made and for the many factors outside of school that contributed to their difficulties but are consistently ignored by policy makers. In December of 2010 Banana Kelly joined a list of schools deemed Persistently Low Achieving.

We have continued to struggle and strengthen our collective energies to keep the school intact and the kids ready for graduation.

When I joined the Banana Kelly family, I believed we were going to change education. Today I am more committed than ever to the need for real change, particularly for schools that serve children like ours. However, I am not optimistic about the prospects of the current system leading that change.

I will miss you all and this place greatly. Thank you for your support throughout the years, particularly during these most recent months.

With much love and many regrets,

Joshua Laub

What principals didn't realize was that the system that turned on its teachers, had every intention of doing so to its adminstrators as soon as they didn't need them anymore.

Interview With Diane Ravitch

2011-08-15T22:35:00.001-04:00

Dr. Diane Ravitch Interview from Richard D'Angelo on Vimeo.

Why do the Koch brothers want to end public education?

2011-08-14T20:52:00.002-04:00

Public Sector Employees & Unions

2011-08-10T12:20:00.001-04:00

Chileans Protest Privatization of Schools

2011-08-05T08:41:00.002-04:00

Matt Damon Says Stop the War on Teachers

2011-08-03T06:25:00.000-04:00

Even Matt Damon Gets It

2011-07-31T14:09:00.003-04:00

I am so crushing on this guy right now..

For Republicans Who Hate Taxes & Government

2011-07-27T17:36:00.001-04:00

Found a great comment that I had to share

So, you’re a Republican that hates taxes? Well, since you do not like taxes or government, please kindly do the following.

1. Do not use Medicare.
2. Do not use Social Security
3. Do not become a member of the US military, who are paid with ta...x dollars.
4. Do not ask the National Guard to help you after a disaster.
5. Do not call 911 when you get hurt.
6. Do not call the police to stop intruders in your home.
7. Do not summon the fire department to save your burning home.
8. Do not drive on any paved road, highway, and interstate or drive on any bridge.
9. Do not use public restrooms.
10. Do not send your kids to public schools.
11. Do not put your trash out for city garbage collectors.
12. Do not live in areas with clean air.
13. Do not drink clean water.
14. Do not visit National Parks.
15. Do not visit public museums, zoos, and monuments.
16. Do not eat or use FDA inspected food and medicines.
17. Do not bring your kids to public playgrounds.

The Hatchet Job On Linda Darling-Hammond

2011-07-26T08:49:00.003-04:00

Gerald Bracey
The Hatchet Job On Linda Darling-Hammond

When Senator Clinton was still a candidate for president, both she and Senator Obama sought counsel from an educator friend of mine. He told them both not to say anything about education. No matter what you say, he told me that he told them, you're going to make a lot of people mad (he made his point in more colorful language). Oh, man, how right can you be?

In the run-up to Obama's picking a secretary, two sides formed in a debate over the desiderata for a secretary and might have duked it out, but only one side was permitted to throw punches in public. It wasn't Dems vs. the GOP. Indeed, that huge sucking sound you hear is Republicans trying to control their laughter. The two groups are largely within the Democratic Party. They might duke it out still because some see secretary of education-designate, Arne Duncan, as the right man in the right place and others see him as evil incarnate (though not quite so incarnate as Joel Klein or Michelle Rhee). If not evil incarnate, a man to further the corporatization of education and the commodification of childhood.

The winners in the fight-that-wasn't were the people who managed to get themselves anointed by the mainstream media--or "corporate media" as some call them--as reformers. They thereby once again illustrated George Lakoff's powerful concept of "frame." This gang consisted of Mike Bloomberg, Joel Klein, Paul Vallas, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan and, weirdly enough, Al Sharpton. Really. It is useful to remember that "reform" means only to reshape, not necessarily improve.

The losers were actual educators in schools and universities who were mostly not permitted in the ring. The "reformers'" advocates managed to label their opposition candidate, Stanford's Linda Darling-Hammond, as an instrument of the "status quo" and as a teachers union tool. Ludicrous? Yes, but it happened.

In Newsweek, Jonathan Alter wrote that Obama knew "that if he chooses a union-backed candidate such as Linda Darling-Hammond...he'll have a revolt on his hands from the swelling ranks of reformers." Swelling ranks? Says who? Edward Sarby in the New Republic asked "How dangerous is Linda Darling-Hammond, Obama's old-school, pro-union education guru?" "Worst case scenario," answered Mike Petrilli of the Right-wing Fordham Institute. The Washington Post said the secretariat was "A Job for a Reformer." It described the choice as between "warring camps within the Democratic party, those pushing for radical restructuring and those more wedded to the status quo." After Obama selected Duncan, the Post ran a puff piece on his sterling qualities.

The "reformers" panicked at one point because Darling-Hammond, who had served as Obama's proxy in several education policy debates, was named to head the education sector of his transition team. They worried this signaled future elevation to secretary. David Brooks in the New York Times said, "I got a flurry of phone calls from reform leaders nervous that Obama was about to side against them...The stakes are huge. For the first time in decades there is real momentum for reform." Brooks apparently has been holed up in the same cave as bin Laden, only longer, say, 50 years.

Aside from a few letters to editors and blogs, about the only published support for Darling-Hammond came from John Affeldt in the Huffington Post, Alfie Kohn in The Nation, and the San Francisco Chronicle in an editorial. Fred Klonsky's blog called the one-sided and often loaded language used by the pro "reformers" bunch as "The hatchet job on Darling-Hammond." Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) emphatically agreed and headlined its take on the sad affair, "The media's failing grade on education 'debate.'"

FAIR observed, "One prominent exception to the corporate media's one-sided presentation of the education nominee was Sam Dillon's news article in the New York Times. Not only did it avoid caricaturing Darling-Hammond by citing views of both her critics and supporters, the article included some accurate media criticism:

"'Editorials and opinion articles in the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have described the debate as pitting education reformers against those representing the educational establishment or the status quo. But who the reformers are depends on who is talking.'"

"Unfortunately," continued FAIR, "in most establishment media accounts, only one side has been allowed to do the talking."

Amen, FAIR and Sam.

Fred Klonsky's brother, Mike, suggests that Duncan, once out from under the thumb of Chicago Mayor Daley might be "neither as bad as some on the Left have predicted or as 'good' as some on the Right are hoping for." We can only hope Mike's called this one right. In the meantime, we wuz framed.

Please Mr. President, Listen to Teachers

2011-07-23T13:53:00.001-04:00

Teach for America Honors Joel Klein

2011-07-21T18:25:00.003-04:00

Honoring Joel Klein: FOR WHAT???

It's the Poverty Stupid

2011-07-16T12:27:00.001-04:00

Professor Michael Marder

After looking at the data, Marder has yet to be convinced that any teaching solution has been found that can overcome the detrimental effects of poverty on a large scale — and that we may be looking for solutions in the wrong place.

Demand

2011-07-13T17:42:00.010-04:00

Discredited programs (Teachers College & Everyday Math) being used to create the DEMAND for test prep materiel$

Textbooks being thrown out to create the DEMAND for technology programs courtesy of Joel Klein

Veteran principals being pushed out in droves creating the DEMAND for incompetents coming from the Leadership Academy

Public schools being denied resources and being generally crappified to create the DEMAND for charter schools

Common Core Standards being forced on schools to create DEMAND for more test$ and test prep material$ aligned with standards

Veteran teachers being pushed out to create the DEMAND for cheap rookie teacher temps from programs like Teach for America

Class sizes increasing to create the DEMAND for online learning programs when a competent teacher is no longer needed

Schools given letter grades to create the DEMAND for worthless consultants to come in and "help" a school given a low grade

Students learning virtually nothing to fulfill the DEMAND for future unskilled workers

Who says the business model doesn't work for education???

How To Take Down a Teachers Union

2011-07-10T11:24:00.000-04:00

Reformers' Agenda Crumbling

2011-07-07T19:23:00.002-04:00

No, Seriously: No Excuses
By PAUL TOUGH

In the early days of the education-reform movement, a decade or so ago, you’d often hear from reformers a powerful rallying cry: “No excuses.” For too long, they said, poverty had been used as an excuse by complacent educators and bureaucrats who refused to believe that poor students could achieve at high levels. Reform-minded school leaders took the opposite approach, insisting that students in the South Bronx should be held to the same standards as kids in Scarsdale. Amazingly enough, those high expectations often paid off, producing test results at some low-income urban schools that would impress parents in any affluent suburb.

Ten years later, you might think that reformers would be feeling triumphant. Spurred in part by the Obama administration’s Race to the Top initiative, many states have passed laws reformers have long advocated: allowing for more charter schools, weakening teachers’ tenure protections, compensating teachers in part based on their students’ performance. But in fact, the mood in the reform camp seems increasingly anxious and defensive.

Last month, Diane Ravitch, an education scholar who has emerged as the most potent critic of the reform movement, wrote an Op-Ed for this newspaper arguing that raising high-poverty schools to consistently high levels of proficiency is much more difficult and less common than reformers make it out to be. When politicians hold up specific schools in low-income neighborhoods as success stories, Ravitch wrote, those successes often turn out, on closer examination, to be less spectacular than they appear. She mentioned the Bruce Randolph School in Denver, which President Obama singled out in his 2011 State of the Union address as an example of “what good schools can do,” and the Urban Prep Academy in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, which the education secretary, Arne Duncan, praised in a speech in February. Each school graduates a very high percentage of its seniors, but, Ravitch said, test scores at those schools suggested that students were below average in the basic academic skills necessary for success in college and in life.

The backlash was quick and intense. Duncan said that Ravitch was “insulting all of the hardworking teachers, principals and students all across the country who are proving her wrong every day.” Jonathan Alter, a columnist for Bloomberg View, wrote that she was “sliming reformers” and later, when he and Ravitch appeared together on a Denver radio show, accused her of “abusing statistics” in her analysis of the schools’ achievement-test scores.

The Bruce Randolph school, Alter explained, “should not be compared to other Colorado schools in affluent neighborhoods”; to consider Randolph’s scores alongside those of white, middle-class schools was like “comparing apples and oranges.” Instead, he argued, the school should be judged on the “stunning” fact that its ninth-grade writing-proficiency rates had doubled since 2007, improving to 15 percent of the class from 7 percent, and that its ninth-grade math-proficiency rates had risen to 14 percent of the class from 5 percent.

A week later, the founder of Urban Prep, Tim King, took to The Huffington Post to defend his school against Ravitch’s charges. King acknowledged that just 17 percent of his 11th-grade students passed the statewide achievement test last year, while in the Chicago public schools as a whole, the comparable figure was 29 percent. But echoing Alter’s fruit metaphor, he wrote that Ravitch was comparing “apples to grapefruits” by holding the students at Urban Prep, who are almost all black males from low-income families, to the standards of “children from all across Chicago.”

To point out the obvious: These are excuses. In fact, they are the very same excuses for failure that the education-reform movement was founded to oppose. (If early reformers believed in anything, it was that every student is an apple.) And not only are they excuses; they aren’t even particularly persuasive ones. By any reasonable measure, students at Bruce Randolph are doing very badly. The average ACT score at Randolph last year was 14, the second-lowest average of any high school in Denver, placing students in the bottom 10 percent of ACT test-takers nationwide. In the middle school, composite scores on state tests put students at the first percentile in reading and writing (meaning that at 99 percent of Colorado schools, students are scoring better), and at the fifth percentile in math. As for Urban Prep: demographic data show that the school’s students are not, in fact, disadvantaged grapefruits among well-to-do apples when compared with the city’s student population as a whole; 84 percent of its students are low-income and 99.8 percent are nonwhite, while in Chicago public schools, 86 percent of students are low-income and 91 percent are nonwhite.

We can quibble about fruit all day, but a more productive response would be to recommit to the principle that 15 (or 17) percent proficiency just isn’t good enough, no matter where you live. To acknowledge this fact is not to say that reform is doomed; it is not blaming students or insulting teachers. It is merely reminding ourselves that the 83 percent of 11th-grade students at Urban Prep who didn’t pass the state exam, and the 85 percent of 9th-grade students at Bruce Randolph who didn’t pass the state writing test, deserve better.

