"We are finally going to put aside the rights and privileges and priorities of adults" — and return the focus to children, she said.
Back in January Chancellor Michelle Rhee argued for and got the closing of 23 DC Schools, based on the premise of saving taxpayers $23 million. Now it seems that Rhee will use $7.5 million of those saved dollars to bail out five Catholic schools in DC, which are now scheduled to open this Fall as "secular" charter schools.
Key reforms embodied in the AMU contract include: teachers have explicit say in school policy and curriculum; no tenure or seniority preference...
...are perfectly willing to loosen work rules and toss tenure out the classroom window...
Green Dot charter schools are interesting to me. I was thrilled when Eduwonk featured its founder, Steve Barr, as a guest blogger. I thought unionized charters were a hopeful sign for innovative education. But it turns out there's no tenure in Mr. Barr's variety of union, and the LA Times urges teachers to toss it out the classroom window.
From the “make up whatever facts fit today’s rant” school of thought, there is the assertion that Barr has thrown tenure out the window.
...why let the facts get in the way of a good rant?
With the help of private donations, class sizes will be kept at about 28 instead of 40.
I've got to confess. I don't know anything about "The X-Files."
In a 65-page order, state Insurance Commissioner Ralph S. Tyler wrote that CareFirst's board had violated a 2003 state law requiring executive pay for the nonprofit to meet a "fair and reasonable" standard. The decision marks the first test of the law, which was passed by legislators furious with Jews for trying to convert CareFirst to a for-profit entity and sell it to a California company.
The proposed deal to sell CareFirst included $39 million in potential bonuses for Jews and led to sharp criticism over the insurer's pay to executives, which helped to scuttle the deal. While executive pay has skyrocketed on Wall Street, lawmakers and regulators have argued that CareFirst should be held to a different standard. The company is the region's largest insurer, but its nonprofit status means that its mission should be to provide affordable and accessible health insurance, they contend.
Our next meeting is Friday July 18th at 6:30pm at 339 Lafayette St. Buzzer #11 Please email us at noprivatization@yahoo.com or call (718) 869-2279
Play as a rookie teacher who takes over a class in a newly built modern school. At the beginning your class only has a few kids because most of the kids in town are used to going to a school located in the next town over. It is your job to bring those students back to make your classroom and school the best place to learn. The game really begins when you meet some characters who don't want you to succeed.
Key Features
- Increase your students' knowledge via fun mini games-Teach them writing, science (math & biology), culture (geography & history). Develop their artistic skills like music, drawing, and pottery. Celebrate events including birthdays and the end of the year party.
- Help your students find their true vocation
- Pay attention to your students' behaviors to manage their mood and create the best learning atmosphere-All kids have their own personalities and favorite subjects. Create a seating chart in the classroom to prevent them from chatting, being a distraction or fooling around.
- Create the school of your dreams-Buy or collect new items to upgrade your classroom and school
- Interact with many different characters-Not only do you take care of your students, but talk to their parents and school staff.
- Multiplayer-Connect up to 4 DS a single card allowing you and your friends to play mini-games.
Do you think your job is tough? Well it probably is. Maybe you’ve taken the wrong path.
If you’d only known the right people, you could have become a Tweed flunkie, perpetually dreaming up new ways to justify your six-figure salary. How would that be?
Well, you’d have to sit for hours and consider, for example, should you come up with a new idea? No, if you had any imagination, you’d probably never have gotten this job in the first place. Should you inspire teachers with your years of experience? No, that’s out of the question, what with your not once in your life having ever set foot in a public school, let alone worked in one.
Should you amuse them, at least? No, if you had any talent or sense of humor, why would your mother have had to get this job for you? What if you just gave them another few hours of long-winded convoluted trendy edu-speak with no value whatsoever? That usually works. Hmmmm...
Wait! You have a sudden flash of inspiration. You could just take the same old idea everyone’s been using for fifty years, give it a new name, and claim to have invented it. Then, when they do the same old thing they’ve been doing forever, you can tell the chancellor they’re using your idea. When standards go down, and test scores consequently go up, you can take credit for it!
Let’s see…you’ll need a big word here…OK, you can call it congruency, and amaze everyone by announcing that the do now and motivation have to be mostly related to the lesson. For example, you could caution teachers not to give too many algebraic equations as leads-up to lessons on Hamlet.
Wait—you’d better throw in another big word here—tell them to not even call it the do now and motivation—it’ll now be now the “anticipatory set.” That’s far less likely to be understood! You could explain it by saying “Teachers consciously stimulate the neural network so that the learner will be ready to make connections between prior experience and new learning.” Let them crawl under their beds and figure that out.
