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Move them widgets (aka students) down the assembly line, and declare Mission Accomplished in weekly glossy mailers. Just don’t call it “social promotion.”

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2008/03/8th-grade-retention-vote-at-march-17th.html

Dr. Fernandez for Chancellor.

As they say the proof is in the pudding.. Stop drinking the kleinaide people. The state tests are watered down and the bloomberg klein mantra of testing up the yin yang has resulted in our kids not being taught a damn thing but how to use a number 2 pencil to bubble in a scantron sheet. As far as placing blame goes.. i wouldn’t know where to start except to say that when high schools get these kids they are also below grade level in reading and math. I thought bloomberg said he got rid of social promotion. The high schools also have the task of getting them through regents exams which is tough to do if you have to teach them basic skills they should have learned in 4th grade.

The discussion about remediation occurs soon after the 11 minute mark in the first part of the interview.

The most interesting part, supported by Mr. Jacobs, is that more kids are graduating high school. The interesting question, who?

If Bloomberg’s schools graduate more kids, but they all need remediation…?

Andy,

Do you have stats on a hybrid of your second and third paras? How many (or what percent) of the NYC public school grads who entered CUNY needed CUNY’s remedial help? And how did THAT change over time?

It’s good to see that CUNY, and especially its community college subset, takes on the responsibility of picking up the slack — of inadequately prepared handoffs from (presumably mostly) the NYC Public School system.

Forget the 8% drop in 6 years, despite a huge increas in total number of “graduates.” We’re still talking a whopping 74%. That’s nothing to celebrate — and no basis to justify a third term.

As an example of what kinds of stunts are being pulled to get that 70 percent graduation rate, we had a student graduate this June who made up 10 credits in a week. Yep, folks, count ‘em – 10 credits. A colleague commented that the student could have completed high school in a month at that rate. If it’s happening at my school, then it’s happening everywhere. In my opinion, this is what happens when you take away tenure. The principals no longer have tenure, they don’t want to lose their jobs, and they are under tremendous pressure to graduate kids. Everyone is lying because the truth is too scary, depressing, or too complicated to deal with.

“Although the current system is far from perfect, it is miles for the corrupt, cronyism system that existed under the ol’ BOE. Principalships were not given to the most qualified individuals but to those who spent their years brown nosing and kissing up to the powers that be. At least today, dynamic leaders are given an opportunity to lead and many are doing a phenomenal job.”

And you claim to know your way around the Bronx? We are saddled with incompetent, inexperienced, arbitrary, autocratic principals in far too many of the schools that Nadelstern created and Bloomberg deserves blame for. How did we get principals who’d never taught? Who have no clue what should be going on in a classroom?

“Although some credit recovery can be dubious, no principal will risk their job by just giving credits away.”

Based on what? Credit recovery is rampant, and it is rewarded through the Progress Reports. No one investigates; no one looks closely. If principals caught changing grades are not even admonished, who will be afraid of handing out credit?

“She said something to the effect that she couldn’t teach under the current system because she would feel stifled. Any principal worth his salt encourages and breeds innovation and creativity in the classroom.”

Says who? Mandated curricula. Mandated classroom models. Mapping standards to lessons. Acuity. It goes on and on. Ask any teacher with a few years what has happened to their job. We’ve never been as CYA as we are now, and we’ve never been as exhausted.

Essentially, you’ve called her a liar time and time again. You did the same to sodeskune. But you’ve provided nothing to back up what you say.

The reason it’s easy to pile on Bloomberg is that the system has gotten worse under his watch. From the inside, we know. And no spin will wipe that away.

“We all know that there are administrators that give the word administration a bad name, however in today’s educational climate they are becoming scarce. Because if they don’t perform, they don’t last in the system.”

really edu-scientist?