So why are some reformers resorting to excuses? Most likely for the same reason that urban educators from an earlier generation made excuses: successfully educating large numbers of low-income kids is very, very hard. But it is not impossible, as reformers have repeatedly demonstrated on a small scale. To achieve systemwide success, though, we need a shift in strategy.

The reformers’ policy goals are, in most cases, quite worthy. Yes, contracts should be renegotiated so that the best teachers are given incentives to teach in the poorest schools, and yes, school systems should extend the school day and school year for low-income students, as many successful charter schools have done. But these changes are not nearly sufficient. As Paul Reville, the Massachusetts secretary of education, wrote recently in Education Week, traditional reform strategies “will not, on average, enable us to overcome the barriers to student learning posed by the conditions of poverty.” Reformers also need to take concrete steps to address the whole range of factors that hold poor students back. That doesn’t mean sitting around hoping for utopian social change. It means supplementing classroom strategies with targeted, evidence-based interventions outside the classroom: working intensively with the most disadvantaged families to improve home environments for young children; providing high-quality early-childhood education to children from the neediest families; and, once school begins, providing low-income students with a robust system of emotional and psychological support, as well as academic support.

School reformers often portray these efforts as a distraction from their agenda — something for someone else to take care of while they do the real work of wrestling with the teachers’ unions. But in fact, these strategies are essential to the success of the school-reform movement. Pretending they are not is just another kind of excuse.

Paul Tough, a contributing writer, is the author of “Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America.” His next book, “The Success Equation,” will be published next year.

Students Being Prepared for Cheap Labor Market

2011-07-05T08:13:00.000-04:00

Students Being Prepared for Cheap Labor Market

The basis of American education is found in the Wilsonian model. That model perpetuates the economic class system which is dependent on cheap labor and poverty. The broad purpose of American education is to train the children to become workers, not capitalists. This in a capitalist's national economic.

When was the last time you heard of capitalists going into the poorest school districts and teaching those children how they will acquire capital and how to participate in the national economic as capitalists?

No, that does not happen. Children are taught to be present and on time, be quiet and polite, be sober, be compliant by following orders, not question "authority", not discuss wages with others, etc. In other words public education prepares American children to be cheap labor.

An education does not guarantee wages greater than the wages of poverty which America's capitalist oligarchy has enacted through legislation. American children are not taught that a democracy cannot enact legislation which allows a capitalist to pay wages of poverty, but a capitalist oligarchy can.

American children are not taught that at the inception of the nation, to participate in the vaunted democracy one had to be a white, land owning male and that the national economic was reliant on slavery. They are not taught how slavery disenfranchised non-land owners through their having to compete with the agency of the false economic of slavery.

American children are not taught that "competing in the world market" as labor means competing with forced labor and labor from countries where a dollar a day is the norm.

A glaring example of the failure of American education can be seen in recent college grads who have $30k plus in debt. Debt, except for the capitalist lender, leads to economic disenfranchisement in a capitalist economic. Capitalist employers legally are required to pay no more than the minimum wage, regardless of educational achievement of the employee. This reality seems to have been missed by those graduating with such debt. America's economic reality is waiting to kick them square in the teeth.

"Over 20% of children live in poverty" in America. What's the surprise? Every Senator is a millionaire with vested self-interests. Poverty has been legislated by the capitalist oligarchy which runs America. How can a vaunted democracy legislate its citizens to work to live in poverty? Wilsonian based education treats this as an economic norm in preparing the future labor force.

American educated Americans participate in the Circus Maximus of electing their oppressors.

Americans are taught denial and superstition through division.

Job loss does not exist for American workers because they do not own the jobs. One cannot lose what one does not own. The capitalists still own the jobs. Capital is fungible and has no national obligations. Capital can hire cheap foreign labor in foreign countries to produce the goods. A lack of environmental and social concern in these foreign countries makes their markets even more attractive than the American market to any half-baked capitalist.

Americans are not taught about the decline of the democracy of Athens, which America's democracy so mirrors. Nor do the vast majority take it upon themselves to be historically informed. That explains why in America entertainers are more valued than teachers, they provide a compelling diversion from the reality of the capitalist oligarchy and a "democratically" legislated poverty.

American educators, how can the vaunted DEMOCRACY which you profess legislate its citizens into poverty?

NEA Fights Back

2011-07-04T09:35:00.001-04:00

NEA goes after Education Secretary Arne Duncan

Here’s the resolution adopted today by the NEA’s legislative body:

ADOPTED AS AMENDED

The NEA Representative Assembly directs the NEA President to communicate aggressively, forcefully, and immediately to President Barack Obama and US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that NEA is appalled with Secretary Duncan’s practice of:

1. Weighing in on local hiring decisions of school and school district personnel.

2. Supporting local decisions to fire all school staff indiscriminately, such as his comments regarding the planned firings in Central Falls, RI.

3. Supporting inappropriate use of high-stakes standardized test scores for both student achievement and teacher evaluation, all while acknowledging that the currently available tests are not good.

4. Failing to recognize the shortcomings of offering to support struggling schools or states, but only in exchange for unsustainable state ‘reform’ policy.

5. Focusing too heavily on competitive grants that by design leave most students behind-particularly those in poor neighborhoods, rural areas, and struggling schools-instead of foundational formula funding designed to help all the students who need the most support.

6. Not adequately addressing the unrealistic Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements that brand thriving or improving schools as failures.

7. Forcing local school districts to choose from a pre-determined menu of school improvement models that are unproven and have been shown to be ineffective and bear little resemblance to the actual needs of the school that is struggling.

8. Focusing so heavily on charter schools that viable and proven innovative school models (such as magnet schools) have been overlooked, and simultaneously failing to highlight with the same enthusiasm the innovation in our non-charter public schools.

9. Failing to recognize both the danger inherent in overreliance on a single measurement and the need for multiple indicators when addressing and analyzing student achievement and educators’ evaluations.

10. Failing to recognize the need for systemic change that helps ALL students and relies on shared responsibility by all stakeholders, rather than competitive grant programs that spur bad, inappropriate, and short-sighted state policy.

11. Failing to recognize the complexities of school districts that do not have the resources to compete for funding, particularly in rural America, and failing to provide targeted and effective support for those schools and school districts.

12. Failing to respect and honor the professionalism of educators across this country, including but not limited to holding public education roundtables and meetings without inviting state and local representatives of the teachers, education support professionals, and faculty and staff; promoting programs that lower the standards for entry into the profession; focusing so singularly on teachers in the schools that the other critical staff members and higher education faculty and staff have been overlooked in the plans for improving student learning throughout their educational careers.

13. Perpetuating the myth that there are proven, top-down prescribed ‘silver bullet’ solutions and models that actually will address the real problems that face public education today, rather than recognizing that what schools need is a visionary Secretary of Education that sets broad goals and tasks states, local schools districts, schools, educators, and communities with meeting those goals.

Further, the NEA Representative Assembly directs the NEA Executive Committee to develop and implement an aggressive action plan in collaboration with state and local leaders that will address the issues above.

Starting November 2011, the NEA President will provide regular updates to the delegates on the progress of this plan throughout the year.

Linda Darling-Hammond on State of American Public Education

2011-07-03T08:04:00.006-04:00

MUST SEE VIDEO

Linda Darling-Hammond gives an excellent presentation on the problems with Race to the Top, the obsession with testing, not funding schools properly, charter school movement, Teach for America, importance of having experienced teachers in our classrooms, how our schools compare to other nations' schools, etc.

Dr. Darling-Hammond quotes Martin Luther King, Jr. -
“Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but because conscience tells one it is right.”

When will deformers understand that in the end they are wrong and are hurting kids??

Charter School Profit First

2011-07-02T10:58:00.002-04:00

Charter schools: Moneymakers for hedge funds

By CYRIL JOSH BARKER Amsterdam News Staff

As the controversy about the co-location of charter schools continues to rage throughout the city, another issue has been raised: Hedge funds are making tremendous profits off charter schools while public school students lose already-scarce dollars because of the presence of the schools.

The charter school movement represents only a tiny fraction of the more than one million students in the New York public school system. But because of the charter school presence, hundreds of thousands of regular New York City kids are getting fewer dollars.

In a recent report by the New York City Independent Budget Office (IBO), it was revealed that money being spent on charter schools is being diverted away from regular schools. As more charter schools are created, more money is pumped into the charter school movement.

Many charter schools are also getting private sector money that public schools cannot access.

According to George Sweeting of the IBO, money for charter schools is calculated on a per capita basis. A fixed formula is set by the state and the number doesn't change.

"The reason for the charter schools' flow of dollars is because the number of schools and enrollment is increasing," Sweeting said. "However, it's not going up for the coming year."

He added that $13,000-$14,000 is spent per child in charter schools. He also pointed out that charter schools often open with only one or two grades and add more later on. As the schools get larger, more money from the Department of Education is transferred to the charter school.

However, a well-placed source in the hedge fund industry explained the real deal to the Amsterdam News. They said that charter schools have historically been for-profit enterprises backed by private sources, and that hedge funds are playing a key role in moving money.

Hedge funds have gained popularity among investors in recent years because they offer a better return on investment than traditional investments.

"The same people who invest in companies to make money are the same people who invest in charter schools," the source said.

The way it works is this: The money the state uses to build public schools can also be used to build charter schools. The hedge fund folks build schools for less money than the government would. For example, a public school might cost $5 million to build, while a charter school could take that same amount of money and only use $3 million to build. What's left over, according to the source, goes into the hedge funds and their investors.

"Hedge funds are the new source of capital. People who want to make money off charter schools hedge funds because they can't get the money from anywhere else," the source said.

The state pays for charter schools on a per-student basis. Investors who put up the initial funds can double their money after several years.

I thought it was about "Children First". Am I missing something???

Diane Ravitch on the Teaching Profession and the Problems in American Public Education

2011-06-30T10:30:00.004-04:00

Bank of America Protest in Queens

2011-06-27T07:26:00.002-04:00

The Truth About Colocations

2011-06-17T08:50:00.002-04:00

Colocations are the very definition of separate and unequal.

Public schools are purposely being crappified so as to create the demand for charter schools.

Teachers As Temps

2011-06-15T12:06:00.000-04:00

The Corporate Dream: Teachers as Temps
A Black Agenda Radio commentary
by Glen Ford

As Democrats hustle to shovel a billion dollars into President Obama’s campaign coffers – making promises to rich people and their corporations every step of the way – America’s billionaires are spending even more money to seize control of the nation’s public schools. Although super-wealthy capitalists like Microsoft’s Bill Gates, fellow computer mogul Michael Dell, real estate magnate Eli Broad, and the rapacious owners of Wal-Mart, the Walton Family, would like people to think of them as philanthropists, they are nothing more than down-and-dirty investors who hope to reap much more than they sow. This mega-buck mafia's goal is to gain access to the $600 billion per year that taxpayers pump into public schools, and then to profit in perpetuity by shaping the nation’s educational system to their corporate needs. The corporate education project has nothing to do with growing new generations of smarter, socially aware, independent-thinking citizens, but is designed to raid public treasuries through wholesale contracting-out of public schooling.

Teachers are the biggest obstacle in the way of the corporate educational coup, which is why the billionaires, eagerly assisted by their servants in the Obama administration, have made demonization and eventual destruction of teachers unions their top priority. Corporations hate collective bargaining, or working people’s power of any kind, but their vision goes way beyond simply neutralizing teachers unions. The billionaires, and the politicians they have purchased, want nothing less than to destroy teaching as a profession. Plutocrats like Bill Gates and politicians like Barack Obama may make noises about respecting teachers' life-long commitment to learning, but their actions prove the opposite. At every opportunity, whenever a real or manufactured educational crisis presents itself, the corporate gang champions charter schools and imports platoons of young, mostly white, inexperienced rookies from programs like Teach for America. Most of these neophytes have no intention of making teaching a career, so they accept low wages, turnover is high, and they have no long term interest in any particular school, or school system, or the profession in general. They are temporary teachers – which is precisely the point.

