Awaiting the Word of the Corporate King

I have known the facts for weeks now but nonetheless there remains in my brain some voice that keeps telling me, this can’t really be true, my union, the once mighty United Federation of Teachers did not really sign off on an agreement allowing the cynically selected corporate crusader, New York State Education Commissioner John King, final say over the new teacher evaluation plan for all of New York City. Surely my union would never entrust this precious fan of Educators 4 Excellence (and other billionaire funded union busting lowlife organizations,) who taught a total of three years (one in a public school) and was just last week seen pathetically cheering on the corporate CEO’s he lined up to shill for Bill Gate’s Common Core. (‘cause, really, who knows more about education than CEO’s? ) to have the final say on the most radical change in teacher’s professional lives in decades.
Surely, this was some kind of bad dream or evil hallucination or elaborate cosmic joke that I’d, in time, awaken from, snap out of or catch on to.

John King who taught for three entire years.

But no. Like their signing on to Race to the Top, easily the most corrosive and insidious attack on American public education in its history ( of which Bill Gate’s Common Core and Commissioner King’s evaluation plan are part and parcel) the UFT, indeed, did sign on to this slow motion train wreck. Worse, my union wants me and my union brothers and sisters to believe that this is a moment for celebration, a victory of some kind.
Reading UFT President Michael Mulgrew’s letter on the matter made me cringe. (See below.) Several times. Then it did something worse. It lit in me the sensation I have known in certain dark hours in my life when I comforted myself with the thought, “it cannot get worse than this” until, a short time later, it was worse than that.

I suspect many teachers from coast to coast have felt something akin to that sickly sensation over the last decade of ceaseless attacks. I am tired of it. And more than tired of it. The corporate disease has over taken all including the only forces capable of withstanding it, namely unions and political parties. The choices of working people, never rosy, are now starker than they have been in a century and there seems there is nothing but darkness in the tunnel. We either find some way, as yet unimagined, to rebel against our own immiseration and degradation or we wind up with lives that are scarcely worthy of the word.

Herein Mulgrew’s letter.

Dear colleagues,
Late on Saturday, June 1, State Education Commissioner John King is expected to release an evaluation plan for K-12 teachers in New York City. It will be done through a binding arbitration process and take effect in September.
The mayor and the DOE will no doubt try to spin Commissioner King’s decision to their advantage. The UFT staff will be working through Sunday to get accurate information about the new system out to you by Monday morning in a form that is both clear and concise.
The process to create a new evaluation system has been long and contentious. The final decision came to rest with the commissioner because the city Department of Education proved incapable of negotiating in good faith with us.
The UFT and the DOE each submitted lengthy proposals to the State Education Department on May 8. Arbitration hearings are taking place in Albany today and tomorrow. Commissioner King will consider the proposals and decide on the final evaluation system on June 1.
We have the opportunity to use our collective-bargaining rights to modify aspects of the evaluation plan during future contract negotiations. Practically speaking, since we are in fact-finding now, if any changes were negotiated, they would not take effect until the 2014-15 school year.
Because the commissioner’s plan must be in accordance with the 2010 state law on teacher evaluation that this union supported and helped shape, we expect it to be fair, professional and focused on teacher development to the benefit of our students. The new evaluation system as set out in state law is designed first and foremost to help teachers improve their skills throughout their careers. Teachers who are struggling will get support tailored to their individual needs.
We have our work cut out for us in September, given this DOE’s terrible track record of translating policy to practice compounded with the fact that they will probably be gone come Jan. 1. We have started working on a professional development plan and we will use our rights to make sure that the new system is implemented fairly. It is a big help that we already have an appeals process for New York City teachers nailed down that will give our members stronger due process rights than they have ever had.
I hope this email clarifies where we are and what we can expect. Working together, we will make this transition. You can count on your union to continue to fight to get you the support you deserve. Thank you for all that you do for our city’s schoolchildren.
Sincerely,

Michael Mulgrew

Musings On Corporate Education Reform: In the Absence of Trust Grows Sickness

A dog starv’d at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
William Blake
The Auguries of Innocence.

