Mayor Bill de Blasio was elected as a progressive candidate. Much of his support came from critics of the Bloomberg-Klein regime and its hostility to teachers and even to public schools. The Bloomberg regime never stopped berating the system that it totally controlled for nearly a dozen years.
De Blasio selected veteran educator Carmen Farina as his chancellor, who promised to bring back “the joy of learning.” Unfortunately, the de Blasio administration has been slow to clean house. The Klein regime still controls large sectors of the education bureaucracy, including the infamous “gotcha” squad that is always on the alert for teacher misbehavior. True, the “gotcha” squad completely missed a high school teacher arrested for having sexual relations with several students at selective Brooklyn Technical High School, who is currently suspended with pay.
But the “gotcha” squad bagged a teacher who helped run a Kickstarter campaign for a student with cerebral palsy. This teacher was suspended without pay for 30 days for “theft of services,” having helped the campaign during school hours.
As Jim Dwyer, columnist for the New York Times reports:
“This is a story of an almost unfathomably mindless school bureaucracy at work: the crushing of an occupational therapist who had helped a young boy build a record of blazing success.
“The therapist, Deb Fisher, is now serving a suspension of 30 days without pay for official misconduct.
“Her crime?
“She raised money on Kickstarter for a program that she and the student, Aaron Philip, 13, created called This Ability Not Disability. An investigator with the Education Department’s Office of Special Investigations, Wei Liu, found that Ms. Fisher sent emails about the project during her workday at Public School 333, the Manhattan School for Children, and was thus guilty of “theft of services.”
“The school system has proved itself unable to dislodge failed or dangerous employees for years at a time.
“Ms. Fisher’s case seems to represent just the opposite: A person working to excel is being hammered by an investigative agency that began its hunt in search of cheating on tests and record-keeping irregularities. It found nothing of the sort. Instead, the investigation produced a misleading report, filled with holes, on the fund-raising effort.
“By omitting essential context, the report wrongly suggested that Ms. Fisher was a rogue employee, acting alone and in her own self-interest.
“In fact, the entire school, including the principal, was involved in the Kickstarter project, with regular email blasts counting down the fund-raising push. And the money was to be used not by Ms. Fisher, but by Aaron, who is writing a graphic book and making a short film about Tanda, a regular kid who is born with a pair of legs in a world where everybody else has a pair of wheels.
“Aaron has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair to navigate the world. Ms. Fisher has worked with him since kindergarten.”
Chancellor Farina, it is time to fire the “gotcha” squad. It is time to replace Joel Klein’s legal team. It is time to clean house and install officials who share Mayor de Blasio’s vision and values.
OMG – NYDOE – Arrest EVA right away….Success Academy lost two entire school days marching over a bridge and protesting with scripts! Please get her NOW!
OMG, Linda you are right! The Rubber Room has a reservation waiting for Eva.
Farina will need to open a sub station on Wall Street with room for her assistants, one to hold her pocketbook, one to get her latte and a luxurious bathroom just for the queen. She shall not be anywhere near the commoners unless they worship.
Alas, alas, charter schools are public schools but only in terms of siphoning public money and public space not in terms of the law which seems to be embodied by Ms. Moskowitiz herself. Meanwhile, Carmen Farina is reigning over a house divided against itself, one side talking about ” bringing back joy” and the other retaining hundreds of well paid lawyers and the like whose job is terrorize teachers and destroy their careers. The numbers of discontinued teachers — teachers whose careers in the city of NY are permanently destroyed before they even had a chance to begin because of the judgment of a single person — have skyrocketed. Farina has publicly stated that she would have principals trained in “best practices” in how to fire ATRs. Farina seems to want to retain some of the most disgusting and demoralizing aspects of the Bloomberg years and improve tone and tenor of the school system. No can do. She must clean house. This house is divided against itself and cannot stand.
OMG I am in big trouble. I check Dr. Ravitch’s blog everyday during school hours and sometimes I even read the newspaper! One time, we even had a cake for a colleague’s 50th birthday. I hope the Gotcha Squad doesn’t come after me next!!!!
*head desk*
Thank you Dr. Ravitch. As a 28 year veteran NYC teacher relegated to ATR status because my school recently was closed, I have seen little, if any, change under the new regime. How much time do they need?
One more thing. A rhetorical question: if the principal was aware and involved in this horrible crime, why wasn’t he or she also brought to justice ? Is it because the only times a principal is held accountable is 1) when they abuse teachers and rip off funds for a number of years at which time they are merely re-assigned to Tweed 2) they get caught in an idiotic sex scandal with a staffer that includes photos leaked to the NY Post.
Ah yes, I thought so.
Farina has her work cut out for her and if she want to be more than a caretaker she’d better get on it soon.
