Tons of Coverage, Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for Charters--We're on Our Own

I cannot believe the crap that passes for news nowadays. Families for Excellent Schools says any damn thing it likes on behalf of Eva Moskowitz, who terrorizes young people into peeing their pants over tests. She's celebrated in the pages of the tabloids and, of course, in Chalkbeat NY, which considers her every move worthy of a feature story. They just had another expensive customized t-shirt heavy rally for more charters.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting in a school that's been over 200% capacity for decades and we have no place to put kids. My inbox is full of complaints from teachers in rooms with no windows that may or may not have air sources. I myself am in a room with a sunny southern exposure on the top floor that gets so hot I can barely concentrate. There's a non-functional air conditioner in front of the room. I complain and I'm told it will be fixed tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

It's a dual-edged sword for public schools here in Fun City. If your test scores and graduation rates aren't where the city wants them to be, you're under one program or other, and now they don't close your school anymore. You simply rehire the entire staff, and everyone has to apply to keep their jobs or become one sort of ATR or another. A lot of teachers don't bother to reapply, as they don't want to jump through all the various hoops demanded by the city and state, and who can blame them? Root causes like poverty, learning disabilities, and lack of English are no excuse for low test scores, and the core problems are vigorously ignored by all levels of government, right up to and including Secretary of Education Reformy John King, who happily dumps hundreds of millions of federal funds into charters.

And make no mistake--charters are not public schools. We don't run them, and we don't get to make decisions about them. We are, however, graciously allowed to pay for them. There is no way Eva takes the kids I teach, the ones who arrived here last week from countries all over the world. There is no way Eva takes the kids my school does, essentially everyone, up to and including alternate assessment students who are not expected to graduate and are a drag on the all-important stats. There is no miracle whatsoever in selecting students, dumping those who don't measure up, and achieving high test scores. If you or I allowed a student to pee her pants in class, we'd be up on corporal punishment charges via CR A-420. Of course Eva doesn't need any stinking rules.

My school is the most requested in the entire city. Any kid who lives in our district, or can successfully pretend to live in our district, gets in. As such, admin scrambles to meet contractual class size, but whenever you push out of one class, you push into another, and it's almost impossible. Our class sizes are already too high and we can barely keep up. Even if we do, 100 kids can walk through our doors on any given week and we'll be right back where we started.

It's a disgrace that the media celebrates the moneyed charter school astroturfers while studiously ignoring the effect on public schools. The more they draw from our best students, the more they can vilify us for not attaining the scores that they've achieved. The more they ignore what's actually happening on the ground, the more the public uncritically accepts their nonsense.

I don't know about you, but it's pretty clear that critical thinking is not being propagated no matter how much Common Core Crap we hurl at our hapless students. If so-called Families for Excellent Schools can regularly feed the media soundbites and stories, why the hell can't we?

Time On, Time Off

There's an interesting discussion about how much time kids should spend in school over at the Atlantic. Various viewpoints are elicited, notably including that of NPE director Carol Burris. Burris, unlike a whole lot of other people who write and talk education, looks at and considers research before forming opinions.

The myth that American students spend less time learning than students in other industrialized nations is not true. It is also clear from studies that increasing school time is very expensive and there is little return in achievement. Reductions in class size and peer tutoring, for example, have been found to be far more effective.

This will be surprising to people who read op-ed pages, which spout baseless nonsense and rely on astroturf groups like so-called Families for Excellent Schools for information. A lot of people attack the summer break, saying it causes some sort of learning loss. You'd think kids contracted Alzheimer's for two months a year. But Burris says affluent kids continue to learn in the summer while poorer kids may experience a loss.

And this, once again, points to our core problem--allowing so many of our children to live in poverty. In fact, it appears the majority of our students suffer from poverty. Meanwhile, we're sitting around debating the summer vacation. The NY Post is trashing the mayor for not closing enough unionized schools and opening more charters. Of course, charters cherry-pick their students, target those who've got to go, and send them back to public schools. We are then vilified for their test scores, as they must be our fault.

Some schools, like mine, give kids summer assignments. We then pat ourselves on the back for having dealt with the learning loss that supposedly takes place. My daughter has had teachers who'd give her assignments over school vacations. I hated those teachers. I'd help her with projects and wonder why the hell they couldn't just give her a week off.

