I picture the conversation like this. Right after Bloomberg and Klein first made love to each other, discussing how they want to run the NYC schools. Both were gazing into one another's eyes, each sweating from rough and hard man love (not that there is anything wrong with that). Cuddled up together, ignoring the leaf blower with the blown engine, the empty bottle of WD-40 and all the gerbils scurrying about, Bloomberg sayeth onto Klein, "Joel what about that Chicago school system, what do you think about then there?" Klein, removing a gerbil looked haltinlgy into Bloomberg's eyes, "I think it is the best. And not just because I had a threesome with Mayor Daly and schools chief ARNOLD Duncan, but because they changed everything." "You are so right," replied Bloomberg as the donkey brayed loudly, "Joel I want you to model our school system after Chicago. It is the best in the world!"

With that sentence Joel Klein went on to transform the NYC schools after Chicago's. But just over this past weekend horrible, horrible news came to Klein. Chicago's "reformation" was all smoke and mirrors.

Yep, smoke and mirrors. Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune ran a scathing article on how Chicago's "Renaissance 2010" is, for lack of a better phrase, crap. How can this be? Well first we should thank that Chicago Tribune for not being in Mayor Daly's back pocket. Hear that NY Times, Daily News, NY Post?? But it be, and it was, and it has hurt whom? Yes, the students. Who did it benefit? Consultants, Daly, ARNOLD Duncan.

But of course lovers Bloomberg and Klein will claim that of course it did not work in Chicago. Chicago is the SECOND CITY. Everything works in NYC.

Here is the article from yesterday's Chicago Tribune. See if you can find any similarities.

Six years after Mayor Richard Daley launched a bold initiative to close down and remake failing schools, Renaissance 2010 has done little to improve the educational performance of the city's school system, according to a Tribune analysis of 2009 state test data.

Scores from the elementary schools created under Renaissance 2010 are nearly identical to the city average, and scores at the remade high schools are below the already abysmal city average, the analysis found.

The moribund test scores follow other less than enthusiastic findings about Renaissance 2010 -- that displaced students ended up mostly in other low-performing schools and that mass closings led to youth violence as rival gang members ended up in the same classrooms. Together, they suggest the initiative hasn't lived up to its promise by this, its target year.

"There has been some good and some bad in Renaissance 2010, but overall it wasn't the game changer that people thought it would be," said Barbara Radner, who heads the Center for Urban Education at DePaul University. "In some ways it has been more harmful than good because all the attention, all the funding, all the hope was directed at Ren10 to the detriment of other effective strategies CPS was developing."

Turning around public schools is the core of Daley's efforts to keep the city vibrant. But the outcome of his ambitious education experiment is as important to the nation as it is to Chicago. The architect of Renaissance 2010, former schools CEO Arne Duncan, is now the U.S. Secretary of Education -- and he's taking the Daley-Duncan model national as part of his Race to the Top reform plan.

Duncan is using an unprecedented $4.35 billion pot of money to lure states into building education systems that replicate key Ren10 strategies. The grant money will go to states that allow charter schools to flourish and to those that experiment with turning around failing schools -- all part of the Chicago reform.

Illinois education officials hope to get a piece of the pie and are preparing an application for Tuesday's deadline.

Renaissance 2010 was launched in 2004 after decades of school reforms failed to fix chronically underperforming schools. City leaders promised to close the worst schools and open 100 innovative ones that would rely heavily on the private sector for ideas, funding and management. Central to the plan was an increase in charter schools, which receive tax dollars but are run by private groups free from many bureaucratic constraints.

Daley and Duncan credit the program with injecting competition and invigorating a stagnant system and say it has laid a foundation the district can build on.

"We haven't looked at all the data, but our belief is that Renaissance 2010 dramatically improved the educational options in communities across Chicago," said Peter Cunningham, Duncan's spokesman, who followed him from Chicago to Washington. "We believe that it is contributing to Chicago's overall success. Renaissance 2010 and Race to the Top both reflect a willingness to be bold, hold yourself to higher standards and push for dramatic change, not incremental change."

Cunningham and other supporters argue that many new schools, mainly in low-income and high-crime neighborhoods, are outperforming nearby traditional schools. They say attendance rates, parent satisfaction and student engagement are higher. And they point out that expecting significant gains from startup schools is unrealistic.

On Saturday, Daley said the program will yield measurable results, but that it will take time.

"I'll accept any criticism, and any adjustment of it, we'll look at it," Daley said.

There have been some bright spots.