Insofar as an absence is as dynamic as a presence, a sane society that wishes to remain more or less healthy need be exceedingly careful of the things we remove, that much the more if those things are vital human needs removed from vital human institutions. The absence of beauty from a building, for example, does not create building minus beauty. It creates something radically different and profoundly diminished. Such changes can be said to be environmental and they are thus as subtle, unpredictable and dangerous as the removal of a species of insect from the rain forest. We now know that such a removal will create chaos even if we do not know when or where as the removal creates a chain of events outside of the logic of cause and effect. Such a removal, that is, may manifest itself in the Tundra ten, twenty, thirty years after the change.
If this is true with the removal of an insect, how much truer must it be with the removal of as primal and vital a human need as trust in an institution of learning ?

The most degrading and increasingly explicit message from the corporate reform campaign to American public school teachers can be boiled down to the following four words: We don’t trust you. We don’t trust you to teach your students. We don’t trust you to test your students. We don’t trust you to mark the standardized tests that we manufacture for your students. We don’t trust you to know your subject. We don’t trust you to have standards so we have provided standards for you that you will be punished for not following.
If fact, we don’t really trust you to do much of anything at all except the things that we tell you to do and even these we don’t trust you to do. And this is why we reserve the right to micro manage every aspect of your professional life

Of course, this is not the language that is employed to get their message through. The corporate reformers speak, incessantly, of accountability and more accountability – all of which is conveniently quantified on standardized tests and reduced to sacred and all revealing data.

Why do you need trust when you have accountability ?

Of course, only a vulgar mind would confuse trust with accountability. Accountability is the thing you need when you have already banished or you are incapable of trust.
And this is to say nothing of Bill Gate’s moronic totalitarian notions concerning students wearing galvanic bracelets to measure involvement in the lesson or placing teachers under video surveillance under the pretense of sharing the practices of master teachers.

In whatever form it takes, the message is the same: You, Mr. or Ms. Teacher are a person wholly unworthy of trust.

And don’t think for a moment that the students don’t also understand this.

For an additional kick in the head, the very same “reformers” who have institutionalized distrust of teachers demand themselves to be trusted unconditionally (or at the very least, unconditionally obeyed) even as they perform untested experiment after untested experiment on America’s unknowing children.

Consider the fact that Bill Gate’s Common Core Standards which are now remaking American public schools from coast to coast have never even been field tested.
Consider the fact that Valve Added Metric (VAM ) evaluation schemes which will determine the livelihoods of millions of teachers are wholly unscientific and akin to a roll of the dice.
Consider the obsession with merit pay despite a century of failed attempts to prove it somehow improves teacher quality.
Consider the fact that there is no evidence that any of the corporate reform schemes improves anything other than the bank accounts of their proponents.
And on it goes.

It is difficult at times, I will admit, in the face of all this not to fall into despair. Battling systemic degradation on a daily basis wears one down. I see it in the faces of my colleagues more and more and I do not know where or how it will end. Individuals so predatory that they have amassed the wealth of entire nations, at the same time that they have essentially harnessed the political machinery of the state, are neither easily defeated nor likely to admit they are wrong. Ever. No matter what. Observer Michael Bloomberg. Or Bill Gates. Or Eli Broad. Or their political operatives, Rahm Emmanuel or Andrew Cuomo or Chris Christie or Cory Booker, or the biggest catch of them all, Barack Obama.
I do not know where this will go. I do know this though, and I know it in the marrow of my bones: any society that systemically institutionalizes distrust of a profession as vital as teachers has entered a state of moral, intellectual and spiritual decay of a terrifying order. It is an order that true visionaries like Blake prophesied and knew would not long survive.
Nor should it.

Fear and Loathing and the Common Core

This morning, like yesterday morning and the morning before that, I was complicit in the wholesale corporatization of American public school education, playing my small but essential role in a corporate experiment of unprecedented proportions and titanic intent.     This morning and yesterday morning and the morning before that, I, like thousands of my fellow teachers, administered to my students the first of a promised endless battery of New York State standardized tests.

