This letter froma teacher was written in response to the post by Marc Epstein on Big Lie Journalism in NYC:
“I began teaching nine years ago,after careers in law and business. There is a profound irony in analyzing the consequences of the so-called Bloomberg business model. While I’ve only taught during the Bloomberg tenure, I’ve seen pervasive mismanagement in my school ( and have heard similar anecdotes from teachers at other schools). The purchasing model for school supplies(books, computers,software) seems at best inept and more likely corrupt. Our school routinely overpays for supplies that are less than optimal. As for hiring incompetent,corrupt teachers, I dont think, as Mr Epstein suggests, that can be blamed on the mayor. It seems to be a combination of principals, who lack the skill sets to select,interview, and hire the best candidates,coupled with an archaic and convoluted human resources system that is baffling and counter-productive to finding the best teachers.
“If the NYC school system were a corporate entity, I would strongly urge the board to file for bankruptcy and bring in a team of turn around experts to work in concert with educators to build the best system that our current collective current knowledge allows for. Build it from scratch, much like Louis Gerstner did at iconic IBM,
The culpability for the sad state of NYC schools should be shared by the politicians, unions, teachers, administrators, and vendors.
The bankers and corporations are drooling over the prospects of privatizing education and the profound financial windfall that will accrue to those lined up to reap it (see,e.g. Joel Klein)
“The question is who can and will step up and represent the real stakeholders in this growing drama-the kids and their parents.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why always include teachers in the mix of the bad actors? Kind of like BLAMING THE VICTIMS… To put teachers on a par with administrators is absurd: One makes the non-nonsensical policy/demands, the other has to “spin straw into gold” of what they are FORCED to adhere to in the businessman’s dream of educational reform! STOP BLAMING TEACHERS AND FOCUS ON THE REAL DESTROYERS!
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I am sorry to intrude upon your attention again, but in response I must say only, “take responsibility for your own situation.” Don’t blame it on the administrators. That’s another cop out. If you put UP with it, you must accept association with them in blame. Eichmann said he was only following orders. That defense just doesn’t fly any longer.
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You are clueless. Really you have absolutely no idea what these teachers face every day.
Would you ever acknowledge not actually knowing what you are talking about? Is that even a possibility?
Are you ever happy?
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Harlan, Harlan, Harlan. Why does *Harlan* get all the free therapy? Why doesn’t anyone care whether *I’m* happy?
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I actually believe you are reasonable, willing to listen to others and generally happy.
That is my free therapy for FLERP.
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Kind of you, Linda. I can be those things, although I am often reasonable to a fault, I often don’t really listen to people until they’ve stopped speaking and are gone, and often I’m profoundly unhappy.
Thanks for responding to my transparent attempt to fish for free therapy.
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Sir: You have no right to compare teachers to Eichmann. That is disgusting and appalling. Shame on you.
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I sincerely hope that Diane eliminates you and your vulgar comments from this otherwise thoughtful, civil and intelligent post. You are truly disgusting!
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You must not be, nor never were, a teacher.
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Oh, leave Harlan alone. All of you.
He taught, as he put it, the “elite of the elite” in a tony private school in the state of I believe, Michigan.
Not to take any merit away from his teaching and career, but what does he know anything about teaching the massess in public schools, teaching under NCLB and RTTT, and teaching in schools that have challenged budgets and substantial segments of low income and ELL children?
What does he know about the excesses of standardized testing and the removal of so much autonomy in pedagogy?
You can’t expect him to know what he never experienced.
Years ago, Siskel and Ebert reviewed my wife’s cousin’s film “A Brief History in Time” (Errol Morris’s documentary on Stephen Hawkings), and they both said it was easier to critique a film than to make it and star in it.
Harlan loves to judge situations thinking he’s gone through the motions we have. He writes reviews on subjects for which he possesses two whole dimesions. We who have actually taught in public education have the third one. That is, when we’re talking about public education.
