The War On Teachers

[JackRiddler]

It's becoming the spear-point for class war. Teachers are the best-organized workers, with the largest unions, well educated and generally liberal in the best sense. Also, at this point, much better paid than those in the "service sector," with resentment actively encouraged among the latter about all the supposed perks teachers undeservedly enjoy. Children are kept on a treadmill of testing and in a cage of constant surveillance and zero-tolerance discipline, conditioning them to obedience and acceptance of their lot in the new order of labor, devaluing all learning and personal development that doesn't translate directly into what the US private sector defines as economic utility. History, humanities, arts, physical disciplines might help make for autonomous, strong individuals, so these are out and early technical training is in, even if it's often low-grade without real prospects for the majority. Authoritarians of all stripes love that. And there's the business profit side of privatizing schools, selling computers instead of paying salaries, "learning software" packages, hiring consultants instead of teachers, etc. I don't think this can be underestimated. Next, it's a new field for the think tanks and foundations and punditry to produce studies and plans and make themselves important and solicit their own funding, long as they serve the desired anti-teacher, privatizing agenda. And finally, a further abandonment of the poor and middle class, helping to shrink the biggest non-war item in the public sector as a whole. It's a powerful combination of toxic interests.

Bloomberg gets his way - Steiner gave him the out, after all - and Cathie Black is in.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/nyreg ... ck.html?hp
Fair use archive, link given, strictly non-commercial, for criticism, education and debate.

November 26, 2010
Deal for Academic Deputy Paves Way for Schools Chief
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg reached a deal Friday to save the tottering candidacy of Cathleen P. Black to be the next chancellor of New York City schools, agreeing to appoint a career educator who started as a classroom teacher to serve as her second in command.

As a result, the state education commissioner, David M. Steiner, has agreed to grant Ms. Black, a media executive, the exemption from the normal credentials required by state law for the position, according to a person with direct knowledge of the negotiations.

The move was a significant concession by Mr. Bloomberg, who has often resisted efforts from outside City Hall to meddle in his affairs.

The mayor’s hand was forced on Tuesday when Dr. Steiner questioned her readiness for the position. Ms. Black, the chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, has spent a lifetime in the media business, does not hold any advanced degrees and has had little exposure to public schools.

The controversy over Ms. Black, 66, had become a liability for Mr. Bloomberg, and a poll released on Tuesday showed that a majority of New Yorkers did not think Ms. Black was qualified to serve as chancellor.

After several days of talks with state officials, Mr. Bloomberg agreed to create the position of chief academic officer to oversee curriculum and testing at the city’s Department of Education. Under the deal, that job would go to Shael Polakow-Suransky, a former principal of a Bronx high school who is a top official at the city’s Department of Education.

But exactly how much authority Mr. Polakow-Suransky, 38, will wield is unclear. A job description prepared by the city said he would have “the broadest scope for the exercise of independent initiative and judgment” and listed 25 duties, including many that would normally fall to the head of a school system. But Mr. Polakow-Suransky will still report to Ms. Black, who is accustomed to setting the agenda in the rough-and-tumble world of corporate culture.

Ms. Black and Mr. Polakow-Suransky have met several times over the past week to discuss how they will divide authority.

Ms. Black is scheduled to take office Jan. 1 after the resignation of the current chancellor, Joel I. Klein. She will oversee the nation’s largest school system, with 1.1 million children, 135,000 employees and 1,600 schools.

Natalie Ravitz, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, said on Friday, “As an experienced C.E.O., Ms. Black recognized the need to have a senior deputy with specific expertise in academic matters.”

Dr. Steiner, who declined to comment on Friday, is expected to announce his approval of a waiver on Monday. On Friday, Mr. Bloomberg submitted a letter making the case for Ms. Black and her new deputy. A mayoral spokesman declined to comment but did not dispute the details of the agreement. Mr. Polakow-Suransky did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Merryl H. Tisch, the chancellor of the State Board of Regents, who played a central role in brokering the deal, also declined to comment. Referring to the position of chief academic officer earlier in the week, she said, “The issue for us is, ‘Can we create credibility around this position?’ ”

The deal reached Friday capped a week of frantic talks between the city and the state. Mr. Bloomberg, who was given control of city schools in 2002, has said that transforming the school system will define his legacy as mayor.

Mr. Bloomberg viewed Dr. Steiner’s challenge as a critical test of his authority over the school system. The mayor told people involved in the negotiations that a rejection of Ms. Black would undermine the model of mayoral control and set a dangerous precedent.

At one point while the negotiations were under way, Mr. Bloomberg said publicly that the law requiring the schools chancellor to hold education credentials was obsolete and should be abolished.

Mr. Bloomberg had initially believed he could build enough public pressure to force Dr. Steiner to approve Ms. Black, according to the person with knowledge of the negotiations. Business executives, former mayors and celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg flooded Dr. Steiner’s offices with messages in support of Ms. Black.

But Dr. Steiner remained skeptical, and he said on Tuesday he would consider her appointment only if Mr. Bloomberg installed an educator at her side.

The talks with the mayor about that possibility grew more serious after an eight-member panel advising Dr. Steiner on Ms. Black’s qualifications on Tuesday mustered only two votes unconditionally in support of her, unexpectedly throwing the selection process into disarray.

Mr. Bloomberg typically loathes intrusions into his management of the city. But throughout the negotiations for the waiver, he showed an unusual willingness to compromise to preserve Ms. Black’s candidacy. To the surprise of his own associates, he held his tongue in public, refusing to challenge Dr. Steiner and the panel that rebuked his choice for chancellor.

The reaction to the deal, and to Mr. Polakow-Suransky’s appointment, was mixed on Friday.

State Assemblyman Hakeem S. Jeffries, a Democrat who has helped coordinate the opposition to Ms. Black, said he would pursue a legal challenge, arguing that the appointment of a chief academic officer does not compensate for Ms. Black’s lack of educational experience.

Sol Stern, an education researcher at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group, said he thought that the deal was a victory for Mr. Bloomberg, and that Mr. Polakow-Suransky’s appointment would not be a serious check to Ms. Black’s authority. “He will be treated by the mayor and Black as a gofer,” Mr. Stern, a frequent critic of the mayor, wrote in an e-mail. “This is a farce.”

Underscoring the high-stakes nature of Ms. Black’s fate, even the federal secretary of education, Arne Duncan, spoke to both Dr. Steiner and Mr. Bloomberg during the negotiations.

On Friday, Mr. Duncan praised the outcome. “Can anyone do this alone? Of course not,” he said. “This is a monumentally tough, complex organization.”


Michael Barbaro contributed reporting.

