There's now a push for a parent trigger law in New York. This law was passed in California in an effort to turn an elementary school into a charter.

The Parent Trigger was conceived by a group called Parent Revolution, formerly known as the Los Angeles Parents Union. It's no secret that the organization was founded by the Green Dot charter school chain, though occasionally there's a halfhearted effort to portray Parent Revolution as a “grassroots” parents' group.

And State Senator Gloria Romero, who sponsored the legislation in California, scored herself a nice gig with Democrats for Education Reform, after voters rejected her bid to become Superintendent of Public Instruction. It must be great to take all that "reform" money and run around creating even more faux-grassroots organizations, like "Educators4Excellence."

I've long found Green Dot and its outspoken founder to be obnoxious and disingenuous. Steve Barr claims teachers drop tenure to work for him, the Green Dot website proclaims its teachers have neither tenure nor seniority rights, yet I've repeatedly seen UFT sources state that its teachers had "just cause" protection. A prominent "reform" voice once told me that GD teachers were "counseled out" when there were problems. I've repeatedly asked union sources and journalists how many GD teachers went through its "just cause" process, and how many teacher jobs were preserved as a result. I've never gotten an answer.

The UFT is partners with a Green Dot school, and while it may have precluded Barr taking over a city school, as he did in LA, it's hard to see how this organization advances the interests of working people (you know, the kind our kids grow up to become). This parent trigger thing just looks like one more "reform" effort to close and privatize even more schools.

This does not help us or our kids (though I never deluded myself Green Dot had any such goal to begin with). Nonetheless, this is one heck of a thank you for our union bringing them to the Big Apple.

Nice if you can get it, and that's precisely what Mayor4Life Bloomberg is demanding from city workers. Basically, you give me 30 million a month, more than I would have saved by firing all those teachers, and I won't fire all those teachers.

Yet nowhere in the article does it mention the actual emergency which necessitated all those firings, to wit, a 3.2 billion dollar surplus. Last year, you probably recall, the mayor dropped the firings by unilaterally canceling the 8% pattern raise all other city workers got for teachers. I'm still not clear how that's okay with PERB, which insists on the pattern for all whenever it's such a stinker no one wants it. In 2005 the UFT agreed to draconian concessions to get a compensation increase that didn't even keep up with cost of living.

The real problem is this--if we give Bloomberg that money, it will not be enough, just as unilaterally canceling teacher raises was not enough. Next year, there will be another crisis. Perhaps the surplus will only be one or two billion, and we'll really need to cut back.  Bloomberg will roll out the LIFO nonsense again, and do his darndest to circumvent the contract he and the Tweedies agreed to. He'll find some other stooge in the Senate to demand we kill seniority protections only for teachers, and only for teachers in New York City, and he'll claim that's the magic bullet to force the improvements he hasn't been able to make over this long, long decade.

Do we want to even consider giving Bloomberg this money? Only if we can preclude a repeat of all this nonsense next year, and the year after. Bloomberg needs a face-saving out for his idiotic and longstanding contention that teachers need to be fired.  That's why it's a good thing they haven't given it up yet.

Let's make him pay dearly for any way out, and let's not give him another in come next year.

It appears the much-touted "transformation model," much beloved by Arnie Duncan, Mayor Mike and President Hopey-Changey, has failed to turn around the troubled Central Falls High School. The first approach, you may recall, was to fire all the teachers.  Education Secretary Duncan "applauded" that action. (Will someone remind me what the heck I was thinking when I voted for Barack Obama?)

Personally, I'm shocked that the 75% of Central Falls students receiving free lunch are not suddenly affluent. I was also certain that the 22% receiving ESL instruction would suddenly achieve native fluency.  How could that have failed?  There is, of course, the possibility that the reason kids are failing has something to do with the kids themselves, with poverty, with learning disabilities, or with other factors I cannot conceive of. However, if that were the case, surely educational experts like Bill Gates and Arne Duncan would have acknowledged them.

As they did not, it's pretty clear to me that these factors are irrelevant, and that failure must be met head on with a drastic and draconian solution that makes no sense whatsoever. After all, that's what they do in public schools, and both Arne and Obama thoroughly endorse such actions, or in fact any actions Bill Gates deems necessary. It's fairly obvious the  only workable solution is to close the White House and replace 50% of qualified employees. Let's replace Obama with Ralph Nader, who has a proven record of accomplishment. We can replace Duncan with Diane Ravitch, or Linda Darling Hammond, or Leonie Haimson, or pretty much anyone who isn't insane.

Sure, you say, these people aren't elected. Well, neither is Bill Gates, Eva Moskowitz, or Michelle Rhee. In fact, Rhee pretty much brought down the elected official who selected her.

One of the most frustrating things about my last year at my old school was the problem of "change for the sake of change." I worked in a school that was excellent by any measure--test scores were up, parents were happy, students were achieving and felt safe and happy. So many of the teachers at my school were never sure why the place had to be reinvented from the ground up when our new principal came, and this feeling that changes were being made simply so the new principal could assert the new authority that came with the job never went away.

I marvel that Joel Klein gets major publication to post the nonsense he writes, but being a corporate-backed celebrity, one can place op-eds fairly easily. This week, Joel is amazed that candidates backed by billionaires are appointed with such regularity. What a shock, to see money and power working hand in hand.

Joel, of course, left his post to make millions from Rupert Murdoch, who cares so deeply about schoolchildren he's backed every move to destroy the middle class their parents hope they will enter. His company's most recent foray is the receipt of a 27 million no-bid contract to replicate ARIS, the crappy boondoggle of a computer program that Klein managed to acquire for NYC for over three times the price.

