Close Reading Is Child Abuse

I'm always surprised when I hear people advocate for "close reading," especially if they're teachers. We really ought to know better. Of course, if you're on the supervisor track, I can only assume you're required to keep up on all the latest fads and trends, and then use the most recent and grooviest buzzwords to describe them to potential employers.

We will enhance classroom-based curriculum integration via close reading, and therefore visualize diverse multiple intelligences across cognitive and affective domains.

I can only suppose when words like Common Core fall out of favor you need to staple your tongue to the roof of your mouth to keep yourself from uttering them.

I'm an ESL teacher, but theories I've studied about language acquisition lend themselves to reading whether you're an ELL or not. Stephen Krashen suggested there is an affective filter that rises when you hand students material to which they cannot relate. They look at it, see it as incomprehensible, and determine it to be not worth their time. In fact, they're very likely correct. Honestly, if you hand me a long, long treatise on The History of Cement, the likelihood I'll read it is quite low.

Krashen thinks ELLs respond best to reading material at or just a little bit above their level. And by reading material, I'd suggest it doesn't have to be the Gettysburg Address, completely out of context. I mean, sure, that makes sense to Common Core architect David Coleman, whose famous theory, in his own words, is that no one gives a shit what you feel or think. But I know exactly how successful I'd be with a lesson like that, and I'm sure it would make no difference whether my students were born here or anywhere on this planet. (In Coleman's defense, I am not entirely sure which planet he comes from.)

Everything I know about teaching suggests you take material and somehow tie it into a student's existing knowledge and interest. If kids can relate to it, they're far more likely to be motivated. I'm fortunate in that I teach English, something these kids direly need and something with direct application to every aspect of their lives. But even so, I work to personalize everything I teach, to make students touch it, use it, and make it their own.

The thing that really jumps out at me about close reading is it's not only counter-intuitive to all my experience, but it also contradicts the research. Of course David Coleman, who knew everything already, couldn't be bothered with any stinking research. Too bad we allowed him, Bill Gates, and Arne Duncan to force their half-baked ideas on cash-starved states via the state-sanctioned bribe that was No Child Left Behind.

This notwithstanding, if you're a teacher, or even if you're an administrator, it kind of behooves you to encourage love of reading, particularly when the likely alternative is hatred of reading. Administrators and would-be administrators who don't know that are incompetent, to say the least. I'm reminded of a song by the Kinks called Dedicated Follower of Fashion. "One week he's in polka dots, the next week he's in stripes cause he's a dedicated follow of fashion."

Take a listen to the song, and substitute portfolios, APPR, the workshop model, and every fad and trend you've ever heard at the September staff meeting for the fashion references. Try to think of close reading as a pair of culottes. And if you don't know what culottes are, you need not bother looking them up. You'll probably never hear of them again, and they are therefore of no relevance whatsoever to you. David Coleman would make you read a book about them, just so your life could be as tedious as his must be.

I want better things for my students, and I certainly hope you want better for yours as well.

Career and College Ready

Queens City Councilman Rory Lancman is upset about college readiness rates in the city. He says that students graduate from high school at twice the rate of college readiness. And if you go strictly by the stats, he's absolutely right. If you read his argument, it's tough to find fault with it.

But if you look a little deeper, there is an issue, and that issue is how we define college readiness. The way we do it is via a combination of test grades. Here's a report from Reformy John King that likens college and career readiness to rating "proficient" on NAEP. Diane Ravitch argues that this is an absurd interpretation, the same one that the Reformy Waiting for Superman film used to berate public schools. Here's a more recent NY Regents report, full of Common Corey stuff.

Who determines who's college and career ready? Well, it's not really a who, but a what. It's based on test scores. Students who get so many points on this test and so many points on that are college and career ready. Students who get fewer points or fail this test are not. So if we want to make our students college and career ready, how can we do that?

It's pretty simple, actually. We test prep them. And as we all know, there's nothing more inspiring to teenagers than sitting around prepping for some test. That will certainly inspire them. They'll look forward to college and career, because they got to sit for hours in some classroom endlessly practicing exercises designed to show them how to pass one test.

Actually there are studies that show teacher grades are a better indication of college readiness. Unsurprisingly, students who do well with high school teachers tend to also do well with college teachers. Rory Lancman hasn't considered that, since he read somewhere that too many city students aren't college ready. In fact, a whole lot of people read articles like these and assume that students aren't college ready. And honestly, how many people follow closely enough to understand that college and career readiness are just a bunch of arbitrary test scores that some overpaid educrat dreamed up in some cozy office in Albany?

A problem with state exam scores is that they are wholly inconsistent and unreliable. One year it's the English Regents exam and the next it's the Common Core English exam. Which one is better and how do you prove it? Unfortunately, standardized tests are not really standardized as they're subject to whatever trendy nonsense comes into vogue. Next year maybe they'll drop the name Common Core and give the same test under a new name, pretending it's different. Or maybe they'll change a few things and say it's the same. Who knows?

Also the grades don't really mean a whole lot either. They are forever raising and lowering lines. One year they want everyone to pass so as to conclusively establish the genius of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The next they want everyone to fail so as to prove every teacher in New York sucks and needs to be fired. Who knows where the lines are this year? Who knows what they mean, particularly when coupled with the ever-evolving test, which Rory Lancman and readers of New York newspapers assume to be perfect no matter what?

There are issues with teacher grades now, too, unfortunately. I myself have attended meetings, the themes of which have largely revolved around how we could pass every student in every subject no matter what. I'm afraid I'm far from alone in this. Teachers understand messages, and not only subtle ones. We get when we're being hit over the head with a sledge hammer. We understand what it means when schools are closed for alleged failure.

If you consider the entire situation, it's very hard to say who is college and career ready. If anyone really cared, or really wanted to know, they'd empower teachers to do what's right and use their professional discretion. Of course, in New York State, that's out of the question. You see, the folks in Albany set cut scores up and down to make them appear any way they wish. That's fundamentally dishonest.

The thing about people who are fundamentally dishonest is they tend to believe the same is true of everyone. That's why they think we teachers are all too crooked to grade the state exams of our own students. As long as the crooks in Albany assume us to be pathological liars, no one's likely to attach any validity to the predictive nature of our grades.

But if anyone really wants to know how kids are doing, and how ready they are, they will empower teachers. The whole vilification thing really doesn't work for anyone at all.

Campaign 2016--the Choice for Educators

The Washington Post interviewed both major candidates about education, and I'm not jumping up and down about either. Trump simply offered a statement about school choice, meaning charters, vouchers, and pretty much anything that doubles down against unionized public schools. Hillary is more nuanced, but not precisely encouraging. For one thing, it's disappointing she isn't still shunning spawn of Satan Rahm Emanuel. But let's look at the issues.

Testing:

A lot of us don't believe in high-stakes testing, particularly since they tend to shed light on nothing but which zip code students come from. Here's what Hillary says:

To me, the solution is better, fewer, and fairer tests.  The bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act was a step in the right direction. By providing funding to states and school districts to audit their testing systems and reduce unnecessary and duplicative tests, the legislation can help us find the right balance on testing.

It's not a bad answer, but it's not a strong one either. This is the same rhetoric we always get from testing apologists, and it really rules out nothing whatsoever. We're always hearing about how there's less testing, about how tests take less time, even when they're untimed. It really makes no difference what the truth of the matter is. That's not a strong statement, but rather a middle-of-the-road thing that makes it hard to disagree. But where's the beef?

Common Core:

When states came together on Common Core, I thought that was a laudable effort. But, like many Americans, I have concerns about how the Common Core has been implemented.

