Archives for category: New York City
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NYC: Parents Holding Sit-In to Demand Removal of Principal

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2017 //
22

Central Park East 1 elementary school was founded by Deborah Meier many years ago. It is an iconic progressive public school in East Harlem that has attracted a diverse student enrollment. Debbie wrote to tell me that the school is interible trouble now. Its current principal is opposed to the original philosophy of the school. Parents are demanding her removal:

“***Breaking Update: Following a meeting of more than 100 parents, teachers and community members, families have been occupying their school at CPE1 since 6:30pm on Thursday, April 6th. The DOE has promised to send someone to meet with occupying families at 8am. Parents are asking Mayor de Blasio to step in and resolve the crisis at CPE1 by removing Principal Garg immediately. Supporters and families will be holding a press conference and rally at 8:30am to explain their demands and next steps in their struggle.***

“BREAKING NEWS RELEASE

“CONTACT: Jen Roesch (917) 319-7008 or jenroesch@gmail.com
Kaliris Salas-Ramirez (718) 704-7387
Kenya Dilday, kdilday@gmail.com

“Parents Sitting In at Central Park East 1 to Demand Principal’s Removal

“Letter Sent to Mayor DeBlasio asking him to personally intervene after DOE’s failure to address long-standing issues

“Majority of Families Want ‘Worst Principal’ in NYC Out; Retaliation Against Teachers, Abuse of Parents, Children Must Stop

“Afternoon of April 6th, Central Park East 1 at 1573 Madison Avenue: Parents, including members of the Parents’ Association leadership and School Leadership Team, are currently refusing to leave their school until their principal, Monika Garg, either resigns or is removed. They say they represent a majority of parents who have signed a statement of “no confidence” in the principal. This letter was presented at the School Leadership Team immediately preceding the sit-in. Other parents and supporters are holding a solidarity rally outside.

“Parents say they have appealed to the DOE for over a year about significant concerns but have not had their needs adequately addressed. Garg is statistically the WORST principal in NYC: she has had the greatest drop in ratings from parents and teachers on the 2016 DOE school survey of any principal in the city and oversaw the city’s largest drop in test scores after her traumatic first year at the helm (2016). NYC has approximately 1800 public schools. They are refusing to leave until Mayor De Blasio intervenes. They cite his claim that his administration will make parent voice and building trust in our schools a top priority.

“Parents cite serious concerns about Principal Garg’s leadership, including abuse of teachers, children and families. Two teachers have been removed from the school for investigations that parents consider retaliatory in nature. The investigations come in the wake of an open letter signed by tenured staff expressing concerns. Another third of the teaching staff left at the end of last year. All tenured teachers have faced investigations and disciplinary action under Garg’s tenure.

“Parents say that children have been harmed as a result of these investigations. Garg interviewed very young children without parents’ knowledge or consent. Many only found out as a result of other parents whose children had told them. In one instance, a 7-year old child had documented emotional issues and was being assisted by the school guidance counselor. This child was interviewed without his parent or his guidance counselor being informed. He was asked about 2-year old incidents and told that his cooperation was necessary in order to keep his school safe. This parent failed to receive an answer to her concerns from either Garg or the DOE. More than 55 parents filed complaints with the DOE without any response. Children in the classes with teachers removed are suffering emotional and social distress and have not received proper support.

“Since her appointment in 2015, which came via a questionable process, Garg has deliberately fomented division, mistrust and turmoil at the iconic public progressive elementary school. With the support of District 4 Superintendent Alexandra Estrella, Garg has harassed and retaliated against teachers, mistreated students and families, and undermined the school’s successful practices.”

# # #

Categories New York City, Parents

Andrea Gabor: Joel Klein Spends an Evening with His Friends at TFA, Berating Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2017 //
20

Andrea Gabor recently attended an invitation-only event in New York City to meet Joel Klein at Teach for America headquarters in lower Manhattan, where he reflected on his legacy.

She writes:

How did Klein feel about his legacy—what was he most proud of, what would he do differently—especially in light of the policies of his successor?

This would be the second question of the evening posed to Klein. And the former schools chancellor’s response, at first, surprised me.

What he most regretted: “We never got teachers on our side. We didn’t communicate and listen well enough.”

However, Klein quickly followed with what he was most proud of: Opening 200 charter schools.