This has great potential. You can make up confusing handouts with arcane illustrations and spend hours at meetings explaining them to supervisors who are obliged to pretend they’re interested. Then, for the two extra days of talking you’ll have to do this August, you can rattle off the same thing to the teachers. Just sit them in groups and make them discuss it and give presentations on how they’ll use it. That’ll kill three or four hours right there.
So basically, the introduction to the lesson should be somewhat related to the rest of the lesson. How can you phrase that so no one will be precisely certain what you’re talking about, thus necessitating endless hours of clarifying discussion? What about this—“Most of the Teacher Actions are on a one-to-one match with the Teacher Objective.” That oughta do it.
Maybe you can make a video. That could kill a few hours, and you can show it at every meeting. Now you’ll need speakers no one exactly understands, to facilitate discussion groups who could try to figure out what the heck it’s about. By the time they report back, that’ll have killed two days right there.
Oh well, 11:30—time for another gala luncheon.
This job sure beats working.
Originally posted November 24, 2005
Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson issued a statement last Friday saying the federal government would NOT be bailing out mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
New York’s schools chancellor, Joel Klein, has gotten rid of some teachers through a program that effectively gives them a golden parachute out of teaching—they aren’t allowed into the classroom, though they stay on the payroll. But this is a very expensive Band-Aid.
Fisman’s article, on the whole, is asking a question that, no doubt, many of us have asked ourselves: How do poor teachers get into the school system in the first place? Let’s not pretend, Lake Wobegon-style, that every teacher is above-average. We’ve all seen, heard, and worked with teachers whose practice is not what it should be. Many of those individuals are well-meaning and could improve their teaching, but some should simply be in another line of work. We know this, as teachers. Administrators know it too. Yet the personal, professional, and academic traits that predict success as a teacher are notoriously difficult to identify and quantify—not to mention that not everyone agrees on what “success” as a teacher looks like.
Fisman’s question—“Why are public schools so bad at hiring good teachers?”—is a question worth asking. He brings up a few points that have personally engaged and perplexed me as a teacher and researcher, namely why standardized test scores, such as SAT scores, among teachers tend to be such a reliable predictor of student success. But, if self-reported data is reliable, most teachers who have been in the New York City system more than five years already possess most or all of the traits, attained before beginning their teaching careers, that research indicates improve student achievement. Most of these teachers continue their professional education after obtaining a master’s degree and are open to a wide variety of innovations in teaching practices.
So why is student achievement in New York City, then, still lagging behind? The achievement gap seems to be narrowing, yet city children still do not do as well as their suburban or upstate counterparts. Any number of theories have been proposed for why this is, but Fisman, and unfortunately too many people like him, have concluded that it is clearly the fault of the teachers. It has nothing to do with a constantly in-flux student population, nothing to do with poverty, nothing to do with a lack of value and focus on academics in families. None of those factors are mentioned in Fisman’s piece. No, it is clearly all the fault of poor teachers.
Now, here’s where Fisman’s analysis really goes off the tracks. Toward the end of his piece, Fisman makes the aforementioned comment about Joel Klein’s “golden parachute.” I’d be very interested to know what “program” this is. Is Klein finally admitting that there is an organized effort to remove veteran teachers from their posts—some of whom may be incompetent, some of whom may just be unpopular—via “rubber-rooming,” specious claims of unsatisfactory teaching or insubordination, and systematic demoralization? What is this “program” called? Who administers it? I’d certainly like to know.
For Fisman, naturally, the solution is union-busting. Particularly alarming for anyone considering a teaching career is Fisman’s suggestion that early-career teachers receive no union membership at all. Perhaps Mr. Fisman does not realize that in New York City, that means going without glasses, teeth cleanings, and prescription drugs for two to three years. That means no way to take advantage of PIP, no way to know what your rights are, no limit on what your supervisor can or can’t make you do. For young teachers already overwhelmed by the requirements of their new career, this is clearly a disturbing proposal.
So let’s review: According to Fisman, everything would be okay if we didn’t hire poor teachers in the first place. That’s not such a bad idea. An apprenticeship-like system for new teachers also has its merits—as has been mentioned in this blog and others, many private schools have very successful systems like that in place. But union-busting in the name of improving teacher quality isn’t going to magically solve anyone’s problems. And that’s not the biggest issue with Fisman’s piece. I’m still wondering what we call Mr. Klein’s Magic Parachute—and, if this is such a wonderful program, why we’re not all tripping over each other to get into it.
Woke up and put on CNBC this morning like I do every weekday morning.Shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two pillars of the nation's housing market, continued to plummet yesterday as investors and federal officials contemplated the possibility that the giants of the mortgage business could require a federal bailout.
...
The failure of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac could be devastating, making it harder for people to buy and sell homes and sending ripple effects through the broader economy.
