An Easily Understandable Explanation of Derivative Markets:

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit. She realizes that virtually

all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no

longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up

with a new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay

later.

She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the

customers loans).

Word gets around about Heidi's "drink now, pay later" marketing strategy

and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's

bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit .

By providing her customers freedom from immediate payment demands,

Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially

increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages.

Consequently, Heidi's gross sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that

these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases

Heidi's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since

he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.

At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these

customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These

securities are then bundled and traded on international security

markets. Naive investors don't really understand that the securities

being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are the debts of

unemployed alcoholics.

Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities

soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading

brokerage houses.

One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager

at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand

payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar. He so

informs Heidi.

Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons. Being

unemployed alcoholics, they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since

Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations, she is forced into bankruptcy.

The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%.

The collapsed bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents

it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in

the community.

The suppliers of Heidi's bar had granted her generous payment extensions

and had invested their firms' pension funds in the various BOND

securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her

bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds.

Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family

business that had endured for three generations. Her beer supplier is

taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and

lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective

executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar no-strings

attached cash infusion from the Government. The funds required for this

bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class,

non-drinkers.

Now, do you understand?

Can He Work Education Magic?

by Melissa Bailey | June 9, 2009 7:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2009/06/school_reformer.php

(Updated) Though he has but one year of classroom experience teaching in a prep school, Garth Harries was welcomed as the man New Haven can count on to turn around public education.

The 36-year-old Wunderkind made his debut performance at Monday night’s full Board of Education meeting. He was roundly welcomed and officially hired as the man who’ll usher in a new era of school reform.

In a two-minute speech, Harries explained why he’s leaving a high-powered post with the NYC school system, where he oversaw an extensive school- building initiative, for New Haven.

“There is a great foundation in this district,” said Harries, “and there is also a leadership that’s setting ambitious goals.” (Click on the play arrow to watch his speech.)

Harries’ official title will be the assistant superintendent for portfolio and performance management. The job was created last month to oversee plans for far-reaching school reform, including closing the achievement gap in five years. Mayor John DeStefano has made school reform a centerpiece of his reelection campaign; the school system recently revealed the broad outline of a three-tiered “Portfolio School Initiative”, which would shift accountability onto individual schools. All the reforms the school system is talking about, including merit-based pay and closing failing schools, are still proposals, and must be agreed to first by a skeptical teacher’s union.

Schools chief Reggie Mayo said now that the “bare bones,” the “broad overview” of reform have been laid out, Harries will flesh out and implement the details.

The board promptly approved Harries’ appointment with a 5-0 vote with little discussion.

“This is the first piece of meat that we’re putting on the bones,” said board member Michael Nast, continuing Mayo’s metaphor.

In his brief speech, Harries quipped that he wouldn’t take offense to being called “meat” on bones.

IMG_3597.jpg

Harries said he was drawn to New Haven by what he called the district’s strong foundation, built on the city’s “state of the art buildings” and data-driven learning, and by the school system’s vision for reform. He said he was convinced that the New Haven Public Schools are committed to making changes, and that the broad outline of those changes coincides with the work he’s done in New York.

“The structure of that is so consistent with my first idea of what needs to happen in public schools,” he said. “That is, that the school is the unit that matters, for teachers and kids, that’s the place that people learn. What every parent wants is a good school to send their kids. That doesn’t mean every school needs to be the same; it does mean every school needs to be good.”

Harries will begin work on July 6. He’ll make a $140,000 salary; a significant cut from his last pos t, where he acted as a cabinet member to the New York City chancellor of schools. In his six years at the NYC education department, Harries focused on an effort to build small schools in poorer neighborhoods. He said he oversaw the creation of over 330 district public schools and over 60 charter schools.

Harries will be returning to New Haven after getting his undergraduate degree from Yale University. He later earned a law degree from Stanford Law School; worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company; and directed economic development projects in poor neighborhoods in Philadelphia. He also did a stint in politics, coordinating a Democratic field operation in Pennsylvania during the 1996 presidential campaign.

Classroom Time

He has one year of teaching experience, as a high school history and math teacher at the Vail Mountain School in Colorado.

When the New Haven post was created, Mayo elicited some concern by saying he wouldn’t require the new school reform czar to have teaching experience.

“If the reform plan is all about accountability, how can you ask this person to evaluate teachers if he or she hasn’t done any teaching?” asked Dave Cicarella, president of the teacher’ ;s union at that meeting. Board member M. Ann Levett agreed with him that a person would be best qualified if they had walked in a teacher’s “moccasins.”

Harries defended his skill set Monday.

“It’s absolutely right that in doing this work, you have to experience the role of teachers,” he said. He conceded he has little comparable classroom experience — his one-year teaching gig at the elite prep school was a far cry from the New York or New Haven school districts.

“I don’t compare it to the experience that urban teachers have,” he said. However, “what’s important is the degree of empathy and understanding of teachers,” he said. He said his wife is a former schoolteacher, and he’ll be surrounded by top staff on Mayo’s team who have a lot of experience teaching in city schools. The new post, he said, will rely upon an understanding of how school “systems” work, something he’s got six years of experience with.

“Frankly, an external perspective to New Haven and its schools is an opportunity for innovation,” he said.

Harries faced a similar line of questioning when he took over his most recent NYC post, tasked with reforming special education. Special education advocates fought his appointment because he didn’t have experience in special ed.

Reached Tuesday morning, Cicarella still had reservations.

“Basically, he has no teaching experience,” said Cicarella. “This seems to be kind of the trend, that they use more management-type people” in top administrative roles, people who “want to run school systems like a business.” Sometimes those people do a good job; sometimes they don’t, he said.

Cicarella said he understands that Harries won’t directly evaluate the teachers or the principals, but “there’s still some concern” that he’ll oversee those reforms “without having any knowledge of what the teachers do.”

Levett, however, said her concerns were allayed. She said while a candidate with more teaching experience would be “desirable,” “my preference is that he has the kind of experience doing what he will be doing,” which is “moving schools to a new level of accountability.”

“I feel very comfortable with that,” she said.

Harries was also welcomed by the Wilbur Cross PTO and the parent activist group Teach Our Children.

“Mr. Harries has a reputation of building strong partnerships with parents and community organizations,” said Claudia Bosch, a TOC leader, in a statement distributed Monday night. The group asked for input in creating the “map” for reform.

Harries’ first task will be to focus on boosting test scores above state averages, according to schools spokeswoman Michelle Wade. “This will require honest assessment and tough decisions about how to implement a school-based management model, achieve and maintain the highest quality of teachers, and determination how best to address the lowest performing schools, be it closing them and reopening them as local charter schools or implementing other improvements to enhance educational opportunities for its students.”

Harries said he’s up to the task.

“New Haven has a shot at being the first district [in the nation] to close the achievement gap,” he said. He plans to flesh out the details of a school reform plan and have it ready to be implemented in September, 2010.

He said he intends to stick with New Haven for the long haul.

“School reform is a long-term endeavor,” he said. “My intention is to live a career here.”

