While DeWitt Clinton High School isn’t closing, the city does intend for it to shrink. (Riverdale Press)
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s education budget proposals are receiving a mixed response from advocates. (AP)
A Stuyvesant High School senior is the city’s only finalist in a national science competition. (Post)
Mayoral candidates joined a broader call for a school closure moratorium. (GothamSchools, Post, NY1)
As temperatures drop, the city is devising school bus strike workarounds. (Post, GothamSchools, NY1)
A bus company training replacements for striking drivers had its buses vandalized. (Daily News, WSJ)
City and union officials took a softer tone on the teacher evaluation fight. (GothamSchools, SchoolBook)
UFT President Michael Mulgrew says again that the union really wants new evaluations. (Daily News)
A principal and a former teacher from his school scuffled over the teacher’s online offensive. (Post)
A higher education commission wants colleges to evolve as they serve a new kind of student. (Times)
Families at local Catholic schools are protesting as the Archdiocese proposes closures. (NY1 1, 2)
GUest
Dear DeWitt,
This is code for close slowly and replace with charter school.
Sincerely,
Washington Irving
Philip Nobile
While teachers should salute Mulgrew’s resistance to Bloomberg’s hangman evaluation deal, let’s get real. Mulgrew has already sold us out by agreeing—without consulting the membership—on value-added measurement. He knows that rating teachers via test scores is junk science. Further, his comment in today’s Daily News that “scores are likely to nosedive” solely because the DOE has not provided curriculum “to help students meet the higher academic standards” is misleading. Scores will fall off the cliff because of new test security which he has derided as too costly. Mulgrew just can’t admit that test tampering has been a traditional criminal practice among his members … with, of course, the deaf-dumb-blind encouragement of regents, chancellors, principals, and assistant principals. “You hate kids,” a Brooklyn UFT District Representative screamed at me when I mentioned my distaste for tampering with Regents exams. Such is the soft criminal culture of UFT leadership.
Larry Littlefield
“Thompson, former president of the old Board of Education, said closing schools is “an admission of failure.”
So is holding kids back rather than engaging in “social” (actually fiscal) promotion. So is having administrators, including principals — that just admits that the state has granted certification to teachers, and the city has paid them enormously (if you ignore starting pay and include retirement costs) compared with the past, and yet it still has to supervise them. So why not save some money?
“Such is the soft criminal culture of UFT leadership.”
They are ripe for a deal in which the schools are in fact increasingly gutted to pay for 25/55 and other pension increases (including perhaps those in the rest of the state, where pension contributions are being “smoothed” for the third time), and the city’s rising debts (along with the state’s), without additional damage elsewhere, in exchange for no longer “admitting” failure and having the city give the union some money in lieu of the dues that would have been paid by the teachers the city could no longer afford. “Everybody wins!”
Of course there would have to be special deal schools, where teachers who want to do their jobs teach the children of the politically connected. But then there will also have to be “jobs” for certain people in the schools where the poor are warehoused to buy out their representatives.
This could be done with Mayoral control but is easier without it. As I’ve said, any future Mayor should dump Mayoral control, just tell everyone how much is being spent on schools (including retirement benefits), and otherwise wash their hands of them shift the blame for the results (which they cannot improve) elsewhere.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We’ve done the same things on debts and retirement benefits, but no one who cut the deals is insane — except perhaps Bloomberg. I hope he says he did what he did why once he leaves office. The past is the projection of the future.
DT Bronx HS
Dear God Please Mr Thompson, save us, please!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Larry Littlefield
“Cuomo’s office didn’t comment Wednesday on the union’s statements. In his budget address, the governor called the 8.6 percent total increase in his last two budget proposals “notable and significant.” “That is double the rate of inflation,” Cuomo said in Tuesday’s address. “That is four or five times the increase in home values during the same period of time and it’s during a period of time where student enrollment has gone down.”
“Last year the state added a 4 percent school aid increase and we still lost 5,000 teachers and other educators,” AQE Executive Director Billy Easton said.
Can all these things be true at the same time? Yes, based on the factors no one will talk about.