It is hard not to feel demoralized if not utterly invisible administering such things, that much the more when you know that few in your profession had any say at all  in the production  of such things, that such tests are incapable of measuring and therefore subtly  dismiss the most sublime human gifts such as creativity,   and that they are designed, in large part, to strip teachers of our  autonomy.

And more than that:  you know that under the current data crazed evaluation systems, the outcomes of such these tests threaten your very livelihood.

It is harder still to believe that such emotions are not part of the design of the entire project.  After all, a cowed, terrified workforce is a compliant workforce and no word is more operative in today’s “new normal” school system than “compliance.”

The Pearson produced tests are all aligned to what are deceitfully  called the  Common Core State Standards, the first of countless tests to be so,  and as such are designed to insure the ten year olds in my charge were on track to be “college and career ready”, the better to help them succeed in the global economy and “win the future.”

And who can argue with that ?

I can.

I can because not only is such a notion of education limited and limiting to the point of vulgarity, but because everything about the Common Core State Standards Initiative, beginning with its name, stinks to high heaven. Everything about this privately funded, privately owned, secretly created scheme, sponsored by the un-elected National Governors Association and given pseudo academic legitimacy by the equally unelected but lofty sounding Council Of Chief State School Officers, is meant to obscure or hide altogether what the Common Core is, why it exists and how it came — ready or not –  to be rammed down the throat of almost every school kid in America  – including the ten year olds I saw pointlessly suffer through  it the  past three days.

Search the New York State Education website and you will find nothing about the Core’s (as it is now called) main funders, Bill and Melinda Gates, nothing about its fantastically lucrative connection to Pearson Publishing, who have already made millions and stand to reap billions of tax payer bucks creating more tests for our kids — beginning in kindergarten — than have ever been seen before in human history, nothing about the multi million dollar Common Core paraphernalia industry.

Lord of American Education

Seek and you will find nothing to indicate the “Core”, in Common Core is, in fact, nothing less than the arbitrary selections of educational entrepreneur and non teacher, David Coleman, pal of Michelle Rhee; he , who gets to pretty much single handedly decide what is and what is not important in our children’s education.

The Divine Decider

And this, does he , from sea to shining sea.

Seek and you will find nothing about the grossly coercive manner in which the Obama administration forced the Common Core upon cash starved states in exchange for their autonomy and enough strings attached to slowly strangle their teacher unions who insanely went along with it;  nothing about  the totalitarian ethic inherent in the Core that mandates that once “adopted “ ( what a disgracefully manipulative use of our language !) by a state not a single comma of the holy document could be altered.

Seek and you will find nothing to indicate the fact the “initiative” in the Common Core State Standard Initiative is the initiative not of states, teachers, or parents  but only that of its  super rich sponsors and   corporations. Seek and you will find nothing about the incredible fact that the vast experiment called the Common Core has never even been field-tested — even as it is utterly remaking the American public  school system as we breathe.

What kind of  people would do this ?

Nothing I can  think of  in the current political landscape more clearly illuminates the insidious transformation of the United States from a problematic democracy into an outright oligarchy and corporate fiefdom than the remarkable series of outrageous experiments currently  being performed on American public school children at the behest of a handful of unelected, wholly unaccountable,  madly narcissistic billionaires and their  corporate allies via the  machinations of their hirelings in elected office.  As yet, the most outrageous of these experiments is the Common Core and its concomitant testing frenzy than comes with it.  As many have pointed out,  the children of the  proponents of the Common Core go to schools that hold such stuff in outright disdain.

We should do as well. Those intrepid parents in the Opt Out movement are showing the way.  The testing industry is the central nervous system of the entire corporate education reform campaign.  If enough refuse to  feed it,  it will die.  If we continue to accept it,  our already deeply enfeebled democracy will.

Next year my child will enter  “a testing grade” and is therefore meant to share in the glories of the Common Core Initiative.  Let me rephrase that:  She will be forced to share in the glories of the Common Core Initiative.