Learning is 24/7, 365 days a year. If we do our job right, we won't need to put guns to our kids' heads to make them learn. We won't need to make up crap for them to do in the summer, or make them answer stupid questions, or make them write reports to prove they read the assignment. If we do our job right, kids will form interests and follow them.

Unfortunately, as long as we place our heads in the sand and pretend we can place some kind of band aid on poverty, that's not gonna happen. Giving kids nonsense to waste time during the summer isn't gonna change anything. At best kids will comply and hate our guts for wasting their time. At worst they won't comply and will still hate our guts for trying to waste their time. Or maybe it's vice-versa. The result is not substantially differeent.

In France, there's a 35-hour work week and everyone, not just teachers, gets 5 weeks off a year. Oh, and no one goes bankrupt paying medical bills, because like in most of the developed world, they have single payer health care. In American, we're obsessed with filling time. God forbid anyone should get a day off. Maybe the kid will select B instead of C on the multiple choice test.

Meanwhile, we're spinning our wheels solving the wrong problems.

Support the Core "Hijacked" by Teachers and Parents

Yesterday was #SupportTheCore day on Twitter. A bunch of reformy folks got together and decided this was the day they would persuade all of social media that it was not, in fact, in their best interests either to oppose CCSS or to have Mulgrew punch them in the face. USA Today even wrote about it:

Organized by the Collaborative for Student Success and supported by other groups like Teach Plus and Educators 4 Excellence, teachers and other Common Core supporters took to Twitter Tuesday to launch an outreach strategy encouraging teachers, parents and other leaders to voice why they are behind the standards.

Wow. So this was an important event. But alas, their best efforts were stymied, as people on Twitter persisted in posting actual thoughts unapproved by Bill Gates, or as Mulgrew would put it, "flying saucers from Mars."

I do not #supportthecore because it was written without public participation, without early childhood or special Ed teachers, untested.
— Diane Ravitch (@DianeRavitch) August 13, 2014

I do not #supportthecore because they can't be amended or fixed. The only standards written in stone are the 10 Commandments.
— Diane Ravitch (@DianeRavitch) August 13, 2014

Wow. That's not reformy at all. And others not only disagreed, but also had a kind of an attitude about it.

I don't #supportthecore because @BillGates paid for them but won't send his own kids to a school that has it.
— Tim Farley (@tfarley1969) August 13, 2014

In general it appears from the Twitters that acronyms, nonprofit orgs, and their employees #supportthecore and teachers and parents don't.
— John Kuhn (@johnkuhntx) August 12, 2014

This can't be making E4E and StudentsFirst jump with joy. After all, it was a great idea to get out there and tell the world what a great job Governor Cuomo and Mike Mulgrew were doing, Or was it?

"What’s been interesting and frankly disheartening is the responses from some of the Common Core opponents have been so vitriolic. I would almost describe it as bullying," says Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which supports the standards. "Here you have these teachers speaking their mind and standing up for something and they’re getting all kinds of nasty reactions back."

On Twitter, Petrilli was even more direct:

"BULLIES" - How I describe the folks who hijacked #supportthecore today to personally attack teachers: http://t.co/iY4E1XYWjn @alliebidwell
— Michael Petrilli (@MichaelPetrilli) August 12, 2014

It's funny to see this thought process at work. Anyone who contradicts reformy sentiment is a bully, and disagreeing with it amounts to a personal attack on teachers. The corporate reformers, who say we're all perverts, who want to take away our tenure, who want us fired based on junk science, are standing up for us somehow.  It was all the more ironic because most of the people I saw posting this stuff were teachers or parents.

I #supportthecore because someone spent a lot of time putting "CC aligned" stickers on old textbooks.
— lacetothetop (@lacetothetop) August 12, 2014

The notion that those who ridiculed this effort were personally attacking teachers is a ridiculous strawman.When you haven't got an affirmative argument it's pretty simple to assert evil motives to your opponents. Thus there's all this crap about how people who oppose Campbell Brown are sexist. Those awful teachers must be opposing her because she's a woman, and it couldn't possibly have anything whatsoever to do with her stupid ideas.

