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Does this mean NYC students will no longer be taught in trailers, hallways, closets, and auditoriums?

Maybe they’ll build another high school in Northeast Queens to ease overcrowding. Yeah sure.

yay.

Actually, I think NYS students will end up as big losers due to the “Race to the Top” victory…..more testing, more data, more fraud, more skewering of data, less learning, less critical thinking, less humanity.

Teaching is about people, not data.  NYS will get the $700 million, but it won’t do anything to ease overcrowding, make class sizes smaller, buy new technology equipment, etc.  It will only create jobs for politically connected educrats who bow down to Bloomberg, Klein and hedge funds.

Oh, and shame on Michael Mulgrew for collaborating on the destruction of both public education and his union (or should I say dues collecting organization)….

It’s hard to get excited about money that likely won’t be spent in our classrooms and will be used to make our jobs more unpleasant.

@Charlie–The problem with the RTTT funds is what they are being spent on……Have you read the application? Do you realize what this means for what counts as knowledge, what counts as good teaching, and what will be scaled up in terms of both teacher preparation (or as they call it “training”), and principal “training”? Have you seen the results from the Leadership Academy which will now get much larger? Have you seen the ways that test scores are used in scientifically incorrect ways to make erroneous high stakes evaluations? Have you seen the retention rates for TFA teachers by per head cost? Have you witnessed the narrowing of the curriculum in elementary schools to focus on standardized test scores? Have you noticed that when they write and talk about “achievement” they don’t mean learning or understanding, but they always mean ‘test scores’? Have you read what psychometric experts say about using student test scores to calculate value added measures and make decisions about teacher tenure, teacher tenure? Have you read any research on merit pay? Have you looked at the common core standards? Have you used the America’s Choice curriculum–which will be the default package most urban schools will end up with? Have you noticed that all the assessments these folks are working on come from the company Pearson? Do you know that Marc Tucker just sold America’s Choice to Pearson? Do you know how much subsidies charter school builders make? And how quickly they can double their investments? Do you know how many charter schools use NYC DOE buildings for a dollar a year? Have you spent any time in some of the “high control” charter schools? Do you know the 8th grade graduation rates of Black boys in KIPP schools–compared to the number who start? [How much more time do you have for me to answer this question?]

“America’s Choice Curriculum”??? There is a erie resemblance to the humongous generically packaged goods that is sold in BJs…and I bet that for the educational quality or improvement, it will not be better.  

The incredible amount of corruption that goes so blatantly under the public’s noses simply shows how much these corrupt interests think that the public will do about it.  

But, depending in how the organized interests decide to take on the fight, the Judiciary seems to know what is festering in the narrow blank spaces of the law.  Thus, arguments need to be well formulated nevertheless, I wonder how far up in the Power ladder of Educational Deformers can be held accountable to the judgments of the courts.  

Even the SEC who decided to go for NJ and their misrepresenting their pension health for about 8 years, seems to have no clear outcome in terms of what NJ government is supposed to do in order to correct their shortchanging of the state pension fund.

Returning to NYC, how many lawsuits and what it would take for these Deformers to really, barely follow their responsibility of doing what their constituency voted/ passively voted them for?   

From Seattle to Boston, from Florida to Chicago, from LA to NY, educational policy is undergoing a sea change. It is supported by the President and the States, it is accountability, core standards, free market driven: testing, ratings/remuneration by student achievement, value-added, charter schools, etc.

Diane Ravitch and other scholars strongly oppose, however, the electeds are supportive across the nation.

If the Republicans sweep to victory these policies wouldn’t change, the fed dollars would stop flowing.

Teacher unions can either vigorous oppose and isolate themselves, they are powerless to change these policies, or, attempt to cooperate and modifiy policies.

It is easy to blame Weingarten or Mulgrew, the same policies exist in every state and every major city.

The city averted 4400 layoffs, that is 4400 colleagues that r still working, a major accomplishment in this climate. Down the road the picture is bleak, the economy continues to falter, today’s announcement: home sales down 27%.

Saving jobs should be one of top priorities of any union.

If Joel Klein were to meet “Bill” (True Blood reference) on a dark street (maybe he has and that explains his personality) and disappear his replacement might be nicer, an educator, more personable, however, his policies would not be different.

