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Eva Moskowitz to Chalkbeat: Buzz Off! We Are a Private Corporation, Not Public!

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2017 //
28

Chalkbeat thought that it would be interesting to gain access to the email correspondence of Success Academy Network to find out how they handled the Dan Loeb crisis. It’s reporter filed a Freedom of Information request. Dan Loeb is the billionaire who is chairman of the SA board who made a racist comment, writing that the leading African American legislator in the State Senate did more damage to black children than the KKK.

The SA Network refused to release any records because they are private, not public. Public records laws don’t apply to them, they said.

Thus, they are public only for getting money, but private when it’s time for accountability and transparency. Accountability and transparency, it turns out, are for the little people.

Chalkbeat writes:

“Success Academy Charter Schools, Inc. (SACS) is a private nonprofit organization that provides services to charter schools, but it is not itself a charter school or a government agency under FOIL,” wrote Success Academy lawyer Robert Dunn in response to an appeal of a Chalkbeat request for Moskowitz’s emails under the state’s Freedom of Information Law, which the network had denied. “Thus, it is not in and of itself subject to FOIL or required to have an appeal process.”

“In addition, Success officials said the emails would not need to be released because they qualify as internal communications that are exempt from the public-records law.

“The city’s most prominent charter school networks — including KIPP and Uncommon — have similar CMO structures, which appears to shield their leaders from at least some FOIL requests. While “the KIPP NYC public charter schools themselves are subject to the New York Freedom of Information Law,” KIPP spokesperson Steve Mancini said in an email, the “CMOs are not.”

“But some government-transparency advocates argue that the law is not so clear cut.

“Because CMOs are so heavily involved in the operation of public schools, it could be argued that the vast majority of their records are kept on behalf of public schools and should be public, said Bob Freeman, executive director of the Committee on Open Government and an expert on public-records laws.

“Even though nonprofits aren’t covered by FOIL, he said, “Everything you do for an entity that is subject to FOIL — everything you prepare, transmit, and receive — falls within the scope of FOIL.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Privatization

Arthur Goldstein: The Myth of NYC’s “Bad Teachers” CORRECTED!

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2017 //
47

Arthur Goldstein is a veteran New York City high school teacher and blogger.

He went slightly ballistic when he read an op-ed article in The New York Times by Marc Steinberg, who became an instant principal during the Bloomberg-Klein regime and left to join the rightwing billionaire Walton Family Foundation, as director of its K-12 program. The Waltons despise public education and spend hundreds of millions backing charters, vouchers, and other modes of privatization. The WFF claims credit for funding one of every four charter schools in the nation. The Waltons individually spend millions on political campaigns to support privatization and undermine the teaching profession. They are avowed enemies of public education, the teaching profession, and collective bargaining.

Sternberg was a golden boy in the Bloomberg-Klein era. He graduated Princeton in 1995, joined Teach for America, picked up an MBA and MA in education at Harvard. Only nine years after finishing college, he was a principal in New York City. He quickly became a Klein favorite and moved up to become Deputy Chancellor in a few short years.

Now, at the pinnacle of rightwing power, with hundreds of millions to dispense every year, what really annoys him is that Mayor de Blasio plans to place hundreds of displaced teachers into classrooms. These are the teachers known as the “Absent Teacher Reserve,” where teachers are assigned when they have been accused of misconduct but are still awaiting a hearing or where they have been placed because their school was closed and they haven’t found a new job. Why haven’t they found a new job? If they are experienced, their salaries are at the high end of the salary scale, and principals don’t want to hire a permanent teacher whose salary is $90,000 instead of two young teachers for $45,000 each.

[ADDITION: Arthur Goldstein wrote at the end of the day to tell me I had confused “the rubber room” and the “Absent Teacher Reserve.” He explained:

[ATR teachers are not rubber room teachers. Rubber room teachers are those who are awaiting hearings. They don’t have rubber rooms anymore, so those teachers are placed in offices or schools. We had one in our school last year. He was given a job running our tutoring room.

[Teachers facing charges are generally not allowed to teach….ATR teachers are often displaced from schools. Some of them have been through hearings. They may have been found guilty on minor charges and fined. None of them have been found unfit. Had they been found unfit they would have been fired.]