This is sorely disappointing. This is the same boilerplate excuse we get from virtually every CCSS supporter. It's like an executioner stating the process would work much better if only the guillotine were better oiled. Hillary sent Chelsea to the same elite school Obama sent his girls to. It utilizes none of the nonsense that CCSS inflicts on our children. Close reading is discredited nonsense, and if it isn't good enough for Hillary's kid, it's not good enough for yours either.

Charter schools:

Quality public charter schools can provide parents with real choices for their children. In fact, many of the country’s best public charter schools are opening doors to opportunity for disadvantaged students. That’s why I have long been a strong supporter of public charter schools and an unflinching advocate for traditional public schools.

She supports them, in case that is not clear. And she uses the ridiculous term "public" charter schools even though the only actual part of them that's public is the funding. You won't see Hillary making a fuss when Eva Moskowitz decides rules that dictate funding are too inconvenient for her. And the distinction between non-profit and for-profit charters, while it may mean something somewhere, doesn't prevent the likes of Moskowitz from paying herself half a million per annum.

Teacher evaluation:

The Every Students Succeeds Act provides a great framework for supporting educators. And specifically on the issue of evaluations, the law helps us move in the right direction by providing states the flexibility to design holistic accountability systems.  That moves us closer to ensuring every student has a supported and effective teacher in the classroom.

What does that even mean? The question specifically asked whether or not she was for VAM junk science evaluation of teachers. There is no yes, no no, and for my money, no answer. Perhaps she's saying she's glad there are alternatives. Still, I want to know whether or not the next President of the United States supports junk science.

Poverty:

...schools alone can’t overcome the crisis of children living in poverty.  This is something we all need to come together to address as a country.  Because the truest measure of any society is how care for our kids. 

I like this answer. It's her best, for my money. But if she believes that, why won't she stand up and say we have to stop evaluating teachers with junk science? Now I'm going to vote for Hillary, but with very little enthusiasm. This is because the alternative is Donald Trump, and I think he need be as widely repudiated as possible.

When she is President, we will need to speak as loudly and directly as we can. We will need to move Hillary Clinton away from these weasel positions and demand she support us. Make no mistake, anyone who supports children must also support their teachers. We are their role models, and I don't go to work every day to model being a victim. We must also demand that our union leadership speak up for those of us on the ground.

I don't have great expectations of President Hillary Clinton. But I think together we have the potential to cajole, push, move or force her toward sanity.

Send Common Core to the Scrap Heap

It's nice to see that Michael Mulgrew has evidently seen the light regarding the nonsense that is Common Core. But maybe, if there's a monument to idiocy being erected in your town square, you ought to protest before it's actually put up. Once it's up, you can always ask that they paint the clown's nose a different color, but the fact is the monument is there.

And so it is with the Common Core standards and the state's attempt to paint lipstick on the proverbial pig that it is. We've now invested a whole lot of time talking about the "rollout" and pretending that it's not the actual program that's a problem. It was entirely predictable that the state would dab a little paint on this highly flawed product and say, "There. Now it's fine. Good luck with that."

I certainly anticipated that, but Mulgrew did not. I've been to DAs where he said we were finally getting that long-awaited input that we needed to make all things right. The problem is, when you've got a product as fundamentally flawed as Common Core, a touch-up is not gonna do the job. There's a fundamental issue with anything based in a philosophy that no one gives a crap what you think or how you feel.

Were I to articulate this approach with my students, I'd likely be up on charges of verbal abuse under CR A-421. And I'd deserve it. Would you tolerate a teacher telling your kid she doesn't give a crap how he feels or what he thinks? I wouldn't. And yet we have an entire nation bribed by Arne Duncan to embrace that philosophy. And while it's nice that Mulgrew has finally come to his senses, just a few years ago he was going to punch us in the face and push our faces in the dirt if we dared get between him and his beloved Common Core.

We're sitting on a brief moratorium, in which Common Core test scores will not be used against students or teachers (unless you're a high school teacher or student, in which case, too bad for you). To hear Mulgrew speak, you'd think it was because of the UFT's activism. But if you've been reading the newspapers, it appears to be a result of the actual activism of opt-out, which has managed to keep a whole lot of students from taking these ridiculous tests. Of course Mulgrew's army of loyalty oath signers not only fails to encourage opt-out, but also actively criticizes those of use who do.

Given that, I question Mulgrew's credibility. I can't speak to the math, but there's something fundamentally wrong with our approach to reading. We ought not to be having children doing close reading, looking at little bits of whatever, and answering endless questions about little pieces of nothing. We ought to be seducing them into loving to read, via high interest materials that make them want to do more. And it ought to be largely based on--get this--what they think and how they feel. Materials ought to be selected precisely on that basis. When they love to read, then you can ask them to find arcane answers no one cares about. Or better yet, you can forget that entirely and have them do such things only when they are actually important.

I'm happy that Mulgrew mentioned ESL and how English learners ought to be judged on a different standard. But even ELLs learn on the same principle I set out above. They need high-interest materials and from there they can move on to tackle general academics. I'm afraid state enterprises like Part 154 move them even farther from that place, removing 33-100% of direct English instruction in favor of giving them a little bit of language assistance during core subjects.

It's now official UFT policy that we favor more, rather than less, instruction in English for ELLs. This is due to a resolution that I had a hand in writing and passing. However we've yet to do anything to change the directive, Part 154, that has ESL teachers running around like so many headless chickens. I've sat on a few committees, and I will be on a panel at a UFT event on October 29th. I hope to ask Regents Chancellor Betty Rosa directly how she plans to fix this.

Meanwhile, it's gonna take a lot more than us saying we don't care for the touch-up to Common Core. It needs no touch-up, and it needs no overhaul. It needs to be burned and buried, and the ground under which it's buried needs to be salted so nothing may ever grow in its place. It's hurtful nonsense, based on a falsehood. If Bill Gates really believed in it, he wouldn't send his kids to a school that doesn't practice it. Nor would Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, or John King.

If it isn't good enough for their kids, it isn't good enough for ours either. Let's consign it to the dustbin of history where it belongs.

A Lesson for Common Core Enthusiasts

Someone sent me an interesting link from the Gates-funded Center for American Progress the other day, about how we could all do fabulous close reading things with the Common Core standards. Believe it or not, just about every organization that's taken money from Gates has fallen head over heels in love with Common Core, on which Gates spent a whole lotta cash. Go figure.

During the 2014-15 school year, more high school seniors read the young adult-oriented books The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent than Shakespeare’s Macbeth or Hamlet, according to a report that tracks what K-12 students at more than 30,000 schools are reading during the school year. These books are generally self-selected, making it not all that surprising that students would prefer to read a contemporary New York Times bestseller than a 17th-century play written in early modern English. And while some of the books that students select are thematically targeted to a mature audience, they are not particularly challenging to read for the average high schooler. The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent, for example, have the readability of a fourth- or fifth-grade text in terms of sentence structure and word difficulty.

God forbid that students should read stuff they enjoy. The end of the world is nigh. What we should value, according to this logic, is difficulty rather than content. Allowing students to self-select has a negative connotation in that paragraph. I'd argue the opposite. If students love to read, they will practice it without guns to their heads. Then, when they are presented with difficult readings, they will figure out how to get through them and deal with them. Forcing them to plod through Shakespere if they don't wish to is not how you get motivated readers. They continue:

Three of the top five most commonly assigned titles in grades 9 through 12 are To Kill a Mockingbird, The Crucible, and Of Mice and Men. All three books, while classics, are not particularly challenging in terms of sentence structure and complexity

Can you imagine that? Those crappy teachers are assigning books because of depth of theme, and they have no regard for how rigorous they are. It doesn't matter what sort of discussion or independent thought those books inspire. The important thing is how big the words are, how complicated the sentences are (all the better if they're in non-standard English) and whether or not the kids can muddle through them and pass a test.

