The War On Teachers

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Re: The War On Teachers

Postby JackRiddler » Sat May 07, 2011 12:12 am


http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 439x957613

Highly respected NYC teacher placed in bottom 7% by Value Added method of scoring. A real shame.


This is the method that was used to publish the names of teachers in Los Angeles and call them failures or successes. They did not include evaluations and performance reviews even if they were excellent.
http://journals.democraticunderground.c ... idian/6792

From an article by Michael Winerip in the NYT in March. This is the type of farce in evaluating teachers that is going on all over the country. NYC is leading the way.

Evaluating New York Teachers, Perhaps the Numbers Do Lie
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/educa ... .html?_r=1

Yes, it seems they do lie.

Image
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Though her principal praised her work, Stacey Isaacson received a poor ranking in a statistical model used by New York City schools to evaluate teachers.


No one at the Lab Middle School for Collaborative Studies works harder than Stacey Isaacson, a seventh-grade English and social studies teacher. She is out the door of her Queens home by 6:15 a.m., takes the E train into Manhattan and is standing out front when the school doors are unlocked, at 7. Nights, she leaves her classroom at 5:30.

Her principal, Megan Adams, has given her terrific reviews during the two and a half years Ms. Isaacson has been a teacher. “I know that this year had its moments of challenge — you always handled it with grace and presence,” the principal wrote on May 4, 2009. “You are a wonderful teacher.”

On the first day of this school year, the principal wrote, “I look forward to being in your classroom and seeing all the great work you do with your students,” and signed it with a smiley face.

The Lab School has selective admissions, and Ms. Isaacson’s students have excelled. Her first year teaching, 65 of 66 scored proficient on the state language arts test, meaning they got 3’s or 4’s; only one scored below grade level with a 2. More than two dozen students from her first two years teaching have gone on to Stuyvesant High School or Bronx High School of Science, the city’s most competitive high schools.


But here it comes. Here is an example via the NYT of the infamous Value Added model of judging teachers. Just look at the graph.

Image
A statistical model the school system uses in calculating the effectiveness of teachers.
By MICHAEL WINERIP Published: March 6, 2011


Impressive looking, but it does so much harm.

This may seem disconnected from reality, but it has real ramifications. Because of her 7th percentile, Ms. Isaacson was told in February that it was virtually certain that she would not be getting tenure this year. “My principal said that given the opportunity, she would advocate for me,” Ms. Isaacson said. “But she said don’t get your hopes up, with a 7th percentile, there wasn’t much she could do.”



The article points out that if the "mayor and governor have their way, and layoffs are no longer based on seniority but instead are based on the city’s formulas that scientifically identify good teachers, Ms. Isaacson is pretty sure she’d be cooked."

That's tragic.

There was another article from the NYT this week, about being defined by data. It's an excellent one.

In a Data-Heavy Society, Being Defined by the Numbers
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/your- ... wanted=all

Numbers and rankings are everywhere. And I’m not just talking about Twitter followers and Facebook friends. In the journalism world, there’s how many people “like” an article or blog. How many retweeted or e-mailed it? I’ll know, for example, if this column made the “most e-mailed” of the business section. Or of the entire paper. And however briefly, it will matter to me.

.."“For almost anybody in the United States under the age of 25, the only models are quantifiable rankings,” he said. So when students are researching a paper, how do they decide where to turn for the greatest expertise? Often, he said, by looking at what articles or papers online have the most hits.


The writer makes a couple more great points.

The obsession with numbers, he said, means we don’t trust or even look for the intangibles that can’t be measured, like wisdom, judgment and expertise.

We also lose a sense of ourselves as anything but a number and a rank, and start feeling bad if our numbers don’t measure up to others.


When a teacher like Stacy Isaacson who is considered outstanding by all who work with her is judged to be in the bottom 7% by a series of numbers...then something is very wrong.

And we are losing a sense of what education is all about, what makes a really great teacher. The saddest part is that it is all apparently being done purposely, deliberately.

If there is enough "failure" it makes it easier for "reformers" of all stripes to move in and take over...in the name of a pending crisis which really isn't there at all.



Thread's worth reading if you're interested further. (Bunch of knowledgeable people beat up one very stubborn supporter of this nonsense.)

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Re: The War On Teachers

Postby JackRiddler » Sat May 07, 2011 12:18 am


http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 439x901340

madfloridian

Fri Apr-15-11 07:43 PM

Miss C blogs about Bronx charter school year. Felt like "chess piece, robot, warden, inmate..."

and performer."

I can read minds here. Many are thinking oh no dear god here comes madfloridian with another education reform post....spare us the pain, make her put it in the education forum so we don't have to see it.

But I don't discourage easily. I know I can't make a difference, but at least I can point out the foolishness of what is happening to the great tradition of public education in America. I will have at least tried.

The words in the subject line are the words of a first year teacher about her year in a South Bronx charter school. This is a fascinating blog post, she brings out the details in a painfully clear way....and she shows that the ones really being hurt by some of the extreme education reforms are the children.

"Reformers" have used the talking point that teachers and their unions only care about themselves...they say their own education reforms are about only about the children.

In my view it is in reality about making students conform to existing standards artificially set by
those who will profit financially from the students. Standards that make sure they fall in line and stay in line. They are not standards about real depth of learning.

Hat tip to the Schools Matters blog for this sad and moving critique by Miss C. of her charter school experience.
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/04/i ... ation.html

In my opinion, the meat of the issue when talking education policy is how changes to our public schools impact the lives of those people in the classroom. If you take it a step further and focus on a very specific topic - say, for instance, early elementary literacy - you're bound to find some very interesting reflections from thoughtful, trained, caring educators.

In the blog post I've linked to below, a teacher with training in literacy studies reflects on her experience in a corporate charter school. Here's a brief introduction (via Mary Ann Reilly's blog):

Guest Blog: This blog post was written by Miss C a former graduate student of mine who spent a year working as a first grade teacher at a charter school in the South Bronx (NYC). Miss C completed a Masters of Professional Studies in Literacy, a graduate program that ironically privileged the arts and situated the study of "literacies" within a sociocultural framework. The charter world that Miss C describes represents a fundamentally different understanding of teaching, learning, children, and developmentally appropriate practices than what she knew and learned at college.


That is an important point known by nearly all teachers who have studied the learning processes of children....what is being done by the reformers is known not to work. It does not produce in-depth learning, and it is more like the I say it you learn it, click your fingers twice, stamp your feet 3 times type learning. It is scripted.

Miss C does some guest blogging at Between the By-Road and the Main Road.

Miss C Recounts Teaching at a South Bronx Charter School
http://maryannreilly.blogspot.com/2011/ ... l?spref=tw

Charter schools are public schools, and can be started by and run by anyone. It is not uncommon for them to be operated by people who have no background in education. They are funded by a mixture of government money, private donations, and grants, and are often situated in areas of high poverty, where applicants are chosen by lottery. Charter schools offer longer school days, smaller class sizes, and "rigorous, standards-based instruction". They also offer a militaristic and strangely corporate environment that emphasizes the importance of order, obedience, and product above all else. Everything has a set protocol and predetermined vision of result, usually dreamt up by administration. I spent ten months feeling like a chess piece, robot, crusader, warden, inmate, and performer, sometimes all at once. It was a very long year.


She titles her next section "Lights, Camera, Action: Battling the Script"

Scripted teaching was really getting started just as I retired. There was absolutely little or no freedom for the teacher to speak in the classroom outside of the lesson plans. That insults the intelligence of the teacher, and it stifles the creative responses from children which are a wondrous part of learning.

So I sympathize with this section so much.

Having worked in a school where instruction was more or less designed by the teachers, I had naively assumed I would be doing the same at my new school. Instead, I was horrified to discover that my entire day was scripted. Reading, writing, math, science, and social studies all had their own stacks of teaching manuals and supplies, dictating every utterance and activity for teachers and students. I distinctly remember a line from a four page script in one of the math lessons wherein the teacher was supposed to rap multiples of 10 to the students. “After each verse, say 'unh' two or three times in rhythm,” it directed.