“Plus $203 million to offset high pension contribution costs.”
New York City’s taxpayer pension contributions are currently far higher than those of the rest of the state. And they have been for 40 years — for several years in the late 1990s school districts elsewhere kicked in nothing — like New Jersey. Yet NYC’s teacher pension fund is as underfunded as New Jersey.
So what is NYC’s share of the $203 million to offset high pension contribution costs, given that our costs are higher (and should be higher still in reality)?
http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/ Norm
“The ‘bad teacher’
narrative as a way of explaining what’s wrong with our school system
gets really old,” says Ms. Cavanagh. “Our union has taken a stance that
we will collaborate and compromise and that is shortsighted when the
other side seems bent on destroying you….
Ms.
Cavanagh adores her Red Hook school and her children, 90 percent of
whom come from families poor enough to qualify for free lunches. But she
feels the walls of the system closing in.– Julie Cavanagh in NY TImes today.
Too bad you didn’t link to Michael Powell’s excellent NY Times article featuring Julie Cavanagh who is running against Mulgrew for UFT president on the MORE slate. How counter to the E4E line and the attempts of ed deformers to paint Julie’s generation of teachers as somehow wanting to be rated based on high stakes tests.
Ms. Cavanagh, 34, teaches at the highly rated Public School 15, in the
working-class Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook. She already loses 16
days each school year to our mania for federal, state, and city tests.
(I write “our mania” but this noun rarely applies to the $40,000 per
year private schools attended by the children of the mayor and many
education reformers, where the emphasis is on essay writing and the
“whole child,” and a distrust of standardized testing prevails.)
“Our
school has never been about churning out day after day of test prep; we
try hard not to be that narrow,” Ms. Cavanagh says. “Slowly but surely,
though, the definition of success becomes based on a test score.”
Yes, the E4E types seem fine with losing weeks of real teaching time to narrow test prep
“The mayor has claimed that the teachers union’s leadership is out of touch with its members. He is perhaps half right. Rank
and file anger swells, some of it directed at the union itself.”
Powell gets it — that while Bloomberg was trying to claim the union leaders are out of touch with E4E types (whereas in fact Mulgrew is closer to them than MORE), in fact the Movement of Rank and File Educators’ ability to attract top level people like Julie is indicative of the more Chicago stye rise of resistance to both the mayor and Mulgrew. If Julie were to defeat Mulgrew in the upcoming UFT elections, she would be Bloomberg’s worst nightmare and if one watches this election closely one would see that the Mayor and DOE and E4E would favor Mulgrew over Julie because as Julie points out the UFT leadership collaborate and compromise in ways that do not serve the interests of students or teachers and MORE like CORE in Chicago aims to truly be teacher/student first, a not incompatible position.
This is what has to happen, and it is going to happen more. It is regression to the mean. Don’t count on the bonus rich to pay for the pension rich. That will be paid by the serfs, is higher taxes and diminished education, and future public employees, who will be less qualified and (with union encouragement) motivated as a result.
BloombergMustGo
So go ask the bonus rich.
By the way, try and remember that teachers’ wages make them serfs also, and they pay the same taxes you do. Last time I checked teachers were not hanging out in Bermuda with Bloomberg or buying their own jets. I still have trouble understanding what your OCD problem is with teacher salaries and pensions. Why don’t you launch any diatribes against police, firemen, transit workers or the hedge fund thieves who pay ludicrously low taxes despite using the same city services as any other business.
You do realize that teachers have no say in their salary or pensions nor do they dictate funding or tax rates? Do you expect teachers to not accept the compensation they are offered? If New York City and State spend too much on schools go harass the politicians making the decisions. One thing I am sure of: if teachers were in charge of expenditures in schools the wasted money would be a lot less than it is and there would be a lot less being thrown at “consultants” and “outside vendors”. I’d even be willing to bet they would lower expenditures which might even lower taxes. However, we don’t work for free or charity.