And, where he saw the biggest problem in New York City schools: The teachers union “polarized” the teachers.

Here, in a nutshell is the contradiction—even the tragedy—of the Bloomberg/Klein regime: Klein, a child of a “dysfunctional inner-city home”, who saw public school as his refuge and claims that his teachers made the difference in transforming his life, sees the proliferation of charter schools, not the improvement of public schools, as his most important legacy. (A biography, incidentally, not unlike that of former Education Secretary John King, another reformer who prioritized privatization and carrot-and-stick policies for teachers.)

It is hard to remember now how disliked Klein was by teachers, not just the union. He turned the schools into a test-and-punish experiment where teachers were expendable. He closed many schools, closed almost every large high schools, fired most of the city’s principals or drove them away, including some of the best veterans. He gave preferential treatment to charter schools, especially Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academies.

It is hard to know why Klein dislikes public schools as much as he does. It wasn’t based on his experience as chancellor. He came into the job with a strong conviction that the public schools were a disaster and it would take business thinking to fix them. He reorganized the system at least four times. He brought in Michael Barber (Sir Deliverology, now the Chief Academic Officer at Pearson) to advise him. He boasted about “reforms” on the day he launched them, then overlooked them when they silently disappeared. He surrounded himself with young business school graduates and lawyers, not educators, and invented new titles to enable them to serve (“chief talent officer,” “chief knowledge officer,” etc.)

After he left the school system, he joined Rupert Murdoch and urged him to buy Wireless Generation, a tech company that had worked for the Department of Education. Murdoch bought it for $300 million or so, and invested about $1 billion in Klein’s tech company called Amplify. Amplify planned to revolutionize education through technology, and it built its own tablets and curriculum. I hear the curriculum was good, but the tablets had many technical problems (the screens cracked, the plugs caught fire, etc.) A few years ago, haviglost hundreds of millions, Murdoch dumped the company, which was bought by allies of Klein. Klein soon was pushed out, and he is now at an online healthcare business called Oscar, owned by Jared Kushner’s brother.

After he left the NYC schools, Klein continued to rail against public education. He wrote articles decrying the high cost of teacher pensions (but when he left office, he immediately filed to collect a pension of $34,000 a year for life based on his eight years as chancellor).

The piece-de-resistance of his anti-public school activism was a report that he and Condoleezza issued, under the sponsorship of the Council of Foreign Relations, claiming that America’s public schools are so dreadful that they are a risk to national security. Their cures: Everyone should adopt the Common Core, and every state needs charter schools and vouchers.

Why does he hate public schools so? He often claimed that his own life was changed by his public schools and teachers. But he wanted to move in a world of elites where no one ever went to public schools and where it was conventional wisdom that public schools stink. He reflected not his own experience, but the class into which he aspired to belong.

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

New York: Parents Sue Cuomo to Release “Frozen” Funds for Neediest Schools

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2017 //
7

The Education Law Center is suing Governor Cuomo on behalf of parents at some of New York state’s neediest schools, seeking the release of $37 million the state owes these schools. :


PARENTS ASK NY APPEALS COURT TO RELEASE ILLEGALLY FROZEN SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT FUNDS

Parents of students in three public schools are asking a New York appeals court to immediately release over $37 million in improvement grant funds frozen a year ago by Governor Andrew Cuomo.

The latest request comes in a lawsuit filed by the parents charging the Cuomo Administration’s budget director, Robert Mujica, with violating the law when he refused to release grants previously appropriated by the Legislature to boost programs and services in twenty, high need schools across the state. Education Law Center represents the plaintiff parents and students.

On December 28, 2016, Judge Kimberly O’Connor in Albany found that the budget director exceeded his legal authority in withholding the grants and ordered the funds be immediately released to the NY State Education Department for distribution to support vital programs in the schools.

Governor Cuomo decided to appeal Judge O’Connor’s ruling last month. Under New York law, the appeal triggers an automatic stay of the order to release the funds. The parents are now asking the appeals court to lift the stay, citing the irreparable harm to students if the schools are unable to implement the programs supported by the grant funds.

“If the grant money is not released pending this appeal, hundreds of children in New York’s neediest schools will lose educational opportunities that they cannot regain,” said Wendy Lecker, ELC senior attorney. “Education is cumulative, so when students are deprived of the support needed for learning that not only limits their achievement this year, but impedes progress as they move to subsequent grades.”

