Waiting for Drunk Superman

It's kind of amazing to read that the reformies are playing down test scores as a way of assessment.I've been hearing the reformies for a good twenty years or so, and test scores were pretty much their bread and butter. I mean, why do we public school teachers suck? Of course it's because our test scores suck. Why did they close almost every comprehensive high school in New York City? Because our test scores suck. Why is there such a proliferation of charters? Because our test scores suck.

Now that charters have gotten well more than a toe in the door, they don't like all this test score stuff. I mean, you can just game the system so much, and then you get bored. How many times can charters dump 65% of their students, lose a few more, and then claim that 100% of their grads are going to college? How many times can they keep kids in their seats doing test prep until they pee their pants?

Better to just focus on stealing space from public schools. Hey, let's push into your building, trash your library, and dump all the public school kids in the basement. Let's get a bunch of funny shirts and drive every kid to Albany on buses. And just to make sure it's the worst field trip ever, let's make the kids do homework on the bus.

Here's the thing--charters have the same kids we do. Except they don't, because only proactive parents would even bother to fill out a charter application. I'd argue proactive parents can be a pivotal factor in how well students do. And hey, if those selected student's don't do well, they can put them on "got to go" lists and send them straight to Palookavile, aka public schools.

It's really challenging to understand how, with all those advantages, charters don't outscore and overtake us at every turn. But the fact is they don't. My school has none of those advantages and we do better than a whole lot of schools. Some people say that's because we have great kids, while others say it's because the ESL teachers are so smart and good looking. I can only suppose it's a combination of the two.

The reformies are right, actually, if they determine that students are not test scores. Nonetheless this is an industry that's argued it needed to exist because, you know, test scores sucked because, you know, public school teachers sucked. Being a public school teacher, I was not much amenable to that line of thought. But that's what I heard over and over. We need Moskowitz Academies because only they can save our children. Only KIPP has the secret sauce that will change our destinies. Only foul-mouthed Steve Barr from Green Dot can do this thing no one can do.

All we've learned from that is there isn't any secret sauce or magic shortcut. I don't know about you, but I hate seeing children marched about like little martinets so everyone can see how quiet and well-behaved they are. I don't give a golly gosh darn if some guy can save a minute and eighteen seconds via his ultra-efficient manner of passing out papers.

The reformies made their beds, and they ought to sleep in them, no matter what sort of creepy crawly things infest them. They raised the creepy crawly things, claim to love them, and ought to show the grit they're forever demanding from our children. They need to put their considerable money where their mouths are.

So yes, I support the removal of high stakes testing. Except for charter schools. In charter schools, in voucher schools, and in every reformy enterprise out there, they ought to count, double, triple, or more. In fact, if kids don't pass tests, charters ought to return state funding for those kids. If they toss the kids out, charters ought to return every dime that accompanied those kids. If the kids fail, charters ought to return the money for that year.

Charters promised us Superman. Superman doesn't bill the city for his services, especially when he fails spectacularly.

The Mariachi Chancellor, El Rey

I honestly don't know a whole lot about Richard Carranza. I see good and bad things. On the plus side, he's a former English Language Learner, or ELL. This gives me hope that he might see through the miserable Part 154 that robs ELLs of both direct English instruction and also core content instruction. In 2017, we ought to offer our most needy kids something better than sink or swim.

Also, he seems to be an advocate for public schools. The last guy the mayor picked, Tom Carvel or somebody, looked like an advocate for school choice in the Jeb Bush mode. Florida's not where I would go to model public schools, though the weather seems pretty nice. Alas, Carvel not only failed to bring the weather over, but also failed to show himself.

On the other hand, there are the stories about Carranza, largely in the Daily News, from his failure to perform miracles, to creepy treatment of female subordinates, resulting in a 75K payoff. I'm not personally too put off by the miracle thing, because miracle stories, like accomplishments of Texas and Michelle Rhee, usually turn out to be outright fabrications. Carranza seems to have a thing for TFA, while I think he'd be better off finding local talent. In fact, I wonder why the mayor couldn't find anyone in NY. The mayor said mayoral control was all about him doing what he wanted to do, but that's not really true.

When de Blasio was elected, he not only stated opposition to charters, but also blocked a Moskowitz Academy or two. Cuomo and his Heavy Hearted Assembly rapidly passed a law that NYC would have to pay rent for charters of which it didn't approve. This said to me that mayoral control was valid only if the mayor was a reformy. They never passed laws against Bloomberg. Evidently, de Blasio hasn't put that together just yet.

Carranza says there's no daylight between his vision and that of the mayor, but I have no idea what the mayor's vision is anymore. When he first ran, he seemed great. He opposed charters and reforminess. He was the anti-Bloomberg. I supported him even as the UFT was pushing that guy, what's his name, who told the Daily News that teachers didn't deserve the raise cops and firefighters got.

These days I have no idea what the mayor stands for. He left a whole bunch of Bloomberg's people in place, so we still lose at step two hearings even when we're 100% correct. He left a bunch of scumbag lawyers in "legal" who believe in doing whatever the hell they feel like and think screwing UFT members is the national pastime. He picks an outright reformy to be chancellor and then immediate turns around and picks a guy who appears to support public schools. Though the NY Post thinks de Blasio's Che Guevara, he negotiated the lowest pattern bargain in my living memory for city workers.

A few days ago, I was speaking to a music teacher I respect a lot who said the new chancellor was a great singer. I later found a video over at Leonie Haimson's site, which I've posted below. He is a very good singer, and he also plays the violin. You have to respect that. Maybe I'm culturally biased or something, but his choice of song is pretty unusual as far as I'm concerned. It's called El Rey, or the king, and it seems like a tribute to machismo or something:

Con dinero
Y sin dinero
Yo hago siempre
Lo que quiero
Y mi palabra
Es la ley 

That says, roughly, if I'm rich or if I'm broke, I do any damn thing I feel like, and my word is the law. It's the kind of song Donald Trump might tweet if he had any music in his miserable, barren soul. El Rey is about a man whose "queen" appears to have dumped him for his miserable attitude, a man who's learned nothing whatsoever from it. While it's tongue in cheek, I'm not at all sure I'd teach it in a class. Given Chancellor's Regulation A-421 about verbal abuse, I'd be very nervous about it. You know, it might make some student feel uneasy. 

I might be sitting in the principal's office being accused of sexism and getting a letter in my file for sharing that song, but there's our chancellor, with an orchestra full of students, performing it. Putting the potential sexism aside, the notion of being the king is the kind of thing I'd expect from Bloomberg or Trump, not an educator. Does the new chancellor have a sharper sense of humor than I do, or is he broadcasting the future?

Only time will tell.

Reformy Chalkbeat Can't Find a Working Teacher Who Isn't E4E

When you read Chalkbeat, you know you'll get a diverse point of view. Whenever I want to find a broad variety of non-teacher opinions, say, about the new chancellor I go right there.

First, you get Michael Mulgrew. While Mulgrew is the head of UFT, he hasn't been a working teacher for some years now. Then, you get a deputy mayor, who I assume also does not teach either. (I don't see a lot of deputy mayors hanging around the lunchroom.)

