95% Satisfaction With NYC Schools

That's what the survey says this year. Given that, are the editorial pages going to be full of praise for the work we do? Shouldn't the News, the Post, and the Times be doing cartwheels and telling the mayor to give us a substantial raise for our great work under often harrowing circumstances? Will they finally say, hey, let's revise the evaluation system so that it's something to support good teaching, as opposed to sneak attacks by Boy Wonder supervisors who couldn't teach their way out of paper bags?

Personally, I won't be holding my breath to read that. I know, though, that 55% of teachers approving of Carmen Fariña is extraordinarily high. You know what that says to me? It says that we are far more generous of spirit and understanding than those who make careers out of judging us. Sadly, I can't include myself among all those high-minded educators. I thought Fariña did an awful job, I said so on the survey, and it's nowhere more evident than in her declaration a raging blizzard was a beautiful day because Macy's was open.

Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of parents are satisfied with city schools. What can we conclude from that? For me, it's obvious. If parents are satisfied with public schools, it's time to celebrate and embrace them. It's also time to stop frittering away precious resources on reformy nonsense.

Exhibit A is Moskowitz and her plainly failed mission. The overwhelming majority of those who start with her finish with us. That's because we simply take everyone. We don't make ridiculous demands of children and their parents. We don't make parents come and work in our schools because we know they have to work elsewhere to make ends meet. We don't make children do test prep until they pee their pants, and we don't ridicule them if they need more time. We don't make "got to go" lists and we don't humiliate students by hanging up their names for progress or lack thereof. In fact, we don't even take our students on buses to Albany on school days to lobby for our self-serving interests.

And then we come to bullying. I haven't got a simple solution to that. Kids can be cruel. I will say, though, that charter schools ought not to practice bullying.  It certainly appears Moskowitz Academies do. Charter schools ought to follow chancellor's regulations. Not allowing a child to visit a bathroom ought to be considered abuse. We need not encourage that, even in the name of "no excuses."

In fact, charter schools ought not to exist at all. New Yorkers voted in Bill de Blasio overwhelmingly, and he ran on a platform of opposition to charters. Governor Andrew Cuomo, after having taken who knows how many suitcases full of cash from Eva's hedge fund BFFs, decided that was unacceptable. Cuomo hated Bloomberg for being the reformiest guy in the state, and here was his chance to claim the mantle, along with whatever financial rewards it brought. So Cuomo and the Heavy Hearted Assembly passed a bill that NYC would have to pay rent for charters it disapproved.

This week, however, Cuomo is posing as Bernie Sanders Lite. He's now the bestest friend labor unions ever had. Given that, maybe it's time for him to renounce Moskowitz and her rich pals. After all, it's becoming pretty trendy to reject tainted money. Zephyr Teachout may well take the Attorney General nomination, solely with contributions from people like you and me. Who knows? Maybe Cuomo's finger, perpetually up in the air to see which way the wind is blowing, will direct him to represent, you know, people instead of money.

It's pretty clear, though, that if 95% of parents are happy with their schools, it's time to stop bashing working teachers. We must be doing something right. Maybe it's time for the editorial pages to slow down all that bluster about how incompetent we are and how much we suck. Maybe it's time to allow educators to make decisions about education. Maybe it's time to step back and trust us a little bit.

That is, unless editorial writers have some interest in an agenda that does not actually reflect the beliefs and interests of the public. That couldn't be, could it?

Time will tell.

Carmen Kills Annualization

What's that, you ask? Annualization is the process, in high schools at least, of changing January grades to reflect June grades. We have two semesters, and students get one credit for each. In our school, if you give a grade of 55 in January, and a passing grade in June, the January grade converts to 65. The student gets credit for the entire year. I'm sure we're not the only school that does that.

This year, Carmen "It's a Beautiful Day" Fariña decided that this was no good and had to go. How horrible to grant a full year of credit to high school students simply because they were passing the class at the end of the year. It's an abomination, evidently. So next year we can't do that anymore.

I don't really know how this affects every discipline. For mine, if a student is proficient in June with the English level I taught, that student ought to get the full credit for the year. If that student can write, read, speak and understand at the same level as the other students, why not? I guess it could be different in an ELA class. I mean, what if the student had read Catcher in the Rye but not Ethan Frome? (I've read both and I'd have been happier to have read neither, so perhaps I'm a bad example.)

Maybe it's not fair to the students who do well in the beginning but screw up in the end. Or maybe it encourages students to ignore the first half and aim for the second. To me, we were doing the right thing. I mean, we always read about how this percentage of kids is ready for that, or how that percentage of kids is ready for this. And always, whatever percentage is ready for whatever, we're at fault because it should have been higher. Or lower. Or different.

But hey, I'm the teacher, and my judgment ought to count for something. Under this system, if I give a kid a 55, I'm saying I think the kid can pass for the year. I'm not issuing a guarantee, but I'm telling the world that it's possible. In fact, I might even tell the kid that. Don't they want us to encourage kids to improve? Isn't that kind of our job?

This is a lot different from sitting the kid in front of a computer and having his smart girlfriend answer a bunch of questions so he can get credit. This is the teacher saying, in January, I think this kid might pull it out in June. And if the teacher doesn't believe that, the kid gets a 50, fails, and that's it. Of course I'm not Carmen Fariña. I haven't got the ability to determine it's a beautiful day simply because Macy's is open. I require further evidence, like, say, the weather report, or the capacity to drive home in fewer than four hours. But I digress.

There has been a lot of nonsense put in place to help students get credit. Ridiculous "blended learning," which entails having kids sit on computers rather than interact with humans or books, has been used to give students credit for, of all things, physical education. I'm not exactly sure how reading passages about basketball and answering a few questions is a substitute for playing basketball, but of course I'm not one of the great minds behind blended learning either.

Of course, neither am I a policy maker. I'm just a guy who spends each and every day in the classroom trying to teach. Oddly, I think that makes me the number one most qualified person to decide whether or not my students deserve credit for my course. I'm the one who issues assignments, I'm the one who assesses them, and I'm the one who observes student performance each and every day I go to work.

But Carmen Fariña, who sat in an office deciding just how beautiful the days were, was the Schools Chancellor. Who the hell am I to assess the students they hired me to assess when she has a better idea? So starting next year, your students and mine who've mastered the material we've taught will need to go to summer school, night school, or some credit recovery nonsense in order to graduate.

And make no mistake--because the city has limited the number of credit recovery courses students can take, fewer will graduate on time. Do you think anyone will blame Carmen Fariña or the incoming mariachi chancellor? Neither do it.

As always, working teachers will be stereotyped as having failed children. It's ironic, because a whole lot of us would be fine with simply passing those who've mastered the material. But why ask teachers what they want when there are so many people sitting around air-conditioned offices who are paid many times our salaries and are 100% certain they know better?

Adios, Carmen Fariña, and thanks a lot for saddling us with this legacy.

Walking Around With a Gun to Your Head

That's how I'd feel if I were working in one of the so-called renewal schools. You have to graduate this many more students by such and such a date. Failure is not an option. Okay, it is an option, but if you exercise it, it's not because the students are impoverished. It's not because they lack homes. It's not because they haven't got health care or food. It's not because they have special needs. It's not because they don't actually speak English. It's not because of the lack of vision of the DOE, which is ready and willing to dump the entire staff.

After all, that proves they are willing to step up. It isn't like they are unwilling to blame the people who go to work every day in these beleaguered institutions. No, they stand right up and say, "You all suck and we aren't afraid to admit it." Then they close the schools and make everyone reapply for their jobs before they sit their asses right back in ergonomic chairs in their air-conditioned offices. Doubtless they discuss their boldness in dealing with the issues at gala luncheons all over the city.

No, the only reason that the school could possibly have a low graduation rate is because, as the mayor and chancellor boldly proclaim, that the UFT members all suck. And again, the DOE, right up to the tippety top are not afraid to stand up and say, "This situation is because you all suck." Otherwise, why would the remedy be having them all reapply for their jobs? That's the underlying logic behind this. Certainly none of the factors I mentioned are addressed in the reshuffling of staff. The only genuine mitigating factor I see in this preposterous exercise is that UFT members have the option of not reapplying, and stepping off of the blame game train.