Klein praises KIPP, amazed at how successful it is with the kids who complete the program. He can't be bothered figuring how many kids drop out beforehand. Apparently, they've eliminated the achievement gap, that same gap he himself claimed to have eliminated before NY admitted it had dumbed down the tests on which Klein based the claim.

Klein then goes on to make his standard attack on lifetime tenure, failing to note there is no such thing and that teachers are routinely brought up on charges. Klein forgets his failures to convict teachers for such things as giving watches to kids, bringing plants to school, or using DOE fax machines to report malfeasance, all of which occurred under his watch. He then attacks pensions, as he always does, failing to note that he himself took one, to supplement the millions he gets from Murdoch.

But mostly, he fails to notice that absolutely nothing he did as chancellor actually improved the New York City school system he ran for eight interminable years. And apparently, the fact that none of his "reformer" colleagues have done anything to better the lives of kids is not worthy of note either.

But that's all in a day's work when Rupert Murdoch puts you on the gravy train.

(Picture from NYC Public School Parents Blog)

 I have no idea, but here you can see 6th grader Sierra Hull playing mandolin with Alison Krauss.  If you haven't heard Alison Krauss yet, well, what are you waiting for?

...to a McDonald's play area. Here's what one parent found:

As Chancellor, I want the best for our kids. That's why I'm closing their schools, and allowing charters to take over. After all, charters are better than public schools 17% of the time, so it's crucial we give our kids the chance to enroll in a grueling, dehumanizing lottery process in which they have a small chance of getting into one of these schools. That way, if they do, they have a 17% chance of getting a superior education. Me, I sent my kids to private schools until high school, because I don't take chances with my own kids.

In any case, I'd like to give the rest of you the opportunity to take that crapshot. I figure if 20% actually get into the charters, that 3.4% of your kids will have better schools. But consider this--if I can double the number of charters, 6.8% of your kids will have better schools. Perhaps one day I'll be remembered as the chancellor who managed to get 3.4% more kids better schools.

Let me tell you, I don't take this responsibility lightly. I want to close all the public schools the failing public schools because it's very important to me to raise the number of privately-run charters improve education for that 3.4% all children. We do meticulous research before taking the drastic step of closing a school, and we stand by our findings. We don't care how many people get up and protest at the hearings on closings, and we don't worry about what people say to us at the PEP meetings when we allow public comment.  Mayor Bloomberg knows best, and we all know that he'd fire us if we disagreed with his findings.

Sure, 78% of public school parents think we're going the wrong way. But I ask you, is that a reason to change horses mid-stream? If it means my job? What are you, nuts?  No one wants to have their jobs on the line. That's why that pain-in-the-ass union is always complaining. Sure, some Gloomy Guses ask why we want to fire teachers, reducing the number of working teachers by 6,000, when we're sitting on a 3.2 billion dollar surplus.

That's simply because it's better to have kids in a class of 140 with a good teacher than a class of 25 with a mediocre one. And Mayor Bloomberg and I know what a good teacher is. A good teacher is a low-paid, non-unionized, constantly terrified for her very livelihood trained professional who knows how to look the other way when we commit outrageous violations train her students for a fuller and more rewarding life. And believe me, with the money we save on losing the 6,000 teachers this year, we will focus on expanding our bad ideas opportunities for all our kids.

And remember, I've pledged never to say a bad word about teachers. I shall show the utmost respect while I fire them based on deficits that don't exist usher them into a world of new opportunity and outrageously raise the class sizes of those remaining create new challenges for our always-excellent working teachers.

Thank you, and be confident that together, we will achieve whatever the hell Michael Bloomberg says great things.

...it's not far from the mind of high school teachers and principals, who are asking the state to reconsider the discontinuance of January Regents exams. New York State requires that students pass a minimum of five Regents exams to graduate from high school, and in the past, they have been offered three times a year: January, June, and August. With January's administration out the window, New York students will only have 2 shots a year at the exams.

Yesterday morning, in my mailbox, I found a note declaring there should be no parties during class. You can imagine my surprise. After all, here we are, almost ten months into the year, and they're setting policy. And here I am, partying since September, ready to continue, and lo and behold, I'm instructed to halt immediately. Isn't that a kick in the pants?

This is not so bad as the last miscommunication, when the principal told us to not work. Imagine my surprise when he walked in on me, found me not working, and asked what the hell I was doing. "You told us to not work," I reminded him.

He was furious. "I told you to network!" he said.

My feeling is, you have to lay out a policy and stick to it. If you want people not to have parties, just say so. If you want them to network, well, I guess you actually ought to have parties.

Just one more reason I'll never make principal.

While it was nice to see an administrator pointing out the obvious flaws in E4E's public relations approach at GothamSchools yesterday, what was far more telling, in GS's coverage of the administrator's letter, was Sydney Morris's response. Morris responded, "E4E is, and always has been, a membership organization and some [emphasis mine] events are for members only...[W]e sometimes [emphasis also mine] have to limit the numbers of attendees we have..."

Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, recently sold for a dollar,  is now writing for Bloomberg. Unsurprisingly, he's written a hatchet job on Diane Ravitch. Ravitch, for the unforgivable offense of examining the actual facts about so-called education reform, must be dealt with. Alter does so via an ad hominem piece that might be persuasive to those who have not studied the actual results of "reform." Alter expresses shock that Arne Duncan would speak against her, despite the undeniable fact that Duncan has been on the reform bandwagon since well before he was Education Secretary.