Ah, that reminded me of the 60 minutes segment on a NYC charter school.
http://journals.democraticunderground.c ... idian/7438

There was a part where the teacher in a bored repetive tone said "clap once, clap twice, stomp twice, clap, ready". Here's the video from 60 minutes.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id= ... ontentBody

That is one of the methods used by many in the education reform movement...repetitive chants and words done in rhythm. Nothing wrong with it per se...but the kids are not stupid and soon they catch on that it means nothing at all.

More from Miss C:

This part she entitles "Kiss My ASSessments: Tales of Testing"

Note the part about the kindergarten and first graders spending two days filling in bubbles.

When a charter school is "born" so to speak, it is aligned to an actual charter stating that the school will meet certain goals (i.e., test scores) within a specific time period (usually five years). If the goals are not met within the five years, the charter could potentially be revoked and the school could be shut down. With such heavy pressure to obtain high test scores, "rigorous" curriculum takes on whole new meaning. In addition to hours of scripted instruction, most of which was test-based, the students were also subjected to relentless test prep delivered from thick, scripted manuals. Upper school (grades 3-5) designated Fridays as test prep days, since the kids left at 2pm rather than 4pm. On Fridays, they literally spent the entire day doing nothing but test prep. The younger grades were spared, at least until May, when my first graders were forced to endure test prep for the Terra Nova exam, a torturous experience for all of us. Even the kindergarteners took the Terra Nova, a test which required children to sit for an hour and a half session on two separate days and bubble in answers on a recording sheet. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the absurdity of it, although I did chuckle when one kindergarten teacher told me how her students blurted every answer out loud after she read them the questions. Test scores determined merit pay, and "testing season" was regarded as the most important time of the year.


Parents in some areas are waking up to what is happening. Maybe it's the image of little kids filling in bubbles instead of soaking up information that will enrich their lives. Maybe it's the tears or the tummy aches.

I had a long career in the teaching profession. I took courses, I learned new skills and ideas. SO this next part of the blog of Miss C was the very hardest to read and the saddest of all.

She calls it "Another One Bites the Dust"

When I worked in the suburbs, teaching jobs were scarce and highly coveted. Teachers got jobs in schools or districts and built life-long careers there. Unlike most public schools, charter schools do not offer contracts, tenure, or a union. Teachers sign “letters of intent”, stating that they intend to work in a position for the school year, that they can be fired at any time with or without cause, and that they are free to leave at any time. Staff changes are frequent. At my school, since teachers were more or less viewed as factory drones, replacing them was swift and emotionless--when people quit, it was often not even mentioned at the weekly faculty meeting. A face was absent, a new face was in place, and life continued. During that one year, seven teachers quit between September and May, one was fired, and five more (myself included) resigned in June. Quitting was often the result of utter exhaustion and depression; the demands and the micromanagement were often more than teachers could bear. I considered leaving every day up until June 25th, wavering back and forth on a near hourly basis and hanging on only by desperate determination to see the year through and a begrudging sense of obligation toward my students. Those who left earlier forfeited two months worth of salary they would have been paid if they’d given 30 days notice (we were paid over 12 months). Out of those seven teachers, only two had new jobs lined up. The other five opted for unemployment.



Teachers came and went, not even an acknowledgement of their presence or lack of presence. No way for the little ones to get comfortable with a teacher or develop a rapport with them. That's a negative thing.

This is how the new "reforms" work all too often. There are exceptions, but not very many.

I have seen the way governors and education commissioners have talked down to and treated teachers as though they did not have the brains to come in out of the rain. No one in leadership speaks out in support of the teachers, no one says enough is enough.

The worst of it is the contempt for teachers, the outward display of it, the lack of anyone speaking in teachers' behalf...the worst began two years ago. It could be stopped.

I doubt it will

We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

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Re: The War On Teachers

Postby JackRiddler » Sat May 07, 2011 12:49 am


http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/ ... HG20110415

Source: Reuters

Detroit to send layoff notices to all its public teachers
CHICAGO | Thu Apr 14, 2011 10:38pm EDT

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The emergency manager appointed to put Detroit's troubled public school system on a firmer financial footing said on Thursday he was sending layoff notices to all of the district's 5,466 unionized employees.

In a statement posted on the website of Detroit Public Schools, Robert Bobb, the district's temporary head, said notices were being sent to every member of the Detroit Federation of Teachers "in anticipation of a workforce reduction to match the district's declining student enrollment."

~snip~
The district is unlikely to eliminate all the teachers. Last year, it sent out 2,000 notices and only a fraction of employees were actually laid off. But the notices are required by the union's current contract with the district. Any layoffs under this latest action won't take effect until late July.

In the meantime, Bobb said that he planned to exercise his power as emergency manager to unilaterally modify the district's collective bargaining agreement with the Federation of Teachers starting May 17, 2011.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

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Re: The War On Teachers

Postby JackRiddler » Thu May 12, 2011 12:32 am

.

The following shouldn't be a novelty story about one school.

It should be every damn school... offering warm breakfast as well as lunch, to every student regardless of need. And they should be buying at least half local & organic from small farms, with a subsidy out of the Agriculture Department budget. Food should be understood as the first fundamental of all schools.


http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/ ... mode=print

May 10, 2011, 12:15 pm

Bronx Charter Makes Eating Well Part of Its Philosophy

By JENNY ANDERSON
Ángel Franco/The New York TimesBennett Fins, the school chef, hands out seconds to students during lunchtime at Family Life Academy Charter School in the Bronx.

The cafeteria at the Family Life Academy Charter School in the Bronx looks like a standard public school cafeteria. There are stacks of plastic yellow trays, enormous white folding tables and the raucous din of children, released from their classrooms to talk loudly and freely about whatever they want.

That is where the similarities end.

The food being served is fresh, hot and prepared by a professional chef. It is dished out in small portions and devoured by kids as if it were chocolate ice cream on a hot summer day. On Monday, 10- and 11-year-old students were seen voluntarily and enthusiastically eating spinach, spooning up brown rice and tackling tall green salads with lemon vinaigrette dressing.

Ketchup was absent. Water was the drink of choice.

This May, Flacs, as the Family Life Academy Charter School is called, will finish its first full year of healthy eating. Borrowing a page — and a chef — from the private school world, Flacs spent five years developing its nutrition revolution. Simply put, it is a program to teach students about healthy food and get them to eat it.

“Kumquats — they know what those things are!” says Francisco Paco Genko-ji Lugoviña, one of the school’s founders and a force behind moving the charter school toward healthy eating. “I’ve been convinced forever that what you eat is directly related to how you perform, in school and in work,” he said.

A compact 72-year old, Mr. Lugoviña has run three marathons and is an ordained Buddhist priest. Since Flacs was founded in August 2001, he has tried to improve nutrition in a school surrounded by a Wendy’s, a Burger King and a Popeye’s and situated in the poorest Congressional district in the United States. Early in the life of the school, which has 368 students in kindergarten through seventh grade, Mr. Lugoviña asked the city’s Department of Education, which supplied the school with its food, for a list of ingredients. He could not find the word “chicken” among the ingredients in a chicken patty. “It was horrendous,” he said.

The school hired a new company to service the food. It arrived frozen in individually wrapped packages for the students and it had to be microwaved. Mr. Lugoviña did not like that, either.

A visit to the Calhoun School, a private school in Manhattan, revealed to him what a chef-run kitchen looked like. No processed foods. Menus that offered choices. No sweets. And kids happily eating fruit, quinoa and fish. Calhoun offered to help Flacs put in place a scaled-down version of its program.

First the school needed to raise money: $200,000 to renovate the kitchen and $175,000 to pay for three chefs, two assistant chefs and one part-time assistant chef. They raised the funds from public and private sources.

At Calhoun they also found Bennett Fins, 30, a chef at the school who wanted to run his own program. He spent a day at Flacs advising officials on how to design the program. Then he offered to run it. (He described the broiler as a “beautiful piece of equipment.”) He joined the school in January 2010 and by March, he had transformed the program.