[JackRiddler]

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Part of the attack aims to deny teachers raises for acquiring masters' degrees in education. (Generally, they get raises for acquiring any additional degree.) We can debate the merits and problems of the education discipline, but the thrust I see operating here is to strew contempt and to disqualify any knowledge, any expertise that isn't directly related to business and the illusion of measurable, quantifiable end results. I think this is a wedge in the attack on higher education and tenure at universities, too.

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[wordspeak2]

Wait, where is that going on, to deny teachers raises for masters' degrees? That's being proposed?

Damn, so of course Bloomberg gets his way with this woman. They're both too powerful to deny. And what are her politics exactly? Has that been laid out? She doesn't promise to be another Michelle Rhee, does she? Who's no longer in the position, btw, correct?

Well, you've nailed the issue in totality, Jack. Indeed, this is a major front of the class war. That's a huge aspect of it. Gotta organize all my progressive and semi-progressive teacher friends from throughout life to fight back. This battle's not going away.

[JackRiddler]

Wait, where is that going on, to deny teachers raises for masters' degrees? That's being proposed?

See Gates further upthread:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30319#p367757

I can't recall who but he's not the first I've heard with the idea, and his pronouncements have long been setting agendas as school districts scramble for a piece of the hundreds of billions thrown around by his foundation. He who has the gold, makes the rules. Capital is the state.

As for Michelle Rhee, last I heard her name was in consideration to run the Florida education department under the new tea party governor.

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[JackRiddler]

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I forget who posted this TED video here before but it's very on point and well worth your 20 minutes.

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55w ... r_embedded

[JackRiddler]

Introducing the indomitable Hannah Bell:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 89x9662861

Hannah Bell (1000+ posts) Wed Dec-01-10 04:14 AM

High school principal throws out the books in school library & turns it into a coffee shop


Just adding a coffee shop to a neighborhood library so people can feel like they're in Starbucks and ultra hip was apparently too passe a trend for Principal James McSwain of Lamar High School.

Finishing up a week ago, McSwain has thrown out nearly all the books and filled the space they were unnecessarily taking up with couches and coffee and food and told his students that they can access the exciting world of reading through e-books! And if they don't have a laptop of their own and Internet access to do so, they can use one of the laptop computers in the library coffeeshop!

And he's bought 35 new laptops! For a Houston ISD flagship school with more than 3,000 students in it...

"I was appalled. I was stunned by the whole thing I can't imagine what he was thinking. I'm assured this is old school thinking and we should just appreciate that they're not old school thinkers."
The change, she said, was "designed to impress the new superintendent with the forward thinking nature of that particular principal at that particular school. "

She said she was told one teacher who had kids after school working on their volunteer hours was asked to send them to the library to "get rid of the books." She said he asked what they meant and "They said they didn't care; just get them out of here."

Hair Balls tried to reach McSwain; he would only speak to us through HISD Sarah Greer Osborne. This is what she told us:

"The school library has been updated. It's got a lot of new electronic equipment. Most of it's e-books and new laptops and they're putting their money, instead of into paper, they're putting it into electronic resources.

Yes, there are still books there but most of it is now e-books where the kids can check out the book and as long as they have Internet access they can read the book. The library is now open from 6:30 to 6:30, a.m. to p.m....The kids are eating it up that's what they want. They want the e-books."

The veteran teacher wasn't as excited. "It's just stupid. It just boggles the mind. I'm sure there's more to the story and I'm sure that they can make it sound better than I'm making it sound to you but in the end it's a terrible story. There's no way in my mind that you can gloss this story and make it seem like a good idea.

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs ... s_book.php

"There's no way to get hold of a book on the campus to read for pleasure or to use to write a paper. If you don't have access to a computer of your own then you have to compete for one of the computers that are in the coffee shop. And you have to find a way to get it done during the time the coffee shop is open."

The teacher said the whole thing breaks her heart; but she can walk away from it. At least she's not the Lamar High librarian, whose library has been "repurposed" (a favorite educator buzzword these days), presiding over a coffee shop with all those swell couches.

[JackRiddler]

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Newsweek and Bill Gates with a disgusting attack on Diane Ravitch, moving her further up in my estimation, as well as every other scapegoat available:

A Case of Senioritis
Gates tackles education’s two-headed monster.

by Jonathan Alter (/authors/jonathan-alter.html) November 28, 2010

Bill Gates is raising his arm, bent at the elbow, in the direction of the ceiling. The point he’s making is so important that he wants me and the pair of Gates Foundation staffers sitting in the hotel conference room in Louisville, Ky., to recognize the space between this thought and every lower-ranking argument. “If there’s one thing that can be done for the country, one thing,” Gates says, his normally modulated voice rising, “improving education rises so far above everything else!” He doesn’t say what the “else” is—deficit reduction? containing Iran? free trade?—but they’re way down toward the floor compared with the arm above that multibillion-dollar head. With the U.S. tumbling since 1995 from second in the world to 16th in college-graduation rates and to 24th place in math (for 15-year-olds), it was hard to argue the point. Our economic destiny is at stake.

Gates had just finished giving a speech to the Council of Chief State School Officers in which he tried to explain how administrators could hope to raise student achievement in the face of tight budgets. The Microsoft founder went through what he sees as false solutions—furloughs, sharing textbooks—before focusing on the true “cost drivers”: seniority-based pay and benefits for teachers rising faster than state revenues.

Seniority is the two-headed monster of education—it’s expensive and harmful. Like master’s degrees for teachers and smaller class sizes, seniority pay, Gates says, has “little correlation to student achievement.”

Here I have to gag. What a fucking monster. He's already made, what, a hundred billion dollars by robbing us all of our precious time through a monopoly position in crash-prone software. Can't he just buy himself an island and leave the children alone?!

After exhaustive study, the Gates Foundation and other experts have learned that the only in-school factor that fully correlates is quality teaching, which seniority hardly guarantees. It’s a moral issue. Who can defend a system where top teachers are laid off in a budget crunch for no other reason than that they’re young?

Absolutely no one can or defend such a practice. If there's a budget crunch for schools, then the systemic problem is not the education system at all, but a political economy and moral calculus that would ever allow a "budget crunch" to result in any teacher firings.

In most states, pay and promotion of teachers are connected 100 percent to seniority. This is contrary to everything the world’s second-richest man believes about business: “Is there any other part of the economy where someone says, ‘Hey, how long have you been mowing lawns? … I want to pay you more for that reason alone.’ ” Gates favors a system where pay and promotion are determined not just by improvement in student test scores (an idea savaged by teachers’ unions) but by peer surveys, student feedback (surprisingly predictive of success in the classroom), video reviews, and evaluation by superiors. In this approach, seniority could be a factor, but not the only factor.

President Obama knows that guaranteed tenure and rigid seniority systems are a problem, but he’s not yet willing to speak out against them. Even so, Gates gives Obama an A on education. The Race to the Top program, Gates says, is “more catalytic than anyone expected it to be” in spurring accountability and higher standards.