I, for one, could never assess the issues in private schooling as accurately as someone who taught in a private tony school with plush tution rates.
A while back, I suggested a Harlan hubris pride parade, with Harlan as grand marshall, but he did not respond to the idea. If I had as much hubris as Harlan, I’d be a lot more confident of myself. Instead, I’m stuck with horrible wisdom and awareness of others.
So are most of the rest of you. Get used to it.
I still think an infaltable, full of hot air “Harlan float” like the one in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade would be a spectacle.
There, Harlan. Don’t say I never defended you or promoted you in any way that makes sense. I’ve tried my best.
I sincerely don’t think that you are by any means the worst mindset on this blog.
You’re just the most meaningless . . . .
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So now the inestimable Mr. Underhill is doing the whole Third Reich thing and bringing it into our realm of laziness and indifference, us public school teachers with our notions of unions and equity. . . . .
Wow, Harlan, you’ve hit an all time low, even in your warped underworld of Equus-meets-Clockwork Orange.
But Linda and FLERP and all others looking for therapy: ganging up on Harlan is always cheap therapy! Cheer up.
My sarcasm-to-a-fault aside, ignoring him permanently is probably the most powerful thing we can all do.
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Agree……ignore, delete, empty trash.
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Linda,
Ignore, delete, empty trash, and sanitize.
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LP,
“. . . You have no right to compare teachers to Eichmann.”
Oh, why not?
I understand what HU is saying. Which is too many public school educators have “gone along to get along” and instituted practices in their classes that they know are not pedagogically sound and that harm students. Is that not the definition of a “good German”, one who is just doing what they are told and turning a blind eye to the harms that are being caused?
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SP62013,
“I sincerely hope that Diane eliminates you and your vulgar comments from this otherwise thoughtful, civil and intelligent post.”
Please explain what is vulgar about HU’s comment. I don’t see any vulgarity and, let me tell you, I can be as “vulgar” as a drunken sailor on shore leave. (Oh, no, now I’m being “vulgar” to drunken sailors, oh no, another stereotype.)
“You are truly disgusting!”
Really! Reality check, look in the mirror to see the blackness of the pot.
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RR,
“So now the inestimable Mr. Underhill is doing the whole Third Reich thing and bringing it into our realm of laziness and indifference”
No, that is not what HU has written. See my response to LAPur for what HU is saying. Which by the way I agree that too many teachers have been “good Germans” by instituting the various deforms and not challenging what they know to be pedagogically unsound practices. And by instituting those challenges have caused irreparable harm to many students.
RR, LP, SP and Linda, I ask that you address what he said in that post and show me exactly where it is so offensive. I just don’t see it!
Duane
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I am no longer reading or responding to anything posted by HU. It is your choice to defend him.
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Duane Swacker,
I would say it’s Harlan’s overall credibility that shades everything he comes out with. He’s right in that we have not, as a professional culture, been militantly resistant enough – overtly or covertly.
But as someone of the Jewish faith and married to a Jew, his analogy is difficult to swallow. Eichmann had the resources to go abroad and leave the country, snitch to other countries, or help the underground movement in Europe and abroad. Most teachers don’t have similar means to just leave their jobs and become full time activists. Eichmann helped kill millions of innocent people. I have this bizzarely accurate feeling that we teachers are not doing that. Let’s parse out hard cold fact from hard cold metaphor.
Our teaching culture in general was always based on cooperation and teamwork, virtues that need to be used additionally to continue the pushback against this reform movement. We are not operationalizing death camps, but our style of interfacing with the rest of world as teachers can potentially contribute to the death of democracy if we don’t gett in touch with our inner Karen Lewises.
But getting back to Harlan: This is also a guy, who in one of his posts wrote to me, asking if I had given up the “drugs and booze” and if I had “stopped beating (my) wife” . . . .
