Crap this is boring. Blah, blah, blah, triangles. Square this, square that. If only I can keep my eyes open for long enough to write this down...13, 14, 15 kids raising their hands. Let me make a quick note....

Only two students raised their hands.

That's show 'em. Jeez, what is this idiot next to me writing. How the hell did he ever get to be AP? Asked penetrating questions.  Heh. "Penetrating." I don't even know what this teacher is talking about. Jeez, is it fifteen minutes yet? That son of a bitch chapter leader will toss another one of my observations if I don't stay for the whole 15. Man why do they make this so damn hard?

Ineffective.

That makes me feel just a little better. Well, sorry, but this teacher just doesn't make me want to go out and draw these triangles. I mean, she isn't even wearing a skirt. When I get my school, all the teachers will wear skirts.

Let me look over at what that son of a bitch at the next desk is writing. Highly effective? Students are engaged? What drugs is this guy taking and where can I get some? You know, I kind of hate walking all the way to the barber shop to buy drugs.I wonder if there are some kids in the building I can buy from. Maybe I could raise a few grades and get them for free. Oh man. I just wrote that on the school iPad. Let me cross it out. Do those tech guys see this stuff? Maybe I should buy my own iPad.

I'm gonna have to talk my pal in the next seat into lowering those ratings or there's gonna be even more norming. I don't want to spend even more time with one of those assholes who rates everyone effective. Jeez, why can't we just go out last period Friday and write up the teachers who have too many absent kids?  Man, I cannot stop thinking about that Popeye's commercial. Two pieces of chicken, two sides and a biscuit for five bucks? For ten bucks, you buy two and that's a meal. Plus at Popeye's you can refill the drinks, so fifteen Coca Colas is not out of the question. Mmmm. Fifteeen Coca Colas.

Three minutes and forty five seconds and I'm outta here. But no. This bozo's shaking his head like he wants to stay the whole period. Can I just leave even if he stays? Oh my gosh he's writing again. Excellent engagement? What the hell is up with that? These kids are all sitting around drawing triangles. They're talking about a bunch of crap that I can't even understand. And they aren't even throwing in big words. Where's the rigor? Where's the grit?

Ineffective.

Oh my gosh this idiot is writing highly effective and I'm not even high. Jeez, are we gonna have to talk about this crappy lesson? I have to get to the barber shop and it's at least a twenty minute drive over to Popeye's. Man, why can't they build one of those joints around here? Nah. Then I'd have to share the chicken with the students and that bitch Feinstein. They'd all be, "Oh, I saw Mr. Wonder at Popeye's."

Oh crap! A fire drill! And me with only two minutes to go. What a waste of time! And now this idiot is going to want to talk about how wonderful the lesson is. Maybe I can slip off to my car. I could probably get over to Popeye's have a nice fifteen Coca Cola lunch, make a quick run to the barber shop, and get back to the school in an hour or two. I'll say I was inspecting the perimeter. Jeez, where did I hear that word? What does that even mean? Well, probably no one will ask.

Oh man! This guy wants to talk to me about the lesson. We can't write it up. Doesn't he know that? What the hell is the point? Hmm... maybe I could write the teacher up during the fire drill. Look at that. She's just standing there talking to some student. And a lot of the kids are just standing around doing nothing.

Ineffective.

I don't care I'm writing it up. And if the other guy doesn't, I'll call it dereliction of duty. That's the ticket. You know what's wrong with this system? The idiots they hire. I don't know how this guy ever became AP, and I'm never going norming with him again. When I become principal, you can bet I'm not bringing this douchebag with me. He loves this, he loves that. Highly effective all over the place.


I can tell you one thing, that guy is never gonna make principal.

Rubrics are perfect, or so you'd think if you heard the nonsense I do at meetings. And teachers have now lost quite a bit of discretion over how students are graded in city schools. There was a memo that went out from the chancellor, there was a meeting of the principals, and evidently this memo is tantamount to the Ten Commandments. Thou Shalt Tell Students Exactly What Basis Marking Has. Thou Shalt Not Have More than 49% in Subjective Measures.

I've always taken a holistic view of grading. Even as we entered an electronic age of grading, I was able to adjust percentages by counting some things more than others. For example, I am not unaware there is a whole lot of copying of homework. By assigning short answer homework a weight of 1, and written homework a weight of 2 or 3, I've been able to compensate a little for that. I also didn't think it was that bad that kids could earn high grades for simple completion. After all, if they failed tests and failed to participate, they simply didn't pass the class anyway.

My layout for grades has been 50% tests and quizzes, 25% participation, and 25% homework. I gave participation grades each semester. This has now been expressly prohibited by the geniuses at Tweed, who of course know better than those of us who fritter away our time actually teaching New York City's 1.1 million schoolchildren. So I will now have to give these grades more frequently and maybe write a rubric expressly explaining what it is for. This will result in more work for me and exactly the same grades. And frankly, short of posting Bill Gates-style perpetual video surveillance in the classroom, there will be no way to ascertain whether or not I am just making stuff up. (You know, like there's no way to determine whether or not supervisors make stuff up about the Danielson rubric.)

Our new department policy, if I recall correctly, is 50% tests, 10% quizzes, 20% participation and classwork, 15% graded homework, and 5% non-graded homework. This will help me not at all. This will help my students not at all. However, it will put uppity teachers like me in our place. How dare we presume to assess our students ourselves? Discretion is for professionals like Carmen Fariña, who made a brilliant success our of her school by hand picking all the students in a process nearly selective as that of Harvard. Me, I teach whoever they put in front of me. I try to do the best I can by them, my system worked fine, and now it's complicated for no good reason.

Why can't I make tests and quizzes one category and simply give tests more weight than quizzes? What if I think frequent quizzes are more important than tests and give me a better picture of where my kids are at any given point? Do I now need to test more frequently? And how can I do that when the school now says I can only test on certain days every week? And since supervisors are always quacking about formative assessment, why do tests now need to count for 60%? Isn't language, which I teach, largely about oral communication? Aren't there abundant tests in my students' home countries, don't they pass them and yet arrive here with little or no ability to communicate in English? Doesn't that argue that a test-based standard is not optimal? Do you judge the English ability of people you meet by how well they score on tests?

And let's go a little further into the woods now--do you think that I teach the same as everyone else? Do you want me to? If so, why not just stick a computer in front of the class? If not, why on earth would you think that assessing students subject to my voice is exactly the same as assessing students subject to another? Is it possible that I might, perish forbid, take the tack that actual day to day communication and survival are more important than how you do on the preposterous NYSESLAT exam about Hammurabi's Code? And if I actually do go the Hammurabi's Code route, how can you make sure the tests, quizzes, and whatever I give will make my students really know Hammurabi's Code?

Another argument I've heard is that teachers keep poor records and therefore need a tight rein so as to correct that. Let me tell you something--people who keep poor records do not need a more complicated and/ or convoluted grading system. If people keep poor records, under this system their records will get even worse. My nature is a little sloppy, but I've had college professors who sat on tests for 6-8 weeks, and then tested us on things without letting us know whether we understood the basis for them. I hated those teachers. For that reason, and also to cover my proverbial keester, I overcompensate. If I give a test, it's like a hot potato. I have to get it graded immediately, no matter what, and I almost always get it back to students the next day. I know if I don't do that they'll probably never be returned at all.