Gates hardly has all the answers: he spent $2 billion a decade ago breaking up big high schools into smaller ones and didn’t get the results he’d hoped for. Today, he’s too enamored of handheld devices for tracking student performance. They could end up as just another expensive, high-tech gimmick.

But thanks to the initial grants from Gates to help schools buy these gadgets, they will at least run on Microsoft software.

This mother fucker. Fire teachers, cut pay, expand class sizes, but buy "handheld devices."

But you’ve got to give Gates credit for devoting so much of his brain and fortune to this challenge. His biggest adversary now is Diane Ravitch, a jaundiced former Education Department official under George H.W. Bush, who changed sides in the debate and now attacks Gates-funded programs in books and articles.

Alter's quite the psychic in attaching slanderous non-sequitur adjectives. (That witch! That scuttling bitter beast!)

Ravitch, the Whittaker Chambers of school reform, gives intellectual heft to the National Education Association’s campaign to discredit even superb charter schools and trash intriguing reform ideas that may threaten its power.

When I asked Gates about Ravitch, you could see the Micro-hard hombre who once steamrolled software competitors: “Does she like the status quo? Is she sticking up for decline? Does she really like 400-page [union] contracts? Does she think all those ‘dropout factories’ are lonely? If there’s some other magic way to reduce the dropout rate, we’re all ears.”

Now she has lots more straw for her broom!

Gates understands that charters aren’t a silver bullet, and that many don’t perform. But he doesn’t have patience for critics who spend their days tearing down KIPP schools and other models that produce results.

There’s a backlash against the rich taking on school reform as a cause. Some liberals figure they must have an angle and are scapegoating teachers. But most of the wealthy people underwriting this long-delayed social movement for better performance are on the right track. Like the rest of us, they know that if we don’t fix education, we can kiss our future goodbye.

Jonathan Alter is also the author of The Promise: President Obama, Year One and The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope .

I like that "also." Implying, in addition to spending an hour on this bilious column, he's also done books! Sort of a side thing?

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[JackRiddler]

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer ... gates.html

Posted at 5:00 AM ET, 11/30/2010
Ravitch answers Gates
By Valerie Strauss

In a paean to Bill Gates, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter calls Diane Ravitch the Microsoft founder's "chief adversary."

It's the world's richest (or second richest) man vs. an education historian and New York University research professor.

Gates, through his philanthropic foundation, has invested billions of dollars in education experiments and now has a pivotal role in reform efforts. Ravitch, the author of the bestselling The Death and Life of the Great American School System, has become the most vocal opponent of the Obama administration's education policy. She says Gates is backing the wrong initiatives and harming public schools.

In the Newsweek piece, Gates poses some questions aimed at Ravitch. I asked her to answer them. Below are the questions Gates asked, in bold, and the answers, in italics, that Ravitch provided in an email.

Gates: “Does she like the status quo?"
Ravitch: "No, I certainly don't like the status quo. I don't like the attacks on teachers, I don't like the attacks on the educators who work in our schools day in and day out, I don't like the phony solutions that are now put forward that won't improve our schools at all. I am not at all content with the quality of American education in general, and I have expressed my criticisms over many years, long before Bill Gates decided to make education his project. I think American children need not only testing in basic skills, but an education that includes the arts, literature, the sciences, history, geography, civics, foreign languages, economics, and physical education.

"I don't hear any of the corporate reformers expressing concern about the way standardized testing narrows the curriculum, the way it rewards convergent thinking and punishes divergent thinking, the way it stamps out creativity and originality. I don't hear any of them worried that a generation will grow up ignorant of history and the workings of government. I don't hear any of them putting up $100 million to make sure that every child has the chance to learn to play a musical instrument. All I hear from them is a demand for higher test scores and a demand to tie teachers' evaluations to those test scores. That is not going to improve education."

Gates: "Is she sticking up for decline?"
Ravitch: "Of course not! If we follow Bill Gates' demand to judge teachers by test scores, we will see stagnation, and he will blame it on teachers. We will see stagnation because a relentless focus on test scores in reading and math will inevitably narrow the curriculum only to what is tested. This is not good education.

"Last week, he said in a speech that teachers should not be paid more for experience and graduate degrees. I wonder why a man of his vast wealth spends so much time trying to figure out how to cut teachers' pay. Does he truly believe that our nation's schools will get better if we have teachers with less education and less experience? Who does he listen to? He needs to get himself a smarter set of advisers.

"Of course, we need to make teaching a profession that attracts and retains wonderful teachers, but the current anti-teacher rhetoric emanating from him and his confreres demonizes and demoralizes even the best teachers. I have gotten letters from many teachers who tell me that they have had it, they have never felt such disrespect; and I have also met young people who tell me that the current poisonous atmosphere has persuaded them not to become teachers. Why doesn't he make speeches thanking the people who work so hard day after day, educating our nation's children, often in difficult working conditions, most of whom earn less than he pays his secretaries at Microsoft?"

Gates: "Does she really like 400-page [union] contracts?"
Ravitch: "Does Bill Gates realize that every contract is signed by two parties: management and labor? Why does management agree to 400-page contracts? I don't know how many pages should be in a union contract, but I do believe that teachers should be evaluated by competent supervisors before they receive tenure (i.e., the right to due process).

"Once they have due process rights, they have the right to a hearing when someone wants to fire them. The reason for due process rights is that teachers in the past have been fired because of their race, their religion, their sexual orientation, or because they did not make a political contribution to the right campaign, or for some other reason not related to their competence.

"Gates probably doesn't know this, but 50% of all those who enter teaching leave within the first five years. Our biggest problem is not getting rid of deadbeats, but recruiting, retaining, and supporting teachers. We have to replace 300,000 teachers (of nearly 4 million) every single year. What are his ideas about how to do this?"

Gates: "Does she think all those ‘dropout factories’ are lonely?"
Ravitch: "This may come as a surprise to Bill Gates, but the schools he refers to as "dropout factories" enroll large numbers of high-need students. Many of them don't speak or read English; many of them enter high school three and four grade levels behind. He assumes the schools created the problems the students have; but in many cases, the schools he calls "dropout factories" are filled with heroic teachers and administrators trying their best to help kids who have massive learning problems.

"Unless someone from the district or the state actually goes into the schools and does a diagnostic evaluation, it is unfair to stigmatize the schools with the largest numbers of students who are English-language learners, special-education, and far behind in their learning. That's like saying that an oncologist is not as good a doctor as a dermatologist because so many of his patients die. Mr. Gates, first establish the risk factor before throwing around the labels and closing down schools."