Today, Mr. Fins’s refrigerator is packed with tomatillos and fresh pineapples (for soup and dessert). An old art closet is his spice “rack,” stacked with industrial-size boxes of fennel seeds, cumin and whole coriander seeds, and the more standard oregano, thyme and bay leaves. A white board with a to-do list for Wednesday included “marinate steak, soak beans and cut potatoes.” The kids call him Chef and eat his food.

There have been challenges, namely the kindergartners. “They are the toughest critics,” he says. But he invests the time to get them to try new things since they will be around for a while. “You’ve got to talk to them and they have to see you eat it,’’ said Mr. Fins, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute. “It helps to make them laugh.”

When Mr. Fins arrived, Flacs spent $2.82 per child per day on food. Today that figure is $2.60, in part because Mr. Fins is able to negotiate the best price for much of the food he uses. Mr. Fins banned chocolate milk, outlawed ketchup and has worked on persuading students to try new things every day. He sold an avowed vegetable-hater on kale. “Victory,” he said.

Teachers are reaping the benefits, too. Inspired by the move toward healthy living, they created their own version of “The Biggest Loser.” Tarina Cobb, who teaches science lab, lost 80 pounds. Cristal Crute, who teaches art, lost 100 pounds. Victor Crespo, dean of the middle school and the basketball coach for the community center, shed 80 pounds. “Ninety-nine percent of it is Bennett,” he said. “I would try things I would never try when I was younger.”

The customers — read students — view the fare with equal, if slightly higher-pitched enthusiasm. Emily, 12, said the old food was plain, looked as if it were not properly cooked and described it as “disgusting.” Now “it’s healthier and better,” she said, scraping clean a plate of roasted chicken, spinach and oranges.

Naturally, not everyone is convinced. Mamoudou, 10, says he misses a few things, including pancakes, hamburgers and bacon. But he loves the pizza, made with homemade sauce and fresh mozzarella. “I would marry pizza if I could,” he says, flashing a toothy grin.


Every Tuesday, education beat reporters for The New York Times take you inside the New York City schools, public and private. Have a tip? Send it to IntheSchools@nytimes.com.

Copyright 2011 The New York Times Company

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Re: The War On Teachers

Postby JackRiddler » Sat May 14, 2011 12:13 am

The Rude Pundit: Your Bullshit Abuse of Teachers Is Killing Education (Series Part 5)


Let's conclude this week about how badly we've screwed with our children's education under No Child Left Behind (and whatever Frankenstein monster Arne Duncan and the President are stitching together) with a few words from some teachers. They were kind and gutsy enough to write into the Rude Pundit, and he will protect your identities (and do some minor edits). Offered without comment:

From C.E.:
"I taught art and English for 17 years in public schools. Art education used to be considered a vital part of a child's education. Art lessons can be used to team up different curriculum (like geometry, history, science, music, etc.) and illustrate new concepts to students. Art can 'demonstrate' how things work and help kids to use critical thinking skills.

"That said, everything changed under NCLB. Art class became the new "dumping ground for Special Education students. With the 'benchmarks' that threatened school closures, testing was king. NCLB was forcing core classes to 'improve' (according to the test results) and SE students were caught in the crossfire. What to do? Solution? Dump them into art class where the teacher could babysit them while the 'real learning' was going on in other classes.

"Soon, my art classes were filling up with SE kids who were repeating art classes they had already taken. In a typical day, I taught 150 kids. 47 of those kids were designated SE learners. Teacher aides were scarcer than hen's teeth. The 'funding' was poor and what little money for teacher aides did come in, was used up in P.E. classes (which had class sizes of 65 and needed locker-room supervision).

"Ever since 'mainstreaming' became the new vortex of energy/trendy norm, special education kids have been pushed into regular education classes. Some SE kids do very well there, but most do not thrive. The truth is that while it may seem discriminatory to keep the bulk of SE students in a self-contained classroom (like they did in the 1970s), moving them into the regular classroom does NOT significantly raise their abilities and it SIGNIFICANTLY slows the learning for the regular education kids. This is the KEY. This is probably the goal, as it keeps the masses from being successful in school. This is not just happening in art class. The SE mainstreamed kids are now in all core classes, excluded only from the advanced placement classes, such as high level math, chemistry, and college level history and English (offered in high school).

"A special education teacher once told me that the typical student needs 4-7 repetitions to learn a concept. A typical SE kid needs 1000-1500 reps! Most school days work on the 6-7 period day, which makes each class run about 45 minutes long. Average class size? 32 kids. Student limit per day per teachers varies by state, but in Montana, it was 150 kids per day. Given that, how much time does your regular education student spend (one-on-one) with the teacher when she is busy repeating concepts to a SE kid? So, let's do the math. In a 45 minute period, with a class size of 32 (ten of whom are SE kids) the amount of face-time per student is about 1 1/2 minutes per student. If the teacher has to repeat concepts with SE students, how much time do the regular education kids get in face-time? Less than zero."


From Carla:
"Not a single teacher I know, including myself, has anything positive to say about NCLB. Topping the list is stopping teachers from teaching, thus stopping students from real learning, thus teachers getting the blame, thus teachers getting further underpaid, losing jobs, and classrooms becoming more crowded as schools are unable to meet the percentages, and lose funding and more teachers; the entire original concept of NCLB is doing what is was designed to do: destroy the public school system, all said here in one long run-on sentence because I can."


From Sara:
"We spend about 6 weeks total in testing. That's 6 weeks I could be teaching chemistry and geometry. 6 weeks, a third of a semester, wasted on test prep and testing and then make up testing. If we must test I say set up Saturday testing centers and pay folks minimum wage to proctor all the testing. That way I can go back to teaching actual content."


From Dawn:
"I will give the last state test to my 6th graders tomorrow. It's in Reading, and I am a National Board Certified Teacher in Literacy: Reading/Language Arts. But my test results probably won't show it, because the kids will be tested on the biggest bunch of crap, NOT what I have worked with them on all year, to be readers and thinkers. NCLB has been a disaster."


From Judy:
"I taught music to grades k-8 in a large inner city public school. I had to retire early because my doctor felt that, if I continued teaching, I would have a stroke. He said most of his teachers were on blood pressure medication from September to June. Does that tell you something? No Child Left Behind reminds me of what our city did every time a new superintendent (now they call them CEOs) took the helm. They tried to reinvent the wheel. New books, new curricula, etc, and everyone was supposed to jump on board without question. Were we ever asked what we thought would work? Hell, no. Our opinions were not even worthy of a look-see. NCLB, is obviously a joke. What frosts me is that there are tons of research that suggest what works in education. Oh, how about lower class size, highly-educated teachers, parents who understand child development, higher academic standards, kids that go to bed at a reasonable hour, not sending children to school with money to buy bagfuls of junk? And on and on. A little respect for teachers would be nice as well. Obama's 'Teach for America' campaign is not much better. Arrogant young kids with little education who think they know the answers to education is not the answer. I heard someone ask Arne Duncan what were his qualifications to be Secretary of Education. I kid you not, his answer was - wait for it -'I went to school and my mother was a teacher.' Kind of makes one's head want to explode."


From Marc:
"I work as a teacher’s aide in New Mexico. Most of our schools don't meet up to NCLB standards, so when that happens they cut our funding and we lose teachers and EAs as myself. That's 'education assistant'- most of the time it means photocopy boy or sub. I'm in a program to become a teacher, and believe me when I say it isn't for the money that I want to be one.

"I feel that when people always blame the public schools for the failure of the students they always mean the teachers. And, yeah, in some cases you're always going to have those type of people who shouldn't be teachers. And NCLB sucks ass, that's true, but most teachers I know are always trying to find ways to subvert it. I believe that what NCLB is doing is hurting our schools. These high risk tests they make us give the children are completely unfair because there is no such thing as a standardized student. Why should we have fucking tests that expect them to be all the same when none of our kids learn the same?"


