GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Diane Ravitch, speaking at a GothamSchools event two years ago.

Is Diane Ravitch a “paid union spokesperson,” her famous change of heart inspired by fees from the teachers union?

The accusation, levied by the philanthropist and hedge-fund manager Whitney Tilson recently, draws from a new book about the education reform movement by Steven Brill. But the suggestion that she was bought is simply not accurate, Ravitch told GothamSchools.

Brill, in an interview, also insisted it’s not the conclusion that his new book, “Class Warfare,” aims to draw.

In a short passage about Ravitch, one of the leading critics of the reform movement, Brill writes that she frequently spoke to teachers unions but did not disclose her speaking fees from them. He estimates that her take from groups that have resisted the movement, including teachers unions, might have exceeded $200,000 in just over a year.

In an interview this week, Ravitch told GothamSchools that she received “less than a third” of the amount of money Brill calculated from teachers unions. (That is, she has received under $67,000.) She said that the majority of her speaking engagements are done for free. (more…)

After wrestling down a unionization attempt and struggling with academic performance, a Brooklyn KIPP school is bringing in a new principal and letting go of teachers.

Concerns about high teacher turnover surfaced at the KIPP AMP (Knowledge is Power Program: Always Mentally Prepared) school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, two years. The concerns were the driving force behind teachers’ decision to join the teachers union against the will of the school’s board. A year later teachers opted out of union membership, kicking off a prolonged fight in which the United Federation of Teachers accused KIPP of intimidating teachers who wanted to unionize.

Now, the school could experience what teachers initially feared: turnover and instability. It’s unclear how many teachers will lose their jobs.

A teacher at the school said today that the school’s leadership has informed most of its teachers that they will not have jobs next year.

KIPP co-founder David Levin, who is also the superintendent of KIPP’s New York schools, said that claims that the majority of KIPP AMP teachers would lose their jobs were incorrect. He would not say how many staff members had been asked to leave the school. (more…)

Will Obama officials succeed in their mission to use the Race to the Top fund to re-write state education laws? The state of Indiana, where a recent down-to-the-wire budget session featured a teacher-evaluation mini drama, offers some clues.

The drama began with pressure from the Obama administration to repeal a law banning the use of student test scores in teacher evaluations. Alarmed, state education officials lobbied the state legislature, and lawmakers acted, inserting a repeal of the law into the state’s budget.

But mere hours before the new budget passed, lawmakers at the state House removed the repeal at the request of the teachers’ union. The final budget includes a roundabout compromise allowing districts to use student data to assess teachers — but only in cases where federal grant money requires it.

“We had a clear message from the secretary [Arne Duncan] that we were putting our ability to compete for the Race to the Top Funds at risk,” a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Education, Cam Savage, said. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett has communicated frequently with the federal education department about Indiana’s strengths in the competition for grant funds, Savage said.

Bans on using student test scores to assess teachers seem to be the next group of laws on the Department of Education’s watch list. States and districts already took note after Obama administration officials used the threat of denying Race to the Top funds to push against state laws limiting the spread of charter schools. Lawmakers in at least eight states have passed or introduced legislation since the end of May to lift their charter caps. (more…)

From Randi Weingarten’s speech to a national union conference in D.C., where she is now being joined by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at a town hall-style meeting:

I hope you’re as outraged as I am when our critics say that unions are part of the problem, not the solution; that we are only in it for ourselves; that we represent adults against kids; and that we are a selfish special interest set against the public interest.

We won’t let them take away our jobs. We won’t let them cut our pay. We won’t let them plunder our pensions. And I will be damned if I let them define who we are.

Because nobody-nobody-goes into teaching to feather his or her own nest. And this union, which proudly works on its members’ behalf, has always been about something bigger. That is why we fight-24/7/365-for the social and economic conditions that will help our students do better in school.

Apparently pins being handed out to members say “with us, not to us.” The conference, called QuEST, focuses on best practices for teaching and learning. Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and her term as president of the New York City union expires at the end of the month.

Her full prepared remarks are below: (more…)

Regular commenter KitchenSink, a principal, sparked an interesting debate in the comments section by making this claim (emphasis added):

The muckraking days are over, people, no one is losing fingers in factory accidents and kids aren’t working long hours in windowless rooms. At least not in this country. The key labor battles have been won, and teachers have multiple avenues for dealing with injustice.