It's too bad that teacher discretion is given such short shrift. I very much believe teacher voice is a thing like writer voice, and that it varies teacher to teacher. Do some teachers work better for some kids than others? Yes, of course. But doesn't it benefit kids to learn how to deal with a variety of influences, even some they don't necessarily like?

Why does everything and everyone have to be exactly the same? How on earth does that help anyone, particularly in these times of "alternative truth?"

This month's DA was notable for several reasons. One is the positive campaign Mulgrew intends to run. It's a great idea, but I'm skeptical because it's only words. I regularly approach the Executive Board with the argument that it is us who represent New York City's children, and it is us who should stand for them. They roll their eyes. Last month they rejected a class size resolution that certainly had input from public school parents. They did this on the basis of our having sacrificed to place class sizes in the contract.

That's an absurd assertion, since it happened 50 years ago, and we still haven't shut the holes in it, which are so large you can drive a Mac truck through them. Maybe we'll get that the "plans of action" cannot be used indefinitely, and maybe the new negotiation process will help a little, but the ultimate decision is with the arbitrators. For my money, they don't give a crap about the real issues of class size and until they do, there's no evidence UFT does either.

As to the DA itself, it was remarkable that James Eterno could be treated with such contempt by leadership. James stood and asked that we work toward a minimum of two rather than four observations, and also mentioned that many state locals work under that understanding. He cited discontent among rank and file with the number, and my experience suggests that he's dead on. He also cited the fact that his wife Camille is currently being railroaded over at Humanities and the Arts Magnet High School. He concluded by asking that the person who speak against his suggestion be someone who is actually rated by the system.

UFT Secretary Howard Schoor got up and angrily told James he doesn't get to pick who speaks against his motion. Schoor, who is not rated by Danielson, who has never been rated by Danielson, and who will almost certainly never be rated by Danielson then proceeded to signal the Unity Loyalty Oath Signers that they were to vote this proposal down. Of course he couldn't just do that; he had to also give an argument.

Here's the argument--There are fewer people rated ineffective now than were rated unsatisfactory under the previous system. Here's what's wrong with that argument. For one thing, it treats those rated developing as though they were rated satisfactory. As someone who's spent a lot of time meeting with, representing, and counseling people rated developing, I can say with 100% certainty that's not how they feel. Sure they don't face the consequences of an ineffective, but that's cold comfort for them.

Another problem with that argument is, as always, leadership conveniently forgets that two ineffectives means the burden of proof is on the teacher at 3020a. That's a hell of a mountain to climb, and no one had to do it before the advent of this system. But the very worst problem with Schoor's argument is this--No matter how few people are rated ineffective, there is no argument whatsoever you can possibly make that will make a single one of them feel better. I do not tell people who are rated ineffective, "Well, it happened to far fewer people so you might as well feel good about it." That would be, and is, idiotic. Remember that Schoor made this statement directly to James, whose wife, again, is currently facing these ratings and being raked over the coals by Danielson.

But the overarching problem with the argument is that making it at all underlines just how out of touch leadership is with membership. It's amazing that people who are not even touched by Danielson can muster the audacity to lecture those of us who are. And this imperious and preposterous attitude bodes ill for the next coming of Friedrichs.

And despite all this, that was not the most striking thing I heard at the DA. The most amazing thing I heard was the statement by Michael Mulgrew that UFT asked for two observations. This shocked me for several reasons. One is that I've been to chapter leader training and the Executive Board, and I've heard about the new system from the best experts the UFT had to offer. The argument I heard, not once but several times, was that more observations give teachers a better chance of doing well. I also heard that CSA, the principals' union, wanted fewer observations.

Now if UFT had asked for two and was rebuffed in negotiations by the DOE, why the hell didn't they just say so? And why on earth would anyone give James Eterno a nasty answer to a very real problem when they could've just said, "You know, we wanted that too, but we couldn't get the DOE to agree to it." If that's the truth, it's a hell of a better argument than any I heard, and I've heard the arguments on at least three occasions, including the DA.

So what's the truth? Is Mulgrew telling it? And if so, why don't all of them tell it? Why haven't they told us before? Have they been lying to us to make us think that they controlled negotiations better than they did? If so, doesn't that suggest that's what they do as a matter of course?

With leadership like that, is it any wonder we're facing DeVos, ready to dismantle public education but ever vigilant about protecting us from grizzly bears? It's amazing that we had to listen to Mulgrew talk so much about transparency, and that leadership nonetheless sits up there on that 14th floor posturing as though they're on Mount Olympus, talking down to all us non-deities below.

I've written in the past about Part 154, the newly revised regulation that effectively cuts direct English instruction and reduces ESL teachers to support staff for teachers of other subjects. In New York State, learning the English language is subordinate to mastering things on which you can be tested. Therefore, in the same time American-born students are studying Macbeth, ESL teachers are supposed to stand around and make sure students who don't understand English acquire the language via studying a form of it no one uses anymore.

Last year, the state was rather benign about enforcement. This was a good thing, because it was a huge stinking mess. Small schools with one ESL teacher would expect said teacher to be everywhere, teaching everything. As you can imagine, that's not a task that can be easily accomplished. What actually happened was that these teachers ran around like headless chickens accomplishing little or nothing. That's too bad because on this astral plane, it's actually kind of important to learn the prevalent language of the country in which you reside.

I know of other small schools in which the ESL teacher is treated as an annoyance. There's the social studies teacher, teaching about the Spanish American War, and that pesky ESL teacher is always interrupting, handing the ELLs vocabulary sheets and stuff. How are they supposed to pay attention to the lesson? How are they supposed to grasp what the social studies teacher is offering when the other teacher is continually interrupting? And how are they supposed to teach not only the subject, but also the language, when newcomers have the same 40 minutes as American-born kids to learn in?

On the other hand, I work in a large school. Aside from the issue of concurrently teaching the subject and basic English, the demands of Part 154 are equally impossible there as in any setting. There are a whole lot of things that just don't make any sense. For example, students are not allowed to be more than one grade apart, so it's virtually impossible to make up classes based on language level rather than grade level. You can, of course, run one section of 4 students and another of 44 students. While that might not make sense to any teacher or administrator who hasn't eaten LSD for breakfast, rules are rules.

The geniuses at Tweed, of course, have the answer. What you do, you see, is you hang up bulletin boards with student work. Also, you make sure a rubric is attached. You see how that fixes everything? Also, you make sure there is a library in the back of the classroom. You also make sure that every ESL teacher does all this stuff, because of course they have nothing else to do. This helps everything. Those are just a few things I noticed in 23 pages of rubrics and demands the DOE helpfully sent us last week.

