Ross Global Charter Facts

CEC One, has formally endorsed and supported RGACS each time the school was slated to co locate in D One schools- because we believed in the mission and aims of the promised charter, and we believed there was room in the host sites to fairly accommodate the school-to-be.

However, over the last 5 years we have heard countless complaints from parents, students, educators and administrators who left the school due to the unacceptable, ineffectual management and pedagogical practices at the school.

The results of these poor practices over the 5 year life of the charter have led to high turnover of students/staff/leadership, low performance and inability to service our neediest kids.

As I said, there truly is no vendetta- only the desire to hold this charter to its own commitments and standards, and to suggest the authorizer make good on the promise of charter school experiments- if they do not get it right after 5 years they need to cease to function, per the premise of all charter schools.

 Charter Schools are privately-managed, high-risk experimental not-for-profit educational entities, not regular public schools and the playing field and rules are entirely different.

One of the fundamental differences between Charter Schools and public schools is in recruiting and admissions: no matter the law or the neighborhood Charter Schools consistently serve a disproportionately low number of  high-needs students as compared with the district schools or the rest of the NYC public schools, on average.

This is true for RGACS-

School Name	Year	Enrollment	% Free Lunch	% Reduced Lunch	% ELL	% tested= SpEd	% AA	%Hispanic	%White	% Asian	ELA %	Math%
Ross Global Charter School	2007/2008	211	28%	13%	3%	10%	48%	27%	2%	17%	72.5%	82.5%
Ross Global Charter School	2008/2009	323	18%	13%	2%	8%	51%	24%	5%	8%	73%	88%
District One	2007/2008	11,653	58%	8%	12%	11%	19%	48%	13%	19%	60%	76%
District One	2008/2009	11,857	62%	8%	12%	11%	19%	47%	14%	20%	71%	82%
NYC* 1035406	2007/2008	1,035,406	67%****	11%****	%	9%	32%	40%	14%	14%	51%	65%
NYC*	2008/2009	1,029,459	NA	Free and reduced= 79%**	16%***	10%	31%	40%	15%	14%	58%	74%

Data sources: 

All data from NYS school  report cards, unless otherwise specified:

http://www.p12.nysed.gov/irs/reportcard/

*  DoE Official Audited October 31st Register (JFORM)

http://schools.nyc.gov/AboutUs/data/stats/Register/JFormbyDistricts/default.htm

** The Kids’ Well-being Indicators Clearinghouse (KWIC)

KWIC Indicator:Children Receiving Free or Reduced-price School Lunch - Public Schools number and percent children in grades K-6

 Data Provider: NYS Education Department

http://www.nyskwic.org/get_data/indicator_profile.cfm?subIndicatorID=52&indYear1=2008&go.x=9&go.y=14&go=Submit&indYear2=2009

***Consolidated Application Update, DCEP Addendum Update, 2008-2009

Allocations for Title III, Part A LEP For Eligible New York State Public School Districts and Charter Schools Data Source: Student Information Repository System (Public), BEDS (Non-Public)

http://www.p12.nysed.gov/funding/cladcep/0809/titleIII0809lepallocs.htm

****

SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL:  THE FAILURE OF NEW YORK CITY CHARTER SCHOOLS  TO SERVE THE CITY’S NEEDIEST STUDENTS  JANUARY 2010

Chart 1. Percentage of Students Eligible for Free- and Reduced-Price Lunch

Source:  2007/2008 NYS Report Card

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Test Scorer

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Test Scorer


Dan DiMaggio


Monthy Review


December 2010


http://www.monthlyreview.org/101201dimaggio.php





Standardized testing has become central to education


policy in the United States. After dramatically


expanding in the wake of the No Child Left Behind Act,


testing has been further enshrined by the Obama


administration's $3.4 billion "Race to the Top" grants.


Given the ongoing debate over these policies, it might


be useful to hear about the experiences of a hidden


sector of the education workforce: those of us who make


our living scoring these tests. Our viewpoint is


instructive, as it reveals the many contradictions and


absurdities built into a test-scoring system run by for-


profit companies and beholden to school administrators


and government officials with a stake in producing


inflated numbers. Our experiences also provide insight


into how the testing mania is stunting the development


of millions of young minds.

3rd negative study on NYC Leadership academy

See also http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jrockoff/cmr_principals_calder_WP38.pdf http://gradworks.umi.com/33/58/3358243.html The effect of the New York City Leadership Academy on student outcomes in New York City schools

by Sabatino, Pasquale, Jr., Ed.D., NORTHCENTRAL UNIVERSITY, 2009, 131 pages; 3358243

Abstract: This applied dissertation was designed to compare student outcomes and principal performance between principals who graduated from the New York City Leadership Academy and principals who did not attend the Leadership Academy. Principals, with at least three years of leadership experience in schools with similar student demographics participated in the study. The impact of leadership training on student outcomes was analyzed using a non experimental casual-comparative design, with data collected from the New York State English Language Arts Exam, New York State Comprehensive English Regents Exam, New York State Mathematics Exam and the New York State Mathematics A Regents Exam. Administrative performance was assessed from teacher responses to the New York City Department of Education Learning Environment Survey. This research investigation revealed no significant differences in student outcomes or principal performance between graduate and non attendee principals of the New York City Leadership Academy. The results offer no evidence that participation in the Leadership Academy is an effective means of preparing principals for successful leadership. This applied research is intended to assist in development of current and future leadership academies.

Introduction to "As Bad As They Say? Three Decades of Teaching in The Bronx "

Dr Mark Naison
 Professor of African American Studies and History
 Fordham University

   At a time of crisis and upheaval in the NYC School system, when tests, assessments and school closings have left students and teachers feeling battered and demoralized  and when leadership of the system has been handed from a prosecutor to a magazine executive, perhaps people concerned with education should begin listening to voices like Janet Mayer's. Mayer, the author of As Bad As They Say?: Three Decades of Teaching in  The Bronx wrote her book not only to highlight the heroism of Bronx high school students and teachers in the face of poverty, violence and shockingly decayed and understaffed schools, but to denounce the educational reforms coming out of Washington  in the last ten years, which, Mayer feels, have made matters much, much worse.   Among the many critics of the two great national education initiatives, "No Child Left Behind" and "Race To the Top," Mayer stands out for embedding her critique in a detailed portrait of teaching and learning in one of the nation's poorest urban school districts. No one has ever written more eloquently than Janet Mayer about what it takes to spend a large portion of your career teaching children in poverty. Those who read As Bad As They Say will be inspired by her stories of fortitude and creativity on the part of students and teachers, but they will also come away enraged that voices like hers have been marginalized in the debate over how to improve America's schools. Veteran teachers like Janet Mayer are the forgotten moral compass in America's educational reform movement. We ignore what she says at our peril.