Just as corporations have revamped the private white collar workforce, replacing full-time, salaried personnel with “temporary” workers – a system in which some managers are officially temps – such are the prospects for teachers in the brave new corporate world of education “reform.”

The billionaires' propaganda machinery claims the corporatization of American education is necessary to make the United States “competitive,” internationally. But teachers in most of the countries that lead the U.S. in learning are highly respected, if not revered, and relatively well compensated. Under the guise of “reform,” the United States is moving in exactly the opposite direction as the rest of the world. The American people are being conned by billionaire hustlers who are stealing the public schools – and the national future – right in front of our eyes.

Rather Interviews Ravitch

2011-06-14T13:23:00.001-04:00

Separate and Unequal

2011-06-11T13:03:00.001-04:00

Walcott’s Separate but Unequal School System

By Billy Wharton, Bronx County Independent Examiner

While the new New York City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott was busy denouncing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) yesterday, charter schools continued their rampage through the City’s educational system. Two well established day care centers in Park Slope, Brooklyn are being muscled out of their current location in order to temporarily house the Brooklyn Prospect Charter School. Nearly simultaneously, Walcott was providing cover for 19 other charters who wish to open up similar turf battles throughout the city.

Brooklyn Prospect Charter School is a veteran of the school building takeover. Charter advocates prefer the more benign “co-location,” but the results are the same – a privately owned publicly funded charter comes in and a public school either is moved out or squeezed into an even smaller space. Brooklyn Prospect carried out such an invasion during its opening in 2009 as the Department of Education allowed it to slam itself into Sunset Park High School – despite the protests of parents, administrators and teachers.

The twist this time is that the Brooklyn Prospect Board of Trustees pulled the lease out from under two well recognized day care centers – Strong Place Day Care and Bethel Day Care. The move will displace dozens of children and send their parents scrambling to find alternative day care sites. In perhaps the ultimate act of arrogance, the day care centers have until this Friday to move out. This illustrates the negative consequences of having privately owned charter schools that both receive public funding and are able to carry out any real estate deal they wish regardless of the consequences to the community.

Meanwhile, in the editorial pages of the Daily News, Chancellor Walcott was busy pledging his allegiance to these same charters. Or, more specifically, using print space to slam the NAACP. The target of Walcott’s ire is a lawsuit filed by the United Federation of Teachers and the NAACP that seeks to prevent 19 charter schools from invading existing public schools. Walcott claimed that school space “does not belong to a school, it belongs to the students.” This was his way of saying that the invading charters, because they will have students, somehow therefore have the right to displace existing public schools.

And, in Walcott’s mind at least, the NAACP is to blame for holding up the invasions and employing “disrespectful and in no way productive” rhetoric to the discussion. This is, of course, a reference to the NAACP’s New York State Chapter President Hazel Dukes’ comment that pro-charter school parents were “doing the business of slave masters.” For Walcott, resistance to the invasions amounts to “the NAACP…turning its back on thousands of families across New York City.” Yet, when Dukes issued the “slave master” comment she also went on to advise such parents to “keep your facts [straight].”

The facts are precisely what Walcott seeks to avoid in his op-ed. The fact that charter schools have had, according to recent studies, mediocre performances even on standardized tests. The fact that the Kingsbridge Innovative Design Charter School recently closed down because of fiscal management issues thereby displacing 140 students in its school – something that would never happen in a public school. And the fact that, as NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous so correctly stated, the charter schools are an attempt to re-build a school system using the old cover of “separate but equal” that defined segregated schools before the Civil Rights movement.

The message here is that Walcott needs to get it straight. Remember, he is supposed to be the more rational choice for Chancellor after the corporate flunky Cathy Black left the building. Yet, his soft-styled demeanor can no longer hide the fact that he is doing the bidding of the politically powerful and economically well-heeled charter schools. He does not represent the interests of New York City public school students or their parents or their teachers. If he did he would be signing an order to eliminate all charter schools, to convert their facilities to public schools and to create a commission to re-think a curriculum and a school governance plan that is administered democratically. Until then, Walcott appears satisfied to live up to the category Dukes created for pro-charter school parents. New York parents should resist, by all means available, the separate and unequal school system the charters wish to create.

Fox News Ticker Hacked

2011-06-04T08:05:00.003-04:00

The genius behind it explains how he did it.

The assault on public education is definitely part of the conservative agenda to privatize anything and everything they can - destroying the middle class along the way.

What Bill Gates SHOULD Do With His Money

2011-05-30T12:20:00.006-04:00

Great letter to the editor on Bill Gates and the school reform debate...

To the Editor:

The best use that Bill Gates could make of the fortune he spends on education would be to create the kind of schools that he and other extremely wealthy people send their children to: schools with small classes (not necessarily small schools), a good ratio of adults — teachers and support staff — to students, intensive remediation for those who need it, and enrichment of all kinds, including the arts, sports, technology, clubs and trips.

There’s no mystery about quality education. Wealthy people know exactly what it consists of and make sure their children get it. We need to help all the other children in America, and elsewhere, get it as well.

LARRY GUTMAN
Brooklyn, May 22, 2011

My advice to Gates: Stop being a control freak. Stop trying to destroy the livelihood of teachers. You and your family are living comfortably. We would like to live well too.

A nation full of poor people with a handful of ultra wealthy folks is no place to live.

Get a clue.

Bill Gates' Pet Peeves About Public Education

2011-05-29T10:43:00.007-04:00

From Education Sector:

Gates puts his drones on the case to find out how money can be saved regarding...

Increases in teacher salaries based on years of experience

Increases in teacher salaries based on educational credentials and experiences

Professional development days

Number of paid sick and personal days

Class-size limitations

Use of teachers’ aides

Generous health and insurance benefits and

Generous retirement benefits.

Yes Bill, it would be so much better of we were compensated on the same level as a Walmart employee. Less taxes for you to pay when we are paid virtually nothing and on Medicaid.

Idiot.

"The Children Are Being Used"

2011-05-25T08:44:00.001-04:00

Weprin: Bloomberg Testing Regimen ‘Insane’

In light of today’s A1 New York Times story about the Bloomberg administration’s plans to administer a dozen new standardized tests in order to evaluate not students, but teachers, Queens City Councilmember Mark Weprin is out with a statement blasting the mayor and the Department of Education.

“These tests will do nothing to improve education in our public schools and will only continue to sap time and resources that should be going toward helping our children learn,” Weprin said. ”Enough is enough. It is time for parents to rise up and give the DOE a wake-up call. Stop the insane obsession with testing.”

Weprin noted that the city planned to use $64 million it received in federal Race to the Top money in order to pay for the increased testing regimen during a time when schools are losing arts, music and phys ed classes, especially since the money is going not toward students, but towards teachers.

“At a time when DOE is planning to lay off teachers, choosing to spend sixty-four million dollars on additional standardized tests is truly an outrage,” said Council Member Mark Weprin. “In short, the children are being used.”

Weprin, it should be noted, is not a particular fervent critic of the mayor, but has often disagreed with his reliance on high-stakes tests.

The 6% Club - Parents Can Opt Kids Out of Testing

2011-05-21T08:46:00.004-04:00

Schools need 95% of students to take tests in order for it to count. If 6% of students don't take the tests, schools cannot be measured by them.

Parents will be able to turn this around and get these vultures out of our classrooms. As Diane Ravitch says, they are the "sleeping giant".

Administrators Told to "Play the Game"

2011-05-18T22:31:00.002-04:00

Do What You’re Told!

To The Editor:

Play the game. This was the phrase I was told when I began to see that the education program being forced upon our schools was hurting our students. This was the phrase I was told when I told my principal that our students, through this program, were being taught little content if any. This was the phrase I was told when I expressed my concerns to my colleagues that our students would be seriously lacking in reading and writing skills that would impact them for years after they’d graduate our elementary school. This was the phrase I was told after it looked like I would be my assistant principal’s next target if I didn’t stop pointing out this new program’s deficiencies.

The program I am referring to is the Balanced Literacy program also known as Teachers College Reading and Writing Project program. The highly scripted, whole-language based program has absolutely no research backing its efficacy and yet former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein mandated its use in most of the schools citywide when he first became chancellor. The DOE (Department of Education) signed a multi-million dollar contract with Columbia University’s Teachers College and the founder of the program, Lucy Calkins. Staff developers from the university soon fanned out all over the city to teach educators how to teach reading and writing through their workshop model. This involves very short mini-lessons and cooperative learning, which means students are left on their own much of the time. These staff developers cost the city $1,500 per day.

Reading anthologies (basal readers) were declared outdated and were thrown away in most schools. Students for the most part no longer have reading and writing workbooks of any kind, including phonics or grammar as it is considered “drill and kill”. Although some schools have adopted Fundations, a highly scripted, repetitive phonics program that once again, leaves kids behind. Little if any content is taught and students are left to read on their own in the “just right” books most of the time. The writing part of the program is even worse. Students’ mistakes are never corrected. Ever. The belief is that students learn writing skills naturally, at their own pace. How can these children compete in the world with poor reading and writing skills? Rest assured programs like this one are not being implemented in expensive private schools, where education “reformers” send their children. The parents there would never stand for it.

Many administrators, knowing the harmful effects of the program, went along with it in order to make their lives easier so they “played the game” as well. This troubled me most of all. Here were the people in charge of the school and yet in no way were they advocates for children. Many began to do what they were told to save their jobs. Educators who spoke out, me included, were quickly targeted.

Parents spoke out against the program at PTA (Parent Teacher Association) meetings but were quickly silenced by the principal who had all the right answers to parents’ questions. Still skeptical, parents continued to put their faith in the people they trusted to educate their children. The principal didn’t want the parents to know that Balanced Literacy could be hurting their children’s future. It pained me to look into parents’ eyes knowing this reading and writing program would leave their child with serious deficiencies in those important subjects.

I’m convinced the program was used in order to disgust and push out veteran teachers from the system and to disgust parents so much that they would want to remove their child from the school and seek out “choice” otherwise known as a charter school. Now our schools are increasingly being headed by inexperienced and very young administrators who are themselves proponents of this discredited program because either they don’t know better, don’t care and just want to get ahead or are simply “playing the game”.

What the city has done is a disgrace to our students. Many students are leaving elementary school completely unprepared for middle school and beyond. This was not the career I signed up for many years ago when I became a teacher and a teacher’s expertise and experience was respected and even coveted. Teachers and administrators should be advocates for children’s education. The way the DOE has set up the system, being an advocate is no longer possible. If this is the game we have to play, I no longer want to play it.

Jamie Christos
Douglaston

I wonder what reading and writing programs they use at the Spence School where Bloombucks' daughters went to school..

Math Curricula Not Preparing Students for College or Career

2011-05-16T19:39:00.002-04:00

Inconsistent math curricula hurting US students, study finds

A new study finds important differences in math curricula across U.S. states and school districts. The findings, published in the May issue of the American Journal of Education, suggest that many students across the country are placed at a disadvantage by less demanding curricula.

Researchers from Michigan State University and the University of Oklahoma used data from the 1999 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which included 13 school districts and nine states in the U.S., as well as nearly 40 other nations.

"Overall, U.S. students are exposed to a less difficult school mathematics curriculum that places them at a disadvantage when compared to the students in many other countries of the world," write the researchers, led by William Schmidt of Michigan State. "Even sadder, a student's mathematics learning opportunities related to content coverage are deeply affected by where the student lives and in which of the 13 local school districts or nine states he or she attends school."

For example, algebra and geometry are generally taught in eighth grade by international standards. But U.S. states and school districts that participated in the TIMSS varied widely in the number of eighth graders whose math classes focus on those two subjects. In one district, 95 percent of eighth graders focus on algebra and geometry, but in another district, only 14 percent do. A broader look at the data shows the content differences between districts are as large as one grade level. In other words, topics covered in sixth grade in one district are not covered until seventh grade in others.

The study found the variation in curriculum was correlated with students' overall eighth grade math achievement, with students in the less demanding states and districts performing much worse than those in more demanding schools. This was true even after controlling for student background, including a measure of students' seventh grade achievement.

