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Does the chancellor’s new inititive mean all populations of students with special needs, or just any student with and IEP. If these schools are just adding more students with “resource room” while the large schools still have all the “self-contained” special ed, this will not level the playing field in any way, nor will it open any new doors for the city’s neediest kids.

Last Friday morning I sent New York Post reporter Susan Edelman the following email in anticipation of her Sunday story on a handful of DOE teacher-scapegoats who are rolled out seriatim whenever the paper wants to inflame anti-UFT know-nothings (“Disgraced teacher is worth $10M”):
“My friend Teacher X told me this morning about your call. I surmise that you are writing a follow-up to the Post’s teacher bashing stories this week in order to promote the DOE’s argument for strictly in-house evaluations and terminations. Regrettably, the Post’s slant in grossly unfair because you are ignoring the many cases where the DOE’s prosecutions were tossed for valid reasons. It is intellectually dishonest and a journalistic crime to pretend that the DOE is an ethical institution and, consequently, above suspicion in its treatment of teachers.
 “Consider the fact that the DOE under Bloomberg’s control corruptly covered up Regents tampering and tricked up credit recovery schemes to inflate the city’s graduation rate. For example, the Mayor claimed an historic grad rate of 65 percent last June when he and Chancellor Walcott knew this stat was inaccurate. Why inaccurate? Because it did not control for Regents cheating that your sister paper, the Wall Street Journal, estimated to be between 5 and 10% via scrubbing. And when Joel Klein was asked to comment on the Journal’s devasating  Feb. 2 report, he took the 5th and declined comment. To date, nobody at Tweed has dared to face up to the Journal’s indictment. Wonder why?  
“… In short, I am challenging the Post to be fair and balanced about the evaluation controversy. For your information, I attach my corruption complaint against OSI and its notoriously rogue investigator Dennis Boyles who framed me in two corporal punishment cases that were tossed by an independent Arbitrator to the great humiliation of the DOE Office of Legal Services. My predicament proves that teacher careers cannot be trusted to the mains sales of Tweed.  
“Can I count on you to write the rest of the evaluation/termination story or will the Post continue to lie by omission.
Ms. Edelman politely replied yesterday, noting that she had previously reported stories critical of the DOE (true) and that she would take a look “any evidence of wrongdoing,” including my own case. I don’t doubt Ms. Edelman’s sincerity, but having been libeled in the Post before I am wary of her editors.

Meanwhile, the charter schools which by law are supposed to recruit, enroll and retain comparable proportions of students with disabilities, along w/ English language learners and students eligible for FRLP, as the surrounding district schools, are getting no such orders.
A law is only as good as its regulation and monitoring, and the charter authorizers, along w/ the authorities such as SED/Regents/DoE’s Charter School Office or Merriman’s Charter Center  are doing NOTHING about enforcing or even monitoring this regulation. In fact, SUNY CSI has recently authorized a ‘replication charter’  (think “Alien”  spawns) for a charter school in D1 that currently does not offer any CTT or self contained classes, severely limiting its ability to serve students with special needs, Furthermore, the school Manhattan Charter School, serves NO = ZERO ELL students.Yet, 12% of students in D 1 are classified as ELL and 23 % are enrolled in Special Education classes. From 2009- 10 NYS report card Manhattan Charter School I= 0 students LEP 16 students w/ disabilities/ 234 Why “replicate” this form of inequity and exclusion?What message is  SUNY CSI  sending by doing so?That charter schools are free to disobey the law- and their operators will even be rewarded for doing so?

I think it’s a big deal. Particularly since E4E represents only an infinitesimal number of teachers.

Isn’t Walcott’s request for selective schools to admit more special needs students a little late for the 2012-13 school year?

The DOE, SUNY and their charterizing friends wonder why so many people are lining up in opposition to charter schools. These inequalities that you write about are causing an imbalance and are overloading the public school system. NYC schools are not sharing the responsibility of teaching high needs students and I’m affraid the chancellor’s request will make NO difference unless there are regulations like you said.