     Mayer's arguments have a special resonance with me because of the experiences I have had organizing workshops, lectures and neighborhood tours for Bronx teachers for the  research project I direct, the Bronx African American History Project, During the last seven years, I have spent time in  more than thirty Bronx high schools, elementary schools and middle schools and have come away from the experience incredibly impressed by the dedication and creativity of the  teachers and administrators I have met, many of whom were, like Mayer, products of Bronx public schools themselves.. These educators, put under immense pressure to raise test scores of their students lest their schools be closed and their jobs placed in jeopardy, still found the time to use the information we presented organize displays, performances, plays and festivals that celebrated community history, often involving students parents and grandparents to help with the research.  Their dedication made a tremendous impression on me, and when Janet Mayer came to me with a early draft of her memoir, I saw an opportunity to give to give a whole generation of under appreciated  Bronx  teachers and principals a voice.

     As you begin reading As Bad As They Say prepare yourself for a view of teaching and teachers that is radically different from the contemptuous one often put forward by educational reformers, business leaders and print and broadcast media  Janet Mayer grew up in a time, the late forties and early fifties, when working class New Yorkers revered teachers, and were proud when one of their children decided to make teaching their career. Janet Mayer came from such a family and becoming an English teacher in the New York public schools was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. She started teaching middle school in the early 60's when she was only 20 years old and nearly quit several times because the job was so difficult, but with the support of older teachers, and her own tireless efforts to discover new ways of helping students appreciate literature, she became a highly successful English teacher in largely white public high school in the Northeast Bronx. Mayer's almost legendary popularity in that school derived from a few key things- her ability to get students excited about reading and writing by creating an electric atmosphere in her classroom supplemented by individualized assignments for students,, and her willingness to defend students and colleagues against the excesses of an authoritarian and vindictive principal who ruled the school with an iron hand. Mayer approached these twin missions as a  sacred  calling, working long hours into the night and on weekends, protected in her efforts  by that much maligned institution, the United Federation of Teachers, the union that had become the official bargaining agent for New York City teachers in the 1960's. Because the UFT had proven its power in several long strikes, Mayer points out, teachers could demand better treatment for students and teachers without getting fired, something  Mayer demonstrated by filing  grievance upon grievance against her principal   and even bringing his conduct to the attention of the press.

   Finally, in frustration at the Board of Education's refusal to remove her principal despite massive evidence of  irresponsible conduct, Mayer decided to transfer to another Bronx High School, this one a vocational high school with a nearly one hundred percent Black and Latino student population.  It is Mayer's experience at this school, which she calls "Carter High School" that inspires the major story line of  As Bad As They Say. The working conditions at Carter High School almost defy description. Elevators don't work. Windows don't open. Classrooms are so filled with mice that teachers have to scream when they enter to scatter the vermin!  Teachers bathrooms are filthy and never have toilet paper, while student bathrooms are unusable. Crack vials fill the schoolyard, which has been turned into a teachers parking lot and gunshots periodically ring out in the street outside the school. Teachers who park there risk having their car window broken. And for Carter students, conditions ware worse. There are two guidance counselors- who are both college counselors and social workers- for the more than 2,000 students at the school. Except for a three year period when the school got a grant- there was no Music, No Theater and No Art- since all the Music and Art teachers in the City  were fired during the fiscal crisis of the Mid 70's. The students who came to Carter, for the most part, were children of immigrants or products of the Bronx's poorest most troubled families. Most of them were at Carter because they could get in to no other school.

    And yet Janet Mayer loved teaching there!  In As Bad As They  she explains why-because for many of the students she worked with, it took heroic efforts to even come to school, much less pass courses and graduate. Using real life stories, with names that are changed, Mayer explains what these students are up against. Parents and siblings murdered. Families evicted. Apartments without heat and hot water-for years. Pregnancies.  Debilitating illnesses.  Language problems due to recent arrival in the country. Work responsibilities as the family's only wage earner. Fear of coming to and from school, or even walking through the hallways less they be set upon by thugs and bullies. Reading and math levels more appropriate for a fifth grader than a high school students.  And in the face of all these things, students persevere, with the help of teachers like Janet Mayer, and  on more than a few occasions manage to graduate from high school and go onto college, in some cases ten or fifteen years after they first entered the school

  As Bad As They Say not only tells several stories of triumph over adversity, it reveals what a great teacher does to help such students succeed. Teaching, Janet Mayer style, is a 24/7 job. Let us see how she gets students with 5th and 6th grade reading levels to pass English and in the process learn to love reading, She creates folders filled with magazine articles on subjects students are interested in- ranging from sports, to dance, to space exploration- to get students to read outside of class. She tutors students after school to help them pass standardized tests. She creates a new course called Multicultural Literature, to help students of color, from multiple cultural backgrounds, see their experiences reflected materials they are given to read She starts a letter exchange with a  high school in South Africa, in the years following apartheid, where the South African students all ask their Carter counterparts "Is the Bronx really as bad as they say" ( hence the title of this book!)  And she is available at all hours, on weekends as well as weekdays, to help students deal with life changing issues,  from helping them get apartments when they are homeless, to finding them therapists if they have emotional problems, to getting them private training in music or dance when the school can't provide it, to helping them choose colleges when the school guidance counselor doesn't have time. And that involvement inspires lifetime loyalty. Janet Mayer students are her students for life, still asking her advice fifteen and twenty years  later, and thanking her over and over again for having faith in them when the world seemed to be against them

  How do you assess this kind of teaching?/ How do you measure it?   How do you grade it?  The answer is, of course, you can't, and when the federal government, shortly after Mayer retires, passed "No Child Left Behind," which requires school districts and schools to meet arbitrary standards of performance, Mayer was both enraged, and deeply suspicious.  She was enraged because she knew that neither student learning or great teaching cannot be easily quantified because much if it involves emotional growth, life lessons, and the unleashing of creativity, but she was suspicious because she believed that  when test performance becomes the sole criteria upon which schools are evaluated and teacher salaries and job tenure are determined statistics  can and will be manipulated.  Mayer's final chapter, a devastating critique of business driven education reform models currently in favor in Washington and New York City, begins with a chilling description of how the landmark Federal Education initiative "No Child Left Behind" was based on  allegedly revolutionary results achieved in the Houston public schools that, future studies revealed, were based entirely on bogus data.  The chapter ends with a critical analysis of Mayor control of New York City schools, which among other things  points out that Bloomber Administration claims of dramatic improvements in test scores and graduation rates were only achieved by "dumbing down" state tests and that greater success was achieved meeting national standards before Mayoral Control than after. It also points out that the closing of large high schools and their replacement with small schools, something which Mayer had familiarity with as a teacher mentor in James Monroe High School in the Bronx, often created mass chaos in school buildings where it took place and left young teachers without the guidance of department chairs and assistant principals that helped new teachers adjust under the old system.