I had not one molecule of a clue of what he was talking about because all three of those things were irrlevant to the post and are foreign and anathema to me, and I could never conceive of bringing someone’s family into a response, especialy when it comes to involving vitriol and vituperativeness.
Harlan’s passions are very frequently correct, but his ability to contexturlalize them to an audience whose careers he really has not particiapted in is weak and counterproductive.
Harlan is not a child at 77, but despite his having grown old, he appears not to have grown up. . . .
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Stacey, he was but he worked in an expensive private school.
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Mr. Bloomberg knew how to run an education system about as much as Julia Childs knew how to repair a carburetor.
It’s easy to remember the words “Bloomberg” and “nefarious”. They both have nine letters.
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🙂
Needed a chuckle
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Voila . . .
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Michael Bloomberg was ceded complete control of the New York City school system by the state legislature.
He proceeded to “train” administrators in his Leadership Academy who were chosen for their lack of teaching experience in order to create a new corporate culture based on something called the business model.
That these principals have proved incapable of recognizing, hiring, and nurturing competent pedagogues should come as no surprise.
Of course Bloomberg is responsible for kinds of teachers that have been hired under his tenure.
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This is what’s known in law as an “argument in the alternative.” It’s correctly taken as a sign of weakness in legal argument. In the real world, it’s weasely to the extreme.
This is how it would read in a memorandum of law: “Assuming, arguendo, that there is a shortage of competent teachers–and Defendant denies there is any such shortage–it is due to the DOE’s failure to recognize, hire, and nurture competent teachers.”
This is how it would read in plain English: “I don’t actually believe any of the premises of my argument. I’m only making this argument in case you accept the premise that there’s a shortage of competent teachers. If you believe that, then it’s not teachers’ fault, it’s Bloomberg’s fault. If you don’t believe there’s a shortage of competent teachers, then great, ignore everything I’m saying.”
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So are you saying any of the problems or lack of progress is NOT the responsiblity of the mayor while the school system is under mayoral control?
I get you sometimes. I don’t get you now.
I think there is a shortage of competent leaders.
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Not what I’m saying. I’m saying that arguments in the alternative are weasely. Is there a real shortage of competent teachers? If yes, what’s the cause and the solution? If no, move on to the next topic.
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FLERP!
Why shouldn’t the person at the top be held accountable for the results of those “over” whom he/she works?
I am reminded of a president, who many thought very inferior in intellect, who said “The buck stops here” (and actually meant it in contrast to those at the top of organizations these days). But then being a fellow “Show Me Stater” as that president, I ask you to “show me” why Bloomberg shouldn’t be held accountable for the results of his 12 years of mayoral control of public education in NYC.
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I’m not saying the mayor shouldn’t be held accountable. He should. Although frankly I don’t know what people mean when they say this. We hold mayors accountable through the election process. Other than that, what do people have in mind? Prison? Flogging?
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Mr. Epstein
This seems like nit picking, but I fail to follow your premise that Bloomberg is responsible for kinds of teachers that have been hired.
From my perspective(correct me if I’m factually wrong), Bloomberg’s overarching oversight of the DOE doesnt reach down to micro decisions such as hiring teachers. The larger limitation seems to be the arcane, confusing system of how teachers can move from school to school. This obsolete anti-meritocratic system is more a vestige of the CBA negotiated by the mayor and the union( the latter seeking to protect teachers) and cant be placed on the Mayor.
If true progress is to be made in public education, all concerned parties have to take ownership of their culpability for the current state of public education. That includes, teachers(yes the job is difficult and most teachers work in good faith to educate students, but there are also plenty of incompetent teachers), administrators(including pre-Bloomberg admins, the vast majority), parents( we all know the impact of incompetent parenting on educational outcomes,even if we can understand the underlying social reasons for it; this is the elephant in the room that doesnt get included in the mix)and unions.
Until each party owns their share of the blame, steps towards progress will not start. We will continue to work at cross purposes.