Book Review - Confessions of a Rogue Teacher by George Colon

By Ronald Standerfer

Not Your Grandparents' Classroom!

Let me begin by saying that George Colon, knows what he is talking about. Born in Puerto Rico, he absorbed the lessons of life served up on the streets of the South Bronx, earned degrees in English and Education, and went on to teach English in the New York City schools for the past thirty years. In his latest book, "Confessions of a Rogue Teacher," the harsh realities of teaching in the New York City public school system comes tumbling out in a torrent of taut, well written prose that keeps the reader on edge throughout the book. It's all there, the good, the bad, and the ugly; a graphic portrayal of a teacher's life in arguably one of the most demanding education venues in America.

The principal character in the book is Manny Quesada, who is described as a jaded teacher whose ideals have long since been eroded by the new realities of urban education. He is a man who wallows in self pity and lives a life that is moving dangerously close to overindulgence in drugs and alcohol. Meanwhile, his infatuation with Maggie, a bright, beautiful student who shares his infatuation is drawing him closer and closer to an improper, physical relationship.

But the worse is yet to come. After a physical altercation with a troubled student---an altercation that Manny felt forced him to act in self defense--- school officials remove him from his high school classroom and assigned him administrative duties in the "Rubber Room" of lore and legend in the superintendent's office, where lost souls known as "rogue teachers" await judgment.

Those who have read Dante's "Inferno" will find the description of the Rubber Room vaguely familiar. It too consists of a descending spiral, in this case a long corridor lined with airless offices where those condemned there spend months or even years performing meaningless tasks while awaiting their fate. But Manny is in no mood to wait. Convinced of his innocence, he wants to return to his classroom. Meanwhile, while performing his "meaningless" duties he makes a startling discovery. Educational officials are falsifying statistics; a fact that if made public, would create a scandal that could reach to the highest level of city politics. This is where the story really gets interesting. The question is, can Manny barter what he knows into a ticket back to the classroom in a kind of quid pro quo mutual blackmail arrangement; or more importantly, should he even try? In the end he decides to go for it.

The thing I like the most about "Confessions of a Rogue Teacher" is the authentic ring of the dialogue and descriptive prose. It makes me wonder how much of Manny Quesada is George Colon and vice versa. I hope to interview the author in the near future and will certainly ask him that question.

"Confessions of a Rogue Teacher" is my kind of book. Short, interesting, and eminently readable!

Ron Standerfer is a freelance writer and photographer who is a frequent contributor to Ezine Articles as well as numerous other online news sites. His latest novel, The Eagle's Last Flight chronicles the life of an Air Force fighter pilot during the Cold War and Vietnam years. Details of his book can be found at http://w0.0.011287.4074R:003d595a E:3355.1105544695 V:1058.1502.1.16.1.1.US S:arizonialg [N3]]mN]1234 [m3]3][m3]

The Nation: The Selling Of School Reform

Dana Goldstein

The Nation

June 15, 2009

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/goldstein



It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: Al

Sharpton, Newt Gingrich and Mike Bloomberg--all failed

presidential hopefuls--arrive at the White House for a

joint meeting with President Barack Obama. Upon leaving

the Oval Office, they convene a press conference on the

White House lawn.



But far from tearing one another to bits or sniping at

the man whose job they coveted, these unlikely

comrades--a self-appointed civil rights spokesman, a

former Republican Speaker of the House and a

billionaire New York City mayor--were in total

agreement. The topic of the meeting? Schools.



"You have to hold people accountable, and those that

perform should be the ones that teach our kids, and

those that don't, unfortunately our children are just

too important," Bloomberg said, referring to his

support for teacher merit pay.



Sharpton intoned, "The nation's future is at stake, our

children [are] at stake."



Education Secretary Arne Duncan was there to lend the

administration's support. "There's a real sense of

economic imperative," he said. "We have to educate our

way [to] a better economy."



Though the media portrayed the meeting as one among

"strange bedfellows," in fact Sharpton, Gingrich and

Bloomberg are all on the same side of the education

policy debate roiling the Democratic Party. The three

are spokesmen for the Education Equality Project (EEP),

an advocacy group that has attracted widespread media

attention since its June 2008 launch, in large part

because of its bipartisan call for policies like merit

pay and the expansion of the charter school sector.

With the support of rising star Democrats like Newark,

New Jersey, Mayor Cory Booker and Washington, DC, Mayor

Adrian Fenty, the EEP and such allied groups as the

political action committee Democrats for Education

Reform--have openly pushed back against the influence

of teachers unions, community groups and teachers

colleges over national education policy. Proclaiming

themselves "reformers," they often borrow their

strategies from the private sector, and they believe

urban public schools must be subjected to more free-

market competition.



On the other side of the divide is a group of

progressive policy experts and educators who published

a manifesto during campaign season called A Broader,

Bolder Approach to Education. They believe teachers and

schools will not be able to eradicate the achievement

gap between middle-class white children and everyone

else until a wide array of social services are

available to poor families. They envision schools as

community centers, offering families healthcare, meals

and counseling.



Theoretically, there is no reason all these people

can't work together. Some charter schools, after all,

have had extraordinary success in raising the

achievement of low-income students--even, in some

cases, with the cooperation of teachers unions. Many

younger teachers appear enthusiastic about performance-

based pay, although there is no evidence from the

cities that have tried it, like Denver, that it

improves student achievement. Yet the single-

mindedness--some would say obsessiveness--of the

reformers' focus on these specific policy levers puts

off more traditional Democratic education experts and

unionists. As they see it, with the vast majority of

poor children educated in traditional public schools,

education reform must focus on improving the management

of the public system and the quality of its services--

not just on supporting charter schools. What's more,

social science has long been clear on the fact that

poverty and segregation influence students' academic

outcomes at least as much as do teachers and schools.



Obama's decision to invite representatives of only one

side of this divide to the Oval Office confirmed what

many suspected: the new administration--despite

internal sympathy for the "broader, bolder approach"--

is eager to affiliate itself with the bipartisan flash

and pizazz around the new education reformers. The risk

is that in doing so the administration will alienate

supporters with a more nuanced view of education

policy. What's more, critics contend that free-market

education reform is a top-down movement that is

struggling to build relationships with parents and

community activists, the folks who typically support

local schools and mobilize neighbors on their behalf.



So keenly aware of this deficit are education reformers

that a number of influential players were involved in

the payment of $500,000 to Sharpton's nearly broke

nonprofit, the National Action Network, in order to

procure Sharpton as a national spokesman for the EEP.

And Sharpton's presence has unquestionably benefited

the EEP coalition, ensuring media attention and

grassroots African-American crowds at events like the

one held during Obama's inauguration festivities, at

Cardozo High School in Washington.



"Sharpton was a pretty big draw," says Washington

schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, recalling the

boisterous crowd at Cardozo. Rhee is known for shutting

down schools and aggressively pursuing a private

sector-financed merit pay program. Some of the locals

who came out to hear Sharpton booed Rhee's speech at

the same event, despite the fact that her policies

embody the movement for which Sharpton speaks.