To further help us, they're gonna visit us six times this year and rate us on said rubrics. That's great. Because just last week, a whole lot of UFT members were approaching me and saying, "Hey, you know what? I don't feel enough pressure on myself as a teacher. I'm just not being micromanaged enough." So naturally, we're all glad the New York City Department of Education, which knows absolutely everything, is coming around with a ponderous and detailed document that no one has ever seen before and demanding we do absolutely everything on it. Because a day without rubrics is like a day without sunshine.

I guess if I were an effective teacher I'd make up 23 pages of rubrics for my students and demand they tow the line. Instead, I've been limiting my focus every day trying to make them learn English so they can, you know, communicate, have lives, and maybe be happy. The truth is I have never seen any of those goals on any rubric detailing college and career readiness, so they must be frivolous and unnecessary. Only the NYC Department of Education, which actually has a PowerPoint somewhere that says acquisition of English is strictly for the purpose of excelling in academic subjects, has the answers. Otherwise, why would they be in those air-conditioned offices in Tweed while we just hang around having big fun in classrooms?

Me, I'm just glad they're coming. I know my colleagues are delighted. Like all teachers, we haven't got enough pressure on us. Being visited and judged six times by people wielding an incomprehensible rubric designed by a bunch of bureaucrats with no idea what we actually do, or how impossible it is to meet their regulations, is just what we need to keep us on our toes. And naturally, as our jobs are so breezy and easy, we have plenty of time to sit around and incorporate their demands into what we do each and every day. Evidently, the DOE thinks we sit around each day and wait for them to tell us what to do, so they are performing a great service by swooping down like the Spanish Inquisition.

The Sword of Damocles that is the APPR system isn't enough. The huge exodus of new teachers isn't enough either. So lets focus on one single department and support them six full days. Let's amp up the observations and judge the teachers on not one, but rather two distinct rubrics. Because Danielson, while it's on par with the Ten Commandments and never to be questioned, cannot truly assess quality even though it assesses quality perfectly.

Oversized classes? Not our problem. Kids never been to school in their first language? Too bad for you. School at 214% capacity? Deal with it. We're from the Department of Education and we're here to help.

As UFT chapter leader, I get a period off, so I teach four classes rather than five. In fact, I teach two double-period classes, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. I am quite fortunate this year in that, after years of begging and pleading, I managed to get my kids into the TDF Stage Doors program. This means that on November 16th all my students will be seeing Wicked on Broadway at no charge.

It's pretty cool because the overwhelming majority of my students have never seen a Broadway show, or likely any live theater at all. But it's also a lot of work because my students know very little English, and very little American culture. So in fact, before they see Wicked we needed to make sure they saw The Wizard of Oz, and that they understood it. We've moved past that, and yesterday was the first day we started discussing the characters in Wicked.

Wicked is an interesting choice for my kids, because it's mostly about a woman who is, well, green. Kermit the Frog can sing It's Not Easy Being Green and it's cute. On the other hand, that's pretty much par for the course when you're a frog. Being a green person is really kind of tough. My morning class was all over it, and a discussion of Elphaba (the witch's name, created from the initials of L. Frank Baum) moved into a discussion about prejudice, discrimination, and even stereotypes. Someone hates each and every one of us, I told them, just because of who we are.

The kids were receptive. They discussed a bunch of questions I'd written, and my co-teacher pushed me to Danielson everything. They read the questions and discussed them in small groups before sharing them aloud. Even a painfully shy young woman who was reluctant to come on the trip with us smiled for the first time in my memory. My morning class was fully engaged and I'm sure if we'd been observed by someone not crazy we'd have come out highly effective.

So we were pretty encouraged to give the same lesson again in the PM. Sadly, we saw a lot of different attitudes. The kid who's always spacing out spaced out as usual. The boys who sit in the back and tend not to mix with anyone tended not to do so yesterday either. Some students didn't answer my questions because they weren't listening. A boy asked me what the question was, after I'd repeated it more than once, and got my stock answer:

A question is an interrogative statement designed to elicit a response.

Of course, that's just obnoxious. On the other hand, tuning out and asking for extra attention after having done so is not my favorite thing either. I wandered to the back and noticed that this boy, in fact, had written an answer to that question. It wasn't bad either.

Our afternoon class was not a disaster, but it was not great either. The morning class went perfectly. I wonder what the difference was. Is it the class size? The morning class has 26 while the evening class has 34. It's certainly easier to observe and keep tabs on the smaller class. Or is it the time? Our morning class meets at 8:46. The students have been through, at most, one class by that time.

Our PM class begins at about 12:30. By then, our students have sat through 6 classes. Are they pretty much washed out by then? Are they bored out of their minds? Are we further boring them out of their minds? I'd say up to eight students are not fully engaged in that class. I'm always walking around and lulling them out of their stupor one way or another. I give them the look, or if they're bent over sideways I bend over the same way and catch their sleepy eyes.

Sometimes I sneak over and try to get a photo of them sleeping. This is very tricky, because I'm actually am not aiming for the photo. I'm aiming to make them pick their heads up before I can get it. Usually, I don't get the photo and the students think they pulled one over on me. Alas, I actually have one photo of a sleeping student I took last week.

How can Danielson be fair when you can give the exact same lesson to two different classes and have two completely different results?

Now I may have spoken a word or two against presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. After all, she's got some rich history. But I'm surprised at the reaction I've gotten. I've been told that I hate Hillary, that I hate women, that I'm stupid, that I'm a "Bernie Bro," and that I don't understand high school civics. I've been told I support Donald Trump. I've been told that I have to vote for Hillary. I have to! I've been called a fanatic. (This writer is hearing pretty much the same.)

What is a fanatic, exactly? I think a fanatic is someone who has one point of view that supersedes all others. But that's not enough. A fanatic is someone who says, "This is the way I do this thing. Everyone else must do this thing this way too." So I'm gonna defend myself against the charge of fanaticism by saying I don't insist everyone else do as I do. I mean, it would be great if everyone voted for Bernie. It would be great if he'd won more contests. You vote for whom you like. I won't insult you. But whatever happens, I'm not planning to vote for Hillary.

I may have mentioned, somewhere or other, that I'm a teacher. I may have also mentioned that I'm a UFT Chapter Leader. In my capacity as chapter leader, I get to hear what anyone wishes to tell me about what they go through. I'm not hearing the love for Race to the Top, which imposed junk science ratings on me and everyone with whom I work. The lone exception is when I go to UFT meetings. In these meetings, people from the President on down, none of whom have ever been rated by Danielson, toss out statistics and easily proclaim that things are incontrovertibly better.

And yet, each day at work, people tell me how unhappy they are. Young, brilliant teachers tell me they can't take it any more. The most relentlessly positive people I've ever seen in my life get up and walk out. And let me add, I work in one of the best schools in the city (in my highly prejudiced opinion).

But in my school, like in every school, there are all kinds of pressures. Sometimes the pressures ease. No more letter grades. But you cut off one head, and another grows in its place. Test scores no good? Close the school. Fire everyone. Put it into receivership and give it to Moskowitz. Test scores good? First overload the school to triple capacity. Then yeah OK, the scores are good but you're not asking the right questions. What's the point of having 97% of the kids passing the math tests if they can't have profound and reflective discussions about whether or not one plus one is really two? I mean, why is it two?  You can't reserve these discussions for works of literature, and anyway we don't do those anymore. We close read pieces of them with no context, and analyze them until we're blue in the face.

