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Pedro Noguera and Karen Sprowal talk after the "Miseducation Nation" panel ended.

Panel members at an event critiquing current school reform policies last night criticized  testing, large classes, and charter schools — and also a university professor sharing the stage with them.

More than 100 people filled a school auditorium in Manhattan to attend the four-member “Miseducation Nation” panel, which was convened in response to – and got its mocking namesake from – NBC’s “Education Nation” summit, a two-day event that wrapped up earlier that day at Rockefeller Center.

Pedro Noguera, an NYU professor who studies urban education, was invited to speak on the panel and for most of the evening, he was on the same page as his fellow panelists, historian Diane Ravitch, Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters, and teacher Brian Jones of the Grassroots Education Movement. They all criticized policymakers for adopting reform ideas that they said were not working – and ignoring alternative ones, such as smaller class sizes and culturally-relevant curriculum, that they said would improve schools.

The panel also criticized the media coverage, which they characterized as biased toward current reform policies. The event was hosted by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, a national media advocacy group. ”We feel beleaguered and we feel there is only one story told repeatedly in the mainstream media,” Haimson said.

More than 100 people, many of which were teachers and parents, packed into the auditorium at P.S. 66 School of the Future.

When moderator Laura Flanders opened up questioning to the audience, criticism quickly turned on Noguera, a board member of the SUNY Charter School Institute, which oversees many of New York City’s most prominent charter schools.

Veteran teacher Michael Fiorillo first brought up the subject when he asked Noguera to explain how he could support opening charter schools, while at the same time being such a vocal opponent of closing the ones that they replace. (more…)

Randi Weingarten testifying at a mayoral control hearing in February. (GothamSchools)

A group of parent activists and union members is expressing anger with teachers union leader Randi Weingarten, telling her that she has dropped the ball in fighting for checks to the mayor’s power over schools.

The frustration began with a May 21 New York Post column, in which Weingarten indicated that she is open to allowing the mayor to continue appointing a majority of members to the citywide school board. A union task force recommended in February that the state legislature reverse that majority as a way to strengthen the board, known as the Panel for Education Policy or PEP.

Weingarten’s Post op/ed dismayed some members of her own union. “I was quite disappointed and angry, actually,” said Lisa North, a teacher who sat on the union’s task force to consider revisions to mayoral control.

North said the task force never seriously considered recommending that the mayor keep his majority of appointments, and so when union delegates ratified the committee’s final recommendations, she expected Weingarten to promote them. “The delegate assembly is supposed to be the highest authority of the union, and it voted for it,” she said.

In an interview today, Weingarten acknowledged that people have reached out to her with concerns about her position, including her own union members. ”I did get a couple of e-mails from members saying, ‘Why are you doing what you’re doing?’” she said. She said that she empathizes with those concerns. “I totally and completely understand and concur with the frustrations that many have that this mayor and this chancellor have not listened to and respected enough the voices of those who go to our schools, their parents, and those who teach them,” she said.

But she also said that she has to weigh concerns about checking the mayor’s power against the reasons she supported giving the mayor control in 2002. “It’s always been a balance of stability, cohesion, and responsibility, which is what mayoral control brought us, and modifying it to create sufficient checks and balances and transparency,” Weingarten said. (more…)