As it happens, a friend of mine lost his job when the large school where he taught was closed and replaced by five or six small schools. He has a Ph.D. in history, but that didn’t help him find a new job. This highly educated, highly experienced teacher involuntarily became a permanent substitute, assigned to the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), bounced from school to school in a humiliating fashion. Marc Sternberg considers him a “bad teacher,” although he was never given a bad rating as a teacher. Mayor de Blasio wants him to get a permanent job. Sternberg thinks he should be fired.

Arthur Goldstein responds here to Marc Sternberg:

“I’ve never been in the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), so I can’t speak from experience here. My experience is limited to being an occasional substitute teacher, not one of my favorite things. I was in my school a few times this summer, and one day a secretary asked me to cover a class. I thought I’d maybe help out, so I asked, “Which class?”

“She told me she needed a teacher for a day, and that there were three classes, two hours each. I told her thanks but no thanks. Six hours is a long time to work as a substitute teacher. It’s far different teaching students you don’t know. A classroom culture takes time to build, but goes a long way.

“Now imagine that you’re an ATR teacher, and your stock in trade has been showing up and teaching whatever to whomever. Physics today, Chinese tomorrow. And then there are the principals, quoted in the press, who say how awful ATR teachers are. I’d only hire 5% of them, maybe, they say. And there are two issues with that.

“Issue number one, of course, is if I were teaching Chinese or physics, I’d be totally incompetent. I know virtually nothing about either. Even if a teacher were to leave me lessons all I could do would be follow instructions, watch the kids, and hope for the best. On this astral plane, I get lessons for subbing well less than half the time I do it. Sometimes I hear that ATRs should simply give lessons in their own subject areas. Mine is ESL, so it would be ludicrous to give such a lesson to native speakers. But even if I were to give one in ELA, imagine the reaction of a group of teenagers when a sub they will likely never see again gives a lesson on a different subject. And even if it’s the same subject, it’s ridiculous to compare the class culture of a regular teacher to one of a sub.

“Issue number two is that administrators, already overworked, now have to do at three to six observations for most teachers. If I were a principal, it would not be a high priority to observe teachers who were just passing through. I’m chapter leader of the most overcrowded and largest school in Queens. My job is nuts (and believe it or not, I’m not complaining). The principal’s job is crazier than mine. There is no time to fairly assess teachers who aren’t around very long. Frankly, I question where principals who cavalierly toss out percentages even find the time to look.

“I wonder if any writers who attack ATRs ever had or saw a substitute teacher. To compare a classroom with a culture, developed over time, with one led by a total stranger the students expect to never see again is preposterous. Watching hedge funded “Families for Excellent Schools” organize a dozen parents to protest the ATR is beyond the pale.

“This year things will be different for a lot of ATR teachers. The new plan is to place a whole lot of them, provisionally at least, in schools. You’d think that the people who bemoaned the cost of the ATR would be jumping for joy. By making teachers, you know, teach, they’re no longer throwing away all that city money they claimed to be so concerned about.

“To the contrary, they’re complaining. What if they’re no good? A parent wrote an op-ed in the Daily News saying she didn’t want her kid taught by them. Some guy on the Walmart payroll wrote virtually the same nonsense in the NY Times. You read in Chalkbeat about principals threatening to observe newly place ATRs to death. What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty, or incompetent, or at least something that merited a conversation?

“Let’s be frank here—it seems that ATR detractors simply want all of them fired without due process. That’s a slippery slope. We are all ATR teachers. It’s just a matter of being in the wrong place at the right time.

“Here’s something you won’t read in the papers—with the help of UFT and my administration, we’ve placed at least four ATR teachers permanently at Francis Lewis High School. Three are in my department, and one is an English teacher working mostly with ELLs. 100% of them are doing fine.

“ATRs need a chance, and Lord knows NYC kids need teachers. Yesterday, I counted 248 oversized classes in my school alone. It’s time for ATR critics to shut up until and unless they discover something worth talking about.”