I applaud this bold approach. It's fantastic that the city is unafraid to step up and blame someone else for everything that goes wrong. There's nothing more American than standing up and declaring, "This is your fault." I have to say, though, that it kind of clashes with the vision Mayor de Blasio laid out when he first ran. I remember the tale of two cities, one inhabited by wealthy demagogues like Michael Bloomberg, and another for, you know, regular people struggling to get by.

This was evident nowhere more than in the wholesale closure of public schools undertaken by the Bloomberg administration. Every high school in the Bronx was terrible, evidently, and needed to be renamed and restaffed. The issue was not that test scores predicted nothing but zip code, even though they did. No, the only reason that a Bronx high school didn't perform as well as Great Neck was not affluence or lack thereof. It was that the teachers sucked and all needed to be made ATRs.

Interestingly, one of the schools in the article is called Automotive High School. I wonder whether they still teach about autos in that school. They used to teach about them in my school, and in the last school I was in. They don't anymore. You see, the goal of high school is to place every student without exception into college. That's because there is no value in trades that don't require college. There's no value in auto repair, or plumbing, or construction, or being an electrician.

The fact that we offer none of our students preparation for trades that don't require higher education is another non-factor in why students don't graduate. It doesn't matter that a whole lot of people in these trades make excellent livings, and it doesn't matter that people attracted to such professions may not excel in the classes the geniuses in Albany have decided everyone has to take.

No, the mayor, the chancellor, and every single apparatchik at the DOE has determined that the only factor that needs addressing is the relative suckiness of UFT members. By shuffling us around like cogs, they will solve each and every outside factor without addressing a single one. Clearly I lack this overarching vision.

That's why I'll never make it as a DOE administrator.

Another Day, Another UFT Member Takes the Fall for a Principal

That's what this story in yesterday's Post suggests. This time it's not a teacher but rather a guidance counselor. After all, we're all UFT members, so why not share the fun?

Now that's not to say that there are no consequences for principals. Principal Santiago Taveras was found to have changed grades and course codes for a bunch of students. You see, for Taveras, it was a matter of honor. He boldly stepped down from his cushy deputy chancellor gig to take that principal job and show the world that Bloomberg's former flunkies could do anything. When screaming and shouting didn't get the test grades he needed, well, he had to do something.

As for consequences, well of course there are consequences. When real things happen, when they are proven, principals in NYC have to face consequences. For Taveras, it meant yet another demotion. Not only that, but his $198K salary was reduced to $150K. That's some tough love from no-nonsense Chancellor Carmen "It's a Beautiful Day" Fariña. I mean, how's an important guy like Taveras supposed to get by on only 150K a year? He must think about that each and every moment in his new gig as "educational administrator" doing Whatever the Hell That Is.

As for guidance counselors, well, they don't get treated any better than teachers. This one was fined $7,500,  and I presume made an ATR. After all, you can't have counselors who change grades to make things look better. That would be a disgrace. Actually, though, the counselor says she didn't do it. The counselor says she declined to make the change on the last day of school. Not only that, but check this out:

Taveras’ signature — not Hunter’s — was on a grade-change form, 55 to 65, and there was no paper trail on another change from “no show” to 55, according to testimony. Without paperwork, only a principal can change a grade and enter it into the system, a veteran clerk explained.

Well, that's one guilty guidance counselor. At least that's what another $1600 a day arbitrator decided. Never mind the clear evidence she didn't even do it. And what about the fact that Taveras had already been found guilty of this very behavior? What about the fact that he'd been removed from his job for it?

The arbitrator, in his infinite and well-compensated wisdom, deemed that irrelevant. The important thing was--well I have no idea what the important thing was. I have no idea why this counselor was made to pay $7500, or what she did wrong. My best guess is insubordination. When your principal says to cheat, well, you'd better get to cheating. Otherwise, be prepared to wander from school to school.

And you'd better hope the DOE hasn't got another top-secret file on you, that you used your cell phone in the school building, or that you turned off the lights when you showed a video. Those are career-ending offenses these days. Anyway, who knows what else this counselor may have done? Maybe she took 46 minutes for lunch instead of 45. Maybe she chewed gum in the school building. Maybe she didn't use enough soap when she washed her hands. It could be anything, really.

I guess this is yet another story Campbell Brown won't be spreading all over the media. After all, now she's got a gig for Facebook doing something or other. I mean, she's qualified. She has a Face, and for all I know she's read a Book. Given a story like this, on the heels of a similar one just days ago, it appears to me that due process is a thing we can not be negotiating or legislating away.

Now I don't know everything about these cases. But I've got firsthand experience with arbitrators make questionable decisions. It appears to me, far from going out of their way to defend incompetent UFT members, they seem to be accommodating the wishes of crooked administrators to blame us.

Maybe UFT members aren't the only ones in need of PD.

Thanks to Bronx ATR

Rubric's Cube, or How Uniform Grading Policies Saved Western Civilization

Rubrics are perfect, or so you'd think if you heard the nonsense I do at meetings. And teachers have now lost quite a bit of discretion over how students are graded in city schools. There was a memo that went out from the chancellor, there was a meeting of the principals, and evidently this memo is tantamount to the Ten Commandments. Thou Shalt Tell Students Exactly What Basis Marking Has. Thou Shalt Not Have More than 49% in Subjective Measures.

I've always taken a holistic view of grading. Even as we entered an electronic age of grading, I was able to adjust percentages by counting some things more than others. For example, I am not unaware there is a whole lot of copying of homework. By assigning short answer homework a weight of 1, and written homework a weight of 2 or 3, I've been able to compensate a little for that. I also didn't think it was that bad that kids could earn high grades for simple completion. After all, if they failed tests and failed to participate, they simply didn't pass the class anyway.

My layout for grades has been 50% tests and quizzes, 25% participation, and 25% homework. I gave participation grades each semester. This has now been expressly prohibited by the geniuses at Tweed, who of course know better than those of us who fritter away our time actually teaching New York City's 1.1 million schoolchildren. So I will now have to give these grades more frequently and maybe write a rubric expressly explaining what it is for. This will result in more work for me and exactly the same grades. And frankly, short of posting Bill Gates-style perpetual video surveillance in the classroom, there will be no way to ascertain whether or not I am just making stuff up. (You know, like there's no way to determine whether or not supervisors make stuff up about the Danielson rubric.)

Our new department policy, if I recall correctly, is 50% tests, 10% quizzes, 20% participation and classwork, 15% graded homework, and 5% non-graded homework. This will help me not at all. This will help my students not at all. However, it will put uppity teachers like me in our place. How dare we presume to assess our students ourselves? Discretion is for professionals like Carmen Fariña, who made a brilliant success our of her school by hand picking all the students in a process nearly selective as that of Harvard. Me, I teach whoever they put in front of me. I try to do the best I can by them, my system worked fine, and now it's complicated for no good reason.

Why can't I make tests and quizzes one category and simply give tests more weight than quizzes? What if I think frequent quizzes are more important than tests and give me a better picture of where my kids are at any given point? Do I now need to test more frequently? And how can I do that when the school now says I can only test on certain days every week? And since supervisors are always quacking about formative assessment, why do tests now need to count for 60%? Isn't language, which I teach, largely about oral communication? Aren't there abundant tests in my students' home countries, don't they pass them and yet arrive here with little or no ability to communicate in English? Doesn't that argue that a test-based standard is not optimal? Do you judge the English ability of people you meet by how well they score on tests?

And let's go a little further into the woods now--do you think that I teach the same as everyone else? Do you want me to? If so, why not just stick a computer in front of the class? If not, why on earth would you think that assessing students subject to my voice is exactly the same as assessing students subject to another? Is it possible that I might, perish forbid, take the tack that actual day to day communication and survival are more important than how you do on the preposterous NYSESLAT exam about Hammurabi's Code? And if I actually do go the Hammurabi's Code route, how can you make sure the tests, quizzes, and whatever I give will make my students really know Hammurabi's Code?