Elsewhere on Twitter there are other astroturfers bemoaning the tone. It's OK if you disagree with us, but why do you have to be so darn nasty about it?

#SupportTheCore because if your kids enjoy reading, we can fix that.
— Arthur Goldstein (@TeacherArthurG) August 12, 2014

I didn't actually see people being nasty. What I saw was people who've been ignored for years expressing indignation. I suppose the astroturfers expect thank you cards from parents whose children are receiving tasks that are developmentally inappropriate. Or maybe they think teachers are grateful to be facing dismissal over student test score related junk science. Or perhaps they expect to hear, "Thank you sir, may I have another."

But that's not the reaction to Common Core I hear every day from parents, especially parents of young children. Astroturfers, like union leaders, are not at all accustomed to listening to us. But those of us who have to live with this nonsense see it for what it is. And while they have the money, we overwhelm them in not only numbers, but also in truth. Because we, in fact, do the critical thinking they're always blabbering about, and glory be, they don't like it at all!

Because we, in fact, are the grassroots. We are the people, the teachers, the parents, and the students. We have thought this through, and we know what nonsense it is. We want what's best for the millions of kids who attend public schools and we will fight for it. We know that Common Core was implemented precisely as planned.  We're glad that public perception found the tests at fault rather than our kids when John King saw fit to fail 70% of them last year.

We were supposed to panic and demand charter schools, as indicated by Arne Duncan's idiotic crack about how our children weren't as smart as we thought they were. But we didn't. We knew they were wrong then, and we know they are wrong now.

And Mike Mulgrew can spend today, tomorrow, and all eternity punching us in the face, but it won't save Common Core. He can shut us out of our union, but he can't control us, he can't control public school parents, and he can't control our children either.

We don't support the core, and that's why it will not prevail. Maybe Michelle Rhee's figured it out, and that's why she's gone into the fertilizer business, literally selling what she and StudentsFirst have been offering us all along.

An Edict from the King

Hello New York. It's me, your old pal John King. I've just returned from an invigorating  evening with the good folks at NYC. Now lots of people suggested that we were afraid to come here, but it was no problem whatsoever. After one nasty little person got up and spewed the same special interest nonsense I'd been hearing at the other forums, a fine upstanding group for excellent schools got up and spoke the truth.

What an amazing coincidence that so many of my supporters happened to spontaneously paint the same sign. Now a lot of people say that we let them in way before we said we'd let anyone else in, and that we gave them a private room, and that a Michelle Rhee-backed group bused them in. I'm not saying that isn't true, but rather that it's important we somehow drown out those special interest parents and teachers.

Common Core is a wonderful thing. We will hold all children to higher standards. Except mine of course, who go to a Montessori school, and 19 of 20 NYS Regents, who send their kids to private schools. There, they are child centered. For the rest of you, there is rigor. And remember, the bigger the rigor, the higher they flyer. It was thrilling to see a river of identical signs supporting Common Core. That's the kind of independent thought we'd like to see in your children. For example, the wonderful Eva Moskowitz took all of her students and their parents on a march. She gave them signs and t-shirts. Maybe one day we will have signs and t-shirts for all state students, and they can march and tell New York what a wonderful job Merryl Tisch and I are doing.

And as for you haters, make no mistake. We aren't stepping down. We didn't get millionaires to support our privately employed interns just to give up. They will make the rules for your children, we will pay corporations to write tests for your children, and we will continue to fail your children until we turn them into a product corporations can use. And heck, even if they fail, there are plenty of jobs at Walmart. The kind folks at Walmart have also spent millions on Common Core, and they fully expect a return for their investment.

Now that we've dredged up some support for our programs, we no longer need to make vague promises of modification, which we were never really gonna honor anyway. What's important here is that you understand our privately-paid interns have already pretty much decided that your children are going to pretty much be tested until they graduate, die, or acquire minimum-wage employment.  And don't worry too much if they fail, because we fully intend to blame the teachers, close the school, and set up lucrative charters in their place.

I'd like to thank Educators 4 Excellence, Parents for Excellence, Students First NY, and all the fine grassroot groups who are standing up to special interests like parents and teachers.  These are the silent majority, the salt of the earth, and be advised that if you can follow me around and continue to sign up before those special interest folks, there are even more 200K Regents intern gigs available.