“Chancellor Farina, it is time to fire the “gotcha” squad. It is time to replace Joel Klein’s legal team. It is time to clean house and install officials who share Mayor de Blasio’s vision and values.”
I’m sorry to be cynical, but I think appealing to Farina is about as helpful as appealing to Obama, and I think the “gotcha” squad *does* share de Blasio’s vision and values. Neither de Blasio nor Farina have gone out of their way to implement the vision and values they sold us on, so we can conclude just how serious they were. It’s Obama redux all over again.
Being rated an effective or highly effective teacher in New York City is a crap shoot which depends on whether you have a psychotic or somewhat sane administrator. Unfortunately, there are way too many psychotic people working for the DOE. Most sane people would realize that it is not humanly possible to cover all eight elements of the Danielson Rubric in a 15 minute observation during a 40 minute class. Most sane people will stay longer or come back another time to observe different elements. Psychotic people will give an ineffective rating when they don’t see enough “assessment”, “questioning”, “student engagement”…..whatever. Nothing is being done about the psychotic people. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. More of the same old same old.
I was inspired until:
ADVISORY BOARD
Wendy Kopp
Founder and Chair of the Board of Teach For America (TFA), a national teaching corps. Wendy Kopp is also the CEO and Co-Founder of Teach For All, a global network of independent nonprofit organizations that apply the same model as Teach For America in other countries.
Between this case and the case of the Arizona teacher who was fired for defending an African American 4th grader from racist bullies and telling them to “shut up” is there any doubt now that it is open season on public school teachers all around the country?
We are walking dead, with targets on our backs, especially if we are veterans with years of competent experience, like these 2 teachers.
The good people of the US of A need to wake the heck up ASAP and help us put a stop to this madness before we lose a vital part of our heritage forever.
We are perilously close now to seeing the end of public schools and public school teaching in this country.
Don’t forget the teacher who was fired for blogging about homophones.
That one wasn’t a public school. It was a private, online, school in my state. Still ridiculous, but not a public school.
Sounds like another dumb bureaucratic decision. One more example of why the current structure of public education is deeply flawed.
Call Arne, Joe. He’s been in charge for a while now. Express your disgust to our leader. Get on that STAT!
This looks like a local decision, doesn’t it, Linda?
Pick and choose your indignation Joe, as usual. Just like CCS was state led and Feds don’t control local schools until Arne pulls your wavier for not following Bill’s rules. Hypocrite Joe and always out to bash us. Go away.
Yes, it’s intellectual inconsistency when charter-fans deplore local school bureaucracies as invidious, but then applaud the federal iron fist (NCLB, RTTP, CCSS). Do schools need freedom or not? Please decide. Can I please charterize my school vis a vis invidious federal bureaucracy?
A number of charter laws (wisely) allow district schools to convert to charter status if some percentage (usually around 55 or 60%) vote to do so. Yes, I think districts schools should be allowed to convert to charter status.
Sure never happens at charter schools, Joe Nathan. Let me set you straight on that:
Three years ago, my husband, a new teacher at a charter school, three weeks into the school year, discovered that a student was bypassing a very weak computer filter to look up pornography on school computers. Upon further investigation, by husband discovered that the student had been looking up the porn since the previous spring, well before my husband had that student. He reported the breach to his administrators.
Within TWO DAYS, my husband was fired. Their excuse was lack of supervision of that student. Nothing happened to that student, and nothing happened to the teacher who had that student the previous year, when this began. My husband had NO due process, NO recourse, NO unemployment insurance. I think that was the idea in the first place. The school had mentioned a week earlier that they had too many teachers for the budget. Firing my husband like that limited the number of teachers they had AND had the added bonus of not having to pay unemployment insurance to my husband.
Try to explain THAT away, you bloviating buffoon.
Sounds like a very poor decision by the leadership of the school where your husband was employed.
Extra points for your outstanding use of alliteration!
Of COURSE it was a terrible decision, Joe. BUT WHAT SAY YOU? Does this show that the “structure of charter schools is deeply flawed?
And thanks, LG! I like alliteration when it works!
The situation you described with your husband shows that school administrators sometimes make questionable, sometimes deeply flawed decisions. Neither the district nor charter structure is perfect. Each has flaws that need attention.
Last year, one of our 5th grade students was diagnosed with neuro-blastoma. Our P.E. teachers arranged a 5K fund-raiser for the girl for a Saturday afternoon, and yes, they planned it during and after school hours. Everyone who participated, whether at the event or in the planning, received Domain 4 creds on the Danielson model regardless of whether or not they helped during school hours. (No one participated just for the credit, mind you.) Everyone was able to perform his or her assigned duties as per their contract–no students lost out on quality instruction during this planning. In fact, students’ lives were enriched for participating in such a process.
Schools belong to the community, and any and every act that goes above and beyond to help a member of the school community is expected by today’s teachers.