   By the time you finish reading As Bad As They Say   you may well become convinced, as I am, that putting business people in charge of public schools may have been the single worst policy decision of the 21st Century  and that performance assessments devised by American business are not to be trusted ( think of the Triple A ratings  given packages of sub prime  mortgages from Moody's and Standard and Poor's!)

   But even if you don't agree with everything Janet Mayer says about "No Child Left Behind," "Race to the Top" and Mayor Control of New York City public schools, you cannot help but be moved by her portrait of the heroism of Bronx students and the life changing power and extraordinary dedication displayed by great teachers. At the very least, after reading As Bad As They Say, you will insist, in the strongest possible language, that teachers like Janet Mayer are given a place at the table when school reform is being discussed. It is through the efforts of teachers like Janet Mayer, inside and outside the classroom, that the lives of students are transformed.

The Pro Mayoral Control Rationale

This is one of the reasons the corporate world pushes for things like mayoral control of public school systems.  I'm not saying they're wrong or right - just that you need to understand where they're coming from. - Dee Alpert

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/education/12atlanta.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

December 11, 2010

Scandal and a Schism Rattle Atlanta’s Schools

ATLANTA — Did any school district in the country have a tougher week than the one in Atlanta?
First, criminal investigators began digging anew into accusations of widespread cheating on state standardized tests that had been plaguing the district for two years. The allegations, which center on dozens of employees who are suspected of changing test answers to improve scores, have already been the focus of investigations by the state and the Atlanta school system that have cost more than $1 million. The new investigation led an influential group of black pastors to call a news conference to denounce what they say is a “witch hunt” on educators who — however misguided — were just trying to help children....
The Atlanta school board, meanwhile, is in such disarray that a team from the regional agency that provides accreditation for the 49,000-student district showed up on Wednesday for its own investigation into whether infighting was keeping the board from governing properly. ...Mr. Reed [Atlanta Mayor] said that he planned to stay “very involved” in the oversight of the schools and in the selection of the superintendent. He is determined, he said, to make sure that advances in student performance, graduation rates and support from corporations and community groups during Dr. Hall’s tenure were not lost because of the cheating scandal or the board’s power struggle. The nine-member school board is locked in what appears to be a battle of egos and factions. One group is a majority that worked well with Dr. Hall. The other faction often found itself shut out of the decision-making process and became concerned about how the cheating scandal was being handled.
In the fall, a coup of sorts occurred. After a series of complicated procedural moves, the group once in control found itself out of power, and those board members filed a lawsuit claiming that the leadership takeover was illegal.
The two sides appeared to solve their differences after meeting late last month with a Fulton County Superior Court judge, but the struggle remained apparent at a board meeting on Monday, with one of the members suggesting that the new chairman, Khaatim Sherrer El, was a dictator.
The board’s conflict is at the center of whether the district can keep its accreditation, said Mark Elgart, president of the regional accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. A team from the agency arrived here on Wednesday for three days of interviews throughout the district.
“They are in a state of paralysis,” Mr. Elgart said of the school board. “They are lining up on ideological and philosophical difference, and that is no way to govern.”
The district will learn in January whether it will face sanctions or lose its accreditation, which could hurt students’ chances for getting into certain universities and securing scholarships.
Dr. Hall came to Atlanta with a reputation for solving tough problems after working as the superintendent in Newark and as a deputy chancellor of schools in New York City. ...

But Bloomberg Told Black That She Was His First Choice!

By Jaya Saxena on Dec 11, 2010 140 Views

After fighting against parents and politicians dead set on keeping her from becoming Schools Chancellor, Cathie Black could at least find comfort in the fact that Mayor Bloomberg thought she was the best person for the job. And now that even thatmight not be true, Black is forced to defend her credibility all on her lonesome, yet again. She told Good Day New York, “What he said to me is, ‘You’re the first person I’ve offered this job to.'" That doesn't mean he's not pining away for the sweet educational experience of Geoffrey Canada.

To further blame Bloomberg for the Cathie Black mess, Black says Bloomberg may not have known that she didn't meet the educational requirements for the job, which are now the subject of one of the lawsuits regarding Black's appointment. She said, "I don’t know that for a fact. I assume he had done his homework — as he should have."

Canada has not said whether Bloomberg actually offered him the job, but he did acknowledge that Bloomberg asked for his advice on the search. As for the lawsuits against her appointment, Black said she isn't worried. She said, "I’ve got the job; I’ve got the job. I am their chancellor.” It's like she knew it all along.

Punishment First at Achievement First Brooklyn Charter School

Achievement First is a charter school/business that depends on their students/customers for their entire purpose. Why not boycott the school?? Take the children out and send them to another school- what will the board and staff do then? I bet they would listen to a drastic drop in enrollment!!!!!  I do believe we have MANY good public schools that would be more than happy to serve these students and their families and do it with RESPECT!!!!

Punishment First at Brooklyn Charter School

 

Another story here: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/11/23/2010-11-23_dean_accused_of_acting_out.html

Punishment First at Brooklyn Charter School

November 24, 2010

by edvoxny

http://edvox.org/2010/11/24/punishment-first-at-brooklyn-charter-school/

My name is Jasmine Crawford and I’m a parent at Achievement First in Crown Heights. On Monday night, after stories surfaced about dozens of children being mistreated, more than 70 parents came together and attended the Achievement First Crown Heights Board meeting to call for a change to the school’s discipline policies. This was the most parents they had ever seen at a board meeting.

As parents, we are outraged at the excessive disciplinary actions taken against our children in Achievement First schools, and, at the meeting, we let our feelings be known. Many of the scholars have had detention almost every day of the year! Trivial infractions such as dropping a pencil, not making eye contact and “slouching” have landed our children in after-school detention. Students have received demerits for having tissues in class if they were sick; one scholar stood up and told of how, after she’d used her asthma inhaler, she laid her head on the desk and received a demerit. Although she was feeling sick, she didn’t want to ask to go to the nurse out of fear that the teacher would call it “talking back” and “being disrespectful.” What kind of environment is this school producing when sick students are scared to ask to see their nurse?

Even at the onset of our press conference, held before the board meeting, AF staff tried to silence parents and challenged students as liars.But we would not be silenced then, and we won’t be now. We entered the meeting and were all given the opportunity to tell our “war stories.” The board chair, Judge Pricilla Hall, was very patient despite the urging of her assistant to close the open floor and go on with the business meeting. Even though the chair did not answer any direct questions, she did listen.

Each war story varied, but each also had a common theme. As parents, we completely agree with and understand the need for a consistent discipline code. But the stories we heard made it clear to anyone with a modicum of common sense that AF has gone overboard. When you are trying to control natural impulses of students such as yawning, you have truly gone off the deep end, and your policies become indefensible. Parents recanted stories of terror on the parts of their children in the school. With each story, a constant theme was being developed: a lack of respect from the school’s administration for parents and students, especially from Principal Blanchard and Dean Solomon.