The less demanding curricula tended to be in districts that had large numbers of poor students. The mathematics taught in districts where over 70 percent of students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch was about one-half of a grade level behind that of districts in which virtually no students were eligible.

However, the variation in content covered was not just a problem for poor districts. Even after controlling for socio-economic status, significant variation remained, suggesting that the problem is partly "a function of the very structure of the U.S. education system," according to the researchers.

"If these results hold more generally, the U.S. is not a country of educational equality, providing equal learning opportunities to all students," said Leland Cogan, an author of the study. "This is true not only for poor, minority, or disadvantaged students; any student can be disadvantaged simply due to differences in the rigor of the mathematics taught in the district in which they happen to attend school."

Perhaps this is all by design so as to crapify public schools as much as possible in order to create the DEMAND for charter schools.

The March to Wall Street

2011-05-13T19:04:00.002-04:00

Education "Reformers" Plan

2011-05-11T09:08:00.004-04:00

The education “reformers” are trying to dismantle the teaching profession as we know it:

The first item is eliminating as many teachers as possible with tenure. We wouldn't want anyone with a right to a hearing in case they are terminated.

They are trying to eliminate anyone over age 50. We can't have teachers making big salaries and might know more than their 27 year old boss.

They are making the job as miserable as possible so younger teachers don’t last long enough to collect higher salaries and pensions.

Next they will be getting rid of requirements for teacher certifications. Why would you need certification when they don't want teaching professionals in the first place?

They want teaching to not be a profession but a JOB and one that you do for a couple of years and then leave. Notice the widespread use of very scripted programs like Everyday Math and Teachers College - very easy for a first-year teacher to follow.

Despite what they say to the contrary, they don’t care about our students so why would we expect them to care about our teachers??

Make no mistake – this is all about money. Making as much as possible for people at the top with very little left over for people at the bottom.

Fits in with the whole income equality and banana republic our country seems determined to become.

Diane Ravitch & Deborah Meier

2011-05-09T00:06:00.000-04:00

"Bridging Differences Live:" Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier from Indiana University School of Edu on Vimeo.

Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman Trailer

2011-05-03T21:07:00.002-04:00

New York City Premiere
May 19th
Harlem's Riverside Church
6 p.m.

Osama Dead

2011-05-01T23:56:00.000-04:00

OSAMA BIN LADEN IS DEAD!

What a great moment in history.

UFT President Mulgrew at Francis Lewis High School, Queens

2011-05-01T07:39:00.000-04:00

I think I'm in love.

Michigan Mayor Spells Out Deformers Agenda - Corporatize, Privatize & Profitize Public Schools

2011-04-30T07:47:00.005-04:00

Go to 3:28 for segment.

Mayor Virg Benero: "Billions of dollars at stake, billions of dollars being spent and Wall Street can't wait to sink their fangs into it. They couldn't get a hold of Social Security but by gosh they've got a way to get in. And even with a president and secretary of Education under the guise of "Waiting for Superman", they can come in and look like a savior but dig right into those piles of cash and at the same time help wipe out the public unions that are a part of the public school system."

Does anyone out there still doubt what this is all about?

An Open Letter to City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott

2011-04-28T17:03:00.004-04:00

An open letter to city Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott

For the past nine years, our schools have been run by a top-down bureaucracy that too often alienates public school parents. To your credit, you have said you want to engage parents and communities more than in the past.

But you have also said you plan to stay the course on the Bloomberg administration’s education policies and practices. I believe you have the background and experience to bring parents into our school system, but I know you will not be able to do it by maintaining the status quo.

I am a public school parent and I have spoken with parents all over our city who are tired of the city Department of Education treating them like problems instead of partners. They are looking for a chancellor who has the independence to bring real change to our school system. To accomplish this goal, I believe you must take on three pressing issues facing our schools today: reforming the DOE’s closed-off, bureaucratic process for closing and co-locating schools; fully supporting the parents of students with disabilities; and saving the more than 4,600 teachers who will be fired under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s budget.

As our growing student population has required more schools to share space through co-locations, the DOE has resisted listening to parents’ concerns and suggestions at every turn. Last year, my office produced a report exposing how the DOE’s top-down policies left parents out of the process, an approach that can result in critical school spaces being lost and students being squeezed into disjointed schedules. The DOE initially agreed to adopt several of our recommended reforms, including engaging more thoroughly with parents and community members when a school is being considered for co-location or closure, but so far it has not fully followed through.

The Brandeis complex on the Upper West Side houses four schools, including the Frank McCourt high school, which was brought in by the community this past September. Now the DOE is threatening this progress by forcing a new school into the building, a decision that could cost Frank McCourt students their science labs, classroom space and music programs. Going forward, you should be willing to adjust the DOE plans based on legitimate concerns, including finding alternate locations when a co-location does not work.

Every year, the DOE closes and co-locates dozens of schools, upending educational environments for thousands of students. Too often these major decisions are conducted in a vacuum, where the views of parents are treated as an obstacle to implementing policy decisions instead of feedback worth consideration. The DOE nearly shut down PS 114 in Brooklyn after failing to remove its principal, Maria Penaherrera, who had driven the school into debt and reduced its academic performance.

Led by PTA President Crystal King, the parents fought back, joining local elected officials and my office, which produced a report tracing the DOE’s history of ignoring concerns from parents about Penaherrera for years. At the 11th hour the school was saved, but this last-minute reversal would never have been necessary if the DOE had been willing to listen to the PS 114 community from the start. Continuing a policy of closing schools first and asking questions later will only widen the gap between your agency and parents. Instead, I urge you as chancellor to use closure as a last resort, following a real effort to give struggling schools support, including teacher training.

There are more than 165,000 students with disabilities in public schools. Their parents face greater challenges than many others, but instead of being helped by the DOE, they are often forced to fight against its bureaucracy. Elisa Gravitch of Staten Island has a 10-year-old son, Kyle, who is on the autism spectrum. At his elementary school, Kyle was in an autism spectrum disorder NEST program, which creates a balanced and supportive learning environment.

As his elementary education came to an end, Gravitch wanted the DOE to put Kyle in a middle school that would provide the same educational and social supports. But for more than a year the DOE repeatedly ignored or dismissed requests from Gravitch and other parents with children in the program. It took public intervention by local officials and my office for the DOE to finally hear these parents and put their children in the school that best fit their needs.

With everything parents of students with disabilities already have to deal with, it should not take a lobbying campaign for their voices to be heard. Under your leadership, the DOE will be implementing an important reform effort to make all community schools more inclusive to students with disabilities. In order to make these reforms work, you must be more supportive than your predecessor of parents of students with disabilities and willing to take their input.

Finally, the most immediate issue facing our school system today is the mayor’s proposal to fire more than 4,600 teachers. This threat is not a new one. This is the second budget cycle in which the mayor has threatened to eliminate thousands of teachers and then changed his mind seconds before the clock ran out.

But while this year’s budget dynamics make the prospect of serious layoffs more real, the mayor has made it clear that his agenda puts the repeal of last in, first out before everything else. We need a new system for evaluating teachers that accounts for student performance, but prioritizing this political fight over keeping teachers in the classroom is too great a risk to take. You need to show independence from City Hall by working first to stop thousands of teachers from being laid off instead of pursuing the mayor’s political agenda.

You will most likely be the last chancellor of this administration. This is a real opportunity to improve upon Bloomberg’s education legacy and to end the history of tension between parents and our school system. Giving parents a real voice in policy decisions, providing them with the support they need and asking them to contribute to their children’s education will make our schools better. I hope you will join me in working with parents and education stakeholders to make this vision a reality.

Bill de Blasio
City Public Advocate
Manhattan

Parents Across America

2011-04-25T14:37:00.005-04:00

It's true, parents are the sleeping giant. Why have most of them been asleep?

I think because most parents can't imagine that their child's school could be offering them a dismal education. Most parents don't want to hear their child's school may not be doing the right thing. So imagine when it's the entire school system. Parents don't want to believe that school officials would be hurting children's chances at a successful future. I think for many it's a denial thing.

Most of the education "reforms" have nothing to do with improving education for our kids but more to do with exaggerating a "crisis" in order to justify privatization of public schools. When you privatize, you open a whole land of opportunity for business entrepenuers to make profits off of public funds. Let 's not forget many of these folks that are running charters are the same people that caused our financial meltdown in 2008.

Children First? HA!

Best quote from video: "It all boils down to this, as a parent, why should Eli Broad and Bill Gates have more say as to what goes on in my child's classroom than I do?"

Bloombucks is an Abusive Administrator

2011-04-23T06:56:00.001-04:00

The Chief Administrator is ‘MOST Abusive Administrator’
by Anna-Maria Thomas

When we speak of ‘Abusive Administrators’ only one name comes to mind: Michael Bloomberg.

Bloomberg represents EVERYTHING which is wrong with our NYC Public School System. May I take this moment to add the entire public school system across this country is in the hands of those who hope to destroy the future of our children to attain public education.

The move by Bloomberg to CORPORATIZE our education system must be stopped. Since Bloomberg’s tenure of mayoral control of our education system, the problems we as educators faced have worsened.

Again, I remind you THIS A NATIONAL PROBLEM as well.

We (as educators and as concerned community members) must demand a ‘RECALL’ on Bloomberg.

Bloomberg’s continued efforts to destroy our education system by

1. Installing unqualified Chancellors who have no desire to improve the success of our students,
2. The effort to remove the BEST educators by any means ‘rubber rooms,’
3. The lack of will to negotiate with our union for fair contract,
4. The misrepresentation to the media and thus the public regarding the true picture of our failing education system for the past eight years,
5. The inability of the new crop of principals to fairly evaluate faculty,
6. And giving full control to these inept principals of the school’s budget to hire/fire teachers

…are prime examples of just some of reasons Bloomberg must be ‘recalled.’

Bloomberg must go! This is what WE must repeat until WE get rid of Bloomberg.

Respectfully submitted,
Anna-Maria Thomas, Ed.D
Educator/Guidance Counselor
New Action Caucus
NYC-DOE

I couldn't agree more. It's time we recall this "education mayor".

Eye on Education: Interview with Diane Ravitch

2011-04-22T10:31:00.003-04:00

Watch the full episode. See more THIRTEEN Specials.

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting For Superman

2011-04-21T07:55:00.001-04:00

Trailer for movie coming out in a few weeks.

Welcome to Boot Camp

2011-04-16T10:35:00.005-04:00

From the Between the By-Road and the Main Road blog

Welcome to Boot Camp
South Bronx charter teacher speaks out

“Miss C, when you were gone, I was so scared, I thought I was in boot camp!” -one of my first graders, after I returned from a meeting.

This piece serves as a glimpse inside a South Bronx charter school, told from the perspective of a classroom teacher. With the overblown acclaim of charter schools as a means of education “reform” in recent months, I jumped at the chance to tell my story. I realize that mine is just one story and there are infinite stories and viewpoints held for any given situation; someone else in my shoes might offer a completely different account. My hope is that my story will spark a conversation, offer new perspectives, and raise a few questions. Teacher's voices can be powerful when they are allowed to be heard.
Charter schools are public schools, and can be started by and run by anyone. It is not uncommon for them to be operated by people who have no background in education. They are funded by a mixture of government money, private donations, and grants, and are often situated in areas of high poverty, where applicants are chosen by lottery. Charter schools offer longer school days, smaller class sizes, and "rigorous, standards-based instruction". They also offer a militaristic and strangely corporate environment that emphasizes the importance of order, obedience, and product above all else. Everything has a set protocol and predetermined vision of result, usually dreamt up by administration. I spent ten months feeling like a chess piece, robot, crusader, warden, inmate, and performer, sometimes all at once. It was a very long year.