Most reformers, according to Alter, are not Scott Walker. They don't want to stop collective bargaining. Take Mayor Bloomberg, Alter's employer, for example. He only wants to do layoffs based on innuendo, on unsubstantiated accusations. He also wants to eliminate right of return, so that the layoffs are actually firings. What could be wrong with that? Arne Duncan simply wants entire school staffs fired, like they tried in Rhode Island, and thinks natural disasters are great opportunities to privatize. Of course, Alter doesn't see how privately run charter schools are privatizing.

Alter's been thoroughly refuted at the Public School Parents blog, both here and here, in Accountable Talk,  Salon, and in the ceaselessly observant Schools Matter. Of course, with Billionaire Boys' Club money everywhere, he's far from alone. It's unpleasant to be attacked, even when attacks are baseless. Teachers know well, as every day we open the tabloids to find double-paged assaults on our sins, more unforgivable each day. How dare we be paid? Why should teachers have health care or pensions? Wal-Mart employees are barely paid, and have benefits that are essentially worthless. Wouldn't America be a better place if teachers were the same?

That's the sort of thinking that goes on in America today, and it's a huge problem. I'm very sorry to see Ravitch attacked like this. Since racism is no longer as chic as it once was, someone else needs to be Willie Horton. For the last few years it's been teachers.

Ravitch, as a truth-teller, has been thrust in our midst. They say people are measured by the company they keep. We've got a very hard road ahead, but standing with people like Diane Ravitch, at the very least, should let us know we're going the right way.

She's got a great response. I love her expressions. Were I to deliver a message in this fashion, people would surely toss tomatoes at their computer screens.

I was screaming at one of my Chinese students the other day, probably because she made a subject-verb agreement error, or spelled "writing" with two Ts, or committed some other infraction I found absolutely unforgivable.

"How could you?" I pleaded, as dramatically as I could muster.

She laughed at me. Just sat there laughing out loud. I was shocked. How dare she?

"Aren't you afraid of me any more?" I asked.

"No Mister, I've never been afraid of you."

"Why not?"

"Because this is nothing. You just say one thing. But in China, the teacher yells at you for an hour."

"Really?"

"Yes, and they are way more angry than you."

"Okay," I said. I walked over to her, ready to try yelling at her for an hour, though I knew the class would be over well before that.

"Action!" shouted the girl next to her, gamely.

But the girl stopped me. "It's all wrong," she said. "You should be sitting down, and I should be standing up. Also, I can't look at you. I have to keep my eyes to the floor."

"Wow. Okay, I'll try."

"No, it's not good yet. You need to have a pot of tea. Then you pour yourself a cup. Drink tea, then scream. Drink more tea, then scream some more. And you can't stop until I'm crying."

With all the nonsense they throw at us, I have to admit I'm still glad to teach here in the United States.

Climate control:

"MISS, PUT ON THE AIR CONDITIONER."

The geniuses at Education Sector have come up with ways to economize on those wasteful teacher contracts. If only we could eliminate raises, sick days, pensions, class size restrictions, and those awful health and pension benefits, we'd have more money to lavish on the children we love.

Thanks to Education Sector, our children can look forward to even more opportunities to get jobs without raises, sick days, pensions, workload limits, and those awful health and pension benefits. This is a great way to sustain tax breaks for those who really need them, like Bill Gates and Eli Broad. But why should we limit such great ideas to teachers?

Couldn't we save money on restaurant bills if we got rid of this whole tipping nonsense?  I mean, if an entree costs 18 bucks, shouldn't it cost 18 bucks? And are we actually paying for those hairnets I see them using in the kitchen? And what about those long rubber gloves the dishwasher is using? How will he know how hot the water is? And are we actually paying to heat it?

Often, I'll see restaurant staff sitting around doing nothing. Sometimes they'll even be eating. Is the price of their food reflected in my eighteen bucks? And if they have nothing to do, shouldn't they go out and make the world a better place? In fact, if they weren't wasting their time cleaning the restaurant, they could clean the streets and save us the expense of hiring sanitation workers. What the hell does Education Sector care if there's a little grease on their plates, or the odd rodent jumping into their soup? Maybe that 18-dollar entree could be ten bucks if we stopped throwing money at the problem.

Also, I've just about had it with these doctors. Why should they have health insurance? If they're so smart, can't they heal themselves? Why should they have professional associations lobbying for them? Are they socking money away for their retirement? Wouldn't it be better if they just stopped charging so much? And what's with these receptionists? Are we paying for them? Wouldn't it be better if the doctors came out, greeted you personally, filled out whatever forms need filling out, and took you into the office?

What really grinds my gears are those waiting rooms. If there are too many people, doctors ought to bring them all into the offices, and that way they'd be sufficiently motivated to get them out quickly. The more they treated, the more money they'd make. You know, like merit pay. Let's find ways to keep it moving and stop wasting time. As long as they're effective doctors, who gives a golly goshdarn how many patients they treat?

Forward-thinking Americans could apply the Education Sector method to many areas of society, save lots of money, and give it back to billionaires in tax cuts.

Because that's what our nation needs more of.

In an interview with WNYC, Chancellor Walcott said, among other things, that he is "jealous that parents have way more options than [he] had when [he] was a parent of school children." It caught my attention, on my morning commute today, that the Chancellor seems to believe that having options is, in and of itself, a good thing.

US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today lamented that only a third of Joplin, Missouri was leveled by tornadoes. "Unfortunately, the fact that so much of the city remains standing will not enable us the opportunity to accomplish what we did in New Orleans." said Duncan. Duncan pointed to the proliferation of charter schools in New Orleans, and called the Joplin tornadoes, "a potential game-changer."