Note:  as they are expanding their empire to kindergarten, next year just about everyone’s child is meant to share in the glories of the Common Core State Standard Initiative.

I do not know what will happen from now till then but I know this: My child will partake in this ruthless, rapacious corporate hustle over my dead body.

“Grass Roots” Educators4Excellence Make $250,000 Commercial

You know there is something seriously wrong with any teacher evaluation plan that is pined for by the likes of the minuscule and despicable Educators 4 Excellence, a whole cloth creation of Bill Gates, Democrats for Education Reform and other union busting privatizers lusting to get their hands on our public school system and remake it in their own image.      You know there is something even more wrong with the thinking of the United Federation of Teachers who, with very minor differences, were willing to sign on to the same plan before Mayor Mike Bloomberg “torpedoed “ it at the 11^th hour over the UFT’s insistence that this radical experiment in union suicide and  systematic destruction of teachers have a two year sunset clause. ( Like all ideas favored by Bloomberg, Bloomberg believed the experiment should  go on in perpetuity: a goal he is apparently seeking for all of the  insane ideas that blossom in his fertile head  in his final 10 months of power. )

Now here we are some six or so weeks later and Governor Andrew “I am the government”   “ Cuomo is poised, somehow, to pass legislation allowing  New York State Commissioner John King the right to  impose his own evaluation plan, union  contacts, and laws be damned, if the existing plan is  not ratified.

This is what passes for binding arbitration in our time.

Inexplicably, my union, the UFT,  seems to be quietly fine with that arrangement.  Much more loudly, E4E is demanding precisely that, and the New York Post, which can be seen as the house organ of E4E, is as ever happy to spread their word.  (Note: As Commissioner King taught for a mere three years before being handed power over education in New York State,  he may well feel an affinity for the leaders of E4E and they for him. )

A couple of  months ago, E4E held something purporting to be a rally at City Hall Park in favor of the wretched plan.   The affair was darkly amusing in its pathos, what with the E4Eer’s chanting idiocies in their billionaire bought green beanies and going on and on about how excellent they were.  “I am not satisfactory!  I am excellent” was a cringe inducing fave.

One after the other they barked on about how they craved feedback from their administrators, all but admitting to being as helpless as infants in their classrooms without an assistant principal telling them what to do and how to do it.

And  yet these were the very same adults who  were demanding the right to influence state educational policy and radically rewrite or outright remove the teacher protections that their predecessors  risked their careers to obtain for them.

A wee bit of a contradiction there, I’d say.  But what the hey!

There were ignorant if almost passionate lamentations  about using the 250 million dollars of Race to the Top extortion money to buy laptops for their students,  as if one dime of the tainted loot was ever going near a   class room and not going straight to consultants and test makers. I attended the rally (and wrote of it in an earlier post) and spoke to some of the beanie wearing crew, all of whom were clueless, some of whom were very pleasantly so.   This morning I  was mailed the on line version of E4E latest effort and — lo and be hold! — there are the same few faces in the video as at their tiny rally spouting the same lines, albeit  it, in  somewhat gentler and infinitely  more somber, even funereal tones.    Alas, what else can you do when your budget is in the millions but your membership is in the hundreds but trot out and re cycle the same people over and over. Indeed, one of them is the very lady who was handed a platform by the NY Daily News on January 3.

The Post does again what it has done since the creation of  E4E , even repeating the nonsense about E4E  forming spontaneously, like Athena out of Zeus’s head, from a couple of frustrated Bronx teachers — neither of whom of is still teaching, but rather living large on their corporate sponsor’s welfare  — in a in a lonely February kitchen under a dim bulb with a sad minor scale violin solo playing in the distance.

( OK, I made up the part about the dim light bulb and the violin but  they made up the bullshit about the kitchen.  You can rest assured, like so much of corporate education reform schemes,  the idea for  this repugnant organization was  vomited  up ages ago in a well lit boardroom. )

A mere two or three years later and here’s E4E with a snazzy midtown office, a branch in LA and   no less than a quarter of a million dollars to spend on a commercial!

