Archives for the year of: 2014
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When Arne Duncan Brought His Snake Oil to Charleston

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2014 //
41

When Arne Duncan went to South Carolina, he probably expected to meet the usual compliant, uninformed business crowd. But Patrick Hayes of EdFirstSC was waiting to meet him, hear him, and ask questions. And Hayes is neither compliant nor uninformed.

Hayes writes:

Ever seen a weasel tap dance? Would you like to?

Well, here it is: me vs. Arne Duncan.

My first thought when I left was that I should’ve boxed him in more during the preamble. ( I was worried about losing the mic as it was).

Looking this over, I don’t think it would have done a bit of good.

The man is animatronic. Push the button and out come the talking points.

For context, here’s the setup (video cuts in midway):

“Your Dept found a 36% error rate for value-added.

Your Dept’s merit pay brief says:

TX, Nashville, and Chicago programs all showed no effect on student achievement.’

We can add NY, Denver and (more than likely) DC to that list.

Why are you spending our money on a policy that is unfair to teachers and has an extensive record of failure?”

Later in the session, Duncan’s talking points misfired. Asked about our move away from Common Core, he went on at length about how upsetting it was seeing SC go back to low standards and lying to parents.

Apparently, nobody told him that our standards were among the most rigorous in the nation, according to Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank that pushes rigor.

Like Duncan, they’re big believers in the fallacy that if we make school harder, we’ve made school better.

Patrick Hayes

Director
EdFirstSC
843-852-9094

Categories Common Core, Resistance, South Carolina, Teacher Evaluations

EduShyster on “Knowledge Ventriloquism”

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2014 //
5

EduShyster here interviews Ken Zeichner of the University of Washington about teacher education.

They talk about the NCTQ report, whose findings were predetermined by its political agenda (I.e., university-based teacher preparation bad, alternative preparation good).

Zeichner says that no other country–certainly no high-performing country–has gone full-throttle for alternative teacher preparation.

He describes a phenomenon that he calls “knowledge ventriloquism:”

“Basically what you have is an echo chamber effect where think tanks and other advocacy groups just keep repeating each other’s claims until they become true. There’s a research component too, except that the research isn’t independent. In fact, you can usually predict what the findings are going to be be based on who is doing the research. Cherry picking is another essential component of *knowledge ventriloquism.* Advocates a particular position or program will selectively choose certain findings and ignore others. The problem is that by the time any of this reaches the mainstream media and the headlines, any nuance or complexity is lost.”

In another era, this was known as the Big Lie, repeated again and again in authoritative circles until the public assumed it must be true despite the lack of evidence.

Zeichner and colleagues recently published a study of the movement to privatize teacher education. The NCTQ ratings are a part of that movement.

Categories Privatization, Teachers and Teaching

What is NCTQ?

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2014 //
17

With the release of the NCTQ ratings of teacher preparation programs, this is a propitious time to review its origins.

It was created by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute. It floundered, then was rescued by a grant of $5 million from Secretary of Education Rod Paige in the early days of the Bush administration. It is not a research organization. It is an advocacy organization.

Its judgments about Ed schools rely heavily on course catalogues and reading lists, not site visits. Its criteria for success include evidence of teaching phonics and preparing to teach the Common Core. If Mr. Smith and Ms. Jones are preparing to teach in a state that did not adopt the Common Core, why should they be prepared to teach it?

When I spoke to the AACTE (American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education), I advised them to insert the words “Common Core” and “phonics” liberally in their catalogues. The key to higher ratings.

Categories National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)

Writing Expert: Computer Scoring by PARCC-Pearson Tests Is Fundamentally Flawed

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2014 //
27

Les Perelman, who was in charge of MIT’sWriting Across the Curriculum program, wrote this opinion piece for the Boston Globe.

Perelman said that student essays written for the PARCC test, created by Pearson, would be scored by computers. Unfortunately, the computer scorers are unable to detect the meaning of language. Instead, they rely on length, grammar, and other measurable elements.

So, he says, the computer would give a high score to this gibberish:

““According to professor of theory of knowledge Leon Trotsky, privacy is the most fundamental report of humankind. Radiation on advocates to an orator transmits gamma rays of parsimony to implode.’’

A human scorer would recognize this as incoherent babble but the computer would be impressed.

He concludes:

“Education, like medicine, is too important a public resource to allow corporate secrecy. If PARCC does not insist that Pearson allow researchers access to its robo-grader and release all raw numerical data on the scoring, then Massachusetts should withdraw from the consortium. No pharmaceutical company is allowed to conduct medical tests in secret or deny legitimate investigators access. The FDA and independent investigators are always involved. Indeed, even toasters have more oversight than high stakes educational tests.