Duncan suggested that education was a pressing crisis, and that we simply could not wait for natural disasters any more. "Let's just bulldoze the entire country from coast to coast," suggested the secretary. "Then, we could build an education system that could pretty much do whatever we wanted to."

When confronted with the enormity of such a project, Duncan said he was open to compromise, and suggested that perhaps we could focus primarily on poorer neighborhoods. "Actually, most of my friends use private schools anyway," said Duncan. "The President sends his kids to private schools. So why waste our energy on areas that use private schools?"

A source close to Duncan suggested the possibility of a smart bomb that would target only those making $200,000 or less, or $250,000 for joint returns. "That would really get those scores up, and we wouldn't have those darn nay-sayers blaming poverty anymore." suggested the source, under conditions of anonymity.

Teacher groups strenuously objected to this scenario, but were roundly dismissed by those we interviewed. "What do teachers know about education?" asked former NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. "They're agents of the status quo," suggested educational expert Bill Gates. These sentiments were immediately endorsed by Democrats for Educational Reform and Educators4Excellence. Oprah Winfrey invited Klein, Gates, and Michelle Rhee to an education roundtable on her new network to discuss Duncan's revolutionary proposal.

President Barack Obama said the proposal was worth looking into, and told teachers, "We won't do it to ya, we'll do it with ya."  While NEA leaders pointed out they'd heard that promise before, they declined to withdraw endorsement of the President.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested the plan would only work if he were given the option to fire teachers whenever he felt like it.  Chancellor Dennis Walcott pledged, "I will fire all those teachers as soon as possible, but I will never treat them with disrespect."

That's the question NYC teachers have to ask themselves, and surprisingly, there's another worthwhile column in the NY Post which ponders the question. I don't know how many times I've spoken to teachers who've told me they were judged by their passing ratios. Is it the fault of crazy supervisors? Perhaps, but they're under the same ridiculous pressures we are--if you don't perform, they close your school, ship in better students, and send the troubled ones to the next school on the hit list.

So you try to get kids with the program. You call, you beg, you send them to get help? If that doesn't work, do you hold tight to your academic integrity and fail kids who don't show, don't work, don't care? Or do you pass them because your supervisor says, "Here at Generic High School, 80% of kids pass."

The thing is, even when you stretch yourself as thin as possible and push the kids through, the Post will put up stats on how many high school grads need remedial courses, and once again it's the fault of those crappy high school teachers who pass everyone simply because their schools will be closed if they don't.

If you uphold your standards, you stink because not enough kids pass. If you pass everyone to please your boss, save your job, save your school, you stink because your kids end up in remedial classes.

It's a pretty tough choice.

Every few days I get spam comments. Often they're from some sort of essay-writing company that helps kids or college students cheat. I don't much care for companies like that, and if Disqus doesn't delete these comments, I do. Here's the most recent:

I appreciate you.I think we should have to change our education system.Teachers encourage the student to think and learn.Teachers should update them self.

Here's another:

 Nice
post,
I like reading your kind of post, thanks for sharing it with us, i will look
forward for such type of great info.

Personally, I have to wonder what sort of person would ask writers like these, who clearly don't know English very well, to take care of their term papers. We know, for example, that this sort of person doesn't actually want to do any work, and wants credit for things others actually did. But isn't it pretty clear that these spammers ought not to be writing for you?

It's not clear enough for some, I suppose, because the spam keeps coming. Maybe too much New York Post and Fox News has really moved us backward. Because anyone who bites on one of these ads is backward indeed.

That's the score at Gotham Schools.

On Wednesday, May 25th Gotham let us know there was going to be a charter school rally. After that, they told us the charter school rally forgot to mention it was targeting the NAACP, because evidently no one could figure out it was actually targeting union and public schools.

Then, Gotham told us that there was not only going to be the charter school rally they'd twice told us about, but also some others as well. After those three stories, they ran one the next day, in case we hadn't yet gotten the point,  to tell us there had been a charter school rally. Gotham says the charter rally attracted 2,500 people.


On May 12th, the UFT held a rally that attracted 10,000 UFT members, and 10,000 other union members. It was spectacular, and Miss Eyre and I were there. On May 11th, to prepare us, Gotham Schools ran zero stories to get us in the mood. The following day, Gotham Schools ran one story about it, vastly underestimating turnout (until corrected by multiple sources).

In fact, Eva Moskowitz had her students and their parents attend the rally in lieu of school. She told the parents to escort their kids to school afterward for safety reasons. I suppose that precluded work for these parents. That's OK though, because Eva Moskowitz can do whatever the hell she feels like. Why should kids be in school when they could be out rationalizing Eva's hefty six-figure salary, and exploring ways to raise it? What is the importance of parents' jobs in comparison with that?

Why did Eva take her kids out of school? So they could demand neighborhood schools be closed, more free space for her lucrative business, and also that a lawsuit trying to save schools be stopped. Gee, do ya think Tweed could've taken any part to encourage a protest against the lawsuit facing them?

What do you suppose would happen if Mulgrew told public school parents to take their kids out of school, urged teachers to take the morning off, and asked parents to take off work to help?

If you hadn't heard already that the state has officially banned the process known as "scrubbing," your principal has probably already had nightmares about it. Scrubbing refers to the re-scoring of borderline Regents exams to see if a failing exam might possibly be a passing one, or a mediocre exam might turn into an honors exam. One or two extra points on an essay, for example, on the English Regents can make a difference. You're never directly asked to violate your academic conscience, but if you can find it in your heart to give, say, a 4 instead of a 3 on the 6-point English rubric, well, that kid and that kid's teacher would really appreciate it.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott has very publicly promised to speak of teachers with respect, perhaps hoping to strike a contrast with his recent predecessors and the Emperor. I'm all for that. I don't believe in screaming fights, mostly because they're not altogether effective. Of course, after a never-ending decade of PEP meetings in which the public is routinely and entirely ignored, I understand how things can get.