Thanks to everyone who wrote in, especially the thugs and criminals who belong to the NEA (if we're to believe Chris Christie). The Rude Pundit will get to parents and students (and more teachers and test graders) in the next few weeks.

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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Re: The War On Teachers

Postby JackRiddler » Sun May 22, 2011 7:32 pm

.

Bill Gates, the third Koch brother. A blind spot for the Democrats outraged about right wing money financing Tea Party candidates and class war. Here's a billionaire just doing the class war, possibly more effectively than anyone else.


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/2 ... of-America

Sun May 22, 2011 at 04:41 AM PDT

The United Gates of America

by
teacherken
http://www.dailykos.com/user/teacherken

The title is not a mistake. In the New York Times, we finally see coverage of a phenomenon some of us have been writing about for year. The piece begins by telling about a small committed group of apparently grass roots organized teachers who testified before the Indiana legislature and wrote an op ed asking to eliminate seniority-based layoff policies.
They described themselves simply as local teachers who favored school reform — one sympathetic state representative, Mary Ann Sullivan, said, “They seemed like genuine, real people versus the teachers’ union lobbyists.” They were, but they were also recruits in a national organization, Teach Plus, financed significantly by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.


To see how pervasive the influence of the money of Bill Gates is, I strongly urge you to read Behind Grass-Roots School Advocacy, Bill Gates

And remember this:
In some cases, Mr. Gates is creating entirely new advocacy groups. The foundation is also paying Harvard-trained data specialists to work inside school districts, not only to crunch numbers but also to change practices. It is bankrolling many of the Washington analysts who interpret education issues for journalists and giving grants to some media organizations.


Some of us saw this coming. We noted several years ago the number of organizations funded by the foundations of Bill and Melinda Gates and that of Eli and Edyth Broad. The number has continued to expand.

In 2009, of the $378 million the Gates Foundation spent on education, $78 million was for advocacy activities. The plans for the next decade are to spend $3.5 billion on education, of which up to 15% will be on advocacy.

Consider the groups the times identifies as receiving Gates' largesse. Besides the aforementioned Teach Plus, the 360 grants include financing charter schools and early high schools, funding for the Educational Equity Project and Education Trust (both of which advocate on policy), and
research institutes that study the policies’ effectiveness, and to Education Week and public radio and television stations that cover education policies.


It pays for public relations services. It funds university programs. in 2008 it spent $16 million in partnership with Broad to try to raise the issue of education in the Presidential election cycle. It is playing a major role in the development of the Common Core Standards:
The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, which developed the standards, and Achieve Inc., a nonprofit organization coordinating the writing of tests aligned with the standards, have each received millions of dollars.


It is paying the Alliance for Excellent Education and the Fordham Institute to help in the promotion of those Common Core Standards.

Let's stop on the CCS for a moment. When the committees were established to draft them, there were people from think thanks, people from curriculum/testing firms, people from advocacy groups, but something was missing - no one was a teacher, no one was from the professional organizations of teachers dealing with the content - National Council of Teachers of English, International Reading Association, or National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Nor of course were either teachers union represented - after all, Gates has been consistent in his opposition to unions.

It goes further. Gates was involved in promoting the horrid "Waiting for Superman" which demonized one teachers union president, Randi Weingarten, and which sought to blame teachers unions for the presence of bad teachers even distorting the data to make its points.

Before that we would find Gates - and Broad - funding Teach for America. Their money was behind New Leaders for New Schools. The New Teacher Project which was led by Michelle Rhee before she went to DC Public Schools was another recipient.

We get journalists writing positively about such groups who are (a) not really trained in or about education and (b) funded at least in part by the same source funding them.

Let me address (a). A number of weeks back I was at an event co-sponsored by the Education Writers Association and the Carnegie Foundation of New York as one of about a dozen education bloggers. We had presentations from a variety of experts. At the end we broke into three groups consisting of only the Education Writers and bloggers. In my group I asked how many could discuss any of the following: Reggio Emilia, Simpson's Paradox, or Campbell's Law. None of the more than a dozen at our table could discuss all three, only a few even knew one. Reggio Emilia is perhaps the world's best model of early childhood education. Simpson's Paradox explains why when you increase participation in something like SATs by lower socio-economic groups (say Blacks or Hispanics) as a percentage of those participating, the overall scores can drop even if the disaggregated scores for all groups go up, which is why we see horror stories on things like falling SAT scores. And Campbell's Law, from 1976, is basic to understanding why our emphasis on test scores is distorting education:
The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.


Such emphasis, whether on arrest numbers for police or test scores for students, inevitably lead to distortion and in some cases outright corruption - as we have now seen in the DC schools led by Michelle Rhee.

Gates has given money to the teachers' unions, even as it helped demonize Randi Weingarten. Gates funds many groups, including one in which I participate: the Teacher Leaders Network is part of the Center for Teaching Quality, itself a recipient of Gates Foundation funding.

Last year the Gates Foundation gave half a million to a group organized by Jeb Bush. This year the President appeared with Jeb Bush at a school in Miami. Among the high ranking people under Arne Duncan in the Department of Education are former high ranking people in the Gates Foundation, and a former top-ranking official of Education Trust, itself a recipient of Gates funding.

In short, Gates money is everywhere in education.

Yes, in some cases the funding is benign, and in a few cases even positive.

The problem is there is no regular outside scrutiny of how this money is driving educational policy to the exclusion of other voices. And the Times article has three brief paragraphs which should illustrate the problem this presents:
In 2009, the foundation spent $3.5 million creating an advocacy group to buttress its $290 million investment in programs to increase teacher effectiveness in four areas of the country: Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla., Pittsburgh, Memphis and Los Angeles.

A document describing plans for the group, posted on a Washington Post blog in March, said it would mobilize local advocates, “establish strong ties to local journalists” and should “go toe to toe” with union officials in explaining contracts and state laws to the public.

But to avoid being labeled a “tool of the foundation,” the document said the group should “maintain a low public profile.”


Randi Weingarten complained about the anti-union approach, and there was some modification, to promote union-management cooperation.

Those of us not at the upper levels of the unions often wonder why their leadership seems to give in on some important issues. Apparently they believe it is the only way they think they can continue to have a seat at the table. Here I want to borrow language first offered by someone else - they may be at the meal, but their place is not at the table but on it, as they are on the menu to be consumed.

There are groups receiving Gates money that still feel free to occasionally criticize some of the Foundation's initiatives. Occasionally.

There has been no serious public discussion of whether the overall influence of Gates and similar groups is what should be driving the policy discussions in this country. Yes, the likes of Diane Ravitch have talked about the Billionaire Boys Club including not only Gates and Broad but other foundations like those of the Waltons and the Bradleys.

What we are seeing is a distortion of the policy making process. Where the public is still included, it is often through what some would describe as a process already distorted or perveted, because the media which should provide accurate and unbiased information does not.

We have seen this in other areas of American life. There was little criticism in the traditional organs of media of the rush to war in Iraq. There were few questions at the move to strip civil liberties in the name of national security. Media outlets have continued to be concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, such as but not limited to those of Rupert Murdoch. Now we have Comcast, which has been in violation of net neutrality, taking control of NBC Universal. When media organizations are owned by industrial interests, as NBC was by GE, can those organizations properly cover their parents? When major economic interests are the source of revenue for such organizations, will the public receive honest reporting about the misdeeds and abuses of such interests?

I'm glad to finally see this coverage in the New York Times. But it is very late, and not even close to being sufficient.

I would not expect to see similar coverage in the Washington Post. After all, Bill Gates is a close friend of Warren Buffett who is a major player in the Post, and they both were friends and bridge playing companions of the late Katherine Graham.

Please note - I do not think Bill Gates is malevolent. My perception is that he thinks he is doing good with how his foundation operates. Yet both he and Broad seek to drive policy in a specific direction that seems to exclude reliance upon meaningful data in a way neither would ever do with the spending their foundations make in health care matters. Unfortunately, everyone seems to think they are experts when it comes to education.

So read the article. Explore the links. Follow the work of graduate student Ken Libby, quote in the article, who blogs with Jim Horn at School Matters

Pay attention.

