GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Teachers are panicked. I’m panicked. With the state’s new teacher evaluation system, I figure I have three years before I can be fired for factors beyond my control.

Next year I’ll be rated as usual. That shouldn’t be a problem — administrators who’ve judged me by what they’ve seen in my classroom have been pretty good to me. But come 2012 and 2013 they’ll look at my students’ scores. They depend not only on what I do, but also on what the kids do. I’ve been teaching teenagers for 25 years (and I have one at home). I know one thing for certain about teenagers — you never know what they will do.

On the brighter side, there are surefire ways to improve statistics. When you focus on that, you don’t need to worry as much about whether or not kids actually learn anything, or communicate in English (the language I’m paid to teach). Taking this broad view, it may be easier to create favorable statistics than actually teach. Instead of wasting time with actual classroom techniques, let’s examine a few individuals who’ve managed to look good under this up-and-coming paradigm. (more…)

It’s been a busy week for Bill Gates. While the NEA featured brilliant Diane Ravitch as its most prominent guest, AFT President Randi Weingarten and company chose Gates, who’s done many remarkable things.

I’m not an education expert like Gates, so I’ll comment only on a TED talk he gave last year that’s available online. My experience is limited to teaching 25 years in New York City. Still, several of Gates’ comments did not sit well with me.

How does that [KIPP charter school] compare to a normal school? Well, in a normal school teachers aren’t told how good they are. The data isn’t gathered. In the teacher’s contract, it will limit the number of times the principal can come into the classroom — sometimes to once per year. And they need advanced notice to do that.

My principal can and does visit my classroom whenever he golly goshdarn feels like it. He offers no advanced notice, and walks around the building visiting my colleagues in exactly the same fashion. Gates’s version of what happens in a “normal school” sounds more like a crass stereotype than any contract I’ve ever heard of. (more…)

Years ago, the technical guru in our school was a guy who sat in an office running the school computer. No one knew what the school computer did, but all seemed well, and the guy pretty much never bothered anyone. Several times a year, he gave professional development sessions, and whatever he was demonstrating never worked. Things popped, fizzled, went up in flames. Pieces of important-looking machines fell off. People tripped over electrical cords and were rushed away in ambulances. Our presenter would leave the room for thirty minutes in search of a solution. You’d sit and talk, and wait, and by the time the session ended, you weren’t really sure what it would have been about if it had occurred.

After his retirement, technology became more commonplace, and professional development sessions began to focus on the Next New Thing. For some reason, I missed the first round of Smartboard training. Everyone was amazed, I was told. The following session entailed usage of tablets, which were very cool, and would quite possibly replace Smartboards (except they didn’t). You could write on them and your miserable handwriting would magically turn into computer fonts, just the thing for the teacher with awful handwriting (me). Unfortunately, by the time the session ended we hadn’t managed to turn on our tablets.

The next round of training was learning how to set up the Smartboard, which you apparently had to do every single time you wanted to use it. This took 10 minutes, during which time you had to trust the kids would engage in whatever meaningful activity you’d provided. I say “trust” because you’d be too busy fiddling with the Smartboard to check.

Last semester’s round of training utilized more advanced Smartboards, which were mounted to the wall and no longer required the ten minutes setup time. You could put all sorts of stuff up there, you could play games, you could illustrate whatever you were discussing, you could write, play music, maybe have it do a little dance — the possibilities were endless.

Smartboard training this week incorporated suggestions on how to use it to teach English. A young English teacher got up and showed us a PowerPoint presentation. Up until now, every PowerPoint presentation I’d ever seen was read aloud. I’d assumed, therefore, that PowerPoint’s prime function was to prolong life by cultivating boredom. However, this teacher used it to present questions that might serve to stimulate discussion. It seemed like a great idea.

But as good as the presentation was, I still felt like I’d wasted my time. (more…)

Every year, I fill out a form specifying which courses I want to teach and what time schedule I would like. Each September, I sit down with my department coordinator, and she calmly and methodically persuades me to do whatever she wants me to, whenever she wants me to.

