The city and the teachers’ union went to court to battle over the city’s plan to “turnaround” 24 schools by firing thousands of teachers.
The judge listened to the arguments, retired to her chambers, and returned seven minutes later to say that she was sustaining the arbitrator’s decision. The city may not lay off the teachers. It violates their contract.
This battle involves more than 3,000 teachers and 30,000 students. No one is sure how the schools will be staffed when schools opens in a few weeks. No one knows which teachers have found other jobs and which will return.
The schools, having been labeled as “failures,” have suffered enormous blows to their reputation in the community. If past experience is any guide, parents will be reluctant to enroll their children in a school that has been targeted for closure and that is now on life support for another year.
Just keep saying to yourself, that is reform, this is not reform, this is reform, this is not reform.
Or just call it chaos.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Disruption and chaos serve a purpose for these people: it keeps the system destabilized, in constant crisis, and open to continuing charges that it is “failing,” and must be reformed, aka privatized.
So, so true!!
Michael, you are so right. I think that those with educational power have taken a page from Saul Alinsky’s “Rule For Radicals”. Here are some excerpts … it’s time that teachers, parents, and students turn the tables …
Rules for Radicals
By Saul Alinsky – 1971
“The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization. Present arrangements must be disorganized if they are to be displace by new patterns…. All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.” p.116
“An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent… He must create a mechanism that can drain off the underlying guilt for having accepted the previous situation for so long a time. Out of this mechanism, a new community organization arises….
“The job then is getting the people to move, to act, to participate; in short, to develop and harness the necessary power to effectively conflict with the prevailing patterns and change them. When those prominent in the status quo turn and label you an ‘agitator’ they are completely correct, for that is, in one word, your function—to agitate to the point of conflict.” p.117
http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/communism/alinsky.htm
Read this comment by Walcott:
“The vision, the goals of the school, trying to create a new atmosphere at those schools — all those things will be pushed aside,” Walcott said. “Our goal is to make sure we provide a high-quality education for the 30,000 students who attend these schools. Unfortunately, that may not happen.”
This is the leader for the teachers and students? He has already decided that they cannot provide a high quality education to these students because the judge did not agree with them? Is he dooming them to failure again just to prove they were right?
This is leadership? What if a teacher said that about their class of students?
Dr. Ravitch; I think you’re missing one “not” in your last paragraph.
Sincerely,
An English Teacher
I don’t think so.
Chaos, yes! Nice to hear Bloomberg was told “no”.
Dr. Ravitch:
I think you’re missing one “not” in your last paragraph.
Sincerely,
NYC ELA Teacher
Reblogged this on Kmareka.com and commented:
Big news for schools in NY as judge rules 24 NYC schools cannot be closed, since it violates the contract.
Actually, when the UFT won a stay for Jamaica, parents who chose it were sent letters saying their kids were assigned to Francis Lewis, but if they really wanted to send them to Jamaica, which the city asserted was failing, they could write back and ask for another shot. Hardly what I’d call encouraging, and particularly galling since Jamaica’s closing was based on statistics we knew to be false.
It seems to me that the perpetual chaos ed reform has imposed in our schools is part of their overall strategy to undermine public education.