It is happening in education.

We already see it happening through other billionaires in what the Koch brothers are doing in places like Wisconsin.

If we do not pay attention, if we do not insist on transparency, if we do not ensure that other voices are part of the discussion, we will find that we are moving our nation in a direction that clearly would justify a new name:

The United Gates of America

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Re: The War On Teachers

Postby Feilan » Sun May 22, 2011 10:22 pm

Jack Riddler wrote:Highly respected NYC teacher placed in bottom 7% by Value Added method of scoring. A real shame...

Image

A statistical model the school system uses in calculating the effectiveness of teachers.
By MICHAEL WINERIP Published: March 6, 2011

Impressive looking, but it does so much harm.


I'm going to preface my remarks by saying I am a language teacher by trade. I currently teach at the community college level in Canada; I have also worked in the LINC program (Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada) as well as in China with highschool kids ... I see I have a lot more reading to do in this thread since I last lurked upon it, but this post leapt out at me due to some professional experiences of my own related to what is being discussed in this article -- well -- that and the eyepopping 'thing'.

That 'thing' :ohwh -- masquerading as some kind of rational tool with which to measure a teacher's ongoing capacity to deliver the goods day in and day out, as well as establish and maintain a constructive and mutually respectful atmosphere in which students and teacher work and learn together -- does NOT look impressive to me. It looks absolutely redonkulous, to borrow a word. The mind boggles. I am eternally grateful to never have (yet :zomg ) encountered such a misbegotten 'thing' in the course of my work.

I have been professionally assessed according to established rubrics intelligently designed for the purpose, by both managers and students. Another manager I'm thinking of fondly: sat in on a 2 hour class, (grammar instruction, listening and speaking activities were all integrated parts of what she witnessed)... Following the lesson, I met with her and she gave me a copy of a detailed rubric, filled out in rich detail. We went through it together and had a very constructive discussion about her impressions of my teaching and rapport with students. It was a terrific experience much aided by my knowing that she, a teacher like me albeit vastly more experienced, was equipped to evaluate my classroom performance in meaningful terms and that her intention was to do so WITHOUT MALICE or ANY ALPHA DOG BULLSHIT AXE TO GRIND - only for the sake of my professional development and the benefit of my students.

The chair of my department at the college where I am teaching this summer is another perfect marvel of openness, genuine support for and devotion to students and teachers (as opposed to capitalist driven "academic" outcomes), exemplar of what 'managers' in any college or university should have to be - experienced teachers first! I simply adore her, and I've worked for the other kind... (with any luck and a good deal of free-agent pluck I never will again!)!

As I say, I have been subject to a much rougher handling in other places where petty-minded, personality disordered superior officers of contempt rule the day. Did you flatter them enough, in every way? Do you blindly, silently and without any **inappropriate questioning **(to be determined after the fact and decided against you for having the nerve to wonder such things out loud) follow a trail of (unionized) teacher smarties at the expense of the complex, individual and group needs of the people you are working with in the classroom (because supporting students first is secondary to any other goals and supporting teachers depends on their union status and whether or not you are required by contract to pretend to give a shit about their working conditions)? Good. Did you never discuss those working conditions - like unpaid work - with your NON-union colleagues? I should hope so!

NON-unionized teachers - sessional, contract, part-time - teachers are often just as dedicated as their raptured colleagues - in some cases, even more so. NON-unionized teachers are aware like no other kind that they are disposable and only if they're making the right impression will they be deemed recyclable at any one institution. You work for a time, get 'laid off', and after a lengthy period of some months/a year, **may be** resurrected by the same employer.

In the mean time you find work elsewhere. There are ever the union gatekeepers = the bosses/managers -- standing between you and the offer of a permanent position thereby rendering you eligible to join the union -- to contend with. It's a neat system for the backstabbers and clique-oriented. Those who teach from the heart out of a desire to serve their students are guaranteed to step in shit and wear it unless they're lucky enough to work for a boss like mine. Lucky, lucky, while it lasts. "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may..." :gonefishing:
Many people will sleep for a hundred years, but when they awake, it will be the artists who give them their spirit back. ~ Louis David Riel
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Re: The War On Teachers

Postby JackRiddler » Tue May 24, 2011 11:03 pm

.

The aforementioned Times article about the flood of Gates money to influence and lobby in education:


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/educa ... gates.html

May 21, 2011
Behind Grass-Roots School Advocacy, Bill Gates

By SAM DILLON


INDIANAPOLIS — A handful of outspoken teachers helped persuade state lawmakers this spring to eliminate seniority-based layoff policies. They testified before the legislature, wrote briefing papers and published an op-ed article in The Indianapolis Star.

They described themselves simply as local teachers who favored school reform — one sympathetic state representative, Mary Ann Sullivan, said, “They seemed like genuine, real people versus the teachers’ union lobbyists.” They were, but they were also recruits in a national organization, Teach Plus, financed significantly by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

For years, Bill Gates focused his education philanthropy on overhauling large schools and opening small ones. His new strategy is more ambitious: overhauling the nation’s education policies. To that end, the foundation is financing educators to pose alternatives to union orthodoxies on issues like the seniority system and the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers.

In some cases, Mr. Gates is creating entirely new advocacy groups. The foundation is also paying Harvard-trained data specialists to work inside school districts, not only to crunch numbers but also to change practices. It is bankrolling many of the Washington analysts who interpret education issues for journalists and giving grants to some media organizations.

“We’ve learned that school-level investments aren’t enough to drive systemic changes,” said Allan C. Golston, the president of the foundation’s United States program. “The importance of advocacy has gotten clearer and clearer.”

The foundation spent $373 million on education in 2009, the latest year for which its tax returns are available, and devoted $78 million to advocacy — quadruple the amount spent on advocacy in 2005. Over the next five or six years, Mr. Golston said, the foundation expects to pour $3.5 billion more into education, up to 15 percent of it on advocacy.


Given the scale and scope of the largess, some worry that the foundation’s assertive philanthropy is squelching independent thought, while others express concerns about transparency. Few policy makers, reporters or members of the public who encounter advocates like Teach Plus or pundits like Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute realize they are underwritten by the foundation.

“It’s Orwellian in the sense that through this vast funding they start to control even how we tacitly think about the problems facing public education,” said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who said he received no financing from the foundation.

Mr. Hess, a frequent blogger on education whose institute received $500,000 from the Gates foundation in 2009 “to influence the national education debates,” acknowledged that he and others sometimes felt constrained. “As researchers, we have a reasonable self-preservation instinct,” he said. “There can be an exquisite carefulness about how we’re going to say anything that could reflect badly on a foundation.”

“Everybody’s implicated,” he added.

Indeed, the foundation’s 2009 tax filing runs to 263 pages and includes about 360 education grants. There are the more traditional and publicly celebrated programmatic initiatives, like financing charter school operators and early-college high schools. Then there are the less well-known advocacy grants to civil rights groups like the Education Equality Project and Education Trust that try to influence policy, to research institutes that study the policies’ effectiveness, and to Education Week and public radio and television stations that cover education policies.

The foundation paid a New York philanthropic advisory firm $3.5 million “to mount and support public education and advocacy campaigns.” It also paid a string of universities to support pieces of the Gates agenda. Harvard, for instance, got $3.5 million to place “strategic data fellows” who could act as “entrepreneurial change agents” in school districts in Boston, Los Angeles and elsewhere. The foundation has given to the two national teachers’ unions — as well to groups whose mission seems to be to criticize them.

“It’s easier to name which groups Gates doesn’t support than to list all of those they do, because it’s just so overwhelming,” noted Ken Libby, a graduate student who has pored over the foundation’s tax filings as part of his academic work.

An early example of the increased emphasis on advocacy came in 2008, when Mr. Gates teamed with Eli Broad for a campaign aimed at focusing the presidential candidates on issues like teacher quality and education standards. The Gates Foundation spent $16 million on the effort.