Chancellor Walcott, after working behind the scenes all this time, understands very well. Unfortunately, it's tough to ratchet down the tone when he rolls out the same tired old nonsense we've been hearing all along. For example, as Miss Eyre ably documents, his new way of showing respect to teachers is looking for a way to fire them without just cause, make them guilty until proven innocent, and place the burden on them to show the firings are "arbitrary and capricious." Short of looking into the souls of administrators, or at least those who have them, that's a tough row to hoe.

Another sign of Walcott's newfound "respect" is that he once again pits us against the children we serve--them or us. Children should have more rights than adults, apparently, until they grow up. Then they can go to hell with the rest of us, every parent's dream.

Of course, Walcott's cordiality is nothing new. 200 years ago, when public education was just getting started in New York City, it was essentially a group of rich people deciding what the rabble needed to know. We decide, you follow. Class sizes were very large. Teachers were very poorly paid and could be fired for offenses like marriage, pregnancy, or the whim of employers. There was none of this collective bargaining nonsense, and pay was determined by employers, who granted promotions and raises when they golly goshdarn saw fit.

This is the vision of Chancellor Dennis Walcott, mirroring that of Emperor Bloomberg, mirroring that of Bill Gates, who seems to tell President Obama what to think about education. After all, the President was recently in Memphis, praising a school that miraculously raised its graduation rates. Turns out, the school dumped 25% of its lowest-performing students to accomplish that miracle. In fact, the charters that President Hopey-Changey so adores often shed their troubled students in just this fashion, dumping them into public schools that end up closed.

With a President and countless other politicians doing the bidding of billionaires rather than representing us, cutting taxes for the wealthy and declaring emergencies that entail cutting back on education and benefits for working people, we're on a rapid return to the 19th century, before the now-quaint 40-hour week and pensions for dignified old age infected the system.

The longer we wait to wake up ourselves and our country, the more uphill our battle will be.

So says Chancellor Walcott, testifying in Albany regarding a(nother) new teacher evaluation system. It's hard to argue with some of what the Chancellor proposes. It probably doesn't help anyone for 3020-a hearings to drag on for months, and we can all agree that convicted sex criminals should be removed immediately from classrooms. These are no-brainers.

I've long lived by those words. A few weeks ago a kid asked whether she could plug her cell into the classroom outlet to charge it. "Of course not," I replied. Kids aren't allowed to have cell phones in school. Of course we all know many if not all have them anyway. If they don't use them to text, or pick them up and talk (that freaks me out), I ignore them and all things are as they should be.

On the other hand, I saw a girl pull her phone out of the wall at the end of a period on Friday and said nothing. This kid plugged it in when I wasn't watching and simply assumed she had an absolute right to do so. So how could I argue with her? Is it unfair? Am I lazy? Or is it that I just don't give a golly goshdarn?

All of the above, I suppose.

I like things as simple as possible. Do you think I should have said something to the girl I saw charging her phone? Am I encouraging her to do things behind my back? Or am I teaching her to keep her mouth shut and avoid trouble whenever possible?

On the other hand, Maybe Mayor4Life will take a gander at the electric bill, close a firehouse, fire another thousand teachers, give his rich buds a tax break, and declare himself even more of a financial genius than he felt he was last week.

In Long Island City High School Wednesday night, there was a PEP meeting. I was very surprised when Chancellor Dennis Walcott got up and spoke of a UFT lawsuit. Walcott decried the timing of the lawsuit, citing the inconvenience it would cause kids planning to go to school in September. This was the first I'd heard of it.

Now Walcott is absolutely correct that this suit will inconvenience the kids. Of course, closing their schools didn't exactly help them very much either. If Walcott is truly concerned about these kids, he can simply stop closing schools, start fixing them, and the mean old UFT will leave him alone.

Meanwhile, I know for a fact the city is doing nothing to help closing schools. They send people who give ridiculous useless criticism and pay them big bucks, while improving facilities only in parts of the building the endangered schools have already given up. They pay lip service, but nothing more.

Walcott is a gifted speaker, a smart person, and personally, a large improvement over his two predecessors. Nonetheless, he's determined to carry on destructive and hurtful policies that benefit no one but charter operators looking for extra space. I applaud the UFT for taking them on, and strongly suspect this wouldn't be happening unless they'd thought things through more deeply than the Tweedies, who have all the management skills of the Keystone Kops, pictured at right. Those are the much-vaunted New York State test scores you see slipping away from them.

I only hope the city will finally be compelled to take responsibility for what it classifies as such a massive failure. Whose fault is it if every Bronx high school had to close, or be restructured, or redesigned, or whatever it is they call whatever it is they do? In fact, if there's that much failure after almost a decade, it's time for heads on high to start rolling.

As well as Walcott speaks, he's been part and parcel of every act this administration has taken. If he's as smart as he appears, it's very difficult to conceive of how he could sincerely believe Tweed is on the right track. If they really want to improve education, they will stop vilifying teachers. Unfortunately, while Walcott's pledge to stop trashing us in public is a nice gesture, he'll need to also match it with deeds.

With overcrowding rampant, with people fighting tooth and nail over limited space, with a 3.2 billion dollar surplus, a 2 billion rainy day fund, and a billion in ed. consultants, it's plainly unconscionable to even contemplate laying off one single teacher. So, Mr. Walcott, we'll give you a chance.

