GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

This is weird . Why such an arbitrary mandate? To replace half the staff? This is an asinine attempt to butt in, and enable the rich to self actualize in a new and fun manner.I could gather a group of teachers at most schools, and get many ideas that would be good starting points for doable and positive change.

I’m so happy that Michael Mulgrew has found a pal who can give him (im)moral support while he goes about the hard work of selling out his members by teaming up to privatize schools, gut the contract (the Green Dot/UFT contract has no tenure or seniority provisions) and destroy the professional lives of the teachers who will be displaced at these schools.

And it’s also heartwarming that Mulgrew could earn the affection of real estate developer and charter school funder Gideon Stein. Think of the effort involved in getting him to jilt Eva! But it’s a leader’s job to go the extra mile and make the tough decisions, and what could possibly be more important than keeping the dues machine going while public education is dismantled? Yes, like his mentor Weingarten, Mulgrew is striving to earn those pats on the head from the education privateers.

When Bloomberg wrote an editorial in the NY Times in February, saying that unions were important in helping him manage the workforce, it was the Weingartens, Mulgrews and Caseys of the world he had in mind. With the union functioning as an arm of the DOE’s HR department, it’s enough to make the people who’ve defended it ashamed.

Maura Walz, please dial up your skepticism detector.

1. The supposed union contracts at Green Dot schools are shams without job security. No union contract has teeth without job security.

When Green Dot took over Locke High School in Watts, the catalyst was that more than half the teachers signed a letter requesting the takeover. Then Green Dot required all the teachers to reapply for their jobs and rehired only 20-30% of them — or, to put it another way, fired 70-80% of the teachers, replacing them with cheaper beginners.

It misinforms the reader to treat this unquestioningly as a union-charter operator collaboration.

2. Your coverage implies that the Green Dot takeover of Locke has been a successful transformation. Actually, achievement has not budged. It’s generally agreed that the campus is cleaner and safer — well, sure, because Green Dot has poured money into security and maintenance, money that huge and fiscally strapped LAUSD could not lavish on one single school. But, again, achievement hasn’t budged.

It’s also important to know that Green Dot’s Los Angeles schools are low academic achievers. That question doesn’t even get asked quite often, so the press seems to *assume* that they’re all-around successes.

3. It’s widely known that there’s been quite a wrangle between Green Dot and Steve Barr over Barr’s attempt to use the Green Dot name in his attempt to expand his con job — oops, project — on a national scale. That’s part of the story.

I gather that Barr is a charming and persuasive character. Journalists obviously need to be persistent and aggressive in the face of personal charisma.

Its upsetting to see my union working with executives who would rather the union not exist.

I’m not sure they care whether or not the union exists. They’re fine with union, as long as it includes neither tenure nor seniority protection and has no real power whatsoever.

agreed about the lack of appropriate skepticism here but as usual you’ve got a few of your facts wrong: for example, many of the teachers chose not to come back because they wanted to keep their ahem lifetime health benefits. and the contract isn’t a sham it’s just not the traditional model — you should read it or check out green dot’s retention / dismissal numbers.

According to the aggregate of the Los Angeles Times data for Green Dot Schools, the average Green Dot teacher has 2.5 years experience. While slightly higher than that of most CMOs (2 years), it still speaks volumes to Association de Maestros Unido (AMU) being a company union (yellow union in the parlance I’m more familiar with).

Their dismissal numbers aren’t too bad, but consider this. AMU has never contested a single dismissal. Not one! Even the most jaded corporate charter cheerleader would be lead to think that a union, no matter how closely collaborative with the CMO executive class, would have challenged at least one of those dismissals. Unless of course, it was a bona fides company union.

AMU didn’t question Marco Petruzzi’s fiat closure of Ánimo Justice either, if they were a substantial union, they could have united with the mass movement and protests by the families that were disenfranchised by Petruzzi’s bottom line move. I was fortunate to see the struggle first hand by the families that Green Dot threw to the curb. Some of the individual teachers helped those families, but since they didn’t have any actual union protection from Green Dot reprisals, it didn’t go very far. In the end Petruzzi was able to use those funds to open two new schools after lying to the Ánimo Justice community when he said “We have no money. We’re a non-profit. We don’t have a rich guy that even [sic] gives us extra.”

Unfortunately, in Los Angeles, we’ve become accustomed to wealthy CMO executives lying on that scale.

I would counter that it’s those who describe Green Dot and its spinoff(s?) as labor-friendly schools who have their facts wrong.

That’s a matter of opinion, Alexander, not a “wrong fact.” However, a real fact is that I’ve discussed this with many observers who were commenting approvingly on Green Dot’s supposed labor-friendliness, but were unaware that the contract isn’t “the traditional model” (aka, one with teeth). Once they learned the truth, they revised their opinion.

So who is putting out false information?

I’m not sure the “oh, they CHOSE to leave” damage-control claim about Locke teachers holds up. It’s like KIPP’s claim that the horde of unsuccessful students streaming out their doors CHOSE to leave.

A staffer at a Bay Area public school that takes in some dumpees from a nearby superstar charter school told me that the students who reportedly “chose” to leave the charter school tend to turn up in the public school office to register — crying, along with a crying parent.

Similarly, I wonder if those teachers who supposedly “chose” to leave would affirm that it was their choice.

Keep the skepticism juices flowing.

Caroline is wrong about achievement at Locke pre- and post-Green Dot. Publicly available Academic Performance Indexes are as follows: 2007 (the time of the rebellion) 511; 2008 (a final LAUSD year) 515 (an untrustworthy figure, but that would be a lengthy digression); 2009 (first Green Dot year) 542; 2010 (most recent figure available) 601. And compare this all with 370, Locke’s score when I started there, in 2001. “Achievement hasn’t budged” is factually wrong.

Alexander, it’s not that easy to get information about these situations unless you’ve been following it all along, as I have been.

(The Los Angeles Times did a big whopping Page 1 puff piece on Green Dot a few years ago; my mother-in-law, in West L.A., interpreted it as saying that Green Dot schools were being opened far and wide, and sent it to me with a handwritten note asking, “How are the Green Dot schools in San Francisco doing?”

Naturally, there are no Green Dot schools in San Francisco, and I will certainly be doing my best as a longtime parent volunteer advocate to ensure that it stays that way. But anyway, right then I started following it as closely as possible, and have “Green Dot” on Google alert.)

So anyway, it’s not fair to snipe at others for making erroneous inferences, and it’s not fair to accuse me of misstatements. It’s especially unfair because Green Dot and its PR operation work so hard to mislead us — we have to pick through their PR firm’s puffery and misstatements, and news accounts that so often fall victim to the puffery and misstatements, in search of the truth.

Caroline, I was using the numbers for the legacy school (in 2009 grades 10-12, in 2010 11-12, this year down to just one grade), where several of my friends work. For the Locke family as a whole, the most recent API was 565, Locke’s highest ever, surpassing the previous high of 539, earned in Green Dot’s first year.

In addition, several hundred (700-800, an increase of approximately 50%) more students are being tested each year than before. These would likely have been dropouts unavailable for testing under the old management.

I have not done the calculations myself–I am merely reporting them, from the same sources used to calculate federal AYP information–here are links to two sources: http://projects.latimes.com/schools/school/los-angeles/alain-leroy-locke-senior-high/ and http://www.greendot.org/results/school_results. The federal government is making the comparisons, as required by law. You need to get your facts straight, or you should simply maintain silence on a subject that you cannot but mislead people about since you steadfastly refuse to gather hard data but instead rely upon second-hand and inaccurate generalizations.