Lights, Camera, Action: Battling the Script

“It defies both logic and experience to believe that the learning of all will be enhanced by a curriculum that meets the individual needs of few, if any." --P. David Pearson

Curriculum, for me, was the single most difficult thing to contend with during my experience. Having worked in a school where instruction was more or less designed by the teachers, I had naively assumed I would be doing the same at my new school. Instead, I was horrified to discover that my entire day was scripted. Reading, writing, math, science, and social studies all had their own stacks of teaching manuals and supplies, dictating every utterance and activity for teachers and students. I distinctly remember a line from a four page script in one of the math lessons wherein the teacher was supposed to rap multiples of 10 to the students. “After each verse, say 'unh' two or three times in rhythm,” it directed. Three large plastic tubs held hundreds of worksheets and assessments to be distributed to the masses. The worst was the reading program, which aside from scripted manuals was also accompanied by sets of basal readers and phonics workbooks, forcing students to engage in choral readings of monosyllabic stories about Fat Cat and Zig Pig. The level of boredom and disinterest during instructional time was palpable. Teachers had to email weekly lesson plans to supervisors no later than 8pm on Sunday nights, filled out in complex electronic templates that detailed everything from what questions we planned to ask during a read aloud, to what page number of the manual we were on. I asked my supervisor why everything was scripted, and she informed me that this was a way to ensure teaching consistency across each grade level. In the past, she explained, some students had been getting quality instruction, while others were getting less quality instruction; scripts were a way to eradicate that inequality and make sure that everyone received the same thing. Mediocrity, evidently, was acceptable, as long as it was uniform.
The idea of uniform teaching baffled and infuriated me for a number of reasons. It reduced teaching to regurgitating lines off a page, and learning to nothing more than acquiring information and regurgitating it right back. Use of scripts insinuated that we were incapable of designing instruction on our own and that manuals created by faceless executives were appropriate for all of our students. I bitterly resisted, sneaking in differentiated instruction, supplementing whenever possible. It was an exhausting challenge. Teachers were required to have the same objectives, lessons, and activities as their grade level colleagues at all times, regardless of what our students might need, and discrepancies were always questioned by administrators. Furthermore, we were informed that we should not design any assignments or response sheets ourselves, since it was all provided and prepackaged for us in the curriculum. Anything we did design was supposed to be approved by our supervisor prior to using it.
In addition to consistency, scripts offered a degree of control and micromanagement for administrators which consumed every facet of life in the school. Teachers (and students) were exempt from making virtually any decision themselves. This included (but was not limited to) what to teach, when to teach it, how to teach it, how to line our students up, how to have them walk in hallway, when to take our classes to the bathroom, how much homework to give, what homework to give, how to handle classroom management, what to put on our bulletin boards, how to arrange our furniture, when to read a book to our students, how to distribute crayons and pencils, and a myriad of other things. I found it ironic, not to mention insulting, that the same administrators who preached about the virtues of teaching and our high level of "professionalism" seemed to regard us as bumbling idiots incapable of doing anything short of walking upright without a set of detailed instructions.

Kiss My ASSessments: Tales of Testing

“When we define what matters in education only by what we can measure, we are in serious trouble.”-Diane Ravitch

When a charter school is "born" so to speak, it is aligned to an actual charter stating that the school will meet certain goals (i.e., test scores) within a specific time period (usually five years). If the goals are not met within the five years, the charter could potentially be revoked and the school could be shut down. With such heavy pressure to obtain high test scores, "rigorous" curriculum takes on whole new meaning. In addition to hours of scripted instruction, most of which was test-based, the students were also subjected to relentless test prep delivered from thick, scripted manuals. Upper school (grades 3-5) designated Fridays as test prep days, since the kids left at 2pm rather than 4pm. On Fridays, they literally spent the entire day doing nothing but test prep. The younger grades were spared, at least until May, when my first graders were forced to endure test prep for the Terra Nova exam, a torturous experience for all of us. Even the kindergarteners took the Terra Nova, a test which required children to sit for an hour and a half session on two separate days and bubble in answers on a recording sheet. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the absurdity of it, although I did chuckle when one kindergarten teacher told me how her students blurted every answer out loud after she read them the questions. Test scores determined merit pay, and "testing season" was regarded as the most important time of the year.
Along with endless test prep for NYS exams, assessment and the quest for data were drilled into our curriculum and practices. Never in my life had I such a dizzying array of assessments, especially in the primary grades. Our math curriculum came with weekly tests that I had to grade using actual percentages scrawled on top, which felt bizarre and cruel to hand back to a six year old (not to mention a stark contrast to my usual star or smiley face). We were instructed to keep data on everything, and make sure anything we put in a portfolio, or hung up on a bulletin board was aligned to a rubric and graded. Our heavily scrutinized bulletin boards--which I secretly referred to as bulletin boreds--were depressing exhibitions of uniform student work that was graded and accompanied by lists of NYS standards and rubrics so observers could see what the “purpose” of the assignment was and how/why students received whatever grade they got. Giving grades was bad enough: putting them on display in the hallway was even worse. Low grades were not permitted to be displayed, so some students never had work shown. Bulletin boards were no place for whimsical artwork adorned with painted handprints, glitter, or anything fun. Nothing “counted” unless it had a grade and was approved by administration.
Data and grades played a more sinister role when it came to determining who was "PiD" (Promotion in Doubt). Children who were in danger of being retained had to be identified by early November--a mere two months into the school year—when PiD forms were handed into administration, then sent home to parents. Each year, out of roughly 66 children per grade level, between five and seven were held back, totaling about 36 kids on average K-5. In my own class, I had four students who were repeating first grade. Criteria for retention was based on failure to meet certain benchmarks, and often seen as a necessary step. Before an end of the year awards ceremony, my supervisor cautioned us to make sure we told our students that "just because they get an award of participation does NOT mean they are being promoted to the next grade."

Phases of the School Year: Another One Bites the Dust

“I used to work for a large telecommunications business. I wanted to teach because I was looking for something easier to do.” --a brand new fourth grade teacher at my school. He lasted nine days of work before submitting his resignation.

During our August orientation, staff members were given a “Phases of the School Year” graph that mapped out our predicted feelings and attitudes over the course of the upcoming school year. According to this graph, we would start off in “Anticipation” mode, but would quickly slip into “Survival” mode, struggling to "keep our heads above water". Survival was followed by the lowest point on the graph, “Disillusionment”, that was projected to hit us around the October/November mark. After this, it was a steady uphill climb toward “Rejuvenation” (Feb/March), “Reflection” (May) and then back to “Anticipation” once again (June, July). I remember thinking how odd it was to be told how miserable and desperate we were going to be feeling in a matter of months. Looking back, I am not entirely convinced over the accuracy of the graph’s information. Personally, I never felt Rejuvenated, and I witnessed more than one teacher who seemed permanently stuck in “Disillusionment”, on the brink of “Severe Mental Breakdown”. Staff morale was perpetually low.
When I worked in the suburbs, teaching jobs were scarce and highly coveted. Teachers got jobs in schools or districts and built life-long careers there. Unlike most public schools, charter schools do not offer contracts, tenure, or a union. Teachers sign “letters of intent”, stating that they intend to work in a position for the school year, that they can be fired at any time with or without cause, and that they are free to leave at any time. Staff changes are frequent. At my school, since teachers were more or less viewed as factory drones, replacing them was swift and emotionless--when people quit, it was often not even mentioned at the weekly faculty meeting. A face was absent, a new face was in place, and life continued. During that one year, seven teachers quit between September and May, one was fired, and five more (myself included) resigned in June. Quitting was often the result of utter exhaustion and depression; the demands and the micromanagement were often more than teachers could bear. I considered leaving every day up until June 25th, wavering back and forth on a near hourly basis and hanging on only by desperate determination to see the year through and a begrudging sense of obligation toward my students. Those who left earlier forfeited two months worth of salary they would have been paid if they’d given 30 days notice (we were paid over 12 months). Out of those seven teachers, only two had new jobs lined up. The other five opted for unemployment.
The record for fastest resignation went to a fifth grade teacher, who quit during orientation, a week before the kids were due to arrive. According to our graph, she never even made it to Survival mode. She was soon followed by a fourth grade teacher two weeks later; his class eventually would lose another teacher in February. On the other end of the spectrum was a third grade teacher who quit in May (Reflection month!), with six weeks of school left. At that point, her position was not replaced, but rather covered by a rotating shift of various learning specialists and office aides who performed like a succession of understudies, picking up where she'd left off in the script.

Kiss My Summative Assessment: Evaluation Tales

“A child sighs loudly on the rug. 2 minutes later it happens again. You do nothing to address this.” --excerpt from one of my 12 documented observations

Over the course of the year, all lessons plans, activities and practices were aligned to the school’s evaluation tool; a six page rubric that broke teaching into 23 areas. Each area had four distinct ratings; Unsatisfactory, Basic, Proficient, and Distinguished. Starting in April, teachers were required to hand in “Summative Assessments”; documents totaling anywhere from 20 to 40 pages that described our teaching performance in alignment to the rubric. Supervisors reviewed them and gave us our "grades". Throughout the previous months, we’d been forced to perform skits and act out examples of these ratings and components at faculty meetings, so it was abundantly clear how one might achieve the exalted title of “Distinguished” and avoid "Unsatisfactory". We were also given a total of 12 recorded observations by supervisors (in addition to about 40 unrecorded observations), where we received feedback such as letting us know that our students were breathing excessively. I was given an unsatisfactory in one category because my classroom cubbies were a mess. As a result, I lost a chunk of my bonus, as performance, along with test scores, were aligned to merit pay. I half expected to be forced to wear a scarlet letter U plastered to my shirt; thankfully it didn't quite come to that.

Reflection

"Ugly stuff, /ugly, ugly stuff./I hate/ school./School is/ boring. I hate/school. boo!" --a poem written by one of my first graders

It is nearly impossible to concisely express what an exhausting, frustrating, and mind-boggling year it was. Much of what I saw and was encouraged (or forced) to do directly contradicted every principle or philosophy I believe in as a teacher. To be fair, there were positive things mixed in with the crazy. The school itself was clean, safe, and decently equipped, with large, sunlit classrooms and brightly painted walls. The children received regular art, music, and gym, as well as daily breakfast and lunch. Most of the teachers I met were genuinely warm, caring, funny individuals who were very invested in their students. Their level of dedication and energy was amazing. In addition to extreme demands at school, most of the staff battled commutes of an hour or more, long subway rides or miserable gridlocked traffic, but were nonetheless at school by 7:30am every day, ready to give it everything they had.
My story here hardly touches upon the 22 students I spent eight hours a day with. I think of them often, wondering if they are happy or miserable, if they are making progress, if they are behaving (hmm, that would be something new), how they are reading, what they are writing, if they miss first grade, if they miss ME. It would be an understatement to say we had a rocky year, but I am convinced it would have been less rocky if they had been allowed to be children rather than stuffed into little invisible straight-jackets all day long, from which outbursts and tantrums were frequent. My first graders in the public school I’m at now have play center time and lots of choice; our curriculum isn’t scripted, the children are allowed to talk, sing, breathe, and be themselves. It’s truly a different world, one that my former students will most likely never know.
I wonder about the high test scores my previous school boasts, and if they are an indication of real learning, or the result of endless hours of relentless test-prep that has taught students how to choose the correct answer at the expense of actually learning anything valuable. I wonder what a “Phases of the School Year” graph might look like for students at this school, and similar schools. Are they Disillusioned? Rejuvenated? Or stuck in Survival Mode, going through the motions and barely scraping through each day, while buried under mounds of tedious scripted assignments and looming PiD forms?
I wonder about the brand-new teachers who find themselves in schools like this, or the student teachers, without any previous experience to give them an alternate view of what education can look like. There were several student teachers at the charter school, and I shudder to think of the warped ideas they left with regarding teaching and learning.
It is thoroughly frightening and depressing to see what is occurring in education these days. The gaping chasm between the have and the have-nots seems to widen with each year, while the "remedies"--scripted instruction, charter schools, value-added assessment, and increased standardized testing, to name a few--manage to pointedly avoid dealing with the root of the issue while imposing the most miserable conditions upon innocent children and hard-working teachers. I hope that the pendulum will eventually swing and that the opportunity for individual thought, authentic instruction, creativity, play, and shared teaching and learning will eventually be available to everyone. I've seen schools like this; they do exist. As Kozol writes, “The schools where children and their teachers are still...given the opportunities to poke around in the satisfactions of uncertainly need to be defended...These are the schools I call the 'treasured places'. The remind us always of the possible."

