THE TURN OF THE CENTURY BLUES

 

We are ankle deep into the new century and I got the “Turn of The Century Blues”.

The turn of the century has brought with it many challenges and so many negative changes that radical movements have risen up against the entrepreneurs s turning our major industries into oligopolies and controlling our banking and financial worlds. These “Barbarians At The Gates” have used every legal loophole at their disposal. They have created corporate philanthropic foundations to support and then control, through monetary influence, the very institutions they claim they are trying to help. They have accrued more wealth and income than at any other time in our history and want more. They have virtually bought both houses of Congress and every legislature in the country, and even some big city governments as well.

Will we ever be safe from these vultures? Will no politicians come to their ethical senses and rescue this republic from their talons? Will Democrats and Republicans alike simply accept their unregulated gifts?  Will we ever be saved?

As Gabe Kaplan’s (OK, who remembers him?) old gym teacher and a former football coach used to say, “The faces may change, but the s–t remains the same.” Was that the 21st century or 20th century? Turns out it is both.

Of course now we refer to Gates, Broad, Walton, and Koch et al. Of course we have to deal with the “Citizens’ United” Supreme Court rulings. Of course we fight vs. Goldman Sachs and the hedge fund guys. Of course we have to deal with their control of education, media, and government through their financial influence.

But of course this has happened before and has been beaten before.

So lets go back about 100 years when a few GIANT corporations formed in the last decades (after a long drawn-out war and its aftermath during the ’60s and ’70s) controlled our economy, our politics, and our education system. Change the names to Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Ford, and Morgan. Change NCLB, RTTT, and Common Core to Frederick Winslow Taylor’s Scientific Management.

Who helped design and pay for the public (common) schools of 100 years ago and their role to develop obedient factory workers? Were state and federal legislatures owned by these Robber barons?  Was the lack of powerful laws to stop them a problem? Were there “fringe” groups like rural “populists” and more urban “progressives” and unions speaking up? YES.

And did it take decades to get executives and legislatures, first at the local levels (Washington. Oregon, and Wisconsin) to act before the federal government did? Did new outlier media reporters called MUCK-rakers come to the aid of those “radical” groups and government officials? YES.

Finally, did presidents from both sides of the aisle Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson with their congresses finally and reluctantly take action? Were constitutional Amendments added to overturn reactionary Supreme Court Decisions and prevent new ones? YES! 

Republicans Teddy and Taft busted the Trusts by suing them under the underused Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. T.R. got Congress to pass the Mann, Hepburn, and Elkins Acts as well as the Pure Food and Drug and Meat Inspection Acts. Taft got Congress to pass both the Clayton anti-Trust and the Federal Trade Commission Acts in 1914.

Under Democrat Woodrow Wilson, the 16th Amendment laid the groundwork for a graduated, progressive income tax to help alleviate the unequal distribution of income of the time.  The 17th gave us real representation in the Senate by having Senate seats become elected and not appointed by corrupt state legislatures. Ok, the 18th was a mistake but at least they were talking about people getting high legally or illegally.

And finally, the 19th finally gave voting rights to half the adult population in the country.

Go check it. I wont bore you here with a paper on the subject, just some questions for you to investigate for yourselves. 

So people, there actually is hope to end this century’s “Turn of The Century Blues.”

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A BATTY 36 HOURS

 

Sunday, July 28^th– Monday July 29^th 2014

 

Almost 5 hours of driving down I-95 and its accompanying roads, service stations, and DC traffic is enough to wear out even the most high flying BAT, but inspired by the potential of meet and greet, dinner, and a great rally the next day, I showered, changed and ventured down to the Bat Social in the Holiday Inn Capitol.

I was surprised to see fewer people than I expected, in a room smaller than I expected, but with energy that was over the top. Adults and children were all smiles and actively listening to music provided by teachers and playing games at banquet tables as well. Snacks and refreshments were served. T-shirts were sold. A good time was had by all. They whooped and hollered as they danced to the Commodores’ “She’s a Brick Hoooouuuuse”.

It was a reminder that BATS is more than a viral pro public education reform group. It is, at the same time, a support group and what I saw and heard during that social was just that. People who felt estranged in their home schools partied as if it was a family reunion, which in fact it was. We are a family of teaches tired of what we have to put up with from people who think they can do our jobs better.

There I watched the “oligarchy response team” and bat costumed women dance their troubles away. It was mostly women. I counted fewer than a dozen men (three were the musicians and one a husband videographer) among over a hundred people. But this is not unexpected. Teaching is still a predominantly female occupation. That helps explain why it is hammered so.