Another argument I've heard is that teachers keep poor records and therefore need a tight rein so as to correct that. Let me tell you something--people who keep poor records do not need a more complicated and/ or convoluted grading system. If people keep poor records, under this system their records will get even worse. My nature is a little sloppy, but I've had college professors who sat on tests for 6-8 weeks, and then tested us on things without letting us know whether we understood the basis for them. I hated those teachers. For that reason, and also to cover my proverbial keester, I overcompensate. If I give a test, it's like a hot potato. I have to get it graded immediately, no matter what, and I almost always get it back to students the next day. I know if I don't do that they'll probably never be returned at all.

It's too bad that teacher discretion is given such short shrift. I very much believe teacher voice is a thing like writer voice, and that it varies teacher to teacher. Do some teachers work better for some kids than others? Yes, of course. But doesn't it benefit kids to learn how to deal with a variety of influences, even some they don't necessarily like?

Why does everything and everyone have to be exactly the same? How on earth does that help anyone, particularly in these times of "alternative truth?"

NYC Schools Reduced to Begging for Air Conditioning

It's 2017, in case it's escaped your attention, and city schools are still not universally air-conditioned. My building is better than most, in that it's largely air conditioned, but as anyone who works in a city school can attest, things break, and they aren't always fixed instantly. Last year the AC in my classroom dropped dead sometime late spring, and I remember a particularly miserable day that I was observed. I didn't fare all that badly, but I'm absolutely certain the lesson would've gone badly if the kids and I were not so miserable in the heat.

And it's not really about being observed or not. NYC has made big noises about being putting, "Children First, Always." The fact is you don't do that by placing kids in miserable learning conditions. When I lived in a non-air conditioned apartment I remember retreating to the library to do work, simply because it had AC. In fact, when Chancellor Carmen Fariña wanted to rationalize keeping schools open during a massive snowstorm, she cited the fact that Macy's was open. Well, if we're gonna go by what Macy's does, it probably isn't working out that well, since they just closed 68 stores and fired 10,000 people. Aside from that, there's no way Macy's would open on a summer day without AC.

The principal of Fashion High School is now running a GoFundMe campaign to get air conditioners for his school. I have to applaud his efforts. He's really showing concern for not only the kids he represents, but also his staff. There's no way that kids can learn efficiently, or teachers can teach efficiently when it's 98 degrees in the classroom. There are only so many articles of clothing you can take off, roll up or loosen, and then you're pretty much stuck wishing you were anywhere but here. How you are "highly effective" under those conditions is a mystery to me.

But as laudable as the principal's efforts are, if I were Carmen Fariña, I'd be utterly humiliated. This principal's efforts are her failure. Fariña can talk until she's blue in the face about how much she cares about schoolchildren, but leaving something like this out there in the public eye is a huge embarrassment. It would be for me, anyway. I mean, it's very nice that she takes a group of seven or eight kids to a museum somewhere and discusses fine art with them. I'd be delighted to do that. Of course, it's not quite as easy for a lowly teacher like me to get away with a small group to a place like that. To portray that as typical in NYC is absurd.

More likely you're in some sweltering classroom with 34 kids, trying desperately to keep them alert and stay alert yourself. In fact, that's where I found myself this September, except I had 40 kids rather than 34. Our AC was replaced, in fact, and our class was reduced to contractual limits, but there are still 42 oversized classes in my school, at last count, and new kids are coming in each and every day.

It's nice that Fariña can bring a few kids to a museum. That's great for those kids. But in terms of big picture, NYC still has the largest class sizes in the state of New York, and they haven't been changed in fifty years. Also, just about everyplace is air-conditioned now except New York City schools. Principals ought not to have to take to funding campaigns for basic necessities, and if anyone at Tweed thinks this represents putting children first, second, or anyplace but last, they need to have their heads examined, and not by a DOE doctor either.

Thanks to Mike Schirtzer

No Direct Political Talk in Classrooms, Says the Chancellor

I really struggled with the results of Tuesday's election. I'm in shock, actually. Robert de Niro says he feels as he did after 9/11, and so do I.

On Wednesday, I didn't know what to do. I simply gave the class I planned to give. I couldn't think about it. In fact, I didn't even think about the DA I'd planned to go to. I understand even Mulgrew was unable to go through with his usual filibuster and actually allowed people to express themselves.

In my car, going home, I cried. How can my country make a choice like this one? How can we spit in the faces of the children I serve? How can we tell working people they can just go to hell? How can we elect a repulsive purveyor of snake oil to the highest office in the land?

And yet we did.

Shaun King posted the graphic at left on Twitter. He said it came from a Chicago school somewhere. I fell in love with it. Some time on Wednesday, I asked that my school reproduce it so I could hang it my classroom. That request was denied on the basis that it was too direct a repudiation of President-elect Donald Trump.

On Thursday, I put it on a flash drive and displayed it on the LED screen in front of my room. I read it to my students. I told them no one in my classroom was a threat to them. I told them they were in a safe place. I read each of the little notes and told them no one would contradict anything they said. I never mentioned Donald Trump, but my students did, repeatedly, and they knew exactly why I was saying this.

Chancellor Fariña declared there would be no overt political talk in class. To a degree, I understand that. It's not my place to tell kids who I voted for. It's not my place to tell them who to vote for either. I would never do such a thing. But I knew they would ask me anyway.

Nonetheless, on Monday, I wore a tie a little bit like the one on the right. You wouldn't notice what was on it unless you looked closely. When the kids asked me who I was voting for, I showed them the tie. I told them that a donkey represented Democrats, and an elephant represented Republicans. They didn't know that. They looked at my tie and said, "Oh, you're voting for Hillary." I was glad they asked, because I needed them to know I would not vote for someone who hated them and everything they stood for, to wit, the American dream.

I also needed them to know that I stood against all the bigoted and xenophobic statements our President-elect made. I'm sorry, Chancellor Fariña, but I'm a teacher, and unlike Donald Trump, I stand for basic decency. My classroom rule, really my only one, is, "We will treat one another with respect."

Donald Trump failed to treat a wide swath of people with respect. He's a hateful, vicious bully. There are all sorts of anti-bullying campaigns that go in in city schools, and I fail to see why Donald Trump should get a pass simply for having lied his way to the Presidency. So I specifically repudiated a whole group of his insidious statements. I also added LGBT to my group, and told my kids that we would not tolerate slurs to gay people in my classroom. Even my kids seem to expect a pass on that. They won't get one.

For tonight, I've asked that the UFT Executive Board either make a poster like the one above left, or give me the means to project it from my flash drive. I'm going to ask that UFT do a campaign of tolerance that specifically rejects the vicious and disgusting statements of our President-elect. I'm going to ask that UFT campaign for respect for all, specifically in response to Trump's bigoted and hateful appeals otherwise.

And Chancellor, Fariña, if you don't like what I did in my classroom, I invite you to place a letter in my file. It will be a virtual badge of honor. I'll frame it and treasure it always.

Who to Blame for the Miserable Pattern Bargain?

In the Daily News there's been a series of union leaders speaking out on whether or not Bill de Blasio deserves re-election. My friends at ICE-UFT blog chimed in and said the mayor doesn't deserve unconditional support. I'd argue that no politician alive deserves unconditional support. I was a great fan of Bernie Sanders, but even he was relatively blind to education issues.

Now the last pattern was 10% over 7 years. James Eterno, who writes most of the ICE blog, told UFT President Michael Mulgrew that was the lowest pattern ever. Mulgrew, even in the best traditions of civilized discourse, called him a liar and turned off his microphone. Yet I cannot recall a worse pattern in our history, and I've been around over 30 years.

I'd argue that it's de Blasio's job to lowball us, and that it's Mulgrew's job to counter with something more reasonable. But here's the thing--the UFT had utterly missed out on the last round of bargaining, and had missed the two-year 8% deal Bloomberg had granted to NYPD, FDNY, and most other city unions. So rather than the miserable 10% over 7 years, Mulgrew could present a fair-to-middling 18% over 9 years. It sounded just mediocre if you ignored the pattern he was imposing on everyone else.