The world of education is not returning to the past, we face a decade(s) of Obama driven reforms … we should asking ourselves how we, teachers, teacher unions, can survive and play a meaningful role in this environment?

Peter,

Actually these policies (blame the teacher for all that ills the community)dont exist nearly to this degree in Westchester or Nassau counties……there, the people in charge are actually educators; what a novel concept!

I think that Peter should resign from his plush union job and rejoin the ranks and teach again…so should Mulgrew.  I wonder if Mulgrew would ever step foot in the classroom  if he were to lose a UFT election…personally, I think that the union needs term limits and that all UFT officers need to return to the classroom after a tenure of four years or so…

Perhaps, then, they will do what’s right for teachers and students instead of for their own political and financial gains…

The UFT is just one big patronage mill and has little interest in its members aside from collecting dues.

NYC Educator

I have been a Unity member for decades and have never signed any “oath,” my opinions are my own, I both agree and disagree w union leadership policies, every large urban center faces similar issues, membership in Detroit and DC, after highly contentious debate approved unpopular contracts … what were the alternatives? unpopular policies versus massive layoffs?

Debate within the union is both healthy and essential. DRs r in school constantly meeting with members, district chapter leader meetings, the Delegate Assembly, e-mails to Mulgrew and other union leaders.

Whatever the union decides to do it requires membership support, a consensus … Would attacking RttT and preventing NYS from receiving the funds been worthwhile? Would it have so alienated the legislature that they change seniority and or tenure provisions? I don’t know … these r the types of conundrums that confront union leadership.

RTT $$$ is all about evaluating teachers.  I don’t think anyone would disagree that making sure you have the best teachers in the classroom is paramount and in the best interest of kids. I have pasted a brilliant analyses and comparison posted by Paul Rubin below because it is worth reading in case you missed it.  But before I do, I feel the need to say this:
Evaluation of teachers must come by people being in the classroom. That means observing someone in action and seeing them interact with students. Unannounced preferably so that you see what someone is like without putting on a “show”. 
Now, I don’t think our current system of a Principal is enough, especially if he deems the educator unsatisfactory. We must move towards a committee of master teachers, part on the UFT payroll and CSA payroll along with a documenter of the city’s choice. 
We must present solutions to this administration as to how best to weed out poor educators because these non educators only see testing as the way to do it. There also has to be a way to chart the course of acceptable professional development that teachers need and want as opposed to the wasting their time. 
Again, we must begin proposing the solutions since it is apparent that the solutions that this administration of non educators has come up with will be more destructive then any one of them can see. 
Now for Paul Rubin’s post:
Hearing what’s going on in Los Angeles with the release of teacher test results to the general public gives me mental cramps. I’m in a position with the the NYC school system to view these so called value added test results on a teacher by teacher basis because one of my roles is the DOE designated Data Specialist for my school.

I’m not against tests. I’m not against standardized tests. I’m not against using certain bits of data gleaned from standardized tests to make decisions and change procedures, and up to a point, I can even see where, in certain extreme cases, teachers might need to be reassigned or let go. I’m hardly Chancellor’s Klein’s enemy as compared to most NYC teachers.HOWEVER, what doesn’t get enough publicity is that these test results vary incredibly from year to year for individual teachers. Schools tend to get comparable results but individual teachers can and do vary with the top 10% of teachers often falling to the median some years or worse, and some of the lower performing teachers will have some years with big jumps.There are plenty of reasons for this:

(1) EVERY class is different. An individual student can often make or break a class.(2) Different groups of students have their own dynamics that respond to different teaching techniques. So I can take Teacher A and put him in front of Class 1 and achieve success and then put him in front of Class 2 and achieve mediocrity or worse. You would need to study teachers over a period of years with different types of classes to gain a real sense of what that teacher’s strengths and weaknesses are. Some teachers work well with large classes. Some only with small. Some relish behavior problems and turn that behavior into something productive. Some fall apart. Some experience personal issues in one year that don’t exist the next. Some have a class that worked with a more compatible teacher the previous year. Some work in schools where the teachers are more apt to help each other, some in a more competitive environment.