In affidavits filed in support of the parents’ request to the appeals court, administrators from three of the schools deprived of the grant funds – Hackett Middle School in Albany, Roosevelt High School in Yonkers, and JHS 80 Mosholu Parkway Middle School in the Bronx – detailed the essential programs they can no longer provide without the grants. These include extended learning time, social work and counseling, family outreach, academic intervention and professional development. The programs were implemented in 2015-16 with the first year of grant funds, but are on hold since the Governor decided to withhold the second year of funding.

Numerous programs have been held up by the Governor’s action:

Hackett Middle School discontinued extended instructional time to provide students with additional academic assistance and professional development for teachers.

Roosevelt High School cut a literacy/math coach and parent coordinator; discontinued professional development opportunities for teachers; and eliminated or sharply curtailed weekend and after-school extended learning time, college visits and CTE pathways.

JHS 80 Mosholu Parkway Middle School could not implement any of its proposed programs, including mentoring for at-risk students, social workers and guidance counselors for their extended day program, and professional development for teachers.

The appropriation for the grants will lapse in March 2018. If the funds are not released pending the appeal, the schools may lose access to the remainder of the funds, permanently depriving students of the opportunity to benefit from the programs and services the grants were intended to support.

Education Law Center Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24

Categories Accountability, Funding, Inequity, Injustice, New York, New York City

Norm Scott: The Battle to Save JHS 145 from Eva Tonight

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2017 //
8

Retired teacher Norm Scott writes:

While closing schools is not as widespread as it was under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, it is still occurring and it is very troubling. The Department of Education still fails to provide proper resources for schools and then calls them failures… James Eterno, ICE blog

I’m taking the subway up to Yankee Stadium tonight, not for a Yankee game, but to take the long walk from there to 1000 Teller Ave for the JHS 145 hearing. I never go to the Bronx, even for Yankee games, because it is as far away from where I live as possible and still be in NYC.

If Eva and her little band of slimeballs show up to tell us about their scholars I’m going to be retching, so I better not eat.

This is not about closing a struggling school but about yet another giveaway of a school building to Eva Moskowitz, who has enough money to rent Radio City Music Hall for a test-prep rally, but wants to toss poor kids into the street in another avaricious grab. And the DOE is closing the school – or trying to – because they fear the slings and arrows of the charter lobby publicity machine.

As for the UFT — they are supposedly doing things behind the scenes. Ho-hum –when what is needed is a strong public stand against the Farina/deB giveaway to Eva. DeB thinks if he pays off charters they will lay off him in the election. Good luck with that.

I reported on teacher Jim Donahue’s heroic efforts to help organize resistance — Closing JHS 145 So Eva/Success Academy Can Ge..

When Jim spoke at the UFT Ex Bd they acted dumb — it was Jim and MORE that asked for the item to be pulled from the March 22 PEP agenda which so far has not happened. March 22 may turn into a redux of Bloomberg era resistance.

James Eterno reported on tonight’s hearing at the ICE blog:

SCHOOL CLOSING BATTLE IN BRONX TONIGHT

The common perception from the UFT is that school closings are not a real problem under the current Mayor Bill de Blasio and his Chancellor Carmen Farina. While closing schools is not as widespread as it was under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, it is still occurring and it is very troubling. The Department of Education still fails to provide proper resources for schools and then calls them failures.

Tonight there will be a Joint Public Hearing to save Junior High School 145 in the Bronx. JHS 145 is slated for closure. Eva Moskowitz has already claimed the building for one of her Success Academy charter schools.

The only trouble with this arrangement is the school community at 145 is waging a valiant fight to save their school. Tonight is their Joint Public Hearing, a public meeting required before a school can be closed. If you can make it to the Bronx this evening, I suggest that you attend the hearing to show your support for 145. Get there before 6:00 p.m. to sign up to speak. Schools targeted for closure need the public to be behind them to have any chance of surviving.

I certainly know how the JHS 145 people feel as Jamaica High School, where I taught for 28 years, was phased out and then closed in 2014.

Here is an email from MORE leader Jia Lee on tonight’s JHS 145 hearing.

Colleagues,

An injury to one is an injury to all. Success Academy is slated to take over the building where JHS 145 has been for generations. Incredibly, SA has advertised for their new middle school even before the vote has taken place at the March 22 PEP.

