All of us get lost in the darkness/Dreamers learn to steer by the stars/All of us do time in the gutter/Dreamers turn to look at the cars--Peart, Neil 1989

I have this habit of waking up at 5 AM and checking my phone for the latest emails and news. When I clicked on the NY Post app on my phone I saw and read a story about Jeanene Worrell-Breeden, the principal of the Teachers College Community School had killed herself back in April on the same day that someone at her school reported her she had cheated on the standardized tests.

The first thoughts on my mind, as well as condolences, go out to her family and friends. This was a needless, senseless death that never should have been. She is someone's wife, mother, daughter, grand-daughter, niece, friend, principal, teacher, etc... No one has won here except Governor Cuomo and Chancellor Fariña.

As I lay in bed thinking of this, my thoughts went back five years to a teacher in Los Angeles, Rigoberto Ruelas, a teacher that suddenly found himself ineffective due to a Los Angeles Times reporter, Jason Felch becoming the story and not reporting on the story. Rigoberto after he was outed by Felch, committed suicide.

I know there are some out there who no matter what would see this death as some type of vindication towards their goals but I do not. This death if nothing should bring all educators in New York City and New York State closer together and fight as one against the marauders of education in Albany and at Tweed. For whatever Ms Worrell-Breeden has been accused of doing it did not happen in a vacuum and was completely avoidable.

The pressure from Albany as well as from Tweed to more or less tie everyone's job, their pay, their  own self worth to whether or not that person can be the next coming of someone's fantasy teacher that only exists in the movies is an impossible ladder to climb for almost anyone. God only knows what was going through Ms Worrell-Breeden. Not only to allegedly cheat, but worse, once confronted with this information, to jump in front of an oncoming B train and kill herself.

This sick, unrealistic method, test, test, test, punish, punish, terminate, embarrass, ostracize, method of educating children and evaluating teachers must end and end soon or we will have many more Jeanene Worrell-Breeden's.

Last Sunday night we were in Corning NY and had dinner with another couple. The wife, who I won't mention, is very prominent in BATs and the AFT. Both her and her husband on two of the most real people I have ever met in my life. In the many topics of discussion that evening we touched on what teachers need and what can or should be done for them.

There are false prophets seeking false profits preying off the backs of teachers that are down to their last act of strength in fighting back against the same forces that Jeanene Worrell-Breeden was fighting.

What support are they given? "Oh here, this is how you file this." Or, "This is what you do when this happens to you." Maybe they get a, "You need to do this." But this is the simple advice.

Now mind you I am all for fighting back and blowing the whistle. But the trick that I learned so long ago is not everyone when they need to fight back can or wants to.

Sometimes the best thing one can do is just to be there. Someone to be there for that teacher to have a shoulder to cry on, someone for that teacher to vent to, someone for that teacher to divert their mind from their troubles. I doubt Jeanene Worrell-Breeden had someone like this. Or someone who could tell her she could have fought back. But the trick between being supportive and being one who can lead someone to fight is a fine line and one must have the EQ to know what is the difference and which one to use.

Teachers and principals are sick if this. Yeah, I said principals. How about this? Educators are sick of this pressure. If we, not them, but WE, do not start supporting one another the best way we can for each and every educator and stop from projecting our ways of settling old scores onto them we will be just as guilty to their emotional and physical demise as the powers that be in both Albany and Tweed.

False hope needs to end immediately to teachers walking the precipice. The testing pressure, the culture needs to end.

The whistleblower did the right thing. For some reason Ms Worrell-Breeden thought she was doing the right thing. But neither of them are to blame for her death. The people to blame are the ones hiding behind the dollars and the sense of self-importance and self-righteousness they have.

I do not want to hear of anymore educator suicides. Enough is enough.

It will and can get better.

Karma usually has a way of coming back and kicking you in the butt. This week Los Angeles Times reporter Jason Felch felt Karma's full wrath.

For those that do not recall, Jason spearheaded a Los Angeles Times report in August of 2010 using data of that funky science of value added measurements to determine who is and isn't an effective teacher. Jason took great pride in doing his part reporting what he saw out of context, but to destroy careers as well.

We here at SBSB soon took great pride in exposing, as well as mocking, Jason Felch and his sidekick, economist Richard Buddin in their use of the funky science as well as the smug glee shown by Jason.

But there was a dark side to all this gloating from Jason. A teacher in Los Angeles, Rigoberto Ruelas was determined by Jason Felch and Richard Buddin to be ineffective. A teacher that was loved and respected by his students, their parents, the community he taught in as well as colleagues, friends, and his family.