When my son was sick with bronchitis and missed a couple of days, I gave the school a doctor’s note but was told it was unacceptable. When I reached out to them to discuss the policy, numerous calls and emails are not returned. But when he was missing a belt or had a white stitch in his sock … five minutes after he walked in the door, my phone would be blowing up! Some parents did not even know what Principal Blanchard looked like, because he never met with nor returned calls.

The school does not seem to care when parents declare that the disciplinary policies have had a very detrimental effects on our children’s emotional states, even to the extreme where some students have talked about suicide. Mr. Solomon took a scholar who was supposed to be suspended off the line and made him wait outside in the cold alone while his mother came from Manhattan to pick him up. Does the administration truly care about our students’ welfare?

If that doesn’t raise a flag of concern I don’t know what does.

More alarming and disturbing is that Chi Tschang, who has a history of emotionally and physically abusing children, was brought in as Superintendent of their schools. Mr. Tschang had been reported in California to have put his hands on students and using harsh punishments like sitting out in extreme cold/sun for hours. We are calling for the removal of Mr. Tschang immediately. Although we saw him walk in the build shortly after 5pm, he was not at the meeting.

Judge Hall said she’ll have a meeting with parents and the school’s administration. But I am weary. I can only hope we can work to create a fair and transparent code of conduct. We the parents seek to improve the overall educational atmosphere of the school, but as each day passes and these policies remain in effect, we feel our hands are being tied and our voices being silenced. Although the AF administration may not believe this, parents do know what’s best for their children.

UPDATE: Retribution on our kids was seen the very next day at school. Scholars were forced to sign a statement in support of Mr. Solomon and praise the school and staff on videotape. More disgusting, a teacher denied a scholar a high school recommendation because of the board meeting. All was done without parent knowledge and the penalty for not following was an automatic detention. What lesson is the school teaching our children?

Jasmine Crawford is a New York Communities for Change member and a parent of 2nd and 8th Grade students at AF Crown Heights

Ironically, Hechinger financed the value-added study published in the LA Times, a methodology which Sahlberg derides:

“If you tried to do this in my country, Finnish teachers would probably go on strike and wouldn’t return until this crazy idea went away.”

Clearly Finland is doing super things w/ an anti-Superman approach.

http://hechingerreport.org/content/what-can-we-learn-from-finland-a-qa-with-dr-pasi-sahlberg_4851/comment-page-1/#comment-704

December 9, 2010

What can we learn from Finland?: A Q&A with Dr. Pasi Sahlberg

By Hechinger Report

Pasi Sahlberg
Justin Snider of The Hechinger Report sat down today with Dr. Pasi Sahlberg, Director General of the Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation in Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture. An edited version of their conversation follows.
Sahlberg, who has trained teachers, coached schools and advised policymakers in more than 40 countries, is also a former Washington-based World Bank education specialist. Earlier this week, Finland was once again among the top-scoring nations on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), an exam given to 15-year-olds around the world. U.S. students were in the middle of the pack for science and literacy but below average in mathematics.
The Hechinger Report: Two Million Minutes, a recent documentary by Bob Compton, reveals that American students spend significantly less time learning than their counterparts in India and China. But in your work, you’ve indicated that increasing instructional time isn’t necessarily a good idea. Why?
Sahlberg: There’s no evidence globally that doing more of the same [instructionally] will improve results. An equally relevant argument would be, let’s try to do less. Increasing time comes from the old industrial mindset. The important thing is ensuring school is a place where students can discover who they are and what they can do. It’s not about the amount of teaching and learning.
The Hechinger Report: Given your reservations about things like standardized testing, choice and competition, I’m wondering how you’re received in the U.S. Are you loved by teachers but loathed by some reformers?
Sahlberg: The reception has been very positive everywhere. The thing is that everyone has exactly the same goal – good schools for all – but there are disagreements on how to get there. What I want to do is challenge people to see that things can be done differently. In Finland, we’ve gone from having a very poor system in the 1970s to what the recent McKinsey report called the only excellent system in the world.
The Hechinger Report: How did Finland do it?
Sahlberg: Most educational ideas that we are employing are initially from the U.S. They’re American innovations done in a Finnish way. You know, in the United States, there are more than enough ideas, there’s superior knowledge about educational change and you speak a language that has global reach. If you want to learn something from Finland, it’s the implementation of ideas. It’s looking at education as nation-building. We have very carefully kept the business of education in the hands of educators. It’s practically impossible to become a superintendent without also being a former teacher. … If you have people [in leadership positions] with no background in teaching, they’ll never have the type of communication they need.
The Hechinger Report: So what do you make of the recent trend in the U.S. of hiring non-educators to run large urban school systems?
Sahlberg: This is a very alien idea to Finns. … You know, a former head coach of the Chicago Blackhawks was Finnish, and when he returned to Finland, he was appointed director of one of the largest theaters – a completely different field. He left after one year. There was no buy-in.
The Hechinger Report: What are your thoughts on the use of value-added data to measure teacher performance, which is quite popular in the U.S. at the moment?
Sahlberg: It’s very difficult to use this data to say anything about the effectiveness of teachers. If you tried to do this in my country, Finnish teachers would probably go on strike and wouldn’t return until this crazy idea went away. Finns don’t believe you can reliably measure the essence of learning. You know, one big difference in thinking about education and the whole discourse is that in the U.S. it’s based on a belief in competition. In my country, we are in education because we believe in cooperation and sharing. Cooperation is a core starting point for growth.
The Hechinger Report: Waiting for “Superman” put pressure on teachers’ unions in the U.S. And they’ve also come under criticism from some experts, reformers and the Obama administration. But others, like Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford, have pointed out that top-performing countries such as Finland have strong teachers’ unions. So what do you make of teachers’ unions in the U.S.?
Sahlberg: In Finland, unions aren’t an obstacle. Ninety-eight percent of teachers are unionized. And this is very important to the success of our system. I wouldn’t buy the argument that unions are a problem.

What's more vital to classroom success, a great teacher or lower class size?

good quotes fr. Jeremy Finn, Helen Bain and Chuck Achilles.  Also Superintendent Nichols of Mobile Alabama:

"Class size is a no-brainer. Most parents, teachers, and school board members realize class size makes a tremendous difference. It's an easy argument to make," he says. "It's harder to make with politicians who are not closely aligned with education. In their mind, it sounds expensive."

For once they interviewed the real experts; what a change!

 

Class Size Crunch | Scholastic.com: http://bit.ly/dM8I7F

Class Size Crunch

What's more vital to classroom success, a great teacher or lower class size?

By Caralee Adams

Like many teachers, Katie Parks Bailey often reflects on her day during her drive home. She's worked in three states, with different grade levels and varying class sizes. Bailey says, not surprisingly, she knows she did a better job managing her class, covering curriculum, and interacting with parents when she had fewer than 20 students in a class versus the year she had 35.