What happened in NYC was an isolated abomination that ought to be appealed. It does not stand as evidence of systemic flaw, however. Your comment is quite the stretch in logic.
Joe’s comments always benefit Joe’s ego. Both are over inflated.
Shock generalizations do run rampant on the Internet.
As Al Shanker noted in the mid 1980’s, teachers who try to create new (within district) options are “treated like traitors for daring to move outside the lockstep.” This was long before the charter approach was created.
There are deep flaws in the system, and not just in NYC. We’d be better off with more teacher led schools. Fortunately there is growing interest among many educators and some policy-makers in promoting this approach – within districts as well as in the charter sector.
http://www.educationevolving.org/teachers
Joe, you blame the structure of public schools and rave about choice, but then ignore problems when they happen in charter schools. I can name two problems in charter for every one I’ve seen in a public school. No protections for teachers and a lot of money to be made means that charters run roughshod over people.
Some charters are run by a board which has a majority of the teachers that work in them. That does not solve every problem either.
But over the last several years, there have been numerous postings about the frustration that some educators have within traditional district schools. Fortunately, many educators and some policy-makers recognize them. Ted Kolderie recently urged in Education Week that the nation pursue what he calls a “split screen” approach – simultaneously try to improve existing schools and give people working day to day with youngsters a lot more power to create public schools they think make more sense. A poll found that more than half of the nation’s teachers were interested in working in such a school:
Click to access tps-white-paper.pdf
Joe, The NYC issue is both disheartening and I think indicative of the inherent limitations of a deep and complex, deeply embedded bureaucratic structure. Regardless, farina and DiBlasio have been both slow off the mark to clean house and incompetent in dealing with the ‘co-location’ issue. This being said, the Charter school industry had had a deep and ongoing run of financial scandals,lack of transparency and student ‘skimming’. ‘creaming’ and attrition issues of its own. So, please no lectures.The NYC incident was a stupid, damned shame: no dispute there. The OT should immediately receive her lost back wages as well as a written apology from both. the Mayor and his Chancellor. The “Gotcha Unit” must be disbanded. Let’s hear no rationalizations from the Board for this despicable behavior.
John, I’d describe the 2 sentences i wrote as an observation. Sorry you saw it as a lecture.
Here’s another observation – there are SO many scandals in education, it’s incredible.
* Almost every week there’s another Faculty have saving sexual relationships with students (which I think is incredibly outrageous, but it appears not to be a major problem for some who post here, other than to say that faculty should have due process when accused, which I agree with)
* Scandals with purchasing, sometimes in districts, sometimes in charters
* Faculty being treated not just badly but stupidly by administrators (this being a good example)
* Thousands of students being suspended, some as young as kg.
* Stupid expectations like all students will be proficient by 2014.
Those are only examples.
I think public education needs rethinking.
So Arne has been in charge for six years + call him Joe. Get going.
NONE of us have problems with these sexual assaults by teachers, Joe? Are you KIDDING ME? Every single person here does. Don’t brush us with your disgusting paintbrush.
I didn’t say no one was concerned. But when I’ve raised the issue before, there has been very little comment except to point out that teachers who are accused of this or other crimes deserve due process. I agree they deserve due process.
One University prof who often posts here and teaches at a university explicitly founded to promote Catholic principles became very angry when I asked why he didn’t criticize the Catholic hierarchy’s protection of some priests who abused youngsters. He’s very critical of some things in education but quiet on this.
No Joe, it doesn’t look at all like a local system failure.
You think NYSED influenced the independent investigator ? Arne’s DOE? Please explain.
It’s not Arne’s DOE….catch up Tim. The Gates USDOE puppetted by Arne pulls waivers whenever you don’t obey. Pay attention
“The New York City Department of Investigation (“DOI”) is one of the oldest law-enforcement agencies in the country and an international leader in the effort to combat corruption in public institutions. It serves the Mayor and the people of New York City as an independent and nonpartisan watchdog for the City government.”
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doi/html/home/home.shtml
Betsy, isn’t the group that disciplined the teacher part of the New York City Public Schools?
There is a significant error in the Times piece: the SCI is totally independent of the DOE (which is a good idea).
The current commissioner was appointed by Bloomberg before Klein was even chancellor.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear as if the full report is available to the public. I agree with Dwyer’s general conclusion that bureaucracies can sometimes make it difficult to do the right thing.
I should also add that for all the talk of transformative change and all the accusations on the campaign trail about how awful Bloomberg’s policies were for children, we are about 20% of the way through de Blasio’s term and Carmen and Bill’s DOE is the same as Mike’s in most respects.
This is an outrage! I hope and pray that this story gets national coverage and the heads of those responsible for the suspension roll!
Totally disgusting. And how many teachers and students have found the “joy” under Carmen? This project is just the type of real learning our students should be involved with. And I am sure it brought joy and excitement to the student. And if it had principal approval, then that should have been the end of it!!