All part of the plan to keep teaching so miserable that teachers won't or can't last long enough to get paid higher salaries let alone pensions.

Yes, running schools like a bu$ine$$ has really worked out well - for the business people.

Great List!

2011-04-15T07:41:00.005-04:00

The Parents Union wants the following reforms to ensure ALL our kids receive a quality education.

1.Smaller Class Sizes
2.Excellent Community Public Schools for ALL Children
3.More Teaching – Less Testing
4.Parent and Teacher Empowerment and Leadership
5.Equitable Funding for ALL Schools
6.Moratorium on school closings and charter co-locations
7.Culturally Relevant Curriculum
8.Expand Pre Kindergarten and Early Intervention Programs
9.Qualified and Experienced Educators and Educational Leaders
10.Enforcement of the law requiring charters to recruit, retain and show their retention efforts of students with special needs and English Language Learners. The practice of pushing/counseling out such students must end
11.An end to the granting of waivers for chancellor appointees who do not qualify under the law
12.An immediate end to mayoral control and the failed education policies of the past 9 years

I really wish another union would have made a list like this.

Okay, Mr. Walcott, you say you want to LISTEN to the parents. Well, here's what they want. What are you going to do about it???

How To Avoid Paying Taxes

2011-04-14T07:44:00.003-04:00

Watch how billionaire corporation GE manages to avoid paying taxes. These are one of the guys that want US to pay for the fact that they are not paying their fair share.

The Leadership Academy 101

2011-04-13T11:19:00.004-04:00

The Leadership Academy has been called the centerpiece of Mayor Bloomberg's efforts to remake New York City's public school system.

Based on corporate management concepts, the Leadership Academy is a rigorous, fifteen-month training program designed to teach effective leadership skills to aspiring principals. Candidates must complete several phases throughout the course of their training including a theory-based summer session, a residency period spent working with a mentor principal inside a school, and a final preparatory summer before taking over one of New York City's 1200 public schools. Current projections indicate that New York City's schools will need 600 new principals over the next three years.

Summer Intensive Preparation

Phase one of the Leadership Academy's Aspiring Principals Program uses dynamic, problem-based learning scenarios to place the future school leaders in the types of situations they will experience as principals. Aspiring principals develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to confront pressing challenges and lead for instructional effectiveness.

Problem scenarios are based on:

NYC public school realities

Current restructuring efforts

Coaching from expert practitioners

Collaborative problem-solving methodologies

Residency

In phase two, aspiring principals enter a residency program where they are paired with another program participant and work with a mentor principal for the duration of the academic year. Over the course of the year participants hone their skills as they strategically address a school-based, instructional challenge identified by the residents, mentor principal, local instructional supervisors, and regional superintendents. Aspiring principals work on-site at the school four days each week. The fifth day is devoted to working sessions. Work sessions provide an opportunity to:

Plan strategies that address the instructional issues identified in their residency school

Engage in consultation and coaching with peers, specialists, and expert practitioners

Develop their capacities as leaders of a broad-based instructional improvement effort

Visit other schools to benchmark best practices, observe different teaching styles and strategies, and compare leadership styles

Planning Summer

The third phase of the program supports aspiring principals as they transition to leadership roles within specific schools. Activities include:

Analysis of student and teacher performance data

Preparation for "Firsts" (such as the first staff meeting, first parent association meeting, first school leadership team meeting)

Professional development planning

Preparation of a personal development plan for the first year as a principal

First Year Support

First year support offers individualized development assistance that is tailored to the challenges of assuming an instructional leadership role in a school. Support structures include technology-based opportunities for collaboration, retreats, workshops, strategic coaching, and peer relationships.

Program Initiated:
July 7, 2003

Estimated Cost (First Year):
$13 Million

Length of Aspiring Principals Program:
15 Months

Aspiring Principal Salary:$92,000 per year

Applicant Requirements:
• A 3.0 minimum GPA for her or his undergraduate degree
• A 3.0 minimum GPA for her or his graduate degree
• Minimum of 5 years work experience with at least 3 years as a teacher

Commitment:
Each participant is expected to make a commitment to work in NYC public schools for a minimum of five years.

Demographics of Aspiring Principals (2003-2004 Class): • 90% from within NYC school systems
• 70% female
• 60% African-American, Latino, or Asian
• Age range: 26-66

Major Funding Sources:
• Partnership for the City of New York: $30 million
• Wallace Foundation: $15 Million
• Broad Foundation: $4 Million

"The principal is the lead teacher, but also the lead learner. The principal must create a community in which adults are constantly learning more effective ways to teach. But they must also learn to see past labels and build on the strength of every kid."

- Sandra Stein

Link here.

Word around town is these principals are DISASTERS. My prediction: this "academy" will be dissolved after Bloomberg leaves and its "graduates" will be required to get a real administration degree.

Walmartizing Public Education

2011-04-12T08:32:00.006-04:00

This is what corporate America would like to do with public education. After all, it's not THEIR kids who will be subjected to inexperienced, undedicated, high-turnover teachers who are forced to teach huge class sizes using scripted curricula. THEIR kids go to very expensive private schools that have experienced teachers, low class sizes and very rich curricula.

Are you still wondering if the deformers have your best interest at heart? Does your school resemble a private school? The more your school does NOT resemble a private school, the more ANGRY you need to be.

Deformers want to create the same culture for our public school employees that they have created in places like Walmart. That culture is one of fear, high turnover, lower wages, little or no benefits and no right to form unions for employees.

The movie is a bit long but worth the watch. It's time we took back our country from greedy, heartless, corporate people (who hate unions) who only want to enrich themselves at the expensive of everyone else.

P.S. The Walton Family Foundation(family who runs Walmart) are one of the deformers.

This is America?

2011-04-11T14:14:00.004-04:00

Looks like Wisconsin is ground zero for class warfare. Teachers and other public sector workers are being blamed for the financial meltdown in 2008.

Embarrassing Moment for Bloombucks

2011-04-10T08:40:00.005-04:00

What nerve he had to show up there. 146 young women, mostly immigrants, died in that fire in 1911 because they were not unionized and corporate America treated their employees like criminals and slaves. And Bloombucks is part of the movement to bring society back to that time in history.

That man was right. Bloombucks, YOU ARE A DISGRACE!

More of the Same

2011-04-09T08:14:00.000-04:00

On Incoming Chancellor’s First Day, a Hot Seat Before the City Council
By FERNANDA SANTOS

Dennis M. Walcott started his first full day as the city’s chancellor-appointee walking his grandson into Public School 36 in St. Albans, Queens. Less than two hours later, he was greeted with hugs and congratulations when he appeared at a City Council budget hearing.

By the time the questioning began, though, it was clear that the honeymoon would not last.

“You should be congratulated,” Councilwoman Letitia James said. “But today the reality sets in.”

Mr. Walcott, the deputy mayor appointed Thursday to replace Cathleen P. Black, was forced to defend proposed budget cuts, which are being imposed on virtually every city agency but have been most contentious in the school system because they may lead to widespread layoffs.

At one point, Councilman Robert Jackson, chairman of the education committee, challenged him. “Let’s talk about the 7,500 teachers,” Mr. Jackson said. Mr. Walcott was quick to correct him, saying the number of teaching positions projected to be lost to layoffs or attrition was actually 6,133. It prompted a couple of chuckles from the audience.

Councilwoman Margaret Chin brought up a line in next year’s Department of Education budget that calls for more money for full-time support staff members and asked, “Who are these people?”

Councilman G. Oliver Koppell offered Mr. Walcott a stern admonishment: “Saying you’re going to have to lay off teachers is a very ominous statement. What you should be saying is, ‘I hope we’re not going to have to lay off teachers.’ ”

Indeed, to Charles Barron, the outspoken Brooklyn councilman, Mr. Walcott said, “I don’t want to lay off teachers.”

“Don’t!” Mr. Barron retorted, adding dismissively that Mr. Walcott was “smooth enough, sharp enough,” and that he would have an answer for everything.

Mr. Walcott testified for nearly four hours. He deferred to the department’s top deputy, Shael Polakow-Suransky, for explanations about instruction, curriculum and testing, and to its chief financial officer, Veronica Conforme, for details about the numbers, but he took most of the questions himself.

Whenever there was something he did not know, he promised to find out.

He defended the city’s policy to offer space in public school buildings to new charter schools, but acknowledged the process could be improved. He pledged to keep “the pedal to the metal” and praised the school system’s “remarkable progress” since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took its reins in 2002.

“I believe in what we’re doing, and I haven’t had any evidence that what we’re doing is wrong,” said Mr. Walcott, who as deputy mayor has advised Mr. Bloomberg on education matters.

He also repeated a mantra of the Bloomberg administration, that the state law protecting the most senior teachers in the event of layoffs was “one of the most crippling policies on the books.”

As he testified, the teachers’ union president, Michael Mulgrew, scrawled “sick of it” on the back of a printout of his testimony. “This isn’t about the chancellor,” Mr. Mulgrew said afterward. “It’s about the policies, and they don’t seem to have changed.”

Sarah Porter and Janine Sopp, whose children go to Public School 132 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, signed up to speak at the hearing, but left after Mr. Walcott did; Ms. Porter said she had gone there for a chance to talk to him directly about the city’s need to control growing class sizes, so there was no point sticking around.

“He says he listens to people and he talks very nicely, but he’s still implementing the same policies,” she said.

Sounding equally disappointed, Ms. Sopp called Mr. Walcott “another mouthpiece for the mayor.”

City Hall, not wanting a contentious Council hearing to frame the public’s first impression of Mr. Walcott, scheduled a photo opportunity beforehand in which he walked his grandson, Justin, into P.S. 36, which he also attended as a child. The Bloomberg administration is making the most of Mr. Walcott’s ties to public schools, since his predecessor was criticized for having none.

But Mr. Walcott’s appointment is subject to the approval of a waiver from the state education commissioner because he does not have enough experience working in schools. (Ms. Black also needed a waiver.) In a letter seeking the waiver, Mr. Bloomberg laid out Mr. Walcott’s many years of public service, including 12 years running the New York Urban League, his master’s degree in education, his year and a half as a kindergarten teacher and the fact that his four children attended city public schools.

They went to public high schools, but for elementary and middle school they attended Allen Christian School, founded by the Rev. Floyd Flake, the influential Queens minister and former congressman who is a friend of Mr. Walcott. A spokeswoman for the Education Department, Natalie Ravitz, said Mr. Walcott had wanted his children to have a Christian education.

After the hearing, Mr. Walcott returned to the department’s headquarters, where he finished filling out forms to submit to the state, met with the chancellor’s remaining cabinet members (four of them left in recent months) and ate a salad before he headed out to record a television interview.

Mr. Walcott has a full calendar in the coming days. He will be attending a special education conference on Saturday, an event set up before his appointment; going to a church on Sunday; and visiting schools, meeting with parents, traveling to Albany and holding a town-hall-style meeting in the city next week.

Rebecca White and Karen Zraick contributed reporting.

Talk About Prophetic

2011-04-07T17:53:00.001-04:00

Open Letter to Ms. Black 11/26/10

Dear Ms. Black,

Please do the right thing and withdraw yourself from the fray.

You will be vilified by the public, not taken seriously by educators & parents and tossed aside when Bloomberg is done with you.

Why be known as Bloomberg’s sycophant and tool in destroying public schools? Did you not see what happened to Klein? He is categorically known throughout the city as a giant failure. Do you really want to join the list of education deformers??

Sincerely,

Queens Teacher

Breaking News

2011-04-07T15:28:00.001-04:00

CATHIE BLACK RESIGNS.

NOW WHEN WILL BLOOMBUCKS?

The Scam of the "Crisis"

2011-03-15T12:47:00.000-04:00

Citizens United v. FEC

2011-03-14T09:03:00.002-04:00

So this explains the corporate war on unions. Time to take back our country from its vultures.