You know what I never think about, and what most readers don't think about? We don't think about the grade level of what we're reading. We read for information, we read to learn, we read to be entertained, and we read for a lot of reasons. But we don't read simply to encounter big words and complicated sentence structure.

I was never taught any of this stuff and I miss it not at all. I was motivated to read myself and never expected other people to tell me what words meant. That’s what dictionaries are for. You'd think what 5-year-olds need is to work on unlocking complex text. That will make them love reading for sure. No more blowing bubbles in their milk and none of that Cat in the Hat nonsense anymore. We're raising a generation of test-takers who have SAT-oriented vocabularies.What more could any country want?

Now I actually have nothing against encouraging vocabulary. Vocabulary is a tool, and we use it as we need it. Were it up to me, I'd teach kids more about logic. I'd let them know what logical fallacies are. I'd let them know what bad arguments are made of. I'd let them explore and detect lies, like, for example, Common Core was developed by teachers, or that it's research based and field tested. I'd want my kids to know that health care is available to all in most non-third-world countries and few outside the United States go bankrupt paying hospital bills.

In fact, I'd like folks who advocate Common Core, like Reformy John King, to stand up and defend his ideas just like he wants our kids to do. That would be a whole lot better than cowardly canceling meetings because he can't muster a coherent argument. It's disgraceful that someone who advocates logic would call parents and teachers "special interests," and get all huffy when we ask why he sends his kids to schools that don't utilize the methodology he demands for our kids.

I also do not think it’s necessarily of value to use big words. Communication is about reaching as many people as you can with the correct words, words that inform, words that are appropriate and most easily understood, not words that impress. People who try to impress with big words end up doing precisely the opposite, even if they use them correctly.

One of my favorite series of books is The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. It's beautiful, lyrical writing. It's simple and universal. I've taught it to ESL students and they've loved it. It's about a woman in Botswana who's very smart, who's suffered greatly, but who's determined to make something of herself. It's about how she makes things happen by outsmarting those around her. It's not about how difficult the books she reads happen to be.

I don't love to read because I went to school and some teacher shoved big words and/ or complicated sentences down my throat. I don't love to read because some teacher handed me The History of Cement and made me close read it.  I love to read because of the very smart people who've taken the time to write. And if I have to plod through The History of Cement, I can do it because reading is natural for me.

The Common Core folk have got everything ass-backwards. And it's not because they weren't taught via Common Core. I wasn't taught via Common Core, and I can see right through all of their reformy nonsense. They'd love it if only we'd keep ignoring the fact that over half our country's children live in poverty. If we can get them to pass standardized tests here and there, that validates the reformies, and that's good enough.

Let them eat sentences.

Chalkbeat NY Stands Up for the Gates-Funded Little Guy

I was pretty surprised to read that the NY Regents are passing policy without the input of the public. I mean, that's a pretty serious breach of basic democracy, isn't it? On the other hand, I've been to a whole lot of public hearings about schools and school closings, and I've spoken at them too. Several were at Jamaica High School, closed based on false statistics, according to this piece in Chalkbeat.

The thing about public hearings is this--yes, members of the public get to speak. In fact, at Jamaica and several other school closing hearings, I don't remember a single person getting up to speak in favor of school closings. I've also been to multiple meetings of the PEP under Bloomberg where the public was roundly ignored. In fact, Bloomberg fired anyone who contemplated voting against doing whatever they were told. While he didn't make them sign loyalty oaths, the effect was precisely the same.

State hearings are different, of course. When former NY Education Commissioner Reformy John King decided to explain to NY that Common Core was the best thing since sliced bread, he planned a series of public forums. However, after the public said in no uncertain terms they disagreed, he canceled them, saying they'd been taken over by "special interests." The special interests, of course, were parents and teachers. He may have implied they were controlled by the unions, but of course the union leadership actually supported the same nonsense he was espousing.

In fact, the only meeting King went to where he found support actually was taken over by special interests, to wit, Students First NY. Only one non-special interest actually got to speak, and that was my friend Katie Lapham. Other than that it was a pro-high-stakes testing party. Doubtless this was King's view of a worthy public forum, and given that it's taken until now for Chalkbeat to stand up to the lack of forums, I have to question whether it's theirs too.

The big change Chalkbeat points to is a link claiming that the Regents "wiped out" main elements of the teacher evaluation law. If you bother to follow the link, you learn that this is a reference to the fake moratorium on high stakes testing, which the article itself later admits to be limited to the use of Common Core testing in grades 3-8. The fact that junk science rules absolutely everywhere else, and will in fact be increased in importance next year, is evidently of no relevance whatsoever.

While Chalkbeat acknowledges these changes were urged on by Governor Cuomo's task force, it fails utterly to make connections as to what forced Cuomo to start a task force, let alone pretend he gives a crap about education or public school teachers. This, of course, was a massive opt-out, in which over 20% of New York's parents told their children not to sit for tests that Cuomo himself referred to as meaningless. But rather than speak to any of its leaders, Chalkbeat seeks comment from a Gates-funded group I've never heard of called Committee on Open Government.

After all, why go to Jeanette Deutermann, or Leonie Haimson, or Jia Lee, or Beth Dimino, or Katie Lapham, when you can get someone who's taken Gates money? And just to round out the forum, Chalkbeat goes to Reformy John King's successor, MaryEllen Elia, who's taken boatloads of Gates money and is therefore an expert on pretty much whatever.

Chalkbeat also makes the preposterous assertion that the Regents allowing children of special needs a route to graduation should have been more gradual because schools were prepping them for tests they didn't need. While that may be true, this did not remove their option of taking those tests. Announcing the allowance this year and enabling it, say, next year, would've helped absolutely no one. You don't need to go to a Gates-funded expert to figure that out.

While it may have been nice to have public hearings, the fact is the public has gotten up and spoken, and without that, none of these changes would have occurred. It's remarkable that Chalkbeat NY doesn't know that.

Is Reading the Magic Bullet?

Well, of course it isn't. There is no magic bullet. But here's a great piece from the New Yorker presenting the idea of reading as therapy, with a particular emphasis on fiction. I'm a great fan of fiction, and if left to my own devices, that's mostly what I will read. Because I love it, I also love to teach it. Now it's not my favorite thing to teach--I love to teach beginners English, and watch them move rapidly through utter confusion toward muddling through toward mastery, but it's my second favorite thing.

Some of my most gratifying moments were when students came to me and said, "Thank you for forcing me to read that book. I never thought I could read a book in English." And I am relentless in browbeating kids to do that work. Of course I'm not always successful. I really believe reading is a solitary pursuit, and while I will try to motivate kids by reading paragraphs here and there, I make them do the bulk of it outside the classroom, and do that so we can discuss it in class.

There are some books I won't teach. I'm a great fan of Steinbeck, but I won't teach Of Mice and Men, because I don't want to be the person who introduces my newcomers to racial epithets. Maybe that's lazy thinking on my part, and maybe I could make kids understand them better, but I want my classroom to be a place where those things simply do not exist. I don't want anyone to remember my class as the place they learned that stuff.