But it's time to walk the walk. In the very likely event that doesn't happen, it's time for the UFT to save what's left of the school system.

With all the drama surrounding teacher evaluations and Regents exams over the past few days, maybe you've forgotten that summer is sneaking up on us pretty quickly...

Over and over, we lie down with dogs, and marvel at the ensuing fleas. We invite Bill Gates to investigate what makes teachers "effective." He comes in and tests cameras in classrooms, because everyone knows those foul teachers cannot be trusted unless you monitor them every second. We invite him to speak at our convention, and the following week he attacks the wastefulness of those bloated teacher pensions, wondering aloud why we can't eat cat food like other elderly folk who aren't Bill Gates.

We endorse mayoral control, because who knows how bad it can be, and besides this Bloomberg fellow goes to baseball games with Randi Weingarten. He must be OK. Then after it turns out to be an unmitigated disaster, we make a list of improvements we'd like before we'll accept its renewal. When we don't get them, we support its renewal anyway.

We allow them to get rid of seniority transfers, and give power to principals to have absolute veto over incoming teachers. We design an open market that allows anyone to transfer anywhere, as long as principals think it's OK. Who woulda thunk that principals preferred malleable new teachers at half salary to grizzled old opinionated veterans? After all, just because those are the only people that get hired in the suburbs, why should it apply to us? And when thousands of teachers end up rotting in the Absent Teacher Reserve, demoralized and demonized, we are shocked, and state because more teachers transferred in the new program than the old, it is an unmitigated success.


We make a deal to reduce class size. The deal is so full of holes a tank could drive through it, but we declare victory anyway. When class sizes go up anyway, despite our deal and almost a billion dollars in CFE funds, we wonder how it could've happened.

Finally, we make a deal to allow value-added be part of teacher evaluations. Sure, it has no validity, but everybody's doing it, so where's the problem? We cleverly allow it to be only 20% of our evaluation, while other states are making it 50, and declare victory yet again. When the state passes a law allowing it to be double, we say, gee, how the heck did that happen? And Governor Cuomo, our good bud, is gonna do a Race to the Top and withhold money if we choose to exercise our option to negotiate, and turn down whatever abysmal offer Tweed comes up with.

Gee, how could this be happening? I thought we'd had it all taken care of.

Hey, don't blame the Mayor or the Schools Chancellor when state test scores plummet, like they did in 2010. Standards are tougher now than they used to be. If the kids can't cut the new mustard, the thinking goes, it can't possibly be our fault, or so the thinking goes.

But it sure could be the teachers' fault. The Board of Regents is so sure of that that they're willing to stake up to 40 percent of teachers' total evaluation scores in a forthcoming new evaluation system on state test scores. So if these test scores that certainly aren't reliable enough for judging the Mayor's or the Schools Chancellor's performance happen to plummet, well, too bad. Or if you're teaching a group of students that are already pretty well-equipped so that there's not much room for improvement, maybe you should have thought of that before accepting your job.

It's not so much that I'm 100% averse to state test scores being used as a component of teacher evaluation. As a small component of an equitable evaluation package, they're something to consider. But 40% is a big number over which teachers have variable amounts of influence. I'd hate to think that a teacher who's doing everything right who happens to see test scores fall one year would stand to lose his or her job. Particularly with the state tests on all levels (elementary, middle, and high schools) being in such flux at the moment, this strikes me as an imprudent and not necessarily fair move.

But the Mayor and the Chancellor could fix all that. They could offer to resign if test scores fall by the same amount for the same length of time that it would take to fire a teacher.

Hmmmmm...

Governor Andrew Cuomo looked like a good guy when he opposed the ridiculous anti-seniority legislation that Bloomberg and his lackeys tried to ram through the State Legislature. But he's the first Democrat I ever voted against, and there are good reasons for that. Who the hell needs a Democrat who publicly declares he will go after unions, while declining to continue a tax on millionaires?

We've all been waiting for him to let his hair down, and it looks like the time has come. The UFT was party to a negotiation that resulted in a new evaluation method for teachers. This was supposed to be 20% from "value-added," or student test results, 20% from some sort of local evaluation, and 60% from observation and so forth. I was not happy with this as there is quite a bit of evidence that "value added" methodology has no validity to begin with. And with an preposterous margin of error, and clear evidence that good teachers can be labeled otherwise, it seems to me it ought not to be used at all.

Yet our esteemed governor, who met with DFER leaders to garner support for his campaign, is now referring to value-added as an "objective" measure of teacher quality.  I suppose lack of validity does not necessarily render data subjective, but I'm still disturbed by the governor's insistence that this take additional significance in teacher assessments. Governor Cuomo, in fact, wishes to preclude decent ratings for teacher who don't do well in such measures, and that will certainly lead to labeling good teachers "ineffective."

What must be addressed, of course, is how many careers of good teachers will be ruined, how many good teachers will lose their jobs, and how many will be slimed by the newspapers who can't wait to publish this dubious data. Right now no one knows. But if the governor gets his way, pursuing a career as a teacher will be, at best, a crapshoot.

At worst, it will be a disaster. Honors classes must be avoided at all costs, as kids with 99 averages can fail to get them up to 100, or worse, fall to 98, and it will be entirely due to the failure of their teachers. Likewise kids with learning disabilities may not overcome them by semester's end, and that can be your job. I'm an ESL teacher, and I've seen many kids make little progress while mired in the determination they would return to their home countries. I've seen those same kids wake up, determine this country was their future, and make enormous and rapid jumps. Under Governor Cuomo's plan if they don't make them on my watch, I'm toast.