The $500,000 donation to Sharpton's organization was

revealed by New York Daily News  columnist Juan

Gonzalez on April 1, as the EEP and National Action

Network were co-hosting a two-day summit in Harlem,

attended by luminaries including Chicago schools CEO

Arne Duncan. The money originated in the coffers of

Plainfield Asset Management, a Connecticut-based hedge

fund whose managing director is former New York City

schools chancellor Harold Levy, an ally of the current

chancellor, Joel Klein. Plainfield has invested in

Playboy, horse racetracks and biofuels. But the company

did not donate the money directly to Sharpton. Rather,

in what appears to have been an attempt to cover

tracks, the $500,000 was given to a nonprofit entity

called Education Reform Now, which has no employees.

(According to IRS filings, Education Reform Now had

never before accepted a donation of more than $92,500.)

That group, in turn, funneled the $500,000 to

Sharpton's nonprofit.



If one person is at the center of this close-knit nexus

of Wall Street and education reform interests, it is

Joe Williams, who serves as president and treasurer of

the EEP's board and is also the executive director of

Education Reform Now. But it is through his day job

that Williams, a former education reporter for the

Daily News, exerts the most influence. He is executive

director of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), a

four-year-old PAC that has gained considerable

influence, raising $2 million in 2008 and demonstrating

remarkable public relations savvy.



The group's six-person team works out of an East Forty-

fifth Street office donated--rent-free--by the hedge

fund Khronos LLC. In recent months, DFER has had a

number of high-profile successes, chief among them a

highly coordinated media campaign to call into question

the work of Obama education adviser Linda Darling-

Hammond, once considered a top contender for the job of

education secretary. During the same week in early

December, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall

Street Journal and Boston Globe published editorials or

op-eds based on DFER's anti-Darling-Hammond talking

points, which focused on the Stanford professor's

criticisms of Teach for America and other alternative-

certification programs for teachers. Less than two

weeks later, Obama appointed DFER's choice to the

Education Department post, Chicago schools CEO Duncan.



During campaign season, DFER donated to House majority

whip James Clyburn, Senator Mark Warner and Virginia

swing district winner Representative Tom Periello,

among others. The organization regularly hosts events

introducing education reformers like Rhee and Fenty to

New York City "edupreneurs," finance industry players

for whom education reform is a sideline. DFER is

focused on opening a second office, in Colorado, a

state viewed as being in the forefront of standards-

and testing-based education reform. The group

successfully promoted Denver schools superintendent

Michael Bennett to fill the Senate seat vacated when

Obama named Ken Salazar as interior secretary. Bennett

led the school system with the highest-profile merit

pay system in the nation.



During the Democratic Party's national convention in

Denver this past August, DFER hosted a well-attended

event at the Denver Museum of Art, during which Fenty,

Booker, Klein, Sharpton and other well-known Democrats

openly denigrated teachers unions, whose members

accounted for 10 percent of DNCC delegates. With

Clyburn and other veteran members of Congress in

attendance, many longtime observers of Democratic

politics believed the event represented a sea change in

the party's education platform, the arrival of a new

generation. While progressive groups such as Education

Sector, Education Trust and the Citizens' Commission on

Civil Rights have long attempted to push free-market

education reforms to the Democratic Party, it is only

with the arrival of DFER that the movement has had a

lobbying arm with an explicit focus on influencing the

political process through fundraising and media

outreach.



"For a lot of groups that are dependent upon both

private money and government money, there's a tendency

not to want to get involved in the nitty-gritty of

politics," Williams said in a March 31 phone interview

from Denver, where he was meeting with Colorado

politicians, setting the stage for DFER's expansion

there. "Our group--what we do is politics. We make it

clear: we're not an education reform group. We're a

political reform group that focuses on education

reform. That distinction matters because all of our

partners are the actual education reform groups. We're

trying to give them a climate where it's easier for

them to do their work."



The education reformers who came to prominence in the

1990s, including the founders of Teach for America and

the Knowledge Is Power Program, the national charter

school network that fought unionization in one of its

Brooklyn schools, often went to great lengths to

portray themselves as explicitly apolitical.

Nevertheless, "a lot of those people are, politically,

Democrats," says Sara Mead, a DFER board member and

director of early childhood programs at the Washington-

based New America Foundation. "One of those things that

DFER does that's really important is to help give those

people a way to assert their identity as Democrats.

It's important for those groups' long-term success, but

also for Democrats, to the extent that some of these

organizations are doing really good things for the kids

whose parents are Democratic constituents. It's

important that those organizations are identified with

us rather than being co-opted by Republicans, as they

were in the past."



The question remains, though, whether DFER and its

allies actually do speak for poor and minority parents

and their kids. Who on the left would disagree that the

staggering achievement gap between middle-class white

kids and poor children of color is a civil rights issue

of national importance? Who wouldn't view the high

dropout rates among black and Latino boys as a

disgrace? And yet there is no clear national

representation for the interests of the urban, mostly

black and Hispanic parents whose children's schools

confront these statistics day in and day out.



"On the local level is a certain distrust and despair

about schools that makes poor families accessible" to

free-market education reformers, says Deborah Meier, an

education professor at New York University and the

founder of several successful experimental public

schools for poor children. "But I think the

intersection between poverty and racism can't just be

tackled in this one area, in schools."



Teachers unions, with their focus on wraparound social

services for poor kids and better working conditions

for teachers, believe they are the natural spokespeople

for poor families. But so do union critics such as Joel

Klein, Michelle Rhee and Joe Williams, who are

sympathetic to No Child Left Behind and standardized

testing, and whose allies support private school

voucher programs.



"The DFERs, when they look at vouchers and charters,

they don't look at the underlying conditions," says

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation

of Teachers. "Parents want to send their kids to

charters and parochial schools because they like the

smaller class sizes, they like the attention to safety,

they like the attention to conditions that public

school teachers talk about all the time. They make us

the villains instead of the people who have the most

power--the superintendents and mayors."



Weingarten says she likes Williams, who is in fact a

reasonable and calm interlocutor; he even walks the

walk by sending his children to New York City public

schools. Some of DFER's board members, though, such as

investment manager and a Teach for America founder

Whitney Tilson, have been known to grow overheated in

their attacks on unions, calling them corrupt and

claiming that their leaders don't care about children.

Traditional education liberals can be just as harsh on

the subject of DFER. Criticizing the group's lack of

commitment to the racial integration of schools,

veteran education writer Jonathan Kozol said, "DFER is

working in historical oblivion. If they're going to

betray everything that Dr. King and Thurgood Marshall

fought for, at least they ought to have the honesty to

say so."



DFER is focused on reaching out to state legislators

across the country, pressing them to support policies

such as lifting the cap on the number of charter

schools allowed to open in a year. DFER is also

carefully watching how Congress and the Obama

administration dole out the $100 billion for schools

included in the February economic stimulus package.



Much of that money will fill local budget gaps, simply

allowing school districts to continue their work

without resorting to massive layoffs. But a $5 billion

"race to the top" fund is intended specifically to

foster innovation and reform in a small number of

states--perhaps between eight and twelve--that win a

competitive grant process. As White House chief of

staff Rahm Emanuel said in March, "The resources come

with a bow tied around them that says 'reform.' Our

basic premise is that the status quo and political

constituencies can no longer determine how we proceed

on public education reform in this country."