And if you do get those good scores, they're not really good unless you have teams of teachers discussing the work. They have to sit every day and analyze it just like the students analyze out of context fragments of literature. If it's perfect, then they have to figure out how to make it more perfect. And for God's sake there has to be PD. Who cares if 99% of the PD you've sat through for thirty years has been useless? You never know. This might be the one. This might be the one percent. And anyway, since the support networks have been broken up, there are all these companies that charge tens of thousands of dollars for PD. How the hell are they supposed to make tens of thousands of dollars if no one pays them for PD? Have you even considered that?

I've considered it. I've considered it in great detail. Every day when another thirty-year-old teacher tells me how lucky I am that I can retire, I consider it even more. I consider that Barack Obama's children attended the Sidwell Friends School, a place that subscribes to absolutely none of the Common Core tests or junk science ratings that so torture my young colleagues. I consider that Hillary Clinton sent her kid to Sidwell too, yet thinks Common Core is good enough for the rest of us peasants and our children. I consider my beginning kids taking the NYSESLAT exam, answering ridiculous and redundant questions about Hammurabi's Code and whatever other Common-Corey Crap the geniuses over at Questar have dreamed up for them.

I'm not voting for people who enable this crap. Not anymore. I've had enough.

Hey, if you want to vote for Hillary, be my guest. But when you come at me with ad hominem nonsense, when you tell me I have no choice, I'm not the one who's fanatic.

Charlotte Danielson, she of the Danielson Framework we all know and love, has penned a missive in Education Week. Danielson is concerned with the way teachers are rated. Let's get right to this jaw-dropping statement:

I'm deeply troubled by the transformation of teaching from a complex profession requiring nuanced judgment to the performance of certain behaviors that can be ticked off on a checklist.

Me too, actually. Maybe they don't have irony in Charlotte Danielson's neck of the woods, but she actually wrote the damn checklist and took a pile of money for having done so. I'm not altogether impressed by her crocodile tears years after the fact. If she's so troubled, she could always give the money back on principle and insist her framework not be used in this fashion.

My former co-blogger Arwen wrote a fabulous piece comparing the old process and the new one. It's quite clear which offers more value to a working teacher, and it isn't Danielson's model. A thoughtful and helpful supervisor could evaluate a lesson and offer valuable advice to working teachers. Of course, like many teachers, I would not take it for granted that supervisors are thoughtful or helpful. Danielson, of course, fails to consider that and why should she? It's not like she has any familiarity with or experience in the system she helped create, or even the largest school district in the country, the one that's using her system.

Where does Danielson go when she needs information? In her article she cites only only a few sources. One is TNTP, formerly The New Teacher Project, formed by Michelle Rhee, and another is Bill Gates, who funded a project called Measures of Effective Teaching, or MET. I've found TNTP to be less than thoughtful or credible, but of course I'm a New York City teacher, and unlike Danielson, I'm familiar with the system upon which she's inflicted her framework. I've also seen Gates MET program up close and personal, and found it less than impressive.

Charlotte Danielson doesn't look that closely at such things. She takes them at face value. Has she read Diane Ravitch? Who knows? What we do know is whose opinions she values. Those of us living through this reformy era know precisely what those opinions are worth.

In fact, the overwhelming majority of principals and supervisors have never taught under Danielson's system. Some may understand it, but there's really no evidence to suggest they do, or how many do. With Carmen Fariña openly advocating its use as a gotcha system, there's no reason to presume its validity. Fariña actually instructed some principal about a teacher she wants gone. Does any reasonable person think that teacher is going to get a fair observation, rubric or no rubric?

Full disclosure--there's a lot to like about the Danielson rubric, in my opinion. But it ought to be used as a growth tool rather than the gotcha tool it's become. That is, in fact, how Danielson first conceived it. For her to complain now, after having sold her idea for a whole lot of cash, that it's being misused, is the height of hypocrisy.

Again, if she really wants to impress us, let her give back the money she took and fight to withdraw the right of New York City to use her framework as a tool to fire teachers.

You never know. They're the Spanish Inquisition and the Red Scare all in one. They sneak in and they hope you do something wrong. If you don't, they just make something up. How else can they justify sitting in an office all day and reading all that email? It's not like they're actually doing something. I mean, you're in that classroom every day doing battle with Valentina, the 14-year-old who's smarter than you are and not afraid to let the whole world know it. How will you avoid confrontation with her today?

Because you know if you slip up for just one moment, the Boy Wonder will zip in unseen with his iPad and write you up in low inference notes. He has those special supervisor glasses and if twenty kids raise their hands he sees only five. If there are ten, he sees two. Five and under he sees zero. And what can you do? It's your word against his. You are a lowly teacher and he is a defender of truth, justice, motherhood and the American Way. You can't file a winning APPR complaint simply because he sees things that don't happen, doesn't see things that do happen, and the voices in his head don't coincide with objective reality. 

When do you think he’ll come after you for the post ob, you wonder? Will he approach you while you're in the classroom? Every time he walks in there you shake. You know he's carrying a box of nails, and every edgewise glance  is gonna be another one in your coffin. Sure, Mulgrew says that only a few hundred ended up with double ineffectives, but you feel it, the target on your back. It only takes two arrows in a row and approval from the rat squad. In fact, under the new APPR coming next year they may not even need a rat squad.

Mulgrew, your President, says everything is fine and we've discarded the war paint. But the only time you remember Mulgrew going to war was when it was with you, when he was gonna punch you in the face for opposing Common Core. And you felt like you were getting it from both sides. And no one knows what's going on because the papers don't even know what they're talking about.

In December the state Board of Regents, based on the recommendations of Cuomo’s Common Core task force, put a moratorium on the use of test scores in teacher evaluations.

Of course that's only true for some Common Core exams given in elementary school, and you don't teach elementary school so too bad for you. Everything is pretty much the same and you will be judged on the same test scores you were judged on last year. Except they will now count 50%. The only upside is a total stranger who knows nothing about you or your students will be coming in, and perhaps he or she will give you a fairer shot than Boy Wonder. Who knows?

It's nice that Mulgrew is feeling all warm and fuzzy, but the pressure hasn't stopped for you. Maybe if you were wearing a suit and sitting in a fancy office at 52 Broadway you'd be feeling the love, but for you it's nonstop tension and pressure.

Maybe you can take that actuary gig. It's not like working with kids, but since all they want you to do is test prep, you aren't really doing that anyway. Oh my gosh here comes the Boy Wonder again with his iPad.

Showtime.

Rodney Dangerfield used to have a routine about heaviness. It followed him everywhere. He'd wake up in the morning and say, "Hello, heaviness." The heaviness would answer. It would say something like, "You're gonna be drinking early today." Dangerfield, of course, felt the heaviness because he didn't get no respect.

In case you hadn't noticed, teachers don't get no respect either. So we feel the heaviness too. Administrators don't understand it. They're too busy writing up observation reports about things that may or may not have happened. It really doesn't matter, as long as they get enough of them done in a timely fashion.

