On Ednotes: A MUST READ From a NYC Principal

How does Norm Scott get a hold of this stuff!!?!?!

This time, he found an email from a NYC principal written to Earnst Logan (his union president), Michael Mulgrew (mine) and the DOE number 2, Shael Suransky.

The email destroys the Danielson based observation process and sets the record straight about what teaching really is.

If my principal didn't rock, I'd ask to work for this guy. He really seems to get it.

Click the link and read over on Ednotes.

http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2013/12/nyc-principal-brian-de-vale-i-am-daniel.html?m=1

John King Goes One Round With the Straw Man -And Wins!!

I'd like to congratulate NYSED Commissioner John King on finally winning one! He's been getting bruised so bad by New York suburban parents and educators for so long that I was starting to feel sorry for him! Last night's forum in Brooklyn, where he was applauded by people who support the Common Core, must have made him feel much better.

In fact, the supporters who turned out in favor of the Common Core helped King look like he is the champion of equal rights in New York! Now supporting him means supporting the Common Core and with it, equal rights for education in New York. But if you oppose him (like parents all across New York's urban and suburban areas have been for months now), then you must be opposing the Common Core -and that means you oppose equal rights and you oppose equal opportunity. Shame on you.

 King has now juxtaposed himself between angry "white" parents in the suburbs and accepting "black" parents in the city as the official guy who cares and is willing to 'take it on the chin' for what he knows is right. It is the most brilliant political move -and slick playing of the race card- that I can remember seeing in a very long time.

Thing is, is a false argument. Parents in the suburbs never were angry over the Common Core. They were angry over the rollout of the Common Core and of the high stakes tests that King is fast becoming associated with.

You see, the rollout of the Common Core has lead to hastily drafted curricula that do not serve students very well in their present form. Those curricula will need to be improved.  The rollout had also lead to an assumption that students of all grades can just snap their fingers and be CC ready with no phase-in from the school system at all. That's bogus. The standards are phased in so that you cannot easily be successful in grade 5 unless you have been able to demonstrate CC understanding in grades k-4.   Finally, supporters have demonstrated no interest in tweeking or improving the standards at all -even though they don't, in their current form, work for every subject and for every grade. This rigid embrace has lead to some zealous interpretations of the standards that dismisses the notions that they can be improved.

And yet, Mr. King would like to test students along the standards anyway. Although no student currently attending school has had an opportunity to interact with the standards for more than a year, Mr. King has insisted that student promotion (by proxy) and teacher and principal evaluation scores (by statute) be linked to new tests that are based on the Common Core (and which assume the students who take them had been learning at the Common Core level the whole while). These super-charged high stakes tests have united parents from across New York State in protest to Mr. King and his policies. People are angry -so angry that they have decided that their only recourse is to take to the streets.

  

Yet they're not actually protesting the Common Core themselves. Listen carefully to the activists and you'll hear a clear message: Poor implementation  and terribly destructive tests. The idea of 'Common Core' protests are shorthand for these very real concerns.

But those concerns didn't stop Mr. King from fighting the straw man out in Brooklyn last night! They sent special buses for the E4E  and StudentsFirst crowd. They let them in the room early, then they let them have at it (see here)  They pretended it was all about the Common Core and allowed his supporters -charter school activists, E4E members and others specifically associated with one side of (the polarized) edreform movement- to praise the standards, while ignoring the very things about the Common Core that are making everyone across the state very very angry.  This made it seem as though anyone who appears to be against the Common Core actually wants low expectations for under privileged students.

Great job, Mr. King. You kicked the straw man's a$$ last night. Your sham argument seemed to pay off. Everyone is talking about high expectations. No one is talking about poor tests, poor curriculum or a rollout that is far less than competent.

It's based on a lie. You've driven a wedge between stakeholders. You've pitted race against race and taxpayers against taxpayers. Most importantly, you've set the notion of honest discussion and discourse about education in New York State in a backwards motion -something I thought was only possible in New York City under Michael Bloomberg.

But hey, you got the "W". That's all that counts for you, isn't it?

Salute.

Accountability vs. Support: Here Is One Example of How Things Need To Change

the second part of my Gotham piece has been delayed by a death in my extended family and my school's QR. It's still forthcoming. In the meantime enjoy my rant.

(Disclaimer: This is not a rant about doing extra work on a weekend. It's a rant about what's wrong with the current NYCDOE (as evidenced by the fact that I'm doing extra work on a weekend). Read on...)