That sounds a lot like a DFER talking point. Indeed, it

has become clear that DFER's idea of education reform

is the one driving the Obama administration as it

distributes these funds. In a major March 10 address on

education delivered to the Hispanic Chamber of

Commerce, Obama spoke glowingly of charter schools and

merit pay plans. "Too many supporters of my party have

resisted the idea of rewarding excellence in teaching

with extra pay, even though we know it can make a

difference in the classroom," he said--though education

research has yet to offer proof that merit pay is a

panacea. Later in the speech, the president called

charter schools the national leaders on education

"innovation" and called on states to allow their

proliferation.



Two weeks later, during a conference call with

reporters, Duncan said thirty-six school districts

across the country are doing "interesting things around

[teacher] compensation" and added he hoped federal

stimulus dollars will increase that number to 150. The

education secretary called "rewarding teacher

excellence" a major priority but would not be more

specific about how such "excellence" should be

determined.



Darling-Hammond--back at Stanford but still advising

the Obama administration--is focusing her latest

research on international teacher quality. Nations like

South Korea and Singapore have managed to reduce

education inequality by building stable, high-quality

teacher forces, she says. The key is paying teachers

more, across the board, and providing them with better

professional training and support. Test-score-based

merit pay, according to Darling-Hammond, is a "marginal

issue."



On the ground, however, merit pay has become a major

point of contention: in districts like Washington, some

teachers have resisted calls for student test scores to

heavily influence their salaries, and parents have

protested the firings of popular teachers,

professionals they believe were making a difference in

their children's lives.



Unexplained teacher firings "are not a way to run a

school," says Ruth Castel-Branco, an organizer with DC

Jobs With Justice. "That shakes up the very foundation

of stability that schools have to have. There has to be

due process and a meaningful way for parents to

engage."



So far, at least, free-market education reformers have

struggled with this piece of the puzzle. Lacking a

membership base, their movement's lobbying arm is

essentially top-down, financed by New York hedge-

funders, supported by research conducted at Beltway

think tanks and represented on the ground by a handful

of state and local politicians scattered across the

country. And while it's true that charter schools and

Teach for America instructors interact with children

and parents every day, the excitement around individual

schools and classrooms does not easily translate into a

national agenda. After all, the vast majority of urban

students remain in traditional public schools, taught

by teachers who came through traditional teachers

college certification routes.



Even the involvement of Al Sharpton can't change those

facts. Joe Williams, who describes himself as chastened

by his involvement in the $500,000 payment to

Sharpton's group, will admit that. "I wouldn't even

consider Sharpton grassroots, actually," Williams says.

"But he holds a lot of power. He brings attention to an

issue like this."



Dana Goldstein is an associate editor at American

Prospect.

First cut of "The Rubber Room"

Greetings All,

Five Boroughs is pleased to announce that we have completed the first cut of our documentary The Rubber Room. We have been receiving a lot of emails over the last few months inquiring about the release of the film. Although we don’t have a specific date at present, we have never been closer. So to our eager audience we say thank you for your support and interest and just hang in there a little longer!

Although the editing process is not quite complete, we are looking for some help from those of you who have had the unfortunate experience of being reassigned to the Rubber Room. So, we are putting out an APB! We would love to review any photos or videos from inside the Rubber Room for potential use in the documentary. Some people have already provided us with some invaluable images from inside the Teacher Reassignment Centers, which has really proven to elevate the quality of the film. Although we will not be able to provide financial compensation for the usage of such images, proper consideration will be given (if desired) to any individuals providing materials used in the final version of the film.

We are specifically looking for images (photo or video) inside the Rubber Room. More specifically, individuals engaged in everyday activities, images that demonstrate the conditions of the room, or simply images that convey the space in which working professionals are being kept. Also, please be assured that considerations can be made for concealing the identities of any persons appearing in, or providing the images.

To this point, this has been a real grassroots project that would not have been possible without the participation, generosity, and courage of people who have been reassigned. We are calling out to you once more to really help make this project a success!

All digital content can be emailed to me at jeremygarrett@rubberroommovie.com.

Sincerely,
--
Jeremy Garrett
Executive Producer
Five Boroughs Productions
www.rubberroommovie.com
347-834-5206

Duking it Out on Charter Schools

Caroline comments on charter schools at Gotham Schools

It seems like I’ve previously made the same points to Kitchen Sink that I’m about to make again.

Aside from the near-parodic degree of bias here (snip below), I have to say that I almost never criticize a charter school for its actual characteristics. Rather than pro-actively attacking or criticizing, pretty much 100% of my comments about charter schools are refutations of their own dishonest and misleading boasts/claims.

Kitchen Sink’s words:
***Charter supporters: “Not all charters are the same. Some are miraculous, some are mediocre, some are terrible. The charter law allows the miraculous ones to operate, and the terrible ones to close.”

Charter skeptics: “Bash, bash, bash.”
***

Yet, Kitchen Sink, right away you contradict your charge that all charter critics do it bash, bash, bash.

*** You’re right to ask for more transparency in charter school practices, and to question results that just don’t square with common sense.***

For the zillionth time, if there is harmful, detrimental, needless bureaucracy hampering public schools, it should be eliminated for all schools, not just a special class of privileged, cosseted schools that then proclaim themselves superior, bash the schools that are still bogged down by bureaucracy, and attract vast amounts of support, acclaim and money by doing so.

So that’s one of my suggestions.

***We have the autonomy to make those dreams come true, which district public schools just don’t have due to the endless layers of bureaucracy and autocracy that have been caked on for decades and decades.***

Do I really have to go, again, into how charter schools cream — inherently, because of the application process, or pro-actively?

We have this discussion over and over.

Charter skeptic: Charter schools have a huge advantage because they cream for students who are likely to be higher-functioning.
Charter advocate: They do not.
Charter skeptic: (explains how charter schools cream.)
Charter advocate: What’s wrong with creaming?

It’s dizzying.

*** And to the extent that [creaming] is happening, is it happening at a higher rate in charters than in district schools? ***

This again too? OK, wearily, again:

First, the charter school process creams because every child in a charter had a family who knew enough and cared enough to seek out the charter and apply. Children who don’t have families who take an interest in their education — who are likely to be the biggest burden on the public education system — go to district schools, by default, by definition.

(The charter advocates’ dishonest “gotcha!” response is always “oh, so only kids whose parents don’t care go to district schools?” No. ALL kids whose parents don’t care go to district schools, but not ONLY kids whose parents don’t care go to district schools.)

Kitchen Sink says: ***I know one charter parent (actually a grandma raising two grandchildren) who complained that a well-regarded district school principal told her, “Take him somewhere else. I don’t have time for him and his learning disability!” Where did she take him? To a charter school. To the extent that this “pushing out” is happening, it works both ways, friends.***

Glad you found one example, but if true, it’s obviously an anomaly. For one thing, statistics resoundingly show that charter schools accept fewer disabled children than public schools — and the ones they do accept have less severe disabilities. One exception, if it’s true, doesn’t change that. And further, once again: Charter schools only enroll kids whose families cared enough to ask. Plus at least in my state, they get basically no oversight, so they can screen as much as their hearts desire in their enrollment processes. The kids whose families don’t take an interest in their education by definition end up in non-charter public schools.