Maybe you can be one!

Hedge Fund Nation

It's time we got together and discussed precisely what was going on in hedge funds. Now I don't personally know what a hedge fund is, or what it does, but I know that a lot of hedge-funders have become deeply involved in education. Therefore, I think it's only reasonable that I chair a national movement to discuss hedge funds.

We will convene next month. I've compiled a list of panel members. I will chair, as I have, if you don't mind my tooting my own horn, trimmed a hedge or two in my time. When I was a child, I lived in a home with a pretty substantial row of hedges in front. Naturally, our panel will be fair and balanced.

We will feature Reality-based educator, who will, as he's anonymous, be appearing with the traditional bag over his head.  RBE is well-known for his political commentary, and may actually have some idea what a hedge-fund is or does. Being broad minded, we won't hold that against him.

Also on the panel is Norm Scott, well-known educational gadfly, who will give us chapter and verse on his feelings about hedge funds. While I doubt he actually has any, I'm sure he'll find something to talk about.

I've also invited Michael Cleveland, who I think is the best fiddle player in the country. He has been playing fiddle since he was four years old, and plays with precision and fluid imagination second to no one. I realize a lot of people may not be interested in fiddle, but I am, so I don't care.

Naturally, a panel of this sort would not be complete without Fred Klonsky, with whom I had a beer in DC once. He's also a gifted artist, delivering some of the coolest drawings I've ever seen on his blog, and a noted authority on Chicago cuisine, including but not limited to deep dish pizza, beer-steamed brats, and those hot dogs with the stuff all over them.

Another great addition is the woman who works at my local pizzeria. I don't remember her name, but this place serves the very best pizza in my town. I'm particularly fond of the white spinach slices.

Next is one of the security guards at my daughter's school. He's really a pretty cool guy, and knows some jokes I've never heard before. As this will be televised, I will ask him to refrain from telling any.

I will, of course, be inviting Chaz, who's currently working as an ATR teacher. He is not sure about all this social justice stuff, but that's OK because we're talking hedge funds.

Finally, I will be inviting noted education scholar Diane Ravitch. I'm pretty sure she doesn't know anything about hedge funds either, but since she didn't get an invitation to NBC's Education Nation, featuring renowned educational experts like Goldie Hawn, this is the least I can do to make up for it.

All Aboard the Junk Science Express

It's mind boggling. Everywhere you read, oh no, it's an emergency! NYC can lose 300 million bucks if we don't agree on an evaluation system! The astroturf shills at E4E are rallying! How will the educators for excellent know whether or not they really are excellent if they haven't got a value-added system on which to base their self-styled opinions? Fellow astroturfers Students First NY are putting up wads of corporate cash to push it through. Bloomberg, predictably, blames the union (though it's likely his monumental ego and intransigence preventing the deal).

Here’s the thing, though—if you read, say, Gary Rubinstein, Aaron Pallas, Tim Clifford, Carol Burris, Diane Ravitch, or the hundreds of NY principals who oppose it, you begin to suspect that there may be some fundamental flaws to this “value-added” system. With further examination, you see it has no validity whatsoever. You begin to notice that, despite eloquent pleas for it by very powerful people, it is nothing but junk science.

Now my union is contemplating an agreement with the city, so that we can get 300 million dollars. That’s a lot of money. But what will it be used for? Smaller class sizes? Better facilities? Blowing up the trailers? Even more miraculous, giving city teachers the contract we’ve been denied for four years?

Or, as history suggests, will it be used for more reformy stuff that has never worked and never will? Another ARIS? Will it be used to pay for the junk science evaluations? To enrich those who write the pointless tests on which the junk science is based? Will it be used to fund merit pay, which has also never worked?

Basically, the state is telling school systems, “Listen, you can have this money, but only if you agree to use a cripplingly expensive system that has never worked, does not work now, and is a long, long time away from ever working at all. You will have to fire teachers based on sheer chance and luck, but hey, those are the breaks.”

This is okay, apparently, with not only Obama, Duncan, Cuomo, Tisch, and Bloomberg, but also the leaders of my union. I’m not at all sure why.

But I’m an educator, and it goes against every fiber of my being to use disproven nonsense to judge my brother and sister teachers.

Not for love, not for money, not for anything.