“Our children deserve better than having their writing evaluated by machines whose workings are both flawed and hidden from public scrutiny. Whatever benefit current computer technology can provide emerging writers is already embodied in imperfect but useful word processors. Conversations with colleagues at MIT who know much more than I do about artificial intelligence has led me to Perelman’s Conjecture: People’s belief in the current adequacy of Automated Essay Scoring is proportional to the square of their intellectual distance from people who actually know what they are talking about.”

Categories Common Core, Technology, Computers, Testing

Mother Crusader Follows the Money in Vergara

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2014 //
13

Mother Crusader, written by New Jersey parent Darcie Cimarusti, determined to find out who was putting up the millions to beat teacher tenure and seniority in California. She examined the 990 tax forms for “Students Matter, the organization that led the battle against the California Teachers Union.

Students Matter spent more than $3 million from 2010-2012; the amount spent in 2013-14 has not yet been reported.

“The 990’s also reveal that the money behind the suit wasn’t Welch’s alone. The two largest contributions did indeed come from Welch; $550,000 from “The Welch Trust” and $568,357 from “LRFA, LLC” which is some sort of business entity that links directly back to Welch’s Infinera.

So that’s well over $1M from Welch.

The next biggest dollar amount came from none other than Eli Broad, who kicked in $200,000 to buy the Vergara ruling.”

“The next biggest dollar amount, $100,000, came from “Tammy and Bill Crown.” It took some digging around to figure out that William H. Crown, who seems to split his time between Chicago and Portola Valley, CA, is one of the heirs to Chicago billionaire Lester Crown’s fortune.

“Lester Crown, 80, chairman of Henry Crown & Co., the privately held company that is the vehicle for much of the family’s investments
……

“William H. Crown, 41, general partner in Henry Crown & Co.; president and CEO of another family-run investment company, CC Industries Inc. (son) Bucks: Regulars on Forbes’ billionaires list, Lester Crown and clan ranked 52nd this year with an estimated net worth of $4 billion.”

And then there is this: “A $30,000 donation from the Emerson Education Fund may be one of the most interesting, however. The Managing Director of the Emerson Education Fund is Russlynn Ali, who also just happens to be on the Students Matter Advisory Board.” Ali was at Education Trust before she became Arne Duncan’s Assistant Secretary of Education for civil rights. Recall that school segregation has been soaring in the past decade. Could it be because the U.S. Department of Education believes that tenure is a greater threat to civil rights than segregation?

Darcie likens Vergara to the Parent Trigger, which brings disruption to communities, not much else, and she concludes:

“It’s my greatest hope the Vergara decision does not spread to other states, and is overturned in California on appeal due to pressure from the actual parents, teachers and students who would be affected but this reckless ruling. I don’t know about you, but personally I’m pretty sick and tired of monied interests buying legislation, and now a court decision, that could potentially impact my (and your) kids and their teachers.”

Categories California, Corporate Reformers, Teacher Tenure

Louisiana: Civil Rights Activists Call for John White’s Resignation

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2014 //
8

Civil rights activists lodged a federal complaint about abuses of the rights of African-American children in the Recovery School District. State Commissioner of Education John White referred to their complaint as a “farce” and a “joke.”

 

The complaint, written by Karran Harper Royal of the Coalition for Community Schools and Frank Buckley of Conscious Concerned Citizens Controlling Community Changes, said the state’s policy of closing and chartering conventional schools is racially discriminatory. It said the decisions put black children disproportionately in low-performing schools, while the higher-scoring schools have admission policies designed to favor white children. Similar complaints were filed the same day against Newark, N.J., and Chicago schools.

 

The state Recovery School District took over about 80 percent of New Orleans’ public schools after Hurricane Katrina. After a last wave of closures, it is now an all-charter system. The complaint asks the government to freeze charter renewals and sought to stop the final closures, of Benjamin Banneker, A.P. Tureaud, George Washington Carver, Walter L. Cohen and Sarah T. Reed.

 

Royal and Buckley called for White’s resignation:

 

 

June 4, 2014

 

John White
State Superintendent of Education Louisiana Department of Education 1201 North Third Street
Baton Rouge, LA 70802

 

Dear Superintendent White:

 

On May 15, the Times-Picayune reported that you referred to a civil rights complaint filed by New Orleans community groups as a “joke” and “political farce.” As Superintendent, you should take seriously and investigate any charge of discrimination that harms students of color in Louisiana. Your comments are reprehensible and prove you are not fit to be Louisiana State Superintendent of Education. Therefore, we demand your immediate resignation.