It was not Bill de Blasio, but rather Michael Mulgrew who sold this thing to us. There were various sales pitches. One was that retro pay is not a God-given right. That, of course, is the sort of argument we should have heard from management rather than our own leadership. Mulgrew's job, I'd say, would be to argue precisely the opposite. Another was that if we didn't take this deal, we'd have to get behind 151 other unions and wait. That was a particularly weak argument, given that we're waiting until 2020 to get paid anyway.

In fact, that argument is even weaker when you consider how low the pattern was that Mulgrew negotiated. I remember being angry with DC37 for accepting the double zero contract that UFT had rejected. In fact, it turned out that they'd cooked the books to get that thing to pass, and some of their leaders actually went to jail over it. This notwithstanding, that pattern was better than this one. So we may as well have gotten in back of the line, because it's hard to imagine anyone doing worse.

Mulgrew also told us the cupboard was bare, which it turned out not to be. That, also, ought to have been an argument from the city rather than from union leadership. In fact there seems to be a pattern of the cupboard being bare around negotiation time and then the mayor finds a billion dollars lying around the Gracie Mansion couch cushions. We merit not even a simple "oopzie" when that happens.

Of course this is an adversarial process. It certainly appears that we, the UFT, and we, organized labor lost this round. I'm surprised the NY Post, instead of criticizing de Blasio for being a socialist hippie weirdo, doesn't erect a statue declaring him to be the savior of public funds against us, the evil unions.

If you want to criticize de Blasio for something, try the tone of Tweed, unchanged utterly from that of Bloomberg. Try criticizing the fact that there are a whole lot of holdovers from Bloomberg's miserable, anti-teacher, anti-union administration. Criticize the choice of an old Bloomberg employee for chancellor.

But if you want to blame someone for the contract, it's not Bill de Blasio. In fact, it's not Michael Mulgrew either. That rests squarely on our shoulders. We voted for it, three to one. We chose to believe the threats. We chose to ignore the fact that the only time we rejected a contract, we managed to improve it, allowing teachers to reach maximum pay three years earlier, even though leadership said anyone who thought they could do better must be "smoking something."

The fact is we made our bed, so we can't blame Bill de Blasio for failing to drop a mint on our pillow.

110 in the Shade (and in the City Classroom, Too)

Yesterday I played fiddle at Terrhune Orchards in Princeton, New Jersey. On guitar was Bob Harris, who spent years playing with late and legendary fiddler Vassar Clements. He told us stories of playing with Vassar in Houston on 110 degree days. He spoke of how Vassar, who used to think Nashville had the worst weather, changed his mind in Houston. We were lucky yesterday. For one thing, it was October. That helped a lot.

Now my heart goes out to musicians playing in hot weather. It's uncomfortable, and miserable, and it's hard for me to understand why even fans want to be out there watching music they love. But you have to respect people who brave miserable conditions to do their jobs. And I suppose a lot of you see where I'm going by now.

At my school, a lot of rooms are air-conditioned. That puts us in a better place than a lot of other schools, which simply are not. (Some administrations will say they just can't, that the electricity is limited, until Moskowitz comes in and air-conditions an entire floor.) The Department of Education, in its infinite wisdom, places no upper temperature limit on classrooms. So when my members email me about the miserable conditions they're suffering, my best bet is to ask them if they've got some medical condition that precludes their being in such a place. Can you get a doctor's note? Because then you're protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. And while pregnancy is not a disability, if your pregnancy causes some condition that makes it inadvisable to sit in a pressure cooker, you can find alternate placement.

I was in trailers for maybe 12 years. I feel like they're part of me. I strongly advise you not to trust anyone who tells you that tin is a good insulator. They are miserable when the AC is out. You really cannot be expected to accomplish anything in a tin box on a 90-degree day with no AC. To its credit, my administration will let you leave the trailer when it's particularly miserable, with no AC, no heat, a sheet of ice on the floor, a sheet of ice on the path to enter, or a flood outside. I'm confident other administrations can't be bothered with such trivialities.

In fact, newer DOE buildings are completely air-conditioned. That's a great idea, particularly because these new buildings haven't got windows you can actually open. Of course, sometimes the AC goes out in these buildings, and when it does the DOE just keeps them open anyway. After all, when the snow comes up to our noses, Carmen Fariña declares, "It's a beautiful day," and says that because Macy's is open, we should be too. What Fariña fails to consider, though, is that Macy's AC is maintained so that it does NOT go out on hot days. No one is going to walk into a miserably hot store to buy anything. And I'll bet you dimes to dollars that Fariña's office is air-conditioned, even as tens of thousands of city kids swelter in miserable classrooms.

This year, I'm in a computer room. It's a large room, with space enough that we can run a class, and the computers are along the perimeter. In fact, the room is so large that it has not one, but two air-conditioners. One has been broken since day one, and with our southern exposure, the room has been miserably hot most of the term. It's particularly awful in the afternoon. I think last Friday was remarkable for not being as uncomfortable as the rest of the year. I'm told the school has ordered a new AC for that room but that it hasn't come in yet.

I really looked for ways I could file an effective grievance. Thankfully, neither I nor my co-teacher suffer from any respiratory ailment. I thought perhaps there were regs for computers. I know that AC has been an addition to computer rooms for decades, even as we humans were told to sit and suffer. I can remember many times I've opted to go to computer rooms or language labs simply because I knew they were air-conditioned. I thought perhaps I could find some regulation in place to protect the computers but alas, I've come up empty so far.

Listen, if they're gonna judge us on student engagement, they ought not to place us in rooms where the natural inclination of sentient beings is to lie down and sleep until the heat passes. And if that argument isn't enough--how about this one? It's 2016. The city is obsessed with making students college and career-ready, and colleges and careers are now air-conditioned. That's a fact, Jack, and we're not preparing our students well by making them suffer in sub-standard conditions.

We, the United Federation of Teachers, opted to wait until 2020 to get paid for what our brother and sister unionists got back in 2009. Consequently, the city is sitting on a ton of cash we lent them interest-free. Why the hell not invest in making learning conditions not miserable for one-million kids?

How about that, Chancellor Fariña? What's more basic than that?

Stupid Stupid Stupid

This week I’ve been examining the new DOE grading protocols, which insist everything be fair and transparent. I’ve written about their notions about homework, which I deemed borderline clueless, but I’m learning even more about them.

In our school, we are semi-annualized. This means that most classes last a year, though they get one credit for each half. We have an understanding that if a student gets a 55 in January, it will be reversed if the teacher grants a 65 at year’s end. This, since it’s understood by staff, makes sense to me. But it doesn’t make sense to the geniuses at Tweed. You see, the average of 55 and 65 is 60, and if things aren’t properly averaged, it’s likely the world will stop turning. We can’t have that, can we?

So teacher discretion is a thing of the past because it’s all about the numbers. To me, that’s ironic because our esteemed chancellor made her bones by running a school. She was legendary. She turned the whole thing around. And she did so by turning down 6 out of 7 applicants, according to the New York Times. If that’s not juking the stats I don’t know what is.

In any case, God forbid some kid should rehabilitate herself, start attending, and actually learn what I have to teach. If her average does not rise to 65, screw her. Let her take the whole course over for no reason because fairness. After all, there should be no discretion whatsoever on the part of the teacher to help a child. Who the hell do these teachers think they are anyway? Why on earth should their individual subjective judgment or desire to help a child trump an average?

It’s funny how people in NYSED and the DOE who regularly mess with figures have no trust whatsoever for working teachers. People who aren’t trustworthy, for some reason. seem to assume other people aren’t trustworthy either. Now I have my bad qualities, and I could line up a lot of people who would characterize me as a pain in the ass, but my word is my bond.

Nonetheless, that’s not actually the stupidest thing I’ve seen this week. While I’d actually planned on saying it was, something happened this morning that made me reconsider. This morning, after a test, a girl in my class almost passed out. I called for a wheelchair. I was told that there was a directive that they not be used. It seems people have not been sufficiently trained in their usage and maintenance, and are therefore not only unqualified, but also liable in the case of anything untoward occurring.