Due to the reporting of Jason Felch and the funky science provided by Richard Buddin, Rigoberto took his own life shortly after he was outed as determined by the Times and Felch. To this day, Felch has always refused any culpability in Rigoberto's death.

In fact as a source shared with The Crack Team here at SBSB, at a conference about VAM, Anthony Cody confronted Felch about Rigoberto's suicide, Jason as always showed just how classy he is by responding when no one was looking;

"You're  despicable!!! How dare you blame me for that???!!!"

Stay classy Jason.

More from Jason's reporting in 2010 as our source shared with The Crack Team;

Jason totally lied about the purpose of the visit to the school... both to him and to the administrators. They said that they had heard good things about their school and certain teachers, and wanted to see it and write about it.

THE TRUTH: the story and its conclusions were already written. They had identified an older teacher (Smith) with low VAM, and a young teacher with high VAM in the same grade. So they went in and cherry-picked observations that fit the "older teachers suck/younger teachers rule" narrative.

The young Hispanic teacher was the second coming of Jaime Escalante, with descriptions of his dynamic teaching, and enganged students. Smith was describled as having unengaged, apathetic students. Smith said that they were in his room for five minutes tops. The truth was that because Smith was ex-military, he was assigned a tougher group of kids, and Superboy was given the easiest-to-educated kids because he was only in his second of third year. Smith also told me the story his principal had told him about the principal's encounter with the Jason's on their way out. They asked her loaded questions that were designed to get the response, "The young teacher is so great, so much better than the older teacher Smith... " She told Smith that she refused to take the bait, and clarifiied that the makeup of the classes was totally different, for the reasons described above,and it was unfair to compare them. Thus, she was left out of the article. There you have it? "The Anatomy of a Smear."

So why are we discussing Jason Felch today, in 2014? Seems that Jason is in a bit of ethical doo-doo.

In December of 2013, Jason Felch bylined a story about Occidental College and how it failed to report 27 sexual assaults from 2012. Occidental College refuted Felch's story and shared with the Times;

Some were not sexual assaults as defined by the Clery Act. Rather, they involved sexual harassment, inappropriate text messages or other conduct not covered by the act. Other alleged incidents were not reported because they occurred off-campus, beyond the boundaries that Occidental determined were covered by the act. Some occurred in 2011, and the college accounted for them that year.  

As the Times investigated the complaint it found out, through Felch himself, that he was shagging a source that he had been using in this story and others concerning Occidental College. This behavior is unethical and unbecoming a reporter and should bring into question other sources he has used for stories in the past as well as anything he has reported on as well. We here at SBSB call for the Los Angeles Times ombudsman to do a thorough investigation post haste. 

But Karma reared its head and this past Friday, March 14, 2014, Jason Felch was terminated by the Los Angeles Times. Times Editor Davan Maharaj said;

 "the inappropriate relationship with a source and the failure to disclose it earlier constituted "a professional lapse of the kind that no news organization can tolerate."

Good for the Times and GREAT for Jason Felch.

Yes, this is a Los Angeles centered story and those teachers in New York wonder, "Why should I be concerned?" We all should. If a reporter had an agenda, used questionable and unethical means to source a story in LA it can happen here. We already see reporters that we believe are biased, or at the very least start a story with an agenda. We know who they are, reporters such as XXXX XXXXX, and XXXX XXXXX, and XXXX XXXXX, and especially XXXX XXXXXX, and the entire crew at the New XXXX XXXX.

But let's not take our word or the Los Angeles Times word on the lack of ethics shown by Jason Felch. Let's ask him ourselves. I am sure he would like to hear from as many teachers as possible.

Send questions to [email protected]
— Jason Felch (@jasonfelch) March 15, 2014

I am taking a break from watching Wrestlemania XXVII to blog. Yes, I missing Stone Cold Steve Austin to share my two cents about another hit piece against Los Angeles teachers in today's LA Times by everyone's most biased reporter, Jason Felch.

In fact I think this is a excellent juxtaposition due to the fact that perennial attention whore, Snooki of Jersey Shore is wrestling in a special 3 on 3 Diva tag team tonight. Jason Felch, I have come to the conclusion is the male reporter version of Snooki. An attention whore that has no morals, no values, and will do, say, or manipulate any and all information as long as he is at the forefront of the story.