Teachers' Lavish Lifestyles

2011-03-12T21:48:00.005-05:00

The Daily Show - Crisis in Dairyland - Apocalypse Cow
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Top Ten Worst Ideas in Education

2011-03-11T09:07:00.003-05:00

Top Ten Worst Ideas in Education

1) BOGUS READING INSTRUCTION -- Whole Word, Sight Words, and Dolch Words (there are many aliases) have created 50 million functional illiterates, for the simple reason that this method does not work. (No one learns to read fluently with Sight-Words. Some people learn to read, if at all, IN SPITE OF of Sight-Words.) This hoax and the accompanying gimmicks known as guessing, picture clues, et al should be eliminated from the schools.

2) REFORM MATH -- Arithmetic jumbled and mumbled. Reform Math is a monster with many names (Connected Math, Chicago Math, Everyday Math, TERC, etc.) created by the same people who gave us New Math and now want to give us Core Standards. Reform Math forbids mastery, requires spiraling from topic to topic, and promotes using a calculator to compensate for a lack of basic skills.

3) COOPERATIVE LEARNING -- Students always work in groups. A good approach for fostering a herd sensibility; a dreadful approach for creating independent thinkers and self-starters.

4) CONSTRUCTIVISM -- A destructive fad. Teachers are reduced to facilitators, their knowledge and academic training rendered moot. Students are required to invent their own new knowledge. This process will be long and slow. After all, the human race has been around for millennia and has collected tens of thousands of prime facts, insights, discoveries, theories, etc. What sort of loon turns a child loose with this order: try to recapitulate the intellectual history of the human race? (A far better approach is to give children a wide range of foundational knowledge ASAP.)

5) WAR AGAINST CONTENT -- A witless policy pursued since the time of John Dewey. The apparent goal is to make sure that children learn as little as possible. In any case, that is the result.

6) NO MEMORIZATION -- This is standard operating procedure in all grades and in all courses. It is an excellent policy if you wish to ensure cultural illiteracy and societal amnesia.

7) SELF-ESTEEM -- Another destructive fad now rampant. Students must be praised even when they do bad work. Furthermore, a concern for self-esteem can justify eliminating virtually all content from classrooms, on the grounds that some students won’t be able to handle the material. A quiet plague.

8) MULTICULTURALISM -- This sophistry requires children to learn more about faraway cultures, both in miles and years, than about their own. As the children have no frame of reference for understanding other cultures, little information is retained, other than the persistent message: your own country is no damn good. Multiculturalism helps in the war against content. Kids are kept busy, going nowhere.

9) HOSTILITY TO TESTING -- A helpful policy if you wish to conceal how little children are learning.

10) TOO MANY IMPOSTORS -- Left-wing ideologues pretend to care about education even while manipulating the minds of millions of children. (Keep these people away from the schools, and the other nine problems will miraculously vanish.)

There is a concerted effort to dumb down education so that kids are only educated enough to work at places like Walmart.

Don't Balance Budget on the Back of Middle Class

2011-03-10T07:32:00.000-05:00

Dumbed Down Education

2011-03-09T16:31:00.000-05:00

How Billionaires Rule Our Schools

2011-03-08T13:07:00.000-05:00

Public School Students Being Prepared for Jobs at Walmart

2011-03-07T15:09:00.002-05:00

Professor Lois Weiner: "...What's really going on is a vocationalization of education, a watering down of curriculum for most kids, so that they're going to take jobs that require only a 7th or an 8th grade education, because those are the jobs that are being created in this economy."

Ed Schultz: The Economic State of the Middle Class is Tied to Union Membership

2011-03-05T07:55:00.000-05:00

Senator Sanders Grills Secretary Duncan

2011-03-04T19:54:00.007-05:00

Duncan is such a slug.

How is it people will vote against their own economic interests?

2011-03-04T13:21:00.008-05:00

Maddow: "There are two sides and because the democratic side is inherently the one that has more people in it and this is a democracy and it's one person, one vote. The Republican side, in order to compete with thay has to use money to leverage as many votes as they can because their side represents the interests of fewer people. That's where they found social issues, abortion, gay rights, religion and all these other things to come in handy. There's an economic split between two parties between Democrats and Republicans but more people are on the Democratic side of that economic split almost by defintion. So Republicans by and large have had to use noneconomic issues to get people to vote with the economic elite and against their own economic interests."

I don't know about you, but this all makes sense to me.

The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

2011-03-03T05:25:00.001-05:00

Who Elected Bill Gates?

2011-03-01T16:40:00.002-05:00

Who Elected Bill Gates?

Gary Stager
Teacher educator, education journalist, speaker, school reformer, university professor

It's sad to watch a once smart and talented man go mad right before our eyes. There needs to be an intervention for Bill Gates. I fear that he has taken leave of his senses and finally jumped the shark.

I have written about Bill Gates and his interest in "school reform" for years, beginning with An Open Letter to Bill Gates, published in 2006 when I had little reason to question his motives or desire to improve public schools. Since then I wrote the School Wars: Who's Trying to Control Your Public Schools? (2008) cover story for Good Magazine in which I urged citizens to be weary of billionaire bullies trying to privatize public education. I mocked Gates' inept attempt to influence the 2008 presidential campaign with his ED in '08 organization in the article, Bill Gates and Eli Broad Go Gangsta.

I sat back stunned when Gates shared the remarkable ephipany that we should find out what effective teachers do and share those ideas with others as if such a patronizing revelation had never occurred to educators. In his incredibly condescending TED Talk, Gates went on to suggest that we film excellent teaching and share it with others; another long-established practice he thinks he invented to rescue children from all of the awful teachers consciously suppressing standardized test scores. Gates doesn't offer to film the classrooms his children attend, but rather the obedience schools like KIPP he prescribes for poor children. In the world of Bill Gates his children deserve one quality of educational experience and other people's children should receive a joyless diet of remediation, testing, deprivation, compliance and shame.

Since when do philanthropists call for the deprivation of children?

I didn't write an article when Gates complained that teachers should not be compensated for post-graduate education, not even when his puppet, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan amplified his ridiculous argument against educators being educated. I blogged that Bill Gates was investing in Khan Academy because it deskills teachers and reduces the cost of education when public schools can be replaced by a hobbyist's YouTube videos. I didn't gloat when the "School of the Future" Microsoft built in Philadelphia and based on absurd corporate fantasies proved to be a predictable failure

I remained quiet when Bill Gates, a monopolist whose company has a record of labor violations here and abroad, when he attacked teacher seniority and pensions. His affection for Teach for America and other gimmicks to recruite cheaper less qualified and more compliant teachers is predictable. Trickling down on the little guy is what American corporate bigwigs do.

I shrugged when the Obama Administration's Department of Education was flooded with former Gates Foundation employees. I was unamused when Microsoft's business partner, NBC News, had my FaceBook access blocked for criticizing their shameless publicity on behalf ot the Gates-financed propaganda film, Waiting for Superman. I tweeted in horror when I learned that the Gates Foundation was funding a scheme to put earpieces in teachers so they may be controlled while teaching.

You would think that nothing else could surprise me, but now, Bill Gates has descended into the delusional world of Charlie Sheen. Gates told the nation's governors (they seem to speak with Bill more than their caddies) that the critical cuts to public schools could actually improve education if class sizes were increased so that we can "get more students in front of the very best teachers." That's right, Bill Gates is now advocating for larger class size! Since when do philanthropists call for the deprivation of children?

Gates' crazy plan to raise class sizes FOR THE CHILDREN is one thing, but his desire to get more students "in front of the very best teachers" reveals his ignorance on how learning occurs. Learning is an active process constructed by each learner. It is not simply not the immediate result of being taught.

Who elected Bill Gates and gave him control of a national treasure, our public schools? Would someone please suggest that he return to the corporate world and refocus his energies on the technological triumph that is the Zune?

A Message for Teachers

2011-03-01T15:13:00.003-05:00

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

How Wall Street Shafted Main Street

2011-03-01T06:55:00.000-05:00

Joke of the Day

2011-02-28T21:15:00.001-05:00

A unionized public employee, a teabagger, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 11 cookies, looks at the teabagger and says, "Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie."

What Teachers Make

2011-02-28T08:32:00.000-05:00

What Teachers Make, or
Objection Overruled, or
If things don't work out, you can always go to law school

By Taylor Mali

He says the problem with teachers is, "What's a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?"
He reminds the other dinner guests that it's true what they say about
teachers:
Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.

I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the other dinner guests
that it's also true what they say about lawyers.

Because we're eating, after all, and this is polite company.

"I mean, you¹re a teacher, Taylor," he says.
"Be honest. What do you make?"

And I wish he hadn't done that
(asked me to be honest)
because, you see, I have a policy
about honesty and ass-kicking:
if you ask for it, I have to let you have it.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best.

I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.
No, you may not ask a question.
Why won't I let you get a drink of water?
Because you're not thirsty, you're bored, that's why.

I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:
I hope I haven't called at a bad time,
I just wanted to talk to you about something Billy said today.
Billy said, "Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don't you?"
And it was the noblest act of courage I have ever seen.

I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write, write, write.
And then I make them read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely
beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math.
And hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you got this (brains)
then you follow this (heart) and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this (the finger).

Let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
I make a goddamn difference! What about you?

The Truth About Republicans

2011-02-27T12:32:00.008-05:00

This is just my opinion but I need to put it out there in case anyone has any doubts about their party affiliation..

I have said this for years: never vote for a Republican. Do whatever it takes to ensure Republicans don't win, even if it means voting for a crappy Democrat. Republicans are unfit to govern and they hate the people. They hate freedom. They hate democracy. They love only the rich and privileged few. Vote Democrat and you may get screwed; but vote Republican and you WILL get screwed. Every. Single. Time. Don't believe me? See here.

Now the question is how do we get faux Democrats like Governor Cuomo and President Obama out of office?

"Shared Sacrifice"

2011-02-27T10:12:00.006-05:00

Broad Academy Graduates Coming to a City Near You

2011-02-26T10:02:00.011-05:00

In light if the diastrous jobs (see here, here and here) many of our Eli Broad Academy for Superintendents have been doing, I thought it appropriate to provide a list of graduates through the years. If you are unfortunate enough, one of them may have landed in your school district. Let's see who came to New York City from the Academy...

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

It can be safe to assume most if not all of the graduates were put in place to dismantle public education. It's no wonder Shael Polakow-Suransky was chosen to be Cathie Black's co-chancellor over veteran educator Eric Nadelstern. Shael is a Broad graduate!!!

See the Broad Center's Board of Directors.

Blame the Teachers, Kill the Unions

2011-02-25T19:18:00.000-05:00

Jeffrey Sachs: "..We've never lived like we do right now with the middle class disappearing in this country and the rich in a contagion of greed trying to crush the bottom. And I think Reagan did get that started. People revere him to this day in this country. But the fact of the matter is when you look at how the middle class started this decline in America, it was in the 1980's when the tax cuts on the top were given, the budget deficits opened up, they started to squeeze education and social spending and we're breaking this country in two...."

Our Tax System

2011-02-25T11:28:00.002-05:00

Warren Buffett: "My payroll taxes plus income taxes came to 17.7%. The average for the office was 32.9%. There wasn't anyone in the office from the receptionist on that paid as low a tax rate(as me)."

Unrest in the Midwest

2011-02-24T09:42:00.004-05:00

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Senator Sanders on American Capitalism

2011-02-23T13:48:00.000-05:00

Billionaire Boys Club Koch Brothers Behind Wisconsin Governor's Union-Busting

2011-02-23T07:21:00.003-05:00

The American Dream ~ Cause You Have To Be Asleep To Believe It

2011-02-22T17:18:00.011-05:00

George Carlin on the wealthiest Americans: "..Well we know what they want. They want more(money) for themselves and less for everyone else. But I tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed and well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests..."

This ties in to the fuzzy reading and math programs being rammed down everyone's throat to keep us all blissfully ignorant. Right Lucy?