 

The discriminatory effects of school closures that students of color and their families experience in New Orleans are no laughing matter. We find no humor in our school communities being dissolved, no amusement in being forced to send our children to charter schools that are unaccountable to our families, and no comedy in schoolchildren waiting outside before sunrise for school buses to take them across the city because we have no neighborhood schools left. It is with utmost seriousness that we have called for a civil rights investigation of the harmful school closure policies that have shuffled countless black and brown children from failing schools to other failing or near-failing schools, year after year.

 

Under your department, the Recovery School District has suffered the following harms:

  •  More than 30 traditional public schools have closed in the last several years.
  •  Last week, the district’s five remaining public schools closed, making it the nation’s first all-charter school district.
  •  Of the students impacted by this latest round of school closures, approximately 1,000 are black. Only five are white.
  •  Many students, mostly children of color, have experienced multiple school closures.
  •  The majority of Recovery School District schools are ranked “C,” “D,” or “F.”

    Communities of color are forced to bear the burdens of these damaging policies, with no neighborhood schools in New Orleans that serve majority black neighborhoods. When schools close, students lose crucial community relationships, have their educations painfully interrupted

and are often pushed into failing or near-failing schools. As a result of selective admissions practices, these black and brown students are often not admitted to “A” and “B” schools. African-American students are over 80 percent of the student population in New Orleans, but only around 30 to 47 percent of the population at most of the high-performing schools.

 

Closing schools often forces students to travel further for their education. In February, a six-year- old boy was killed crossing the street early one morning to catch the school bus. In 2010, a female student was raped as she walked home from school. Many students in New Orleans East have to catch the bus as early as 5:30am to travel to their schools.

 

The New Orleans community has been very vocal about these harms. Last year, a mother filed a civil rights complaint documenting them. Your department did not investigate her claims. Despite repeated protests and complaints about school closures and pro-charter policies, you have dismissed these concerns – and along with it the lived experiences of countless families. That you would now refer to this current civil rights complaint as “a joke” further shows your disregard for the discrimination experienced by students of color and their parents. We have had enough of your misguided, paternalistic policies and request your immediate resignation.

 

Your real allegiance is to the pro-charter, pro-privatization agenda. It has become clear that you will lie, bribe, and turn a blind eye to discrimination to benefit this agenda. In 2011, you told the parents and students of John McDonogh Sr. High School that they would have to convert from a direct-run school to a charter school in order to receive $35 million in much-needed renovations. After they agreed, you failed to provide these funds.

 

The May 13th civil rights complaint was filed by New Orleans community members – people who have advocated for students for decades – in collaboration with Journey for Justice, an alliance of grassroots organizations advocating for neighborhood public schools across the country. New Orleans partners include Coalition for Community Schools (CCS) and Conscious Concerned Citizens Controlling Community Changes (C-6). To mischaracterize the complaint as being “dominated” by teachers unions, as you did according to media reports, is not only incorrect but another example of your dismissal of the voices of communities and families.

 

Your irresponsible comments make you unsuitable to be State Superintendent of Education. There is no place in the education of children for individuals like you, Mr. White. We respectfully request your immediate resignation and a moratorium on school closures.

 

Sincerely,

 

Frank J. Buckley, C-6 Karran Harper Royal, CCS

2

CC: Anurima Bhargava Chief

Educational Opportunities Section
U. S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division 601 D Street NW, Suite 4300
Washington, DC 20004

Catherine Lhamon
Assistant Secretary
Office for Civil Rights
U. S. Department of Education 400 Maryland Avenue SW Washington, DC 20202

Charles Roemer
President
Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education 1201 North Third Street
Baton Rouge, LA 70802

3

 

 

 

 

Categories Louisiana, New Orleans

David Sudmeier: USA Today Permits Hate Speech

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2014 //
63

David Sudmeier accurately portrays the vile advertisement in USA Today as hate speech directed against teachers. He posted this commentary on the blog.

The Crucible

Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible survives to this day as a metaphor for accusations without merit that damage reputations and lives. The advertisement that appeared in USA Today after the Vergara decision contained such an accusation, which might as well have been of witchcraft and evil spells cast upon students by malevolent kindergarten teachers. The same organization that created that ad had another rejected by the Chicago Tribune, because it conflated teacher unionism with racist segregationist attitudes a la George Wallace. Teachers can likely expect a continued barrage of similar ads in the media, funded by privatization interests.

