Yes, the Mayor Got His A$$ Kicked. No It's Not the End Of the World

It's budget season in  New York State. That period of time from February 1 to April 1 is very a exciting time to follow politics. Lately, it has become a very exciting to follow education issues as well. The calculus of democratic politics don't seem to be just right during budget season. It can be a time where down seems up and up left seems right; a time where the voice of the few -those who can afford TV ads and can afford to drag thousands up to Albany- seem to outnumber the many. It is a time where politicians find themselves in all sorts of contorted positions with the hope of making as many constituents as possible happy with the how they voted.

This year's budget season is no different. Yet it should be remembered for two great things: First, this year's season has marked the return of the #edwars here in New York. It has seen charter school leaders backed by funders worth tens of millions, successfully fight their way out of a corner they found themselves in after last year's election. Second, it has marked a rare loss for State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Shelly, as he's called upstate, did something he doesn't normally do during budget season; he publicly stated a few positions. That's rare because he usually likes to be the last voice in the room that is heard. After that, he did something he hardly even does; he changed those positions in the name of compromise. 

That's a significant shift. New York State budget negotiations has often been referred to as 'three men in a room', the governor, the leader of the Senate and the leader of the Assembly, hammering out a deal. Shelly doesn't like to change his positions very often (that's why he hardly ever shared them with the press during negotiations). 

This year's budget season is also significant for another reason; the 'fourth man' in the room -the mayor of New York City (and the one person who holds sway over the most amount of legislative votes (of both houses) up in the Albany, had his a__ royally kicked this season, then made a speech that reached out to the charter groups and finally fell completely silent during the last, intense week of negotiations, letting the 'new' powers that be hammer out the details. That's a first and is indicative of just how bad he got whooped. 

To hear Diane Ravitch tell it over on the New York Review of Books, the man simply caved to the powerful funding of charters. Ravitch writes that, at some point during this budget season:

De Blasio decided he could not win this war. The other side had too much money and proved it could drive down his poll numbers.

And to hear Norm Scott tell the story over on Ednotes, BDB is, at best ineffectual and, at worse, a man who wasted our vote. "Enjoy the victory", Scott writes to all of his readers who voted for BDB back in November. "--he is folding faster than a cheap suit--".  Then there's this:

I hate to tell you I told you so, but I told you so. That Eva would never pay a dime in rent...Not only that but now de Blasio will have to pay her rent....can I predict right now -- one term.

Ouch.

So the guy who wanted to stand up to the powers that be had his head handed to him. Instead of thinking of ideas like organizing a press conference to  accusing charters of getting some of the school aide that he had wanted for pre-k (he had wanted $342 million. He got $300 million, with more than $42 million in new dollars going to charters), he caved. Instead of getting creative, perhaps using his bully pulpit powers to visit NYC students who are forced to attend class in trailers (then, perhaps accusing the governor of not caring about those students), he remained silent.  In short, instead of fighting, he turned tail and ran. Gave up.  Here are afew ways you could describe it.

He had his head handed to him.
He got hit straight into next Tuesday.
They beat him so bad his stars saw stars.
He got his butt kicked so hard, mine hurt just watching it.
He was a tomato.


He definitely some missteps. He probably shouldn't have announced the end of co-locations during budget season -when the fog of war hangs over New York politics like a, well, like a fog. And he probably should have taken the gloves off with Eva before she grew as big as she is now (I personally felt she should have been investigated by OSI for calling off school for all those children for a day to head up to Albany. Charters, you may recall, are still required to follow the rules of education in New York State). But what's past is past and it's time to sum up and measure exactly how much was lost.

• Instead of an end to the standardized test regime, we got an affirmation of it. The suburban backlash amounted to less than what many of us had hoped for. Instead of a moratorium on testing, we got a reminder that our jobs are about test results and a warning about teaching to the test. 
• Instead of a $342 million tax on the rich, we a $300 million handout and a slap in the face to the principal of home rule. New York City is now the only district in NYS that cannot create a new funding source to teach it's four year olds. The governor did that to us.
• Instead the end of co-location, we lost a small part of mayoral control and three co-locations must now continue. The topic that the governor actually dismantled part of mayoral control when he didn't exercise the type of control that the moneyed interests like to see is a topic for another blog post. But it happened.