Chuckz
hey larry,your comments rarely make any sense….you are way out there guy come back to earth a little bit and stop trying to prove to everyone that you know what the future is bozo
Larry Littlefield
The problem is the devastating effect of retroactive pension increase. As I’ve calculated it, the increases in teacher pensions in 2000 and 2008 took the amount that should have been contributed over a career by taxpayers from around 8.8% of pay to over 20.0%. Fine, a 12.0% raise. Why is that a problem while the 20.0% cash raise at the start of Mayoral Control was good?
a) There is no gratitude and no work motivation for that raise, part of which went to those already retired with the best deal for those who walked out the door a year or two after 2008.
b) The 8.8% and 20.0% is what would have to have been contributed all along, plus investment earnings. When benefits are suddenly awarded after the fact, you can’t go back 10 or 20 years and put money in and have it earn returns. The increase in cost is this far greater than 12.0% of pay. I’d say 50% is more like it going foward, and every year you don’t contribute enough to limit the impact the hole gets deeper.
“Teachers…pay the same taxes you do.”
Not once they retire. Public employee pensions are exempt from state and local income taxes at any age, no matter how high total income is. Private sector pensions have a $20,000 exemption at, I believe, 59 1/2.
“Why don’t you launch any diatribes against police, firemen, transit workers or the hedge fund thieves.”
I have in the appropriate forums. I’ve pointed out that NYC has 2 1/2 times the number of police officers relative to population as the U.S. average. Couldn’t they keep us safe with, say, double.
As for hedge funds, I won’t be voting for Thompson for this reason.
You neglected to mention that those that receive retroactive benefits, for the most part, collected lower salaries at the beginning of their careers. In a space of ten years, starting salaries doubled. That means that older teachers’ pensions were based on salaries that were seriously out of step with living costs.
As to gratitude, where is the gratitude from a society that relies on its teachers for more and more. Despite the American view of teachers as inferior workers, they are trained and degreed professionals. This is the only country in the world that does not respect its teachers.
If you factor out the financial disaster caused by the banks and Wall Street, teachers have always trailed their private counterparts. NYC teachers have and still trail Long Island and Westchester teachers.
May I recommend this article as but one example of the the hours to pay ratio of U.S. teachers compared to other countries: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/teacher-pay-around-the-world/
BloombergMustGo
Hmmm……..
Nycdoenuts
Long sigh. OK Larry Littlefield, let’s go over it again.
When the bonus rich decided to spend the rest of their lives seeking a profit, they did so with the understanding that they would, through their tax dollars, support the general public good. The pension rich, who were college classmates with the bonus rich take that money – without apology, mind you- because round about the same time in their lives, they decided to … And this is the part that continues to confuse you …spend the rest of their lives contributing to the public good.
Now the notion that the bonus rich can no longer support the pension rich can only be true of the bonus rich have first exhausted the money they spend on such things as that second extra expensive car, or that fourth vacation in a year. Yes Larry.. The notion that ” my profit is my profit and everyone can just go scratch” is a broken paradigm. We are all entitled to profit, but our first responsibility is that of citizen (not to the market, but to the forum). That’s true whether you are bonus rich, pension rich or any one else. So when I start seeing successful Wall Street guys driving Toyota Corollas, then we can talk about whether there is money to support my salary and pension.
So do stop complaining. Instead, just coin up and pay my pension (so that I can afford a new Pinto upon retirement) AND, while you’re at it, pay my full health care too. Thanks.
Guest
“just coin up and pay my pension ”
just lovely
Larry Littlefield
It is true that those who retired before 2002 were low paid during their carrers. Then again, the quality of the NYC public schools at the time was terrible — what one gets in return is another factor that may be considered.
Were there lots of outstanding teachers who for some reason wanted to work in NYC and worked their rears off at those wages? Sure. They were screwed (and will be again — we’ve got more money for education with fewer teachers and a five-year wage freeze). But most headed out for the suburbs as soon as the gained competence, while the city attracted many who just needed a job (including the uncertified).
Bottom line — teacher quality correlates with cash pay, including starting pay. As DOE Nuts pointed out, pensions don’t count as far as his motivation and attitude are concerned, and I agree with him that this is the common attitude. (Particularly among those in lower tiers who have ahd their take home pay and pensions cut to pay for those deals). As of 2010 the total compensation of NYC teachers per student was higher in NYC than the average for the downstate suburbs according to the Census Bureau, but cash pay was higher there (and they seem to want to keep it that way by underfunding their pensions).