Carmen allowed the closing of Jamaica High School at a time it was making progress and not only had the support of the community, but local leaders as well. Yet the person she allowed to make the final decision was a Klein staffer. Now Carmen is on a new crusade, to rid our schools of teachers who are now ATRs. She is also doing more to empower principals rather than teachers.
As for the joy, teachers are coming home fried after 80 minutes of staff development each week. Of course if these 80 minutes would be spent with teachers on the grade reflecting over their lessons and students instead of more Common Core and test prep, it would make a difference. Linda Darling-Hammond when she consulted with districts had a program where teachers met after school to reflect and make changes, and as a result, academic progress improved.
My 80 minutes of staff develop is spent on looking over math data for 7th and 8th grade. Mind you, I don’t teach math, nor do I teach 7th and 8th grade.
No one else in the entire world was more pessimistic and skeptical than me about the assertion that the repurposed week would be as good or better for at-risk kids than extended day.
I’m sorry to say that yours is not the first anecdote I’ve heard that’s exceeded even my worst expectations. Good god.
Someone in her community should start a kick starter for her to cover the 30 days of lost wages. They are out to get you, teachers, so be extra vigilant. Do we not believe once this hits all the news outlets, people will come to this teacher’s defense? Where is the principal, where are the students, where is Aaron? His parents? The parents of other kids in the school?
You know how this will be turned around (to borrow a phrase from the rheeformers)? People are going to rally around this teacher and Aaron. Just watch it happen; I believe it will.
As to Eva, well—some people are so rich, all they have is money. Let her be happy with her money; it can’t buy her love; it never does. Eventually, she will get what is coming to her; the all will/do.
Every teacher in NYC should turn themselves in on the same day. What teacher hasn’t sent emails, read the paper or this blog, or shopped on-line during lunch? Go ahead NYC – show up at Tweed in handcuffs in protest!
Where is Al Shanker when we need him?
I hope that everyone who reads this blogg will send emails to de Blasio and Farina!
BRAVO!!!!!!
Every single school district employee who has ever–even just once–read a personal text on their cell phone during a staff meeting is guilty of theft of service.
In the hall for hall duty and checked your phone? Guilty.
Clocked in at work before school and read a personal email on your phone even though no students are present in your room? Guilty.
Under Mike Miles, my school is churning through teachers. I’d say we’ve had a 90% turnover in the 3 years he’s been superintendent. New teachers take about 3 weeks to figure out that the deck is stacked against them and begin making exit plans. Fights have been rampant at my campus and we are only 6 weeks into the year. Kids are getting beaten to pulps. Our Mike Miles’ BFF principal does nothing but ask teachers what we should be doing differently to change the mindset of the students. It’s ludicrous and it’s hurting the innocent kids who get caught in the crossfire. The principal conveniently ignores them.
And now we want to suspend and harass teachers who are “guilty” of theft of service?There will be no one left to teach. It’s already becoming that way at my school.
And while Mike Miles was all over tv trying to get national exposure over the Ebola patient here in Dallas, one of the quarantined students broke quarantine and went to school. It took several hours for the campus to realize this because Miles has actually done nothing to protect the schools.
This is THE BEST EXAMPLE of what the “top down” nonsense leads to. How many among us have seen fantastic teachers who if left alone would have stayed another 5 years in the system but chose to run away from full retirement to maintain their sanity? How many of us know someone who has done amazing work and got kicked in the bottom anyway so the person goes back to doing “just what is expected” …. way too many stories like this. If this suspension without pay is tolerated, a very large head at the top of the garbage heap should roll! What this OT did was amazing and is more in the league of “national teacher of the year”!
Could someone more familiar with George Orwell’s Animal Farm let me know if it is at all relevant to what has happened here and and is happening to education in general in the US?
The seven principles of Animalism, known as the Seven Commandments were inscribed on the side of the barn, reduced to a single principle reading “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Orwellian is right!
Then maybe we need a gotcha squad in California ~ it seems to me there’s double dipping by admin & staff, right & left, but the powers-that-be actually encourage this. I guess that they’re doing work that’s more important than empowering children.
At the next PEP meeting look at the woman next to the Chancellor. She is Courtenaye Jackson-Chase and is the top of the attorney of the DOE. Joel Klein brought her in in 2006. What is she still doing there?
Joel Klein’s Attorneys are Still Deeply Rooted in @NYCSchools
http://protectportelos.org/joel-kleins-attorneys-are-still-deeply-rooted-in-nycschools/
Was she involved in this debacle? Has anyone even asked CF the simple direct question of why a Klein appointee is still working in that ‘shop’? Where is CF’s head, or for that matter BDB?
Joe Nathan defends the Illinois Charter Commission.
OCTOBER 6, 2014