Gates: "If there’s some other magic way to reduce the dropout rate, we’re all ears.”
Ravitch: "Here's the sad truth: There is no magic way to reduce the dropout rate. It involves looking at the reasons students leave school, as well as the conditions in which they live. The single biggest correlate with low academic achievement (contrary to the film Waiting for Superman) is poverty. Children who grow up in poverty get less medical care. worse nutrition, less exposure to knowledge and vocabulary, and are more likely to be exposed to childhood diseases, violence, drugs, and abuse. They are more likely to have relatives who are incarcerated. They are more likely to live in economic insecurity, not knowing if there is enough money for a winter coat or food or housing. This affects their academic performance. They tend to have lower attendance and to be sick more than children whose parents are well-off.

"The United States today has a child poverty rate of over 20%, and it is rising. This is a national scandal. The film compares us to Finland, but doesn't mention that their child poverty rate is under 5%. Mr. Gates, why don't you address the root causes of low academic achievement, which is not 'bad teachers,' but poverty. It won't involve magic, but it would certainly require the best thinking that you can assemble. And if anyone can afford to do it, surely you can.

I don't mean to suggest that schools as they are now are just fine: They are not. Every school should have a rich and balanced curriculum; many don't. Every child should look forward to coming to school, for his or her favorite studies and activities, but those are the very studies and activities likely to lose out to endless test preparation. Schools need many things: Some need more resources and better conditions for teaching and learning; all need a stable, experienced staff. Teachers need opportunities for intellectual growth and colleagueship. Tests should be used diagnostically, to help students and teachers, not to allocate bonuses and punishments. Teachers, principals, administrators, parents, and local communities should collaborate to create caring communities, and that's happening in many places. I know that none of this is the "magic way" that you are looking for, Mr. Gates, but any educator will tell you that education is a slow, laborious process that requires good teachers, able leadership, willing students, a strong curriculum, and willing students. None of that happens magically."

I also asked Ravitch about her reaction to the strange comparison Alter made in calling her "the Whittaker Chambers of school reform." She wrote:
"I wondered if Alter knows much about history. Whittaker Chambers renounced Communism and embraced American patriotism. Was Alter suggesting that Bill Gates is the Alger Hiss of school reform? I thought it was a weird analogy."

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[JackRiddler]

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Rather surprising the following was published in the Smart Money magazine of the Wall Street Journal:

http://www.smartmoney.com/spending/rip- ... /?page=all

10 Things by Sarah Morgan

December 6, 2010

10 Things Charter Schools Won't Tell You

1. We're no better than public schools.

For all the hype about a few standout schools, charter schools in general aren’t producing better results than traditional public schools. A national study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford found that while 17% of charter schools produced better results than neighborhood public schools, 37% were significantly worse, and the rest were no different. (Not that public schools are perfect, as many parents know. See our earlier story, “10 Things Your School District Won’t Tell You,” for more.)

A host of other studies on charter school outcomes have come up with sometimes contradictory results. As with traditional public schools, there are great charters – and some that aren’t so great. “There’s a lot of variation within charter schools,” points out Katrina Bulkley, an associate professor of education at Montclair State University who studies issues related to school governance. “In fairness to organizations that are running high-performing schools, many of them are very frustrated with the range of quality, because they feel that it taints charter schools as a whole,” Bulkley says.

2. Our teachers aren’t certified.

According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, charter-school teachers are, on average, younger and less likely to hold state certification than teachers in traditional public schools. In a 2000 survey, 92% of public school teachers held state certification, compared to 79% of charter school teachers. A 2008 survey found that 32% of charter school teachers were under 30, compared to 17% of traditional public school teachers. Charter schools often recruit from organizations like Teach for America that provide non-traditional paths into the profession, and more-experienced teachers who already have jobs in traditional public schools may have little incentive to give up the protection of tenure.

Relying on relatively untrained, inexperienced staff may have a real impact in the classroom. “A lot of them don’t have classroom management skills,” says May Taliaferrow, a charter-school parent.

3. Plus, they keep quitting.

As many as one in four charter school teachers leave every year, according to a 2007 study by Gary Miron, a professor of education at Western Michigan University, and other researchers at the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. That’s about double the typical teacher turnover rate in traditional public schools. Charter schools typically pay teachers less than traditional public schools do, and require longer hours, Miron says. Meanwhile, charter school administrators earn more than their school-district counterparts, which can also make teachers feel underpaid, he says. The odds of a teacher leaving the profession altogether are 130% higher at charter schools than traditional public schools, according to a 2010 study by the National Center on School Choice at Vanderbilt University. That study also found that much of this teacher attrition was related to dissatisfaction with working conditions.

Higher turnover is inevitable with a younger staff – and the ability to get rid of ineffective teachers, says Peter Murphy, a spokesman for the New York Charter Schools Association. “There needs to be more turnover in district schools,” Murphy says. “Instead, what you have is this rigid tenure system where teachers are not held accountable, and children suffer.”

4. Students with disabilities need not apply.

Six-year-old Makala was throwing regular tantrums in school, so her mother, Latrina Miley, took her for a psychiatric evaluation, eventually ending up with a district-mandated plan that stated the girl should be taught in a smaller class where half the students have special needs. The charter school’s response, Miley says, was to tell her she could either change her daughter’s educational plan, or change schools. She moved Makala to a nearby public school – where, she says, teachers have been more effective at managing her daughter’s behavior issues. The school says it can’t talk about specific cases.

Critics say charter schools commonly “counsel out” children with disabilities. While a few charter schools are specifically designed to serve students with special needs, the rest tend to have lower proportions of students with special needs than nearby public schools, according to a review of multiple studies conducted by the University of Colorado’s Education and the Public Interest Center. Charter schools also appear to end up with students whose disabilities are less expensive to manage than those of public school students. A Boston study, conducted by the Massachusetts Teachers Association, found that 91% of students with disabilities in the city’s charter schools were able to be fully included in standard classrooms, compared to only 33% of students with disabilities in the traditional public schools.

5. Separation of church and state? We found a loophole.

Charter schools are public schools, supported by public tax dollars. But among the thousands of charters nationwide are schools run by Christian organizations as well as Hebrew and Arabic language academies that blur the line between church and state. “What would not be tolerated in a regular public school seems to be tolerated when it’s a charter school,” says Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University and the author of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” Even if these schools aren’t explicitly teaching religion, “it’s potentially segregation by religious preference,” Bulkley says.

6. We don’t need to tell you where your tax dollars are going.

An investigation by Philadelphia’s City Controller earlier this year uncovered widespread financial mismanagement among the city’s charter schools, including undisclosed “related party” transactions where friends and family of school management were paid for various services, people listed as working full time at more than one school, individuals writing checks to themselves, and even a $30,000 bill from a beach resort charged to a school.