Maintaining a sense of dignity depends on the deference and support shown to you by society in light of your contributions. When major media publications accept ads portraying student feet protruding from a garbage can, and accuse teachers of placing students in that demeaning position, they accept hate speech as a legitimate source of income. Teacher sensitivity to outright lies is less a product of being targeted for criticism—that’s part of life in the public sector— than it is due to the duplicity of the bad actors that create those lies. They demonize teachers on the one hand and extend the other for profits to be earned by displacing unionized teachers with ill-trained, easily controlled dupes working in charter schools, among their many crimes. The “Center for Union Lies” does not criticize teachers; it intentionally distorts and mischaracterizes their achievements to enable corporate gain.

When you deprive teachers of dignity and meaning in their work, you strike a blow against public education. Of course, that is exactly the point for some. For others, it is “collateral damage” that must be accepted to improve instruction and raise test scores. If test scores rise, then education must be improved. If living and breathing teachers who will demand immediate compensation can be replaced with technology that raises test scores on tests written by testing companies whose shareholders seek short-term profits…well, all the better.

What is lost if public education is lost? Just as terrorism is a front in the war for the soul of Islam, attacks on public education—one of the sources of our common good— constitute one front in the war for the soul of democracy. Democracy can withstand challenges from without which are obvious and overt; whether democracy can withstand challenges from within is unknown. Dismantling public institutions encourages individualism and loss of community. That loss of community opens a democracy to manipulation and exploitation by powerful corporations.

Still, we teachers as a group fail to see the forest for the trees. We imagine that what we experience in the form of attacks by individuals and organizations on teachers and education is somehow unique and unrelated to other events. We feel our institution being assailed, and we forget that there are others in the public service enduring similar mistreatment.

How have we ended up in this situation? Corporatists have built a myth of excellence and efficiency in the private sector, and a specter of malfeasance and incompetence in public institutions. Their tactics include attacks on public institutions, accompanied by demands for firings and accountability measures. They then demand new “standards” for performance that are clearly impossible to reach, and place blame on those same institutions when they fail to attain them and attempt to cover it up. Finally, they seek to withdraw financial support from those institutions, citing the failures they themselves engineered. This has happened in education with NCLB and RttT, and will occur with CCSS, if it is not more widely abandoned. It has happened as well with the Veterans Administration. The VA (underfunded and overwhelmed by demands resulting from the Iraq/Afghanistan debacle) was accused of not providing timely care for those who deserved better. The solution? A standard was set that could not be met, a 14-day window for care, and accountability measures for not achieving success. When that couldn’t be accomplished, managers found ways of lying to make it appear that things were fine. Uncovered, the VA was again blamed for incompetence. Calls were made to privatize an institution that attempts to fulfill a public obligation to those who have stood in the line of fire for us all.

We teachers can easily comprehend what VA employees face. Our experiences are not unique; they are part and parcel of a wider attack on democracy. The sooner we accept that and coordinate our actions with other institutions that are also suffering, the sooner we will begin to turn the corner. We become powerful when we recognize our community, and weak when we abandon it. Badass Teachers know what it means to acquire community; we need to remind our colleagues of the role their unions need to play in preserving, protecting, and extending that community of public service employees. NEA and AFT have accomplished much in the past, but are only lately stepping up to the plate on this issue. They can do much more, and will need grass roots support to do so.

We are not just educators. We are warriors for democracy, and we fight a dangerous opponent. We fight for free, fair, and appropriate public education, just as our brothers and sisters fight battles for better public health care, better public transportation, and improved public security. Part of our fight is to act with dignity and demand dignified treatment from society. We need to build a new myth of the public employee, one that recognizes our commitment to service and champions our achievements in creating community.

Arthur Miller is calling to us now.

Categories Teachers and Teaching

Mercedes Schneider: Get Ready for the NCTQ Ratings of Ed Schools

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2014 //
7

Mercedes Schneider wants to give you a heads-up about the NCTQ scorecard, and she does it here.

Learn about the organization and its board in this post.

As she concludes:

“NCTQ remains a well-funded, well-advertised, corporate-reform-promoting facade. Its bogus teacher training program ratings will appear in Mortimer Zuckerman’s US News and World Report, complete with search engine headed with this statement:

“Becoming a successful teacher requires good training.

“The height of hypocrisy for an organization replete with TFA influence.”