Mr. Gates later acknowledged that it achieved little, but in the years since, the foundation has helped leverage sweeping changes. Its latest annual report, for instance, highlights its role — often overlooked — in the development and promotion of the common core academic standards that some 45 states have adopted in recent months.

The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, which developed the standards, and Achieve Inc., a nonprofit organization coordinating the writing of tests aligned with the standards, have each received millions of dollars.

The Alliance for Excellent Education, another nonprofit organization, was paid $551,000 in 2009 “to grow support for the common core standards initiative,” according to the tax filings. The Fordham Institute got $959,000 to “review common core materials and develop supportive materials.” Scores of newspapers quoted Fordham’s president, Chester E. Finn Jr., praising the standards after their March 2010 release; most, including The New York Times, did not note the Gates connection.

“What Gates got for their money was an honest review,” said Mr. Finn, a longtime advocate of national standards. “All I could say to Gates before the common core came out was that we were hoping the new standards would be good.”

The Center on Education Policy, which calls itself “a national independent advocate,” was awarded $1 million over two years to track which states adopted the standards. Its president, Jack Jennings, said he had nonetheless publicly criticized the Gates stand on other issues, including charter schools and teacher evaluations. “I feel free to speak out when I think something is wrongheaded,” he said.

In 2009, a Gates-financed group, the New Teacher Project, issued an influential report detailing how existing evaluation systems tended to give high ratings to nearly all teachers. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan cited it repeatedly and wrote rules into the federal Race to the Top grant competition encouraging states to overhaul those systems. Then a string of Gates-backed nonprofit groups worked to promote legislation across the country: at least 20 states, including New York, are now designing new evaluation systems.

While the foundation has given money to both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, totaling about $6.3 million over the last three years, some of its newer initiatives appear aimed at challenging the dominance that unions have exercised during policy debates. Last year, Mr. Gates spent $2 million on a “social action” campaign focused on the film “Waiting for ‘Superman,’ ” which demonized Randi Weingarten, the president of the federation.

In 2010, the foundation gave $500,000, to the Foundation for Educational Excellence, founded by Jeb Bush, a former governor of Florida.

In 2009, the foundation spent $3.5 million creating an advocacy group to buttress its $290 million investment in programs to increase teacher effectiveness in four areas of the country: Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla., Pittsburgh, Memphis and Los Angeles.

A document describing plans for the group, posted on a Washington Post blog in March, said it would mobilize local advocates, “establish strong ties to local journalists” and should “go toe to toe” with union officials in explaining contracts and state laws to the public.

But to avoid being labeled a “tool of the foundation,” the document said the group should “maintain a low public profile.”

Ms. Weingarten complained to the foundation that the document appeared to be antiunion, and Mr. Golston said the foundation had shifted the group’s mission to support union-management engagement.

“Unlike some foundations that would rather just scapegoat teachers and their unions, Gates understands that teaching is a profession, that you have to invest in and support teachers,” Ms. Weingarten said. “That doesn’t mean we agree with everything they do.”

Two other Gates-financed groups, Educators for Excellence and Teach Plus, have helped amplify the voices of newer teachers as an alternative to the official views of the unions. Last summer, members of several such groups had a meeting at the foundation’s offices in Washington.

Two Bronx teachers, Sydney Morris and Evan Stone, founded Educators for Excellence in March 2010, to argue against seniority-based layoffs. But it was a $160,000 donation from Mr. Gates months later, Ms. Morris said, that allowed them to sign up 2,500 teachers.

Teach Plus was founded in 2007 in Boston by Celine Coggins, a former teacher with a Ph.D. from Stanford, to give young educators incentives to make the classroom a career.

With relatively small grants from other foundations, Ms. Coggins began working with teachers in Chicago and Indianapolis in 2008. The next year, she received Gates foundation awards totaling $4 million, for expenditure over three years, which allowed her to expand to Los Angeles and Memphis, build a Web site and move into new offices at the Boston headquarters.

In Chicago, union activists have accused Teach Plus of being an “Astroturf” grass-roots organization. In Indiana, some lawmakers accused the group of being “part of a conspiracy by Gates and hedge fund managers” to undermine the unions’ influence, according to Ms. Sullivan, a Democrat who voted to end seniority-based layoffs, as Teach Plus wanted. “I don’t believe in conspiracy theories.”






Diane Ravitch wrote:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and- ... mainpromo8

Bill Gates: Selling Bad Advice to the Public Schools

by Diane Ravitch


Everyone agrees that American schools need help. But as Diane Ravitch argues, the fixes proposed by billionaire savior Bill Gates will only makes things worse.

Over the weekend, The New York Times published a startling expose of Bill Gates' successful efforts to shape education policy in the United States.

Image
Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates poses on April 4, 2011 in Paris. (Photo: Miguel Medina, AFP / Getty Images)

As I showed in my recent book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, Gates is one of a small group of billionaires that is promoting privatization, de-professionalization, and high-stakes testing as fixes for American public schools. I called this group "the billionaire boys club," which includes Gates, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.

The Times article documents how Gates has put almost everyone concerned with education policy in his debt: advocacy groups and think tanks of left and right, education journals, public television programs, leaders in academia, local school districts, and state education groups. In addition to what is reported in the Times, Gates has significantly influenced the policies of the U.S. Department of Education, especially its signature program "Race to the Top," which encourages more privately managed charter schools and recommends that states judge teacher quality by student test scores.

Gates appears to mean well, but he has obviously—and repeatedly—gotten bad advice.

About a decade ago, he decided that the biggest problem in U.S. education was the size of high schools, and he proceeded to spend $2 billion to persuade school districts to downsize their high schools. He told the nation's governors that the American comprehensive high school was "obsolete." Districts lined up to get grants from his foundation to break up their high schools, and more than 2,000 of them converted to small schools, with mixed results. Some fell into squabbling turf wars, some succeeded, but Gates' own researchers concluded that the students in large schools got better test scores than those in his prized small schools. So in late 2008, he simply walked away from what was once his burning cause.

The main effect of Gates' policy has been to demoralize millions of teachers, who don't understand how they went from being respected members of the community to Public Enemy No. 1.

Now, he has thrown his support behind the idea that America has too many bad teachers, and he is pouring billions into the hunt for bad teachers. As the Times article shows, he has bought the support of a wide range of organizations, from conservative to liberal. He has even thrown a few million to the teachers' unions to gain their assent. Unmentioned is that Gates has gotten the federal government to join him in his current belief that what matters most is creating teacher evaluation systems tied to student test scores.

Gates seems not to know or care that the leading testing experts in the nation agree that this is a fruitless and wrongheaded way to identify either good teachers or bad teachers. Student test scores depend on what students do, what effort they expend, how often they attend school, what support they have at home, and most especially on their socioeconomic status and family income. Test scores may go up or go down, in response to the composition of the class, without regard to teacher quality. Students are not randomly assigned to teachers. A teacher of gifted children, whose scores are already sky-high, may see little or no gains. A teacher of children with disabilities may be thrilled to see students respond to instruction, even if their test scores don't go up. A teacher in a poor neighborhood may have high student turnover and poor attendance, and the scores will say nothing about his or her quality. But all will get low marks on state evaluation systems and may end up fired.

So far, the main effect of Gates' policy has been to demoralize millions of teachers, who don't understand how they went from being respected members of the community to Public Enemy No. 1.

As a nation we now have a toxic combination of a failed federal policy—No Child Left Behind—which made testing the be-all and end-all of schooling, and Bill Gates' misguided belief that teacher quality can be determined by student test scores. In the years ahead, American students will undergo more and more testing, the testing industry will fatten, and the quality of education will suffer. To save their necks, teachers will teach to bad tests, school districts will drop the arts, and shrink the time available for subjects like history, geography, civics, science, and foreign languages to make time for more testing. And there will be more cheating scandals as test scores determine the lives and careers of teachers and principals, and the survival of their schools.

What is most alarming about the Times article is that Bill Gates is using his vast resources to impose his will on the nation and to subvert the democratic process. Why have we decided to outsource public education to a well-meaning but ill-informed billionaire?