Wouldn’t it be amazing if the Walton Family Foundation stopped acting as an echo chamber for Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos and began to use its billions to address the real problems of students and schools?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New York City, Privatization, Teachers, Walton Foundation

NYC Shuts Down Key Part of “Leadership Academy,” Legacy of Bloomberg-Klein Era

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2017 //
35

The New York City Department of Education announced that it was closing down the “Aspiring Principals” program, which was the linchpin of the NYC Leadership Academy. The Leadership Academy was launched by Joel Klein as a bold effort to attract business leaders, young teachers, and out-of-town principals who wanted a fast track to be a principal in New York City.

The first chairman of its board was Jack Welch of General Electric, who believed in grading all employees every year and firing the bottom 10%. The first CEO of the Academy was Robert Knowling Jr., a tech executive from Denver whose company had just collapsed. He brought a staff of more than 20 people with him to New York, including his personal coach.

Bloomberg raised $75 million for its first three years of operations. After that, the Department had a “competition” and awarded $50 million to the Leadership Academy, at which time Klein was chairman of the board.

The Leadership Academy was announced with great fanfare, like all Bloomberg initiatives, and school boards came from across the country to learn about it. What a great idea! Training business executives to be principals! It was about as good an idea as Bloomberg’s choice of a publishing executive to become chancellor after Klein stepped down. She lasted only three months.

The results of the Leadership Academy were unimpressive.

The only out-of-town principal who joined the program departed after six months. No business executives finished the program. It served as a pipeline for typically young teachers, who didn’t want to wait to gain the experience to become a school leader. Those who became principals found themselves in charge of a staff of veteran teachers who resented the quickie principals who had little experience and were in their late 20s or early 30s.

The city also cut its ties with TNTP, which Michelle Rhee created before she was D.C. Chancellor.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New York City, Principals

Fred Smith: How De Blasio Juked the Stats to Overstate Test Score Gains

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2017 //
38

Fred Smith is a testing expert who knows how test scores can be manipulated and statistics can be twisted into data pretzels.

In this post, he calls out Mayor de Blasio for hyping the numbers to make the gains far larger than they were. Leave aside for the moment that test scores are a ridiculous way to measure the quality of education. Leave aside the fact that using them as measures of progress feeds into the privatizers’ narrative. Smith caught the Mayor juking the stats for Political gain.

He writes:

Ignore that tall man behind the curtain as he cranks up the volume.

Bearing a strong resemblance to Mayor de Blasio, he is there to proclaim that, “Since 2013, English proficiency has increased by 54 percent and math proficiency has increased by 27 percent.” But the noise machine can’t hide the fact that there is little substance in all the thunder.

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So, the mayor’s Tuesday press release leads with huge gains in reading and math scores—the major, if-you-don’t-remember-anything-else point he wants us to take away as he seeks re-election.

But the percentage gains are statistical smoke that befogs the mayor’s already clouded efforts in education. And, frankly, they raise questions about the incumbent’s honesty.

Three tricks prop up the testing headline:

1. The DOE press release emphasizes percentage gains, which are current results minus previous results divided by previous results. Evidently, the increase in English scores of 14.2 percent (26.4 percent to 40.6 percent) from 2013 to 2017 wasn’t good enough news. Nor was the 8.1 percent gain (29.6 percent to 37.8 percent) in math. So, the press office reaches into its bag of tricks and insists there has been a 54 percent gain in English proficiency under de Blasio—14.2 divided by 26.4 and a 27 percent boost in math—8.1 over 29.6.

Now, can you imagine the mayor doing this if there had been an increase in the murder rate. Let’s say homicides were up from 6 to 7 killings per 100,000 New Yorkers. Would de Blasio say that murders rose by one percent or by 16.7 percent? You know he would minimize the negative outcome.

2. – De Blasio’s spinners also present 2013 as their baseline year. But Mayor Bloomberg owned the 2013 results and most of 2014’s, as well. De Blasio didn’t arrive at City Hall until January 1, 2014. The English test was given on April 1, 2014.

Why would they go back to 2013? It allows de Blasio to start his story the year the ELA and math results tanked–creating a fictional narrative of tremendous achievement. For 2013 was the year the Common Core-aligned tests descended on the schools and rained rigor down on 440,000 New York City students. De Blasio wants to embrace Bloomberg’s bottomed-out, third-term school years as his starting point, because things could only improve after that.