Then you go to the person probably most quoted by Chalkbeat, Jenny Sedlis, Executive Director of Students First NY. Everyone knows that the way reformies put students first is by putting teachers last. Of course, teachers should be fired at will, because supervisors know everything. They never act out of vindictiveness. They are never failed teachers who moved up because they couldn't do the actual job. Most of all, they are never utterly unqualified, like Joel Klein, Cathie Black, Betsy DeVos, or any number of people who've run school systems. If Michelle Rhee says taping kids' mouths shut is the way to go, that should be good enough for anyone.

Naturally, you then pivot to James Merriman, the CEO of NYC Charter Center. Maybe Eva Moskowitz was unavailable. In any case, it's important to find out what charter school people think about the chancellor, even though they can't be bothered following chancellor's regs. Verbal abuse? Well, abuse on if that means they're gonna pass the standardized test. Corporal punishment? Let the kids pee their pants instead of leaving test prep because we're zero tolerance and we don't go for that human dignity nonsense. Oddly, I afford my dog more dignity than some charters afford their kids so I'll be walking him very early on this slushy and snowy morning.

Then you go to Houston Federation of Teachers President Zeph Capo and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten: Naturally you group them together, because who can be bothered to distinguish between teacher union presidents? It's not like they're Educators 4 Excellence, in which case you'd need to get each and every one of their comments. Of course neither one of them teaches, so you haven't muddied the waters too much with anyone who actually does this job.

 You then, finally, get to someone very important, to wit, former teacher Evan Stone, who runs a group called Educators 4 Excellence even though he himself hasn't been an educator for years. I mean, he was one for maybe five minutes, but now he's got this groovy gig taking Gates money, and he doesn't have to be bothered with the trivial nonsense of actually teaching children. Chalkbeat once ran a feature about how E4E managed to acquire 100 signatures for something or other, probably more work for less pay. I work in the largest school in Queens, and I could collect 100 signatures in 45 minutes. But since I don't take money from Bill Gates, like E4E and Chalkbeat, who cares what I think?

Of course you follow that up by interviewing an actual teacher. Since you are, ostensibly, a site about education, but neither know nor can be bothered to look up any actual teachers, you leave no Evan Stone unturned and ask him who he knows. And who would've thunk it, but the only teachers he knows are also Educators 4 Excellence. So you talk to that person and you've killed several birds with one Evan Stone. First of all, you haven't had to bother with the messy work of talking to any typical rank and file, because who knows what they will say? Certainly no one at Chalkbeat, and certainly no one who relies on Chalkbeat for information. On top of that, you've managed to sneak in yet another reformy view while presenting it as that of an ordinary teacher.

Best of all you don't have to worry about those nasty bloggers calling you a reformy rag. You interviewed a living breathing teacher and no one can say otherwise. Who cares if the one you found signed a pledge of allegiance to a Gates-supported bunch of reformies that has no business claiming to represent teachers? The important thing is you can tell yourself you spoke to a teacher, and when you get down to it, that should be good enough for anyone.

After all, teaching is already a calling, so why should you bother calling teachers?

Correction: Of course they interviewed Eva Moskowitz. I don't know if they added it or if I missed it, but no Chalkbeat piece would be complete without her opinion.

Chalkbeat Says Good Morning, and Waiting for Superman is Mainstream

I admit I read Rise and Shine from Chalkbeat every morning. It's kind of a cheat sheet to find out what education stories I might want to see every day.  Also, they email it to me every morning around 7 AM, when I'm sitting with my computer in a department office. I was struck by the part of the intro yesterday, which read exactly like this:

Plus, a new study estimates the cost to district schools when students leave for charter schools. Finally, are you wondering what Oprah would bring to the table on education policy if she ran for president? Chalkbeat has you covered.

What's a district school? Had you ever heard of such a thing in your life before charters existed? I'd argue this is a term they invented. Use of this term legitimizes charter claims to be public schools, but in fact we know that charters are public schools only when they want public money. Eva Moskowitz waged a war with City Hall over having to sign an agreement over pre-K. Moskowitz doesn't do agreements. Whatever Eva wants, Eva gets.

Here's another thing--you may have read about how Eva's students pee their pants rather than interrupt their test prep. That's outrageous and abusive, I'd say. In fact, not only do I say it, but Chancellor's Regulation A-420, which doesn't apply in Eva World, prohibits the use of physical force. As a parent, if you forced my kid to sit and work until she peed her pants, I'd want you charged with that. If that didn't fit, I'd want you charged with negligence, abuse or both. I'm absolutely certain if I were to make kids pee their pants I'd be up on some sort of misconduct. Maybe at Moskowitz Academies you get a gold star, a raise, a promotion, or all of the above.

Who knows?

Then there's Oprah. Of course Chalkbeat lets you know all about her educational policies. Let's look at the headlines they run:

She understands racism and poverty in America — and how schools can make a difference.

Yes of course. The only thing is, racism and poverty have yet to be ended by schools. If they had been, Donald Trump would certainly not be President. And here's the thing--Oprah is a remarkable success story. Painting her as the rule rather than the exception is ridiculous. It's like determining that because Bill Gates didn't go to college, your kid doesn't need to either. And Gates, who Oprah admires, has steadfastly operated on the theory that poverty is too complicated, so we'd best ignore it.

Then there's the talk about Oprah's school. It's not precisely all roses, as abuse,  sex scandals, and other things make you wonder whether you want this school in your neighborhood. And even if you did, how could you judge American education by schools in South Africa? I'm not an expert on South Africa, but if I were looking for a country that really addressed poverty, I'd look to Scandanavia. Sit while you wait for Chalkbeat to do that.

She has given to education initiatives that cross partisan divides

Well that's all nice and well, but anyone following education knows that there are very few partisan divides. The Democrats suck, and the Republicans suck a little bit more. Charter schools are not viewed as a panacea by people who follow education. Of course, these people get little representation by Democrats or Republicans. Here's the thing--they get none in Chalkbeat either, even though it portrays itself as non-partisan. Maybe Chalkbeat failed to notice that Hillary, representing Democrats, failed to support universal health care, a living wage, or college for all. Maybe they failed to notice that the majority of Americans support these policies, and that they had no representation from the Democrats or Republicans. Who knows? The only sure conclusion is that Chalkbeat deems reforminess universal.

They're wrong, of course.

She’s also aligned herself with heavyweights of the ‘education reform’ movement

It's ironic they use the word also here. After all, they just said she was bipartisan because she supports charter schools. Who can forget the show she devoted to reformy Waiting for Superman, with Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee, Geoffrey Canada, and whoever else was the reformy flavor of the month? Last I heard, Canada walked away from his charter school, Rhee was hawking fertilizer, and Gates was still hammering away, undeterred by his record of utter failure.

Maybe ignoring poverty and blaming teachers for all of society's ills isn't the way to go after all. It depends what's important to you. Do you want to actually help the children of the United States? Then you're gonna need a new approach. On the other hand, if your goal is enriching Betsy DeVos and her billionaire BFFs, just keep reading Chalkbeat and chugging along the way we are now.

If you're looking for well-thought-out local information, though, you might want to check out Diane  Ravitch or Gary Rubinstein. They don't assume charter schools are better than public schools, and they don't assume charter schools are public schools, because they aren't. They are private schools that take public money.

Of course, that's my opinion. The difference between this blog and Chalkbeat is that I'll freely admit this blog represents my point of view. I'm paid by no one to write this. Chalkbeat takes money from Gates and Walmart, just to name a couple. They claim to be unbiased but they present the reformy view as though it's the Gospel.