The staff and families of JHS 145 are fighting to keep their school open. They serve students who have been mislabled based on faulty test score metrics. A large showing of support for the school and resistance against charterization will send a message to the DOE that we will not stand by while they destroy public schools.

Please join me at this joint hearing with JHS 145 and Success Academy

JHS 145
1000 Teller Ave. Bronx NY
Take any train to Yankee Stadium or
take the A or 1 train to 181 Street in Washington Heights, then take the Bx35 bus toward the BX.

Categories Charter Schools, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

Arthur Goldstein: When Teachers Complained About Large Classes, the Arbitrator Said…

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2017 //
30

High school teacher Arthur Goldstein reports what happened when teachers complained about overcrowded classes in New York City:

“A few months ago, a $1,600-a-day arbitrator named Deborah M. Gaines declared that Francis Lewis High School, where I work, could keep oversized classes, but that teachers of said classes would be relieved once a week from a school assignment, e.g. tutoring.

“It’s hard to imagine, by any stretch of the imagination, that 40 minutes per week of not tutoring alleviates the difficulties of teachers grappling with oversized classes. It’s even harder to imagine how less tutoring benefits students, particularly from a city that claims to put “Children First. Always.”

“If I’m a conscientious kid, sitting in one of our 42 oversized classes — some of which run as high as 37 students — and not getting enough attention from my teacher, I might be wondering how her being less available to tutor me helps the situation. Do I breathe a sigh of relief that she’s off that period and hope for the best? The arbitrator and the Department of Education seem to assume so.

“Maybe I’m not sophisticated enough to grasp how it helps. I’m just a lowly teacher. But I’m also my school’s UFT chapter leader, so twice a year I report class sizes, the union files a grievance, and we bring them before an arbitrator.

“Usually there are a handful and we work it out. This year the number was higher, never went down, and in fact rose to 42 by my last count.

“Oversized classes are tough to manage, especially when teachers in New York City are rated by a rubric that values student engagement highly. In a room with over 34 teenagers, keeping them motivated and on task is challenging in that it demands total attention. The arbitrator may as well have declared that teachers of oversized classes will now have eyes in the backs of their heads.

“It’s been 50 years since class size limits were first established in the United Federation of Teachers contract. Since that time, we’ve managed to not improve upon them at all, and worked our way up to the highest class sizes in the state….”

Categories Class size, Education Reform, New York City

Gary Rubinstein Solves the Mystery of the Missing Regents’ Exam Scores for Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Students

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2016 //
15

Gary Rubinstein was curious about  how students in the Success Academy high school fared on the mandatory state Regents examinations. He called and called to state offices, but he got a run-around. Two days after he blogged about it, he learned the answer to his question: Success Academy, which is celebrated for producing high test scores, has an exemption from the state so its high school students do not have to take the Regents exams required of all others. (The only exception to the mandate is a group of small, project-based schools called The Consortium schools, who offer portfolio assessments instead of state tests; they received an exemption about 20 years ago.)

 

Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of the SA charter chain, receives millions of dollars from benefactors every year in recognition of the high test scores of her charters.

 

Success Academy has gotten so much attention (and money) for their high 3-8 test scores that it is only natural to wonder how the few older students they have in their schools have fared after 8th grade. One thing we know is that Success Academy eighth graders have not done well on the specialized high school entrance exam to gain admissions to one of the eight specialized high schools. They have had three cohorts of students take the entrance exam and the first two cohorts had no students gain admission and the third cohort had six students out of two hundred eligible gain admission to one of the eight specialized high schools.

 

Rubinstein found this very puzzling: Why would a school that prided itself on turning students into “little test-taking machines” avoid the Regents exams? He has a few theories about that. Read his post to find out what he believes explains this special case of avoiding the required tests.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Harlem Success Academy, New York, New York City, Privatization, Testing

Arthur Goldstein: Chancellor Farina, Put a Letter in My File, Please

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2016 //
17

Arthur Goldstein teaches English language learners in a high school in Queens. He is active in his union and more often than not, a thorn in its side. He writes a blog where he speaks his mind, protected by tenure.

