Demoralization and Dejection On Chancellor’s Conference Day

Today as part of Chancellor’s Conference Day, my fellow teachers and I were obliged to sit through a talk on “Teacher Effectiveness” which seems to be the code word for the brand new teacher evaluation plan released by NYSED Commissioner King on Saturday and to be implemented beginning this September. It was for many of the teachers present the first real exposure to the speeding locomotive racing straight at their hearts and heads.

The presentation was as strange as the subject matter was overwhelming. We sat, the bunch of us, staring at a projector screen filled with graphs and charts while a disembodied voice of a DOE official called “Dave” bumbled his way through the graphics.
Halfway through, disembodied “Dave” was replaced by disembodied Shael Polakow- Sharansky, chief academic officer of the NYC Public Schools. Introduced by “Dave” as “Shael” as if he were an old pal of ours, Sharansky droned on and on and on about a system built upon junk science that seems to be designed to exhaust teachers for the sake of exhausting them, keep administrators and teachers at each others throats, and above all create a climate of perpetual fear. All of this, of course, is to put children first and insure that they would be collage and career ready. Sharansky informed one and all of how we were one and all to be judged, and if need be, fired if we proved to be “ineffective” as teachers.
The torrent of information seemed not merely horrible but interminable. Even though I was familiar with much of what “Dave” and “Shael” were going on about, in time the sheer volume, vulgarity and ruthlessness of the stuff shut down my brain. At the same time I knew most if not all of my colleagues were hearing this for the first time.

Every by and by, I looked around the room and studied the faces and eyes of these decent, hardworking talented teachers I’ve come to know and respect and care about over the years. In time, as the disembodied voices droned on, their eyes grew blank or fearful, their faces masks of dejection. Once in a while I’d catch a colleague’s eye from across the room and they would inevitably shake their head as if to say, “This is insane.”
At last the weird presentation on “Teacher Effectiveness” drew to a close and our principal, a decent and caring person if there ever was one, did her best to address and disperse the palpable distress in the room but to no avail. The truth, moreover, is that she too is in the crosshairs. The mood remained funereal and appropriately so. These were not people who were against “accountability, ” a word that along with “compliance” has taken on an almost sacred status in the Church of Corporate Education Reform. These were people who, like all people, wished simply to be treated fairly and with the dignity of their chosen and noble profession.
Gone.
Slowly, as if recovering from shock, people drifted out of the big room. I watched them as they walked and knew what they were thinking because we were all thinking of variations on the same theme: “How did my union agree to this?” and “Who could sustain such a work load?” and “How long will it be before I’m fired?” and “How will I feed my kids ?”
I imagine the disembodied presentation was held in hundreds of schools across the city today to very much the same effect, which is to say, complete demoralization of the teaching staff.

It is impossible to conceive of any thing good coming out of any plan this joyless, this convoluted, this degrading, this a-human. But something will come, that is for certain.

Ours is a very vicious and violent hour.

The Common Core: A Bizarre but Revealing Picture Tells a Thousand Words

A couple of days ago a bizarre if not surreal poster appeared on the entranceway wall of the school in which I work. Issued by the New York City Department of Education, touting both the challenges and wonders of the highly dubious educational cure all Common Core State Standards, the poster is aimed at New York City parents. In large print are the words: “ This Spring We’re Aiming Higher.” It makes a point of warning parents, among lots of fluff, that on account of the rising standards of the Common Core, their childrens’ all revealing test scores will go down this year.

But not to worry, parents, the poster goes on to say, in the end, because of the Common Core, your kids will be prepared “for college and a career.”

Nothing new here. This kind of drivel about the wholly untested Common Core has been repeated with cast iron certainty ad nauseum from coast to coast.
But the words are accompanied by a photograph and it is here that things get interesting. The picture of what appears to be a 10 year old boy shooting a basketball at a basket that is not merely distant but ludicrously distant. The child appears to be almost beneath the opposite basket on the other side of the court. To tell this child making this shot is “a challenge” is to not understand the meaning of the word. Or, worse it is to understand the word. In either case the child has not a prayer of making the shot. It is an act of cruelty to propose that he can. Indeed, neither would many grown men make the shot — and if they did, it would be more luck than skill. But then again, most grown men would know what the little boy in the picture would not: there is only one scenario where one would even consider taking such a shot — a moment of absolute desperation when your team is behind at the buzzer and you fling the ball and hope you get lucky. And they would know something else: they would know that only an absolute fool or an absolute sadist would have you practice such a shot.

It is, to say the least, a curiously cruel choice of a metaphor, particularly considering the audience it is aimed at. If some gym teacher had my kid taking such shots I’d question not merely his or her competence, but his or her sanity. Indeed, only someone with no knowledge whatsoever of basketball or the fragility of a child’s psyche would ever request such a moronic task. It virtually insures failure. Yet, for all its absurdity it is completely consistent with the towering arrogance and self-righteous certainty of the promoters ( and owners and profiteers ) of the Common Core and indeed, all of the “education reformers.” After all, this is the same crew that under the No Child Left Behind Act insanely demand that every child in America be proficient in English and Math or they shut down their schools and fire their teachers.

That’ll show ‘em.

All of this, of course, could be dismissed as making too much of a silly poster but for the fact that while musing over the image I could not help but recall Diane Ravitch’s prescient comments on a purloined copy of this years Common Core aligned fifth grade English Language Arts test: “ I read the passages and the questions based on them. My reaction was that the difficulty level of the passages and the questions was not age-appropriate. Based on test questions I had reviewed for seven years when I was a member of the NAEP ( National Assessment of Educational Progress ) board, it seemed to me that the test was pitched at an eighth grade level. The passages were very long, about twice as long as a typical passage on NAEP for eighth grade. The questions involved interpretation, inference, and required re-reading of the passage for each question.”

