The story below appeared this morning in the NY Post. It refers to a judge’s decision not to overturn the ruling of an independent arbitrator who stopped the Mayor from firing half the staff at 24 “turnaround” schools. The Mayor has had one very simple strategy to “help” schools and “save” students: He closes them. This time, to qualify for federal funds, he decided to “turn around” the schools by firing half the staff (no negative evaluations, just bad luck). The union and the city went into binding arbitration and the Mayor lost. You can see from the article below that the city honestly believes it is giving schools “the help they so desperately need” by firing half the staff. This is called “reform” in the era of NCLB-Race to the Top. Burn the village down to save it. Or, in this case, burn down only half the village.
Bloomberg getting
a fresh ‘ed’ache
A judge yesterday dealt another blow to Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to fix 24 failing public schools by closing them, replacing half their staffs and reopening them with new staffs.
Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Joan Lobis denied the city’s request for a temporary injunction.
“I’m not going to jump in at this point,” Lobis said.
City attorney Maxwell Leighton said the arbitrator’s ruling, if it stands, will hurt the mayor’s plan to reform failing schools.
“We would find ourselves in a position where we would not be able to give the schools the help they so desperately need,” he said.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is BS and backspin. This is about Bloomberg getting shut down and being denied full control. I don’t trust anything he or Sternberg say. But he is not done yet. Someone with money, power and a huge ego will continue to humiliate teachers for his own gain. He will make their lives miserable and the kids are an afterthought.
There should be bullying laws to protect teachers from political hacks. By the time he leaves, he will have been in charge of the schools for TWELVE years and there will be plenty of evidence of the disaster Bloomberg created due to ignorance and arrogance.
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My state is doing the same thing… I should say my city.
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Where is that. Fill us in with the details please.
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In the old days, when someone would invade a country, their method to get the people in line would be to burn their crops and villages. The people would be starving and unable to defend themselves. When the United States wanted to end the war with Japan, we atomic bombed two of their cities and the Japanese fell right into line. When Mayor Bloomberg wants to reform schools, does he really think that war tactics like nuclear attacks and slash and burn (circa the Civil War era burning of Atlanta or the War of 1812 burning of Washington D.C.) will really do the trick? Maybe he forgets that history shows these tactics don’t work.
I wonder if Mayor Bloomberg and his fellow billionaire philanthropists can explain how closing a school will fix it?
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It can’t fix it. But it can line the pockets of his cronies (and by extension his own pockets) by privatizing a public good and have the suckers, oops I mean taxpayers, pay for it.
By the way good analogy!
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I am a principal of an urban, low-income school. My first challenge when I took this position was to respond to poor-performing teachers, some of whom I took action to remove. I vividly recall accepting the resignation of one particular teacher I had evaluated poorly, only to think, Now what do I do?
The result was a revolving door of teachers in that classroom until this year, four years later, when I hired an exceptional person. As luck would have it, the person was not “highly qualified,” so I’ve lobbied to keep the person on by putting a “plan of assistance” in place.
The learning I’ve taken from this is that even taking action against one poor-performing teacher who “deserves” such action comes with costs, many unintended. It hasn’t stopped me from continuing to do so, but it definitely lends a gravitas to my thinking and actions I didn’t have before.
So does it help schools to fire half their staff? I don’t know. Maybe, at some particular school under some particular circumstances, if “half their staff” is truly the problem. But even under these conditions, I have doubts that it can be done well and thoughtfully, that the people making these decisions understand the complexity and ramifications of such an action, that the people making these decisions don’t have ulterior motives, and that the people making these decisions have taken the time to thoroughly wrestle with the question, What really is the problem here?
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I agree with your view that when you find a bad teacher, that teacher should be removed. Firing half the staff by fiat or formula is simply mayhem. I am impressed when I hear about principals who rekindled the energy and enthusiasm of a beaten-down staff. That’s impressive.
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Careful, Harold, you’re thinking way too much. That’s no way to move up the education administration ladder!!
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I work in one of those 24 turnaround schools in NYC and was appalled at the hiring process. The majority of the teachers who were NOT hired back were indeed effective and amazing teachers. They were “culled” from the herd because they were senior teachers and made too much money. Among the teachers who were not hired back were the bilingual science teacher whose Regents passing rate was the highest of all the science teachers. She is amazing, but her sin was being in the system too long. Honestly, teachers were stunned when they were not hired back.
Ironically, some of the teachers who were hired back were among the weakest on our staff. Nobody really understood the hiring process or how these decisions were made. Yes, we knew there was a rubric and yes, the UFT sat on these committees, but let’s be honest–none of this addresses the real issues in many of these students’ lives. They are sent to the high school with deficient skills and other social problems.
And “Harold,”,none of this, please be clear, was about helping kids. It was about hiring the least expensive workers. Kids be damned. Morale at my school was so low to begin with. Nobody even knows if they are back or not, nobody knows if the old principal is in or not and nobody even knows what the school’s name is.
This is chaos. This is destruction. This is immoral. This is DANGEROUS!
I am not sure if has been discussed on this blog–but the turnaround model in Chicago yielded such dangerous conditions in one high school that a student was murdered.
Here is a link to an article about that: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/20/1054298/-Murder-of-Derrion-Albert-was-a-Turnaround-School
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This is so wrong. How could this be happening in our country? How could we finally have our first minority, partially African American president and it is poor children of color who are the ones being resegregated by charters, turn arounds and the rest of these backwards reforms. I just get sick and sicker when I read these posts. I don’t even know what to do.
These self-appointed refomers do not know what they are doing. They are making it up as they go along and the transparency and high standards that apply to the lowly teachers never apply to them.
This has to implode at some point and you are correct; this is DANGEROUS.
Who will they blame when the turn arounds are a failure. Who then?
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Mr. Leighton, you know you could just stop doing things like cutting every budget, and doing simple things like giving teachers the supplies they need. That would be a start n helping schools.
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