He addresses the question that most educators will have to face in the days ahead. What do you tell the students? What do you say to Hispanic students? to Black students? to gay students? Do you still teach an anti-bias curriculum? an anti-bullying program? If you do, are you criticizing the President-elect?

Goldstein writes:

In this post, he calls on the Chancellor of the New York City public schools to put a letter in his file. He also offers a graphic/meme that he hopes will appear in every classroom in the city (or state or nation).

Chancellor Fariña declared there would be no overt political talk in class. To a degree, I understand that. It’s not my place to tell kids who I voted for. It’s not my place to tell them who to vote for either. I would never do such a thing. But I knew they would ask me anyway.

Nonetheless, on Monday, I wore a tie a little bit like the one on the right. You wouldn’t notice what was on it unless you looked closely. When the kids asked me who I was voting for, I showed them the tie. I told them that a donkey represented Democrats, and an elephant represented Republicans. They didn’t know that. They looked at my tie and said, “Oh, you’re voting for Hillary.” I was glad they asked, because I needed them to know I would not vote for someone who hated them and everything they stood for, to wit, the American dream.

I also needed them to know that I stood against all the bigoted and xenophobic statements our President-elect made. I’m sorry, Chancellor Fariña, but I’m a teacher, and unlike Donald Trump, I stand for basic decency. My classroom rule, really my only one, is, “We will treat one another with respect.”

Donald Trump failed to treat a wide swath of people with respect. He’s a hateful, vicious bully. There are all sorts of anti-bullying campaigns that go in in city schools, and I fail to see why Donald Trump should get a pass simply for having lied his way to the Presidency. So I specifically repudiated a whole group of his insidious statements. I also added LGBT to my group, and told my kids that we would not tolerate slurs to gay people in my classroom. Even my kids seem to expect a pass on that. They won’t get one.

Categories Freedom of Speech, New York City, Resistance, Students, Teachers and Teaching

The Death of a Great High School

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2016 //
5

Jelani Cobb graduated from Jamaica High School, as did many other distinguished Americans. In a powerful story that appeared in The New Yorker, Cobb tells the history of Jamaica High School as a paradigm for the clash between race and reform. Jamaica High School was long considered one of the best high schools in New York City in the 1980s. As the city adopted reform after reform, the school went from an integrated model to a highly segregated school; it enrolled growing numbers of students who were learning English or had disabilities. Other schools lured away top-achieving students. When the Bloomberg-Klein regime took over, Jamaica’s days were numbered. The staff and the local community fought for the survival of the school, but Bloomberg-Klein gloried in closing large high schools and stuffing them with multiple small schools with multiple principals. The school that once enrolled over 3,000 students held its last graduation ceremony in 2014, with a graduating class of only 24 students. This is a very sad story about the abandonment of schools that suffered from the reformer conceit that low scores=bad schools. Jamaica in its final years was serving the neediest of the city’s students; it was put to death by the authorities.

Cobb writes:

Underscoring the indignities that attended the school’s last days was a difficult irony: for much of its time, Jamaica was a gemstone of the city’s public-education system. In 1981, the schools chancellor, Frank Macchiarola, decided to take on the additional role of an interim high-school principal, in order to better appreciate the daily demands of school administration. He chose Jamaica, and was roundly criticized for picking such an easy school to lead. Four years later, the U.S. Department of Education named it one of the most outstanding public secondary schools in the nation. Alumni include Stephen Jay Gould, Attorney General John Mitchell, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Walter O’Malley, Paul Bowles, and three winners of the Pulitzer Prize: Gunther Schuller, Art Buchwald, and Alan Dugan. Bob Beamon, who set a world record for the long jump in the 1968 Olympics, graduated with the class of ’65. The school’s closure felt less like the shuttering of a perennial emblem of stagnation than like the erasure of a once great institution that had somehow ceased to be so.

Jamaica had become an institution of the type that has vexed city policymakers and educators: one charged with serving a majority-minority student body, most of whose members qualified as poor, and whose record was defined by chronic underachievement and academic failure. Even so, word of the school’s closure angered students and their families, the community, and alumni. I was among them—I graduated with the class of ’87—and for me, as for many former students, the school was a figment of recollection, frozen in its academic glory. George Vecsey, the former Times sports columnist and a member of the class of ’56, accused Joel Klein, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s schools chancellor, of “cooking the books,” to make schools slated for closure appear worse than they were, and compared the Department of Education’s closure policies to the nihilism of Pol Pot. Vecsey later apologized for having slighted the suffering of Cambodia, but he held to his contention that Klein ruled by dictatorial fiat. He wrote, in a blog, “The city destroyed a piece of history because of its own failure.”