President Oprah is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. Running a TV show is one of the worst qualifications for President I can think of. Of course, accepting reforminess as Gospel is just another. I wouldn't vote for Oprah on a bet. If she wants to do the country a service, she can take all that money she has, buy Fox News, and try to slow down the national plague of willful ignorance.

This notwithstanding, I won't be holding my breath.

ATRs Are the Golden Key for Reformies

Thanks to the blogger at ATR Adventures for alerting me to pieces I miss. This one, from the NY Post, is important for several reasons. First of all, it's important that they even bothered to speak with a real teacher and former ATR in the form of James Eterno. That's a step up from a lot of the nonsense I've seen on the same topic in Chalkbeat.

It's also important that the article attributed this demonstration, like others of its ilk, to a reformy astroturf group. In this case, it's charter-loving StudentsFirstNY, and offshoot of Michelle Rhee's group. Rhee, of course, has moved on to a gig that deals with actual fertilizer rather than what passes as information with her BFFs.

The big question, of course, is why the reformies are so preoccupied with the ATR, or Absent Teacher Reserve. Why, if they want to push privately run charter schools, do they even care whether or not we put these people to work?

I'd argue the answer is pretty basic. We are all ATRs waiting to happen. It's just a matter of being in the wrong place at the right time. I worked at John Adams High School for about seven years. It was just a simple twist of fate that I'm not there anymore. When Adams became a Renewal school, or whatever they were calling it that year, all the teachers had to reapply for their jobs. I recall reading the majority didn't bother. That could easily have been me. Or you.

Even the NY Times is piling on ATR teachers. I expected better from them, but I've been wrong before. Of course newspapers have unions, and they'd probably like them to go away. Who wants to deal with contracts when you could just cut pay, benefits, and rights? Once you do that, you can treat people any damn way you please, and keep more money for yourself. And that's directly relevant to us.

Right now, NY charter schools can certify their own teachers any way they want. It's a month of training, 40 hours in the classroom, or something, and then they are teachers, sort of. Charters have a turnover problem. They treat people like crap and people seem not to like it. People say it isn't sustainable if you want to, oh, get married, have children, live a life or anything like that.

This is tough for charter school bosses. In fact, I know charter teachers who've moved to public schools, and they aren't going back, ever. Despite all the things I write, and all the nonsense we endure, our jobs are a walk in the park compared to charter schools. Can you imagine having to take a cell phone home to answer questions after work? Imagine having to take bus rides to Albany at Eva's beck and call. Imagine having no contract, no rights, and no voice.

People who run charter schools have not only imagined, but also realized all those things. They see them as a prototype for all of us. They're reinforcing it with their limited certification. What if the charter teachers can't move to public school gigs? People with charter certification will be stuck. It's unlikely there's time to work in a charter and take night classes. After all, you have that phone to answer, and you've probably only slept eight minutes, what with making home visits and doing who knows what else.

The ATR was an egregious error in the 2005 contract, quite possibly the worst mistake the UFT ever made. We made a strong showing against the awful contract, but it wasn't good enough. The ATR is kind of our Achilles Heel. Bloomberg used it against us, demanding a time limit for ATRs. Leadership, to its credit, hung tough. Of course, this resulted in an inferior contract for us and a pattern that was the worst I've ever seen.

This notwithstanding, giving up the ATRs would place targets on all our backs. Close this school, close that school, wait a few months, and then fire everyone. Where do fired teachers go? Many I know have gone to charter schools. It's ironic that the people out marching against ATRs are perfectly OK with that.

Here's why it's OK--degrading and debasing middle class jobs is a win for the hedge funders and gazillioanaires who fund groups like StudentsFirst. They'll shed crocodile tears about how it's all about the children, but it's all about the money. Janus isn't enough for them. They want it all, they want it now, they want more, and they don't give a golly gosh darn if you go begging, eat cat food, or both.

That's the master plan, in fact. Crap jobs for you, crap jobs for the children they claim to love, no union, and bring back the good old days of the nineteenth century. Child labor isn't far behind.

In Which I Am Asked to Collaborate with David Cantor and the 74

Yesterday I got an email from Norm Scott, saying that David Cantor, former mouthpiece for the execrable former Chancellor Joel Klein, wanted him to comment on union dues. Norm declined, of course. Union dues are in the news, I suppose, because we're facing Janus and a "Right to Work" nation. I have a lot of issues with UFT leadership, but I don't remotely support that.

You see Cantor's new gig is working for the 74, the reformy website initiated by self-styled education expert Campbell Brown. Evidently Brown, who now works for Facebook, has turned over the reformy reins. I mean, someone has to spread the word about the perfidy of those of us who choose to spend our lives helping children, and I guess it's his turn.

I wondered who else Cantor would reach out to. I didn't have to wonder long.

@TeacherArthurG Can I speak briefly w/you about dues?

— david cantor (@cantorrac) October 10, 2017

Well, what can you say to that?

You just did. I have no more to say on the topic. But it was an enjoyable conversation. Enjoy the 74! https://t.co/OJ4W2pqM0Z

— Arthur Goldstein (@TeacherArthurG) October 10, 2017

I mean, really, he talked to me. That's what he asked to do. What more could he want? I mean, I guess I could have told him some nonsense about dues. But honestly, here's what I think about union dues--they're like taxes. I'm paying my share.

Now if I didn't pay taxes, someone else would have to pay my share. In fact, that's kind of how America works. Rich people are so sensitive, if you touch them they'll probably break. That's why rich people pay so little in taxes. Cantor's old boss, Joel Klein, has doubtless raked in truckloads of cash working for Rupert Murdoch, and he needs do keep it. That's why we can't have universal health care. That's why we can't have a living wage. That's why college is unaffordable for so many of our students. Maybe Cantor has tons of cash too. Who knows? Reforminess tends to pay well, certainly better than teaching.

Anyway, because the rich people are so awfully sensitive, they need to siphon off funds from public schools, Thus they establish Moskowitz Academies where kids pee their pants rather than sacrifice one moment of test prep. (You know, because tests are way more important than basic biological functions.) Thus they establish cyber charters where maybe kids show and maybe they don't.

In any case, Cantor was not 100% satisfied with my answer:

It wasn’t so enjoyable but I understand.

— david cantor (@cantorrac) October 10, 2017

Well, not everything can be enjoyable, I guess.

Working under you and Klein wasn't that enjoyable for 100,000 UFT members. But I understood. That's why you get no story from me. https://t.co/TOV6MtIavh

— Arthur Goldstein (@TeacherArthurG) October 10, 2017

I mean jeez, talk about sleeping with the enemy. There's a court case called Janus designed to obliterate union and I've got reformies contacting me asking me to help them do it. My guess is he'll find some E4E type ready to demand more work for less pay. It's all about the children and that's why I'm willing to work 200 hours a week, be on call on my charter school cell phone until one AM, get up at four to go to PD, and get fired for no reason because I have no union.

Make no mistake, that's precisely the life the reformies have in mind for not only us, but our children as well.

Open Up Another Can of Teachers

Chaz has a great piece pointing out the hypocrisy of the NY Post editorial board, which cries bloody murder when teacher certification requirements are reduced, but also supports charter schools who basically want to hire just about anybody. You know, it's too inconvenient to run around looking for certified teachers, so basically let us certify anyone we feel like.