*** Do you really think hordes of parents whose children are doing WELL in the district schools are going to take their kids away from their friends and teachers and bring them to a school with NO track record? Do you think a desparate family with no real success happening in school will do so?***

You’re correct there. But once again, those are families who care. They are motivated enough to take their kids away from their families and teachers and etc. etc. The kids who are doing poorly and have families who don’t give a rat’s a** (if any families at all) are the real challenge to public education. Those kids will remain in the publics, while the charters get the students with the motivated families.

Here’s a lesson that I do think we’re learning from charter schools: In at least some cases, when low-income, at-risk students who have families motivated enough to take an interest in their kids’ education are removed into a setting where all their classmates have the same advantage — and away from the most troubled kids from the most messed-up families — they overall seem to do better.

But is there something special about charter schools that makes this happen, or is it simply being removed from their most-troubled peers? Would the same thing happen in a public school if the same kids were removed from their most-troubled peers into a setting of entirely kids from more-motivated families? Since this entire situation is shrouded in denial (and, let’s be blunt, lies), it hasn’t been studied and we simply don’t know.

Some steps.

1. Everybody stop denying this and look at it clearly. Charter folks, own up, be honest and stop claiming it doesn’t happen. Press, researchers, observers, etc., wake up and pay attention.
2. Do some pilot projects replicating the situation — simply regular, non-charter public schools that no one gets into unless they request it. Add some hoops to jump through, like the contract-signing sessions KIPP does that weed out less-committed families. Do nothing else differently. Track student achievement and outcomes.
3. If this is a success, set up a public, non-charter system that’s frankly going to be two-tiered, justifying this on the basis that it’s helping some at-risk kids toward success. This system would offer every family a school that’s entirely by request (maybe with a few hoops to jump through) and provide a default school for those who don’t make the request. The difference would be that it would be an open and honest system, and the by-request school wouldn’t be able to claim to be superior to the default school, because the situation would be clear to all.

For added benefit, do some honest and thorough accounting of how much the more successful charter schools spend per student, counting the private philanthropy. Give that much to those pilot schools.

Teacher Resists a Charge of Corporal Punishment

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/nyregion/28corporal.html?ref=nyregion

May 28, 2009
Teacher Resists a Charge of Corporal Punishment

By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
When Glenn Storman, a guidance counselor at Public School 212 in Gravesend, Brooklyn, came across an unruly student cursing at a substitute teacher in 2004, he ordered the boy to “zip it” and brandished a rolled-up piece of paper, thinking that would be the last he heard of the encounter.
But five years later, Mr. Storman, 57, is embroiled in a legal dispute over allegations that he committed corporal punishment. A 27-year veteran of the school system, Mr. Storman denies hitting the student and is seeking to erase an unsatisfactory rating that a principal gave him. The Department of Education, however, has defended the rating, arguing that Mr. Storman did indeed touch the student, who was in the fifth grade.
The case shows the difficulties teachers can face in disputing the ratings they receive each year from principals. The ratings can determine whether they are eligible for lucrative teaching opportunities outside of the normal school year. The case also sheds light on the fine lines of interpretation surrounding the question of corporal punishment: Did Mr. Storman’s paper brush against the student? If so, was that intentional, and did it rise to the level of corporal punishment?
Teachers who receive unsatisfactory ratings are allowed to appeal to a court, and this month a judge in Manhattan ruled in Mr. Storman’s favor, saying she did not find evidence of corporal punishment. The unsatisfactory rating, wrote the judge, Acting Supreme Court Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich, “shocks the conscience, was arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion.”
The Department of Education said last week that it was reviewing the decision and declined to comment further.
In October 2004, Mr. Storman entered a special education classroom at P.S. 212 after hearing a student yelling. When he stepped into the room, he saw the student on his knees on a chair cursing at the teacher. Holding the piece of paper in his hand, Mr. Storman recalled in an interview, he told the student to be quiet. The student moved forward as he reprimanded him, but Mr. Storman said he did not remember coming into contact with him.
Mr. Storman said he would not have hit the student because he had experience with special education students and did not believe force was the best way of resolving disputes.
“I don’t need to do anything more than to look at them and say, ‘Listen, you know to stop right now,’ ” he said.
Mr. Storman said he had been carrying the rolled-up paper while walking down the hallway. In previous statements to school officials he said he “may have touched” the student’s mouth with the paper, according to the court ruling. He says now that he does not believe that was so.
The boy’s father complained to the school’s principal, who asked for an inquiry, and in 2005, Mr. Storman, who is still a guidance counselor at P.S. 212, received an unsatisfactory rating in his annual review. He appealed, but the Department of Education stood by its determination that he had committed corporal punishment.
Mr. Storman appealed again in 2006, seeking $100,000 in compensation because, he said, the unsatisfactory rating prevented him from getting work as a summer school teacher and a tutor, work which he estimates had added about $25,000 a year to his income. He has also filed a lawsuit in federal court, which is still pending.
Mr. Storman was given another unsatisfactory rating in 2008 after his principal said he had inappropriately yelled at a student, according to Mr. Storman’s lawyer, John. C. Klotz. Mr. Storman is also appealing that rating.
An investigation by the Department of Education’s Office of Special Investigations ultimately substantiated the charges of corporal punishment. But in an apparent change of heart, the investigator who wrote that report, Dennis Boyles, testified during the appeal process that he did not believe Mr. Storman’s actions rose to the level of corporal punishment, according to the May 11 ruling.
Mr. Boyles testified in 2006 that the encounter constituted “inappropriate physical contact” but not corporal punishment, the court ruling said. Last year, Mr. Boyles reiterated his statement that he did not believe Mr. Storman’s actions amounted to corporal punishment, but added that Mr. Storman inappropriately touched the student with the paper, according to the ruling.
The Department of Education defines corporal punishment as “any act of physical force upon a pupil for the purpose of punishing that pupil.”
Mr. Boyles stated in his report that three students in the classroom at the time of the encounter could not recall seeing the paper hit the student’s face. But the fifth grader whom Mr. Storman had reprimanded told the investigator that Mr. Storman had brushed the paper against his lips and embarrassed him, though he added that he had not been physically injured.
The principal of P.S. 212 said at a hearing last year that she had recommended that Mr. Storman be given the unsatisfactory rating because of Mr. Boyles’s findings, which she believed substantiated the corporal punishment charges, according to the ruling.
Justice Kornreich called the Department of Education’s actions “irrational.”
“Nothing in the record supports the D.O.E.’s conclusion that Mr. Storman committed a substantiated act of corporal punishment,” she wrote, ordering that the unsatisfactory rating be annulled.
Mr. Storman said in an interview that the Department of Education had turned a “pebble” into a “mountain worth of wrongdoing.”
“This was a long hard, road,” he said, “and a costly one to me.”