I think the way to trick kids into loving reading is to carefully select stories to which they can relate, stories that mirror or expand on their own experiences. As such, I'm very fond of The Joy Luck Club. This is a book full of brilliant interwoven stories of people overcoming the situations into which their thrust and making something of their lives. A great extra, for me, is that it's all about several generations of Chinese women. And although neither I nor a whole lot of my students are either Chinese or women, these are stories that everyone can relate to.

Of course my students are all newcomers, which is kind of a hook for this selection, but they're also facing all sorts of personal difficulties. I think just being a teenager is an almost insurmountable problem in itself. Add to that being in a new and strange country with limited use of the dominant language, and things become challenging indeed.  But people rise up from the most awful situations, and a book like this, I hope, gives my teenagers the notion that they too can overcome their troubles, no matter how awful they may appear right now.

This approach is in stark contrast with that of Common Core, that no one gives a crap what you think or feel. Jesus, who even wants to live in David Coleman's world, where no one gives a crap what you think or feel? While I will grant that I honestly don't give a crap what David Coleman thinks or feels, that sentiment does not extend to my students.  I want them to feel cared for in my class, and I want them to know that I care what they think. That's why I'm always asking them what they think and fairly thrilled when they tell me. I spend a great deal of time trying to open up kids who've been told to sit down and shut up all their lives.

The Common Core approach of answering tedious questions about a text out of context actively discourages love of reading, and is precisely the wrong approach, counter to everything we know about how kids learn. There is certainly a time and place for plodding through tedious text, but that's not how we start our kids. And those best equipped to deal with tedious text are people who love to read.

I gotta admit, I read a lot in college, and there were things I just did not love. Moby Dick, classic though it may be, wasn't my favorite. I had the misfortune of reading Beowulf for not one course, but rather two. By the second course I had learned not to tell the truth when the instructor asked us to write our impressions of this classic work. In my job I'm constantly perusing the Contract and looking through regulations to determine just what is and is not kosher, and I sometimes have to counter the preposterous interpretations of the folks the DOE "legal," whatever that is. I'm fortunate in that a whole lot of folks at UFT have already interpreted the bejeezus out of these things, and that they are always right while "legal" is always wrong. Honestly, I think they just make stuff up and hope for the best.

I developed a love of reading early on. I still remember the first book I read, and being amazed that I'd cracked the code. I moved from there to comic books, and from there to the paperbacks my mom had lying all over the house, and from there to whatever grabbed my attention. Once I found an author I liked I sought out everything that writer produced.

I was lucky because reading, in the high school I attended, entailed mostly reading books aloud. You read page one, the girl behind you reads page two, I read page three, and so on. It's a great gig for an English teacher who doesn't actually want to do anything, and even better for a lazy student like me, who only had to pay attention when the person in front of me was reading. The only books I was asked to read in high school independently were The Incredible Journey, about a dog and a cat running around doing something or other, and The Good Earth, which everyone in my social studies class found fascinating. None of us could get over the notion of arranged marriage, though we were perhaps only one generation away from it.

But not every kid grows up in a house full of books, and for those who don't, teachers are the best bet to pick up the slack. It's tragic that Common Core gives kids precisely the opposite of what they need, and will likely lead them to despise reading rather than simply be indifferent to it. Reading is power, and without it, our kids will be swept under those who possess it. Our system is designed to create and maintain drones rather than thinkers.

We can surely do better. We're kind of pinned under the yoke of ridiculous, arbitrary measures of "college readiness," and we begin to measure such things at absurdly young ages. I don't think Hillary Clinton knows that, or much of anything of what is good education for our kids (as opposed to her own, who attended an elite private school that used none of this nonsense) and sadly, I don't think Bernie Sanders does either.

But as long as we do, it's our job to get the word out.

Imagine Help for Newcomers

You may have read a thing or two on this little blog about CR Part 154, the idiotic state regulation that cuts direct English instruction to newcomers and substitutes it with, well, less than nothing. Instead of direct English instruction, a newcomer may have a social studies class with an ESL teacher to help, or a dually-certifed ESL/ social studies teacher. Supposedly, this teacher, or pair of teachers, will teach newcomers both English and social studies in the same time it takes an American-born student to learn social studies only.

Regents Chancellor Betty Rosa told me that this rule was made with the best of intentions, and I'm sure she's right, but that's a weak argument indeed. I think everyone does everything with the best of intentions. Michael Bloomberg closed schools with the best of intentions, and hired Cathie Black with the best of intentions. He felt that people who had a lot of money knew better than those of us who don't, and acted accordingly.

But everyone knows the road to hell is paved with good intentions, so why don't we focus on taking newcomers somewhere else? One of the things I've learned from being chapter leader is that it's best to come not only with a complaint, but also with a potential solution. So if anyone actually knows Betty Rosa, maybe you can present her with it.

The other day, a social studies teacher looking to get ESL certification observed the first period of my double period class. I was showing a Powerpoint explaining vocabulary. She wrote that she saw a preparation period for the class that follows, which was accurate. So why not, instead of taking away an ESL period, add one? I'm not a social studies expert, but I could easily read the text and prep students for whatever the lesson may be.

I could easily identify key vocabulary and fill them in before the class. I could identify key concepts and make sure they are familiar with them before they walked in there. I could actually offer students more support rather than less. Is that such a revolutionary concept? I don't think so.

Of course I'm just a lowly teacher who spends each and every day of my working lives with these kids. I'm not an expert working in some office tower in Albany making decisions about children I never see and will never know. Eveidently they keep teachers out of such decisions and keep them pure, under the direction of folks like Reformy John King, who regards parents and teachers as special interests, or MaryEllen Elia, who loves her some Gates cash and programs.

Honestly I have no idea what anyone was thinking when they rewrote Part 154 like this. I have no idea what drugs they were taking, or why they thought this would benefit anyone. They certainly couldn't be bothered investigating research or practice, none of which would support this. My personal feeling is they felt teaching students how to communicate in the English language was simply not Common Corey enough, and decided to do away with conversation in favor of answering questions about Hammurabi's Code, and other things about which teenagers don't give a crap.

But the David Coleman approach of shoving things down children's throats whether they like it or not is not only counter-intuitive for teaching reading, but also for teaching English. These are subjects in which affect plays a great role. For example, I don't love reading, say, the UFT Contract, but because I'm a reader I can plod through it and understand what I need to. If you want me to go the extra mile and learn a foreign language, there'd better be someone or something I love where they speak it. In lieu of that, there'd better be a teacher to trick me into loving it.

Because I can tell you for sure, this Hammurabi's Code stuff isn't gonna cut it. Nor is Part 154. 

Kick Him While He's Down

It's not the best of weeks for Andy Cuomo. After all, Preet is dropping clues all over the place that Silver and Skelos weren't the only crooks under his watchful eye. And there are really few individuals so morally bankrupt as the Governor of our great state, obviously on sale to the highest bidder. For a few million, he'll stand with Eva Moskowitz and pretend she serves all children (while we really do, and are regularly vilified for our trouble). He'll call himself the "student lobbyist" but fail to seek the billions NY State owes city children in the CFE lawsuit.

You may recall that the great minds of Revive NYSUT overthrew leadership, specifically claiming to oppose Cuomo. They failed to do so in the Working Families primary, when pro-teacher Zephyr Teachout ran against him. They failed to do so in the Democratic primary, when Zephyr Teachout ran against him again. They also failed to do so in the general election, when the Green Party's Howie Hawkins provided an alternative considerably better than shooting ourselves in the foot.