Most of the elementary schools overhauled by the Academy for Urban School Leadership, which changes the school staff but leaves the students in place, are outperforming their previous selves. The Noble Street charter schools, which operate in some of the toughest neighborhoods, have college-going rates that even suburban schools would envy. And innovation has flourished, as the city's first all-boys public high school, Urban Prep, opened in Englewood, and the Chicago Virtual Charter School went online.

The business community embraced the reform agenda and has ponied up $50 million to the Renaissance Schools Fund, a nonprofit created by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago. The group has awarded about $30 million to 63 new schools.

Currently, 92 Renaissance 2010 schools enroll 34,000 children -- about 8 percent of the district total. Seven new schools will open in the fall, and the city plans to announce new school closings within the next few weeks.

The new schools mirror the district demographically, except they enroll fewer special education students and those who speak English as a second language.

Chicago school officials don't publicly track the performance of the Renaissance 2010 schools. But Ron Huberman, who took the helm of the city schools when Duncan left, said he has crunched the numbers and about one-third of the new schools are outperforming their neighborhood counterparts; one-third are identical in performance; the rest do worse.

A Tribune analysis shows that in Renaissance 2010 elementary schools, an average of 66.7 percent of students passed the 2009 Illinois Standards Achievement Test, identical to the district rate. The Ren10 high school passing rate was slightly lower on state tests than the district as a whole -- 20.5 percent compared with 22.8 percent. But it's identical at 17.6 percent when selective enrollment schools, where students test to get in, are removed from the equation.

Only a quarter of Renaissance 2010 schools had test scores high enough to meet the federal goals set by No Child Left Behind, the signature education policy of the George W. Bush administration. Chicago students as a whole still post some of the lowest test scores on national math and reading exams.

A series of studies released last year paints an unimpressive picture of Renaissance 2010.

One report, commissioned by the Renaissance Schools Fund, found that children in the fund-supported schools had low academic performance and posted test score gains identical to students in the nearby neighborhood schools.

"The Renaissance Schools Fund-supported schools will need to rapidly accelerate the academic performance of their students if they are to realize their own expectations," researchers wrote.

Phyllis Lockett, president of the fund, said their most recent analysis was more encouraging. Using test data not yet publicly available, the study found that pass rates in their schools are now 4 percentage points higher than those in comparable neighborhood schools.

"It's not like we are ready to cheer and scream success," Lockett said. "Our schools are doing very well but we've got to raise the bar. It's not good enough to 'just be better than the neighborhood schools.' But with the complexity of opening a new school, that's a good early goal."

Opening new innovative schools was only half of the Renaissance 2010 strategy. Closing the lowest performers was the other component -- and nothing created more disruption to the city's educational landscape.

Even in schools with single-digit pass rates, violence-filled hallways and embarrassing absentee patterns, parents picketed the streets and filled the school board chambers, begging that their schools be left alone.

But Duncan stood his ground and closed schools. The migration of teenagers across racial, cultural and gang boundaries burdened a high school system already struggling to educate students. Violence escalated.

Some point to the 2005 closing of Carver High School as the flash point for the September death of Derrion Albert, the 16-year-old Fenger High School student who was beaten, kicked and smashed with large planks of wood about a half-mile from school. District officials converted Carver into a military academy, sending teenagers to other schools, including Fenger. The two groups never got along and tempers flared inside and outside the school, culminating with the beating caught on videotape.

The academic outcomes of the displaced students wasn't any better. A report, issued in October by the Chicago Consortium on School Research at the University of Chicago, found that students from closed schools landed, for the most part, at campuses that were just as bad and then progressed at the same predictably low levels.

One positive outcome: students who ended up in higher-performing schools made more academic progress.

Duncan, pained by the increased violence, embraced a new strategy in 2006. Known as the "turnaround," it replaces the school principal and teachers with more effective educators, but leaves the children in place.

The Academy for Urban School Leadership has transformed eight schools under this model. Three of the four elementary schools that have at least two years of test scores have seen an uptick in results.

At Harvard School for Excellence in Englewood, for example, pass rates increased from 32 percent to 56 percent since the private, nonprofit group took over two years ago. Principal Andre Cowling, a former Army captain who served in the first Gulf War, attributes the progress to a razor-sharp focus on data, parent outreach, teacher training and a culture of safety and learning.

"Before they took over it was like World War III inside the school, fights everywhere," said Wanda Wilburn, who has three children at Harvard. "But they came in and stretched their hands out to us. Our kids are learning now."