Diane Ravitch is the author, most recently, of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic).
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Re: The War On Teachers

Postby JackRiddler » Thu May 26, 2011 11:27 pm


http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2011/05/ ... uncan.html

May 25, 2011
Letter to Arne Duncan
A letter from David Reber, who teaches high school biology in Lawrence KS


Mr. Duncan,

I read your Teacher Appreciation Week letter to teachers, and had at first decided not to respond. Upon further thought, I realized I do have a few things to say.

I'll begin with a small sample of relevant adjectives just to get them out of the way: condescending, arrogant, insulting, misleading, patronizing, egotistic, supercilious, haughty, insolent, peremptory, cavalier, imperious, conceited, contemptuous, pompous, audacious, brazen, insincere, superficial, contrived, garish, hollow, pedantic, shallow, swindling, boorish, predictable, duplicitous, pitchy, obtuse, banal, scheming, hackneyed, and quotidian. Again, it's just a small sample; but since your attention to teacher input is minimal, I wanted to put a lot into the first paragraph.

Your lead sentence, "I have worked in education for much of my life", immediately establishes your tone of condescension; for your 20-year "education" career lacks even one day as a classroom teacher. You, Mr. Duncan, are the poster-child for the prevailing attitude in corporate-style education reform: that the number one prerequisite for educational expertise is never having been a teacher.

Your stated goal is that teachers be "...treated with the dignity we award to other professionals n society."

Really?

How many other professionals are the last ones consulted about their own profession; and are then summarily ignored when policy decisions are made? How many other professionals are so distrusted that sweeping federal legislation is passed to "force" them to do their jobs? And what dignities did you award teachers when you publicly praised the mass firing of teachers in Rhode Island?

You acknowledge teacher's concerns about No Child Left Behind, yet you continue touting the same old rhetoric: "In today’s economy, there is no acceptable dropout rate, and we rightly expect all children -- English-language learners, students with disabilities, and children of poverty -- to learn and succeed."

What other professions are held to impossible standards of perfection? Do we demand that police officers eliminate all crime, or that doctors cure all patients? Of course we don't.

There are no parallel claims of "in today's society, there is no acceptable crime rate", or "we rightly expect all patients -- those with end-stage cancers, heart failure, and multiple gunshot wounds -- to thrive into old age." When it comes to other professions, respect and common sense prevail.

Your condescension continues with "developing better assessments so [teachers] will have useful information to guide instruction..." Excuse me, but I am a skilled, experienced, and licensed professional. I don't need an outsourced standardized test -- marketed by people who haven't set foot in my school -- to tell me how my students are doing.

I know how my students are doing because I work directly with them. I learn their strengths and weaknesses through first-hand experience, and I know how to tailor instruction to meet each student's needs. To suggest otherwise insults both me and my profession.

You want to "...restore the status of the teaching profession..." Mr. Duncan, you built your career defiling the teaching profession. Your signature effort, Race to the Top, is the largest de-professionalizing, demoralizing, sweeter-carrot-and-sharper-stick public education policy in U.S. history. You literally bribed cash-starved states to enshrine in statute the very reforms teachers have spoken against.

You imply that teachers are the bottom-feeders among academics. You want more of "America's top college students" to enter the profession. If by "top college students" you mean those with high GPA's from prestigious, pricey schools then the answer is simple: a five-fold increase in teaching salaries.

You see, Mr. Duncan, those "top" college students come largely from our nation's wealthiest families. They simply will not spend a fortune on an elite college education to pursue a 500% drop in socioeconomic status relative to their parents.

You assume that "top" college students automatically make better teachers. How, exactly, will a 21-year-old, silver-spoon-fed ivy-league graduate establish rapport with inner-city kids? You think they’d be better at it than an experienced teacher from a working-class family, with their own rough edges or checkered past, who can actually relate to those kids? Your ignorance of human nature is astounding.

As to your concluding sentence, "I hear you, I value you, and I respect you"; no, you don't, and you don't, and you don't. In fact, I don't believe you even wrote this letter for teachers.

I think you sense a shift in public opinion. Parents are starting to see through the façade; and recognize the privatization and for-profit education reform movement for what it is. And they've begun to organize --Parents Across America, is one example.

. . . No doubt some will dismiss what I've said as paranoid delusion. What they call paranoia I call paying attention. Mr. Duncan, teachers hear what you say. We also watch what you do, and we are paying attention.

Working with kids every day, our baloney-detectors are in fine form. We've heard the double-speak before; and we don't believe the dog ate your homework. Coming from children, double-speak is expected and it provides important teachable moments. Coming from adults, it's just sad.

Despite our best efforts, some folks never outgrow their disingenuous, manipulative, self- serving approach to life. Of that, Mr. Duncan, you are a shining example.


Posted by TPR at 5/25/2011

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Re: The War On Teachers

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Fri May 27, 2011 1:33 am

Simply:

Sabotaging education = Social Control.

Make education more expensive = de-politicizing college students by replacing class-consciousness with affluenza.
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Re: The War On Teachers

Postby JackRiddler » Sat May 28, 2011 7:20 pm


http://gcherald.com/letterseditor/lette ... ssue.shtml

Dear Governor Snyder,

In these tough economic times, schools are hurting. And yes, everyone in Michigan is hurting right now financially, but why aren’t we protecting schools? Schools are the one place on Earth that people look to to “fix” what is wrong with society by educating our youth and preparing them to take on the issues that society has created.

One solution I believe we must do is take a look at our corrections system in Michigan. We rank nationally at the top in the number of people we incarcerate. We also spend the most money per prisoner annually than any other state in the union. Now, I like to be at the top of lists, but this is one ranking that I don’t believe Michigan wants to be on top of.

Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.

This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!

Please provide for my students in my school district the same way we provide for a prisoner. It’s the least we can do to prepare our students for the future...by giving our schools the resources necessary to keep our students OUT of prison.

Respectfully submitted,

Nathan Bootz
Superintendent
Ithaca Public Schools

We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

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I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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Re: The War On Teachers=Social Control Strategy

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Sat May 28, 2011 9:31 pm

Former Teacher of the Year-award winner turned whistleblower, John Taylor Gatto, spelled out the history of schooling as social control-

http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm

John Taylor Gatto is a former New York State and New York City Teacher of the
Year and the author, most recently, of The Underground History of American
Education. He was a participant in the Harper's Magazine forum "School on a Hill,"
which appeared in the September 2003 issue.

.....
It was from James Bryant Conant-president of Harvard for twenty years, WWI poison-gas specialist, WWII executive on the atomic-bomb project, high commissioner of the American zone in Germany after WWII, and truly one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century-that I first got wind of the real purposes of American schooling. Without Conant, we would probably not have the same style and degree of standardized testing that we enjoy today, nor would we be blessed with gargantuan high schools that warehouse 2,000 to 4,000 students at a time, like the famous Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado. Shortly after I retired from teaching I picked up Conant's 1959 book-length essay, The Child the Parent and the State, and was more than a little intrigued to see him mention in passing that the modem schools we attend were the result of a "revolution" engineered between 1905 and 1930. A revolution? He declines to elaborate, but he does direct the curious and the uninformed to Alexander Inglis's 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education, in which "one saw this revolution through the eyes of a revolutionary."

Inglis, for whom a lecture in education at Harvard is named, makes it perfectly clear that compulsory schooling on this continent was intended to be just what it had been for Prussia in the 1820s: a fifth column into the burgeoning democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table. Modern, industrialized, compulsory schooling was to make a sort of surgical incision into the prospective unity of these underclasses. Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many other more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass of mankind, separated in childhood, would ever re-integrate into a dangerous whole.

Inglis breaks down the purpose - the actual purpose - of modem schooling into six basic functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent enough to believe the three traditional goals listed earlier:

1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.

2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.

3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.

4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.
5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.

6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.