But alas, the leadership of NYSUT and UFT was having none of it. After all, it's scary to endorse newcomers. It's frightening to oppose a governor like Andy Cuomo. He might get mad if you do that, and that's an unacceptable risk. I mean, what if he gets up on his hind legs and demands a teacher evaluation system even worse than the one we already have? So it's best to slink away and mumble ridiculous excuses when members demand you stand by your explicitly stated principles.

On the other hand, Cuomo actually did demand an evaluation system worse than the one actually on the books. Not only that, but he won it as the spineless Democrats voted for it with "heavy hearts." I don't remember the reaction of NYSUT, but it's hard for me to forget an email I got from UFT President Michael Mulgrew thanking the Assembly for passing this atrocity.

Of course, Cuomo has since backed up a bit, what with hundreds of thousands of New York children opting out of his ridiculous tests. And everywhere I read of a "moratorium" on using test scores to rate children or teachers, even though a very limited number of tests are actually not counted. For example, all high school teachers are still judged on the same junk science as last year, and will have to await the "matrix" before we get a new variety of junk science.

But now that Cuomo is pretending to back down on his insane demands, and now that everyone is talking about having him frogmarched into a cell with Silver and Skelos, this might be a good time for NYSUT and UFT to get ahead of the curve. Why not start trashing the governor right now, so that when he finally goes down, they can genuinely take some credit for it?

When Michael Mulgrew, who was gonna punch us in the face and push our faces in the dirt if we didn't support his beloved Common Core, stands up and takes credit for its few and inconsequential reversals, he looks ridiculous. To avoid that in the future, all he has to do is threaten to punch Cuomo's face instead of ours. Maybe then when Cuomo goes down, he can say, "You see? I boldly threatened to brutalize the guy and now he's in prison so I don't have to."

So let's get in there now, UFT and NYSUT leadership. Because once the guy goes down, you know you're gonna take credit for it anyway. So let's make it look good, and begin making some noise. As an added benefit, all those irritating bloggers won't be calling you out all the time.

It's all about looking ahead, for once, and just a little bit. Let's try doing the right thing, just as an experiment, and seeing how it works out. If it does, who knows? Maybe we could make it a regular thing.

Common Core Not Doing Its Job. Too Bad for You, America

Naturally, I'm as shocked as anyone to hear the NAEP scores are not skyrocketing. Reading scores are stagnant and math scores are actually going down. Who would've thunk it? After all, we've made kids do close reading. What could be better for a student than reading and analyzing the Gettysburg Address with absolutely no context? It's about time we got rid of those ridiculous methods that insist we actually understand what we read.

And now we can stop wasting time reading novels. Finally we can take excerpts from them and analyze them until the end of time. What's more valuable than that? Or we can take a short story and analyze it for 17 days. What motivates students more than that? I, for one, am sick of all this "loving literature" and "loving to read" nonsense, and it's about time we let kids know that reading only exists so that we can answer questions about it on tests.

Along with that, of course, is the new visionary approach to math. I mean, finally we're doing away with simple equations and making things more creative. I mean, why make math simple when you can make it complicated. There's nothing people like more than solving problems in ways that are more complicated than necessary, and using common core math will surely make people love math as much as it makes them love reading, which is to say, not at all. That's what we call "rigor."

And the point of "rigor," of course, is to develop "grit." Once you have "grit," you can accomplish the most tedious and pointless tasks in the most inefficient fashion, and still get up and say, "Thank you sir, may I have another?" After all, children are work product for our highly respected corporations, and someone's got to do this kind of work. Our friends over at the Walmart family contribute big money to refominess, and of course people trained like this might not run screaming to jump out of tall buildings after lives as Walmart associates. That's good for Walmart, as the alternative might be to pay a living wage or something.

Fortunately, we have Common Core champions, like Hillary Clinton, who will make sure our children continue to be trained in these things. The fact that they don't actually benefit anyone is neither here nor there. Hey, it must be OK because even AFT President Randi Weingarten supports it. And if that's not enough, UFT President Michael Mulgrew will punch your face and push it in the dirt if you don't.

The fact that none of this actually helps our children understand anything better is neither here nor there. Bill Gates spent a bazillion dollars funding this stuff, and that ought to be good enough for anyone. So shut up and sit down, America.

Why Not Opt Out of Midterms?

That's the question the Daily News asks. After all, the stakes are pretty low, as the state has agreed not to count the results for a few years. This is true for students and in many cases for teacher ratings as well. So what's the big hooplah, the News wants to know. Why don't these goshdarn kids just sit down and take their tests?

That's a much more reasoned approach than that taken over at the Post, where they concoct a ridiculous strawman argument suggesting that parents who opt out are simply petulant, over-privileged, self-serving lunatics who don't want their kids to fail. At the same time, they are helicopter parents making ridiculous demands for their pampered children. Patrick Walsh had a great piece on his blog in response: 

Its always a good sign when shills for those who are systemically attempting to undermine public education, the better to privatize it, are reduced to making public arguments that read like they are written by a person on a six day drunk.

Read the whole piece.  I'll just address the piece at the News, which makes a more reasonable argument. There's actually a pretty reasonable answer, too.

Midterms are usually written by teachers. They’re usually graded and returned to the students, so the students can see how they did and what they may have done wrong. That’s not the case with these tests, whatever the stakes. And if the stakes are so ridiculously low anyway, a better argument might be that they ought to simply be canceled.

A lot of us are labeled as anti-testing, when that's not precisely the case. We are against high-stakes tests that don't really help our children. And while it's true that there is a temporary reduction in the stakes, the tests still don't help our children. I don't know much about these tests, but from what I'm reading, even disregarding the fact that our kids will never get them back or learn anything from them, they don't appear to be of very good quality.

They don't necessarily test what kids need. They aren't necessarily developmentally appropriate. And the notion of kids sitting indefinitely to take these tests appears not so much a concession as an implement of torture. 

But even more important is the fact that we won't be fooled. You can't just tell us, hey, we won't count it for a few years. Please drop your organizing and go away. Maybe that's not what the Daily News editorial board had in mind. But it certainly appears to be what Cuomo had in mind.

And to Governor Cuomo, I have just this to say. We did not just fall off the tomato truck from New Jersey.

And we are not going away.

Elia Calls Teacher Encouragement of Opt-out Unethical

It's funny to be lectured by the likes of reformy MaryEllen Elia, who took boatloads of Gates money in Florida to promote programs that ultimately didn't work. Nonetheless, it's not that unusual. After all, her esteemed predecessor, Reformy John King, called parents and teachers "special interests" and managed to weasel his way up to US Secretary of Education.

Now, of course, we have a Regents Commissioner who says she'd opt her own child out if she got a chance. This is remarkable. Will Regent Roger Tilles, who talks a big game against reforminess but votes any damn way Cuomo says begin to exercise what he contends to be his conscience? That remains to be seen.

But what should teachers do? This teacher, the one writing this, certainly supports opt-out, and would encourage others to do so too. I think opt-out is the only force that's caused Cuomo to temper his draconian positions, or at least to grant lip service to it. Michael Mulgrew can stand up and take credit for it, but I've heard him at the DA not only declining to support opt-out, but also spreading appeals to fear about the money we'd lose were it to become popular in NYC. He sounds as reformy as anyone when he talks that talk.

Now if I felt it were unethical to encourage opt-out, I wouldn't be writing this. In fact, I think it's imperative that we do this. For one thing, despite Mulgrew patting himself on the back, the "moratorium" is not only temporary, but has little to no effect on a whole lot of teachers. I teach high school, and it has no effect whatsoever on us. Like most opt-out supporters, I have very low expectations for Cuomo's board rewriting standards, and I fully expect to see Common Core with a new name. Mulgrew can talk all he wants about teacher input, but he said the same thing about Common Core before offering to punch us all in the face if we opposed it.