Every six weeks, high school teachers compile their grades for report cards. While the method has changed during the Bloomberg years (we used to fill out bubble sheets. Now we use Excel to complete the grades and email them in. Soon, we'll be doing them online), the basic structure of grades has remained the same. Most of us are expected to score students on a numeric system, rounding each grade up or down to the nearest 5th point (55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, so on and so forth). This is the end of the second marking period of our Fall semester. We received our grade reports and were given the Thanksgiving Weekend to complete them.

We are also responsible to leave comments with each student (we're expected to leave two comments for students who didn't achieve a passing grade). It is important to note that, over the fourteen years that I have (proudly) been teaching in New York City's schools, these comments (and their corresponding numbers that I have been asked to enter) have not changed. It's been one of the few things that have remained exactly the same in this system

 Until now, of course. Someone down at the Tweed Courthouse has decided that now (in the middle of a semester where many teachers are giving up time from their holiday weekend to complete grades and during a year where Danielson and Common Core are in full on implementation) is the time to update the comments.

And it's not just and update. They have completely re-formatted both the comments and the way we find those comments such that every teacher who sits down with them has to spend even more time learning the new codes and finding a brand new set of comments to leave that both satisfy our school's policy and our responsibility to leave effective feedback. Sure, the old comments were a little antiquated and could have used updating. But dropping this on teachers in the middle of a semester, as opposed to September at the beginning of a school year (and dropping it on us during a holiday weekend) makes a tough job even more difficult.

 I've said this before, and I'll say it again: I don't complain for the sake of complaining. If I raise an issue with something here, it's because I believe it points to a larger issue that should be addressed. Dropping something like this on classroom teachers in the middle of a holiday weekend is yet another example of what's wrong with current district leadership: It's a good idea, that has been rolled out in the absolute wrong way. It's a way of keeping everyone -teachers, students and parents- accountable except for the managers who think of the ideas and expect them to be implemented. It fails to gives employees the proper support - which in this case, is simply time and the courtesy of an announcement- that is needed to get the job done.

The ideas of accountability and support are pretty important. For years,  DOE leadership has been obsessed with holding us accountable. Yet, as their critics often charge,  the leaders have consistently failed to consider the right types of support  needed in order to achieve the accountability they seek. For example, current school funding (call "Fair Funding") has prevented extra monies from flowing to schools who serve the students with highest needs. The results of that?  Schools who serve students of higher needs perform worse on indicators like school Progress Reports and they receive lower letter grades. (File this one under 'Duh'. The Queens schools with the lowest Special Education Students (Students With Disabilities) and ESL ("L") populations received the highest grades: A whopping ten received an "A" (two received a "B"). Yet in the schools who serve the highest populations of SWDs and Ls; zero received an "A", only four received a "B" and four were given a "C", (oh, and and one "F"!). Just to underline the point I'm making: These schools are held accountable, yet are not given the proper supports needed to achieve that accountability (and when they fail to reach that accountabiliy, they're closed).

This business of dropping a whole new system of comments (a required task for teachers) right in the middle of a semester -during a holiday weekend and with no announcement at all!- is just another symptom of this approach. They want to hold people accountable without even considering the supports needed to achieve that accountability (in this case, it's new specific comments, without regard to proper time or introduction). It's one of the many many things that need to be changed with regard to the leadership of this district and I hope the new chancellor identifies and addresses it.

About John King: A Quick Look At This Blogroll

I know I have to publish the second part of the GS evaluation piece, but I wanted to take a moment to pose a quick question:

Do you think NYSED Commissioner John King is in a bit of trouble? Almost every blog on this blogger's roll suggests that he very well may well be. 

The reformers' big mistake -their overreach really- was taking the problems of urban education issues and dropping them straight in the laps of suburban school districts. Suburban parents (and districts) are not happy to have been dragged into the 'ed wars', where curriculum, tests and teacher evaluations are thought to be main tools in combating poverty. There isn't as much poverty in the suburbs and education stakeholders feel that its going fairly well there. 'So if it ain't broke here' a suburban parent asked me last summer 'then why fix it?'.

Poor Commissioner King took all that frustration right on the chin last week . I don't blame him for canceling the rest of the meetings. I'd cancel too.