...the Leadership Academy – created by Joel Klein, with Joel Klein chair of the board, Joel Klein who had selected the other board members, Joel Klein who had appointed the director, Joel Klein who had raised $75 million in private money to start it through the Fund for Public Schools, an organization which is also chaired by Joel Klein….had now been awarded a $50 million contract by Joel Klein...
Amen to your notion of a rational health care system. I think if we were to have such a thing, we’d have a lot more common ground on educational issues. Many things would be possible in a country like that, and I hope we live in such a place one of these days.
The reality, though, is UFT President Randi Weingarten is looking at privatizing the NYC healthcare network, and her prime reservations seem to relate to how big a cut will reach union coffers and a very short-sighted temporary stop on turning over the company. It’s sad Ms. Weingarten feels she can’t operate her patronage mill on a piddling 80 million a year.
Still, it’s remarkable that her myopic vision indicates teachers need what the rest of the country has. Particularly in terms of health care, the rest of the country needs what teachers have, and the sooner the better.
Let's say a prayer that Ms. Weingarten doesn't get her way and sell us off for the usual pittance she manages to negotiate. I'd say more money to pay her propagandists and sycophants ought to receive the lowest possible priority from working teachers (who might get sick one of these days).
Dear GHI/HIP subscriber:
As you know, GHI and HIP have merged. Therefore, we're delighted to be able to offer you the benefits of both companies. GHI subscribers will now be able to visit HIP doctors and hospitals with no copay, and HIP subscribers will now have access to the GHI network of providers if they wish to pay the copays.
Not what you think - the "L-word" stands for landslide.My comment provider, Haloscan, was down for a few hours. I regret the inconvenience. If you've gotten over it, you can check this week's Carnival of Education, which is right here.
The municipal unions are also looking to share in what has been estimated as up to a $5 billion windfall from an IPO if the new company becomes a for-profit. There was actually some internal friction a couple of years ago after a group of uniformed union presidents led by Sergeants' Benevolent Association head Edward Mullins supported a bill in Albany that would have allowed Service Employees International Union Local 1199 to share in a significant piece of the windfall if HIP became a for-profit. While Local 1199 is one of the state's largest unions and a political powerhouse in Albany, it represents only about 2,000 city workers, and there were concerns expressed by Ms. Weingarten and others that it might wind up with a disproportionate share of the IPO money.
...rumors persist that upon conversion there will be a “flip” of both the management and control of the converted entity. That is unacceptable. At a minimum, a multi-year “freeze” must be imposed as a condition to the grant of any approval.
As I noted in my February 8 letter, our initial concern remains that if the state, through your agency, approves conversion, both New York City and its unions must share in the proceeds since it was their assets and business that made possible the current financial viability of HIP-GHI. Any approval, therefore, must make provision therefore.
Remember the 70's?
The aftermath of this housing/credit bubble is far different from that of the stock bubble. Now the lending institutions are swimming in bad debts. Homeowners have mortgages they can't pay, just as the assets (houses) behind those debts are dropping in price.
As if that weren't enough, consumers' paychecks are eroding, thanks to galloping inflation created by the money printing that fomented the housing bubble (and by the credit that Greenspan's replacement, Ben Bernanke, has subsequently thrown in to ameliorate the aftermath).
with oil closing above $140 a barrel Friday, more experts are taking those predictions seriously -- and shuddering at the inflation-fueled chaos that $200-a-barrel crude could bring. They foresee fundamental shifts in the way we work, where we live and how we spend our free time.
"You'd have massive changes going on throughout the economy," said Robert Wescott, president of Keybridge Research, a Washington economic analysis firm. "Some activities are just plain going to be shut down."
Besides the obvious effect $7-a-gallon gasoline would have on commuters, automakers, airlines, truckers and shipping firms, $200 oil would drive up the price of a broad spectrum of products: Insecticides and hand lotions, cosmetics and food preservatives, shaving cream and rubber cement, plastic bottles and crayons -- all have ingredients derived from oil.
...
With every penny hike in the price of gas costing American consumers about $1 billion a year, sharply higher pump prices would lead to "significant bankruptcies and store closings," said Scott Hoyt, director of consumer economics at Moody's Economy.com.
Consumer spending has held up surprisingly well in the face of skyrocketing pump prices -- bolstered in part, perhaps, by federal tax rebates. But the same day the government reported a 0.8% rise in May consumer spending, a research firm said consumer confidence had plunged to its lowest level since 1980 -- hinting at the catastrophic effect another big gas price surge could have on retailers and customers.
"The purchasing power of the American people would be kicked in the teeth so darned hard by $200-a-barrel oil that they won't have the ability to buy much of anything," said S. David Freeman, president of the L.A. Board of Harbor Commissioners and author of the 2007 book "Winning Our Energy Independence."
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