Had the Mayor begun his account with the 2015 results, he would still have a 10.2 percent increase to boast about in English proficiency (from 30.4 percent to 40 percent6 percent), but only a 2.6 percent gain to show in math (35.2 percent to 37.8 percent) under his control of the schools. That would be nothing to brag about.

Ironically, as he notes, Joel Klein too tried to claim credit for test score increases that occurred before he took office.

Sad that test scores are now a political talking point. Just proves how meaningless they are.

Categories Accountability, Bill de Blasio, Data, Klein, Joel, New York City, Testing

Carol Burris Deciphers a Study That Falsely Claims That Charters Benefit Nearby Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2017 //
22

I am reposting this because the original omitted the link to the article. I went to the car repair shop and the computer repair shop today, and wrote this post while paising in a coffee shop between repairs. Carol Burris’s article links to the original study, which has the ironic title “In Pursuit of the Common Good: The Spillover Effects of Charter Schools on Public School Studenys of New York City.” Ironic, since charter schools have nothing to do with the common good.

Recently, a study was released that made the absurd claim that public schools make academic gains when a charter opens close to them or is co-located in their building. To those of us who have seen co-located charters take away rooms previously used for the arts, dance, science, or resource rooms for students with disabilities, the finding seemed bizarre, as did the contention that draining away the best students from neighborhood public schools was a good thing for the losing school.

The rightwing DeVos-funded media eagerly reported this “finding,” without digging deeper. Why should they? It propagated a myth they wanted to believe.

The author of this highly politicized study is Sarah Cordes of Temple University.

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and a former principal, is a highly skilled researcher. She reviewed Cordes’ findings and determined they were vastly overstated. Her review of Cordes’ study was peer-reviewed by some of the nation’s most distinguished researchers.

Burris writes:

“Cordes attempted to measure the effects of competition from a charter school on the achievement, attendance and grade retention of students in nearby New York City public schools. In addition, she sought to identify the cause of any effects she might find.”

She did not take into account the high levels of mobility among New York City public school students, especially the most disadvantaged.

But worse, her findings are statistically small as compared to other interventions:

“Upon completing her analysis, Cordes concludes that “the introduction of charter schools within one mile of a TPS increases the performance of TPS students on the order of 0.02 standard deviations (sds) in both math and English Language Arts (ELA).”

“To put that effect size in perspective, if you lower class size, you find the effect on achievement to be ten times greater (.20) than being enrolled in a school within one mile of charter school. Reading programs that focus on processing strategies have an effect size of nearly .60. And direct math instruction (effect size .61) with strong teacher feedback (effect size .75) has strong benefits for math achievement[2]. With a .02 effect size, the effect of being enrolled in a school located near a charter school is akin to increasing your height by standing on a few sheets of paper.”

Burris noted that what really mattered was money:

“Although it appears that Cordes found very small achievement gains in a public school if a charter is located within a half mile, that correlation does not tell us why those gains occurred. To answer that question, Cordes looked at an array of factors — demographics, school spending, and parent and teacher survey data about school culture and climate.

There was only ONE standout out factor that rose to the commonly accepted level of statistical significance — money.”

Burris concludes that journalists need to check other sources before believing “studies” and “reports” that make counter-intuitive claims:

“The bottom line is that Sarah Cordes found what every researcher before her found — “competition” from charters has little to no effect on student achievement in traditional public schools. It also found that when it comes to learning, money matters as evidenced by increased spending, especially in co-located schools.

“Most reporters generally lack advanced skills in research methods and statistics. They depend on abstracts and press releases, not having the expertise to look with a critical eye themselves. But it does not take a lot of expertise to see the problems with this particular study.”

Sarah Cordes’ “study” will serve the purposes of Trump and DeVos and others who are trying to destroy the common good. Surely, that was not her intention. Perhaps her dissertation advisors st New York University could have helped her develop a sounder statistical analysis. It seems obvious that the public schools that have been closed to make way for charters received no benefit at all–and they are not included in the study.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Funding, New York City, Privatization, Research

Ariela Rosen: A Whisper in an Age of Shouting

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2017 //
5

Ariela Rosen is a high school senior in a public school in New York City. She wrote a beautiful article that was published on the op-ed page of the New York Times.