Despite the program's mixed reviews, Daley promised this month to push forward and expand Renaissance 2010.

Huberman cautions against tossing out the entire strategy, a reflex typical in education reform. Instead, he plans to promote the components that work and get rid of the ones that don't -- even if that means closing down underperforming Renaissance 2010 charter schools, he said.

Huberman has promised that students displaced by school closings will be guaranteed spots in higher performing schools and will be assigned staff members to help them adjust to their new schools. He told the Tribune on Friday that he also will set aside coveted spots in magnet schools to accommodate them. Huberman also promised to devise safe passage plans to make sure children can get to their new schools safely.

"The first phase of Renaissance 2010 was the organic part of a brand-new reform," he said. "In the second phase, we need to put our energy behind the proven factors that work and drive them hard. If we had not gone through stage one -- as painful as it might have been -- we could not get to stage two."

This is a SBSB world exclusive video.




And a few years later.......

If I were to tell how many out of classroom administrators, coaches, etc... for such a small school population you would be shocked. John Deacon has decided, without any input from the school based support team, the chapter chair, or anyone, to announce to hires today. All the hires are redundant to what we have in the school.

The worse part is that the students have zero textbooks, the teachers are allowed one ream of paper the entire year, there are no computers, and no supplies for teachers. All we hear is,"there is no money available." How is this possible, when three created out of the blue, redundant positions are filled? When you have a man, Mr FG, who can't speak or write proper English teaching writing to students? Isn't it a requirement to speak and write English proficiently to teach how to write in English? Well, Duh!!

Joel Klein wished to give more power to principals. What Joel failed to realize is that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Thanks Joel for showing how to put children first.

Numb Nuts does a lunch period alone. Actually he does it alone because a good 75% of the time he is not where he should be. He runs, he hides, he shirks his responsibilities and as usual, pawns it off on others. The thing is he has the easiest lunch period there is. Three classes!

Travel back in time to this past Thursday. Out in the yard whilst the children are playing and frolicking in the cool autumn air there is not one supervisor or pedagogue to be found out there with the students. Oh there are a some excellent aides out there, aides that are more aware of what to do than Numb Nuts, but what if a child gets seriously hurt? Would not the powers that be be curious as to why Numb Nuts is not out there? Or perhaps the lawyers of the parents that decide to sue the DOE when their child suffers from a head injury. I don't wish that to happen, but would it not be fascinating being fly on the wall and watch Numb Nuts being disposed by a lawyer? I don't think his smarmy attitude would go over to well.

You ask how about when he is there, actually making a lunch duty contribution. I don't know how to put this. It should be simple since Numb Nuts claims he is a disciple and sycophant of Lee Canter's Assertive Discipline. Oh but when he gives workshops on Canter's work, he just copies and pastes the information. See, he is a phony. One would think that the lunch period is calm, that Numb Nuts and the students are connecting on some Zen like plane. Sorry to inform you, that is the furthest thing from the truth.

The man is a shriek machine. I swear, his head will explode one day like that guys in the 1981 movie "Scanners". There is no sense of order, no sense of anything. All he does is go up to a student, get in their face and scream, "excuse me!" The students do not take him seriously at all. Several years ago some third grade students came up to me and said, "Numb Nuts is a pussy. He never means what he says and we can get over on him all the time." Shouldn't this make someone, somewhere wonder if this man is cut out to be an AP? This inane drone does not have tenure yet as an AP, so what is the DOE waiting for? Does John Deacon see something that students, teachers, and parents do not see?

Thank you Joel Klein for putting children first.

We all know that Amy Mcintosh is the person at Tweed that has devised the Zagat's guide to rating teachers. But what is not known is that there is a possible conflict, something that is hush hush. And who better to uncover what should not be known other than the crack investigative team here.

Amy Mcintosh is married to Jeffrey Toobin, talking newshead at CNN, and author of "The Nine", amongst other books. But nowhere in Mr Toobin's biography's is it noted that his wife is the Zagat reviewer of NYC teachers. Not here, or here. or even here. I find it strange. I would be quite proud of my wife if she were able to hold such a lofty position without the requisite skills. But why do you ask does this matter?

Mr Toobin has previously worked for the Department of Justice.

So has Joel Klein.

Mr Toobin has graduated from Harvard.

So has Joel Klein.

Jeffrey Toobin works for CNN which is owned by Time-Warner.

Time-Warner owns NY1.

Time-Warner also owns Time Magazine.