I read that over at Eva's place teachers don't write lesson plans. They have them, they give them to you, and you do any goshdarn thing they tell you to. There's no scrambling for the right textbook. There's no worrying whether you should skip this part or emphasize that. You just look at what day it is and do whatever the hell they tell you to do. Teacher voice? Give me a break.

And hey, if that's not enough, the gazillionaire who runs Netflix wants to just stick every kid in front of a computer, and expand charter schools like they've never been expanded before. He uses New Orleans as a model, where 90% are charterized. I'm surprised it isn't 100. So basically, teachers become non-unionized, at-will employees doing any damn thing they're told. That's a great role model for our children, of course, if you want them to become non-unionized, at-will employees doing any damn thing they're told.

I think this is one of the last really good jobs there is. It's not because the pay is fabulous or the hours are short. Like a whole lot of my colleagues, I work well beyond what the clock requires. Honestly, though, the day they tell me they have scripted lesson plans for me to follow will probably be the day I retire. Let them teach a monkey to read and get him to do the job. A big plus would be they could pay him in bananas.

There's this steady drip, drip as teachers become less teachers and more technicians. Sit the kid in front of the computer and have the computer decide what chapter she's on or what question she gets to answer. That way she'll get a better score on the test that measures the questions the computer has decided to ask. And sure, it's not exactly fun to learn that way, but it's probably not fun working at Walmart either. The people who run Walmart probably fund all this reforminess for that very reason.

And while this wave has not yet enveloped NYC public schools as a whole, there are plenty of principals obsessing over it. After all, the principals get rated too. In case you're wondering why you're assigned to some teacher team, New York City has decided that teacher teams are the bestest thing since sliced bread, and that your principal sucks if your school hasn't got them.

In our school, we gave up one day of C6 for teacher team, and in exchange we got one day back for teacher-directed Other Professional Work. It seemed a fair exchange, and our members voted for it overwhelmingly as part of an SBO. In other schools with weak or no union presence the principal just says, "Everyone is doing a teacher team one period a day," and that's pretty much it, And in charters? Hey, when Eva comes in and says everyone is going on a bus to Albany tomorrow you don't bring up your carsickness. You ask Eva for permission to use the bathroom on the coach bus while the kids do homework. Or maybe you puke on the floor, just as the kids pee their pants.

Who knows?

Actually we should have high standards for our teachers. If we don't, it means we don't have high standards for our children either. We also need to preserve this profession as one of people serving people. I don't want to place kids in little cubicles with computers working out little problems to prepare them for tests. It's not my job to teach them how to adapt to cubicles. I already have a job. I complain an awful lot, but never about actual teaching, and never about the kids I serve.

We need to model a better way for children. We do that not by making them little tin soldiers, and certainly not by being bigger tin soldiers ourselves.

The Meaning of "Education Reform" Laid Bare

There is a fascinating piece in Politico today. Evidently, we're somehow making some progress against reforminess. This goes hand in hand with a statement from Eduwonk, AKA Andy Rotherham of Bellwether Education Partners, referring to teacher unions:

In fact, these groups thwarted key parts of the Obama education agenda. 

Rotherham does not give any more detail, and with 12 years of blogging I still can't read his mind.  I'll therefore focus on the Politico piece, which is a little more explicit. Politico states that NY is no longer the ed reform capital, and as a New Yorker, that sounds like good news. Reformies are stalled in their tracks, evidently.

Yet here on the ground, I have never seen teachers so demoralized and worn down. Some of the most positive individuals I've ever met have left the profession. Some of them left from my school, a relatively good place. Why would that be, if we were so successful at turning the reformy tide?

One reason is that Politico looks at "reform" in a curious fashion. The word, to me, entails change, and hopefully for the better. That's why I question reformies, because what is their motivation to change? I mean, Betsy DeVos is as reformy as they come, and for all I can see, she's on a mission to destroy public education so her BFFs can profit from it.

You know, the wall idea is a good one. Why don't we just build walls around all public schools and privatize everything?

— Fake Betsy DeVos (@FakeBetsyDeVos) July 22, 2017

The march toward privatization notwithstanding, a great deal of the Politico article focuses on teacher tenure. Here's a blatant falsehood:

At Cuomo’s urging, the Legislature pushed through some reforms in 2015, tying tenure to teacher performance instead of time in the classroom...

In fact, I have firsthand experience with tenure being withheld for classroom performance before this "reform" was passed. Tenure could be delayed or denied for almost any reason before 2015. The city used this much more frequently after Bloomberg came in, but always had the option to do so. But why should education reporters bother knowing anything about history? (In fairness, Politico opts for the Chalkbeat model of not talking to working teachers, speaking with Gates-funded E4E reformies instead.)

A stronger focus of "reform," as per Politico, is the failure of New York to utterly eradicate due process, popularly known as "tenure." It seemed the prime directive of self-proclaimed education expert Campbell Brown to allow administrators to fire anyone they felt like, anytime they felt like it. To enable this, they went full-court press after what they called bad teachers--generally people who were accused of things but not found guilty. Brown went to the tabloids and blew up a few cases to stoke outrage, but it appears her efforts have stalled.

In fact, I knew the circumstances only one of the cases that Brown tossed about, and I knew it to be nonsense. I therefore doubted the rest of her allegations. I was very happy to write about the flip side of the coin, and how all teachers deserve due process. Hey, if I stink at my job, if I'm abusive to children, fine. Come after me. But if you're mad at me for standing up for the children I serve and making your job inconvenient, screw you. If you're mad at me for standing up for the rights of my colleagues, again, screw you.

Reforminess is something Trump is strong on, because he doesn't believe in protecting the rights of working people. With him, it's all about profit, hence Betsy DeVos, who's pretty much decimated public education in Michigan. They can wrap themselves in the flag all they want, and claim to care about the children. Those of us who wake up every morning to serve those children know better.

And then there is Andrew Cuomo, who first ran on a platform of going after unions, who appeared at Moskowitz rallies and frothed at the mouth over the possibility of firing as many teachers as possible. Cuomo could not possibly anticipate that parents would become informed and fight back against the nonsense that is Common Core. He could not anticipate that parents would boycott his tests in droves.

What reformies failed to count on was the opportunism of Andrew Cuomo. As a man with no moral center whatsoever, he is driven by rampant ambition. This year, he watched Donald Trump win the presidency against neoliberal Hillary Clinton. Cuomo decided to position himself as Bernie Sanders Lite and pushed a program to give free college tuition to New Yorkers (albeit with a whole lot of restrictions).

Cuomo is now best buds with UFT, judging from what I hear at Delegate Assemblies. While I don't personally trust the man as far as I can throw him, I'm happy if that works to help working teachers and other working people. So what is education "reform," exactly?

As far as I can tell, it's piling on, How miserable can we make working teachers? How can we arbitrarily and capriciously fire them? How can we give them as few options as possible, and as little voice as possible?

It's ironic. The MORE motto is, "Our teaching conditions are students' learning conditions." I agree with that. Take it a step further, and our teaching conditions are our students' future working conditions. When we fight for improvement of our working conditions, we are fighting for the future of our students as well.

Two of my former students teach in my school. They are the first of their families to be college educated, and the first of their families to get middle class jobs. I will fight for them, and for my other students to have even more opportunity. Betsy DeVos and the reformies, on the other hand, can fight to maximize profits for fraudulent cyber-charter owners and all the other opportunist sleazebags they represent so well.