Should Gotham Schools Be Taken Off Of My Reader? (Part 1 of 2)

There have been a lot of attacks lauched at the edu website Gothamschools.org over the last few months. The most noticeable is a satirical blog entitled "Gotham Charter Schools" (see here). While I myself have not been above pointing out that website's deficiencies (see here for one example), I have to say that I have been more concerned with another question: Does the website even hold value anymore? By that, I mean the type of value that someone like me (a public school teacher) can take from visiting their pages? While my habit of visiting it daily says "yes", my experiences with their articles and linkbacks have been saying "no" more and more as of late. I'm finally up to asking myself this question: Is it time to just say goodbye and take them off my reader?

GothamSchools "crawls" by the 'Way Back Machine'. The amount of crawls performed correspond to web traffic and Google searches and is the best "quick" way to gather how busy a website has been over time

I don't want to simply attack. That's really not what I do, anyway. Instead, I want to give the question, and the previously awesome website, the full airing I think they deserve. I also want to help inform my fellow edu bloggers as to whether they should be angry with, upset at or have just plain understanding for what the folks over there have to go through -have to put themselves through, really- in order to have to publish. So this question is going to take two posts. 

so buckle up. Part One  is a quick history lesson ...

It's no secret that the way we get our information these days is becoming a process that is getting more and more narrow. When Ronald Reagan's FCC disposed of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 , he let us fall off of a very big hook: He told us that it was ok to stop listening to views that contrasted with our own opinion and  to pay no mind to people with whom we disagreed.

For those who may not know, the Fairness Doctrine was a fairly important FCC policy which news organizations followed during the Golden Age of Journalism ('49 - '87). It said that two things: 1) Controversial topics in American had to be covered and 2) When covering any topic, major positions, representing contrasting views needed to be represented in the news organizations' publication. For the newspapers, this usually meant that both sides of a given position had to have their coverage on their pages. For radio and TV, this tended to mean equal time be given to both perspectives of a given topic. 

This was done with the thinking that the audience would hear both sides and make up their mind for themselves. It all boiled down to a Jeffersonian commitment that journalists had  in helping a create a well informed citizenry.

These days, as Gotham schools own a mission statement once revealed, the journalistic institutions that many middle aged adults have grown up with are collapsing. Without the Fairness Doctrine, yet with the continuing need to raise money (either through profit or institutional donations) that is the lifeblood of professional journalism in America, news organizations have been left to themselves to earn whatever viewership will keep the money coming in.

The new trend of amateur journalists -the bloggers- haven't made this any easier. Readers tend to read opinions that appeal to their opinions. "Old World" news outfits must compete more and more against this backdrop of the new 'social' media that are banging around the echo chamber.

 For the overwhelming majority of news organizations in America, the response to this has been to attempt to draw as many viewers that will gain as many advertising (or donation) dollars as possible (this is why you and I see more of Snooki in a pair of high heels then we do our own president during 6:30 News hours: She looks better than 'O, and she doesn't numb our brains by making us all think too hard).  This reality has turned professional news organizations, once the solitary  beacon of information for the entire adult nation, into almost complete slaves of their viewers' whims.

As a consequence, whatever  the viewer wants, or says (s)he wants, is what the news organizations have shown or discussed. As the news outlets have tried to gain an edge, and attract more viewers, they have experimented by showing or revealing news that will attract one particular type of reader or viewer. And the viewers? Well, they have swarmed to some news outlets expecting to see one type of news, and to other outlets expecting to see a different type. If they do not see what they expect, they tend to drift away to another outlet that will discuss what they do expect (this is sort of where I am with regard to my big question: should I take them off my readers). 

It's this mentality -and it's best to think of it as a swarm mentality- that has led innovative online news organizations to create news outlets which are intended attract a particular swarm of readers. CNET, for instance, covers only information about technology. Gawker, covers only shocking news and gossip that would interest urbanite New Yorkers. This trend of journalism around one topic or issue (specifically an entire news outlet which provides news only around a specific issue), is a relatively new one, but a relatively feudal one as well -where instead of one organization with the ability to provide news around all topics, several dozen smaller organizations spring up and are able only to provide information about smaller 'local' topics. 

While it will probably be around for a while, this feudal journalism holds a a few wonderful promises. For instance, it makes no bones about what it is and about which viewers or readers it is trying to attract. That's a good thing, because these new smaller, news outlets, organized around single issue to topic, are  therefore free to cover whatever they want, within the parameters of what they have set for themselves in their mission statements and other internal decisions they make. That means they can develop a true expertise and flip almost anyone off who doesn't like what they have to say. That type of journalistic feedom is good for us. 