I’m supposing that someone got hurt while using a wheelchair somewhere. What the geniuses at Tweed fail to consider is the number of people who will be hurt by not using wheelchairs. It must be good to sit around an office all day, come up with stupid ideas, force schools to use them, and blame the people who actually teach children for everything and anything that goes wrong.

Sure beats working.

Correction--Actually the document gives as an example that a student with a minimum grade of 75 in June will have her  January grade adjusted to 75 as well. I'm not sure this is minimum policy. 

Abstract Portrait of a Chancellor

There's an interesting piece in Newsweek today. It's written by Alexandar Nazaryan, and ostensibly about NYC Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña. Full disclosure--I have a little experience with Mr. Nazaryan. He edited an op-ed I placed in the Daily News when he worked there, and it was a bit contentious. I can be picky about my writing, as anyone with whom I've worked will attest. Nonetheless, we treated one another respectfully. There was no personal animosity when we finished working together, at least none on my part or that I'd heard about.

That's why I was pretty surprised when, on Twitter, for no reason I could determine, Nazaryan accused me of being a UFT mouthpiece:

@TeacherArthurG @KatieOsgood_ @leoniehaimson @DianeRavitch Last I remember, Arthur, you were shilling shamelessly for UFT. That still so?

— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) May 3, 2014

That's ironic, because I'm wholly confident UFT President Michael Mulgrew, among many others, would spring to my defense and tell the world I have been doing no such thing. As if that weren't enough, after my response to that absurd statement, Nazraryan saw fit to attack me personally:

@TeacherArthurG People like you are the reason teaching isn't respected more.

— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) May 3, 2014

Now that's not simply a personal attack. It also utilizes what you call a stereotype. You see, whatever I do, or have done, or whatever Nazraryan perceives me to have done, is then attributed to all teachers. We are, therefore, in his view, disrespected. This is the same sort of thinking bigots of all stripes use to insult people of a given religion, race, nationality, or ethnicity. So yes, I absolutely believe the writer is prejudiced against us, and we therefore need to question his assumptions very carefully.

De Blasio, after all, is a self-styled progressive who promised “transcendent” change, surrounding himself with youthful advisers minted in the Barack Obama mold. Fariña, meanwhile, was coaxed out of retirement.

Now it's entirely possible that Nazaryan simply forgot, while writing that particular sentence, that Fariña had worked for Bloomberg. And it's entirely possible that Nazaryan doesn't know that a whole lot of Bloomberg people are still sitting at the DOE.  But being that he's writing a piece about the chancellor, it kind of behooves him to know that, doesn't it? I mean, here I am, a lowly UFT shill, disrespected by all for reasons known only to Nazaryan, and even I know it. Here's how Fariña is seen, according to Nazaryan:

Some see her as a defender of teachers, others as the pawn of teachers unions. 

That's not much of a choice, is it? I see her as neither, and I'd argue that this is a black and white fallacy. Lots of teachers do not feel the love for Fariña, and don't see her jumping to our defense. She let Jamaica High School wither and die, she is not shy about removing and/ or firing teachers, and is much ballyhooed for having done so in her career as principal.

Nazaryan devotes a good deal of time to speaking about himself and his brief teaching career. Perhaps he feels that gives him some cred while writing about this. Who knows? What I do know is he has no idea how working teachers think or feel. Even in the piece, Nazaryan outs himself as a supporter of right to work with no respect whatsoever for our union:

I was once a member of a teachers union and have long lamented its moribund conception of the teaching profession. (I was not a fan of the mandatory membership fees extracted from my paycheck either.)

I actually wonder how on earth Newsweek can present this as a portrait of the chancellor, or why their editors, if indeed they have any, deem Nazaryan's feelings about labor unions germane to what is, supposedly, a piece about the chancellor. Nazaryan is also clueless about the recent teacher contract:

Fariña said sensible things—that she wanted to bring joy back to the classroom and earn the teachers’ trust (a generous new contract with the United Federation of Teachers has helped). 

In fact, the contract gives us the 8% over two years that FDNY and NYPD got, but we don't actually receive it until 2020, a full decade after they got it. It then goes on to give us 10% over seven years, the lowest pattern in my living memory, and for all I know, in the history of the City of New York.

Nazaryan is also less than opaque about his own feelings on charter schools.

Her “old-school” tendencies are also responsible, I suspect, for an outsized antipathy to charter schools, which she shares with the mayor. Charters are public schools, and Fariña could have embraced them as a small but critical component of the education system, one that does an admirable job of educating poor kids of color.

For Nazaryan, there's no question that charters do an admirable job, but there's also no awareness of the fact that they shed students at an alarming rate, dumping them back into public schools, not replacing them, and thereby increasing their test scores. There's no awareness that they rarely if ever take students like I teach, or those with severe learning disabilities. As far as I can tell, there's not even awareness that the state pretty much decreed NYC would have to pay rent on charters of which it didn't approve. There are also a whole lot of us who dispute the characterization of charters as public schools.

There are rambling paragraphs about Moskowitz, Rhee, and all the reformy things they've done, and or tried to do. Then there's this, the conclusion:

This state of affairs is unfortunate but not surprising. We are not a small, monocultural nation like South Korea, or an autocracy like Russia where a history textbook might fall victim to Kremlin diktat. In America, school reform will always be a Hegelian contest between clashing visions, frequently maddening, infrequently productive. It is the only way we know.

There are always clashing visions, but reforminess has thus far reflected mostly one, and that has been pretty much whatever Bill Gates placed his many dollars behind. Small schools, charters, VAM, Common Core, and other such things proliferate. Despite Nazaryan's conversations with Diane Ravitch and Patrick Sullivan, and despite his limited experience as a teacher, he has no idea what goes on in city schools.

From what I can glean here, Nazaryan has little interest in finding out.

PROSE and Its Mysteries

Politico just did a feature on the PROSE schools. After reading it I have no idea why they are an improvement over the SBO feature of the standard contract, which allows schools to change class time, rearrange schedules, and basically do whatever they need to achieve their unique goals. I also see no advantage whatsoever in allowing the program not to sunset at year's end. What if it turns out to be a disaster?

I can only suppose it's an effort to compete with charters in doing things differently. Unsurprisingly, those representing charters decline to sing its praises: 

The program has been largely dismissed by the city’s influential charter sector; its leaders call it an unproven strategy that has not yet shown tangible improvements for schools.

Of course, "tangible improvements" are open to interpretation. Last I looked, charters had not only failed to show them, but in NYC were also not subject to Chancellor's Regulations that prohibit, for example, allowing children to pee themselves rather than granting the fundamental dignity of allowing them to go to the bathroom.

A Daily News story from last year has some less than encouraging words on the PROSE program, from none other than sitting Chancellor Carmen Fariña:

“You see something here that in some other schools would raise people's eyebrows,” she said. “You have one teacher with almost 40 kids in the class and you have another teacher with eight kids in the class. And no one is saying this is how many I have, this is how many you have. They're saying in order for me to do my job here, you're gonna do your job there.”

I'm not sure when it was that Carmen Fariña last worked as a classroom teacher, but I still do, and I also represent over 200 working teachers. I can tell you with 100% certainly there are a whole lot of things teachers don't tell their immediate supervisors or principals. The likelihood they would tell such things to the school chancellor hovers somewhere below nil.

So we have 48 kids. Eight of them, according to someone or other, require individualized attention. 40 of them evidently do not. In this scenario, over 80% of the students are in an oversized class and we're supposed to celebrate that because the teachers, as far as Fariña knows, aren't complaining. That's not the most persuasive argument I've ever heard. Why couldn't there be two classes of 24 without the PROSE initiative? In fact, if she feels so strongly about it, why doesn't Fariña ante up so all those kids could work in groups of 8?

In fact, an SBO could be used to enable an oversized class. We had a strings class in our school that was one over the limit, and we had an SBO to allow it to stay that way throughout the year. In exchange, the teacher was relieved from his C6 assignment, repairing instruments. Admin agreed not to overbook the class in the future, and it seemed a better decision than removing a kid at that point in the year. The teacher even did his C6 assignment, as no one else was gonna do it if he didn't.