It is the story of a man you have never heard of: Charles Stover. There is a bench in Central Park in New York City dedicated to him. But only a bench.

She writes:

“Under his name a simple inscription proclaims him “Founder of Outdoor Playgrounds.” When I read that for the first time, I laughed. How could one person be the founder of playgrounds? And shouldn’t he get more than a bench?

“Even more absurd was what I found when I looked him up. His Wikipedia page was barely two paragraphs long and made no mention of playgrounds at all. The article mainly concerned the day in 1913 that Stover, after three years as New York City’s parks commissioner, went out to lunch … and didn’t come back. For 39 days.

“Naturally, this made me more than a little curious about the man. I’ve been looking for him ever since.

“The first thing I discovered was that almost nobody — not my parents, not my high-school teachers — knew who Stover was. This seemed strange to me because he was an enormously important figure. In 1886 he was a co-founder of the University Settlement House — the first settlement house in the United States — from which he spearheaded the growing reform movement in New York City. Stover was also involved in efforts to preserve Central Park and develop more parks and playgrounds in poor neighborhoods. In 1898 he founded, together with Lillian Wald, the Outdoor Recreation League, which sponsored the construction of playgrounds as a substitute for unsupervised street play. As parks commissioner, Stover created the Bureau of Recreation, which built dozens of playgrounds in its first three years, including DeWitt Clinton Park, Seward Park and Jacob Riis Park….”

“When Stover died in 1929, he left only a few books and papers, but his legacy went far beyond his possessions. He spent his time and money providing playgrounds, gardens, housing and other services for poor immigrant children and their families, all the while battling his depression…

“Stover believed — and his life proves — that it is possible to make a difference in the world without yelling. It is easy to get caught up in the shouting of politicians, or to want simply to walk away from it all. That is why it is more important than ever to listen to the stories of those around us.

“I plan to go on looking for Stover, but his bench has already taught me an important lesson: Sometimes the most powerful words are the ones that are whispered.”

What a lovely essay.

Ariela Rosen roused my curiosity, so I checked Stover’s Wikipedia entry. It was five paragraphs long.

It reads:

“Stover was born in Riegelsville, Pennsylvania, on July 14, 1861. He attended Lafayette College and graduated in 1881. He studied to become a Presbyterian minister at the Union Theological Seminary and graduated in 1884. He also took classes at the University of Berlin, before moving to Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

“In 1886, Stover founded the Neighborhood Guild on Forsyth Street, the first settlement house in the United States. In 1898, he and Lillian Wald, director of the nearby Henry Street Settlement, founded the Outdoor Recreation League (ORL), whose mission was to provide play spaces and organize games for the children of the densely populated Lower East Side. The ORL opened nine privately sponsored playgrounds and advocated that the City itself build and operate playgrounds. In 1902 the City assumed the operation of the ORL playgrounds, and in 1903 opened what is presumed to be the first municipally built playground in the nation, Seward Park in Manhattan’s Lower East Side; the ORL had opened an outdoor gymnasium there in May 1899, on city-owned land.

“In January 1910, Stover was named parks commissioner for Manhattan by New York City’s newly-elected mayor, William Jay Gaynor. Stover’s tenure was controversial; in July 1911 The New York Times reported that he was being asked to hand in his resignation. He did not resign and was not fired; in August 1911 he announced major plans were underway for Central Park and Riverside Drive Park. In April 1913 Stover said “I do not believe in the policy that the parks are merely places people to walk through and look at the trees and gaze at the landscapef from a distance, nor do I believe that any one should be permitted to destroy anything, but I take the position that certain parks of the asphalt and the lawns should be open most liberally to the young people for amusement, proper athletics, and recreation, under proper circumstances.