Now I do draw the line somewhere. I would not talk opt-out in my classroom, ever. I don't think it's my place to influence my students directly. I'd have a different approach at a PTA meeting, though. Parents may get their info from the papers, which have a distinct slant. They may get info from principals, who delicately threaten those who don't participate. Or they may have no info whatsoever and not even realize that's an option.

Of course, in high school it's kind of a moot point. My students cannot graduate without passing Regents exams, whether they're Common Core or not. I certainly wish that were an option. I teach ELLs, and the English Regents exam in all its iterations has proven inappropriate for them. I spent several year prepping ELLs for this test. Oddly, I found I was able to get a lot of them to pass, and therefore graduate. But I did this by teaching them how to pass a single test at the exclusion of just about everything else. Kids who passed the Regents that way would be likely to need remedial classes if they entered CUNY, and that could limit their prospects to community colleges. But at least they got out of the place where they were required to learn skills that weren't good for much other than passing a single test.

Opt-out is the heart and soul of education in NY, and we can rejoice that we finally have a prominent voice in a position of power that is not insane. UFT leadership will not stand and oppose junk science testing. UFT leadership will not stand and oppose the worst education law I've seen in my lifetime, and Michael Mulgrew actually thanked the legislature for passing it.

MORE is running an opt-out activist for President of the UFT. MORE is forging alliances with Stronger Together, a huge conglomeration of state locals that were shut out when Mulgrew decided to dump NYSUT leadership. I never understood what union could be until I met Beth Dimino, Brian St. Pierre, and people all over the state who opposed reforminess in all its ugly forms.

We can be a union like that too, if enough of us rise up and overturn the Unity monopoly this May 5th. I'm ready.

Are you?

Democracy--AFT Style

I just read a retweet from Randi Weingarten. It was some teacher in Texas (or somewhere) who voted for Hillary and wrote about how proud she was that her union had endorsed Hillary. Now that's fine. You can be proud of anything or anyone you want, and as long as you don't try to shove it down my throat I won't give you any grief about it.

Here's the thing, though. I represent the largest school in Queens, one of a handful of the largest schools in the largest district in the country. I was not asked who I wanted AFT to represent, and I don't know a single other person who was either. I'm told there was a scientific survey, but I'm not sure exactly what it means. For one thing, I haven't seen a single question on this survey, and for another I have no idea exactly what sort of science we're discussing here. Is it the same kind that rounds out my teacher rating?

And who exactly filled out this scientific survey? Again, not I or anyone I know. In fact, time after time I read survey reports saying teachers support Common Core, or Hillary, and I wonder why the surveys show that teachers support whatever leadership does. Personally, I can't think of a single working teacher who supports Common Core. I know some very smart teachers who've found ways to deal with it and ways to help their students do the same, but I haven't heard a word of enthusiasm about it even from them.

Months ago when AFT began its exhaustive search for whom to endorse, I was invited to be part of a conference call featuring Randi Weingarten. At this call, supposedly, we could push a button or something and get to speak our minds. I couldn't help but notice the first person who spoke was this NYS Unity guy who wrote a column about me. The guy called me a part time union leader and a part time teacher, and said I was obsessive over having lost the NYSUT race for EVP, all of which is ridiculous.

Randi, of course, posted a link to this blog (I won't), and kept it up, saying what I great blog it was. I was kind of surprised at how impressed she was by a combination ad hominem/ strawman personal attack. Nonetheless, when I pointed out to her that the characterization of me as a part time teacher/ part time unionist insulted not only me, but also every working chapter leader in the city she took it down.

Anyway, I decided whatever pearls of wisdom this NYS Unity employee had to offer were probably not worth my time, and turned it off. Of all the hundreds of people on this call, it was absolutely impossible that guy's call happened to be first by coincidence. So in Democracy, AFT style, you get in this long queue, and they call on whoever they're gonna call on.

And then there's the UFT winner-take-all system, which means anyone who disagrees with Punchy Mike Mulgrew gets no voice whatsoever in AFT or NYSUT. It was pretty obvious that AFT was gonna endorse Hillary, just as it was obvious that UFT was gonna endorse that mayoral candidate, what's his name, who told the Daily News the city just couldn't afford to give teachers the raise everyone else got.

We have a shot at changing that this May. It's usually in April, but in a typical quirk of UFT-style democracy, May happens to be when a 3.5% raise kicks in. So May it is. I'm sure that decision was made just as democratically as our decisions to endorse Hillary, to support Common Core, to support junk science ratings, to support mayoral control, and to allow Reformy John King the right to arbitrate our rating system. 

Reformy John King--Hypocrite of the Year

In a headline that appears to belong on The Onion, New York's own Reformy John King is "trying to repair the Obama administration's frayed relationship with teachers." This is kind of incredible. First of all, if President Obama wished to score points with teachers, he would not begin by appointing someone who appears to hate us and everything we stand for. And yes, that would be King.

In New York, King held hearings on Common Core. When he found himself criticized, the King called public school teachers and parents "special interests." He then canceled all subsequent hearings until an outraged public forced him to come out of his office and face the music. King passionately supported the miserable Common Core, and became indignant when New Yorkers asked why he placed his own children in schools that did not use it.

In one of his first major speeches as acting U.S. secretary of education, John King apologized to teachers for the role that the federal government has played in creating a climate in which teachers feel “attacked and unfairly blamed.”

It is borderline surreal to read these words. King himself championed the New York junk science rating system. It never bothered him that value-added teacher rating had no established validity. He totally ignored NY State principals who said that this was the wrong way to go. When the American Statistical Association declared that teachers affected student scores by a factor of 1-14%, King did not raise a whisper of acknowledgement.

Another disappointment is the reaction of NEA President Lily Eskelson Garcia:

“We definitely hear something new coming out of Dr. King,” she said, adding that while his words “mean a lot to us,” teachers are now interested in seeing how he backs up those words with actions.

The fact is she ought to know better. Candidate Barack Obama went to the NEA and promised to do things "with" teachers, not "to" us.  He followed that up by appointing Arne Duncan Secretary of Education, racing to the top, and imposing junk science ratings and Common Core on most of the country via a gun to its head. When Arne said Katrina was the best thing to happen to NOLA education, Obama didn't chastize him at all. When Arne made his idiotic remark about soccer moms' kids not being so smart, based on ridiculous Common Core tests, Obama said nothing.

Making John King Duncan's successor was a slap in the face to working teachers. It's very disappointing neither Eskelson Garcia nor Weingarten would come right out and say so. Of course, they're both busy campaigning for Hillary Clinton, who has promised to close any school that isn't "above average."

King would have us entirely forget his own tenure in New York and make believe we trust him. I certainly hope we aren't stupid enough to fall for that.

If Reforminess Worked, NYC Would Be a Utopia

I read with interest a Daily News editorial rating Bill de Blasio on education. They say the graduation rate is inching up, and paint that as a legacy of Bloomberg. But Bloomberg controlled the city schools for twelve long, long years and despite his uber-reforminess they are not perfect. Of course it's hard to achieve perfection when people are not perfect. Bloomberg was certainly not perfect, or he wouldn't have bought himself a third term. But as a self-serving, self-important megalomaniac with billions of dollars, he had little choice.