And you, all you have to do is grade stacks of papers, write IEPs, consult with your co-teacher, consult with your other co-teacher, go to your teacher team, go to PD, call the parents, patrol the hall, go to meetings, keep a record so you don't lose your license, go to another school to mark papers, proctor 500 exams, grade 200 more, reflect on all you've done, ask the kids to reflect on it too, write your class midterm, analyze your department midterm, and intervisit with your colleague to show school spirit. Oh, and you have to write lesson plans. And teach the classes. Did I forget that part? Well, you'd better not.

Anyway, the heaviness. It's the Danielson rubric, don't you know. Can your 30-year-old supervisor give the highly effective lesson he expects from you every time he darkens your doorstep? Who knows? It doesn't matter. He read in the book what it is, and goddam it you'd better deliver, or you're on a one-way trip to Palookaville. What's the matter, can't you deal with a few stinking observations?

Well, here's the thing. If you have a supervisor who isn't insane, it's likely you can. But how many of you can say that? And even if you can, this system was expressly designed to get rid of lowlife teachers like you and me. Cuomo said so when Bloomberg wanted to get rid of LIFO. This will thin the herd, he suggested. Then when it didn't, he called the system "baloney," and worked to make it even worse. 50% junk science, because the current system isn't crappy enough. Wear sunglasses and dress hip because your rating is going through a matrix.

Oh, and by the way, because not only do you suck, but your supervisor also sucks for not issuing enough negative ratings, we need outside observers. That's the only way we can make sure we fire enough of those stinking teachers. And make no mistake, that's what the current system was put in place to do. The only reason the system is changing is because it wasn't doing so efficiently enough.

Are we paranoid? Perhaps. But they are out to get us, they've said so quite openly, so maybe we're reacting entirely appropriately. Still, in any case, there's the heaviness. Every day before we go to work, we say, "Hello, heaviness."

Sadly, it's gonna take a lot of work before we can say goodbye.

Right now we're looking at a system that entails only 20% state-imposed BS, and 20% local BS. This is a great system, according to UFT President Punchy Mike Mulgrew. I've seen him say so repeatedly. According to Punchy Mike, it's a great improvement over the last system in which principals could give bad ratings whenever they felt like it.

I suppose that might be true if it were not for the fact that 70% of those facing 3020a under the new system will have the burden of proof on them, rather than the city. They are guilty until proven innocent. Is that the American Way?

Actually, as a rule, the American Way is even worse than that. In New York, for example, unless there's a contract that says otherwise, people are at will employees. They can be fired for any reason or even no reason. That's one reason a lot of people have little sympathy for teachers. And rather than say we want what you have, they say we want you to be just as miserable as we are.

But teachers need to be socially conscious and politically active. Despite what you may read in the NY Post, we actually represent the children we serve. That's a fundamental part of our job. People may be surprised to learn that administrators who are indifferent or abusive to employees are often not a whole lot better with children. This is true whether said administrators are federal, state, or even hyper-local.

Under the current junk science-based system, teachers in NYC with consecutive bad ratings are facing 3020a. And despite what Punchy Mike said, principals can still give the very worst ratings based on their druthers. Anyone who contends that a Danielson rubric makes things fair is either delusional or disingenuous. Administrators can see what they wish to and ignore what they wish to. I've seen incontrovertible video evidence of that. There is no advantage whatsoever in the addition of junk science, and worse, even if a principal gives a positive rating the junk science can drag you down to ineffective. I've seen that too.

As for the much-vaunted UFT peer validators, the ones leadership maintained represented an improvement over the old system that was never even tested,  they have tanked 70% of those they observed. It must be very rewarding to send your brothers and sisters through a process that will almost certainly result in their termination. I can't remember whether it's 10 or 20K per annum the validators take for that particular service.

So while it will be nice if Cuomo's draconian and punitive new APPR is not enacted, the current one is already an abomination. Just because we don't move further backward is not cause for celebration.

When we think back to our best teachers, there are a lot of things that we never mention. For example, it's been frequently pointed out that no one ever says, "Gee, I loved Mr. Educator's class because he helped me pass that standardized test." And despite that, standardized tests now pretty much control everything and everyone. I know perfectly competent teachers who've had their ratings dragged down by tests. Two years in a row, and those teachers would be toast. We don't need programs to protect "outliers." We need programs that make sense in the first place so we don't create them.

Another thing kids never say is, "Gee, my old teacher was a fantastic facilitator. She sure knew how to put us in groups." And of course, you never will. Oddly, Danielson thinks it's vital. Maybe if I put all my SIFE kids together, they'll teach one another everything they're missing in L1. Maybe if you put your beginning ESL students with native-born kids, they'll instantly learn English and say, "Thank you for grouping me with kids fluent in a language I don't understand at all." Probably not, though, and I've never heard a single kid whisper those words.

They will probably not express gratitude for the extra PDs you sat through either. Even though you went to every single UFT-sponsored PD on everything, and even though you gave a workshop in DOK, the kids will never say, "Thank you for attending and sponsoring all those workshops. They certainly made you highly effective." They will never say, "Boy that lesson you gave on enzymes and hormones was really engaging." You won't hear a lot of, "Now I understand the War of 1812 better than ever." In fact, you're unlikely to even get a, "Thank you for that bell to bell instruction."

There are just so many things they won't thank us for, although Charlotte Danielson thinks they're important. Worse, though, are the things we actually do that Charlotte Danielson doesn't care about. What about the time you followed that chronically absent girl, waded through every phone number you could find, the ones the school didn't have, and actually got her off the 4 AM job delivering Newsday, the one for which her Grandma paid her nothing, and managed to get her back into school? What about the kids who had never read a book before, the ones who thanked you for making them do it? What about the ones you took extra time with, the ones you got to pass classes you yourself didn't even teach?

There are so many things teachers do. It's preposterous to think that they could be codified in a rubric, let alone that crazy supervisors won't take liberties, misinterpret, and or outright lie about what happens in the classrooms of those with whom they are not comfortable. For all we know, there are people who are comfortable with no one. That could well be the sort of feeling that drives someone out of the classroom and up where he can do even more damage.

I have never loved a teacher for facilitating. I've loved teachers who asked great questions and actually cared what we thought. I can't remember loving teachers for putting us into groups, not even in college. I do remember being in a group where one person designed and administered the project, I was assigned to write about it, another member with a Commodore 64 computer was assigned to type and edit it, and the fourth person was assigned to do precisely nothing. The teacher didn't set up that group, but we knew what everyone could do best. The person we assigned to do nothing was fairly happy about it, and got the same A as all the rest of us.

But I liked the teacher very much. He was brilliant, with a great sense of humor. He knew the subject like the back of his hand. He was always open to everything and anything we had to say about it. He introduced us to the TOEFL exam, which allegedly determined how well people knew English. We sat, a whole class of native speakers, and argued about what the correct answers were to various grammar questions. I always make jokes about people reading The History of Cement, and if I'm not mistaken,  he introduced it to us as a TOEFL writing or reading topic.