(3) The tests are not stagnant. Ask any English or Math teacher to describe the difficulty level of today’s tests as compared to say 10-15 years ago and you’ll get an earful. It’s not just that the standards were dropped and now all of a sudden raised. The tests themselves have been manipulated and some teachers took better advantage of those manipulations.

(4) Many of our best teachers are utterly resentful not of being judged but of having these results blown so out of proportion that they now must teach to the test exclusively rather than develop the child’s interest in the subject and put them on a track to improve over time. We can’t test that with a single annual test. We must figure out a way to track that over time and as a parent and teacher and simply as a interested citizen, that gift that a good teacher will give their child is no less important that a question or two on a standardized test measuring low level thinking skills.

Bloomberg and Klein should be applauded for shedding some intense light on the state of American education. God knows it’s not as good as it was and not as good as it can be let alone should be. But they’re taking a complex set of inter-related variables and trying to boil an art into an exact science. The only way that goes is into history’s dustbin of expensive and disastrous failures. A good principal with a solid administrative staff and the input of 3 or 4 key teachers can tell you with about 99% accuracy who belongs in the classroom and who does not. These “experiments” are going to give us at best 70% accuracy. You tell me where the money and effort should really be invested.

What we have is a fundamental disagreement on how to evaluate teachers. On the one hand, we have the vast majority from Obama/Duncan down to Bloomberg/Klein/Rhee/Gates, etc. who believe it comes down to results on standardized tests given in two subjects on some grades. On the other, you have those who view schooling as more complex with issues ranging from socialization to the arts to a love of learning to development of higher order thinking skills that can’t be readily dealt with via standardized tests.Anyone with a modicum of common sense knows that we must have a balance of both ends of this spectrum but we can’t even figure out how to properly measure a teacher’s impact on something as straight forward as test results so how are we going to evaluate all that other stuff?

I wonder how Joel Klein would favor evaluating lawyers? Is it just about winning the highest percentage of cases? Numerically straightforward and on first glance completely logical. I’d like to think he’s smarter than that and he’d know that if that’s how we evaluated lawyers, lawyers would gravitate to easily winnable cases. Who would represent the inevitable losers? Just the bad lawyers? Could we somehow weight the cases before they were tried to give them each a difficulty rating so that good lawyers would have incentive to take some of those tougher cases on? Perhaps but how can you effectively determine that when you don’t know how the case will proceed from both sides in advance? Hmm. Perhaps we just evaluate lawyers based on billable hours? Isn’t that sort of how it’s done now? Problem with that is lawyers only have incentive to rig the process to make cases drag out, create paperwork unnecessarily, and leave many Americans without the resources to have legal representation. Damn, this accountability/evaluation stuff is hard.

Let’s make it harder still? Let’s assign the cases randomly to the lawyers without regard to their specific expertise and strengths but still evaluate them based on cases won. How far do you think that gets through our state and federal legislatures dominated by current and former attorneys who would whine about unfairness and how it will damage the field and and so on. Wa wa wa! Those damn lazy lawyers who want to get paid big bucks with no accountability.But wait, that’s not hard enough. Cause sometimes their clients will be uncooperative, unwilling to listen or properly defend themselves. And nobody, not even the client’s parents can get them to attend meetings when they’re been scheduled and these shiftless clients just don’t seem to care. But the lawyer has to deal with it and very often, through no fault of their own, they will lose the case for this reason but now, since wins and losses are the only thing that matters, too bad, you struck out too often cause you had difficult clients, and we’re going to deny you your livelihood. Get out of the field. Yeah, that’s likely to happen.Don’t pretend not to know what’s really going on here. Lawyers outearn teachers therefore they must be smarter than teachers about everything including education. Lawyers are at the top of the food chain looking down at us and for better or worse, control both government and to a certain extent, the private sector. They know what’s good for us and they’re going to jam it down our throats just as they jam policy down the throats of the medical industry cause afterall they’re expert in that too. And they know everything there is to know about investments, real estate, the banking industry. And they know about foreign relations, the military, building trades, sports franchises. Hell they even know more than everyone else about drilling for oil. Are we seeing a pattern here? We’re supposed to be a representative democracy and our representatives consist of probably 70% attorneys, 10% private business owners, 10% doctors, 5% former military and the other 5% consist of every other field imaginable. How come there are so few teachers? Don’t web designers and programmers aspire to politics? How many firemen and cops or sanitation workers give it a go? Are there any construction workers in politics? A lot of housewives perhaps? Chefs? Waitresses? I hear Spitzer’s madam is running for governor but is she beating Cuomo (a lawyer)? Wasn’t Spitzer a lawyer? Isn’t Christie a lawyer? Obama? I rest my delirious case. This isn’t about school reform at all. Or even destroying public education for the private sector’s benefit. It’s about lawyers who feel that a few years of law school, typically good incomes, a learned ability (from teachers mind you) to write in a way that obscures the intent from those not in the legal club, entitles them to run every aspect of American life. Perhaps this is really where the debate needs to be fought. It’s not about test scores folks.