"When the classes were smaller, I felt more effective more often," says the 34-year-old teacher from Murfreesboro, Tennessee. With just 14 in her kindergarten class, Bailey says she could give the children the individual attention they needed.

Later, in larger classes, Bailey faced discipline problems and spent time breaking up fights. "When you don't feel effective, it clouds everything else," she says. On her evening commute, she was overwhelmed with worries about managing her class and had less energy left to put toward better teaching ideas.

It's hard to find an educator or parent who is not a fan of smaller classes. But the reality for principals and superintendents is that resources are limited. They have to weigh class size along with other approaches to help student achievement, such as beefing up teacher training or enhancing technology. And with the dismal economy, many states are facing larger class sizes rather than considering smaller ones. How does an administrator decide what's right for his or her district?

Measuring Results
There is no one answer when it comes to improving education. But unlike teacher quality and parental involvement, which are hard to gauge, reducing class size is a concrete approach that works, says Charles Achilles, a leading researcher on class size and professor of leadership, management, and policy in the College of Education at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.

"There should be no question about the value of it and no controversy that it works for as long as it's been around," says Achilles. However, districts don't always invest enough to see the true impact. It takes three to four years of small class experiences, starting in PreK or kindergarten with 15­-17 students, for students to reap the benefits of extra teacher time, he says. It's a mistake to put students in small classes just for one year before they have a high-stakes test and expect to see positive results, he adds.

It's Not Student-Teacher Ratio
It's also important to distinguish between class size stats and student-teacher ratio numbers, notes Achilles. When a school calculates a student-teacher ratio, it is based on the total number of school instructional staff divided by the total enrollment of students. This includes all specialists, such as the librarian and the art and physical education teachers. Classes can be large, even crowded, in schools that have low student-teacher ratios overall.

Class size refers to the number of students in a classroom daily with a teacher. "The number of students in the room shapes all that happens, including teaching, the amount of attention given to each student, learning, and student behavior," says Jeremy Finn, professor of education at the State University of New York at the University of Buffalo.

"The research is very extensive and there is consensus that smaller classes in the early grades, K-3, has an academic benefit in every subject and has a lasting benefit," says Finn. Research shows that students who experienced small class sizes early on are more likely to perform better throughout their academic career, have higher graduation rates, and are more likely to take college entrance exams, he says.

While there isn't an absolute number, 20 is a threshold, says Finn. Districts, especially when serving students at risk, should shoot for keeping younger classes under 20 for the best results. Indeed, the addition of each child to a class changes the dynamic of the class and influences the outcome, notes Achilles.

The reality is that class sizes are going up in many districts because of the economy. So, if choices have to be made, the priority should be to keep class sizes small in grades K-3 and those serving the most at-risk students, says Finn.

The most extensive experiment that revealed the benefits of small class size is Project STAR, conducted in Tennessee in the late 1980s. It found that children randomly assigned to smaller classes (13-17 students) in grades K-3 scored significantly higher on achievement tests than those in regular classes of 22 to 25 or those in a regular-size class with a teacher's aide.

The four-year study was the brainchild of Helen Bain, a teacher, researcher, and former president of the National Education Association, who convinced the Tennessee state legislature to invest $12 million in the four-year project. As a seventh-grade teacher, Bain knew firsthand how much more students could learn in a smaller class and she was determined to prove it. "If you give me 50 kids, forget it, even 35, you can't do a thorough job," says Bain, cofounder of HEROS, Inc., an organization that conducts class size research and is the official holder of the STAR data. "I believe you can do it with 20."

Florida on the Forefront

Currently, about half the states have class-reduction programs for public schools. Florida passed a constitutional amendment in 2002 that phased in lower class sizes to 18 in grades K-3, 22 in grades 4­-8, and 25 in high school. This fall, districts had to meet the cap or face fines.

Bain believes Florida has the right approach. "If I could wave my magic wand, I'd do it in every state," she says.
Not everyone shares Bain's enthusiasm for the mandate. "Some of that $16 billion should have been spent improving curriculum and making our schools more rigorous. Instead, $16 billion was drained away to hire more teachers," says Florida state senator Don Gaetz, who contends there is little evidence that class size is a significant determinant of student performance. "The most important factor is an effective teacher."

Bruce Tonjes, associate superintendent in Polk County Public School District, says putting up 1,000 portable classrooms and adding staff has meant a lot of moving around. "It's been quite disruptive. It's a constant battle to have enough teachers available. It's a nice idea, but it's not manageable."

An examination of Florida's statewide mandate by Matthew Chingos of Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance found insignificant improvement in student performance in grades 3­-8 with lower class size. "The study isn't saying you should never, ever reduce class size. But it is saying Florida's policy, which cost billions of dollars, doesn't seem to have made much of a difference in student achievement in that state," says Chingos. "The one-size-fits-all mentality is very rarely a good idea."

Finn criticizes Chingos's study for focusing on grades where the likelihood of finding class size effects is smaller, and says that it overlooks the long-term potential impact of smaller classes in K-2. He also says the differences in class sizes of the two comparison groups in the study—those treated and untreated—are too small to make a difference educationally.

To loosen the class size requirement, Senator Gaetz sponsored an amendment on the ballot this fall that would raise the cap for individual classes and let schools meet the limits on an average basis. "It's a commonsense way to provide some limited local flexibility and avoid the chaos," says Gaetz.
Responding to the Economy

Georgia passed legislation mandating class size maximums ranging from 18 to 28, varying by grade and subject, beginning in 2006-2007. But in response to the economic downturn, the state board of education in May scrapped the limits on class size (with the consent of the legislature) for this school year.

While not ideal, the move was in recognition of the budget crunch that schools were facing, says Susan Walker, policy and research director at the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, a nonprofit that works with businesses to follow education issues.

"The intent was to give the school systems more flexibility so their hands would not be tied as they tried to do more with less," says Walker. Although there was an initial outcry, class sizes haven't skyrocketed, as some feared. Walker says the hope is that relaxing the class size maximums is only a temporary measure.

In 2001, a tax referendum to increase funding for schools in Mobile County Public Schools in Mobile, Alabama, provided money to reduce class size. At first, the early elementary classes were held to 16 students and the fourth and fifth grades to 20-22. Then, the concept was rolled out to the middle and high schools, trying to cap classes at 24.

Now, Mobile is one of the higher-performing systems in the state, says Superintendent Roy Nichols. Along with class size reduction, teachers were also required to focus on student data and collaborate on how to best meet their academic needs. "People get hung up on the argument of class size or teacher expertise," says Nichols. "I don't think it's an either-or. We need to look at both."