That, unfortunately, is the purpose of mandatory public education in this country. And lest you take Inglis for an isolated crank with a rather too cynical take on the educational enterprise, you should know that he was hardly alone in championing these ideas. Conant himself, building on the ideas of Horace Mann and others, campaigned tirelessly for an American school system designed along the same lines. Men like George Peabody, who funded the cause of mandatory schooling throughout the South, surely understood that the Prussian system was useful in creating not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers. In time a great number of industrial titans came to recognize the enormous profits to be had by cultivating and tending just such a herd via public education, among them Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.
.....
CIA runs mainstream media since WWII:
news rooms, movies/TV, publishing
...
Disney is CIA for kidz!
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Re: The War On Teachers

Postby JackRiddler » Mon May 30, 2011 4:23 pm


http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-05 ... black-hole

City prepares to spend nearly $1 billion on education consultants as it fires 4,100 teachers

BY RACHEL MONAHAN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, May 13, 2011


As the city prepares to lay off 4,100 teachers, the Department of Education is planning to spend nearly $1 billion on consultants next school year, a new analysis shows.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer blasted the agency's budget as a "black hole" and took issue with the 6% increase on consultants, after his office pored over the latest budget documents.

"There are a whole lot of troubling increases that have nothing to do with spending money in the classrooms," said Stringer, noting the city's plans to lay off teachers was "political gamesmanship" and the "solution" may lie in the $20 billion Education Department budget.

"This is a black hole that gets darker and deeper as time goes on," he added.

"It's time to shine some light on what these services really are."

Stringer's analysis, which agency officials dismissed, found the agency is increasing its spending on consultants under the central administration budget by $25 million - with $23 million of the increase spent on computer services.

The analysis also found increased spending on consultants to recruit teachers by nearly $1 million - while the city is cutting teachers.

Education Department officials have said that it's necessary to continue recruiting teachers to shortage areas like special education even during cuts.

City Education Department officials rejected the analysis, saying that most of the consulting budget is for required services and directly goes to serving students with disabilities.

"The Borough President either fails to recognize an important fact about these consultant costs or he is intentionally misleading people," Chancellor Dennis Walcott said. "The truth is that over $840 million of the $981 million he cites are dedicated to direct services for our students with the vast majority going towards our students with disabilities which are services that are required under the law."

Agency officials also disputed that the computer contracts are increasing so steeply, saying instead that they underestimated expenses last year.

Jose Gonzalez, whose sons Alvaro, 10 and Allan, 9, attend Public School 73 in the Bronx joined a protest against budget cuts held yesterday at City Hall.

"We want a better education for our children. How are we going to do that?...They're really wasting money on consultants and contracts," said Gonzalez, a member of the Coalition for Educational Justice.

rmonahan@nydailynews.com






http://gothamist.com/2011/05/25/doe_spe ... ltants.php

The DOE Has A $1 Billion Dollar Consultant Problem


The Tweed Courthouse, home to the consultant-heavy Department of Education (WikiCommons).
The Department of Education, meant to be one of the defining triumphs of Michael Bloomberg's mayoral career, has become a "fiscal black hole" with a serious consultant problem to the tune of $982 million, according to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. That title comes after yet another consultant-related financial scandal came out of the department. Turns out the former Chief Financial Officer of the DOE, George Raab, and several consultants used their time their to plot Raab's exit to a private financial firm, according to a report [PDF at http://www.nycsci.org/reports/05-11%20R ... %20Ltr.pdf] from Richard J. Condon, the special commissioner of investigation for the city schools.

According to Condon (who has been on a scandal busting roll this year) Raab—who joined the DOE with a salary of $196,000 in October 2008 from the late Bear Stearns—used his position and choice of consultants to assist him in planning a department at Guggenheim Securities, where Raab ended up just 11 months after starting at the Department. Raab and four consultants from the late Stearns allegedly used DOE e-mail systems and resources to make plans for Guggenheim—and then charged the department for their time.

The ever-vigilant DOE only started to notice something fishy after the Bear gang was gone, but once they did they immediately reported it to the special investigator, they swear. But since no actual crime was committed by the group and since none of them still work for the city, Condon has recommended banning them from further work for the DOE and the DOE seems to agree.

But maybe it should just stop with the consultants all together? In the light of this latest development, Stringer has been on a press rampage regarding the massive amounts of cash the city is spending on education consultants while threatening to fire teachers. According to Stringer the DOE's spending on outside consultants soared 455% from 2004 to 2012, rising from $177 million to $982.3 million.

For an example of what exactly these consultants are doing, look no further than William Howatt, one of the consultants hired by Raab and implicated in Condon's investigation. For less than a year's work Howatt received $374,000 to help the DOE's mid-level managers by "improving their ability to adapt to change." Which we're totally sure he did...from his home in Nova Scotia where he billed the majority of his hours from. Jeez, where can we get one of these consulting gigs!


Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.
By Garth Johnston in News on May 25, 2011 3:50 PM 11





Comments on above at http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 39x1196290

madfloridian wrote:
http://failingschools.wordpress.com/201 ... yc-layoffs

Critics wonder why the city has accepted the new recruits - 400 from New York City Teaching Fellows and 100 from Teach for America - to work in shortage areas like special education instead of retraining teachers on the payroll.

"It's mind-boggling that they're hiring when I may lose my job," said Marquis Harrison, 25, who started in the city schools with Teach for America nearly three years ago."

SNIP

"Not only are they paying “consultants” to recruit these new teachers, but Teach for America corps members cost much, much more than any regular teachers. My district has paid $10,000 per year per corps member above and beyond their regular teacher salaries and regualr teacher benefits as the extra fee just to have TFA in our schools where there has never been a teacher shortage. Six TFA year one = $60,000 in fees. Six additional TFA in year two = $120,000 in fees. Year three will cost us another $60,000 for the second set of six to finish their two-year commitment. The extra money goes to TFA for administrative costs, for corps members additional training, and for a free Master’s degree in Educational Leadership from a local University. Even if they stay in the profession for a few years, it is hardly worth the additional costs. Fully trained, certified, licensed teachers are avaialable to fill these jobs. In NYC, apparently, current staff are available for these jobs. This kind of action is totally unjustifiable."



If you know the details of what many of these "consultants" do, it's far worse than you imagine. They'll take fees for many years without providing any discernible service. This is crony capitalism. This is plunder at the top to justify class war on the bottom.

This is why Bloomberg picked a beancounting hitwoman with no education experience from his business circle to run the department: to protect against the exposure of what is essentially "graft" in the form of contracts. It was beautiful how spectacularly that backfired, and maybe the fall of Cathie Black combined with this latest controversy can be the beginning of unraveling the real story of Bloomberg's mayoral dictatorship over the NYC school system and the War on Teachers nationwide.

.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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Re: The War On Teachers

Postby 82_28 » Mon May 30, 2011 5:16 pm

Fuck, I hate Bill Gates. I hate his nasally assed voice, his poor vocabulary of always having to use the word "great" to describe his shitty ass scam software, I hate his mug. I'd give him a pass if he were just an up and coming dude and wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth that went on to "found" some fucking company that anybody who knows anything is a scam and the most worthless piece of shit of software that has ever existed. But fuck bro, you're the motherfucking richest motherfucker in the world. Get out of our shit. YOU, GATES, are a case in point of why we don't need motherfuckers like you running around planet Earth. THERE SHOULD BE NO NEED FOR YOU! If you knew what was what as far as this "philanthropy" you would be like "holy shit, something's seriously wrong with this existence if all of a sudden I got like a billion dollars in my bank account and billions of people can't eat" in 1990 but then continue on doing it. Come the fuck on, bro.

Fuck you, Gates. Get the fuck out of education. Pare your wealth down to one million dollars and be done with it. Have your corporation pay some fucking taxes and quit sweating open source. Fuck. I swear to god.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: The War On Teachers

Postby Allegro » Mon May 30, 2011 10:50 pm

.
off topic for a bit...
JackRiddler wrote:... Now we have Comcast, which has been in violation of net neutrality, taking control of NBC Universal. [REFER.]
:backtotopic:
Art will be the last bastion when all else fades away.
~ Timothy White (b 1952), American rock music journalist
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