There are great teachers. I've had a few. What would Charlotte Danielson say about them? Who knows? Why would anyone even care?

Our school's a relatively good place. I'd argue that most of the administrators aren't even crazy. Yet the maniacal footprint of the reformies is everywhere, and there's no escape for a working teacher. This is brought home to me by a few of the people who've left us this year. And no, I'm not talking about retirees.

I was recently contacted by a teacher who stayed late every night writing lesson plans, not the first such teacher who's contacted me. I remember the last one I knew, who happened to be in my department. Because I'm chapter leader I keep very strange hours and stay late for all sorts of reasons. But this young woman stayed for hours after work each day, plotting out lesson plans in excruciating detail. I could not persuade her to do anything differently, and eventually she left. Perhaps she's a reluctant workaholic. Who knows?

What I keep hearing from teachers in trouble, from teachers not in trouble, from teachers who don't care one way or the other about trouble is that they're tired of being in a fishbowl. They're tired of thinking the boss could walk in at any moment and catch them doing something less than Danielson-worthy. They're tired of being constantly auditioned for a job they already have.

The teacher who just contacted me is taking a job elsewhere, and I often hear from teachers who are considering jobs elsewhere. It's heartbreaking to me because I think this is the best job there is. Don't get me wrong, I hate the new gotcha system as much as anyone. And given this blog's been up over a decade, I probably complain more than just about anyone. But the classroom and the kids inside of it aren't the problem at all. (This notwithstanding, I also know a bunch of other teachers who've left without sharing detail with me.)

Yesterday I heard a young teacher who I'd deemed almost a Renaissance man had left. This guy was conversant in multiple subjects, and had perhaps the most relentlessly positive attitude of any person of my acquaintance. I was certain the kids loved him, because it appeared everyone else did. Last year he surprised me by confiding how unhappy he was under this new system. I was shocked. He was the last person I'd have expected to complain about anything.

To me he's a bellwether of sorts. If a guy like this can't make it in a school like mine, how is any teacher to make it anywhere? Sure there will be a lot of young teachers who persevere and push through, but at what cost? Do we seriously want the people who are to be role models to our children to be constantly walking a tightrope and hoping for the best?

Even now there is a lawsuit to strip us of due process and render us at-will employees. Who the hell is going to speak up when special ed. kids are poorly served if they can then be fired for a bad haircut? Who's going to report safety hazards? Who's gonna bother calling the union about the moldy trailers? And for goodness sake, who's gonna want to take an already crazy job like chapter leader?

A former student of mine just took a teaching job in my school. This is a very, very smart and capable young woman. Will she make it, or will she wither under unreasonable pressure? I hope for the former, but I'd understand the latter.

We really need to make this job one worth having, not only for the teachers who come after us, but also for the kids they'll need to serve. People who believe Campbell Brown represents the children we serve are laboring under a serious misconception, and will need those reformy broomsticks surgically removed from their asses at the earliest possible opportunity. I only hope they have health insurance adequate to the task.

NYSUT has published a fact sheet on the Cuomo/ Heavy Hearts revision of state APPR. It is less than encouraging, to say the least. The thing that really stands out, the thing I hadn't heard at all before, is this--




This is something new. No more UFT Rat Squad, because it's now a LOSE-LOSE. No matter what happens, it's on you to prove you are not incompetent. (Sorry, all you UFT members who took money to rat out your colleagues. Doubtless other opportunities will present themselves. Maybe you can be peer observers.) So if the Boy Wonder Supervisor determines it's time to dump you, you get classes calculated to fail the junk science portion, you get bad writeups, the Boy Wonder sees things that didn't happen, fails to see things that did, and two years later you have to prove he's lying, likely with no evidence whatsoever.

Another interesting development is the Teacher Improvement Plan (TIP). While the UFT agreement states that it should be collaborative, because perhaps you as a teacher have some inkling as to where and how you can improve, the Cuomo/ Heavy Hearts plan does away with that entirely. If the Boy Wonder states you have to do 20 pull ups every lunch period to attain Nirvana, that's pretty much what you have to do.

There is an appeals process, but I'm not clear it will help UFT members who have insane supervisors. There are specific grounds for appeal, but unless you've actually videotaped lessons it won't help teachers with supervisors who make stuff up or selectively rate things.

NYSUT plans to appeal the TIP requirement, and to try to attain more realistic scoring bands. What I don't see is any objection to burden of proof on 3020a or general objection to junk science. Naturally I'm shocked, since I watched all the Revive/ Unity candidates, none of whom lifted a finger to stop the APPR law, relentlessly criticize Richard Iannuzzi for having negotiated it. Oddly, none criticized Mulgrew, who was there at the side.

Since Mulgrew praised the Heavy Hearts for having negotiated this abomination, he owns it. And so does his subsidiary, Revive NYSUT/ Unity.

It is our job to inspire children. How we do that with the Sword of Danielson hanging over our heads is a mystery, to say the least. It's unconscionable that our leader, Mike Mulgrew, expressed support for this abomination. How on earth does he get all punchy over Common Core, used to label us as failures, and not raise fist one over this?

It's good to see the possibility this awful system will be delayed for one more year. As someone who teaches beginning ELLs who will certainly bomb on tests, particularly tests like the NYSESLAT that fail even to measure what I teach, I see it as a one year reprieve from being fired for the crime of doing my job. This system will cause teachers to teach to the test as a fundamental survival technique. As per Campbell's Law, as per history, it will inspire cheating.

As per common sense, it will do nothing to address the factors that contribute to low test scores, which are exclusively economic. But with New York State manipulating test scores to prove whatever they wish proven, along with Governor Cuomo's well-documented desire to fire more unionized teachers, things are looking particularly dismal for us this week.

Rubrics are the great equalizer. Once you have a list that goes up and down, with various levels at every point, everyone will know what is expected. You are this square, you are that square, and that's the only possible square in which you can reside. Fair is fair, square is square, and you are there without a care. We have extracted that inconvenient human element with 100% efficiency.

Of course, sometimes people see things differently. For example, your supervisor may be batshit crazy. Or maybe he hates you and everything you stand for. Or maybe he holds a grudge for that year you shared the classroom when you failed to erase the board. On the other hand, perhaps he loves you. Maybe he has an entire wall of his studio apartment covered with your pictures. Maybe he has torrid fantasies about you in or out of your classroom. Who knows?

Of course, things need not be so extreme. Thinking people approach one another differently. It's not necessary to lecture and instruct on differentiation when your audience has a modicum of intelligence. Of course, if that's not the case, all your lectures and theories go out the window because non-thinking people tend not to receive or process new information very well anyway.

But regardless of what qualities we have, good, bad or otherwise, we all have our prejudices. We all like certain people better than we like others. And supervisors, too, see us all differently. I hate to be the one to break you this news, but despite everything you've heard, there is no way on God's green earth that every supervisor rates the same lesson in the same way. It doesn't matter how many times they've been trained. It doesn't matter how many times they've been retrained in whatever the rubric wants this year, last year, or next year.