Financial scandals have come to light in schools around the country, but what’s more troubling, says advocate Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters in New York City, is that charter schools have opposed state audits of their finances. The New York Charter School Association won a lawsuit against the state comptroller last year, with the court ruling that the legislature had violated the state constitution when it directed the comptroller to audit charter schools. Charter schools in the state are already overseen and audited by at least two other agencies, Murphy says. “We have never objected to being audited, being overseen, and being held accountable. In fact, this organization has come out in favor of closing low-performing charter schools,” he says.

7. We’ll do anything to recruit more kids…

Walking around New York City, it’s impossible to miss the ads on buses and subways for the Harlem Success academies, Haimson says. The school is legally required to reach out to at-risk students, and it has been opening new schools over the past couple of years. However, some schools elsewhere have gone beyond marketing. A charter school in Colorado gave out gift cards to families that recruited new students, and another school in Louisiana gave out cash.

8. …but we’ll push them out if they don’t perform.

The Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools have been criticized for high rates of student attrition, in part because it’s the struggling students who are more likely to leave schools mid-year – so if more students leave charters, that churn could boost a school’s scores. A KIPP study released in June found students leaving at rates comparable to the rate at which students leave traditional public schools – but, according to Miron, that study ignored the fact that KIPP schools don’t then fill empty slots with other weak, transient students the way traditional public schools do. “Traditional public schools have to take everybody,” Miron explains. “Charter schools can determine the number they want to take and when they want to take them, and then they can close the door.”

Miron found there was a 19% drop in enrollment in KIPP schools from grades 6 to 7, and a 24% drop from grades 7 to 8. Some charter schools lose 50% of a cohort each year, Miron says. And in some cases, students can be explicitly pushed out of a charter school for failing to meet the school’s academic or behavioral standards – an option that’s not available to a traditional public school.

9. Success can be bought.

Some of the most successful charter schools are also some of the wealthiest. Harlem Children’s Zone, for example, had over $193 million in net assets at the end of the 2008-2009 school year, according to its most recent IRS filing. The organization’s charter schools spend $12,443 per student in public money and an additional $3,482 that comes from private fundraising. That additional funding helps pay for 30% more time in class, according to Marty Lipp, spokesman for the organization.

It’s great to see schools that have the resources to spend lavishly to help children succeed, Bulkley says, but it’s difficult to see how those schools can then be models for traditional public schools largely constrained by traditional public budgets. “All schools should get what they need,” Lipp says, but adds, “You give two people $10 and they spend it different ways, so it’s not simply about money.”

10. Even great teachers can only do so much.

Much of the public debate over charter schools focuses on teacher performance and the ability to fire ineffective teachers – something that’s more difficult at a traditional public school where teachers are typically union members. While it’s true that teachers represent the most important in-school factor affecting student performance, out-of-school factors matter more, Ravitch says. “The single biggest predictor of student performance is family income,” she says. “I certainly wish it were not so, but it is.” Children from higher-income families get a huge head start thanks to better nutrition, a larger vocabulary spoken at home and other factors, she says. The narrative that blames teachers for problems that are rooted in poverty “is demoralizing teachers by the thousands,” Ravitch says. “And you don’t improve education by demoralizing the people who have to do the work every day.”

[Elvis]

Gates: Increase Class Size, Cut Teacher Salaries

Heh. Gates went to Lakeside, a schmancy private school in Seattle.

Working in small, collaborative classes, our teachers help students learn how to think, write, and speak thoughtfully..."

STUDENT/TEACHER RATIO: 9 to 1

AVERAGE CLASS SIZE: 16

http://www.lakesideschool.org/theheadsdesk


(This is not to denigrate Lakeside, most kids should be so lucky to attend a school like it. I know some of its alumni and I went to a related school myself. It's just so easy for Gates to call for bigger classes for everyone else.)

[JackRiddler]

Sort of a Sims animation, a satire in which an administrator tells a teacher she will be under video surveillance in the classroom for assessment purposes to determine best practices, including neo-Tayloristic breakdowns of units of communication. The humor's dry, but it's on point and, in fact, not a satire. This is one of the ideas Gates has in mind. The corporate jargon is accurate and in common use, and instructive for those who haven't heard this language before.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpmQZ5MXs8c

[KudZu LoTek]

My school reform proposal: Adopt Linux as the only operating system for school computer rooms and administrative software.

Yeah, but only commie pinkos use Linux. It's downright un-American.

I don't remember the specific details, but a few months back I came across an article about some kid that came close to getting kicked out of high school because he was handing out copies of freeware (I think it was a Linux disto) to his friends. The teacher that caught him "pirating" insisted that there was no such thing as free software and took it fairly high up the chain of command. Finally someone tech literate straightened out the teacher, but if they hadn't the kid would have been up the creek and probably expelled. Shows how deep the conditioning goes. Might have something to do with generous kickbacks subsidies from corporate sponsors.

And just to make sure the cake is well frosted, I'm pretty sure Mr. Bill "Expert in Education" Gates is a college dropout:

Bill Gates, billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, one of the richest men in the world, philanthropist. Dropped out of Harvard after his second year. As he noted, “I realized the error of my ways and decided I could make do with a high school diploma.”

[beeline]

Link

Teacher salaries issue sharpens across region
By Kathy Boccella

Inquirer Staff Writer

When Neshaminy High School biology teacher Louise Boyd looks at her paycheck – with yearly pay of $97,652 and fully provided health insurance - she sees the fruits of a long campaign to pay educators what they believe they're worth.

"We had to fight, claw, scratch, and beg," said Boyd, president of the Neshaminy Federation of Teachers, "and now we do make a professional salary."

But when Levittown parent Susan Porreca looks at Neshaminy teachers' pay and perks, she sees red. A 47-year-old office manager who was unemployed or underemployed for most of 2009 while her welder husband spent three months out of work, Porreca has joined a local taxpayers' group because she's furious at the union's tough tactics in fighting to keep those gains.

"I've taken a lot of time, read their collective-bargaining agreement - none of it has to do with the education of our kids," said Porreca, whose daughter is a sophomore at Neshaminy High. "It's a gimme, gimme, gimme - all the things they have and things they want to keep. And they don't want to contribute to health care when they're making six-figure salaries. That is unbelievable to me."

In many ways, the sprawling Lower Bucks County district, where a protracted contract dispute has played out in the streets and over the airwaves for more than two years, is the tempest-tossed center of a perfect storm sweeping the region, starting with a war of words in New Jersey and spreading to more than a dozen suburban Pennsylvania districts.

The conflict pits teachers eager to hold on to hard-won gains in pay and benefits against a growing number of taxpayers beaten down by the long economic slowdown who question why so many classroom instructors earn more than $80,000, and in some cases more than $100,000, a year.