Two years ago, she asked me to prep English learners for the English Regents exam. I said OK, and spent all year making the kids write until their hands were ready to fall off. Most of them passed, and for some, it was miraculous.  Of course, they’re fortunate that more stress is placed on content than grammar and usage (”conventions” rates the very bottom of the grading rubric). I showed them how to write highly formulaic four-paragraph essays that minimally met the requirements.

One technique entailed copying directions and converting them to first person. Another featured repeatedly rehearsing canned literary references, many of which could be trotted out to support virtually any quote about anything. No technique, in my view, much encouraged writing habits that would prove useful in the long haul. There was no time for such things and besides, half my kids could barely communicate in English. Sadly, there was almost no time to work on that either.

English language learners should not be taking this test at all. It’s designed for native speakers. If my kid couldn’t pass this in eleventh grade, I’d be very concerned. But a kid who came from Korea two months ago needs other things — including the grammar and usage that the state test doesn’t value that much. (more…)

Education is on a roller coaster recently, with unexpected twists and turns seemingly improvised on the spot by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. First, 4,400 teachers were going to receive pink slips. Then, the mayor unilaterally declared teachers would receive no raises for two years, and that layoffs would thereby be averted.

His declaration spat in the face of the Taylor Law, which “requires public employers to negotiate and enter into agreements with public employee organizations regarding their employees’ terms and conditions of employment.” Though the mayor has no legal right to unilaterally declare a conclusion to ongoing negotiations, the New York Times declared it was a “sensible choice.” Gabe Pressman called it a “wise decision.”

Then, wise decision or not, Mayor Bloomberg surprised us by reconsidering yet again. Apparently, he may give teachers pink slips anyway. Even if he doesn’t, the draconian budget cuts he’s imposed will mean fewer elective classes for kids, larger class sizes, and widespread “excessing” of teachers, dumping them into the Absent Teacher Reserve and forcing them to scramble for a rapidly decreasing job pool. Teachers have every reason to be nervous.

Having lost my job this way four times, I know exactly how they feel. (more…)

I recently met a guy from another country who found himself a little surprised by what he’d seen in America. People here, he said, spent almost all their time working. In their few free hours Americans watched TV and seemed to believe everything they saw.  In his country, he said, we would go to a cafe and talk about what was on. We would question whether or not we could believe the commentators — then we’d make up our own minds.

Our conversation started because I’d mentioned the frenzy to create more charter schools. President Barack Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, created a program called Race to the Top, in which states compete for cash. What states needed to do, apparently, was subscribe to as many unproven educational programs as possible, and the more shots in the dark they took, the more chance they had to win the money.

The jewel on the crown of New York’s monumental struggle to kowtow to the feds was the raising of the charter cap. This was very important to Duncan, even though charters, with fewer English as a Second Language and special education students than those attending neighborhood schools, have still not managed to outperform public schools.

This amazes me because I strongly believe proactive parents to be the number one predictor of academic success, or lack thereof. When I call parents, which I do with great frequency, the ones who react the most vehemently tend to be the ones who effect the quickest changes. That parents could take the time and trouble to research and enroll their kids in any alternate setting is a sure sign they care about their kids. With 100 percent proactive parents, any school ought instantly to rack up better stats than its counterparts.

In any case, the new law says charter schools will have to serve the same population as public schools. After reading false accounts in the New York Times claiming they already do, I’ll believe that when I see it. (more…)

There’s a young teacher I’ve taken under my wing of late. I’ve been trying to help her get her classes under control and she’s made considerable progress in a very short time. But though I’ve got 20+ years of experience on her, the other day she managed to teach me a thing or two. Several of her students had unexpectedly shared their novel cheating strategies with her. Perhaps her youth made her appear more sympathetic than she really was.