Reformy War on Teacher Professionalism Continues

Are you seeing a pattern here? Moskowitz and her pals don't want to bother with all that messy certification nonsense. They want to do it their way and take whoever they want. And why not? Their teachers aren't unionized and don't last anyway. When this one goes, just open another can. Reformy Bellwether Education wants to do away with pensions because they're supposedly unfair to the people who quit after five minutes. Now here's a piece saying do away with certification altogether.

This is not a new idea. Self-styled education expert Nicholas Kristof suggested this years ago. Evidently Merryl Streep and Colin Powell were unqualified to teach.The fact that neither one of them had any desire to teach was neither here nor there. New York City students were being deprived of imaginary teachers, and we needed to address this crisis immediately! The new arguments are not much better, actually.

Funding per student has been rising sharply for decades, resulting in lower class size, but such expenditures seem not to have succeeded.

I don't know what planet this guy lives on, but here in NYC, the opposite has occurred. In fact, there's a lawsuit right now trying to change it. We are the largest district in the country, with the highest class sizes in the state. The writer should be delighted to learn that maximum class size is now pretty much standard. Doubtless he'd revel in our busting-at-the-seams overcrowded school.

The key to successful education is to attract good teachers. We can try to do so by raising teachers’ salaries (as commonly advocated). But this strategy also seems to fail, partly because higher incomes go to both good teachers and bad, giving bad teachers as much incentive as good ones to become and remain teachers.

I don't remember much about economics, but there is the whole supply and demand thing. In fact, as you'll see, it's pretty much the crux of this writer's argument. But it doesn't apply, evidently, when it comes to, you know, paying teachers. The fact that half of them walk before they hit five years is neither here nor there. Then there's that bad teachers trope. Evidently they are everywhere, though there is little or no evidence to support this supposition.

And then the writer goes on to the main point--that certification is keeping out good teachers. To his credit, the writer doesn't mention Streep or Powell. Here's the point:

How can this be? Despite much research, nobody can say what skills, qualities, or training good teachers need. 

So therefore, let's drop requirements altogether.  That's what passes for logic in this piece. So, now that we've given up certification requirements, how do we weed out those bad teachers wandering the landscape like a zombie plague?

By far, the most effective way to improve teacher quality is to require administrators to selectively retain, after the first few years of experience, only the more effective teachers. The biggest barrier to improving teacher quality is therefore union contracts that block such selective retentions and, with lock step pay, eliminate success-based compensation.

Okay, let's examine that. Given the plague of zombie bad teachers, we need to address this crisis. But on the other hand, who hired these zombies? My guess it was the administrators, you know, the ones we're depending on to weed out the bad teachers. Who failed to get rid of this plague? Right again, the very same administrators. And wait, isn't there already a means of firing teachers for performance? Haven't we just enacted not one, but two laws to accomplish that in New York? And didn't Race to the Top insist on teacher certification requirements in all the states that took the money?

Let's take a look at "success-based compensation," otherwise known as merit pay. In fact, merit pay is an old, old idea that has never worked anywhere. Let me tell you something--I've outlasted many trends and one thing I can tell you is I've never made a whole lot of money. I'll also tell you I don't work for tips, and suggesting that I do, or that anyone does, will not stem the tide of teachers walking out the door.

The notion that it is difficult to get certified is pretty ridiculous. Hey, if it's too much trouble for you to get twelve education credits, maybe this isn't the job for you. The notion, propagated by this writer,  that colleges don't require certification is equally ridiculous. For me to work as an adjunct teacher of English as a second language, I needed a master's degree in applied linguistics. I didn't just grab it off a tree like an apple. If you want to work on a tenure track, for the few that are still around, you'd better have a doctorate, and not one of the ones you buy online for $169.

I don't know about you, but I'm a little concerned about who gets in front of my children, or yours. I'm not remotely comfortable with Eva Moskowitz, who keeps kids in test prep until they pee their pants, getting to decide. I'm not comfortable with abusive teachers who lack the common sense of salad vegetables.

So I'm sorry, but inconvenient as it is, I think we need standards for teachers. If the ones we have are too difficult, or not relevant enough, we can amend them. The notion of dumping them is part of a larger pattern, a pattern designed to eliminate career teachers and make us replaceable cogs.

We devote our lives to teaching American's children, and we deserve better. And for those who blather on about placing children first, our children deserve better too.

Happy Independence Day

I wish everyone reading this blog a safe and joyous holiday. We call it the Fourth of July but it's really a day we celebrate liberation and independence. This is something we sorely need, what with a raving lunatic in charge of the country.

On this Independence Day, union is pretty much under assault. In Texas, already a "right to work" state, they're moving to stop payroll deductions for those who choose to remain in the union. Note that this is only for teachers, and not for police officers.

This mirrors actions in Wisconsin, where Governor Scott What's His Name eliminated collective bargaining, except for police and firefighters. He rationalized this with some nonsense about public safety being important, which clearly implies public education is not. It's more likely that he was concerned about being protected when the rabble came out with torches and pitchforks. You know, in North Korea a lot of people go hungry, but not the military.

And this is where we find ourselves on Independence Day 2017. Orange Man is attacking the press as fake news with clips from wrestling, a fake sport. This is what occupies our time and our news. It's nice that we have one day a year blowing up stuff, even though in doing so we drive our canine friends out of their minds. Likely, though, they'll get over it tomorrow.

We, on the other hand, are stuck in a more complicated and long-term mess. Our union is already fragile, and national leaders, having expertly stolen the Supreme Court, are poised to push it off a cliff. Our pensions are under attack from reformies nationally, many posing as Democrats. You can hardly tell whether they are fake Democrats or Democrats are real reformies. While I sadly lean toward the latter, it doesn't much matter because we find ourselves in exactly the same place.

The question becomes not only where do we go from here, but also how bad do things have to get before we rouse ourselves from our indifferent slumber? Take a look at Puerto Rico, just a little bit farther down the road than we are. Over there they face massive school closures, and they've just been told their pensions are no more.

Could that happen here? Absolutely. And how will we face it? Will we continue to put on a tie and ask for that seat at the table? Will we wear a few buttons that say we're Public School Proud? Or will we take to the streets and tell them no more?

Eventually we'll need to move toward the latter, and the sooner the better. A whole lot of Americans are no more awake than we are. 

Why I Support COPE, and Why You Should Too

For those who may not know, COPE is the political fund of the UFT and NYSUT. Contributions are strictly optional. 

I've been chapter leader for eight years now, and each and every one of those years I've received some package or other from UFT urging me to do a COPE drive. In fact, a few years back, I decided to take them up on it. So I invited a Queens rep over to a meeting, but the rep texted me after the meeting had begun asking me what time to show. I was left to largely improvise a meeting, but that was OK because, as usual, these were pretty lively times and we all had much to discuss.

I was interested in supporting leadership at that time because it was hanging tough against Cuomo's insistence we rate teachers on junk science. And when the rep showed up, he said, after we'd gone years with no contract, "Don't worry, Michael Mulgrew is very smart. You'll get your contract, because Bloomberg can't get evaluation without it." Despite that proclamation, virtually every sentient NY City teacher remembers ending up with an evaluation system devised by Reformy John King and no contract. My members still ask me to bring the rep back so they can throw stuff at him. And by the end of that meeting, only one UFT delegate and I had signed up for COPE.