Much of the controversy over teachers' unions has focused on New Jersey and the increasingly bitter conflict over pay and proposed givebacks between pull-no-punches Gov. Christie and the New Jersey Education Association.

But there are 13 districts in the suburbs north and west of Philadelphia, and 19 in south Jersey, with unresolved union contracts. Increasingly, the new variation of class warfare is playing out in places like Neshaminy or neighboring Pennsbury in Bucks County, where last year three new board members were elected by promising to all but crush the teachers union.

"In a recession with declining revenue, labor costs are the single biggest expenditure," said Simon Campbell, one of those winning Pennsbury candidates, who is also lobbying for a bill in Harrisburg to ban teacher strikes. "Of course, the union doesn't care about that - they just want the money. The average teacher cares about kids but . . . doesn't have a sense of what their union leadership is doing or the implication of what they're doing."



What teachers make
In the Pennsylvania suburbs, salaries for full-time teachers, on average, range from $52,989 in the Oxford Area School District to $89,513 in Council Rock - a significant improvement from the 1980s, when politicians of all stripes saw an urgent need to lure top students into teaching as a way to keep America competitive.

South Jersey teachers' salaries go from an average of $51,966 in the Swedesboro-Woolwich district to $74,566 in Merchantville.

In 2006, future President Barack Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope, "We are going to have to take the teaching profession seriously. This means paying teachers what they are worth. There is no reason why an experienced, highly qualified teacher shouldn't earn $100,000."

Nearly 7 percent of public school teachers in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties earn more than $100,000, and nearly 36 percent make more than $80,000.

That contrasts with Philadelphia, where just two teachers make more than $100,000, and 10 percent earn above $80,000.

In South Jersey, where teacher salaries are generally lower, fewer than 1 percent make more than $100,000 - and two-thirds of them are in the Lenape Regional School District. Fifteen percent in Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester Counties earn more than $80,000, according to state data.

"If we're going to attract the best and the brightest to the profession, that's what they're going to get paid," said Jim Testerman, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state's largest teachers union. "We're going to have to pay them what similar professions with similar education are paid."

Testerman noted that thousands of teachers in the state earn less than $50,000 annually, especially those starting out in their careers.

The Economic Policy Institute in Washington issued a 2008 report, arguing not only that teacher pay trailed comparable jobs by 15 percent, but that the gap had widened in recent years.

Richard Ingersoll, a professor of education and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania who studies teacher-related issues, argues that U.S. teachers are still paid less than their counterparts in many nations.

"They have double the quit rate that [college] professors have," he noted. "A lot of this is because maybe you can get a better-paying job elsewhere."

At the same time, Ingersoll said, the current "push-back is not entirely irrational or vindictive. People are hurting."



Taxpayers vs. teachers
In Neshaminy, the battle lines are drawn most sharply. The district ranks fourth among those in Pennsylvania for the percentage of teachers earning more than $80,000 a year - 55 percent. Their average salary of $77,165 is 15th highest in the state - greater than the typical family income in many communities in the district, which includes both the working-class, flag-draped Cape Cods of Levittown and newer upscale subdivisions.

The pay figures don't take into account the teachers' health coverage or other fringe benefits; one controversial provision in Neshaminy is that after 10 years, teachers are eligible for fully paid family health coverage until age 65.

Add to that the annual 2 to 3 percent raises for experience, a feature of nearly all teacher contracts that boosts end-of-career salaries and those enviable pensions.

"You almost have class warfare here," said Ritchie Webb, president of the Neshaminy school board, "where teachers are saying, 'We're highly educated and we deserve more than you' - that doesn't fly." Webb said residents were beginning to question whether teachers should earn more than people like his own son, a police officer.

"You can't say a teacher's worth all this money while the citizenry paying it is losing their homes."

Census data released this week show household income in parts of the Neshaminy district dropped during the decade by as much as 19 percent.

Neshaminy teachers have been working without a contract since June 2008. Their union seeks retroactive annual raises of 3 to 4 percent and continuation of fully paid health plans. The district has offered a 1 percent annual raise and asked teachers to pay 15 to 17 percent of health costs.

Talks this fall slowed to a trickle as teachers staged a "work-to-contract" job action, in which they avoided tasks such as providing after-school homework help or planning Halloween parties. Their union is running radio ads seeking support.

As the impasse has dragged on, more parents and other taxpayers have turned to activism. Gail Thibodeau is one of two Neshaminy mothers who started an online petition to support the district's hard-line stance, stating: "Fortunately, we are employed but we are definitely opposed to providing free health care to our teachers, not in these economic times."

Matt Pileggi, a 34-year-old father of four in Levittown, said he started the GetRealNeshaminy.com taxpayers' website in the spring after the district proposed cuts in school programs to balance the budget. He would rather see the district reduce payroll. "This is about more than we think everybody is worth," said Pileggi, who has seen his own income as a Web developer drop and his insurance costs rise.

The acrimony comes even as Neshaminy approved a budget in June with no tax increase, in part the result of a no-raises pact with a school support staff union.

The average school-tax bill in Neshaminy is about in the middle for Bucks County - roughly $4,200. Raising school taxes is difficult under the 2006 state law known as Act I, which limits rate hikes, creating a revenue squeeze in some districts - especially with home values shrinking.

Even some of the most affluent suburbs have increasing discord. Radnor teachers have been working without a contract since September, a month before they overwhelmingly voted down a contract with annual raises that would stretch out the number of years teachers must work to reach the top of their salary scale. Meanwhile, the township police union has agreed to a salary freeze.

Teachers initially decided not to hold informal coffee sessions with parents as they have done before. "We were conscious of the perception - who wants to hear from someone wanting more money?" said Alan Metzger, a social studies teacher and spokesman for the union. "There hasn't been a lot of love thrown our way."



N.J. governor talks tough
Christie has played a large role in the escalating national debate over teachers' pay and the political clout of their unions.

It's not just what he's asked for - that teachers agree to freeze their pay and contribute 1.5 percent of their salaries toward health coverage - but the bombastic way he's done so.

In one popular YouTube video, Christie barks at a teacher complaining of low pay: "Well, then, you don't have to do it."

Also feeding the controversy this fall was the popular documentary film Waiting for Superman. It also cast teachers unions in a harsh light, a depiction many educators have bitterly contested.

Despite the rancor, some districts have found common ground. Two years ago in the cash-strapped Quakertown Community School District, the teachers union and district officials agreed on $700,000 in givebacks that minimized layoffs and saved popular programs.

"We said we really have to do something," said Chris Roth, the union president, after weighing possible cuts in transportation and sports. "The money just didn't come in - so you can't pay it out."

In other districts without contracts, union officials say teachers are bearing the brunt of the criticism.

"The only place where the community can control the purse strings at the local level is with teachers," said Jackie Anderson, teachers union president in Hatboro-Horsham, where there's been an impasse over pay and health insurance since June 2009. "There's very little you can do about state spending, very little you can do about federal spending."