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Bloomberg inherited a broken hiring system badly in need of an overhaul, and he proceeded to micro-manage a new process that
did nothing to improve the selection process.
When you couple this with the Leadership Academy philosophy of training principals with little or no classroom experience on purpose, then you guarantee that a functional HR process when it comes to hiring teachers will never come to fruition.
Here’s an excerpt from a piece I wrote at Huffington a few years ago that addresses some of the issues you raise… from “Cathie Black’s Tenure Trap”
“Mayoral control gave Michael Bloomberg the power to re-establish a Board of Examiners with the stroke of a pen, but nothing has been done to return rigorous standards to the hiring process.
Perhaps Bloomberg, who didn’t grow up in New York, is unaware that a Board of Examiners ever existed? After all, it’s far easier to run a PR campaign than it is to institute real reform.
The union, never one to miss an opportunity, has yet to call for a return to the hiring standards under the Board of Examiners that helped make New York’s schools the finest in the country.
Why should an experienced teacher have a tough time landing a new position you might ask? Well, along with the downsizing of schools came Klein’s decision to budget schools according to the actual salaries of their teachers.
Before mayoral control, a high school teacher counted as a “unit,” which meant whether you had a school with lots of experienced teachers or mostly rookies, the cost for staffing the school was the same. The teacher “unit” would represent the average price of compensating one of the 80,000 teachers in the system.
If a school closed, or its population declined, teachers who were no longer needed there were placed in available slots without having them go into the so-called “open” hiring market.
By forcing the principals to figure the real salary of each teacher into their budgets, they have every incentive to hire younger lower salaried teachers and to avoid the more experienced ones, who were too expensive. In Klein’s universe inexperience and lower salaries becomes a virtue, while experience be damned!
Would critics of tenure suggest that if a firehouse is closed because of a reorganization move by the department, the firemen are responsible for finding a new job within the system? Would these critics claim that young inexperienced firefighters are preferable to experienced ones?
With the press providing the wind for his sails, and Bill Gates funding the small school voyage, Klein’s assault on teachers and comprehensive high schools proved irresistible for someone with no real administrative skills. Ask yourself which role is easier, playing Tom Silva on This Old House, or just taking a wrecking ball to the whole place?
Around now, you might be asking yourself why the teachers union acquiesced to the ATR? To say that the union has taken a pounding in the press and from the chancellor over the past seven years is an understatement.
In typical New York fashion, the union stood by when a good policy, the School Based Option Staffing and Transfer Plan was being strangled, and agreed to the ATR pool.
The SBO had a cooperative team of teachers and administrators select new faculty members collegially. If someone with loads of seniority applied for a job and had nothing else going for them except time in the system, they could be rejected.
The SBO was already in place and had been spreading throughout the system when Bloomberg took over the schools. So Klein’s claim that he was being strangled by union seniority rules was simply a myth.
If the union was as omnipotent as the editorialists claim, why didn’t it block, or wage a PR campaign against this new fatally flawed hiring process and fight for the SBO?
There’s no way to divine the answer to that question. In all likelihood the UFT knows that no matter how much ink is spent reviling them; no arbitrator would overturn the civil service laws and allow unassigned teachers who otherwise have satisfactory performance records be fired.
Yet the public discourse is diminished by the union’s failure to make its case for the rank and file teacher to the public.
In the end, the DOE and the union have been clever by half. Hundreds of millions have been wasted. The hiring process hasn’t been improved, and teachers who remain the vital component in the education process are further diminished.
If this self-inflicted “crisis” were given to a business management class as a case study, it’s likely that they would conclude that the negotiators on both sides of the table were idiots.”
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It is a dismal state of affairs indeed. And it should be noted that 12 years under the control of this mayor has not significantly improved outcomes for students. This in light if the fact that NYC principals aren’t even given half that time to turn their schools around before they face removal from their posts!
Sent from my iPad
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