If the PROSE programs are so fantastic and innovative, why are oversized classes their calling card? How about letting us see, now, each and every program so we can assess them? How about letting us know why these things could not be achieved via a regular SBO process?

Are these programs just a propaganda tool to show that public schools can do new things just like charters? For my money, that's nothing worth aspiring to in the first place. Also, the UFT has already kowtowed sufficiently to charters. Not only did we drag the trash talking Steve Barr and Green Dot to NYC,  but we also opened and colocated our own charter. Just how far backward do we need to bend in order to prove a point?

If it's about showing we are flexible with the contract, I absolutely don't believe the contract favors us. In fact since 2005, I've seen it favor us less and less. This notwithstanding, it happens to be constructed by both the union and the city. I've seen it work in favor of UFT members, and I've seen it work in favor of administration. I don't think we need to hold it in contempt, and show our enemies we're willing to push it aside to show how open-minded we are.

If there is some great value in the PROSE schools, I'd like to hear about it. What exactly is it they can do that a general SBO cannot?  Why are they better than the UFT Contact, and if they're so wonderful why isn't everyone using them? When are we going to see exactly what goes on in these schools rather than vague allusions in Politico?

If they are as good as Mulgrew and Fariña say they are, they have nothing to lose by showing us the full picture.

No More Free Ride on Sixth Classes

Mayor de Blasio giveth, and Mayor de Blasio taketh away. In my school, there are a whole lot of teachers with six classes. That's because people get sick, take leaves, go on vision quests, quit, and do all sorts of things that humans do. When that happens, kids ask, "Hey, where the hell is my teacher?"

Now I can't say precisely why they ask that question. For one thing, I know an awful lot of kids with intense aversions to homework. When the gym teacher is covering your physics class, you tend to get much less of it. But they're young, and sometimes they just don't think things through. Administrators, though, take a different view. They might wonder how they get 90% of the kids to pass physics. They can scream at the gym teacher, or me, or whoever happens to be covering, but probably none of us could pass physics either.

That's when they start to look around. "Hey, Mr. Teacher, how would you like to teach a sixth class and pocket an extra 12K a year?" That usually goes over pretty well. A lot of people, in my experience, want twelve thousand dollars. Think of all the doggie biscuits you could buy for that. Or donuts. You could eat donuts every day, your doggie could eat biscuits, and the whole house could celebrate almost perpetually.

And the cool thing about it is Bill de Blasio picks up the tab! So principals haven't got a whole lot of incentive to stop giving six classes to everyone. After all, it's a win-win! The teachers get a crapload of cash and not one cent leaves the school budget. After all, with "fair student funding" it isn't like the good old days when central paid all the salaries.

But I just got a hot tip that those days are over starting next year. So if principals want to give out sixth classes, they'd best be prepared to lay out 12K per class from the school budget. If you were thinking about padding your retirement with those extra classes, better do it before June. This could be a big hit for schools that depend on this stuff.

Waving 12K in front of people can do some pretty bad stuff. Full disclosure--I've been offered an extra class for years and have declined it each and every time. My job is crazy enough already and it's all I can do to keep up. I just don't think I could handle it.

Of course, that doesn't stop everyone. Sometimes it's that people want the money, and they'll do whatever they have to. Other times it's a supervisor leaning on someone, saying we really need you to help out. But I've seen brand new teachers with six classes, and it doesn't always work out well. Teaching is a complex and always demanding job, and new teachers really need time to learn. How on earth are they going to be mentored when they've given up their woefully insufficient forty minutes of daily prep?

So there's a good-bad thing happening here.  It's good that this sixth class thing will likely be discouraged. In my personal, non-chapter leader opinion, having these things out there is divisive and destructive.  As a chapter leader, though, I can't much fight it because a whole lot of people really like the chance to make extra money.

The bad thing is there are a whole lot of schools that depend on this little break from the city to staff their schools and provide essential services. It's incredibly creepy that Bill and Carmen have decided to say, "Screw you, you're on your own now," to principals who've come to depend on this little perk. Make no mistake, there will be fewer teachers for kids and larger classes for all as a result of this.

So thanks a lot, Mr. Mayor.

Mike Bloomberg and the Magic Mirror

Carmen Fariña is talking about consolidating her some schools. This is a direct reversal of the signature policy of her former boss, Mike Bloomberg. Bloomberg, of course, had to look in a mirror every morning and ask it who was the reformiest of all, and as long as he kept closing schools it said,

Working teachers drop and crawl cause you, Mayor Mike, are reformiest of all.

Now Bill Gates, whose assful of wonders produced the small school initiative, backed up on it when he found out it didn't work. But because NYC is the first to adopt the worst ideas, and the last to drop them, Bloomberg plodded on regardless. I mean, why have one principal in a building when you could just as easily have five? And why have students abide by one set of rules when you can have five? As an added bonus, you could always dump in a Moskowitz Academy, have the whole thing refurbished, and make students in the other four schools feel like total crap because they aren't worthy.

But that's not the only benefit of small schools as far as Mayor Mike is concerned. After all, with Fair Student Funding, whatever that is supposed to mean, the fact is that every school has to be concerned with teacher salary. After all it now comes out of the school budget rather than central. So wouldn't you know it, principals with very small schools tend not to hire teachers with big salaries.

That's just part of it, though. I talk to teachers in schools that have inquiry teams that meet each and every day. Every single person in the school does that. Now there's supposed to be a C6 menu, and if you don't get one of your first three choices, you get another three. That means there should be six choices, at the very least. So could it be that every single person in the school happened to make the same choice? That's quite a coincidence.

Actually, this tends to happen when there is no chapter leader and no knowledge that there is a contract, or rules, or any of those messy things. And if you start a school with 20 teachers, all of whom are untenured rank beginners, you tend not to have a whole lot of union activism. After all, being chapter leader can be like swimming in a pool of sharks, and you're unlikely to opt for that when you have yet to master the doggie paddle. Also, while I've seen untenured teachers as chapter leaders, I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone. After all, when you can be fired for a bad haircut (and new teachers are unlikely to find time to seek out a good one), you might not want to be bringing multiple grievances to your principal. Also, you may want to spend time learning your job rather than going to Multiple Meetings About Everything.

In fact, it's likely newer and smaller schools have no chapter leader. I've been to class size grievance hearings where I've met teachers from small schools who weren't chapter leaders. They'd tell me their principals asked them to go. Now I will grant you it's a special kind of principal who will appoint people to grieve school class sizes. And given that, I'd suppose that most of them just go unreported.

If you have no union presence, it's a Principal's Paradise. Do whatever the hell you wish, and no one raises a peep. Will the young teachers get tenure and decide it's time to rise up and enforce the contract? Or will they simply become accustomed to doing Whatever the Hell the Principal Wishes and stay that way?

Bloomberg's magic mirror told him this was the way to go, but I'm not sure teachers who just follow instructions and question nothing are ideal role models. Isn't it our job to not only teach, but also model critical thinking? How can you do that when you aren't permitted to question anything, let alone criticize it?

Fariña is looking at a more practical problem. Why is she paying all these people to do all these things that are redundant, wasteful, and unnecessary? Of course consolidation is a reasonable solution, and hopefully she'll see fit to restore community schools, and even communities themselves. I mean, sure her boss is still pushing mayoral control, which does the exact opposite, but maybe this is a baby step in the right direction.

So if we put together five schools, will one competent chapter leader emerge? Will one principal who truly understands leadership rise to the top?

Only time will tell.

Fariña Wants to Fire Her Way to Success

I've read and heard a lot from Michael Mulgrew and his Unity Caucus about how fabulous the new teacher evaluation system is. Obviously Mulgrew cannot be bothered lowering himself to mix with rank and file teachers who haven't signed his caucus loyalty oath or he'd be hearing a different song altogether. But they have their talking point set, and they're sticking with it.