Categories National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)

Mark Weber: Don’t Mess with Teacher Tenure in New Jersey

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2014 //
77

Mark Weber, also known as blogger Jersey Jazzman, advises New Jersey legislators not to mess with teacher tenure.

New Jersey has tenure laws that work, he says.

For one thing, they keep political patronage–for which the state is infamous–out of the schools.

He writes:

“Over the years, while so many of New Jersey’s public institutions have fallen victim to cronyism, teaching staffs have remained largely immune from the stench of political corruption. Tenure is a big part of the reason why: Thanks to the right of due process, most teachers haven’t felt undue pressure to submit to New Jersey’s political machines to retain their jobs.

“And seniority protections, closely tied to tenure, have helped to make and keep teaching a profession, rather than a job whose workers churn with the rise of each new political regime. So long as senior teachers continue to demonstrate their effectiveness, they need not fear the reprisals of those who would love nothing more than to turn New Jersey’s schools into their personal political fiefdoms.”

The state tenure law was reformed in 2012, and it now takes four years to earn tenure–meaning, due process, the right to a hearing. The process for hearing an appeal by an arbitrator is limited to five months,

Forty percent of teachers in New Jersey never earn tenure.

Weber concludes:

“As a proud New Jersey public school educator, I’ll be the first to say it: Teachers matter. And that’s why we need to keep teachers out of the political muck. Tenure is good for taxpayers and students, and it’s an inexpensive way to keep good teachers in the profession.

“Unless we want another 125,000 patronage jobs in New Jersey, we should keep tenure and seniority for teachers.”

– See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/opinion/opinion-don-t-tamper-with-teacher-tenure-1.1034638#sthash.Io3TTDWv.dpuf

Categories New Jersey, Teacher Tenure

Dave Cunningham to Editorial Writer: You Were Wrong to Vote Against School Budget

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2014 //
35

Michael Dobie, an editorial writer at Long Island’s Newsday, wrote an opinion piece in which he explained with a certain amount of embarrassment why he voted against the school budget for the West Babylon public schools, where his daughters attended, graduated, and went on to outstanding colleges.

 

West Babylon asked voters to approve its budget because Governor Cuomo put a tax cap on every district in the state, and the cap can’t be raised unless at least 60% of voters approve. The budget in West Babylon was turned down. The assumption of the Cuomo tax cap is that schools will keep their costs down, but costs keep rising, so budget cuts are inevitable.

 

Dobie wrote (in a piece behind a paywall, sorry, so I can post only the beginning and I have no link):

 

What have I done?
I’ve been asking myself that a lot, after I did something for the first time since I moved to Long Island 24 years ago.
I voted against a school budget.
Until this year, I never had rejected a budget proposed by my district, West Babylon. Do it for the kids, right? But this time the district was pitching to pierce its 1.36 percent state tax cap by well more than double — in a year when taxpayers will receive state rebate checks for their tax increases when their districts stay within the cap.
So I said no, as did enough other voters to defeat the budget. My hope was that West Babylon would then turn to its teachers union — personnel costs are the bulk of every school budget — to get the savings needed to stay within the cap for the budget revote to take place June 17.
Instead, the district killed the high school bowling, gymnastics, swimming and golf teams, eliminated a bunch of clubs and activities at all grade levels, and fired 18 part-time hall monitors, among other things.
Officials saved $1.3 million and got within the cap, but look at the cost. Kids lost teams and clubs, and adults lost jobs.
I’m not naive — this is usually the way such things work out. But this is my first personal experience with the consequences of voting against a budget, and it’s distressing.
It turns out the administration didn’t believe it could ask teachers for concessions because two years ago, the union agreed to open its contract and spread out one 2.3 percent salary increase over three years. That helped the district in another difficult budget year.
But the teachers have continued to get step increases — essentially, annual longevity raises. West Babylon’s teachers are due an average 3.25 percent step increase next year, which, combined with the 0.75 salary increase, means they’ll get a 4 percent raise. Who gets a 4 percent raise these days?
Please understand, this is not a screed against teachers. It’s an argument against an unsustainable system…..

 

The rest of the article continues in that vein, inveighing against teachers’ pay.

 

Dobie thinks that the step increases for teachers must end. Period.

 

Dave Cunningham, a veteran teacher in the West Babylon schools, wrote to Dobie to explain why he was wrong. A native of Babylon and a graduate of its schools, Dave has taught elementary school and coached high school sports in West Babylon since 1990. Here is Dave’s letter:

 

Hi Mike,
I’m happy to see that some of your writing is appearing on Newsday’s pages again. In fact I’ve been meaning to contact you to see if Newsday had any interest in giving a full, honest analysis of the daily assaults on public education in our state and in our local communities. Alas, my hopes were dashed when I read your column this morning.