I continued to pay because I felt it gave me marginal cred with leadership, which for reasons I can't fathom, criticized bloggers from time to time. But I didn't see the point in inviting anyone else until very recently, when I heard UFT Political Director Paul Egan speak of the NY constitutional convention vote, coming next November. You probably know that NY State, unlike New Jersey and Illinois, has to pay its share of pension contributions by law. You probably also know that the states I just mentioned, since they don't have to, tend not to pay their share.

This is problematic for those of us who envision a retirement in which we don't have to check prices of canned cat food before purchasing it for lunch. Of course, there are valid arguments against paying into COPE. For one, NYC high schools have absolutely no voice nor vote in NYSUT. For another, COPE has supported some questionable politicians, from Serphin Maltese, who broke two Catholic school unions, to George Pataki, who answered our support by vetoing improvements in the Taylor Law, to teacher-basher Andrew Cuomo, to the execrable Fernando Cabrera.

This notwithstanding, there are powerful forces looking to open a Constitutional Convention, and Egan is not exaggerating when he says they are after our pensions. Upstate teacher Maria May recently sent me this paper describing Reclaim NY, a group that claims to be impartial, but only meets that standard if you believe Fox News is "fair and balanced."

This group is headed by hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, who supports all sorts of right-wing causes, including Breitbart Media, Ted Cruz, and everybody's best buddy Donald Trump (or "the presidential election," as Unity leadership calls him).  Reclaim NY is the very definition of an astroturf group, being 100% financed by Mercer's Family Foundation.

Reclaim NY is very much against taxes, and is suing school districts to try to expose what it deems to be overspending. They seem to have a very reformy outlook, strongly supporting charter schools, religious schools, and our good pal Betsy DeVos. They support a national constitutional convention so it's not a big leap to assume they will support a state one as well. Imagine how much more money New York could devote to charter schools, religious schools, and tax breaks for zillionaires if it simply didn't pay the pensions it's promised NY State teachers.

This is a very real threat, and not just for senior teachers. Our pensions are already under attack by national reformies, and folks like Mercer would probably like nothing better than to do away with them utterly. Right now, the only solid entity I know that's fighting this is our union and AFL-CIO. That's why I went before my staff and made my own pitch for COPE this year, and that's why I signed up another 80-plus members.

I would not be able to sleep at night if I weren't doing my bit to fight Mercer and like-minded reformies. While some of my friends disagree, I will continue to push COPE for now. Hey, if we win in November, maybe we can reconsider. But a country controlled by Donald Trump and his thugs is a very dangerous place for working people. While I frequently disagree with union leadership, this is one area in which I don't want their hands tied.

To them, I say fight this vigorously. Too frequently I see UFT leadership fall down when no one pushes them. They can't afford to do that now. We need to not only support them in this, but also to monitor their actions and progress.

Today's Class

Today, after having given our Regents exams, after having finalized and turned in all our grades, NY City high school teachers will face our students. Well, that is, we will face the students who bother to show up. All the students know grades are in. This is an innovation created by Dennis "Waffles" Walcott, reformy extraordinaire.

Personally, I don't believe that grades are everything. I think there's more to education than passing tests. We have a lot of interactions that aren't recorded, and we do a lot of things that are not actually required by contract. Of course we get no credit for these things, not on the Danielson rubric, not on the junk science ratings, and our supervisors don't even know when we work things out for kids. But we're teachers and that's what we do.

Nonetheless, high school students are not coming in today expecting help with non-academic issues. They're not coming in expecting help with academic issues either. In fact, a whole lot of them are simply not coming in at all, and I don't blame them. I mean, it's nice to come and say hello to your teacher and friends. However, when I was a teenager, if you told me that the grades were all in and there were no consequences for my non-attendance, you'd probably find me at the beach.

I teach ESL, and a lot of my students will show up. I'll show up too, because, you know, it's my job and I get paid and stuff. But it's not a productive use of our time. If we all have to come in, and the grades are a fait acompli,  the reformies who devised this should have found a better way for us to spend our time. Maybe they could send us all to a baseball game or a play. Maybe we could visit a college. Maybe there is something we can do other than sit in a classroom when class time is effectively over.

Actually I know they'll never do that, so here's my real idea--why not just push the Regents exams forward one day, and have us teach one day before the Regents exams? Wouldn't a class day be more productive if the students thought it were actually worth showing up?  Now I realize I'm just a lowly teacher whose paycheck is a mere fraction of Dennis Walcott's. And I've never been to a Leadership Academy or even an administration school (though he hasn't either). But naturally, by virtue of his innate reforminess alone, his idea is much better than mine. Still, I have no idea why.

My kids are great, and I'm sure they will pose no problems for me or anyone. But what if they weren't? What if they really didn't want to show and their parents forced them? What if they know their grades cannot be lowered, they can't be suspended, and it's highly unlikely there will be any consequence for any actions that aren't specifically felonious?

Dennis Walcott wasn't worried about things like that, because he wasn't a teacher. Who cares if Johny commits an atrocity in Miss Grundy's class? It's not like the AC was gonna break down in Walcott's  office, or the window air conditioners in Bloomberg's SUV were threatened. It's not like he was gonna have to eat whatever was left over on the last day the school cafeteria was open. And this certainly was not gonna result in bad service at his gala luncheon at the Plaza.

So if you're sitting five periods in a classroom that looks like the one above, consider sending a thank you note to Dennis Walcott. The thing about reformies is they're all about wasting your time. They don't really care about the quality of education. They have their eye on opportunities. After all, Eva Moskowitz is barely pulling in 500K a year, and you can barely buy a house with that these days. There are more charters to be built, and cyber-charters that don't even have to technically exist to rake in the bucks.

If you and your kids have to spend your time sitting around doing nothing for no good reason, well, that's a small price to pay for all this progress.

DeVos of Da People?

There is no question that US Secretary Betsy DeVos is an active enemy of public schools. At the right-wing conference she attended last week, she opened with a hilarious commentary ridiculing public school students who are too poor to buy lunch. She proudly told the crowd that she told Bernie Sanders there was no such thing as a free lunch.

That's news to most students in my Title One school, which relies on the federal government to give them lunch every day. Maybe DeVos is feeling jolly because her BFFs in the House are moving to take away lunch from poor kids who come to school hungry. Or maybe she finds the free lunch thing amusing because she herself was born rich and married richer. Clearly my students (and I) showed a lack of vision by failing to do that.

I don't suppose there were many free lunches in the elite private educational institutions DeVos and her children attended. When your family can pay tens of thousands of dollars annually for you to be away from the riff raff, you don't mix with the sort of people who fall into that category. That, of course, is one reason a whole lot of private schools exist.

The problem, in fact, is exactly the opposite of what DeVos says it is. She'd tell you that we need more choice. She'd tell you that we need charter schools and vouchers. She'd tell you that HBCUs are about school choice rather than utter lack of it. She'd tell you that we're condemning our children to inadequate facilities by sending them to the public schools that she and Donald Trump have deemed unfit for their children. Ironically, under absolutely no scenario they put forth will our children, whether or not they get free lunch, be attending school alongside the DeVos and Trump children.

If so-called school choice is not the problem, what is? I'd argue it's Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump. I'd argue it's Michelle Rhee and Michael Bloomberg. I'd argue it's Andrew Cuomo, Joel Klein, Bill Gates, John King, and absolutely every one of the so-called education reformers who decline to send their own children to the schools over which they preside. And yes, I'd have to include Barack Obama in that crowd as well. While I understand taking special precautions for the children of a US President, I have no idea how he rationalizes pushing one system for our children, and opting his into a school that does almost the polar opposite.