Can I get rated highly effective while you get rated ineffective? Sure. Why not? Maybe I got rated for minute one, which was amazing, while you got rated for minute 7, which sucked beyond all possible question. Or maybe minute 7 was the bestest thing ever but the supervisor wasn't wearing glasses. Maybe his prescription is out of date. Maybe he woke up and put on his wife's glasses instead of his. Or he's Mr. Magoo, can't see at all, and only hears the voices in his head.

But that's the hand you're dealt. And unfortunately, no matter how precisely Charlotte Danielson words her rubric, it's always subject to interpretation. It's really too bad she sold out and allowed her framework to be used for high stakes evaluation. As a supportive and motivational instrument, it could have been used to improve education for children.

As is, it's used to fire teachers. Amazing we live in a society so obsessed with doing such a thing.

Pictured at left is our good buddy Kathy Hochul. You see, while NYSUT and UFT made a big show of not supporting Cuomo, and of course failing utterly to oppose him, AFT President Randi Weingarten made robocalls for his lieutenant governor. Perhaps it was intended as some sort of balance to the general UFT/ NYSUT policy of doing nothing. Perhaps it was the best we could do without outright endorsing Cuomo. Who knows?

As usual with the amoral reformy scumbags we get in bed with, Hochul shows her gratitude by stabbing us in the back the first chance she gets. It's hard to forget that after Bill Gates gave the AFT keynote he went out and attacked teacher pensions.

The question, of course, is when are we gonna learn from our mistakes? How many times are we gonna kowtow to people who hate us and everything we stand for just so they can crap all over us? I guess there's some logic to this, but my mind just can't get around it. Norm Scott regularly posts explanations, but even after he explains it I don't understand.

Even if we take the most cynical view possible, very few charter schools are unionized and there isn't a whole lot of cash making its way from charters to 52 Broadway. But UFT leadership's support of charters contributes to the cynicism and alienation of membership. Their miserable and humiliating failed foray into charters and co-___location clearly displayed the lack of vision this blog has been documenting for the last decade.

How many times do we need to fall on our asses before someone in leadership gets tired? How much inexcusable nonsense do working teachers need to experience before someone says enough?

I guess if you're going into 52 Broadway every day, sitting in a nice clean office earning more than any working teacher, and listening to loyalty oath signers tell you what great work you're doing, everything seems fine. But if you actually do the work and teach the kids, you feel the pressure of the convoluted and idiotic APPR that Mike Mulgrew helped compose every single day. It's pretty easy for him to stand up in front of hundreds of enthusiastic sycophants, announce what a great job he's doing, and linger in the loyalty-oath inspired enthusiasm.

But every teacher I know hates the new system, including those who get good observations. Who the hell understands all that crap on the forms? How can you say this aspect of teaching is important but that isn't? How can you say the contributions you make to a school are only important if you've done them within 15 days of being observed? A colleague reported to me yesterday that she'd completed all her observations. I guess now she can stop going to outside meetings and cease studying altogether until next September, because it's utterly without meaning.

The idiotic notion that there are parameters, that this counts but that doesn't, that something as complex and variable as teaching can be reduced to an 8-point checklist should have been rejected outright by leadership. Instead they embraced it, and unceremoniously dumped the sitting NYSUT President when he started to show disturbing signs of independent thought.

It's time for us to get off the reformy bandwagon. If leadership can't tell what we see and feel every day, they need to step down and make room for teachers who actually know what's going on. Just how out of touch do you have to be to remotely imagine Kathy Hochul represents working teachers?

An assistant principal said that to me the other day. I was saying that teachers are constantly under pressure, facing constant evaluation no matter what. The AP countered with the pressures on an AP. I suppose having to do 200 evaluations a month, or whatever the hell it is, can be daunting. I'm certainly glad I don't have to tell people they did this or that ineffectively.

Nonetheless, even teachers receiving effective ratings are unhappy. There's a cloud hanging over our heads, a cloud by the name of Danielson, and it's not going anywhere in the foreseeable future. I haven't really determined whether the 8 domains is better than the 22.  But even if it's the bestest thing ever, it's really kind of daunting to know that no matter how highly effective you are rated they need to keep checking up on you.

Arwen had a great column comparing the old observations and the new ones, and I think most who read it concluded that this largely incomprehensible checklist nonsense represents no improvement whatsoever. Sadly, I have no faith that a crazy supervisor will listen to the voices of your students any more carefully than he listens to those in his head. Also, I think it's preposterous to attempt to remove human error. By doing so, you kind of remove the human element altogether. Arwen used Hawthorne's The Birthmark to illustrate that, and I learned more from that story than I ever expect to learn from Danielson.

This clarion call for standardization is also evident in the demand for rubrics. I hate rubrics. I have hated them ever since I started grading the English Regents that contained them. I got a feel for what they were looking for and I was able to grade them fairly easily. A former colleague of mine got all bogged down in checking the rubrics and I would grade a class set while she was struggling with paper number three.

But I know what I want from student writing. I want kids to address the question. I want them to be careful. I want them to check their writing for errors. I want them to show me they actually care about what they've written, and if they don't, I want them to act like they do anyway. I want them to spell writing with one t. I want them to use structures I've taught them correctly, and ultimately I want them to express their own ideas with clarity and precision. As I teach beginning ESL students, the last goal will take them a little more time.

As for what supervisors want from us, it's tough to say. Is there really such a thing as low inference notes? Can we really keep our feelings out of our observations? Is it a good thing if we do? Feelings are important. For example, I want my students to be happy. I want them to enjoy my class. I want them to know they can speak freely and no one will make fun of their English or discourage them in any way.

I'm fortunate in that I feel only the normal amount of apprehension about this system that loudly announces, "I don't trust you," in every element of its origin and composition. But I know a teacher who I met as a young woman who's been beaten down into the ground by this. She's terrified. She no longer loves to come to work. And she's representative of a lot of teachers I meet and speak with. The only real advantage I have over her is that I lack the common sense to be terrified.

Unlike David Coleman, I really, really want kids I serve, kids I help, kids I love, to be happy. I absolutely give a crap how they feel, even if the father of the Common Core thinks no one does. In fact, that's probably more important than whether or not their subjects and verbs agree. Now I will deny that if you repeat it in front of my students. I hope they're happy anyway.

But no one else seems to be. And whether David Coleman thinks so, whether John King thinks so, whether anyone who runs this system or our union thinks so, that is a fundamental problem.

If we want to have a productive and worthwhile education system, we need to fix it.

When you have a handful of years teaching already safely stored in your pockets, you may not take kindly to a system that forces you to start from square one every year.  The system is stacked against your professionalism.  Last year, I had to hand in "artifacts" to prove that I do what I do every day and I do every day what I have done for the last twenty years.  There are no "artifacts" this year, but I still must prove myself anew.  Those twenty years count for nada.  I am once again at square one and under the microscope of NY State.  I can no longer be trusted.

If I am held up to Danielson each year, perhaps 4d will rear its head again.  I might need to volunteer my time and energy to volunteer service to the school or attend functions that have little to do with my teaching.  If I have done all these things in the past, but now find myself busy with children at home or, perhaps, a pressing medical condition, my past record cannot be used in my defense.  Teachers are currently asked sometimes to chaperone student events.  It is a desperate situation because there is no money in it.  So, the sign indicates: "FULFILLS DANIELSON REQUIREMENTS!"