Time-Warner also has one of the biggest cable contracts with NYC

Is there a possibility that the reporting of the NYC DOE has not been fair and balanced?

IMHO, all are relevant questions.

Has anyone seen Thomas Pynchon of late?

Yeah, still being cryptic.

This story is too funny not to tell.

In the 90's I and my 3rd class went on a field trip to the Bronx Zoo towards the end of the school year. A teacher in my school had arranged it for her class and another but for some reason my class went instead. It was your typical end of year field trip. Something to waste time. In fact most field trips are, very few have any tie in with the curriculum. If they did then every fouth grade class that was studying the American Revolution would go see all the locations in the city where the Battle of New York took place. It happens in Westchester County.

On the bus to the zoo the only thing on the student's minds were the bears. They wanted desperately to see the bears. The bus dropped us off at the Southern Blvd entrance. I had one parent volunteer with me and thirty students. Easy. I doubt Numb Nuts would be able to handle it.

So off the bus we go. We line up in two lines enter the zoo and the kids are still OCD'ing on the bears. "Please, A Teacher in the Bronx, can we please see the bears first?" I tell them OK. It makes sense. As any who have been the Bronx Zoo know the bears are in an almost direct line from the Southern Blvd entrance. So we make a bee line to see the bears.

The expression on the students faces were of a high anticipation. Bears! Bears! Bears! They were almost there. In fact it was clear sailing. The railing was empty. They were promised an unimpeded view of the bears. Praise be the bears!

"Oh mi dios!", the parent volunteer cries out. Kevin one of my students looks at me and says, "A Teacher in the Bronx, one of the bears is trying to jump over the other bear and can't make it over." I look and there is Papa Bear getting down with Mama Bear and Baby Bear must have been sent to the movies, or maybe was at Grandma and Grandpa Bear's den. Anyway the kids seemed to have no idea of what was happening, I ended the the bear viewing prematurely, though I don't think there was anything premature with Papa Bear. I saw Mama Bear later. She was laying back and having a cigarette. Papa Bear wasn't there. I think he had to get up early for work.

No biggie. It was done, it was over. But what would happen now under the reign of Chancellor Klein? I would have been called immoral for not thinking ahead of time that bears might be fornicating that time of the year and should have considered this option. Condon's office would have been sent into the school to take statements with leading questions from the students, and the bears would have been interviewed as well. The New York Post would have labeled me the "BEAR VOYEUR TEACHER" and would have felt shame. My career would be hanging by a thread.

And people wonder why teachers won't go the extra mile anymore.

It appears that Bloomberg thinks himself indispensable. Hey I give him credit for keeping New York solvent, keeping crime down, being pretty much straight forward. But what he has yet to learn is humility. He thinks that the the sh** will hit the fan if he is not around to control the sh**. This is exactly what Hugo Chavez tried to do in in Venezuela. Wait, are teachers allowed to use swear words? Must we lead a chaste life? More on this another time.

I think the days of seeing New York turn into the budget busting, crime infested, filthy city are long gone. In fact this transformation is going on throughout the US with some exceptions. Hell, even Yonkers is nicer. But like Giuliani, Bloomberg is a control freak and thinks that only he can save us from ourselves. All he is really doing is saving us from Anthony Weiner, an attention whore if there ever was one.

William Thompson seems to have the skills, the brains, and the cajones to do the job as mayor. Yeah we know that Bloomberg is worth $20 billion, but Thompson manages a combined portfolio of nearly $95 billion. Like David Paterson he is a no nonsense, no bullshit person. Best of all he actually has experience in education unlike Bloomberg and Klein.

Which is my entire issue with Bloomberg and Klein. The lack of HOTS when it comes to education, and the constant blaming the teachers tirades. Yes, I agree there are some bad teachers. But, there are a great many teachers out there who care. Or worse, did care until they found out that they had to worry about themselves and their direct deposit first, and this is what this administration has done to us, and now are just robots for the DOE. Aren't the parents the ones who are ultimately responsible for a students progress and success in school? Why not hold a press conference in City Hall and make examples of parents who never sign a report card, never ever come to conferences, never show an interest in their child's education? If the mayor is unable or unwilling to find such parents I will be more than happy to supply him with a rather long list.

Bloomberg and Klein bust our balls about attendance, why not the parents balls about showing up on conference night? I have never seen a class in my school, or anywhere with more than fifty percent of the parents showing up.