If Betsy DeVos had been required to place her own children in public schools, can you imagine Detroit, in her home state, facing crumbling, rat-infested buildings as a matter of course? Do you suppose she'd allow such conditions to even exist if they could affect her own kids? In fact Betsy's privatization efforts have led to the deterioration of public schools all over her state. Sadly she's not alone.

People with a lot of money give it to folks like Andrew Cuomo, who pushes thinly-veiled voucher schemes much like DeVos does. It's Cuomo who advocated and enabled the junk-science based evaluation system that's brought teacher morale to the lowest I've ever seen it. It's Andrew Cuomo who criticized the system he championed as "baloney" because not enough unionized working teachers were fired as a result. Of course Andrew Cuomo didn't send his kids to public school either, so why does he give a damn what happens to them?

Anyone who'd presume to lead a public school system ought to have a stake in it. If Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein had to send their kids to public schools, would our children be sitting around in crumbling trailers? Would they and their teachers be rated via tests of quality that can be described, charitably, as dubious? Would they set up junk science systems to demoralize and fire the people whose jobs entailed helping their children?

Of course not. There ought not to be a multi-tiered education system, and Finland, generally regarded as the world's best, hasn't got one. Education is supposed to be the great equalizer, and as long as we allow it to be controlled by hypocritical windbags with no stake in it, we're not going to reach that ideal. And as long as we entrust our children to people who find our children's poverty a source of hilarity, we're going to move farther from that goal, at a rapid pace.

We need to find leaders willing to put their money where their mouths are, and to do that they're going to have to put their children where our schools are.

When Chalkbeat Needs an "Expert," They Consult Students First NY

I am consistently amazed at what Chalkbeat regards as expert advice. Evidently, if you have enough cash to start an astroturf group, or if Bill Gates gives it to you, that's good enough for them. I found this tidbit in my email today, courtesy of Chalkbeat:

COLLEGE READY? City officials are hoping to ensure at least two-thirds of its graduates are "college ready" but experts disagree about how exactly readiness should be measured.

Wow. Who are they gonna ask? Aaron Pallas? Longtime principal Carol Burris? Ravitch herself? Here's the very first "expert" opinion Chalkbeat offers:

...StudentsFirstNY, in a report released last week, argues the city should include in its calculation students who don’t make it to graduation, which would knock the citywide rate down to just over one third.

Now that's very interesting. It's particularly interesting because I'm always reading about these amazing charter schools at which 100% of their grads go to four-year colleges. Incredible right? But what these stories don't say, ever, is precisely which percentage of the students who started these schools didn't finish. (That includes the ever-popular Dr. Steve Perry. I don't like to brag, but he recently banned me on Twitter because I retweeted something critical of him. How dare I?)
 I mean, if you start out with 100 kids, and 50 don't graduate your high school, doesn't that mean that half weren't college ready even if the other half ended up in 4-year colleges?

But I don't read these stories on Chalkbeat. I generally see them on Gary Rubinstein's blog. You see, while Gary is a full-time teacher at Stuyvesant and a father of small children, when he gets a story he doesn't just go to Students First NY and ask what they think about it.  He does research,  crunches the numbers, writes graphs and charts to make them accessible to folks like me who wouldn't understand otherwise, and presents a picture we wouldn't have otherwise.

Now in fairness, Chalkbeat also went to "Research Alliance for New York City Schools, a nonpartisan center based at New York University." 30 seconds of research revealed they were funded by Gates and Walmart. So you get both sides of the story at Chalkbeat. Reformy Students First NY, and a Gates funded entity that Chalkbeat calls "nonpartisan." We should take their word, right? (The fact that they didn't bother to label Students First as partisan should count for nothing, I suppose.) They also ask someone from Gates-funded "Achieve." So if you want a real spectrum of Gates-funded views, Chalkbeat is your go-to.

Also in fairness, they do acknowledge another view:

Yet some critics argue that test scores are not the best way to judge whether students are ready for college. Studies show that a student’s GPA is often a better predictor of success in college than his or her SAT scores, for example, though GPA isn’t standardized across schools.

You see that? "Some critics argue," they say, though they can't be bothered to cite a single one. And though it says "studies show," it doesn't mention who made them, or interview a single person who believes it. But then we resolve this issue.

Meanwhile, groups like StudentsFirstNY believe a metric that counts only graduates, rather than all students who start in ninth grade, artificially inflates the numbers.

Of course you have to not only give the last word to the astroturfers, but also fail again to mention they are partisan. Because journalistic standards. 

Though there are tens of thousands of teachers, though said teachers have a union, Chalkbeat New York could not be bothered asking them. Though Gary Rubinstein actually is an expert, and though he actually does research, they haven't bothered asking him either.

Chalkbeat NY's double standards are showing, and it appears they can't even be bothered to pretend anymore.

Platitudes Ahoy from Hillary at NEA

Writer Dana Goldstein is highly impressed by Hillary's talking points at the NEA. She says it represents a new beginning for teachers, and calls her "the teachers' candidate." Yet she's also highly impressed by recent actions of the Obama administration.

Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued a mea culpa of sorts on the overuse of standardized testing, and his successor John King has drawn attention to racial segregation and overly harsh school discipline.

While it's nice that these guys have finally taken the crucial step of paying valuable lip service to these things, the fact is they've done jack squat on the testing front, and John King is, in fact, trying to subvert ESSA to ensure that more testing be done, spirit and letter of the law be damned. And despite the alleged philosophical evolution of President Obama, I haven't heard him raise a peep over King's disregard for the law.

You'll pardon me for not getting overly enthusiastic here, but I've watched our AFT President Randi Weingarten very carefully, along with our local President Michael Mulgrew, and I've heard a lot about what President Obama has said. Those words have not changed much for those of us who actually do the work. Things seem to get worse each and every year, no matter what they say. Here's more on our commander-in-chief:

Two years later, in a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Obama referenced teacher tenure more harshly, saying, “I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences.” If we could fire bad teachers and replace them with better ones, the thinking went, we could narrow the academic fissures between rich and poor children.

Obama wasn’t wrong about the excesses of teacher tenure.

I love that Goldstein feels no pressure to, you know, offer any evidence for that statement. In fact, tenure does not give teachers jobs for life. Tenure just means, or at least used to mean, that admin has to prove teachers are unfit before they fire them. Generally no one, including Goldstein, questions why these teachers received tenure if they were indeed unfit. And no one questions why administrators didn't bother to go after these teachers before. But now that Cuomo has managed to place the burden of proof on teachers to prove they are not unfit, a virtually impossible burden, perhaps writers like Goldstein find things improved. Who knows? She herself feels no need to even offer an explanation.

And while it's nice that Obama pays lip service to factors other than teachers, and it's nice that Hillary does as well, there's no evidence here that anything is going to change, and no promises to actually, you know, do anything about it. Were Hillary saying she was going to do away with all VAM junk science, it would be something worth talking about. But I didn't hear that, and Goldstein didn't report it. Here's the important part of Goldstein's argument:

I wrote a book on our historical tendency to blame teachers for society’s ills.