My favorite line from the Post’s puff piece?  “The nonprofit E4E has drawn criticism for relying in part on funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates and Carnegie foundations.”

“In part.”   That’s a good one.

My bet is that there has not been a single dollar raised by teachers for this egregious organization.

And yet here again is E4E, possessors of zero credibility, with less than 1 % of NYC teacher as members again presented as if it is a legitimate organization and an “independent” voice of real educators.

I know of no other group that so completely embodies the fraudulence and deceit of corporate education reform and the willing complicity  of the media to aid in such fraud and deceit as E4E.  Think about it.  A quarter of a million dollars for an ad for a group that was “hatched in a kitchen” three years ago.  There is a story here.  It is the story of media complicity with insidious corporate reformers.  And how that story  goes on and on and on.

And there is another story here, one even darker in its way that the fraudulence of E4E.

And that story is this:  how did it happen that a group like E4E, that was created by billionaire  privatizers  for the sole purpose of   stripping  teachers of their rights,  and an organization like the UFT, that was created by teachers to  grant them rights and protect their rights wind up agreeing to essentially the same teacher evaluation plan ?

 

My question:  on what level of Dante’s hell are we trapped in and how the hell do we get out dignified and alive?

We have reached the hour when everything must change or we will enter decades of data based, billionaire orchestrated, illuminated darkness.

Independent teachers group demands Albany eval plan

• By ERIK KRISS, Bureau Chief
• Last Updated: 3:07 AM, February 19, 2013
• Posted: 1:55 AM, February 19, 2013

ALBANY — A group of reform-minded city teachers is taking to the airwaves today to demand the state impose a teacher-evaluation system on the Big Apple soon, The Post has learned.

Educators 4 Excellence plans to flood network and cable TV stations in the city with a 30-second ad calling on Albany to impose an evaluation system as soon as possible in the face of an impasse between Mayor Bloomberg and the United Federation of Teachers.

Gov. Cuomo will introduce legislation this week for a state-imposed system — but the measure could give the city and UFT until Sept. 17 to agree on their own plan before it takes effect.

But that could push implementation of any teacher-evaluation plan into the 2014-15 school year, E4E says.

“It will be incredibly difficult to train teachers and principals on a teacher-evaluation system that isn’t finished until the beginning of the [next] school year,” E4E executive director Jonathan Schleifer told The Post yesterday.

“We need a system put in place soon,” he said, adding that there is “no local deal in sight.”

The ad buy is expected to exceed $250,000 and may run longer than a week, organizers said.

It’s aimed at Cuomo, who faces his own deadline this week to amend his state budget proposal by adding his mandatory teacher-evaluation plan.

State lawmakers are expected to approve the budget for the state fiscal year that begins April 1 by the end of March.

E4E says it wants evaluations to provide feedback to teachers based on multiple observations, “student growth data” and student surveys, among other factors.

With school out for winter break, E4E members also plan to fan out across the city today to collect petition signatures calling for a state evaluation system to take effect as soon as possible.

“A meaningful evaluation system will tell me what’s working — and help me be better for my students,” Queens seventh-grade mathematics teacher Jemal Graham says in the ad.

“With feedback and support, I will be a stronger teacher for my students,” adds Rafael Gondim, a math teacher in Queens.

The city already lost $250 million in state aid by missing a Jan. 17 deadline for an evaluation plan that must be agreed to by the UFT.

It stands to forfeit another $224 million if the sides miss the September deadline.

“We can’t afford any more empty promises and empty programs,” Gondim says, with Bronx special-education teacher Susan Keyock adding, “Our students deserve better.”

The nonprofit E4E has drawn criticism for relying in part on funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates and Carnegie foundations.

A UFT spokesman questioned how “a supposedly grass-roots teacher organization with limited membership and resources can afford an ad campaign — unless of course the campaign is being funded by outside sources,” adding that the union hopes the state facilitates “binding arbitration” in the absence of a negotiated settlement.