AFL-CIO TELLS UNORGANIZED WORKERS: NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO JOIN A UNION

The Labor Educator
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2009 6:31 PM
Subject: Labor's Voice for Change (35) May 14, 2009

Labor's Voice for Change (35) May 14, 2009

AFL-CIO TELLS UNORGANIZED WORKERS:
NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO JOIN A UNION

BY HARRY KELBER

The AFL-CIO has been conducting the biggest lobbying campaign in its
history to persuade Congress to approve the Employee Free Choice Act.
It started its EFCA campaign about four years ago, and since then, it
has been pouring countless millions of dollars into a full-scale
campaign to make EFCA a top priority issue for the labor movement. It
has inspired a continuous bombardment of e-mails to lawmakers to win
their support for the measure.

The AFL-CIO’s case for EFCA is clear and straightforward. Employers
are using intimidation, coercion and the threat of discharge to
pressure their employees from forming or joining a union. Union
leaders say that an EFCA law would “level the playing field”
between labor and management. It would make it easier for workers to
join a union by signing an authorization card, rather than by voting
in a Labor Board election, where employers can influence the outcome.
It is the “card check” system that has aroused fierce opposition
from employer groups.

One of the unfortunate side-effects of the EFCA campaign is that
union organizing is at a virtual standstill. Labor leaders are holding
back on their recruiting plans until the passage of a “card check”
law, when they expect huge lines of workers ready to join.

In their quest for EFCA, labor leaders have sent a wrong-headed
message to unorganized workers. We’ve told them that unions are too
weak to protect them from their employers, and that now is not the
time to join a union because they might get fired. This is a message
they are likely to remember when, in the future, a union organizer
shows up at their workplace.

What If Labor’s Gamble for EFCA Is Lost or Delayed?

A strategic mistake by the AFL-CIO leadership is in not mobilizing
unorganized workers to play an active role in the EFCA campaign. After
all, they are the ones who would be the principal beneficiaries of the
legislation, giving them the right to join a union and enjoy its
benefits.

While union members everywhere have supported the EFCA campaign and
are looking forward to its passage, they would also deem it wise and
prudent to plan on alternatives in case Congress does not approve the
legislation.

There are events that might make a difference: huge rallies at the
home of every legislator who is uncommitted or intends to vote "No" on
EFCA; a National Labor March in Washington; a 2-hour national work
stoppage or some other attention-getting action that dramatizes EFCA
as a life-and-death issue for the labor movement.

* * * * *

Right now, unions are still waiting — and hoping — that Congress
will act favorably and soon on EFCA, although there is no guarantee
that it will. It is disheartening to learn that a small group of
Democratic Senators, led by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California,
intends to vote “no”, when EFCA comes up for a vote. Equally
disturbing is the undenied rumor that the Obama administration is
looking for a compromise on EFCA that would satisfy the business
community.

If there is a lesson to be learned from the current struggle over the
Employee Free Choice Act, it is that you win legislative battles by
exhibiting your strengths, not your weaknesses. Pleading is never as
effective as demanding in dealing with opponents.

Article 36 of “Labor’s Voice for Change” will be posted on
Tuesday. May 19.

The Day My Union Died

This appeared in Huffington Post and was written by UTLA member Dennis Danziger.

As I cruise around L.A., his eyes follow me. He's in my face when I stop for a coffee or pull up at an ATM. This blond, 30-something, smiling white dude on the ubiquitous billboards looks like he might have sold sub-prime mortgages and enjoyed it. In his hound's-tooth suit and bow tie, I'm pretty sure he fights tax cuts for the rich, and above his head I read these words:

Hiring dropouts is just good business. Honestly who else would work that cheap?

Below his beaming face, I read:

High School Dropouts make 42% less money.
Stay in school.

But on May 15, 2009, I planned to do just the opposite. I was going to stay out of school for just one day, for the work stoppage. I planned to join my fellow United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) union members; we'd voted to picket outside our respective schools to protest the proposed layoffs of 5,100 of our colleagues, 2,500 of whom are teachers, who have received pink slips for the next school year.

UTLA, the second largest teachers union in the country, called this action weeks in advance. I gave my students plenty of notice. I explained it all to them -- that our strike wasn't about us teachers asking for better health care or more money.

I explained that we were protesting Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Ramon Cortines's decision to hold back as much as $167 of the $554 million dollars of federal stimulus funds the LAUSD received until the 2010-2011 school year instead of spending that money next year.

This is the LAUSD which dumped $400 million on the Belmont Learning Center, a new high school that was built, then demolished, then rebuilt on a toxic waste site. The same LAUSD that dolled out $186 million taxpayer dollars to outside consultants in 2006-2007. The same district that paid $95 million dollars for a new payroll system that caused chaos with teachers' paychecks for two years. This same district that has assured us that our 9th and 11th grade English classes of 20 (mandated by law) will next year be ballooning to 35 to 38. Our classes of 35 will mushroom to 42 or more.

At Venice High School where I teach English, 55% of our students drop out. If LAUSD fires teachers, APs, deans, college counselors, and librarians, and axes arts and vocational programs, those dropout numbers are likely to soar, sending undereducated teens into a national job market that's losing more than 15,000 jobs a day.

So that's what I planned to march in protest of on May 15.

On May 12, a judge granted the LAUSD a restraining order, forbidding UTLA to strike.

When I heard the news, I knew we were in for a fight, and I was ready to stand up for what I know is right. Sure we were threatened with a fine of a thousand dollars and loss of our credentials if we chose to fight against these layoffs, to challenge Cortines' decision to hold on to the stimulus money, but if we weren't willing to stand up for our rights, we'd never have any.

So I was ready for UTLA leadership to come back to ask for our vote, ready to support them in storming into court to appeal the injunction, ready to stand in solidarity with my fellow teachers. And I was eager to see how many others were.

Instead, none of that happened. Our leadership simply caved. They called off the strike.

And my union died.

For as any middle or high school kid could tell you, if you challenge someone to a fight, you'd better show up.

On Friday, May 15, 39 of UTLA's 48,000 members, at least one of whom had been responsible for calling off the strike, defied the court order and were arrested for sitting in an intersection near LAUSD headquarters. That same day hundreds of teachers called in sick. Others marched legally outside their school sites before school, but when the school bell rang, they timidly entered their classrooms so as not to defy the court order.

I taught that day. I taught and felt despair that boomeranged around my school in a thousand directions -- despair for my fellow teachers, the young, energetic ones who are who are being fired and will never return to the LAUSD, despair for my students whose classrooms are too large and growing larger, despair for my fellow union members whose leadership failed us.

I couldn't think about much else that day, and that night I turned on the local TV news to measure the impact of UTLA's actions on the city.

The third story on the local news that night was an LAPD interview of a suspect not guilty of kidnapping.

The fifth story was about how our city's commuter trains soon will be equipped with on-line cameras.

I was falling asleep, but I waited, and finally the 10th story, 48 seconds long, was about 39 teachers sitting in an intersection and being arrested for blocking traffic.

Now Superintendent Cortines -- puffed up with success -- has implied that he'd keep most of the pink-slipped employees in their jobs -- that is if the rest of us agree to accept furlough days. That's a fancy name for working for free.