Since 2008, economic problems in the area have translated into two to three more students per class in Mobile, and Nichols says he's hearing "moaning and groaning" from teachers who don't like the change and feel smaller class sizes are essential for increasing student achievement.

"Class size is a no-brainer. Most parents, teachers, and school board members realize class size makes a tremendous difference. It's an easy argument to make," he says. "It's harder to make with politicians who are not closely aligned with education. In their mind, it sounds expensive."
Making the Case

To get lawmakers to support public education, Nichols says superintendents need to show that it's an "economic development" and "quality of life" issue.

Administrators need to get across the value of small class size to school board members by getting to know them one at a time. Then, they must stay on message. "You have to be like a dog with a bone," says HEROS's Bain. "If you want something done, you just have to stick with it."

And superintendents need to make a distinction between a push for small class size rather than a low student-teacher ratio, says Seton Hall's Achilles. "They've got to be clear when a school board says, ‘You have plenty of people'—you might have people, but you might not have them in the right place," he says.

Achilles encourages administrators to emphasize the long-term benefits of small class sizes. "It will save them money in the long run because there will be fewer students retained and in special education," he says. "Drop-out rates will be lower and the kids will stay in school. On the whole, it works out."

Finn acknowledges it's an uphill battle. "I would try to fight the impulse to increase K-3, especially in inner-city and rural schools, and fight like crazy," says Finn. "But I'm afraid the economy is a much larger influence."

Teacher Quality Matters More While it's hard to find experts willing to take a stand against lower class sizes, there are some who question the effectiveness of the statewide programs currently in place. For instance, in 2002, Florida voters narrowly agreed to a law reducing average class sizes to 18 for K-3, 22 for fourth through eighth grades, and 25 for high school. A paper by Matthew Chingos, with Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance, examined schools between 2006 and 2009. The schools reduced classes by 3.1 students; however, there were no statistically significant benefits for students of these schools in a number of areas, including test scores, absenteeism, and school violence. Research on California's effort to lower class sizes to 20 for the first four years of school—which started in 1996—also fails to correlate gains in achievement to class size. This is not to say that everyone agrees with the validity of Chingos's findings. Jeremy Finn, a professor of education at the University of Buffalo-SUNY, says one weakness of the Harvard study is that it focuses on how older students do, when it's proven that children fare better over time if exposed to smaller classes at an earlier age. He also argues the schools in the "non-treated" group that Chingos used for comparison already had smaller classes. Others, such as Chris Whittle, CEO of Edison Schools, and Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews, say that improving teacher quality is more beneficial than reducing class size. Whittle, author of Crash Course: Imagining a Better Future for Public Education, put the question in stark terms: "Which would be better, a bad teacher with 15 kids or a good one with 30?" Mathews argues paying a higher salary might attract more applicants to teaching and ultimately increase the quality of the teacher pool. Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, a nonprofit that supports smaller class sizes, disagrees, contending that salary is not as much a grievance for teachers as class size-that since the average teacher likely puts less emphasis on salary to begin with, giving them a more manageable class can attract more people to the profession. —Eric Butterman

Report: Many officials willing to replace half of staff to turn around schools

economic stimulus by laying off teachers; what a concept.  the headline says officials are "willing" but what choice do they have?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/09/AR2010120904925_Comments.html

 

Report: Many officials willing to replace half of staff to turn around schools
By Nick Anderson
Washington Post Staff Writer


Thursday, December 9, 2010; 5:23 PM



Education officials across the country have replaced the principals and at least half of the staff in about 150 struggling schools to obtain federal aid, the Obama administration disclosed Thursday.

In several hundred other cases, principals have been replaced and other major steps taken as part of the administration's unprecedented $3.5 billion campaign to rejuvenate thousands of the nation's lowest-performing schools.

The initiative, which reflects President Obama's get-tough policy on school reform, is likely to be central to the coming debate in Congress over revision of the No Child Left Behind law.

Thursday's report on the school improvement grant program shows that despite protests this year over proposals to fire large numbers of teachers in Central Falls, R.I., and elsewhere, many state and local officials are willing to replace half or more of a school's faculty in an effort to turn it around.
What's more, some of those turnaround attempts are moving ahead without opposition from teachers unions.
On Dec. 1, the president of the National Education Association, Dennis Van Roekel, joined Education Secretary Arne Duncan in a tour of G. James Gholson Middle School in Prince George's County.

The Landover school, which has failed to meet academic targets for the past eight years, won a $2.7 million turnaround grant. This fall, it has two new co-principals, and half its staff is new. Three other county middle schools - Benjamin Stoddert, Drew Freeman and Thurgood Marshall - are on a similar path.

Van Roekel said Thursday that his appearance at Gholson was not meant to endorse a fire-the-faculty strategy. But he said, "I talked to the local [union] there and was impressed with the level of collaboration and parental engagement."

He said the NEA, with 3.2 million members, in general prefers other strategies for fixing schools besides staff replacement. But he added: "We're not going to ignore kids in any school. The success of the students is what we have to focus on."

Many other schools nationwide targeted for major shakeups are represented by the 1.5-million member American Federation of Teachers.

Duncan said he was pleased at the high level of participation in the school improvement campaign. "The story is that there hasn't been screaming," he said. "There hasn't been outcry. Folks are just doing the hard work together. Folks are taking this work extraordinarily seriously."

Education Department data on the initiative, which is funded by the 2009 economic stimulus law, offer the most detailed look yet at efforts underway to overhaul (and in some cases shut down) at least 730 low-performing schools in 44 states.

The report had no information on schools in the District or in Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, Montana and New Hampshire.

School officials were given four options to obtain funding. They could replace staff and give a new principal additional powers, a model known as turnaround. They could shut down a school. They could hand management to an independent operator, such as a charter organization, known as a restart. Or they could replace the principal (with a few exceptions), overhaul instruction, increase lesson time and take other steps to improve academics. That option is known as transformation.

Taken together, those remedies are significantly more intrusive than fixes prescribed in No Child Left Behind , enacted in 2002 under President George W. Bush.

In the program, transformation is the most popular option. Data show officials have made that choice in seven out of every 10 cases. Transformation is the model for school improvement at T.C. Williams High in Alexandria, for example, and at 10 other schools elsewhere in Virginia.

The turnaround model was chosen in 21 percent of cases, including at least 29 schools in California and six in Maryland. Five percent of schools were restarted and three percent closed.

Obama raised a furor among educators in March when he expressed support for Rhode Island officials who were moving to fire teachers at Central Falls High School. Subsequently, Rhode Island officials shifted course and kept the school's faculty.

The episode suggested that Obama and Duncan would encounter massive resistance to reforms that entail replacing teachers. But that has not necessarily proven to be the case.

Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University education professor, said staff replacement has been tried in many places since the 1980s - often without success. Good teachers often don't want to work at a school labeled a failure. She said that strong leadership and a comprehensive improvement plan are essential. "There are ways to reboot a school that can be thoughtful," she said.