It’s about control.

Control of teachers and parents mind you. And of course the kids we both care about.

Peter,

You’ve written repeatedly now that you’ve never signed an ‘oath’. Have you ever signed ANYTHING that prohibits you from publicly criticizing or contradicting union policies or ideologies? And if that in itself is confidential, please encrypt your next comment in the page and line numbers of virtually unknown 19th century novels.

Mama Bear,

I love your idea.

looks like CT, PA and NJ are the places to teach!

That was for Astraka, by the way.

Were happy about the money, upset cause it cannot be used for any real change.

Godwin’s law
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Godwin’s law (also known as Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin’s law of Nazi Analogies)[1][2] is a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1989 which has become an Internet adage. It states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”[3][2] In other words, Godwin put forth the sarcastic observation that, given enough time, all discussions—regardless of topic or scope—inevitably wind up being about Hitler and the Nazis.

Godwin’s law is often cited in online discussions as a deterrent against the use of arguments in the widespread reductio ad Hitlerum form. The rule does not make any statement about whether any particular reference or comparison to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate, but only asserts that the likelihood of such a reference or comparison arising increases as the discussion progresses. It is precisely because such a comparison or reference may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued[4] that overuse of Nazi and Hitler comparisons should be avoided, because it robs the valid comparisons of their impact.

There are many corollaries to Godwin’s law, some considered more canonical (by being adopted by Godwin himself)[3] than others.[1] For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically “lost” whatever debate was in progress.

Peter’s new job is to spin this fairytale. I’m sure he gets a little stipend from Big Mama. I mean, he still hasn’t answered any of the questions we posed to him about the results of the ’05 contract and mayoral control. He thinks the elected officials know more than Diane Ravitch. He loves seeing public school children losing their classroom spaces for charters.

Peter has no soul. He gave that up to Randi when he kissed her ring and said, “Godmother, make me an offer I can’t refuse”.

ICE and UNITY are political parties, in the Congress the political parties develop and support positions on the floor of the Congress, Democrats don’t attack Pelosi or Reid on the floor of the Congress, nor would I expect ICE or UNITY supporters to attack their leadership.

Union policy evolves.

District Reps are in schools each and every day listening to members, District Reps meet with union leadership and debate issues and policies, and these positions/policies come to the Ex Bd and the DA.

I served on the Governance Task Force, some of my ideas made it into the final document, most didn’t (I argued for an expedited appeal to the Commissioner and to the courts through an Article 78 proceeding … didn’t make it into the report).

The last two contracts were overwhelmingly approved by secret ballot elections at schools. They were far from “perfect” contracts, however, the salary increases were substantial.

The union has a complex relationship w/ the Mayor, for some comments on this site the failure of the union to publicly skewer the Mayor at every opportunity is a failure. The union has a respnsibility to its membership. In spite of the city budget woes and the threat of 4400 layoffs, no teacher was laid off. Some may argue they would rather have a raise, they would be happier if Mulgrew attacked Bloomberg every opportunity, I view the avoidance of 4400 layoffs of union brothers and sisters as an important victory.

On another note: This site offers teachers, parents, and the public in general an opportunity to comment on policy, to particpate in an online debate, offer alternative strategies, solutions, etc.,
let me raise an issue: in the current contract negotiations what are the core issues?

salary increases, protecting tenure and seniority, others?