Cuomo's plan is unreasonable and unacceptable. NYSUT has spoken out against it, and the UFT needs to oppose it by every means necessary. If it goes through unchallenged, vindictive supervisors will be able to deliberately give teachers classes that will ensure their failure, and more reasonable supervisors will do so by accident as well.

I work very hard to make my kids succeed. But I am not magic, and despite what "reformers" may contend, there are certainly things that influence kids far more than I do. If Mayor Bloomberg disagrees, if Governor Cuomo disagrees, that's their right, even though available data suggests they're entirely wrong. I suggest they resign immediately, since by their own standards they're both doing a terrible job.

Update: It's passed.

That's the theme in today's offering--Machines, by the inimitable Lothar and the Hand People.

Visionary hedge-fund manager Smellington G. Worthington III is bullish on Governor Andrew Cuomo.

I went to a rally yesterday with thousands of my fellow teachers. We marched the streets of Manhattan, and it's very clear to me that in numbers there is strength. The more we're out there, and the more of us who show up out there, the less the Emperor will be able to sit in his castle and ignore us. I'm inspired by the spirit out there, and amazed that I managed to run into half a dozen local bloggers, including the elusive Miss Eyre. (I only recognized her because she recited several of her posts verbatim on demand.)

I also noted some oddities, including a guy all by himself on the side of the road waving a sign that said, "We stand together."

There was also an endless chant of, "Enough is enough," accompanied by some very insistent drummers. I kind of wished they would grow a sense of irony, but I suppose it got lost in the crowd. 

I was highly impressed by the guy in front of me who was wearing a pink Barbie backpack. "That guy is a real man," I told my marching companions. I don't think I'd have the nerve to do the pink Barbie backpack thing. (To tell the truth, I favor messenger bags anyway.)

A lot of teachers I know said they had to go home, they had to watch the news, they needed some "me" time....ya know what? Me too. But I went anyway.

So I have a question for those of you who weren't there, and it's very simple.

Why the hell weren't you there? Mayor Bloomberg is bringing us a little bit of Wisconsin, and it behooves us to throw hearty shovelfuls of Wisconsin right back in his smug disingenuous face.

You can see me in the back there. I'm the guy not holding a sign. Am I gonna see you there next time?

Kindergarteners sure are cute, aren't they? Back when I worked with younger students, my heart would just melt when I saw the kindergarteners, carefully maneuvering hand-in-hand through the hallways, looking like It's a Small World in action. Most of them love school and truly are filled with wonder and excitement. Not many people can look at kindergarteners and feel cynical.

Joel Klein has a piece in Atlantic magazine that reeks to high heaven. I'm not linking to it as I think it's bad enough that I had to read it. Spouting the same old nonsense we've heard for the last interminable eight years, Klein blames everyone but himself for what he deems the sad state of American schools.

I'm not quite as concerned about the quality of education as the quality of journalism. Leonie Haimson pretty much let him have it in a Facebook comment, and asked whether or not there are any more fact checkers at magazines anymore. It's not only that, but the fact that typical readers are so poorly informed that they could easily assume Klein is telling the truth.

In fact, if more journalists were doing their jobs, demagogues like Bloomberg and Klein would not be able to exist.  So get out your shovel, bury the article, and then bury the shovel.

After you do that, make plans to join Miss Eyre and me tomorrow at 4 PM. We're marching on Wall Street to ask them to take responsibility for the economy, to pay their fair share rather than dumping the mess on us working stiffs. No more garbage from the autocrats. We've had enough and it's time to tell them, repeatedly, every way we know how, until they get the message.

Folks, I don't rally. Something about large groups of people waving signs just doesn't do it for Miss Eyre. I'll blog and e-mail my Congressperson and give money and vote and all that stuff. But I don't rally. What can I say? My claustrophobia kicks in once I'm not surrounded by sweaty teenagers anymore. I can only suppress it for six or seven hours a day.

As you know, Mayor Bloomberg has announced his plans to reduce the teaching force by 12%. Many people are saying, oh, this means higher class sizes, and will thus be a disaster. Others are saying it's incredibly stupid to cut teachers while sitting on what is now a 3.2 billion dollar surplus.

We at Educators4NYC Educator choose not to wallow in negativity, but rather to seek new reforms. For example, Mayor Bloomberg will be saving over 300 million by laying off thousands of teachers. We see this as an opportunity for innovation. NYC is a city of innovation. For example, we're now not only using value-added methods, but fighting to make the results public, despite the fact that the actual results can be worse than meaningless.

We've also created a merit pay program that failed to substantively improve anything. We've devoted a lot of time and money to this plan, and as reformers, the important thing is that we tried. And, of course, there were the incredible test score gains that proved to be nothing but an illusion.

What's the point? The point, of course, is that it's daring and noble for NYC to fearlessly try new things. That's why we at Educators4NYCEducator are now upping the stakes. We'd like Mayor Bloomberg to take a mere 100 million of the savings and donate it to the Educators4NYCEducator Foundation. Our numbers have increased considerably since last week, with 4 or 5 commenters agreeing to sign our pledge and grab a share of the loot promise to uphold our guiding principles. Will this be an improvement to education? Who knows? But it's been amply demonstrated that Tweed will pretty much try anything, and that evidence whether or not it would succeed was neither here nor there.

So please sign up in the comments section. As soon as Mayor Bloomberg signs off on our proposal, Miss Eyre and I will be sending your checks. And don't worry about follow up--Miss Eyre and I both pledge to stop going to work once we get the money an agreement from Tweed so that we can devote ourselves full time to shameless self-promotion the principles that guide us all. And please tell your friends we'd like to buy them off encourage their participation in our noble quest!