(May I recommend this article as but one example of the the hours to pay ratio of U.S. teachers compared to other countries).
Teachers are underpaid paid elsewhere in the U.S., compared with New York. The article cited is a national comparsion. I calculated instructional wage and benefits in NYC for FY 2010 at $13,469, compared with a national average of $5,703. Of course you have to step down the NYC for the higher general wage rate here, typically above 1/3 higher than average for private workers if the financial sector is excluded. But that still leaves the NYC rate at $10,126. Yes it was lower earlier. Which is why I was an advocate for higher teacher pay and school funding at the time.
“When the facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Keynes
Tim
I don’t pretend to understand the bonus rich, but phenomena such as most hedge fund managers choosing to set up shop in CT rather than NY(C) and the almost frighteningly rapid growth in “nearshoring” (having traders, back office, and other personnel work out of NJ or CT, or even UT, TX, NM, etc., rather than NY(C)) leads me to believe that if they have an option to pay less to support the general public good, they’ll take it almost every single time.
Larry Littlefield
Well we have no choice.
But it’s a lot more that is currently going in, even under relatively favorable assumptions, even though a lot is going in. So when the classroom gets cut some more don’t pretend the cause is something else, Unless things get really bad and something else is added to the rise in pension costs, as in the 1970s.
Clay
So Larry, NYC public schools before 2002 were terrible?
Again, you show your bias and disdain.
Larry Littlefield
“So Larry, NYC public schools before 2002 were terrible?”They were found to be bad enough to be unconstitutional. By the courts. With pockets of good schools, that only some people had access to.
Nycdoenuts
Alternatively, I’d like you to feel free to dedicate the rest of your career to improving the public good. Although, based on how much complaining some of you folks do about paying your fair share to support that end, I honestly don’t know how you’d last.
Flerp
As you can see on this thread, most commenters here are completely unable or unwilling to meet Larry head-on about these issues. The main thrust of their responses is usually that: (1) Larry has insulted teachers with something close to hate speech; and/or (2) Larry has a hidden, evil agenda, which is never well-articulated but is generally expressed as having something to do with “banking.” In both cases, the implication is that Larry should be ignored. The rest is just a grab-bag of personal attacks (e.g. “Larry has OCD”) and non-sequiturs (e.g. “teachers make less money than bankers,” or “teachers work hard”). It is what it is. If anything, it shows how much anger there is out there.
Nycdoenuts
Flerp,
You missed 3) Larry is opining from the premise of an age old argument between college graduates; Some who seek private sector gain and some of whom seek public sector service. As the argument goes, those who seek private sector gain resent having to support the salaries of those who seek public sector service through their taxes and they use a variety of tactics to try to justify exactly why they shouldn’t pay.
I know, in this day of successful business leaders entering politics and controlling state (and city) budgets, that it may not appear immediately recognizable. But a Google search might show you that the argument has been around since before the days of Ayn Rand and will be around long after you or I or Larry are.
I’m actually surprised you haven’t heard of it, as I have raised the point a few times with Larry before. So unless by evil, you really meant selfish, you should amend that comment.
wise owl
I heard Aretha Franklin singing RESPECT on the radio today. Maybe we can get her to sing it for the mayor! I can’t get that song out of my head.
BloombergMustGo
Head on about what issue? It’s like going to an expensive restaurant, ordering a meal, not liking the food and demanding to know why the waiter should get paid. Just because he adopts a pretentious attitude and cites a bunch of meaningless spreadsheets does not mean his point is valid.
For his and your information, for many years until the present, New York State certified teachers had one of the highest number of reciprocity agreements with other states due to the relative high quality of teacher found in this state. Despite Bloomberg’s empty insults New York teachers still are ranked very well in the country. And again, we don’t work for free.
Larry Littlefield
“Larry is opining from the premise of an age old argument between college graduates; Some who seek private sector gain and some of whom seek public sector service.”