Ceolaf, equally regular commenter, challenged (again emphasis mine):

Clearly, the key workplace safety battles have been won. Perhaps the key child labor battles have been won. But it is not clear that work dignity, living wage, healthcare and retirement security are anywhere near won. In fact, there seem to be rollbacks in those areas. I would argue that there remain many key labor battle to be won, or even re-won.

New York City teachers have seen their salaries jump 43% under Mayor Bloomberg. But does that mean they have achieved “work dignity”? Discuss. (Bonus points for providing examples from your own experience!)

Marcia Lyles, the deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, testifying at an Assembly hearing earlier this year.

Marcia Lyles, the head of the city’s teaching and learning department and one of only a handful of veteran educators who reports directly to Chancellor Joel Klein, could be on the brink of leaving the school system. The answer hinges on an announcement tonight by a school board in Delaware, where Lyles and one other candidate are vying for the job of superintendent.

The board of the Christina School District, a semi-urban, 17,000-student district comprising parts of two of Delaware’s three largest cities as well as some suburbs, has narrowed down a cast of contenders to two finalists: a longtime Delaware educator who is now serving as acting superintendent and Lyles, a Harlem native who has worked in the city’s public school system since the 1970s.

Lyles would not confirm that she has been offered the job, but a member of the Christina teachers union, Harrie Ellen Minnehan, told me that rumors are flying in Delaware that Lyles will be announced as the new superintendent tonight — against the desires of teachers and principals, many of whom favor the Delaware candidate. (more…)

The highly anticipated teachers’ contract for the Green Dot charter school in the South Bronx, which has been heralded as an innovative collaboration between a Los Angeles-based charter school operator and the union president Randi Weingarten, is expected to be finalized as soon as today.

The contract is being closely watched for signs of just how flexibly Weingarten is willing to negotiate a teachers’ contract — eagerly by supporters of looser protections for teachers, and with gritted teeth by veterans who believe strong job security is crucial. The original Green Dot charter schools in Los Angeles raised many veterans’ eyebrows here because the schools’ contracts do not include the concept of “tenure” for more senior teachers. The contracts do guarantee teachers protections against unfair dismissal.

Steve Barr, the charismatic leader who founded Green Dot, told me Wednesday that he expects a contract by the end of the week. “It should be finalized this week; I would be very surprised if it’s not,” Barr said. Barr has said in the past that he expects the New York contract to be similar to the one negotiated in Los Angeles. (more…)

One confusing point in the ongoing saga between the KIPP charter schools and the city teachers union is exactly how many KIPP teachers actually want to belong to the union.

While 16 teachers at the KIPP AMP school in Brooklyn submitted cards to the state labor board saying they want to join the United Federation of Teachers, at least one of those teachers changed her mind after submitting the card, and teachers at two other KIPP schools the union has tried to represent are resisting the push. Yoav Gonen described the union’s effort at those schools as “meddling” in today‘s New York Post.

But add at least one more person to the ranks of KIPP teachers who are actively seeking union help: A staff member on the payroll of KIPP Academy, one of the original KIPP schools, who turned to the union after the charter school network allegedly decided to move him to a new school and dock his pay.

The teacher detailed his complaint in a January letter asking KIPP Academy’s principal, Blanca Ruiz, for a meeting where he would be represented by a UFT official. The union sent me the letter but whited out the name of the teacher who filed the grievance, and the union did not make him available for an interview. (more…)

It’s one thing for Randi Weingarten, the teachers union president, to say she’s behind President Obama’s reform mission to track teacher performance — as long as he gets the details right. It’s another for her to lay out what those details are.

That’s what her national union, the American Federation of Teachers, did today, by way of a press release from Anderson, Indiana. Yeah, I’ve never heard of Anderson either, but apparently teachers there passed a program that will mentor struggling teachers — and give evaluations that point out their strengths and weaknesses.

“PAR is an example of an innovative, successful union-led education reform,” said Dal Lawrence. “It shows just how inaccurate the stereotype is that teacher unions are anti-reform or anti-accountability.”

Here’s the full release, which is from the Anderson union but was sent to me by the national press shop: (more…)