And don't forget, we need to keep pressure on the union to poll members on whether or not they'd like the city to give us 100 million bucks. It's always good to have a scapegoat principled argument with which to win over the public!

I have a kid in my afternoon class who's been here three years and managed not to learn English. That in itself is remarkable. Teenagers are naturally social, and it takes real determination to shut out a culture that announces itself pretty much everywhere. Yet this kid never wanted to be here, and only mixes with others who speak his language.

As you might imagine, this has not resulted in what you'd call excellent grades. Yet a month ago, after many calls that went nowhere, the kid's dad showed up quite unexpectedly for parent-teacher conferences. Since then, the kid has not missed a single homework assignment. If I were Michelle Rhee, I suppose I'd loudly proclaim I'm the best teacher ever. Were I to take that approach, though, I'd have to ignore that his test grades are still abysmal, and when asked to complete tasks in class, the kid cannot do it. I said to him, "Boy, it's remarkable you can do this stuff at home but not in class."

What that really means is I know he's copying the homework. But really, should I acknowledge that? Wouldn't it be better to take the Rhee-form approach and take credit for this extraordinary improvement? After all, just a month ago this kid didn't have the motivation to copy the homework, and now he does so religiously. Should I give him extra credit for effort?

Sadly, no. Nor does it seem worth it to get in touch with Dad. Since this kid wasted seven months learning nothing, and an eighth month trying to trick me into thinking he's doing something, it's pretty much impossible he'll get to the point of passing in the next six weeks.

The best I can do is hope that next year Dad will be responsive in September rather than April. If that happens, the kid can really catch up. Despite what you see in Davis Guggenheim films, and despite how much I'd like to credit myself, there are no miracles.

As someone who loves history and civics, I was saddened (though hardly surprised) to note that most American students failed a recent standardized civics exam, and the civics exam scores are better than those in history. I can't say I'm surprised, though. When I taught middle school humanities, social studies was easily the class that got shortchanged the most in terms of instructional time. Social studies classes were, it seemed, expendable. My students received only four periods a week, compared to five periods of science and eight periods each of math and English.

It's a new day in NYC. We have a new chancellor, who's publicly declared that he will not say anything bad about teachers. I'm certain you won't hear him do so. Walcott is a seasoned politician, and anyway, he's got the NY Post to do all the dirty work.

Even so, when you read this, about the DOE's determination to release value-added scores of highly dubious value, you have to wonder why in the world anyone would trust them. I'm sure I questioned the UFT's wisdom in making a deal to study value-added at the time, what with it having no validity whatsoever, and the DOE has made me a genius by reneging utterly on the deal.

Regrettably, we have a history of making ridiculous deals with the DOE, perhaps most egregiously this utterly unenforceable class size agreeement. I am hopeful that we will refrain from making any further such deals, as both demonstrate that the DOE is simply not to be trusted.

Here's the thing, though--we are in the business of educating kids, and it would be advantageous for everyone if we could function in an atmosphere of trust. The DOE, by indulging in such preposterous nonsense, precludes trust.  And honestly, if you can't trust your partner, you can't be a partner.

From a UFT perspective, I hope that all of us, particularly our leaders, understand the toxic atmosphere fostered by Bloomberg, with Walcott taking part in every step, means no deals without explicit written guarantees, with collateral, penalties, and whatever else it takes to compel to keep their word.

From a DOE perspective, it behooves you to work with us, rather than lie to us. It's nice that Walcott refrains from badmouthing us, but if he really wants to change things, he'll have to let us know that his department is not a bunch of lying weasels, waiting for whatever opportunity to slur us for no reason. It can be done. However, reneging on an explicit agreement with the largest teacher local in the country is hardly a good start.

What can Walcott do to tear down the wall between teachers and administration?

A couple of history teachers at my school suspended their planned lessons yesterday and swiftly collaborated on a lesson around the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound that resulted in his death. I was impressed by how quickly they moved, but wasn't planning on doing anything myself; I'm not a social studies teacher anymore, anyway. But as it turned out, one of my classes is an elective in which we deal with a lot of historical content, and many of my students wanted to talk about it.

Our new organization, Educators4NYCEducator, has taken a stand for the good of NYC Schools. It is our contention that, should layoffs occur, reverse seniority order is unacceptable. For the good of our students, we need to ensure quality. We therefore propose that, should layoffs occur, that we not focus over who does or does not get laid off. What is truly important is that the NYC Department of Education invest 80 million dollars in the Educators4NYCEducator Foundation. This foundation is dedicated to the enhancement of all educators in the foundation, primarily myself and Miss Eyre.

As everyone knows, a good teacher is a happy teacher. Both Miss Eyre and I vow to be exceedingly happy once the city forks over the 80 million dollars. In fact, we are so confident that this will improve our practices that we are willing to forgo the next year's payment of 80 million dollars if the first 80 million fails to enhance our teaching. We are willing to make that sacrifice, even though we would very much prefer to make the 80 million an annual rather than one-time payment.

Furthermore, we have challenged the United Federation of Teachers to poll its members and find out whether or not rank and file approves of this notion. Thus far, the UFT has declined. We find this outrageous as we think it's the function of a union to fulfill whatever request we make, no matter how preposterous or counter-productive.

We urge you to come to one of our socials. All you need do is sign a commitment to support our goal of getting the city to give us 80 million dollars, and you will get not only a free bowl of peanuts, but also the opportunity to step up to the bar and buy yourselves a drink.

50% of all proceeds will go to Educators4NYCEducator. If you haven't got time to come to our social, please feel free to sign up in the comments section, where we will cut you in on some of the booty make you a charter member.