This was the promise for a brand new website, Gothamschools.org, in 2008. Gotham was a test as to whether issues based journalism could  carve out a niche for itself over the topic of public education. As they're original statement of purpose read on their "About" page back then:

GothamSchools is an independent news source about the New York City public schools.

We seek to correct an unfortunate confluence of events: The movement to improve urban schools is reaching a peak of energy while the journalism industry is crumbling. That means that both the achievements and challenges of the movement risk escaping the healthy scrutiny of a vibrant press corps.

(note, they have since changed this statement of purpose to something completely different further leading to my big question)

In addition to a new hopeful outlook, GS also held the promise of not being profit driven. Overhead and salaries were provided through large donations from institutions who cares about their topic of education.

Yet, despite collecting and disseminating the best list of edu news stories on a daily basis,  the endeavor seemed rocky right from the start. These issues based journalists seemed rather close to the educational leaders yet rather distant from actual educators. Their staff came off as snooty right in their own comments section and began replies with sentence starters like "A close read of this article might show you that ...". One year into the gig, they were being called schils by anyone involved in education who didn't seem to agree with them (only partly because they weren't liked and because there were times when the staff came off like a bunch of jerks, but also because of who funded them)

That said, their open comments section and their commitment to gathering and sharing information from Twitter and the blogs, was brand new -and it showed their commitment to the democratic process of discussion (which is what their website says they seek to "host") around education. Gotham Schools connected readers to bloggers like Norm Scott Leonie Haimson and a host of other edu bloggers, for the first time. Their "Community" section not only connected readers with edu wonks and players in the edu scene , but also to teachers like Arthur Goldstein, who can explain the pedagogue's perspective about as good as anyone I've ever read.  They weren't even above publishing a post from an anonymous blog -as long as it was intelligent and talked about education in New York. It's important to note: that had never been done before! Jefferson once said that "Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government". Well I'm here to tell you, relative to what we had before GS, we were all plenty well informed!

All in all they, while tilting heavily toward the power brokers of education in New York City (the Bloombergs, the Klein's and anyone else who held power at Tweed and City Hall), they did let voices in. Some may say those voices were marginalized. Others may say they were just outnumbered on the pages of their site. But no one can claim that they didn't let new voices -voices that had previously had no place- into the public discussion of education. A complaint like that would be just plain absurd.

And man, was 2009 - 2012  the time to have "discussions" about edu in New York, or what!

Soon, as the recession hit and  the mayor changed the tone and policies for his third term, Gotham demonstrated to viewers and competitors alike that education in New York could be a hot button topic that generated a fairly large swarm of viewers. And other news organizations soon followed this pattern in an attempt to attract the 'swarm' of people hungry for edu news. But more on that in the second post.

So, to review, journalism collapses, then feudalizes around topics that they hope viewers might find interesting and gothamschools.org find a niche for itself, and lets in new voices.  

It was really important to place the gothamschools story in that context. I'll publish the rest in a few more days.

The Long Overdue Adieu

Happens 89 days from today.

And if you have to ask what that means, then you just don't know Mayor Michael R Bloomberg of New York ;)

One Great Big Pair of ....

So, de Blasio have a speech to the one percent today. He's way ahead in the polls and may in fact sail to victory. So did he placate New York's wealthy business class  to help ensure his victory?

Nope.

Instead, he told them that he would fight for mandatory paid sick days, end the free ride for the real estate sector and fight for the working class.

Nice.

And what about labor unions?

"In remarks that lasted 30 minutes, Mr. de Blasio, who is the city’s public advocate, paid tribute to labor unions as a guarantor of economic security, and he said he would find a way to restore their place in the political sphere"

Now there is a big difference between labor unions and public sector unions. Labor unions, for instance, gave money to organizations who work for anti teacher union groups during the last recession (and I know of one sheet metal workers union who actively told its members that teachers in NYC deserved to be fired back in 2010 (to the dismay of a nephew of mine who is a member). So, teachers,  you shouldn't go thinking that we're going to be getting that raise just yet.

But the fact that this guy came in and told 800 of the biggest businessmen in New York that unions, who take money from their bottom line, would have a seat at his table leads me to one ultimate conclusion: This guy's got one great big pair of bologna sandwiches!