GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

So Obama says the rules are blatantly unfairn then blackmails the States to reform schools with HIS agenda—-and you wonder why people want the Federal Government out of local school business completely.

Now that NCLB has done what what it was intended to do, namely, stigmatize virtually every public school as failing – after all, achieving on 100% proficiency is a statistical  impossibility – Obama and Duncan try to come in as “reasonable” people, extorting communities into accepting privatization, teacher evaluation schemes that are guaranteed to eliminate tenure and seniority, forcing force people out of the system, and a Microsoft/Pearson-generated “curriculum” that is a pretext for even more testing.

NYS granted Bloomberg mayoral control.
Mayor breaks large schools into small theme schools and phase out large schools.
Small theme schools accept only the best of the best students and they are exempted from all sp.ed./ESL criteria.
Small theme schools hire only TFA or TF’s teachers, where Damocles’ sword is over their head to pass every child.
Small theme schools get A’s and B’s; there’s a correlation between student credit accumulation and untenured teachers.
Large schools receive all the special needs, ELL and disadvantaged students from those phased out schools.
Large schools receive no extra resource or support from the DoE, but the DoE gives those necessary resources to small theme schools.
Large schools are struggling to help these emotionally challenged, low socio-economic, level 1 students who are placed in the school carrying very little credit accumulation.  These students have not passed the regents or have passed 1 or 2 and many are overage.  The schools must have them graduate in 4 years.
DoE spends an exorbitant amount of money on the Predictive Assessment Test and teachers are required to test to the test.  DoE pressures Principals; Principals pressure teachers.  Credit recovery is used and abused, where the granting of credits will keep the schools open at the cost of an education for each child in this Ponzi scheme called NCLB and Mayoral Control.
Regents exams are water downed so much during the Mayoral elections (2005 & 2009) that a 6th grader can take the regents and bubble any answer and still get a 65.  Money can buy anything even a repeal of term limits and getting the state regents to make the cut scores on regents low enough to make Forrest Gump a valedictorian.
Mayor Bloomberg is in favor of term limits.  Cut scores on regents are increased.  Students were not allowed to learn to think, but to bubble in the answers.  The failure rate is higher now than ever, and colleges are inquiring about the students’ lack of college-readiness that the Bloomberg’s Children First Initiative has produced.
Budget cuts are imposed at the schools, but the DoE gets more funding.  Three Chancellors have been incompetent and they are lackeys to the mayor.  Parents have been shut-out or ignored; the majority of the PEP members are lackeys to the mayor.  The no-bid contracts of hundreds of million of dollars never trickled down to the schools, but to these corporations of “syndication”.  Charter schools co-locate in existing public schools, squeezing the life out of the public school.
 
I wonder why the schools are sub-par as per the NCLB law which is a senseless, incomprehensible, punitive, ridiculous law.  Mayoral control does ensure that every child gets an education; it only guarantees the mayor’s political career stays alive and strong as public schools are destroyed.

I’m pondering how depressed I would have been if my High School English teacher used a discussion about Orwell as an occasion to illustrate “what real educators are up against.”