Ravitch’s conclusions on the actual (still secret, still hidden) test – that fifth graders were tested with eighth grade level work — could easily be seen as the intellectual equivalent of demanding that little kids shoot a basket from the opposite side of the court: could easily be seen, that is, as exposing either an imbecile’s idea of raising standards or as an integral part an extraordinarily cynical long term plot to set American children up to fail by the millions to create a rationale for privatizing public education.

I see the latter.

Bloomberg Thwarted As Court Allows the Release of Cathie Black Emails

Mike and Cathie: Together Again

We will soon know some inside skinny about the day-to-day antics of Cathie Black, Mike Bloomberg’s preposterous replacement for the egregious federal prosecutor turned school chancellor, Joel Klein. Black’s 100 day pseudo reign as chancellor, no matter how well choreographed was nothing short of a spectacle, especially when Black chaired Bloomberg’s grotesque Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) where she was proved incapable of answering even the most basic questions and was openly jeered like I’ve seen no other public official openly jeered. More than any other maneuver by the little mayor, appointing the clueless Black to run the largest school system in America spotlighted “Education Mayor” Bloomberg’s oceanic arrogance and ignorance concerning any thing to do with education. More, Black soon became to Bloomberg what Bernie Kerik became to Rudy Giuliani — the person who called into very, very serious question either man’s basic judgment. It was only a matter of time before Bloomberg discarded poor Cathie like a used tissue, replacing her with the equally clueless Dennis Wolcott who, unlike Cathie, has mastered the art of appearing to be thoughtful and knowledgeable without actually being so.

There is a reason Bloomberg fought like hell to keep these email under wraps. The emails should be a hoot and will doubtless serve to further discredit both Bloomberg personally as well as the Department of Education he has renamed, run and ruined for over a decade. Bloomberg and has minions have hounded and degraded NYC public school teachers for what feels like forever under the pretence of holding them accountable even for things for which they can never be responsible, like the extreme poverty so many of their students grow up in. In doing so Bloomberg has made the working life of every teacher in New York city a pointless misery and has driven many fine educators right out of the field.
Bloomberg was unquestionably responsible for the appointment of Cathie Black. Let Bloomberg be held accountable. For once, let Bloomberg be held accountable.

Looking forward to a good read. And to watching Bloomberg squirm.

See article below.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/05/bloomberg_loses_1.php

Bloomberg Loses Final Appeal to Keep Emails Secret
By Nick Pinto Thu., May 2 2013 at 3:10 PM 1 Comment
Categories: Bloomberg, Courts, Secrets

All legal avenues exahusted, Bloomberg must make public emails concerning the hiring of Cathie Black.
Mayor Bloomberg’s fight to keep emails concerning the hiring Cathie Black, whose catastrophic career as school chancellor lasted all of 100 days, has finally ended, and Bloomberg has lost.
The story stretches back to 2010, when Sergio Hernandez, then a Village Voice intern, filed a Freedom of Information Law request for emails related to Black’s hiring. The city first delayed, then refused. Hernandez appealed, and the city refused again. So he sued, represented pro bono by Schlam Stone & Dolan, and he won.

But the Bloomberg administration really didn’t want to let those emails see the light of day; it spent upwards of $25,000 in taxpayer funds fighting the case, appealing to succesively higher courts, consistently losing every time.

Finally, today, the state’s highest court declined to hear the final appeal. The city will have to abide by the initial ruling, which called the city’s arguments “particularly specious” and “wholly devoid of merit,” and required it to turn over the emails to Hernandez within 15 days.

A call to the New York City Law Department was not returned by the time this was posted — we’ll update when we receive their comment.

For his part, Hernandez, who now works as senior business editor for The Week and as a freelance contributor for ProPublica, says he welcomes the court’s denial of Bloomberg’s appeal. “This is their last stop,” he said. “It’s a relief to finally have it over with. I’ll be curious to see what’s in the emails.”
He told the Voice he intends to write about what he finds, and is talking with news outlets interested in publishing what he writes.

[npinto@villagevoice.com] [@macfathom]

Go to Runnin’ Scared for all our latest news coverage.

Resistance to High Stakes Testing Grows and Grows

If there is anything positive that can be said to have come out of the relentless billionaire backed corporate hijacking of public education, it is the building of communities of resistance.    In the end, after the initial shock wears off and the public relations campaigns are exposed as just that, almost nothing  can stronger create communities of resistance than attacks on one’s children in the guise of “reforming” their education.  This is that much the more when “reforming” their  education is little more than boiling it down to a number on a standardized test: the same number, mind you, that can be used to fire your child’s teacher and close your child’s school.

Such a community of resistance, hundreds strong, was in overwhelming evidence at a rally last night on the steps of the Tweed Court House, home of the NYC Department of Education. The crowd was united behind one overall goal:  the end of high stakes testing and all that goes with it.  As high stakes testing comprises nothing less than the central nervous system of corporate education reform, an end of the high stakes dictate would effectively paralyze their entire campaign. Corporations would lose out on a multi-billion dollar taxpayer guaranteed revenue stream which explains the insidious nature of the entire corporate education reform campaign.

Organized by Change The Stakes (www.changethestakes.org) and Time Out From Testing (info@timeoutfromtesting.org), the rally drew parents, teachers, and students a like from all corners of the city and even a stray politician or two. ( Mayoral candidate John Lui was there.)  The rally  was a joy to  partake in and a joy to behold.    There will be more.  Many more. As many as it takes.

People will do what they have to do to protect their children.

Does Steven Brill’s ‘Class Warfare’ Pass Muster? Not if You Care About the Truth

http://www.alternet.org/education/155053

In an attempt to discredit public schools and the teachers who teach in them, Brill ends up mostly discrediting himself.