But before you go thinking it's the end of the world, consider two things. First, consider what we gained this budget season:

• A ton of new cash from the state for city schools. Yes, not as much as it should be, but BDB was able to get $6.3 billion from the state in addition to a guaranteed funding source for Pre-k. At no point were we talking about a funding cut.
• An affirmation that co-locations may now end.  If you're crying about co-locations, understand that Silver held off the really bad stuff. The mayor did not lose the control of creating new co-located schools. Unless Fariña decides to co-locate at some future PEP, they are now over. I mean OVER. That's a win in any language.
• No new city dollars going to help charters.   Charters are getting a whole lot of new money, but it's from the state. What does this mean? Well the trend of siphoning off money from the public district to pay for the charters is now reversed. Yes, the state is picking up the tab. But, given the nearly $7B that NYC schools are getting this year (which is a huge increase), that new money (coming from the state) is not coming from the city (at least, this is what I have taken away from the news stories). It's coming from the state. That's a win that Diane Ravitch and Norm Scott should be happy about. 
• [This is an Update] The rent is offset Now some may think that, since the city must now pay for the Eva's rent, that the outcome is terrible. But the fact is that those funds (up to $40 million per year) are being offset (and then some) by the monies that the state is providing. I just wanted to be clear: Mario Cuomo's son is paying the rent for charter schools. He's doing so with money from upstate and long island and all of the suburbs in between. The taxpayers of New York are not paying for that rent. 

Second, consider this; BDB wasn't the only one to get his a$$ kicked this season. As I noted earlier, this season saw a rare loss for Sheldon Silver as well. That is a rarity and it should be factored into anyone's analysis of exactly wth it was that happened up there in Albany this year.

Concusion:

So is deB a one term mayor? Maybe. The way I see it, he's two choices; he could switch teams, like state Senator Tony Avella, has apparently done, or he could find his inner Bill Clinton and figure out how to fight back against all of this. Which way his survival instincts take him is anyone's guess at this point. If he brilliant politician anywhere in him, now would be a good time to let it out.

But I would like to give you a brief history lesson before you go writing off this, or any Italian from Brooklyn. This city's last populist mayor; Theorello H. La Guardia, was elected on the promise of putting everyone back to work. Yet during his first year, he laid off thousands of city employees, because the NYC government was heavily in debt. . It wasn't until after that year until he found his groove and became the mayor we all remember him for. And how he is remembered? Well, among other things, for finding ways of getting the city new money from Washington DC) and for putting people back to work during the Great Depression. 

So, Yes!! BDB got is a$$ kicked this season!! But no. It's not the end of of the world. 

".. Then They Fight You .." Perdido Street On the Post's Review of Ravitch

Perdido Street has a great piece on the hatchet job that the Post has done on the new Diane Ravitch book. His critique of the piece is far better than anything I could have ever articulated and shreds the review from the Post to pieces. One sentiment he expressed that caught my attention the most is this:

"That the Post published an attack on Ravitch that is this personal and this fraudulent just goes to show how much she and her arguments are getting under the skin of the corporate reformers"

They sure are. I'm finishing the Ravitch book now and it is a lucid, fair portrayal of what the reform movement has become and, as Ravitch shows, what it truly was all along. What's more, the book coincides with the contraction of the war on teachers and on public education. It is a contraction that was caused, as Perdido points out, by people like Ravitch.

It's no wonder why the hatchet had been swung: With the disgrace of Rhee and Hall (and, I predict more of these high name reformers) and with "anger" pieces from reformers bring published more and more, there is a sense of desperation in the reform camp that, to even a layman like me watching from a distance, is unmistakable. And now Ravitch is going to release this powerhouse and take all of the air out of the room. The attacks on her makes perfect sense to me.

Gandhi (actually, labor leader  Nicholas Klein in 1914) on struggles like this: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win". 

Ravitch is about to be #winning.

(PS...NO ONE reads newspapers anymore!)

Ed Reform Gone Wrong: How Teachers Are Required to Engage in Unethical Conduct

Much has been made about the push for higher academic standards across the spectrum of what we consider the reform movement. The Common Core is held up as a prime example of these higher standards. The new teacher evaluations systems, coming online in states all across the country, are another. The embracing of high stakes exams (with a promise that the need to assess will eventually move beyond simple tests and into more acceptable and complex assessments) is yet another.

The reasons for this push from the reform movement are mainly old and familiar. Many students are locked out of opportunities as adults in the complex service-based American economy. Our college readiness rates are painfully low. We leave too many students behind. American students, the reform movement contends, must be better academically prepared. This is what really matters.

This push has led many teachers, principals and school leaders to bemoan about how the job of teaching has changed from building an intelligent well-rounded (and academically prepared) adult to preparing students for a test along the lines of what they claim to be unreasonably high academic standards. Teaching, as the criticism goes, just isn't the same as it used to be. The era of building a child has ended, they claim, and the era of teaching only to academics -and to a test- has arrived.

The 'Ed Reformers' they claim -who are interested only in making profit off of educating our fellow citizens-  are to blame for this destruction. The Ed Reformers' -who don't understand what teaching or learning is about (or who do understand and are just out to destroy)- have this need to make a profit from education that has led the entire profession astray. Their thirst for privatization and profit has turned everything on its head, rendering it almost unrecognizable, and has gravely hurt the teaching profession. That's the claim, anyway.