Thats news to me.. My school is being phased out and while I got excessed because of seniority all the administrators are staying and I’ve detailed before some of the garbage these so called saviors have pulled. i.e observing someone the day he was giving a test for his tenure observation..
So you let me know how a principal shouldn’t be fired immediatly if a school is targeted for phase out.. there’s some accountability for you to stick in your pipe and smoke.

sodeskune : what you are talking about is simply ridiculous. If it is true, which I doubt, either your principal has no soul or the teachers in your building have no spine. Call 311 and report it.

Edu_scientist, you’re kidding, right? You must be a Teach-for-America recruit.

You’d send your kid to Aerospace? End of that conversation.

Back to Mr. Jacobs’ comment:

She doesn’t say a higher proportion need remediation. She says the size of Hostos CC’s remedial program has doubled.

What I’m implying, and I’m probably right, is the kids who are barely graduating today would not have graduated previously. But when principals are encouraged to hand out credits, when small schools get squeezed on numbers AND grade their own regents, without fear of audit…

sodeskune, I’ve seen the same type of stuff, reported it, had it investigated, and was told that principals have a lot of lattitude when it comes to grade fixing and that it was very difficult to get school employees to talk. Be very careful about being a whistle blower. In fact, I suggest you send the information to eduscientist, or someone else with faith in Klein’s integrity, and have him or her report it.

I will not defend crooked practices by anyone. I won’t say that it doesn’t happen, but I am sure the stories that are told are exactly that – fictional stories
Geez man if your on vacation I want what your smoking.. Why would we make this crap up? Oh wait I forgot we’re teachers so we’re here defending the contract. These are not fictional stories this stuff happens.. open your eyes.. I suppose you believe the magic bullet theory too.. And thats another thing.. Every time I hear a gripe about the teachers union they always mention the onerous contract.. Well why don’t you review it.. tell me the parts you have a problem with.. please lets see where this contract is holding these kids back.. You won’t though.. You’ll just keep bringing up the same tired arguments that you read in the post. Pathetic is all I can say

socrates, sorry, I mean edu-scientist..There is a lot of underhanded stuff going on through Bloomberg/Klein/nervous principals’ credit policies. The sad part is that the politicians are aware of it and the media is aware of it, but do nothing about it. Currently, fair and honest education is suffering from a corruption that is hidden by a wealthy PR monster.

Here’s the problem with this yern for accountability. That term means only one thing.. whose to blame.. Is that whats important here? Thats what we’re debating? Who wants to take blame? WHo can we point the finger to? Its nice if someone is willing to fall on the sword but honestly since when has taking ownership of a disaster solved the problem.. It doesn’t its the honorable thing to do.. But that doesn’t mean the disaster itself gets fixed.. Truth is its a lot deeper then a mayor, a union, an admin or a socio economic group.. We should be working to solve the problems together instead of debating whose head should be on the chopping block. If we all have th best interests of the students at heart then we should realize that we are all equal shareholders in the success of the school system. The mayor as the executive should be there finding ways to fund this, the admins should be working with the teachers to collaborate ways in which to overcome the hardships they are seeing on the front lines in the classroom and the neighborhoods should be asking what they can do to help the schools. Its not about making ones self look better through countless data reports and stats on regents scores.

Glad to have you aboard Javier.. Seems like she is just like bloomberg.

Howdy
Thanks for the welcome Insider Knowledge. I’m not sure if she’s from Bloomberg’s circle or not. But she’s in the neighbourhood. That’s for sure. She arrived at Hostos via Badillo and Guiliani. How she got herself in through Diaz Junior is beyond me, Of course there has to be more to it and I aim to find out.

Be careful! Her method emphasizes appearances over substance. I still remember when she arrived at Hostos with her “team” They descended like vultures upon a scared and intimidated workforce. You’ll remember that the tabloids had vilified Hostos for months and the newcomers could smell blood. They brought with them the notion that government service was garbage and the private sector was the ideal that public employees should model themselves on. It didn’t matter that most of them were either private sector failures or thoroughly untested in that utopian work environment they so wanted to emulate! They arrived with a lot of talk of results oriented approaches, customer driven environments, excellence models, performance and professionalism. In reality the only thing they excelled at was creating the image of results rather than the real thing. It was really very simple to do. They bullied, intimidated and sometimes fired vulnerable faculty and staff while cajoling or buying up powerful academics and student leaders. This had the effect of keeping complaints down while this piece of garbage Fernandez basked in the light of that facade she had created. She really managed to turn Hostos into a perfectly run whorehouse. And for that she deserves a stifling punishment.