The problem is, under Bloomberg and the geniuses who reside in the Ivory Towers of Albany, our students had little choice too. I remember when special education students could take RCT exams instead of Regents exams. I remember when ESL students were exempt from taking an English Regents exam specifically designed for English speakers. In fact, I'm so old that I remember an English Regents exam that expected me not only to have a knowledge of English and American literature, but also to understand English spelling. Spelling is incredibly illogical in English, but fortunately so am I. Personally, I've found the newer versions of the Regents exams to be not only more and more tedious, but also less and less challenging.

The Daily News looks at the graduation rate as something important, and I don't disagree. But now that we fail to differentiate (funny how teachers are expected to differentiate in classes but there's no such thing in assessment), it's tough for a lot of kids to pass required tests. I teach newcomers, and any reasonable educator would give them an alternate mode of graduation. The state's notion that we can replace English instruction with Common Core-laced subject classes via Part 154 is blatantly idiotic, and will result in even fewer ELLs graduating on time. Of course, this is the price you pay for stacking the Regents with people who are utterly ignorant of language acquisition. I'm sure that they don't bother making allowances for other special needs either.

The News, like most Americans, doesn't bother to question the one-size-fits-all reformy agenda. Most politicians are right there agreeing with them. Now here's the thing. There is nothing wrong with our schools. There is nothing wrong with our teachers. Sure, they aren't perfect. But the fact is every so-called failing school, without exception, has a high percentage of high-needs kids. To assume, because these schools get lower test grades, that they are not as good as schools full of affluent students is simply idiotic. And when I read editorials (not the one to which I linked) saying that poor-scoring schools have poor teachers, I'm also amazed. It doesn't take a genius to know that some kids score higher on standardized tests than others, or that income is among the best predictors of who those kids will be.

That, of course, is why the Moskowitz Academies need a "got to go" list. That is why Geoffrey Canada had to dismiss entire cohorts from his charter school. That's why the charters who boast of their 100% college enrollment rates forget to tell us that they've managed to lose 30-60% of the kids with which they started. Where are the ones that left? Surely in the same public schools being vilified for being so miserable.

Here's an idea. Instead of going on about how the schools suck, why don't we do something about the fact that 23% of our children live in poverty? Why don't we raise taxes on folks like Michael Bloomberg and actually help these kids? Because I'll tell you something--when you're hungry, when your house is cold,  when your parents can't afford to take time off from their multiple jobs, when parents have no time for their kids, when you have no health benefits or care, standardized tests become a whole hell of a lot less important.

That's why Bloomberg made no difference (though I don't recall the News or any paper holding him to task over that), and that's why, as long as de Blasio accepts reformy premises, he won't make a whole lot of difference either.

DA Takeway

I don't know what to make of UFT President Michael Mulgrew. A year ago, he was shaking his fist and telling the whole world he was gonna punch it in the face and push it in the dirt if it laid a finger on his precious Common Core. At last week's Delegate Assembly, he seemed to be not only reveling in its impending death, but also taking credit for it. We did this, and we did that, so Cuomo's commission happened.

As usual, I think Mulgrew is passing out the party hats a little prematurely. Like all things reformy, you cut off one head of Common Core and it merely grows another. I'm much more impressed with the Carol Burris version, which lays out what New Yorkers really want:

A whopping 86 percent responded that New York should abandon the Common Core and return to the former New York State standards. The slow plod toward standards review recommended in the report is hardly the “overhaul” that parents will expect.

Burris doesn't precisely envision the withering and dying of Common Core. While Mulgrew boasts that teachers will help develop the next iteration about the standards, he and Weingarten said exactly the same about Common Core. I can't recall how many times I heard leadership defend CCSS as teacher developed, though sources I trust say otherwise. In any case, involvement has multiple facets. When your principal decrees everyone is working nights and weekends for free and that's that, he may consider it consultation. Those who mark papers all night likely view it otherwise.

It is indeed progress that the new ESSA doesn't mandate junk science. But Mulgrew also says that this is a bad time for us to ask for changes on anything, and as far as I can tell, we're still gonna be judged 50% on it. And it's tough for me to forget Mulgrew thanked the Heavy Hearts for enabling this atrocity. Whether it's Common Core junk science or garden variety junk science is not particularly comforting to me.

Leadership likes to cite teachers who'd have been granted bad ratings but were saved by junk science. That's nice, but I am personally acquainted with teachers who'd been granted good ratings but were sunk by junk science. To my mind, advocating junk science at 50% is akin to playing Russian Roulette with three bullets in the chamber. Personally, I can't get all excited simply because we've painted the bullets a marginally more attractive color.

Mulgrew asked a member who inquired about the 50% if she wanted to have principals determine 80% of the rating. The DA booed at that idea, but junk science is just a crapshoot. Spin the wheel and hope for the best. That's not what teachers want. That's what reformies want. Anything that results in fewer unionized teachers is good with them. Who cares if they fire good teachers or bad teachers as long as there are more charter schools with no union at all? Maybe we should dump junk science and simply demand rational administrators across the board. Or is that an impossible demand?

Mulgrew says we shouldn't worry about school closings, that they're basically part of life when not presided over by Michael Bloomberg, but I don't buy that either. I love what I do, but I do not envision a whole lot of principals asking me to do it. If my school were closed, I would very likely be consigned to the ATR pool for the rest of my career. While there may be some who are happy there, I'm not one of them. I love to teach, and I can't for the life of me figure why we gave up seniority transfers for the ATR. TNTP did some ridiculous paper on mutual consent, but basically if you're an ATR you have to go where they send you unless the principal doesn't want you. Mutual consent appears to be whatever the principal damn well pleases.

All in all, last week's DA was pretty uneventful and unsurprising.With Friedrichs hanging over our heads, it's tough to stay calm, as Mulgrew urged. But panicking won't do much good either, so I'm gonna have to agree with him on that, at least.

Mulgrew's Minions: When We Win We Win, When We Lose We Win, and When Nothing Happens We Win

That's the message we get from Michael Mulgrew and his Minions in UFT Unity, and it's pretty consistent. Last Thursday I got an email from Mulgrew. Of course it was a mass email, as he's far too important to bother speaking directly to the likes of me (or you). It said that Cuomo's committee had recommended a multi-year delay in judging teachers by Common Core junk science. That was confusing to me.

After all, hadn't Mulgrew repeatedly told the DA that junk science was great? Under a "growth model" everyone would be happy and life would be a dream. Hadn't he told us that before the advent of junk science supervisors could rate us any damn way they pleased, and that we were basically stuck with whatever they said? Hadn't he touted the value of the wholly untested and unresearched "growth model?" Nonetheless, the committee's opposition to it represented a Great Victory.

Of course, the email neglected to mention what's contained here. Thanks to blogger Sullio for sharing this:

The Education Transformation Act of 2015 will remain in place, and no new legislation is required to implement the recommendations of the report, including recommendations regarding the transition period for consequences for students and teachers. During the transition, the 18 percent of teachers whose performance is measured, in part, by Common Core tests will use different local measures approved by the state, similar to the measures already being used by the majority of teachers.

Reading Mulgrew, you might think there'd be an absence of junk science. You'd think we'd be once again at the mercy of our supervisors. Yet capricious and whimsical though Mulgrew says they are, it would be yet another Great Victory. When they don't have all the power, it's a Great Victory. When they get it back, it's a Great Victory. And even though there have only been recommendations and nothing has actually happened, it's another Great Victory.

But even that may not be a good assumption. If the quote above is accurate, that means the recommendation is simply that we substitute one variety of junk science for another.  The draconian and vindictive 50% test score rating, enshrined in law, still stands, And the fact is it's still only a recommendation, not a fait accompli.