Full disclosure: As a thirteen year veteran teacher, I subscribe to the opinion that the teaching profession is being gravely hurt by these policy initiatives . But I also cringe whenever this concern is publicly asserted. I do so because I rarely see anything other than commentary or anecdotals to back up the opinion whenever it is expressed . I believe in anecdotal evidence and I a strong subscriber to listening to commentary.  But I also know that the people on the other side will respond with public jeers and snickers and will invoke the children in order to marginalize these very real concerns and discredit the people who express them. This is how their kind always responds to criticism and dissent.

I was just recently reminded of this trait (of discredit critical professionals) when I read this piece by Peter Cunningham, former media relations assistant to USDOE Secretary Arne Duncan. He went to great lengths to discredit Diane Ravitch, who works harder than anyone else in the country to responsibly criticize the Ed. Reform movement under the Obama administration. Apparently, Mr. Cunningham, who is now a privately paid consultant for the very same US Department of Education he once worked for (see his Linkedin profile here) wasn't happy that Dr. Ravitch is about to release a new book which squarely takes aim at the reform movement itself, including the need to spend so many oodles of public money on private consultants (like him).  Views expressed in the book, if well received, might possibly change public opinion and threaten to bring policy changes that may effect the bottom line of his very own company; Cunningham Associates.

While it would be unfair for me to opine that Mr. Cunningham's true stake in this discussion is to advance his own personal profit, it should be pointed out that it was unfair for him to leave the bio  "Former Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach, U.S. Department of Education"  under his byline as he entered this discussion of "Ravitch vs. the Reform Movement". I say this because he left out the fact that he is now a paid consultant. Cunningham Associates is nowhere in his byline. But that's what they do: They level hard and harsh critiques on dissenters without making clear what their stake really is, where they're coming from or how they might personally -financially- benefit from continuing the current policies. This is why I cringe whenever anyone says the profession of teaching has changed for the worse without attempting to offer any proof. Profit making reformers like Mr. Cunningham will take to the public airwaves and simply slay us (smote, I believe, may be a better term) with snickers and jeers and a good dose of discredit.

So, to that end, I have one, small, but provable accusation to make: The current policies require teachers, at least here in New York, to engage in conduct that is simply unethical. (This requirement to commit unethical conduct is what is changing the profession of teaching.)


President Obama's great education legacy is a three legged stool: The Common Core standards, the implementation of new accountability measures (embodied in such things as the new teacher evaluation systems and the new tests that are tied to them) and the new public/private partnershipto support these efforts (something that, at least around my dinner table is referred to as privatization).   The Common Core, as you probably already know, are (very high) academic only standards. They speak to skills (as opposed to content) and are coming with new standardized exams (provided by several for-profit education companies, of course). And here in New York, the new teacher evaluation system will evaluate teachers along the lines of how well their students perform on the exams (academically). The Danielson Framework (used across New York and other parts of the country) is concerned only with academics. The new standardized exams consider only academic achievement. The standards themselves are concerned only with academics.

Yet academics is only one (albeit major) part of our job.

Each teacher in New York must adhere to a specific set of ethics called the New York State Code of Ethics for Educators. This code of ethics is printed on the back of each and every teaching license in New York and, I am told, was once held up as a model for teacher ethics across the country. These ethics are codified into six principles and set a clear path for how a teacher should conduct his or self in the workplace. Conduct yourself along these lines and you're being ethical. Fail to conduct along these lines and you are being unethical. It's fairly cut and dry stuff.

So what does the code of ethics say about an academics only approach? Well principle one says:

Educators promote growth in all students through the integration of intellectual, physical, emotional, social and civic learning   

So every time you choose not to pause your reading assignment to ask little Peter whether he's eaten breakfast or has had a safe night at home, but choose to stay with your pacing calendar so that he can pass that test, you are committing unethical conduct. And yet the new responsibilities of your job to the Common Core and to the Danielson Framework and to the ever-present test require you to not address those things and to stay with the reading assignment. The new responsibilities require you to do something that is unethical. In fact, your continued employment as a teacher requires it.


So if you're a teacher, and you feel that the job of teaching has changed for the worse, you may be absolutely correct. The job is having us all turn away from those aspects that help us build a future adult and is embracing only one instructional aspect. But remember that if you choose to share that concern in a public forum, and if you don't phrase that objection just the right way and don't back it up with some type of fact (feel free to use the word unethical), then you're setting yourself up for jeers and snickers as a way of being discredited (after all, if they can try it on Diane Ravitch, they can surely do it to you).

One last thing. If you're an ed reformer and you're reading this post and you're a little upset; please don't smote me. Principle 6 of this code of ethics  requires educators to

... advocate for fair opportunity for all children

The over-commitment to testing and the for-profit structures that have been put into place to support that commitment, is hurting children and the people who teach them. This post (and others like it on similar blogs) are actually our way of adhering to ethical conduct. I invite you to read all of my professional ethics again linked here.