Cuomo’s office had no comment and a spokesman for Bloomberg did not return a request for comment.

E4E was hatched about three years ago by several Bronx teachers frustrated over the lack of teacher input on school reforms. It has also advocated for merit pay and stronger tenure requirements, and opened a Los Angeles chapter in late 2011.

The teacher-quality and school-choice advocacy group StudentsFirstNY ponied up over half a million dollars in December for a citywide TV and social-media ad campaign to pressure the city and UFT to reach an agreement before the January deadline.

ekriss@nypost.com

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Educators 4 Excellence: An Independent Voice for Teachers

Dear Karl,Good morning.I wanted you to be the first to know. As millions of New Yorkers watch TV today they are going to see myself and two other E4E-NY teachers calling on Albany to act immediately and deliver a meaningful evaluation and support system for New York City’s teachers.You’ll probably see it during your favorite news and shows this week, but you can also watch the 30-second video here:  http://bit.ly/NYbetter This message couldn’t come at a better time – yesterday the NY Post reported that the Governor would give the City and Union until September 17th to try to get a deal. Unfortunately, though we hoped they could work something out before, we’ve seen they haven’t been able to – even when a quarter of a billion dollars for our students was at stake. I remain optimistic, but we need Albany’s leadership to guarantee that we will get the feedback and support we need to help our students. E4E teachers have been asking for meaningful evaluation and support for two years now and we can’t afford to wait until the start of another new school year. In order for an evaluation system to have a meaningful impact, we need time to implement it thoughtfully by training principals, setting up a feedback loop with teachers, and lining up high-quality professional development to support teachers. No more kicking the can down the road! The video will be seen by millions of New Yorkers, but our voice is strongest when you join Susan, Rafael, and me. Here are two quick things you can do right now to help share this message: •    Forward this email to your friends and colleagues. •    Share the video on Facebook and Twitter Best, Jemal Graham Seventh grade math teacher, Queens E4E-NY School Captain

Connect with E4E  Subscribe | Contact Us |  Privacy Policy © 2012 Educators 4 Excellence 333 West 39th Street, Suite 703, New York, NY 10018About E4E: For far too long,education policy has been created without a critical voice at the table – the voice of reform-minded classroom teachers. Educators 4 Excellence (E4E), a teacher-led organization, is changing this dynamic by placing the voices of teachers at the forefront of the conversations that shape their classrooms and careers. To learn more, visitEducators4Excellence.org. Right now, educators are working through E4E to drive positive outcomes for students and elevate the teaching profession. Help grow this movement. Please donate today.

Educators 4 Excellence and the Strings They Pull

Once again the farce that calls itself Educators for Excellence, a minuscule organization existing solely to implement the will of its hubristic and anti-democratic billionaire backers, most prominently Bill Gates and the hedge fund gang that calls itself Democrats for Education Reform, have managed to land yet another editorial in a major New York paper, this time the New York Daily News.

There is, of course, no sane reason that as microscopic an organization as is E4E would be treated with such respect and prominence other than the fact that the same people who have ponied up over two million dollars for the two year old propaganda group paid other people to make   some serious phone calls to the honchos at the DN and the heroes of the “Liberal Media” found it advantageous to do their bidding. Hence, another editorial for E4E.

It is more than ironic that these people have the gall to speak of merit.

The editorial, like Educators 4 Excellence itself, is pathetic.   And, like all the times I have actually encountered this deceptive little group, I was almost initially disarmed by pathos.  The last time was a few weeks back at a tiny and tinny E4E rally for the same cause in which head shill Evan Stone, with characteristic humility, bellowed idiotically into a microphone to his 30 or so followers, “ I am not satisfactory!  I am excellent!” with all the energy and passion of a depressed salamander.

For a moment I could not help but pity the poor fool who was trying so hard to please his ultra-wealthy employers who have removed him from the hard work of teaching so as to allow him to play dummy to their ventriloquist.     What else can one feel but pathos?