This is the talking point--if you oppose the junk science/ Danielson system, you therefore want to place 100% of the rating power in the hands of principals. The junk science somehow mitigates the principal evaluation even though it's largely a crap shoot. So, therefore, ipso facto, shut up and stop complaining. That shut up and stop complaining theme is very popular among Unity folk. It's pretty much their greatest hit, and I've personally been hearing them sing it since 2005.

But then along comes Michael Mulgrew's BFF, Carmen Fariña, and she's singing another song altogether. In fact, she's talking about "purging bad teachers," counseling them out or firing them, whatever it takes. Now this runs counter to the Mulgrew talking point. Mulgrew says only 700 teachers were rated ineffective this year, as opposed to 2,000 unsatisfactories under the previous system. We are, therefore, supposed to spring up on our hind legs and applaud wildly.

The problem is, though, that teachers don't much feel like applauding. Teachers feel the Sword of Damocles over our heads. We feel tremendous pressure to do all sorts of things that may or may not benefit our students. We worry that we will be fired for no reason. While Mulgrew can boast about the wonders of junk science and how it mitigates the judgment of those awful principals, I personally know a great, smart young teacher who was rated ineffective last year solely on the basis of test scores. Had this teacher not moved schools last year, another such rating could've led to a dismissal hearing.

On one issue, I think Mulgrew is right. A lot of supervisors are incompetent. I know plenty of people working for various Boy Wonders, and their lives are a misery. I mean, if you're a vindictive, small-minded, self-serving narcissist, it's unlikely you'll inspire great work, let alone enable or encourage it. And the fact is teachers with figurative guns to their heads are not likely to be of the very best service to children we serve.

But here's a fun fact--Mulgrew and his Unity Caucus have done absolutely nothing to improve the quality of administrators. It doesn't seem all that well-known that it's the  job of administrators to help teachers improve. Adminstrators seem shocked when I bring that up at meetings. Rather than help those who need it, adminstrators walk around checking off boxes and consigning teachers to Danielson hell. I know supervisors I very much doubt could perform better than the teachers they relentlessly criticize. People driven by ambition rather than care for what they do are not necessarily "effective." Those who rose in the ranks to "escape the classroom" weren't good teachers, and can't be good leaders of teachers either.

I question whether Fariña, who is on a mission to fire rather than support teachers, is really contributing either. It's pretty well known that this was her MO when she was a principal, but the fact is she not only selected the teachers, but the kids as well, rejecting 6 of 7 applicants.  I am unimpressed with those who lead highly selective schools and then boast of their results. For those of us who teach in community schools and serve everyone, it's apples and oranges. If Fariña, or Moskowitz, or anyone reformy wishes to impress me, let them go to Detroit and work their magic on a crumbling school full of high-needs kids.

Until they do that, this whole blaming the teachers thing isn't going to make me jump up and down, let alone actually help children. And as long as Fariña is trying to fire her way to the top, Mulgrew's happy talk isn't going to resonate with those of us on the front lines. Maybe it's time for Mulgrew himself to be "counseled out," and turn over the reigns of our union to a working teacher.

Sit While You Wait

I, for one, am pretty happy to see NYC Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña acknowledging instances in which she might opt out her own kids. One is if the kid were a special education student who couldn't possibly keep up with the test requirements. Of course such a kid ought not to be taking a high stakes test, and indeed I've read reports of such kids taking them for many hours. Here's an anonymous complaint that was sent to opt-out activist Jeanette Deutermann:

I am a NYC teacher and I support the opt-out movement and will opt my own children out when the time comes. I proctored a practice ELA exam on Tuesday for the first time since it became untimed. One of my 3rd grade students with Special Needs sat with a 9 question test (6 multiple choice 3 short answer) for 4 hours and 50 minutes. From 9 am-1:50 pm she "worked productively" and continued to say she wasn't done. Lunch was brought to her in the testing room. It was child abuse, plain and simple. I am writing you for fear of retaliation in my workplace since this story pertains to my job and I imagine Ms. Fariña would not approve of me sharing it on social media. I don't know what else to say as there really isn't anything more to say other than repeat what I stated earlier. It's child abuse. The passages and questions were ridiculously inappropriate. Most adults would have had difficulty answering the questions.

 Consider not only the story, but also the fact that the teacher is too fearful to be identified. And this is where we are in NYC in 2016, even as the monopoly Unity Caucus celebrates our evaluation system. No child should have to go through such abuse, and Unity Caucus has repeatedly failed to support our cause, choosing to exercise talking points about how we could lose money if too many kids like the one above were to opt out.

The other category Fariña mentioned was newly arrived immigrants. That touched me a little as those are the kids I see every day of my working life. Of course they shouldn't be taking standardized tests until they acquire English. But that's a long process, and it's severely hindered by NY State's Part 154, which has reduced direct English instruction to high school students by a factor of 33-100%, depending on just how indifferent principals are to these students and their unique needs. It is also dependent on budget, and NY principals are not precisely rolling in cash these days.

I would love to see Carmen Fariña really stand up for these kids, but unfortunately that's yet to happen. I remain hopeful, of course. (I'm on a secret mission to get the UFT to oppose Part 154, and should anything come of it, I'll let you know. Again, I'm hopeful.)

But here's the thing. I think more students should opt-out than just those two groups. I'd use another two groups if I were to identify them. Specifically, I would opt-out male and female students. For anyone who doesn't fall into one of those categories, opting out could be optional. I'm very broad-minded, so I'm OK with that.

There's one more factor I'd like to bring up though. Parents don't need my OK, and with all due respect, they don't need the OK of Carmen Fariña either. It's up to them to opt out their kids or not. There are factors in NYC that make it a little more difficult. A big one is the lack of UFT support. In districts that have union presidents who support opt-out, they tend to work with parents and organize. Sadly, that's lacking here, but you'll soon have a chance to do something about it.

My hope is that both Carmen Fariña and Mike Mulgrew come to their senses and support opt-out wholeheartedly, as Regents Commissioner Betty A. Rosa just did. I hope you won't label me cynical when I tell you I shall certainly sit while I wait for that to happen.

The Secret Sauce Revealed

No one knows how to "fix" schools. After all, a prime reason they are "broken" is that many kids come from homes of poverty. Many parents have to work multiple jobs and haven't got time to spend with their children. Then, of course, folks like Joel Klein cry out that the schools suck and teacher heads must roll. It's the tenure that explains why everyone is failing! It's those step raises! Why can't we just fire any damn teacher whose salary gets too high? The bastards.

But Satellite West Middle School has found a solution. They're gonna change their name and move to a new building. Impressive, huh? Oh, and they're also gonna start being selective about who they let in. No more of that "community school" nonsense. They're gonna try and select more "gentrified" folk. After all, those folk might not want to mix with those, you know, other folk, so let's make sure we get all the right folk in place. Well, it worked for Carmen Fariña, and now she's chancellor.

So, while other schools struggle over how to get better test scores and avoid closures, this one just follows the charter school playbook. Well, not exactly. Charters have to go through the motions of a lottery, then interview those who win and let them know what's required. If parents have to go in and do work, or show up to meetings, or get on buses with Eva Moskowitz, well, that's just what it takes. And if they suspend your kid dozens of times until they withdraw you, well, there you go. Or if they place your kid on a "got to go" list, well, your kid's gotta go. Oh, and when they dump those kids back into those awful public schools, they don't have to replace them.

Now this school can't dump kids so easily, being ostensibly public, so it's decided not to bother with any of that lottery nonsense. We'll just take who the hell we please, thank you very much. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the much sought-after secret sauce. It's not charter schools, or vouchers, or tax credits. It's not Campbell Brown, or what's-her-name who runs that parent union. It's, "We'll take these kids, the ones who get high scores and everyone else can just go to hell."

No more improverished kids who've developed learning disabilities. No more kids who don't speak English. No more behavior issues. No more of those inconvenient special education children who need smaller classes and more attention. None of those classes that require two teachers at a time. It will be just like a private school that's gotten rid of all those bootless and unhorsed, and you don't even have to worry about all that riff raff that moves into the neighborhood, because no one gets in until you damn well let them in.