So which did I pick, since that’s your belief?
Abc
Flerp says it, Larry says it, its got to be true.Truth is that the only person who pays attention to Larry is Flerp. What does larry know about the teaching profession, truth is absolutely nothing. He resents teacher’s pension and their health care but he chose to work in another area and I quess he sold himself to a profession that bitches and moans about others. He never complain about any other civil servants ever wonder why? I KNOW SOMEONE WHO IS RETIRING AS A COP who will have a sizable pension but i don’t drool over what he is getting. So why does Larry spend every waking hour speaking about our pensions? If that isn’t OCD what is? Why else would someone whose job is city planning waste his time commenting on a teacher blog? For that matter why would a lawyer do the same thing (Flerp)? Larry will be as successful here just the same why he was when he ran for political office. Keep throwing out those numbers
Larry this may be the only place where you can get attention.( Duh Your agenda). How do you have time to do your work? Your always here. I have plenty of time spending your money in Florida. Thank you so much for your generosity. Larry by the time you retire all of your money will be paying for our pensions. Get a life.
Weather was great here today.
Clay
Do you mean the CFE?
Regardless, your blanket statement is insulting to past and present NYC public school students that are currently doing well in life and give thanks to that educational background. Again, you show your disdain from your ivory tower.
Clay
I’m not an actuary, so I can not call Larry on the numbers he always throws out. I’m not accepting anything he says as a given because he regularly uses derogatory statements about public education and teachers in particular. See his comment below about all NYC schools being terrible before 2002. Some of us here attended those schools he has deemed terrible. He shows his disdain with regular frequency.
Flerp, what I do know is this, I’m a teacher, you claim to be a parent, we both have a vested interest in education. What is Larry’s interested? Why hasn’t he been upfront? He’s posting 20 times a day about teachers pensions because he’s benevolent and wants reform? Why does he solely target teachers’ pensions? Why is this man so fixated on teachers? Please tell me!
Ocd
1 like Flerpi
Ocd
1 like Larry
Ocd
Larry Larry you have worn me down after repeating the same thing everyday for the last year. I have decided to return my pension because you told me to. I didn’t earn it your way so its time to give it back. Would you please help me find out how this could happen. You seem to know everything and your always looking up important information instead of doing you job so please find me someone who I can return my pension. I want to thank you personally for spending so much of your time complaining about teachers. You see our job isn’t hard enough at the moment and listening to you makes the day go so much faster.
You have been so sensitive in your comments that you have shown me the light. If this shuts you up for even one minute it will be worth every penny.
Larry Littlefield
“What is Larry’s interested? Why hasn’t he been upfront? He’s posting 20 times a day.”
When ther budget, or the impact of a shortage of money for the classroom, comes up. Then not for days otherwise.
I am interested as a past advocate, who provided lots and lots of data on the subject, of increasing public school spending and teacher pay in New York City. For years, and years, and years. Not as a banker, or academic, or follower of Ann Rand, or anything else some people here want to believe.
I knew that they were re-wrecking the schools (and other things) with those retroactive pension deals (and re-wrecking the transit system with debt) as a matter of math. And feel very hosed. Basically, I’ve been proved wrong. People told me years ago that in the end nothing would be received for any increase in funding, so why bother? I had argued otherwise.
Some people seem to believe that the only place I’ve ever written anything is on Gotham Schools. Those who followed some of the links I’ve posted here know otherwise.
My interest is to not allow those who benefitted from those deals to mentally detach their benefit from the consequences for others, though deception or silence. Because, again, I’m very ticked off.
Why am I particulalry upset about education? In addition to education, more than virtually any other public service, being something I had argued for more funding for in NY, there is also the factor of the 2008 pension deal being the last straw. Lots of retroactive pension deals were done in lots of places around the peak of the stock market buble in 2000. That deal was eight years later. “Gee we were mistaken” can’t be used as an excuse.
What makes those who comment here different is that many people scoffed at the idea that the cost of retroactive pension deals would lead to service cuts and higher taxes before that occured. People here, uniquely, do so after it has already started, because they don’t want to hear.
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