And tonight, May 19, 2009, the tax-raising propositions that Governor Schwarzenegger begged and bullied us to vote for, went down in a crushing defeat. Surely, he'll now move to what he's been hinting at, that he'll move to cut the school year and teachers' pay by one week.

So come fall when UTLA teachers are complaining about the chaos and exhaustion that accompany their overcrowded classrooms, we union members will have to remember that when it came time to stand up for our students, we stood down.

By not appealing the injunction or striking in the face of it, we have insured that tens of thousands of our students will one day come under the spell of that smiling guy on the billboard -- the man eager to hire what LAUSD produces best -- high school dropouts.

School's Out Forever by Seward Darby in The New Republic

Meet the 1,400 jobless New York teachers still getting paid.

Seyward Darby, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, May 20, 2009

It would seem like a pretty good gig: About 1,400 teachers in New York City are receiving full salaries and benefits even though they don't have permanent jobs. Two hundred and five of them have been without full-time work for three years. And they can continue receiving payments indefinitely even if they never secure new positions.

These educators are members of what is called the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), a program in which unionized teachers are placed when they don't have jobs. They end up there after being displaced by school closings, program cuts, or voluntary transfers. Technically, they work as classroom substitutes, but, when they don't have temporary assignments, they spend their days in school offices, cafeterias, and break rooms. And they are not required to seek full-time positions. "Teach one year, get [displaced], never apply for another job, but, as long as you work as a sub at full salary, you can get tenure at the end of that," says Tim Daly, president of The New Teacher Project (TNTP), a New York-based education advocacy organization that monitors the reserve closely. And some ATR teachers, it seems, are content to stay right where they are. "I'm happy now," one such teacher told TNTP researchers. "I don't have to prep, I don't have to grade tests, I don't have my own class. I don't really have to do anything."

Over the last three years, the city has shelled out almost $200 million to compensate ATR teachers. This school year alone, in the midst of a recession, TNTP has projected the reserve will cost about $75 million. "I could use those [millions] to spend on early childhood education or to fund retention strategies to get our greatest teachers to stay," an official at the city's Department of Education (DOE) says.

Perhaps worst of all, the ATR is part of what was supposed to be an effort to free New York from the stranglehold its powerful teachers' union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), had for decades on teacher hiring. The reserve was created in 2005, when the devastating flaws of the old hiring system--which privileged seniority and lifelong job security over teacher quality--were finally challenged. Reformers came up with a new system, one that compelled displaced teachers to compete for jobs, often against new, younger teachers. But the union, spurred by traditionalists sticking to a deeply rooted belief that teachers should be guaranteed jobs, pushed back. The final agreement extended old-style job assurances by guaranteeing that, even if teachers didn't have positions, they would always get paid.

Now, the recession is forcing New York to make massive budget cuts and refocusing attention on the city's contract with the UFT, which is up for renegotiation in the fall. Something must be done about the ATR. But, while reformers want to amend the rules governing the reserve, saying the ill-conceived 2005 compromises are the problem, the union's traditionalists argue that, if the new way isn't working, there's only one direction to go--back.

Meanwhile, as states look for ways to qualify for federal stimulus money by committing to increasing teacher effectiveness, New York stands as one model of what not to do.

The battle over teacher hiring is why, on a Saturday afternoon in late March, a group of angry veteran teachers gathered in a chilly Manhattan classroom. They were there to protest the ATR. Sitting at desks scattered haphazardly through the room, the educators shouted complaints as one woman scribbled notes on sheets of paper taped to the blackboard. They decried New York's mayor, his chancellor of education, and school principals, and they lamented this cabal's primary goal: to replace experienced educators with younger recruits. "A lot of principals don't want teachers who've been around for a while because when they say jump, we'll say, 'Why?'" one woman cried, her brow furrowing with anger. "A twenty-two-year-old would say, 'How high?'" Another woman holding an issue of the International Socialist Review silently shook her head.

Good veteran teachers, the group said, have been refused employment and are trapped in the ATR. "It's like in the nineteenth century, when people were thrown off farms and had to live in crummy parts of cities," grumbled one teacher, slumped at his desk in snakeskin cowboy boots and a shirt emblazoned with the UFT logo. (Five of the roughly two-dozen teachers in the room indicated that they had worked in the reserve as substitutes; one woman said she'd been doing it for three years.)

Their sense of entitlement dates back to 1961, when the newly formed UFT challenged the weak job security and low pay of the teaching profession. It negotiated a contract that guaranteed teachers jobs and gave hiring priority to the most senior educators. When teachers were displaced from jobs, they weren't unemployed for long; the school district's central office simply decided where to place them next, without input from teachers or principals. The most senior teachers got first dibs on vacancies. If openings weren't available, the district could bump out more junior staff. School systems around the country soon implemented versions of the program, widely called "forced placement," which remains the norm in most districts today.

Soon enough, however, problems began to appear. Districts could place teachers into grades or subject areas that they weren't trained to teach, and principals were required to accept new staff whether they liked it or not. (In 2007, TNTP reported that, through Portland, Oregon's forced-placement process, "teachers are often slotted into grade levels with which they have limited or no experience.") The system also allowed schools to play musical chairs with bad teachers: Skillful principals would reorganize programs to eliminate the positions of poorly performing teachers or encourage them to transfer elsewhere. "It's just the dance of the lemons. Everyone knows about it," says Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality.

Fed up with forced placement's defects, in 2005, the UFT and New York City's DOE crafted a new hiring plan called "mutual consent," which would oblige displaced teachers to apply for jobs rather than accept assigned ones. Seniority would no longer trump all other qualifications. Instead, displaced teachers would have to find vacancies, send out resumes, and go on interviews, and they would face competition from applicants seeking to work in the school system for the first time. Principals would have final say over whom their schools hired.

Today, the vast majority of displaced teachers are rehired, and most approve of mutual consent. But the plan is deeply flawed because, in 2005, UFT refused to sacrifice its commitment to lifelong job security. It won the ATR, which means that, while displaced teachers have to compete for jobs, there is no consequence if they do not find them. They would simply get paid to wait in the ATR.

Today, teachers lingering for months, even years, in the reserve are more likely than the rest of the city's educators to have "unsatisfactory" performance ratings, and many haven't applied for new jobs online, where the city maintains an employment database, or attended a job fair. "There's no way we'd design this system if we started over from scratch," says Tim Daly of TNTP.

Last fall, the UFT insisted that persistent ATR teachers weren't being hired because it cost schools less to bring on new teachers who, as junior recruits, had lower salaries. TNTP found no hiring bias against ATR teachers, but the city agreed in September to pay the schools the difference between a reserve teacher's salary and that of a new hire.

But critics aren't satisfied. They say the city has mounted a smear campaign to garner support for eliminating the ATR, currently a bulwark preserving teachers' lifelong job security. They argue that the DOE and school principals have allowed some veteran teachers (particularly union activists) to languish in the ATR and then used the press to marginalize them as a lazy, unqualified lot. "[There is] a scarlet letter on them that hasn't been erased," says UFT President Randi Weingarten, who is also head of the UFT's umbrella organization, the American Federation of Teachers.