“In October 1913, Stover told his staff and coworkers that he was going out for lunch then he disappeared. In mid-November he was erroneously thought to have died in Delaware when a body resembling him was found. A week later, he was seen in Washington, D.C., by a former city official. In late November, a nationwide search began, which included sending a short film clip to 10,000 moving-picture places across the United States. Shortly thereafter, Stover mailed his letter of resignation from Cincinnati, and Ardolph Loges Kline, the Mayor of New York City, replaced Stover with Louis F. La Roche, Stover’s deputy. On January 28, 1914, Stover returned to the University Settlement House.[10]

“Stover spent the rest of his life developing a summer camp at Beacon, New York, operated by the University Settlement House. He died at the University Settlement House on April 24, 1929, at the age of 67, leaving an estate valued at only $500.”

I recommend that Ariela continue her search by reading about Mayor Gaynor, who appointed Stover as Parks Commissioner. He was shot in the neck by a discharged city worker, but survived. Gaynor was put into office by the Tammany Hall machine, but to the surprise of all, turned out to be an honest and dedicated public servant. I have a published collection of letters that he wrote to constituents, and they are masterpieces of wit and irascibility.

Categories History, New York City, Play, Real Education

Mercedes Schneider on the TFA Teacher Who Forgot to Put It on Her Resume

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2017 //
16

Mercedes Schneider takes us on a tour of the latest claims, exaggerations, and braggadocio on the Teach for America website. She is bothered to the extreme by TFA who are assigned to special education classes, despite their poor preparation.

What bothers me most is this:

“Even with its fly-by-summer training and its turnstile, two-year recruit commitment, TFA unabashedly proclaims itself a provider of “world class education.”

TFA has been in business since 1989. That’s almost thirty years. It cannot name a single district where its young college graduates have provided a “world class education.” Kopp wrote in her last ghost-written book that New York City, D.C., and New Orleans were proof of TFA success. But where are the miracles in those three cities? D.C. still has the largest achievement gaps of any urban district in the nation, and it has been under TFA control (Rhee And Henderson) for a decade. No one calls either NYC. Or NOLA a miracle district except for PR flacks.

Lies really bother me. It shows character to hide ones TFA background. Or shame.

Categories District of Columbia, New York City, Teach for America

Gary Rubinstein: Why Would NYC Invest Another $699,000 in a Failing Program?

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2017 //
18

On Tuesday night, the New York City Board of Education (aka, the Panel on Education Policy) will vote on paying $699,000 for a program called Teach To One. It was developed by Joel Rose, a protege of Joel Klein when he was chancellor of the NYC public schools.

Gary Rubinstein saw this program in action and thought it was dreadful.

Teach To None

To check whether his judgment was right, he reviewed the scores of the schools using this math program. They were abysmal. In one of the schools, 0.0% of the students passed the state math test.

Why would the Department of Education propose to pour more money into this failing program?

By the way, look at the funders: the Gates Foundation, the Bezos Foundation, etc. guess it doesn’t take much other than who-you-know to get their money.

The leaders of KIPP are on their advisory board, but KIPP doesn’t use the program.

Categories Curriculum, Education Reform, Failure, New York City

Arthur Goldstein: The Sooner “Reform” Dies, the Better for Career Teachers

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2017 //
10

Arthur Goldstein gives a close reading of Eliza Shapiro’s article about “why New York City is no longer the national leader of reform” in education.

When he read it, he felt heartened by the thought that “reform” was on the ropes, withering on the vine, falling apart, use whatever metaphor you want. Going, going, gone.

And yet he knows how demoralized the teachers in his building are.

He shows the error of Shapiro’s framing of the teacher tenure issue. “Reform” apparently means the utter elimination of any job rights for teachers. “Reformers” want to be able to fire any teacher at any time, without cause, just because they want to. Reformers agree that teachers should have no rights at all, and they wonder why there is a growing teacher shortage.

He writes:

Reforminess is something Trump is strong on, because he doesn’t believe in protecting the rights of working people. With him, it’s all about profit, hence Betsy DeVos, who’s pretty much decimated public education in Michigan. They can wrap themselves in the flag all they want, and claim to care about the children. Those of us who wake up every morning to serve those children know better.

And then there is Andrew Cuomo, who first ran on a platform of going after unions, who appeared at Moskowitz rallies and frothed at the mouth over the possibility of firing as many teachers as possible. Cuomo could not possibly anticipate that parents would become informed and fight back against the nonsense that is Common Core. He could not anticipate that parents would boycott his tests in droves.