Are members willing to wait, six months? a year? as long as it takes?

How do you gain public support?

Peter,

You speak of the complexities of the political process and governance: all well and good. You then illustrate your point by referring to the UFT Governance Committee, on which I also served, and mention how some of your recommendations made it into the report, while others did not.

What you did not mention, however, is the fact that Randi Weingarten, unilaterally and without any consultation with the Committee, Delegate Assembly or membership, threw the report in the trash and supported mayor control of the schools, guaranteeing its continuation (and everything that follows from it)..

In what universe does this constitute “a responsibility to the membership?”

PS: You ask, “How do you gain public support?” One way is to not betray the parents who’ve worked with you, and who looked to the UFT as the one institution that could have blocked the continuation of the mayoral dictatorship of the schools, which is the source of their disenfranchisement.

Peter, it is interesting to see how you put ’4400′ jobs saved as something of an accomplishment by the Union and yet Mulgrew and other UFT officials called it an unilateral move which did not take into account a dialogue with the Union.  The Union did NOTHING, it was the major who struck what he wanted by ‘sparing’ these jobs at the expense of just teacher’s raises, while all other municipal unions played a different game.  Please stop taking credit where no credit is due. 

Your description about the Union’s relationship with The Supreme Leader (AKA:Bloomberg) as “complex” and thus, your not advocating adversarial public policy positions by the Union leaderships is quite simply puzzling to someone as simple minded as myself.  

I guess it is all fine and dandy to lay low, and be demure when someone is slowly and steadily dismantling all that you stand for, that is fairness, due process etc…  

Silence has its place but then, the Union’s choice of using it in this one sided, character assassination of the profession by moneyed and corrupt interests in City Hall, is not appropriate.  

Peter,

What matters to me is getting a salary that is not appx. 20-25% less than all districts in Westchester and Nassau counties. Getting a fair salary should not involve touching seniority or tenure. Those two issues should be completely non negotiable. In case you are not aware, layoffs are done by seniority in all districts in those two aforementioned counties. Why should they be done differently in NYC? Why does the UFT not push this issue of how our salary stacks up to districts in those counties. 
If you are wondering what their pay is feel free to see: :http://seethroughny.net/Contracts/TeacherSuperintendentContracts/tabid/54/Default.aspx

Peter

How do you gain public support? Show me where the UFT/AFT has gained public support. You must be talking about Michelle Rhee or Arne Duncan who love Randi. And all the other ed deformers who praise the UFT/AFT leaders. Your mistake is you confuse the pundits and ed deformers with the public. In fact the position the anti ed deformers are taking is getting more public support as has Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meiers, former friends of the UFT/AFT. Not the mention the rank and file teachers.

As to trying to compare Unity and ICE that is a joke. Unity sets UFT policy and the lack of internal debate within Unity is part of the problem. ICE has internal debate and no caucus discipline so people are free to take any position they want to. That has led to healthy discussion which is one of the reasons the opposition has been able to take positions on high stakes testing, mayoral control, merit pay, charter schools etc – posiitions that were once in the extreme minority that are now being accepted by many teachers and parents. How does that decision to open up those UFT charter schools, which we opposed, look now?

Funny that you mention all the other cities that have ed deform. You were in the room at a UFT EXec Bd meeting in June 2001 – when Randi called for mayoral control – when I put on the table of every Ex BD member Ed Notes talking about the impact on Chicago of mayoral control listing all the catastrophes that were to come.

Note how until recently the union acted as if Klein were the problem and did nothing to educate the membership about the nationwide assault on teachers that was going on for a decade. That was on purpose as the union doesn’t want an educated membership. Thank goodness for the blogs over the last few years that have been able to circumvent the monopoly the union had on the means of communication with teachers. Readers may be few compared to the total membership but the job of the alternative groups to Unity is to expand that network.

Sorry Cory, wrong link, correct link below,

http://mets2006.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/the-calculus-and-rituals-of-labor-contract-negotiations-will-randi-and-mike-agree-to-a-modest-contract-or-spar-over-core-union-issues/