That's how you beat that test score game. Let all those other schools who have to take everyone worry about it. Your asses are covered and that's pretty much all that matters.

Principal Carmen Fariña

Here's an old piece about Principal Carmen Fariña. You know her better as current NYC Schools Chancellor. She's working for Bill de Blasio, and by virtue of that alone I like her better than Klein, Walcott, or what's her name. She's been good about not abrogating union contracts by placing city schools under the draconian receivership plans we're now seeing in Buffalo, but I haven't seen her move the pendulum as close toward rationality as I'd like.

I'm very curious about this article, which professes she worked wonders on the elementary school she headed. How did she do it?

Carmen Farina is the principal everybody loves to fear. She runs her school -- Public School 6 on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, just a block from the Metropolitan Museum of Art -- with a no-nonsense style and gets results through Darwinian selection. She has taken a school once known for serving the children of janitors and doormen and made it competitive with the city's top private schools and attractive to those who can afford them. 

So Fariña made the school attractive to people who could afford private schools, and utilized "Darwinian selection" in the process. You have to wonder, then, where the hell the "children of janitors and doormen" ended up. And what, precisely, constitutes "Darwinian selection?"

Last year, about 200 children applied to P.S. 6, going through an interview intended to detect a certain spark, and about 1 in 7 made it, Mrs. Farina said. At Harvard, the ratio is 1 in 8.  

Okay. This is not a knock on Fariña, though it may appear otherwise. But what the hell is so remarkable about making a school do well when you tell the overwhelming majority of applicants to go elsewhere? The Times is quite specific.

For the winners, admission means a free, top-flight education; for the losers, it often means paying $15,000 or more in private school tuition. 

Clearly the children of janitors and doormen were utterly out of the mix. From the article, I can only conclude that Fariña's school, in addition to improving via taking only the best candidates, also accomplished the dubious public service of saving thousands of dollars for those who least needed them.

So Fariña kept out the riff raff, and the community, with a 1999 median income of 226K, flocked to the school. I'm not sure that's the best way to utilize public schools. Evidently the rich will utilize public schools if we get rid of all those poor people. But a public school ought to be a place where all kids can thrive, not only those who already have all the possible advantages. Fariña's school held a different sort of appeal:

''My private-school friends -- I don't want to call it the Chanel set, but I guess that's what it is -- some do look at me in horror and think I'm possibly some kind of misfit,'' said Ms. Lenz, senior vice president of Sotheby's International Real Estate. 

Wow. I don't see my students, having just arrived from El Salvador, Afghanistan, China or Korea getting much of a shot in a place like that.  It's Dalton without the tuition. What else did Fariña do?

Since her arrival in 1991, Mrs. Farina has replaced 80 percent of her staff, a rare feat in public school, where teachers have tenure and the right to transfer by seniority. She did it, she said, by persuasion. ''Once you create a climate in a building that is hard-working, people will find out whether they are comfortable with it or not,'' Mrs. Farina said. ''And then they have decisions to make.'' 

Of course there is no more seniority transfer, thanks to the 2005 contract that "scrapes the skies," according to Edwize (may it rest in piece). Still, I have to wonder what the hell Fariña means. How did she get rid of all those teachers, really? And why did she need to turn over 80% of her staff in order to make a highly selective school do so well?

Sometimes we see miracles. More often, we see sleight of hand. In the case of the school in the article, we really see neither. It's no miracle at all when you hand pick the kids and the scores improve. It's no miracle at all when you take affluent children and make them do well.

I'd be a lot more impressed with someone who took a straight look at poverty, high needs, special education, ESL kids, and met them where they are. I'd be more impressed with someone who didn't just slam the door in their faces so their affluent students wouldn't be inconvenienced. I'm assuming Fariña ran her place better than some no-excuses Moskowitz test-prep factory. Still, I find something fundamentally wrong with a public school that has to be so selective.

We serve everyone. That's portrayed in the media as our weakness.

Actually it's our greatness.

Astroturfing 101

It must be great to put out a press release from so-called Families for Excellent Schools and talk about how poorly the public schools serve high-needs students. Those astroturfers just care so much. High needs kids are the ones I teach every day of my life, the ones who wouldn't get into a hedge fund backed charter school on a bet.

If you're a lucky astroturfer, some paper will put your press release out as news. That's pretty much what a Daily News article did yesterday. In fact, it did not present much of any other point of view (though mild protests from Carmen Fariña's office were later added). It appears Fariña's office has some sort of junk science VAM formula to show progress, or lack thereof, on the part of ELLs. It seems to entail the NYSESLAT exam and some other English exams, like the elementary school ELA or maybe the NY State Regents. Neither the ELA tests nor the English Regents are designed to measure language acquisition (and your humble correspondent feels it's absurd to have newcomers take these tests at all).

The fact is the new NYSESLAT test has been given precisely once. Any other test with which they compare it was substantially different, and if that's what Fariña's office is doing, well, it doesn't know what it's doing. I know this well because I administer the NYSESLAT each and every year. The new NYSESLAT, like the aforementioned exams, does not measure language acquisition.  It used to at least try, but now it's all Common Corey. For the edification of confused NYC DOE officials, as well as the CEO of so-called Families for Excellent Schools,  the purpose of ESL is to help newcomers acquire English. It is not, as some genius at DOE stated on a Powerpoint, to prepare them for core content courses (though it certainly helps).

Last year's NYSESLAT test was largely about doing close reading. This is not a language specific skill, and in fact any and all reading skills transfer with time, something so-called Families for Excellent Schools did not really account for. Nor, it appears, has the DOE. Of course, since absolutely no one mentioned in this article appears to have the remotest interest in language acquisition or what that entails, this is no surprise.

It's funny, because right now, while this article merits placement in the Daily News, ESL instruction has been cut to the bone in NY State. I happen to know the writer of this Daily News piece is aware of this, because I sent it to him personally. I'm going to send it to him again just to make sure. I'm a little curious how severe cuts in English instruction for newcomers do not merit mention, but a press release from a Moskowitz PR firm masquerading as grassroots is a big deal.

No one bothers to ask me what's going on with ELLs because I am not qualified. I only see them come into my classroom every day of my life. Yesterday I had a girl come into my classroom, speak Spanish to me and everyone in it, and act like everything was fine. My students were pretty surprised.

I took her outside and told her, in Spanish, she had to speak English in my classroom. I asked if she understood and she said she didn't. This was a first for me. I told her I would not speak Spanish with her in the classroom and that I would not answer questions addressed to me in Spanish. She found that unreasonable. I told her I couldn't speak Chinese or Korean for my other students, and that until I could translate for all, classroom business would take place in English. I offered to explain it to her mom by phone and have mom explain it to her, and she seemed to understand a little better. But just to make sure, I had a dean who speaks Spanish better than I do give her chapter and verse.

Now it's great that so-called Families for Excellent Schools are interested in ELLs. Even as I deplore their outlandish ignorance, I applaud them for their concern. Since they are such big proponents of the Got to Go List Moskowitz Academies, I'm sure they'll urge Eva to start taking in all beginner ESL students, including those SIFE students who don't know how to read and write in their first languages. Do you know how many of these kids are now in the much ballyhooed Moskowitz Academies? Exactly zero. (And it would probably be fewer if they could do anything about it.)

Personally, I'm not at all surprised that math scores are down for kids who don't speak English. I'm not at all surprised that schools with high percentages of non-English speakers have lower test scores. After all, they don't speak English. I regret that is evident to neither the DOE nor so-called Families for Excellent Schools.

I suggest Eva Moskowitz and her BFF, the CEO of so-called Families for Excellent Schools travel to China, take a bunch of tests in Chinese and share their results with us. After all, since they're so horrified by these test results I'm certain they'd do much better. And since the new plan in NY State entails teaching ESL via magic, rather than classroom time, and since this is noteworthy to neither Moskowitz  nor so-called Families for Excellent Schools, they should have no problem learning Chinese. Eva will work her magic and show her CEO pal how to be highly effective.

I don't know about you, but I'm gonna sit while I wait for that.