Check this out. Eight years ago I awoke on a Saturday morning to drive all the way into the Bronx for a district wide presentation on gangs. It was replete with an officer from the local precinct, elected officials, etc... Notices were sent home, fliers in every school. Ten parents showed up.

Maybe if food was served more would have shown.

Remember the olden days of the DOE? Well, not the DOE, the BOE, pre-2003. Come around children and listen to a story about the days when things were not quite right, and things were not quite wrong. All depends on how you look at issues. Like is the glass half empty or half full.

There used to be thirty two districts, and thirty two school boards in the City of New York. In a sense there still is. Yes there were lots of problems. School boards traveling to Hawaii on special educational junkets, principal jobs gotten for $10,000 in small bills inside a small envelope, rampant cronyism, lack of accountability. Hey these were problems. I admit it, and a band aid wasn't the salve to heal the problem.

So along comes Il Duce Bloomy. He knows how to resolve the problem. Mayoral control. OK, why not. So he convinces Albany to give him all the power to control the schools. He goes out looking for a Mini-Me and find Joel "The Animal" Klein. Mini Me wishes to streamline the DOE, get rid of waste, etc... OK still going along. What does Mini Me do? He breaks up the system into ten regions by combining districts. Each region now has about 100-120 schools. Makes sense. Lets take a district with 20-30 schools and make it bigger. But then he makes the regions smaller by having schools in a "network" with an Local Instructional Superintendent. But this LIS is then another layer of bureaucratic feces. And this LIS needs to be paid as well as he staff. Figure about ten LIS to a region times ten. I will let you the reader do the math.

But the big things now are in centralized locations further away from the people they serve. If you are a parent who lives on 125th St and Lexington Ave you know must travel all the way downtown to 28th St to get help. Makes sense so far? Oh I am sure it does in some warped way. Oh yeah before I forget there is still a figurehead Superintendent in each district along with some kind of weakened Jedi Council and each school now has a paid parent's advocate. Does anyone see the saving of money so far? Or at least the multiple layers added on?

Each region has it's own personnel office, support, etc... I guess that is where the saving came from. Too many duplicated jobs throughout the districts. Hey I am down with that. I can dig it. But now instead of serving a small amount of schools these people are over extended and serve many schools. Highly illogical.

So what happens two years ago? Everything is broken up again! No we have schools that belong to nobody because they are empowered. The LIS doesn't work for the DOE, but works for and serves at the pleasure of the principals in the network. Not only do you have the principals drunk with power, but the people who are supposed to be watching them, keeping an eye on them are paid by the principals themselves. Are these LIS' loyalty to principals or the students? The fox is watching the hen house.

Now there are LSO's, DSO, Essos I can't keep track. But what I can keep track of is how the system is getting further away from serving the needs of the students and the families in the community. There were strong support staffs in the DO's and they were there to assist the schools with professional development at the drop of a hat. If a parent had an issue that parent knew exactly where to go and whom to see. Where is the after school PD that you used to see. It is gone. Where are the staff developers who lectured at conferences and were experts in their fields. Now their are "coaches" who are training teachers after five years of teaching themselves. Coaches? I was expecting Don Zimmer when I heard this.

How is this better way better? Who does it serve? I think it serves the consultants we keep on hearing about at Tweed. A lot of "keep busy" work for them and the cronies that hire them.

All we have now is the captain of the Titanic rearranging the deck chairs while the ship be sinking.

In the "olden days", well up until 2005 I believe, teachers did not have to report until the Tuesday after Labor Day. We sold our souls for more money and Bloomy and Kleiny wished us to come in for two extra days of PD---the so called "circle jerk." Why do I call it that? Because that is what it basically is. Teachers have no time to set up their classrooms, t o go over cumulative records of their students, meets as grades. Instead we we get as we did yesterday a horrible Power Point presentation of CFI, Children First Initiative and the affects it had on the school, by an incompetent, unqualified assistant principal. This AP only is qualified to be an AP for two reasons. One, he paid money to get his administrative license, and two he kissed ass like no one ever has. He has no idea of what the curriculum is, and no clue of how to manage behavior problems. In fact the students used to call him a soft behind his back!

As far as his Power Point presentation all I can say is WOW! It is really neat how you have the words move all different ways when you hit a key. That really got my attention! Didn't anyone ever teach you to "bullet" information on PP? Apparently not!

As far as CFI, I do see its point in targeting and understanding which children are doing well or need improvement on testing, but there is actually no such thing as children first in my school. It is each administrator, incompetent for themselves. Those who speak up, are taken down.

Hold you head above the crowd, they gonna take you down!