Today's headline, and subsequent biased reporting by Jason Felch is about a teacher, Miguel Aguilar, who was rated very effective by the convoluted algorithm by Dr Richard Budin of the Rand Corporation, and blindly followed by Jason and the LA Times.

Apparently Miguel Aguilar has received a pink slip, he is being layed off, and another teacher in his school, Broadous Elementary School, John Smith, who has been rated least effective, is not being laid off. Mr Aguilar has 8 years of experience, versus Mr Smith's 15 years. In fact Mr Aguilar and Mr Smith were featured in the original story about Value Added Assessment in the Los Angeles Time last August.

No we here at SBSB applaud Mr Aguilar's method for not teaching to the test, for teaching through the test and finding an effective method for reaching these students. We are also saddened to learn of Mr Aguilar's being laid off and wish that this is just a temporary blip in his career and hope he returns to the classroom at Broadhaus soon. But sadly, Jason Felch is once again playing loose with the facts.

Jason starts off with quoting a teacher that, "A teacher coming forward … that hadn't happened before" But if you read further down in the article Principal Stannis Steinbeck came up to Mr Aguilar and asked Aguilar, "if he'd be willing to lead a school-wide training session."

So Jason couches it as if Mr Aguilar came forward on his own to give professional development, yet further reading shows that it was requested by his principal. In fact this is quite disingenuous of Jason Felch. He is attempting to show a divide amongst teachers at the school, that there is no collaboration, that teacher do not support one another.

Especially when at the beginning of the article Felch writes; "It was the first time anyone at Broadous Elementary School in Pacoima could remember a teacher there being singled out for his skill and called upon to share his secrets school-wide."

Hey, it's not the teacher's fault. It is the administrator's fault that this never happened in the past. A good principal should always look at their teachers to give professional development, to turnkey good practices to the staff. I have given PD, as well as turnkeyed what I have learned. This is called collaboration and does not happen as often as it should. I know at my school, and in fact all teachers I have come in contact with in my career are always sharing ideas and best practices. What Felch has flaunted is not reinventing the wheel.

Felch continues to flail away on his keyboard; "The article contrasted Aguilar's performance with that of the teacher next door, John Smith, who ranked among the district's least effective teachers. Pupils in both classes faced similar challenges in the poor, predominantly Latino community."

Similar does not mean the same. The same does not mean similar. Case in point: A parent and I once had a conversation about the projects. She made explained to me that not all people who live in the projects are poor. There are college grads, city workers, bankers, business people, candlestick makers, etc... who live there. There are also drug addicts, drug dealers, gang bangers, criminals, ex-cons, mentally ill, etc... Even though these people live in the same place, there is a wide array of families, people, etc.... Another case in point: Growing up, there was a family across the street that seemed right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The classic All-American family. However, I learned many years later that the father was an alcoholic and there was such fear inside that house.

The point I am making here Jason Felch, is that you never knows what happens behind closed doors. Just like your closed doors.

Aguilar in the article claimed, "There's a lot of jealousy and hate out there.... People said things like, 'There's this guy who thinks he's all good just because he's Latino and he's friends with the kids. How do you know he's not cheating?'"

Nice of you to play the Latino card Mr Aguilar. See, now I am starting to lose some respect for you. Maybe you did cheat? How can we be sure? How can Felch be sure? Could it be that no one trusted you because you spoke to the press? There are still many questions that I have asked, and still need to be asked.

Aguilar forced students to slow down and think before answering questions. Without dumbing down lessons, he broke down key concepts in a way that his fifth-graders, among the grade's least fluent in English, could readily understand.

Let's see. Aguilar probably speaks Spanish. How much of his day does he speak in Spanish to his students? Smith, mmmm, I doubt he speaks Spanish. Is it possible that perhaps Aguilar's students feel more of a connection to him? Is it a personality thing? I really don't see what Aguilar is so special. It's common sense.

How come Felch didn't bother to speak to the parents of Mr Smith's students? Why didn't Mr Felch bother to speak to Mr Smith's students? Why is Mr Aguilar so eager to speak with Jason Felch? He claims embarrassment, he whines about about being singled out, but again, Aguilar has no problem making himself the center of attention.

Jason Felch clearly has an agenda. He is a failed teacher, and definitely has an axe to grind. Let's hope and pray that there are no more suicides caused by Jason Felch's irresponsible reporting. Yes, I know, Jason has no conscious. It wouldn't surprise me for Jason Felch to be rooting to see Mr Smith take matters into his own hands.