Newsday’s stance on public education can be summed up thusly: TEACHERS BAD! AND THEY GET SUMMERS OFF! You probably know that the chief purveyor of this nonsense is your education pointman/hachetman, John Hildebrand. He never pens a story without some part of his twisted agenda being validated. On the day of the recent budget vote, he did a great job of finding two aggrieved senior citizens, ages 79 and 81, who gave him statements to support his thesis. Who amongst us wouldn’t sympathize with elderly people living on fixed budgets, besieged by high taxes which according to Newsday, are fueled by the greed of public school teachers? I’m sure they’d make good use of a $98 check from the state. How are those checks not seen as a bribe, used to influence an election?
Had Mr. Hildebrand ventured inside of Santapogue School, (rather than using it for a convenient photo op) he would have found a thriving place where nearly 40% of our students receive free or reduced lunch. He would have seen an “international” school where ELL teachers perform daily miracles with children who speak one of fifteen different languages. Had he spoken with parents and teachers, he would have also discovered that due to the state’s gap elimination program, that West Babylon had lost about $4,000,000 in state aid per year over the last four years. Such facts don’t fit the narrative, so they’re not reported.
The overarching story that Newsday continues to neglect is the stealthy, insidious campaign to privatize public education , here and around the country. I’ll leave it to you to do some research for yourself, but any honest assessment of education in New York will show that NYSED is slowly and quietly outsourcing its authority, its operations, and its soul to the British conglomerate, Pearson. The truth is that the hard-working, overtaxed people of our state are seeing their money spent on tests, standards, curriculum, and materials produced by the non-educators hired by Pearson, often at minimum wage salaries. My experience has shown me that most anything that Pearson produces is either developmentally inappropriate, substandard in quality, or both. Yet the state and school districts continue to buy their products. Pearson writes the state tests, which are not “more difficult” as Newsday and other supine media outlets report. They are designed to produce failure, adding to the narrative of TEACHERS BAD! AND THEY GET SUMMERS OFF! A google search of Pearson/Campaign contributions will tell you all you need to know. Pols from both major parties have benefited from Pearson’s largesse.
Diane Ravitch’s blog, https://dianeravitch.net/ is a treasure trove of information about public education. Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post has an excellent blog which often features the work of Southside HS Principal, Carol Burris, who is one of the most sensible, articulate voices in the push back against the hostile takeover of our schools by corporate interests. There is a ton of excellent archived work on the site: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/ If you still have anyone at Newsday who is interested in some honest, investigative reporting, (and maybe earning a Pulitizer, to boot!) please share these links with them. FOIA requests should yield information about how much school districts have been mandated and forced to spend on the implementation of Common Core and its attendant exams and assessments. In my 39 years in education I’ve never seen anything as onerous and threatening to education in this country. It’s costly, it’s wrong, and our people deserve better.
I assume that you struggled with your decision to throw the children of WB under the metaphoric bus. I’m sure today’s column wasn’t easy to write. So your takeaway that step increases are the big villain, while popular with the trolls who inhabit Newsday’s comment pages, misses the larger point. You state that the WB district was reluctant to ask the teachers for help because we probably wouldn’t be receptive. We as a faculty have “given back” on numerous occasions during the last ten years. You asked, “Who gets a 4% increase now?” Easy answer: the wealthiest. Since 2011, more than 90% of the income gains in this country have gone to the 1 %. Yet our feckless politicians, their corporate enablers, and an AWOL media rig the game against the working and middle class families who populate our communities.
On a personal note, you should know that I haven’t received a step increase in years. Since I haven’t maxed out my graduate credits, I’m nowhere near the top of the pay scale. So you and the other aggrieved taxpayers of WB are getting a bargain with me; a teacher with nearly 40 years experience at a salary of a 25th year teacher. Silly me, I should have been in grad school when I was coaching WB kids 24/7, 365 days a year. I have no regrets, my former players and students visit every now and then to say thanks and to let me know how they’re doing. Those moments represent the true rewards that a teacher receives. Those are things that nobody at Newsday will understand any time soon, apparently. Enjoy your reading assignments! I look forward to hearing from you. Pay it forward!

 

All the Best,

 

Dave Cunningham

Categories Budget Cuts, Cuomo, Andrew, New York
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