Angry taxpayers like Neshaminy's Porreca, who eliminated a home phone and other extras after she and her husband took pay cuts this year, seized that opportunity. "I don't begrudge people with an advanced degree earning more money," she said. "They went to school, took time, got the education. . . . But they already have the Rolls-Royce of health-care plans, and they contribute nothing toward the cost of that."

Boyd, the union leader in Neshaminy, said teachers merely wanted to maintain their standard of living, and she rejected the notion of giving back to help the community. "We're not doing that," she said. "I don't want to make less. I don't want to ask you to make less this year than last year."

[JackRiddler]

Our friends the banksters at the schools:

http://journals.democraticunderground.c ... idian/7308

NYC educator blog sounds off. A beautiful rant. NYC teachers and parents feel righteous anger.
Posted by madfloridian in General Discussion
Mon Feb 07th 2011, 12:31 AM

Here is the video of the NYC school chancellor, Cathie Black, putting down a group of parents who wanted to keep their schools from being closed. It's an arrogant moment on her part.

Here is a link to the video.
http://www.ny1.com/content/news_beats/p ... es--span-/

Her words are about 1 minute 40 seconds in.

Here are the words from the article:

Eventually, the crowd demanded that School Chancellor Cathie Black speak, and she did, for the first time all night.

"I cannot speak if you are shouting.... We have studied these very difficult proposals for the better part of two years. It has been an extremely difficult process," said Black.

In the video when she said that the crowd went Ohhhhhh, and she responded with the face you see in the picture and said a snide "ohhhhhh" back to them. Very childish of a CEO in charge of the schools of a big city. Petty, in fact.



The NYC Educator blog tells about this meeting. It is most descriptive.

The party's over.
http://nyceducator.com/2011/02/partys-over.html

A still from the video of Cathie Black speaking down to the crowd

The first speaker was an unforgettable Tony Avella, the NY State Senator elected with the UFT's help. Tony was the only Democrat in the state to beat a sitting Republican, and he asked why on earth a hearing over Jamaica High School's future would be in Brooklyn rather than Queens. Of course it was to keep the community out, as they're always raising nasty objections about their neighborhood being decimated---not to mention other things Cathie Black and Michael Bloomberg don't wish to be bothered with.

I've no doubt Cathie Black's snappy remarks about birth control or Nazis murdering children go over very well at ritzy cocktail parties. Doubtless she's shocked that public school parents, the ones who don't get invited to fetes in Park Avenue penthouses, don't seem to find them that funny. And the juvenile "Ooooohhhh" with which she greeted their concerns about the future of their children the other night did not go over that well either.

I walked out, along with most of the crowd, reluctant to watch the Mayor Bloomberg's odious and utterly undemocratic PEP do their rubber stamp thing. What on earth was NYC thinking when it determined the best thing for the future of its children was to turn it over to the richest man in New York City, so that he could do whatever the hell he felt like with them?

And the anger there was said to be very strong.

Here's the thing--I've never seen anger like this before, even at these meetings. It's palpable. Several speakers made references to Egypt, rising up against tyranny. Mayoral dictatorship is a bad policy and must end. And absolutely everyone at the meeting last night could see that New York City has had just about enough of it.

They voted to close 10 schools. It was a done deal, and the people felt those on the panel were only pretending to listen.

The New York Daily News wrote about this meeting. The reporter seemed alarmed as well.

Bloomberg talks down to parents, teachers and students fighting for lives of their schools
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/201 ... mayor.html

"This is not democracy, letting people yell and scream."

No, that was not Hosni Mubarak talking about the demonstrators in Egypt. That was Mike Bloomberg talking about the parents, teachers and students who turned raucous at two meetings preceding a rubberstamp vote to close 22 schools.

How does Bloomberg propose NOT to let them yell and scream in an actual democracy? Eject them? Lock them up? Bloomberg went so far as to say they had embarrassed their city, their state, even their nation.

He did not seem to consider that they were roused to fury by much the same feeling that rouses the protesters in Cairo. This is the sense that whatever you say in more reasonable tones will be ignored.

The NY Daily News spoke of one of the parents who pointed out that Cathie Black was on her blackberry, not even listening.

"Not one person on the panel was actually listening," said Charm Rhoomes, who was there Thursday night as the mother of a student at Jamaica High School and the president of its PTA. "Even Cathie Black. She was on her BlackBerry."

.."Had they bothered, the minions on the stage would have had no trouble hearing Rhoomes as she spoke with a Caribbean lilt of her son, who never misses school and gets good grades and was so thrilled when he was admitted to college-level math. He attended one class only to be told at the second that it had been dropped from the curriculum because the teacher had been cut. He would still love to have college math, but he does not want to lose the school where he has worked so hard. "He still loves the school," she said.

The parents cared enough to come and wait for hours to speak and to listen. They are fighting for their public schools and being ignored and treated badly.

.

http://journals.democraticunderground.c ... idian/7308

Neat blog post: "I Teach for America too."

Also following the money trail to TFA.

Posted by madfloridian in General Discussion

Sun Feb 06th 2011, 01:51 AM

I was impressed by this blog I happened to run across. I know the feeling. When I was still teaching I was not aware of Teach for America, the organization sending teachers with 5 weeks training to take the jobs of experienced teachers.

If I had been aware, I would have felt the same way.

The blog post:

I Teach For America Too
http://www.teach4real.com/2010/07/18/i- ... erica-too/

I recently read an article about Teach for America, a program that recruits the best and brightest our nation has to offer from schools like Harvard, and put them in the most jacked up schools in our nation. Basically the article said this: After 2-3 years, almost half of these teachers had left the profession, and after 5-6 years, almost all of them were gone. With a track record like that, you have to wonder what the goal of Teach for America really is. I’m sure those stats don’t have their home office twirling their fingers and going “Whoopty-doo.”

The article basically highlighted the fact that Teach for America is harder to get into than Law School at Colombia, or Harvard, and that there were more applicants than ever this year because TFA offers a real paycheck, something harder and harder to come by straight out of college these days. But I read it in a little different light. The “best and the brightest” are using TFA as a resume builder, and laughingly, they’re doing it for the money! Isn’t that the ultimate recession irony? People are going into TEACHING for the money. Hilarious.