What reformies failed to count on was the opportunism of Andrew Cuomo. As a man with no moral center whatsoever, he is driven by rampant ambition. This year, he watched Donald Trump win the presidency against neoliberal Hillary Clinton. Cuomo decided to position himself as Bernie Sanders Lite and pushed a program to give free college tuition to New Yorkers (albeit with a whole lot of restrictions).

Cuomo is now best buds with UFT, judging from what I hear at Delegate Assemblies. While I don’t personally trust the man as far as I can throw him, I’m happy if that works to help working teachers and other working people. So what is education “reform,” exactly?

As far as I can tell, it’s piling on, How miserable can we make working teachers? How can we arbitrarily and capriciously fire them? How can we give them as few options as possible, and as little voice as possible?

It’s ironic. The MORE [MORE is a progressive caucus within the UFT] motto is, “Our teaching conditions are students’ learning conditions.” I agree with that. Take it a step further, and our teaching conditions are our students’ future working conditions. When we fight for improvement of our working conditions, we are fighting for the future of our students as well.

Two of my former students teach in my school. They are the first of their families to be college educated, and the first of their families to get middle class jobs. I will fight for them, and for my other students to have even more opportunity. Betsy DeVos and the reformies, on the other hand, can fight to maximize profits for fraudulent cyber-charter owners and all the other opportunist sleazebags they represent so well.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Cuomo, Andrew, New York City, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure

New York City: Why Eliza Shapiro Should Read “Reign of Error”

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2017 //
28

Eliza Shapiro writes about New York City for Politico.

She wrote a somewhat wistful article about why New York City was no longer “the nation’s education reform capital.”

For one brief shining moment, she suggests, New York City had the chance to expand its privately managed charter schools and to break the grip of the teachers’ union. It came “this close” to evaluating teachers by test scores. It was near to a point where it might have eliminated tenure and seniority.

All of this is supposedly reform?

Well, as she well knows, this is the agenda of hedge fund managers and others on Wall Street. This is the agenda of the billionaires who never set foot in a public school and whose children will never go to public school.

What stopped the headlong rush to crush public schools and teachers’ unions?

Parents. The New York State Allies for Public Education, a coalition of 50 parent and educator groups (not the union), that organized the mass opt outs from testing.

When twenty percent of the parents in the state with children in grades 3-8 refused to allow their children to take the tests, Governor Cuomo stopped in his tracks. He had been gung-ho to evaluate teachers by student test scores; he boldly claimed to be the state’s charter school champion (even though only 3% of the state’s children were enrolled in charter schools). But when the opt out started, he realized he had a political problem. He hired Jere Hochman, the thoughtful superintendent of the Bedford Central public schools, to advise him, and for the first time, he had an experienced educator calming his passions. He formed a commission and grew silent.

Sheri Lederman, a much-loved teacher in the Great Neck public schools, challenged her evaluation, and the judge agreed with her that it was arbitrary and capricious.

The American Statistical Association said that the test-based evaluations in which Cuomo put so much stock were inappropriate for evaluating individual teachers.

Shapiro seems unaware of most of these developments. Her framework is: charter supporters=good; unions=bad; firing teachers at will without cause=good; tenure=bad.

She insists on seeing the New York City story through the framework of “reformers vs. union.” It would have made more sense to look at the NYC story as “parents (in New York State, not New York City) vs. high-stakes testing. Research vs. Cuomo.

Now that the reform laurels are no longer in New York City, she suggests that readers look to Louisiana and D.C. instead, both of which are among the lowest performing jurisdictions in the nation.

I want to suggest to Eliza Shapiro that she read my last two books: The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (rev., 2016); and Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. She should read Mercedes Schneider on John White in Louisiana and John Merrow on the subject of the D.C. “miracle” that wasn’t. (John Merrow and Mary Levy will have an article in the next issue of the Washington Monthly that takes apart the D.C. “miracle.” but in the meanwhile Shapiro can read this post that Merrow wrote: https://themerrowreport.com/2017/08/08/touching-the-elephant/comment-page-1/

If she contacts me, I will send her both books at my expense. If she reads them, she will be a better education writer. Certainly better informed.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New York City, Privatization, Testing
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