If my students fail miserably on a high-stakes test any year in the future, it does not matter that I once had AP kids average a 3.828 out of 5 (with 91.4% lined up to receive college credit).  If I helped countless kids get Regents credit in the past, all is washed away.  All the kids who achieved personal victory with me in years past in one form or another are now discounted.  If my kids do well, but not as well as an arcane formula demands from them, I may also be royally wrecked as Dr. Lederman in Great Neck.

I cannot control the things that may suddenly make me appear inept.  If I have 39 students and another teacher has twenty, it doesn't figure into the formula.  If my students are living in poverty and my classroom is underfunded and another teacher has a classroom filled by well-fed children with lots of supplies, it doesn't matter.  If my kids stepped off a plane and cannot tell me much more than their names, and they never attended a school anywhere in the world, it makes little difference.  Sometimes I really feel the people who invented this spiffy system in a seeming vacuum are the ones who really need to be schooled.

I'm sure you remember how Mulgrew popped up in the news last May when his private words to his caucus went public.  He had pushed for twenty-two domains of Danielson to "gum up the works" as one defensive strategy against the ed "reformers" in this ongoing war to protect our public schools and the teaching profession in general.  His words aroused the ire of Jenny Sedlis as well as some parents and provided the media with a field day or two.

So, now, I occasionally wonder if my union doesn't have more up its sleeve.  Will Mulgrew one day announce that the UFT only found the common standards of the Core user friendly in a bid to act as a double agent and steal some sweet grant money?  We've seen histrionics, fists shaking and threats wielded.  Will we learn one day that this was all for show?  Our Union only milked the Core for its millions, realizing it would crash and burn under the weight of its own unworkability and its unpopularity?  Is the Union trying to sweet talk the Core's Sugar Daddy before it all succumbs to inevitable decay?  Will the truth unfold like an Agatha Christie plot?

I know some of you are sure our Union has been bought off.  And it sure looks like that to me at times.  Laugh at my naivete, if you wish, to even imagine such a scenario.  I laugh too, that is, until I once again wake up and read more news that is too strange to believe.  

That's what a Queens chapter leader called the 80 minutes of PD most city teachers are subject to every Monday for the foreseeable future. Of course UFT leadership deems it a great victory, since there is now a committee that will sit around and figure out how to inflict plan this. The idea, of course, is that with teacher input everything will be much better. Of course, I've been to teacher-planned PD sessions for years, and I can't see a whole lot revolutionary about it.

Mulgrew asked the city chapter leaders last week whether it was PD or faculty meetings, and there was a moan that very much suggested the latter. After sitting through decades of meetings planned by administrators, almost all of which I'd have done just as well without, it's kind of tough for me to understand just why Carmen Fariña determined it would all be different this year. Did she think that because her PD was perfect in every way that it would be magically replicated citywide? Did she think that administrators everywhere would finally discover the secret sauce and motivate all the teachers who'd reluctantly sat through years of tedious and unnecessary meetings? Did she think that teachers, who supposedly never had any voice in PD before, would all wake up experts in administering it?

Of course this innovation was a great victory for the UFT, just as the small group instruction was a great victory for the UFT. Of course, when this great victory was over, it was just as great a victory to get rid of it. It must be fabulous to run the UFT, go to gala luncheons, and declare victory all the time no matter what happens. We achieved a great victory. Now we dumped it and that is yet another great victory.

One teacher told me they spend their extra time writing curriculum, you know, the one that was supposed to be in place this year so we could have Common Core and Mulgrew wouldn't punch you in the face. Another told me she sat through 80 minutes of lectures about Danielson and wanted nothing more than to slit her throat.

And that's not to mention Tuesdays, with 35 minutes of parent contact, because the only time parents ever need to be contacted is on Tuesdays, and if anything happens on Wednesday they can just sit and wait six days to hear about it. Then there is another 35 minutes for OPW, other professional work, which I've heard referred to as OFS. (We'll call it Other Frigging Stuff for the purposes of this column.)

One of the great things about teaching is you're never tired after a full day, so what's better than sitting for another 80 minutes on Monday? And surely all principals are ethical, and none would ever have teachers do extra work for which they should be paid. Nor would they ever give a dull, wasteful meeting. Doubtless teachers are jumping up and down for chances to discuss the new educational programs the geniuses who dream up such things have concocted. And next year, when the same geniuses discard those programs for new ones of equally dubious value, teachers will be equally excited to discuss them too.

It's a great thing we're using the time like this, rather than frittering it away by adding to class time. How horrible and wasteful it would be if we were actually teaching instead of going to meetings.

I've been receiving a lot of complaints from teachers about ridiculous observation reports that declare them developing or ineffective with no evidence whatsoever. Has this happened to you? You get rated poorly and the comment is something like, "Goes to meetings only when physically dragged there," or "Fails to accept my word as tantamount to that of deity?"

Actually that's unacceptable. Aside from being lazy, it's just using a random quote to buttress the administrator's highly subjective opinion. How does it help you to hear that? If you were really doing something unacceptable, there'd be evidence. Rather than saying, "Questions are of low rigor" the administrator ought to quote the question. Your actual behavior in the class ought to be described.

If you're falling asleep in front of the class, the administrator ought to be saying so, and then tying it to some piece of Danielson. If you aren't, the administrator ought not be quoting Danielson to suggest you are. Danielson should be used to highlight what you actually do, not what the administrator thinks you do, in his or her fertile imagination.

It's not your fault if the administrator doesn't know how to write, and therefore opts not to. It's not your fault if the administrator has happily spent the last decade ignoring everything that goes on in classrooms. Nor is it your fault that administrators now has to write 4-6 observations a year, and no longer has time to sit in an office and ponder the mystery of what they are actually supposed to do in there. (However, if you fail to point out the lack of evidence in a response, that is your fault.)

The job of the administrator is to support you. It's not the job of administrators to plot vengeance against you for not sharing a vision, particularly if said vision entails your working 5 classes in a row, teaching oversized classes, washing their cars, or picking up their dry cleaning. Random quotes from Danielson, whatever PD geniuses may preach for 80 minutes every Monday, will not improve your practice.

Under the new UFT contract, there will be fewer areas of Danielson from which to quote. This may further limit the ability of some administrators to give the appearance they know what they're talking about. However, that is not your problem.

The problem, really, is that of people who can't wait to get out of the classroom. If that's what motivated someone to be an administrator, it's likely that person wasn't the best teacher in the world. If that's the case, how on earth will that person teach you how to be "highly effective?" Danielson, though much-maligned, is not the problem. The problem is the assumption that a rubric precludes subjectivity. Actually, nothing precludes subjectivity. Anyone who already has a bad opinion of you, your teaching, the horse you rode in on, or whatever, will seek text in Danielson to bolster that opinion. That's the nature of prejudice.

Let them pretend to write low inference notes. Or not. But the fact is the new evaluation forms, in the wrong hands, are every bit as subjective as the old ones.