That's what you call an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy, if not a self-serving advertisement. I don't care if she's written ten books. Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein have written books too, and they're still still full of crap. Show me why I should listen to you. Here's what self-appointed expert Goldstein has learned:

Teacher accountability isn’t a bad thing; any functional system has mechanisms in place to remove low performers and, even more importantly, help them improve. 

You see that? It's more important to help them improve, but despite all the nice words about external factors from Hillary and Obama and her uncited sources, there's still that bad teacher floating around the pool polluting the water for everyone else.  And here's Goldstein's conclusion:

It’s safe to say it is a new day for the Democratic Party on education policy. But here’s hoping that Clinton’s turn toward the unions doesn’t mean she lets go of some of the Obama administration’s more promising recent ideas.

Despite the fact that Hillary was addressing an audience of teachers and clearly catered her remarks to evoke applause, despite the fact that this was a speech, not an act, and despite the fact that teachers booed her remarks about charters, which she clearly plans to support and expand, this writer, who "wrote a book," is  certain it's a new day. Frankly, I didn't even see how Hillary's promise of "a seat at the table" has any meaning whatsoever. I've been to many legally imposed public meetings where those who were supposed to listen had their minds made up and did whatever they came to do anyway. I've joined entire communities to speak at that table as Bloomberg's operatives played video games below it, ignoring us entirely.

If Hillary becomes President, it's incumbent upon activists like us and opt-out to keep the pressure on. We already know that AFT and NEA are content with status quo and unconditionally accept every word that comes out of the mouths of educational demagogues they wish to support. It's what they do, not what they say, and thus far Hillary Clinton has done nothing but sit idly by while her former boss followed each and every reformy druther of Bill Gates. She's accepted money and support from Broad and the Walmart family, and this teacher does not believe reformies are paying for any "new beginning" that involves improving the lot of public school teachers or students.

Go ahead and prove me wrong, Hillary. But don't take me for such a fool that, after decades of reforminess, I should just take your word things will be better even as you offer no specifics whatsoever.

Why I'm Not Donating to Chalkbeat (And You Shouldn't Either)

For the last few days I've been receiving missives from Chalkbeat NY, nee Gotham Schools, to contribute money. They want me to support the great work they say they're doing. I have actually been following them pretty much since their inception, and I still get their daily Rise and Shine, which I occasionally find useful.

They used to have something called Nightcap, which gave alternate points of view, like blogs, but now it's pretty much all from reformy MSM sources. They used to feature comments on the front page, back when it made a difference what conmmenters thought. And it used to be easy to read, before they instituted their new and largely ponderous format.

I was solicited to write for them. The first piece I did was a report on a PS 123 rally. I reported what the speakers said and was attacked for the speakers being inaccurate. It had not occurred to me that for my salary, nothing whatsoever, I was supposed to investigate their statements. After that, I was subject to the most brutal editing process I've ever experienced. Everything was pretty much gone over with a fine tooth comb, sometimes for the better, but not always.

After battling for months, I submitted this piece. Chalkbeat objected that I'd labeled Cathie Black as billionaire-sponsored, though Michael Bloomberg had appointed her. They objected to my saying TFA favored Ivy diplomas, though at the time they certainly did. I don't recall the third objection, but I do recall that it wasn't even debatable. That was the end of my tenure at Chalkbeat. Truthfully I'm more interested in using my voice, rather than have it watered down to be more acceptable to the reformies.

I later objected when they decided to place a piece about 100 E4E members signing some petition for more work for less pay, or whatever nonsense they were pushing that week. Gotham told me they would happily run a piece if I got 100 signatures. I wrote a petition asking that the ESL students in all schools school have their Regents exams graded by ESL teachers.  This was the policy for schools containing high percentages of ESL students. Although my school had lower percentages than some of these schools, we in fact had higher numbers. I didn't understand, if indeed that was an advantage, why my students weren't entitled to it.

I wrote the petition in five minutes and had 100 signatures within an hour. Just for the heck of it, I added the signatures of most of our School Leadership Team. I submitted it to Chalkbeat. A Chalkbeat reporter called me and we talked. She asked for the name of another teacher who could address it. I gave her one. Then I never heard anything of it again.

I've been to UFT rallies that haven't received mention in Chalkbeat, even though every time Eva Moskowitz blows her nose they report what color Kleenex she used. When I wrote them to complain, they gave me a snide response about how they were giving their reporters the summer off. You know, like us lazy worthless teachers. But this particular lazy worthless teacher was at the Manhattan rally that day, the one Chalkbeat didn't see fit to report. You'd better believe if E4E had a rally it would make the cut.

That's why I'm not giving a dime to Chalkbeat. Instead I made a donation to Class Size Matters, an organization that works for things we believe in (as opposed to things zillionaires want). If you'd like to follow my example, and I very much suggest you do, you can do it right here.

The Moskowitz Anomoly

Eva says the "got to go" list was an anomaly, one of those wacky things that happens once in a blue moon.  Yet there have been stories for years of kids pushed out of Moskowitz Academies, for inconvenient behavior, low test scores, whatever. Eva is now demanding public funding for the Moskowitz pre-K but refusing to submit to required oversight by the city. Rules are for the little people, and that would be us, the people who serve all children.

If there's an "anomoly," it's the fact that this particular list was placed in writing.

@campbell_brown @SuccessCharters @NYCSchools next time they will not make the mistake of leaving a paper trail.

— Gary Rubinstein (@garyrubinstein) October 30, 2015

Eva's test scores are no miracle. They're a product of the drill and kill method she favors that values test scores over children. How else do you explain children soiling themselves as a matter of course under the abusive leadership she fosters and defends. In a public school, this would be considered child abuse. If you didn't allow a child to go to the bathroom and that child soiled herself, you'd be guilty of corporal punishment under CR A-420. When my dog asks to go out, I jump up and take him. Therefore I treat my dog better than Moskowitz treats the children under her care.

Anyone who tells you Moskowitz is an amazing success story is ignorant, willingly or otherwise. There is no way I'd subject my kid or yours to the ridiculous and joyless discipline inherent in her test factories. There is also no way I'd equate a Moskowitz Academy with "Success." In my view, success entails a certain degree of happiness. Creating compliant drones is great for companies like Walmart which pay poorly for lives of drudgery. Doubtless that's why the Walmart family is all in for charters. Nonetheless I want something much better for the children I serve.

That's just one reason I don't work for the likes of Eva. A better reason is I have a better job. I serve all high-needs kids, none of whom will get a great standardized test score, and none of whom would be accepted into a Moskowitz Academy. Despite recent reforminess, I still have better working conditions than Moskowitz teachers ever will. I want my kid and yours to have better working conditions and therefore reject the preposterous claims that we somehow oppose "excellence." If "excellence" entails forcing working people to demonstrate publicly against their own interests, like Eva just forced her teachers to do, who needs it?

Moskowitz Academies take public money, but are not public schools. Public schools serve the public, and do not discriminate against ELLs or kids with disabilities. They don't write "got to go" lists about kids whose scores will hurt the bottom line. The stakes attached to scores are there because Eva and her BFFs are waging war against us, the last bastion of unionism in these Unitied States.

It's an important war, because if we really cared about "excellence," we'd want our kids to have excellent lives, as opposed to excellent test scores. Hobbling union deprives our children of opportunity and makes it more likely they'll spend years of drudgery in service of Eva's BFF the Walmart family.

Moskowitz is a demagogue and I applaud NY Times reporter Kate Taylor for shedding further light on her misleading and unethical practices.