I remember the TFA students in my teaching credential program. They came to evening class all still wearing ties, took more notes than anyone else, and kind of put off the vibe that said, “I went to Harvard, we don’t need to associate, you’re a lifer.” Yes, a lifer as in, I’ll be teaching more than a couple years. I felt like the rest of us were freaks and perverts sitting in the back of the room while the Harvard alums were saving the children of Oakland for one year before going back to Ohio. In their defense, many of us were freaks and perverts. Getting into a teaching credential program without going through TFA isn’t what you’d call grueling. Our credential programs, like our hiring policies in public schools, basically consists of checking your wrist for a pulse followed by the question, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

It used to be hard to get certified in Florida, it took time, effort, and intelligence. I think the blogger may be right, though, in some respects. The last few years before I retired I refused to take interns. I had some of the best through the years, real quality. The last two I had I called the professor to come and see me. I said what is going on...these last two are not going to make it. Turns out both the district and the university were lowering the standards.

Now we are down to actually calling those with 5 weeks training the elite among teachers. That to me is puzzling. How did that happen. Well, silly question, I know how it happened. It was a corporate media power blitz with huge money behind it. Works every time.

The blogger had a few more very pertinent things to say.

So essentially, what TFA is doing is helping these goal-oriented students earn a paycheck comparable to an entry level job in a “real” profession for 2 years, all the while boosting their resumes, because evidently TFA is harder to get into than most Law and Medical Schools. So like some political candidates these days, they can say, “I was a teacher once.”

Of course, the question left over is: “So where does that leave education?” Where education always is: Forgotten. These guys and gals go on to Law Schools and better paying jobs, buy bigger houses, and continually distance themselves from the poor kids they once tried to help for a couple years.

So once again the question. How did our country get to the point that they revere a group that charges school districts big money to hire teachers with 5 weeks training? How did we get to the place that these are the elite among education? How did they manage to lower the standards required of educators and make it sound like a wonderfully great notion?

Money.

Follow the money
http://weblog.liberatormagazine.com/201 ... erica.html

Torre Veltri is an assistant professor at Northern Arizona University. Last summer, her mother received a letter from Wachovia Securities/Wells Fargo Advisors, dated June 12, 2009, requesting input on a customer service questionnaire. In exchange for her time, the letter promised, “We will make a donation to your choice of one of the following charities: American Red Cross, Teach for America, or the National Council on Aging.”

Torre Veltri’s mother was puzzled. “Why would donations be solicited by (Wachovia Securities/)Wells Fargo for Teach for America?” she asked her daughter. “Since when is teaching some kind of charity?”(1)

Good questions without easy answers. Wachovia Securities/Wells Fargo was undoubtedly in need of an image makeover in early June. A few days before the letter to Torre Veltri’s mother, affidavits in a federal lawsuit recounted how Wells Fargo deliberately steered working-class African Americans into high-interest subprime mortgages, with the lending referred to as “ghetto loans.”

TFA’s 2008 annual report lists Wachovia as one of five corporations donating more than $1 million at the national level. The others are Goldman Sachs, Visa, the biotechnology firm Amgen, and the golfing tournament Quail Hollow Championship. The organization is, without a doubt, a fundraising mega-star. In one day in June 2008, for instance, TFA raised $5.5 million. The event, TFA’s annual dinner, “brought so many corporate executives to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York that stretch limousines jammed Park Avenue for blocks,” the New York Times reported.

One more thing we know for sure. TFA got 50 million from Congress and recently got another 100 million from unknown groups. That federal money is in addition to money that was given to districts that converted their schools to charters and did away with the limits they had on charter schools.

TFA got another 100 million from varied foundations last week. Their donor list is staggering.
http://journals.democraticunderground.c ... idian/7280

Philanthropist Eli Broad and three other donors announced Thursday a $100-million endowment to make Teach for America a permanent teacher-training program. Broad's foundation pledged $25 million to the endowment, spurring three other matching donations from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Robertson Foundation and philanthropists Steve and Sue Mandel, officials said.

Education-reform efforts are a major thrust of the Southern California-based Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. Teach for America, which has a local regional office, currently has 270 teachers working in the Los Angeles area.

There was also legislation passed that allows TFA teachers with only 5 weeks to declare themselves as fully accredited. Some groups are trying to fight that designation.

The blogger is right, he teaches for America just as much those TFA trainees...and yes, they are trainees.

And they should not be able to be considered fully qualified. Parents need to know about this lack of certification.


Discuss (24 comments) | Recommend (+33 votes)

.

[JackRiddler]

...

Hope this isn't too inside-baseball...

http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2011/ ... ck-on.html

Friday, January 21, 2011
At the PEP: Cavanagh Challenges Black on Choices She Made for Her Children/UFT's Mendel Promises Resistance/Black Incoherent on NY1

Here are two videos plus a link to Cathie Black's almost incoherent comments on NY 1. This has got to be a joke Bloomberg is playing on educators all over the nation- his message that a buffoon running the largest school in the nation is preferable to anyone with real education experience. (See my comments to Black at the PEP the other day on this issue.)

Try this one out from Too-Chattie Cathie: "We know, study after study shows the most effective people in front of our students, are the best teachers possible.” Huh? Does anyone in the press have the guts to call her on this gibberish? One comment: "As a nation we celebrate our corporate leadership. Makes you wonder! Has she uttered an original thought yet?"

Paul Moore wrote:

One of the most shocking things I have ever witnessed! The Chancellor of the nation's largest public school system cannot form a coherent sentence. This is the best you could do Bloomberg? I realize that Ms. Black can serve as a model for some of the children of New York City but what about those who go beyond 3rd grade?

I stand at the ready Mayor Bloomberg if you are now ready to consider an upgrade in communication skills at the Chancellor's post.

Professor Irwin Corey


Steve Koss said:
Ahem.

I believe Ms. Black was referring to several formal studies published over the years by successive third grade classes at P.S. 87. Those third graders did indeed discover from their research that the most effective teachers deserved to be called the best.

Ms. Black's statements on "Inside City Hall" demonstrate that she is quickly coming up to speed as regards the central issues of public school education and that she is quickly assimilating the findings of serious educational research up to at least Grade 3 level.

At least this latest assertion by Ms. Black is one that she won't have to "refudiate."


Julie Cavanagh wrote:

Ridiculous one might say. And how does Ms. Black propose we choose the best teachers and layoff the apparently less-bestest (as she might say)? Are we to leave this decision to principals alone so that teachers who stand up for kids are fired? Are we to base the decision on test scores, for the teachers who generate them? Will we base these decisions on the level of one's degree? A survey? What will be the standard for choosing our best teachers that apparently some mysterious research shows has nothing to do with years of experience... even though any educator and most parents would tell you that experience is one of the most significant factors in student achievement. I can't believe they let her loose to speak again.



In the video below, Julie, a NYC decade long special ed teacher, holds Cathie Black's feet to the fire on choices she made for her own children: low class size and experienced teachers. UFT Officer Michael Mendel challenges Black to restore credibility to the system and declares the UFT will fight back on school closings, etc.
The UFT endorsed our Jan. 27 rally and Michael will deliver a fiery speech.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qglFL2HGBSo

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