The Tax Cut Bill Helps Rich

2011-02-22T08:27:00.000-05:00

Richard Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and currently a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. He has a PhD in Economics from Yale University as well as degrees from Harvard University (history BA) and Stanford University (economics MA). Wolff has authored or co-authored 10 books and over 50 scholarly articles and 75 popular articles. His recent work has concentrated on analyzing the causes and alternative solutions to the current global economic crisis.

Deformers Want Wisconsin To Join Race To The Bottom

2011-02-21T17:51:00.005-05:00

Comment on Op-ed "Wisconsin Power Play" from the New York Times

Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Their ranking on ACT/SAT scores:

South Carolina - 50th
North Carolina - 49th
Georgia - 48th
Texas - 47th
Virginia - 44th

Wisconsin is currently ranked 2nd. Welcome to the race to the bottom.

I guess the unions aren't standing in the way of student achievement after all.

Update:
Also, here is a list of graduation rates and states that don't allow collective baragining. They have some of the lowest graduation rates.

Class Warfare - Top 1% vs You

2011-02-21T13:17:00.000-05:00

Why America's Teachers Are Enraged

2011-02-20T17:00:00.000-05:00

Why America's teachers are enraged
By Diane Ravitch

(CNN) -- Thousands of teachers, nurses, firefighters and other public sector workers have camped out at the Wisconsin Capitol, protesting Republican Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to reduce their take-home pay -- by increasing their contribution to their pension plans and health care benefits -- and restrict their collective bargaining rights.

Republicans control the state Legislature, and initially it seemed certain that Walker's proposal would pass easily. But then the Democrats in the Legislature went into hiding, leaving that body one vote shy of a quorum. As of this writing, the Legislature was at a standstill as state police searched high and low for the missing lawmakers.

Like other conservative Republican governors, including Chris Christie of New Jersey, John Kasich of Ohio, Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Rick Scott of Florida, the Wisconsin governor wants to sap the power of public employee unions, especially the teachers' union, since public education is the single biggest expenditure for every state.

Public schools in Madison and a dozen other districts in Wisconsin closed as teachers joined the protest. Although Walker claims he was forced to impose cutbacks because the state is broke, teachers noticed that he offered generous tax breaks to businesses that were equivalent to the value of their givebacks.

The uprising in Madison is symptomatic of a simmering rage among the nation's teachers. They have grown angry and demoralized over the past two years as attacks on their profession escalated.

The much-publicized film "Waiting for Superman" made the specious claim that "bad teachers" caused low student test scores. A Newsweek cover last year proposed that the key to saving American education was firing bad teachers.

Teachers across the nation reacted with alarm when the leaders of the Central Falls district in Rhode Island threatened to fire the entire staff of the small town's only high school. What got their attention was that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama thought this was a fine idea, even though no one at the high school had been evaluated.

The Obama administration's Race to the Top program intensified the demonizing of teachers, because it encouraged states to evaluate teachers in relation to student scores. There are many reasons why students do well or poorly on tests, and teachers felt they were being unfairly blamed when students got low scores, while the crucial role of families and the students themselves was overlooked.

Teachers' despair deepened last August when The Los Angeles Times rated 6,000 teachers in Los Angeles as effective or ineffective, based on their students' test scores, and posted these ratings online. Testing experts warn that such ratings are likely to be both inaccurate and unstable, but the Times stood by its analysis.

Now conservative governors and mayors want to abolish teachers' right to due process, their seniority, and -- in some states -- their collective bargaining rights. Right-to-work states do not have higher scores than states with strong unions. Actually, the states with the highest performance on national tests are Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Vermont, and New Hampshire, where teachers belong to unions that bargain collectively for their members.

Unions actively lobby to increase education funding and reduce class size, so conservative governors who want to slash education spending feel the need to reduce their clout. This silences the best organized opposition to education cuts.

There has recently been a national furor about school reform. One must wonder how it is possible to talk of improving schools while cutting funding, demoralizing teachers, cutting scholarships to college, and increasing class sizes.

The real story in Madison is not just about unions trying to protect their members' hard-won rights. It is about teachers who are fed up with attacks on their profession. A large group of National Board Certified teachers -- teachers from many states who have passed rigorous examinations by an independent national board -- is organizing a march on Washington in July. The events in Madison are sure to multiply their numbers.

As the attacks on teachers increase and as layoffs grow, there are likely to be more protests like the one that has mobilized teachers and their allies and immobilized the Wisconsin Legislature.

Petition for Bloomberg's Resignation

2011-02-20T08:39:00.003-05:00

Mayor Bloomberg, please resign
Mr. Mayor,

The people of New York stood by and watched you, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and the City Council of New York gift themselves a third term against the will of the people. Since then we have helplessly watched the appointment of a Chancellor of Education with no background in education. The mayor has called the people of New York "embarassing" for speaking their minds at PEP meetings.

I'm writing to ask you, Mayor Bloomberg, to resign and take Cathie Black with you. You have shown a complete and utter lack of respect for the United States Constitution by stating that protests at public meetings are embarassing and not a democracy. Our US Constitution not only protects the right to speak freely, it also defends the rights of the people in this country to peacefully assemble.

The people of New York will continue to assemble and speak up, regardless of your lack of Constitutional understanding. You, however, must resign.

Since her appointment, Cathie Black has shown a complete disregard for the parents of New York; making off-color jokes about birth control and mockingly booing the crowds at PEP meetings. The children of New York deserve better than what you have given them.

In your latest budget you claim that the layoff of 4,666 teachers is inevitable. Your budget would also close down firehouses, cut thousands of child care services, and close down 100 senior centers. It is obvious that you care very little for the most vulnerable in our city.

Your budget, your actions, and your words show the working and middle class people of New York how much you really care for them.

We demand your resignation.

[Your name]

Will the Democratic Party Survive?

2011-02-19T07:19:00.000-05:00

Rachel Maddow: "What's happening in Wisconsin is not about a budget. It's about elections. This is about the Republican party going after institutions that make it possible for Democrats to win elections in America."

Senator Sanders for President!!!

2011-02-18T16:21:00.000-05:00

Avella To Bloomberg: Stop Blaming The Unions

2011-02-17T18:16:00.004-05:00

Avella To Bloomberg: Stop Blaming The Unions

NYC Councilman-turned-Senator Tony Avella sent a letter today to his erstwhile political foe, Mayor Blooomberg, accusing him of taking an “unconscionable” stance on the so-called holiday “bonuses” he’s trying to eliminate as part of his pension reform push.

The Queens Democrat, who ran a longshot run for mayor in 2009 (losing the Democratic primary to then-NYC Comptroller Bill Thompson), is siding with the more than 33,000 former NYC cops and firefighters who receive that amount every December as part of the Variable Supplement Fund.

The bonus was established in 1968 and, unlike other pension benefits, is not constitutionally protected. Doing away with it would save the city $200 million a year, Bloomberg mantains.

But the unions – and now Avella – note the bonuses came about as a result of the collective bargaining process. In exchange, the city was allowed to adopt a more aggressive pension investment strategy to reduce its annual direct contribution to the pension funds. (This reportedly saved $4 billion, Avella said).

Avella called the mayor’s characterization of the VSF as “Christmas bonuses” disgraceful, adding: “Your attacks in this regard on the city’s uniformed personnel, who put their lives at on the line every day throughout their careers, is unbecoming for a mayor of the City of New York.”

How the middle class became the underclass

2011-02-16T15:29:00.007-05:00

How the middle class became the underclass

Are you better off than your parents?

Probably not if you're in the middle class.

Incomes for 90% of Americans have been stuck in neutral, and it's not just because of the Great Recession. Middle-class incomes have been stagnant for at least a generation, while the wealthiest tier has surged ahead at lighting speed.

In 1988, the income of an average American taxpayer was $33,400, adjusted for inflation. Fast forward 20 years, and not much had changed: The average income was still just $33,000 in 2008, according to IRS data.

Meanwhile, the richest 1% of Americans -- those making $380,000 or more -- have seen their incomes grow 33% over the last 20 years, leaving average Americans in the dust. Experts point to some of the usual suspects -- like technology and globalization -- to explain the widening gap between the haves and have-nots.

But there's more to the story.

A real drag on the middle class

One major pull on the working man was the decline of unions and other labor protections, said Bill Rodgers, a former chief economist for the Labor Department, now a professor at Rutgers University.

Because of deals struck through collective bargaining, union workers have traditionally earned 15% to 20% more than their non-union counterparts, Rodgers said.

But union membership has declined rapidly over the past 30 years. In 1983, union workers made up about 20% of the workforce. In 2010, they represented less than 12%.

"The erosion of collective bargaining is a key factor to explain why low-wage workers and middle income workers have seen their wages not stay up with inflation," Rodgers said.

Without collective bargaining pushing up wages, especially for blue-collar work -- average incomes have stagnated.

International competition is another factor. While globalization has lifted millions out of poverty in developing nations, it hasn't exactly been a win for middle class workers in the U.S.

Factory workers have seen many of their jobs shipped to other countries where labor is cheaper, putting more downward pressure on American wages.

"As we became more connected to China, that poses the question of whether our wages are being set in Beijing," Rodgers said.

Finding it harder to compete with cheaper manufacturing costs abroad, the U.S. has emerged as primarily a services-producing economy. That trend has created a cultural shift in the job skills American employers are looking for.

Whereas 50 years earlier, there were plenty of blue collar opportunities for workers who had only high school diploma, now employers seek "soft skills" that are typically honed in college, Rodgers said.

A boon for the rich

While average folks were losing ground in the economy, the wealthiest were capitalizing on some of those same factors, and driving an even bigger wedge between themselves and the rest of America.

For example, though globalization has been a drag on labor, it's been a major win for corporations who've used new global channels to reduce costs and boost profits. In addition, new markets around the world have created even greater demand for their products.

"With a global economy, people who have extraordinary skills... whether they be in financial services, technology, entertainment or media, have a bigger place to play and be rewarded from," said Alan Johnson, a Wall Street compensation consultant.

As a result, the disparity between the wages for college educated workers versus high school grads has widened significantly since the 1980s.

In 1980, workers with a high school diploma earned about 71% of what college-educated workers made. In 2010, that number fell to 55%.

Another driver of the rich: The stock market.

The S&P 500 has gained more than 1,300% since 1970. While that's helped the American economy grow, the benefits have been disproportionately reaped by the wealthy.

And public policy of the past few decades has only encouraged the trend.

The 1980s was a period of anti-regulation, presided over by President Reagan, who loosened rules governing banks and thrifts.

A major game changer came during the Clinton era, when barriers between commercial and investment banks, enacted during the post-Depression era, were removed.

In 2000, President Bush also weakened the government's oversight of complex securities, allowing financial innovations to take off, creating unprecedented amounts of wealth both for the overall economy, and for those directly involved in the financial sector.

Tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration and extended under Obama were also a major windfall for the nation's richest.

And as then-Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan brought interest rates down to new lows during the decade, the housing market experienced explosive growth.

"We were all drinking the Kool-aid, Greenspan was tending bar, Bernanke and the academic establishment were supplying the liquor," Deutsche Bank managing director Ajay Kapur wrote in a research report in 2009.

But the story didn't end well. Eventually, it all came crashing down, resulting in the worst economic slump since the Great Depression.

With the unemployment rate still excessively high and the real estate market showing few signs of rebounding, the American middle class is still reeling from the effects of the Great Recession.

Meanwhile, as corporate profits come roaring back and the stock market charges ahead, the wealthiest people continue to eclipse their middle-class counterparts.

"I think it's a terrible dilemma, because what we're obviously heading toward is some kind of class warfare," Johnson said.

If people can't see the correlation between trying to rid the public school system of the teachers unions and the demise of the middle class, they need to open their eyes and ears.

The question is will the unions continue to allow the wealthy to erode everything that we fought so hard for or will they fight to save the teaching profession and ultimately a student's right to a public education?

Here's a list of large corporations who pay little in taxes. These guys are all sitting in their mansions laughing at us.

Yeah, it's the unions that are killing this country. It wouldn't be these wealthy opportunists not paying their fair share. Nah, it wouldn't be that.