On E4E: When they are given space in the NY Post to print things that everyone knows are mistruths and distortions I think just putting up a link to the article is not OK given there are so many articles out there to touch base with. The Post can get linked numerous times by putting up numerous amounts of trash. Better to link to those mags that talk about alien babies.

Note how Evan and Sydney — those self-acclaimed  teacher supporters
conveniently forget to mention that Tisch and Steiner agreed to 20% and
then Tiisch and King did a bait and switch to 40%. NYSUT goes to court
to enforce the law Tisch agreed too and is hammered by Cuomo for doing
so. Why isn’t  SED and Regents being called on this by reporters? E&S are distortionists (my new word for them).
Leonie Haimson calls them:
More astro turf corporate reform. And follows with:they
claim DC has a successful eval system; which is not true (except in eyes
perhaps of Sam Dillon and one particular teacher who got a bonus named
Tiffany Johnson, who was quoted in Dillon’s article and  elsewhere in
the media and is the poster child for this system  (for more on this see
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2012/01/on-teacher-evaluation-responsibility-of.html  ) On the other hand, see what Stephanie Black, a former DC teacher wrote about how it led her to quit the profession: http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2012/01/teachers-story-why-dc-impact-system.html  This
piece has been reprinted widely all over the blogosphere and has gotten
over 2300 hits on my blog since it was posted less than 2 weeks ago.

I guess Evan and Sydney somehow missed this on their narrow reading list.

I wonder why these two ex-teachers merit this sort of attention from anyone but Murdoch’s rag of a paper. Is anything Murdoch chooses to place on the pages of this rag deemed newsworthy by Gotham Schools simply because he chooses to place it there?

If Gotham Schools ever wants to know what real working teachers think, feel free to ask us.

I posted this comment on Ed Notes from Julie Cavanagh:

I don’t know why I am even responding to this because these two
Gates-funded, leave-the-classroom-before-5-yrs-work part-time-fake
teachers are irrelevant…

But…
This part really bugged me-”The biggest sticking point in negotiations was the UFT’s insistence on an unnecessarily arduous appeals process.”
An appeals process that is fair, transparent, and independent is
absolutely necessary. Without it, educators will be beholden to serving
administration first rather than children and families.

Google Peter Lamphere to understand how important this is. He recently
won the first of two lawsuits to overturn politically-charged and
completely unwarranted U ratings. He is one of the finest teachers and
people I know, and his career was almost ended because of a rouge
principal. What was the DOE’s response when he won this lawsuit? They
were “disappointed” bc the DOE believes that independent fact finding
and a judge, who both cleared Peter, are irrelevant compared to the
“judgment” of the principal. There are countless Peter Lampheres out
there, who, because they advocated for their students, families, and/or
colleague(s) they were given U ratings, with some eventually terminated
or discontinued.

Before Evan and Sydney decide to buy their next editorial, perhaps they
should go back and actually teach, understand the ramifications of what
they are talking about, and ask themselves this important question: is
the role of teacher evaluations to subordinate teachers or is it make
sure we have the best teachers we possibly can working with our
children. Obviously, it is the latter. An appeals process is a key part
of teacher evaluations, without it, teachers cannot stand up to unfair,
immoral or illegal practices that negatively affect the people they
serve.

Those who know me know, I can be critical of the UFT (leadership). In
this case, I applaud them tremendously for taking a stand on this and I
hope they do not fold in this new round of negotiations. Teacher
protections protect children, our interests are aligned. The
overwhelming majority of teachers are working tremendously hard for our
kids. For those that need support, we can make them better. For those
that should choose another career (and let’s remember in reality this is
a very, very small number of folks, not the majority as the rhetoric
out there makes it seem), we can fire them. What we cannot do is
sacrifice a protection for a teacher to act in the best interest of a
child or colleague over the objections or threats of a politically
motivated principal or Department of Education.
Julie Cavanagh