She surprised the kids, though, by establishing new and unexpected ground rules for her next test. One of the boys who’d confided in her almost cried when he heard them:

1. No water bottles. It’s fairly easy for a kid to manipulate a water bottle so that the test answers are just a twist away. What teacher would deprive a kid of a swig of water?  Probably one that wants the kid to study rather than cheat.
2. No electronic dictionaries. This one was not news to me. Kids can place as much text as they like on these little things. One year I noticed two identical essays on the English Regents exams, right down to the misspellings. A supervisor called them both in and asked them to reproduce the essays. One wrote nothing, and was disqualified. The other produced the first few sentences from the essay and was allowed to pass. I protested, telling the supervisor I could recite “Annabel Lee“ from memory, but that didn’t make me Edgar Allen Poe. I was overruled. (more…)
   

One of my personal pet peeves is class size, and as a new chapter leader I thought compliance was quite straightforward — you grieve the oversized classes, and on a bad day you lose and you’re screwed for a term. On a better day you win, kids win, and class sizes are corrected (at least to the extent prescribed by the UFT contract, which still leaves city kids with the highest class sizes in the state).

But I hadn’t counted on fighting City Hall. Whatever City Hall wants, City Hall gets, and unconnected little guys like me, or the 4,500 kids attending our school, are routinely left by the wayside. 

It’s not only the kids, of course. When I became chapter leader I learned our school’s UFT chapter had a soda machine in the check-in room. We made some sort of profit from each can of soda, how much I had no idea. The company that filled the machine was kind of cute — they forgot to send checks when I took over.

We called. Nothing happened. Called again. Another excuse. We finally told our contact, whom we knew only by first name, to send us a check or move the machine out. No response. Then we unplugged the machine. Three days later we got a check. The only way to deal with these folks, I thought, is to make them offers they can’t refuse. But they’re small potatoes.

Both our chapter and the cute company learned that weeks later when City Hall rolled in and took over everything. (more…)

Bill Gates is amazed at what he sees happening at KIPP charter schools. Bill has no idea those same things happen at Francis Lewis High School, and countless other public schools, each and every day. Because Bill believes in the very same “reforms” that have caused Francis Lewis, my school, to balloon to 250 percent capacity, he surreptitiously funded the Learn NY campaign to preserve mayoral control (in practice, mayoral dictatorship). So I don’t trust him, and I don’t think he knows much about education, despite the millions he throws around imposing his pet projects on us. Still, I withheld judgment when he sent his new program to my school. I did not participate, but I said nothing to those who chose otherwise.

The Measures of Effective Teaching program, sponsored by the Gates Foundation, is now at my school and many others across the city. Teachers were told this study would show what worked and did not work in the classroom. They hoped it would give them ideas on how to reach their students more effectively. How long should you pause after posing a question? Did certain seat arrangements promote more interaction? Is group work always more effective than lecturing?

A young woman from the program came to our school and told our teachers that the study was actually examining newer ways to observe teachers. Traditionally, said she, there’ve been only a few ways to accomplish this. The most popular is the traditional observation, in which a supervisor sits in the classroom and writes up the results. She also cited peer observation, and the notion of test scores being used to determine whether or not lessons are effective.

However, she said, this new study had an entirely new element — the panoramic camera. This camera, specially designed, could observe not only the teacher, but also the students. Are they engaged? Do they understand? Are they texting their girlfriends during the final exam? Should we grant tenure to the teacher in question? Perhaps the camera could tell all, if only they could get it to work properly (there have been issues, and they’re apparently working on a newer version).

Three participants told me that learning about the panoramic camera caused them to question the sincerity of the program’s sponsors. (more…)

What is it good for? Well, war has been around for an awfully long time, and sometimes if you can create the right war, you wag the dog, and no one even needs to win.

If you’re Mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein, you find one of the last remnants of vibrant unionism in the center of your fiefdom and ask, “Why should we put up with such nonsense? Unions? We don’t need no stinking unions!” After all, most charter schools don’t have unions, and you can fire teachers simply for telling their colleagues how much UFT teachers earn. You can fire them for hanging Picasso paintings in the classroom. 

So, how do you start this war? Well, a good start is to seek out some nervous and wacky senator facing an uncertain future. If he’s desperate enough for your support, maybe you can persuade him to propose an uphill bill demanding an end to reverse-seniority layoffs. You will demand this only for teachers, not for firefighters, police, or anyone else. After all, you haven’t invested years into sliming them. Also, you’ll insist this bill be restricted to New York City, where you have mayoral control and a fake board of education that votes for absolutely everything the mayor wants. If they don’t, they’re fired on the spot, and teachers should be fired on the spot too, goshdarn it! (more…)