For a moment, anyway.

In the editorial, pathetically tilted  “Please help me to be a better teacher ” you have the same message, slightly augmented.   You might call this an Educators 4 Excellence version of   Paradise Lost desiring deeply to enter Paradise Regained.

Here you have the song of a teacher who claims that she relocated from the middle of the country “after working as a public school teacher for five years in Colorado” and  “moved to New York City because of its reputation for being on the cutting edge of innovation in all things,” assuming, of course, in education.

Here “cutting edge” needs be understood as the educational version of a century old scientific management, also called Taylorism: “a theory of management that analyzed and synthesized workflows. Its main objective was improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes and to management. Its development began with Frederick Winslow Taylor in the 1880s and 1890s within the manufacturing industries.”

Taylorism was beloved by Henry Ford and any number of industrialists.

“Value added metrics” or VAM is a great grand child of Taylorism and as such is a half-baked completely unreliable and fraudulent method of evaluation that links students test scores to their teachers. It can torpedo teaching careers with no justification whatsoever.     Only a person utterly without an ethical center would inflict this crazy system on any teachers.  E4E, like their corporate overlords, are gaga over VAM.  At   least those who know of VAM’s existence, which, at least in terms of their rally, were very, very few.

Alas, hoping to encounter Paradise in “cutting edge” New York, the angst-ridden   author encounters only Paradise Lost and found herself longing for the system she had fled in which Denver  “successfully implemented a teacher evaluation and compensation system known as ProComp when I was working there. Under ProComp, teachers are evaluated by multiple measures, including student growth data, the amount of professional development they participate in and thoughtful, meaningful classroom observations.”

Ah, for the happy days of ProComp!  Alas, one wonders why she fled such an educational Eden in the first place.

Her next lines read as if they were penned by a committee.

“The city and the teachers union have until Jan. 17 to negotiate such a system or risk losing $300 million in state education aid. And if they don’t, we’ll lose a lot more than money, missing an important opportunity to create a world-class teaching force that can provide a great education to every child in the city no matter where they live or which classroom they end up in each year.”

The writer either does not know or  does not care that not a thin dime of the $300 million is  destined for the classroom.  The writer either does not know or does not care that the evaluation system is based partly on the presumption of good faith on the part of administrators – a good faith precious few NYC teachers have seen evidence of since the advent of the Eternal Mayor and his eternal war upon them — and partly on demonstrably bad science called Value Added Metrics.  In short, to implement such an evaluation system as it stands would be to treat the career of New York City teachers as if with a roll of the dice, a scenario that would not seem to faze Mr. Bloomberg in the least.  Or E4E.  Or Bill Gates. Or Democrats for Education Reform.  Or Andy Cuomo.  Or Barack Obama.

Sorry, we need to take your license.  You can never work as a teacher again.  But it’s for the kids, you understand.

Another part of her letter, considering that it entirely concerned with the appalling shortcomings of appalling administrators,  is nothing short of an unintended exposure and indictment of the Bloomberg administration.

“My experience in New York has been quite different. In my first job here, working with students who were considered some have the most disabled in the city, I received tenure without so much as ever having the principal observe me teach. The feedback I received was limited to a checklist that included things like the quality of my bulletin boards.

Never did I get useful feedback on my classroom management; never did I get quality advice on how to better differentiate my instruction to reach more students, and never did I receive insights from coaches or mentors on what had or hadn’t worked for them.”

The author seems to be clueless as to who is responsible for the above but assumes, somehow, the new evaluation plan will transform these incompetents into stellar performers – to use a word cherished by Ed reformers.

Finally there is yet another pathetic attempt to frame the argument in hipster language.

“There is simply no reason New York cannot do the same for its teachers. There is simply no reason that a city that has been at the leading edge on so many other things can’t lead on this.”

But all of this nonsense begs the question of why does this infinitesimal organization which represents less than 1% of teachers and would vanish back in to the hell from which it came the moment its sugar daddies ceased bankrolling it, repeatedly land editorials in widely circulated newspapers, seats on educational forums and interviews with Fox News and the Wall Street Journal ?