December 8, 2010

Game Plan for a Flat Tax, Social Security Cutbacks and Austerity

Obama's Sellout on Taxes

By MICHAEL HUDSON
I almost feel naïve for being so angry at President Obama’s betrayal of his campaign promises regarding taxes. I had never harbored much hope that he actually intended to enact the reforms that his supporters expected – not after he appointed the most right-wing of the Clintonomics gang, Larry Summers, then Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke and other Bush neoliberals.
But there is something so unfair and wrong that I could not prevent myself from waking up early Tuesday morning to think through the consequences of President  Obama’s sellout in the years to come. Contrary to his pretense of saving the economy, his action will intensify debt deflation and financial depression, paving the way for a long-term tax shift off wealth onto labor.
In achieving a giveaway that Democrats never would have let George Bush or other Republicans enact, Obama has laid himself open to the campaign slogan that brought down British Prime Minister Tony Blair: “You can’t believe a word he says.” He has lost support not only personally, but also – as the Republicans anticipate – for much of his party in 2012.
Yet Obama has only done what politicians do: He has delivered up his constituency to his campaign backers – the same Wall Street donors who back the Republicans. What’s the point of having a constituency, after all, if you can’t sell it?
The problem is that it’s not going to stop here. Monday’s deal to re-instate the Bush era tax cuts for two more years sets up a 1-2-3 punch. First, many former Democratic and independent voters will “vote with their backsides” and simply stay home (or perhaps be tempted by a third-party candidate), enabling the Republicans to come in legislate the cuts in perpetuity in 2012 – an estimated $4 trillion to the rich over time.
Second,  Obama’s Republican act (I hate to call it a compromise) “frees” income for the wealthiest classes to send abroad, to economies not yet wrecked by neoliberals. This paves the way for a foreign-exchange crisis. Such crises traditionally fall in the autumn – and as the 2012 election draws near, it will be attributed to “uncertainty” if voters do not throw the Democrats out. So to “save the dollar” the Republicans will propose to replace progressive income taxation with a uniform flat tax (the old Steve Forbes plan) falling on wage earners, not on wealth or on finance, insurance or real estate (FIRE sector) income. A VAT will be added as an excise tax to push up consumer prices.
Third, the tax giveaway includes a $120 billion reduction in Social Security contributions by labor – reducing the FICA wage withholding from 6.2 per cent to 4.2 per cent. Obama has ingeniously designed the plan to dovetail neatly into his Bowles-Simpson commission pressing to reduce Social Security as a step toward its ultimate privatization and subsequent wipeout grab by Wall Street. This cutback will accelerate the point at which the program moves into supposed “negative equity” – a calculation that ignores the option of restoring pension funding to the government’s general budget, where it would be paid out of progressively levied income tax and hence borne mainly by the wealthy, not by lower-income wage earners as a “user fee.”
So the game plan is not merely to free the income of the wealthiest class to “offshore” itself into assets denominated in harder currencies abroad. It is to scrap the progressive tax system altogether. The Democratic Congress is making only token handwringing protests against this plan, no doubt with an eye looking forward to the campaign contributors two years down the road.
Crises usually are orchestrated years in advance. Any economic recovery typically is shaped by the way in which its predecessor economy collapsed. Medieval Europe’s emergence from the Dark Age, for example, was shaped by ancient Rome’s debt crisis caused by its aggressive oligarchy. In a similar fashion, the coming epochal tax shift off finance and property onto labor will be introduced in response to the dollar’s crisis, in much the way that we have seen Ireland and Greece tap their pension funds to bail out reckless bankers. In America as in Europe, the large “systemically important banks” that caused the crisis will be given enough money by the government – at the expense of labor (“taxpayers”) to step in and “rescue” the bad debt overhang (i.e., toxic junk).
The tactics of this fiscal game sequence are so time-tested that there should not be much surprise. So President Obama’s deal is not only financial and fiscal in scope, it is a political game changer. When Congressional Democrats sign on to this betrayal of their major election promise, they will be re-branding their claim to be the “non-Wall Street party,”
Barack Obama was trained as a lawyer. I’ve rarely met a lawyer who understands economics. That’s not their mind-set. They make deals to minimize the risk of surprises, often settling in the middle. That is legal pragmatism. When candidate Obama promised “change,” I don’t think he had any particular change in economic policy in mind. It was more a modus operandi. I suspect that he simply thought of the Presidency as being referee on “bringing people together.” Probably this personality trait was formed as a teenager, in the kind of popularity contest that teenagers engage in student council elections. Obama’s aim was to be accepted, even admired, by negotiating a compromise. He probably didn’t care much about the content.
He did care about getting political campaign backing, of course, and the rules for this are clear enough in today’s world. He was given a policy to plead, and a set of experts to plead his case. There are always enough Junk Economics advisors to work on politicians to try and convince them that “doing the right thing” means helping Wall Street. It is not a matter simply of believing that “What’s good for Wall Street is good for the economy.” To hear Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke tell the story, the economy can’t function without a “solvent” banking system – meaning that no bank is to lose money. All gamblers on the winning side (such as Goldman Sachs) are to be made whole in cases where they cannot collect from bad casino-capitalist gamblers on the losing side (such as A.I.G. and Lehman Brothers).
So should we say that Obama’s plan really helps the economy simply because the stock market jumped sharply on Tuesday? Or are we dealing with a zero-sum game, where the predator’s subsidy is at the cost of the host economy?
Contra Obama’s pretense, cutting taxes for the rich will not spur recovery. The wealthiest 2 per cent do not spend their income on consuming more. They invest it financially – mainly in bonds, establishing more debt claims on the economy. Giving creditors more money will deepen the economy’s debt deflation, shrinking “the market’s” ability to spend on goods and services. And part of the tax subsidy will be recycled into Congressional lobbying and campaign contributions to buy politicians who will promote even more pro-financial deregulatory policies and tax benefits. There still has been no prosecution of banking crime or other financial fraud by large institutions, for example. Nor is there any sign of Attorney General Holder initiating such prosecutions.
It is a travesty for Obama to trot out the long-term unemployed (who now get a year’s extension of benefits) like widows and orphans used to be. It’s not really “all for the poor.” It’s all for the rich. And it’s not to promote stability and recovery. How stable can a global situation be where the richest nation does not tax its population, but creates new public debt to hand out to its bankers? Future tax payers will spend generations paying off their heirs.
The “solution” to the coming financial crisis in the United States may await the dollar’s plunge as an opportunity for a financial Tonkin Gulf resolution. Such a crisis would help catalyze the tax system’s radical change to a European-style “Steve Forbes” flat tax and VAT sales-excise tax falling almost entirely on employment? Big fish will eat little fish. More government giveaways will be made to the financial sector in a vain effort to keep bad debts afloat and banks “solvent.” As in Ireland and Latvia, public debt will replace private debt, leaving little remaining for Social Security or indeed for much social spending.
The bottom line is that after the prolonged tax giveaway exacerbates the federal budget deficit – along with the balance-of-payments deficit – we can expect the next Republican or Democratic administration to step in and “save” the country from economic emergency by scaling back Social Security while turning its funding over, Pinochet-style, to Wall Street money managers to loot as they did in Chile. And one can forget rebuilding America’s infrastructure. It is being sold off by debt-strapped cities and states to cover their budget shortfalls resulting from un-taxing real estate and from foreclosures.
Welcome to debt peonage. This is worse than what was meant by a double-dip recession. It will be with us much longer.
Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist. A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) and Trade, Development and Foreign Debt: A History of Theories of Polarization v. Convergence in the World Economy. He can be reached via his website, mh@michael-hudson.com