Also unaddressed was  the fact that, under our agreement, any teacher with two ineffectives is still guilty until proven innocent. The DOE no longer needs to bother proving those teacher are incompetent. Rather, those teachers will have to prove they are not incompetent.  Of course, whether or not that happens could very well hinge on the UFT Rat Squad. If they vote thumbs up for the embattled teacher, the DOE will have to prove incompetence, as they did 100% of the time before Mulgrew enabled this system, another Great Victory. And as Mulgrew told us at the DA, the Rat Squad only votes thumbs down 70% of the time. That, of course, is yet another Great Victory.

As you see, no matter what happens, it's a Great Victory for Michael Mulgrew and his army of oath signers. No matter what happens to us, or how we feel, they never lose. The fact that teacher morale is swirling the bowl and has been for almost a decade is neither here nor there. Because as miserable as you may be, as long as Mulgrew's Minions get the word out that everything is fine, there are conventions to attend and cushy union gigs to pick up. And best of all, competence is not a factor at all. All you have to do is show unconditional loyalty, and they don't even care if your school votes you out as chapter leader. Vote as they say and keep your gig.

I really have to wonder how whoever writes Mulgrews emails and op-eds manages to keep spitting that stuff out. Most thinking people would probably choke on it.

The Perils of Merryl

Merryl Tisch is concerned about how things are going, or at least how things appear to be going. To remedy this, Tisch has decided not to change how things are going, but rather how things appear. For one thing, she wants to change the name of Common Core. This is part and parcel of the canard that there's nothing wrong with Common Core, but rather the way in which it was rolled out. This, evidently has given the whole Common Core thing a bad name.

So we can call it the Empire State standards, or the NY State Standards, or Merryl's Perils, or whatever. Then everyone will forget that their kids are spending 12 hours a night studying for developmentally inappropriate tests. The rising tide of opt-out will stop dead in its tracks, because well-informed parents will fail to notice it's the same nonsense with a shiny new bow on top. No one will notice that their kids are spending hours, days and weeks preparing for tests even the governor admits are meaningless (except for rating those darn teachers). Bill Gates has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on these standards, and we can't just leave them lying around on some railroad track.

The other big idea is to allow teachers to appeal their junk science ratings. This way, you see, it will be tougher for teachers to take their cases to court and claim the entire system is nonsensical and incomprehensible. That the entire system happens to be nonsensical and incomprehensible is of no consequence. What's important is, with this regulation, some teachers may have their ratings reversed. NYSUT and UFT leadership have praised this, but as usual they've started the celebration prematurely. However they spin it, all the ratings are baseless. How can Karen Magee or Michael Mulgrew get up and claim victory because every now and then logic may trump junk science? The optimal percentage of junk science in teacher ratings is, and has always benn, precisely zero.

No matter how many times you paint over that garbage can, its contents remain the same. It's really unbelievable how many people are paid to run around and rationalize this nonsense. Maybe they should start a cult or something. They could all gather around a Bill Gates statue and pay tribute.

Maybe they could call it a religion. It kind of fits that an organization dedicated to the privatization of a public good would pay no taxes. Perhaps they're rich enough to pay no taxes already, but why not double down?

It's a WIN-WIN!

ESL--Twice the Work in Half the Time

I'm quite upset about what's happening with my ESL students. They're getting substantially less support and being held to increasingly inappropriate expectations. In fact, I approached UFT leadership about in June and was encouraged that they might do something to help.

We had scheduled a meeting for tomorrow, they sent me several reminders, and I worked my summer plans around it. Yesterday I got an email that it was canceled, with no explanation whatsoever. I had to call the people who'd agreed to come with me and tell them not to bother. (They did not thank me for having invited them.)

(UPDATE--UFT is rescheduling this meeting.) 

So instead of sitting on a beach somewhere, I'm here playing stick with my dog. (That's not so bad. I love my dog.)

A recent piece in Hechinger Report suggests that Common Core, which UFT leadership passionately supports,  is creating double the work for ESL teachers, even as NY State issues draconian cuts in time for kids to learn English. As reported previously in this space, the geniuses who run education in this space have taken one period of English instruction away from high-school level ELLs, to replace it with a content area course taught by either a dual-certified content area teacher or a content teacher working in concert with an ESL teacher.

I don't know whether the teacher interviewed or writer of this piece are familiar with the new regulations. But for us, in fact, the new rules amount to a demand that we somehow make kids acquire language more quickly via wishful thinking. Rather than spend time acclimating teenagers, who naturally acquire language more slowly than their younger counterparts, we're placing them in a content course they'd have taken anyway, and hoping they learn English at the same time. We're essentially demanding that they acquire academic English instantly, via magic for all I know, and offering even less support for a process known to take 5-7 years on this astral plane.

There are several additional flaws in this approach. One is, while it won't hurt to have someone qualified deal with these children, content area courses frequently culminate in the same assessment regardless of whether or not the kids know English. I suspect many principals, freaked out over test scores, will place kids in these classes so they can pass Regents exams. If they don't, of course, it will be some defect in the teachers, rather than the simple and indisputable fact that the kids don't know English.

Of course, the geniuses who administer NYC education think ESL only exists so that kids can do better in content area courses. Things like, you know, living their lives, communicating with others, vastly enriching their educational and vocational opportunities, ordering lunch, or meeting friends, lovers, husbands or wives are of no relevance whatsoever. The priority is getting a 65 on that Global Regents.

And yet the current plan won't much help even with that very low standard. It's interesting to read the story about Port Chester, where it appears all of their ESL students speak Spanish. You can do things with a monolingual population you can't do with a population hailing from all parts of the world. I'm not exactly sure what they are because, over decades of teaching newcomers, the most I've ever had an ESL class that spoke only one language has been never.

Yet there are some good ideas here. A bilingual class (which the article does not much differentiate from an ESL class) would be a much better place to teach content area. Alas, bilingual classes I've seen have frequently been taught largely in foreign languages, neglecting  English quite a bit. This is not what bilingual classes are supposed to be, but even in those cases it would be easier to teach science, social studies, or indeed anything. It would also be easier to assess reading and writing skills or lack thereof. While I teach newcomers reading and writing, I do so gradually. Handing them a two-inch thick textbook and demanding a 5 page paper day one would be nothing less than insane.

While the bilingual teacher in the article adores the standards, I'm afraid I do not, and parents across the state agree with me. That's why 20% of NY States students opted out of the tests, a 300% increase from last year. Parents are weary of having their children discouraged, with hours of incomprehensible homework and developmentally inappropriate assignments. I agree with some of what she says:

“But, if the test is assessing their ability to read and respond to literature, make inferences and think critically — how can they prove proficiency if they are in the beginning stages of English? How do we capture what they know, and what they’re capable of and how far they’ve come?”

We can't, and that would apply whether or not we had Common Core. One thing kids need, regardless, is to learn English. And for that, no matter what our goals, the new state rules are absolutely nuts. The notion that kids need less time to learn a language in addition to all the Common Core stuff we're thrusting upon them has no basic in research, logic or common sense. You don't need to study language acquisition to know that it takes time to learn one. If you don't believe me, go find a writing test in a language you don't understand and try to get through it.

Better yet, why don't we send MaryEllen Elia on a fact-finding trip to Shanghai. She can sit with the students as they take their tests, try to pass them, and we'll judge her just as we do our students. If she doesn't pass with flying colors, we'll conclude that the Shanghai schools and teachers are failing.

Because absurd as that sounds, those are precisely the expectations she has for my kids.