Of course, in a nation in which the 1% are waging eternal war against all those who are not them, it is apposite that it is so.  It is also reprehensible.

I said earlier that my dealing with E4E have sometimes led me to be almost disarmed by their pathos.  For a time,  for a time.

But then I think about what they doing, their level of their conscious deceit and cynicism masquerading as innocence and honesty. I think about the cold blooded hubris it takes to try and undermine the last standing union of size in the nation because it will land you a soft cozy job on billionaire welfare.  But mostly I think about the almost animal like lack of empathy embedded in the reckless, unproven, untested policies they promote and the ruthless, predator nature for those they work for.  I think about all the fine teachers I know who have been thoroughly demoralized by the likes of the polices E4E and its masters so insidiously work to implement. I think of dear friends and fine beloved teachers with families whose careers have been destroyed by the same a-human impulse that drives all of this corporate reformer psychosis.

And then I feel something very different than pathos.

I moved here from Denver, where evaluations are more rigorous

Comments (12)

BY SUSAN KEYOCK / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 2, 2013, 2:55 AM

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ADAMS IV

Mayor Bloomberg (l.) and UFT head Michael Mulgrew (r.) have frequently clashed over education reform.

After working as a public school teacher for five years in Colorado, I moved to New York City because of its reputation for being on the cutting edge of innovation in all things. Little did I know that when it came to teacher preparation and support, I’d be taking a big step backward.

Today, five years after my move, our schools still haven’t caught up to forward-looking states like Colorado — and parents and students are left to wonder why there is often such a disparity in teacher quality from classroom to classroom.

A robust teacher evaluation system would begin to help change that by providing educators with meaningful, data-driven feedback about their performance — hopefully leading to training and mentoring opportunities to help us improve in the areas where we struggle.

The city and the teachers union have until Jan. 17 to negotiate such a system or risk losing $300 million in state education aid. And if they don’t, we’ll lose a lot more than money, missing an important opportunity to create a world-class teaching force that can provide a great education to every child in the city no matter where they live or which classroom they end up in each year.

Better evaluation is hardly a novel concept. In Denver, which is a fraction of the size of New York, we successfully implemented a teacher evaluation and compensation system known as ProComp when I was working there. Under ProComp, teachers are evaluated by multiple measures, including student growth data, the amount of professional development they participate in and thoughtful, meaningful classroom observations.

In turn, highly effective teachers in Denver can receive financial bonuses and leadership opportunities — things that signal to educators that performance matters. Studies have shown a positive impact on student achievement, and Denver is now evolving the system to meet new needs and challenges.

My experience in New York has been quite different. In my first job here, working with students who were considered some of the most disabled in the city, I received tenure without so much as ever having the principal observe me teach. The feedback I received was limited to a checklist that included things like the quality of my bulletin boards.

Never did I get useful feedback on my classroom management; never did I get quality advice on how to better differentiate my instruction to reach more students, and never did I receive insights from coaches or mentors on what had or hadn’t worked for them.

I’m currently working at a school where my principal recognizes the value of observing her teachers and working with them to improve their practice. I’ve been fortunate to receive her feedback promptly — and I incorporate her assessments into my planning to enhance the education I am providing. It makes coming to work that much more rewarding, but receiving that support shouldn’t depend on the principal. Rather, it should be offered to every teacher in every school.

Across the country — from Los Angeles to Newark to Washington — many districts have successfully negotiated new evaluation measures.

There is simply no reason New York cannot do the same for its teachers. There is simply no reason that a city that has been at the leading edge on so many other things can’t lead on this.

City officials and the city’s teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers, need to get beyond their eternal grudge match and start thinking about how they can help teachers enhance their profession — which, in turn, can only increase student performance. They can start by providing us with a stronger means to evaluate our work.

Keyock is a special-education teacher at Metropolitan High School in the Bronx and a member of Educators 4 Excellence.

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