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, High School Graduation, Klein, Joel, New York City

Julian Vasquez Heilig Reviews WikiLeaks for Education Emails

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2016 //
11

Julian Vasquez Heilig combed through the Podesta emails released by WikiLeaks in search of education-related comments. He found quite a few.

Reach your own conclusions.

I don’t think he included this one, where the Clinton campaign reacts to a question from the AFT about whether Joel Klein is involved in the campaign.

Education Week reported the story here.

Klein’s company Amplify lost about $500 million, when it was owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Murdoch dumped it, and Laurene Powell Jobs picked it up for the Emerson Collective, probably for a song.

But Klein is still in the money. Despite the epic failure of Amplify, Rupert Murdoch is paying him $4.6M per year to sit on the News Corp board. (And don’t forget that he filed for a pension from New York City for the eight years he spent as Chancellor, closing schools and opening charter schools.)

Klein is now working as “chief strategy” officer for the failing Oscar health insurance company, which is also losing millions fast. Klein has not had much luck in the business world. This company was co-founded by Josh Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Clinton, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Klein, Joel, New York City, Privatization

Arthur Goldstein: The New Grading Standards in NYC Are Absurd and Inhumane

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2016 //
27

Arthur Goldstein has taught ESL students in New York City for decades, and he has one of the best blogs in the city, state, and nation, written from the view of a teacher.

In this post, he lacerates the administration of the New York City Department of Education for a grading policy that further diminishes the discretion of teachers to make judgments about what their students need and how they are progressing. I can’t help but think about the paradigm of all national systems, where teachers are carefully selected, well prepared, treated as masters of their profession, and trusted to do what’s best for their students.

The new NYC rule, Arthur says, is “you will differentiate instruction the same way for everyone.”

He writes:

“That seems to be the main thrust of the new grading policy. A big thing, for me at least, is the policy on what is and is not acceptable for participation. I had been doing precisely the thing that the DOE seems to loath—granting a participation grade at the end of each marking period. I essentially gave a positive grade for students who raised their hands and were active all the time, a negative grade for those who spent most of the time sleeping, and various degrees in between for others.

“Now here’s the thing—DOE gives an example that you give credit each day when a student brings a pencil and notebook. That is, of course, measurable. It’s also idiotic, as it’s a preposterously low standard. I think the reason they gave that example was because it was very easy for them to think of. And thus, we part ways. I actually think about grades a lot. To me, bringing a pencil is only a marginal step above breathing.

“But they don’t need to think about it. They just need to sit in air-conditioned offices and tell us what to do. Why bother considering the real lives of lowly teachers, let alone the students they ostensibly serve? Treat everyone the same.

“So if someone places a student in my class, tells me she has a 70 IQ, and the girl looks appears so fragile that if you touched her she would break, well, rules are rules. If she doesn’t participate each and every day, screw her, she gets zero. If one of my students is from a country where they have classes of 50, if she’s been taught all her life to sit down and shut up, if she’s so painfully shy that she actually trembles when you ask her a question, give her a zero. Everything is black and white in the ivory towers of the DOE.

“Your opinion cannot be quantified. Let’s say you teach strings. Let’s say one of your students comes in and plays a beautiful piece, with perfect vibrato. She makes you feel as though you have reached nirvana. I come in and scratch out something that sounds like I’m strangling a cat.

“But we’ve both brought in our violins and cases, and how the hell are you gonna prove she plays better than me? Is it on the rubric? And who’s to say I didn’t find my own piece to be breathtakingly beautiful? Who the hell are you to judge me without a rubric? And if you do have one, and you tell me how badly I played, maybe I’ll just report your ass under Chancellor’s Regulation A-421, verbal abuse. You made me feel bad. So screw you too.

“After all, the supervisors are using rubrics. They come in with that Danielson thing and check boxes. These boxes contain the evidence. Plus they have notes. So who cares if the notes came from the voices in their heads and nothing they say actually happened? I’ve seen supervisors outright make stuff up.”

Categories Accountability, New York City, Teachers and Teaching
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