Jamaica HS Teacher Marc Epstein on Cathie Black and Tenure

THE HUFFINGTON POST

 

 

Marc Epstein

History teacher at Jamaica High School

Posted: December 7, 2010 04:34 PM

 

Cathie Black's Tenure Trap

 

When there is evidence of bad public policy, you can safely assume that it took two parties working collaboratively to create the swamp.

 

New York's Department of Education and the teachers' union have found themselves mired down in a dispute over the fates of more than a thousand teachers, many of whom have no assigned teaching position, but continue to collect full-time salaries.

 

This group of teachers is collectively referred to as ATR's, or the absent teacher reserve. Large numbers of ATR's are not instructing students in their licensed areas. Instead they often find themselves working as substitute teachers.

At various times these teachers have been labeled incompetent or too lazy to seek positions by Joel Klein. He wants to fire them.

 

To judge from his statements and newspaper editorials, we are simply facing a case of old time union featherbedding.

 

If the problem isn't resolved over the next few weeks Cathie Black will inherit this mess, and all her public statements to date indicate that she has bought Joel Klein's narrative hook, line, and sinker.

The primary reason that so many teachers are out of a job stems from Klein's policy of closing comprehensive high schools, declaring them "failed" enterprises, and replacing them with small high schools.

 

Since the closing is a "hostile" takeover the teachers too are "failed" and sent packing, rather than placed in the new small schools.

 

If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, you can lose your position with either a short time served in the system or with 20 plus years on the job.

 

When you impose this method of staffing on the largest school system in the country, something has got to give. In fact, it's only logical that a number of teachers would find themselves inhabiting the limbo world of the "ATR."

This limbo world can find a music teacher covering classes for absent social studies teachers, while his music program is assigned to a social studies teacher. I know because this precisely what occurred in my school.

 

The sooner the myths about public school staffing are dispensed with the better the public interest will be served, because this is Joel Klein's self-created crisis.

Tenure: tenure for public school teachers is not a lifetime sinecure. In most respects it is no different from civil service protections for police, fire, and sanitation workers. You have to have due process in order to fire an employee.

 

We should recall that the civil service laws first instituted on the Federal level were the direct result of a presidential assassination in 1881, when a disgruntled officer seeker shot President Garfield.

 

Back in 1883 the cities of New York and Brooklyn served as the model for civil service reform nationwide on the local level.

 

The New York City schools once had a rigorous accreditation process for teachers. It included a meaningful written examination of the subject area and an oral exam. The Board of Examiners wrote and administered the tests.

 

As standards ebbed, the once vaunted Board of Examiners was whittled down until it was quietly put out of business in 1990.

The once demanding exam was replaced by a ludicrously easy interview and a more questionable statewide written exam.

 

It's no accident that the dumbing down of the hiring requirements coincided with the dumbing down of state testing for our children too.

Mayoral control gave Michael Bloomberg the power to re-establish a Board of Examiners with the stroke of a pen, but nothing has been done to return rigorous standards to the hiring process.

 

Perhaps Bloomberg, who didn't grow up in New York, is unaware that a Board of Examiners ever existed? After all, it's far easier to run a PR campaign than it is to institute real reform.

 

The union, never one to miss an opportunity, has yet to call for a return to the hiring standards under the Board of Examiners that helped make New York's schools the finest in the country.

 

Why should an experienced teacher have a tough time landing a new position you might ask? Well, along with the downsizing of schools came Klein's decision to budget schools according to the actual salaries of their teachers.

 

Before mayoral control, a high school teacher counted as a "unit," which meant whether you had a school with lots of experienced teachers or mostly rookies, the cost for staffing the school was the same. The teacher "unit" would represent the average price of compensating one of the 80,000 teachers in the system.

 

If a school closed, or its population declined, teachers who were no longer needed there were placed in available slots without having them go into the so-called "open" hiring market.

By forcing the principals to figure the real salary of each teacher into their budgets, they have every incentive to hire younger lower salaried teachers and to avoid the more experienced ones, who were too expensive. In Klein's universe inexperience and lower salaries becomes a virtue, while experience be damned!

 

Would critics of tenure suggest that if a firehouse is closed because of a reorganization move by the department, the firemen are responsible for finding a new job within the system? Would these critics claim that young inexperienced firefighters are preferable to experienced ones?

With the press providing the wind for his sails, and Bill Gates funding the small school voyage, Klein's assault on teachers and comprehensive high schools proved irresistible for someone with no real administrative skills. Ask yourself which role is easier, playing Tom Silva on This Old House, or just taking a wrecking ball to the whole place?

Around now, you might be asking yourself why the teachers union acquiesced to the ATR? To say that the union has taken a pounding in the press and from the chancellor over the past seven years is an understatement.

 

In typical New York fashion, the union stood by when a good policy, the School Based Option Staffing and Transfer Plan was being strangled, and agreed to the ATR pool.

 

The SBO had a cooperative team of teachers and administrators select new faculty members collegially. If someone with loads of seniority applied for a job and had nothing else going for them except time in the system, they could be rejected.

 

The SBO was already in place and had been spreading throughout the system when Bloomberg took over the schools. So Klein's claim that he was being strangled by union seniority rules was simply a myth.

If the union was as omnipotent as the editorialists claim, why didn't it block, or wage a PR campaign against this new fatally flawed hiring process and fight for the SBO?

 

There's no way to divine the answer to that question. In all likelihood the UFT knows that no matter how much ink is spent reviling them; no arbitrator would overturn the civil service laws and allow unassigned teachers who otherwise have satisfactory performance records be fired.

 

Yet the public discourse is diminished by the union's failure to make its case for the rank and file teacher to the public.

In the end, the DOE and the union have been clever by half. Hundreds of millions have been wasted. The hiring process hasn't been improved, and teachers who remain the vital component in the education process are further diminished.

 

If this self-inflicted "crisis" were given to a business management class as a case study, it's likely that they would conclude that the negotiators on both sides of the table were idiots.