Participants at the March meeting--sponsored by a self-described "dissenting caucus" of the UFT--are leading a campaign to get the city to repeal its mutual-consent policy, including the ATR. And they echoed Weingarten's grievance (though they also called her a "failed labor leader" for agreeing to scrap forced placement in the first place). Wearing black boots, army pants, and a skin-tight shirt that said "undefeated," a reserve teacher standing by a snack table declared himself a "political prisoner." He blamed principals with whom he doesn't get along for keeping him out of a job. "We can take these bastards!" he fumed. Another retired teacher shouted that the city's attacks on seniority and job guarantees "will make the AIG crooks look like gold."

The ideal, reform-minded outcome of New York's fracas would be a better mutual-consent policy. Chicago, one of the only other big U.S. school systems to adopt mutual consent, allows teachers to remain in reserve for ten months, after which they are removed from the public payroll. Some experts also advocate allowing reserve teachers to go on unpaid leave after a specified amount of time; were they to find new jobs, they could return at their old salary levels. New York could also provide reserve teachers with enhanced job-search support. And the city would need to improve teacher evaluations and the rules for handling instructors who aren't measuring up.

But implementing such a comprehensive program is, in the words of one New York DOE official, "a long shot," because of growing opposition and outrage from the UFT and teachers clinging to the past. "I've been in those meetings, in those screaming matches," says the DOE official, describing hiring policy negotiations. "It would be a real uphill slog."

Seyward Darby is the assistant managing editor of The New Republic.

Teachers, Performance Pay, and Accountability (What Education Should Learn from Other Sectors)

[The following is Daniel Koretz' preface to the book

Teachers, Performance Pay, and Accountability (What

Education Should Learn from Other Sectors), by Scott J.

Adams John Heywood Richard Rothstein (eds), ISBN:

1-932066-38-1. The book may be purchased ($14.50) from

the Economic Policy Institute at

http://mpower.mosaicprint.com/EPI/p-153-teachers-performance-pay-and-accountability-what-education-should-learn-from-other-sectors.aspx

-- moderator.]



Teachers, Performance Pay, and Accountability

What Education Should Learn From Other Sectors



05-14-09

May 2009 | An Econonic Policy Institute book



By Scott J. Adams, John S. Heywood & Richard Rothstein

Preface by Daniel Koretz

Series editors Sean P. Corcoran and Joydeep Roy



by Daniel Koretz



Accountability for students' test scores has become the

cornerstone of education policy in the United States.

State policies that rewarded or punished schools and

their staffs for test scores became commonplace in the

1990s. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act federalized

this approach and made it in some respects more

draconian. There is now growing interest in pay for

performance plans that would reward or punish

individual teachers rather than entire schools. This

volume is important reading for anyone interested in

that debate.



The rationale for this approach is deceptively simple.

Teachers are supposed to increase students' knowledge

and skills. Proponents argue that if we manage schools

as if they were private firms and reward and punish

teachers on the basis of how much students learn,

teachers will do better and students will learn more.

This straightforward rationale has led to similarly

simple policies in which scores on standardized tests

of a few subjects dominate accountability systems, to

the near exclusion of all other evidence of

performance.



It has become increasingly clear that this model is

overly simplistic, and that we will need to develop

more sophisticated accountability systems. However,

much of the debate-for example, arguments about the

reauthorization of NCLB-continues as if the current

approach were at its core reasonable and that the

system needs only relatively minor tinkering. To put

this debate on a sensible footing requires that we

confront three issues directly.



The first of these critically important issues,

addressed in the first section of this volume by Scott

Adams and John Heywood, is that the rationale for the

current approach misrepresents common practice in the

private sector. Pay for performance based on numerical

measures actually plays a relatively minor role in the

private sector. There are good reasons for this.

Economists working on incentives have pointed out for

some time that for many occupations (particularly,

professionals with complex roles), the available

objective measures are seriously incomplete indicators

of value to firms, and therefore, other measures,

including subjective evaluations, have to be added to

the mix.



And that points to the second issue, known as

Campbell's Law in the social sciences and Goodhart's

Law in economics. In large part because available

numerical measures are necessarily incomplete, holding

workers accountable for them-without countervailing

measures of other kinds-often leads to serious

distortions. Workers will often strive to produce what

is measured at the expense of what is not, even if what

is not measured is highly valuable to the firm. One

also often finds that employees "game" the system in

various ways that corrupt the performance measures, so

that they overstate production even with respect to the

goals that are measured. Richard Rothstein's section in

this volume shows the ubiquity of this problem and

illustrates many of the diverse and even inventive

forms it can take. Some distortions are inevitable,

even when an accountability system has net positive

effects that make it worth retaining. However, the net

effects can be negative, and the distortions are often

serious enough that they need to be addressed

regardless. To disregard this is to pay a great

disservice to the nation's children.



The third essential issue is score inflation-increases

in scores larger than the improvements in learning

warrant-which is the primary form Campbell's Law takes

in test-based accountability systems. Many educators

and policy makers insist that this is not a serious

problem. They are wrong: score inflation is real,

common, and sometimes very large.



Three basic mechanisms generate score inflation. The

first is gaming that increases aggregate scores by

changing the group of students tested-for example,

removing students from testing by being lax about

truancy or assigning students to special education. The

second, which is a consequence of our ill-advised and

unnecessary focus on a single cut score (the

"proficient" standard), is what many teachers call "the

bubble kids problem." Some teachers focus undue effort

on students near the cut while reducing their focus on

other students well below or above it, because only the

ones near the cut score offer the hope of improvement

in the numbers that count.



The third mechanism is preparing students for tests in

ways that inflates individual students' scores. This

mechanism is the least well understood and most

controversial, but it can be the most important of the

three, creating very large biases in scores. One often

hears the argument: "our test is aligned with

standards, and it measures important knowledge and

skills, so what can be wrong with teaching to it?" This

argument is baseless and shows a misunderstanding of

both testing and score inflation. Score inflation does

not require that the test contain unimportant material.

It arises because tests are necessarily small samples

of very large domains of achievement. In building a

test, one has to sample not only content, but task

formats, criteria for scoring, and so on. When this

sampling is somewhat predicable-as it almost always is-

teachers can emphasize the material most likely to

recur, at the expense of other material that is less

likely to be tested but that is nonetheless important.

The result is scores that overstate mastery of the

domain. The evidence is clear that this problem can be

very large. There is no space here to discuss this

further, but if you are not persuaded, I strongly urge

you to read Measuring Up: What Educational Testing

Really Tells Us, where I explain the basic mechanisms

by which this happens and show some of the evidence of

the severity of the problem.



My experience as a public school teacher, my years as

an educational researcher, and my time as a parent of

students in public schools have all persuaded me that

we need better accountability in schools. We won't

achieve that goal, however, by hiding our heads in the

sand. This volume will make an important contribution

to sensible debate about more effective approaches.



Daniel Koretz is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of

Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education,

Harvard University, and is a member of the National

Academy of Education.