The corrupted environment she created made it possible for employee abuse to become rampant without it being noticed much. In order to create a provost position, new VP slots and other high bucks executive jobs for her buddies without busting the budget, this low life fired dozens of low paid college assistants and other provisional employees. As a result remaining salaried workers were often expected to be on call 24 hours a day. Employees, particularly the lower ranking were often expected to work way above their pay grade. I recall the case of a woman whose name I don’t remember but whose story I remember well. She worked as a college assistant for a guy named Nixon in some office. The guy told her point blank that he didn’t know how to do the job and would be relying on her to do it for him. Like a good employee she said OK and gave it her best shot. For some time she functioned as the de facto manager for about 9 bucks an hour while this guy played billiards. In the end they weren’t entirely happy with the job “HE” was doing so he turned around and fired her. She complained, but as a college assistant she had virtually no rights. This is just one of the atrocities that occurred on Fernandez’ watch.

There was a guy who ran the IT office whose hobby seemed to be, verbally abusing women. He really didn’t like the idea of women having anything to say and it bothered him when they did. One time, he so insulted a lady by the name of Maria that she was absolutely incensed. I believe he had her transferred out of the IT department or maybe she asked for the transfer. I’m not sure what happened but verbally abusing a woman in the workplace would normally have been a serious issue, particularly in a school like Hostos where women are said to be a very powerful group. Unfortunately, in the rubber stamp environment Fernandez created, not only could this sort of thing happen, but the aggressor could get away unscathed and remain in his position. But what really steams me about this is that they fired a perfectly competent IT manager, so they could give his job away to this abusive piece of garbage. He won his grievance, but did so posthumously. After leaving Hostos, he went to work at the Metropolitan Transit Council in the World Trade Center and went down with the building. He would be alive today if it wasn’t for this animal and her friends.

Then there’s what happened to me. It’s a story in itself. It involves the corruption of the faculty, the presence of do nothing coworkers, negative evaluations given to me by a no show supervisor, evaluation on jobs normally assigned only to senior lab techs, threats and retaliation by another lab tech and her idiotic son. There was a supervisor who liked to hire dainty cutesy childlike women whom he treated like his grandchildren. There’s a tenured lab tech who had maneuvered herself into a position where she could not be asked to do any sort of work because she was either not trained for it or because it somehow didn’t fall into her idea of her job description or because she was handicapped.
And there’s lot’s more.

Then there’s the union side of the thing. On that end there’s a union boss by the name of Barbara Bowen who couldn’t think of anything better to do than hire a convicted felon as the union’s lead attorney! The guy had been convicted of giving false information to a court officer in the Ron Carey corruption scandal. He managed to finish wrecking my case by giving it as much attention as you might give to a parking violation. But of course with his criminal past, I can only wonder if there was something more to my loss. Bowen never did answer me when I demanded that she explain why she had hired him. And there’s more.

What really surprises me is how after all this trying I’ve been unable to get anyone in the city government to conduct an investigation of my allegations. At the DOI, a woman by the name of Wright referred the matter back to CUNY! The state investigative office didn’t even respond. Why is it that no one seems to be interested in looking into what happened to me at Hostos? I am more convinced than ever that there is corruption to be found in all this.

But this is far bigger than me. I’d like to see an authoritative probe into employee abuse at Hostos during the time of Dolores Fernandez. If you know where I might be able to get that probe please let me know. I think it’s very important. This Fernandez is an up and coming sort and could go very far and do a lot of damage if she isn’t stopped. Can you imagine this person wound up running our public schools or CUNY or advising Obama on education! Remember, people like Fernandez arrive at their positions through political connections, not competence.

Regards

Javier