I saw a few people I recognized (shout out to Anthony Cody, Jesse Turner, Danisha Jones, Morna McDermott (without her famous straw cowgirl hat,) from previous DC demonstrations and conferences (from Save Our Schools and United Opt out), but at this Social were mostly BATs from 38 states and family members who came because they were drawn to the occasion. I knew some of them as well: notably organizers Marla Kilfoyle, Priscilla Sanstead, and the omnipresent Mark Naison.

 I did meet some terrific older kids from the Newark Student Union and discussed good education with them including getting at least one of them really excited about the WISE program (experiential learning for HS seniors). I also met and heard Janet Garrett, a kindergarten teacher running as the Democratic candidate for Congress in Ohio’s 4^th Congressional District.

 Most interesting was being interviewed for a film (Do they still use that word?) by Jack Paar. (No, not the former Tonight Show host who has been dead since 2004, but the one who is doing this film about what must be done to save public education for his wife, who is a teacher.)

 Dinner brought me to a table with Joan Kramer, Joe Lieb, Jesse Turner and Rosie Reyes. All are FB friends and colleagues, although I knew Jesse most and Rosie least, so I thought.

 Two hours later, after some fun and serious talk about what is going on in everyone’s neck of the woods, mostly hearing stories about Connecticut being “New Jersey east”, I discovered that Rosie, ELL teacher from rural Connecticut, is really Rosie who graduated from Adlai Stevenson High School in the Soundview section of the Bronx in 1979 while I was teaching there. I immediately went form Dave to Mr. Greene. It was soooo funny. She couldn’t, or wouldn’t stop.

 The next day brought unusually great weather for DC in July. Instead of the 93-degree days with high humidity we suffered through in July 2011 for our Save Our Schools March and Conference, It was in the mid 70’s with a strong but refreshingly cool breeze.

 At the vendors’ table set up on the right side of the venue, I had the opportunity to share stories with other “vendors” Ruth Rodriquez and Bess Altwerger (both of SOS as well), rapper Jeremy Dudley (who performed as aka Origin) and Yo Miz, also from NY and also the singer of the National Anthem. Of course I met lots of new people from all over the country and listened to their stories as some of them actually bought my book, “Doing The Right Thing: A Teacher Speaks”.

 Of course, there were performances from adults like Barry Lane and Dell Akron, but the show was stolen by a group of high school dancers, slam poets and rappers from nearby Chancellor HS. Damn Good! I have been to many rallies, even helped to or organized some, but each time I am knocked out most by students and kids who know what this is all about and know how to fight for their academic lives. I can’t help but hold out all hope.

 Amongst the revelry, song, dance, and celebration of a few hundred teachers and their families were powerful speeches of hope, pride, and progress in our fight for public schools by several people I knew like Jesse Turner, Danisha Jones, 10 year old Wiz kid from Chicago Asean Johnson and his mom, Shoenice Reynolds’ (who both spoke at our SOS rally in NYC on May 17^th).

 I was also amazed by new speakers Gus Morales, Rousemay Vega, Helen Gym from ravaged Philadelphia, Adele Cothorne who blew the whistle on Michelle Rhee in DC, and Dr. Yohuru Williams, who just blew us all away.

 However the two who stood out most to me were two candidates for Congress, the aforementioned Janet Garrett and Allen Cannon from New Jersey whose raw emotion came out so powerfully as he tried to hold back tears. When two DEMOCRATIC candidates for Congress rather than Republican or Tea Party candidates jumping on the anti CC express go public at a rally like this I am even more energized.

 When I meet and chat with candidates like Allen Cannon and Janet Garrett I want to stand up and fight even harder.

 How about you?

 

Stop the Media Madness.

Concerned parents all across the country are asking: What’s wrong with our public schools? What’s wrong with our teachers? All parents are right to ask these questions. The problems are immense. The solutions are complex. There is much to be fixed. Students of all ages are not challenged. They are bored. They are being tested to death. The love of learning is instilled in far too few students of all socioeconomic backgrounds and geographic locations. Policy makers do not listen to parents, teachers, and students.

Additionally there are simply not enough good teachers to go around. All of our kids deserve the kind of teachers we may have had that inspired us to learn, to grow, to become better students and human beings. How do we get them? Why are there so few inspiring teachers? What about our system prevents it? What about the new reforms make it worse, not better? We all deserve answers.

We must be honest and admit we have work to do.

For us to continue to be the democracy we care for, we must provide for a better-educated electorate to help fix our schools, our curricula, how we recruit our teachers and, finally how our teachers are taught to teach so they can be most effectively in today’s world. 

This is all the media moguls at the beck (no pun intended) and call the corporate philanthropies want you to hear and read and see. They insist that only they or their experts know how to fix things. 

However there is much already very good about our schools. There are excellent schools with excellent teachers in excellent districts all around the country. There are programs and styles to be shared. But who knows of those? If you are lucky enough to live in one of them you know. But if you don’t, what information do you rely on to judge American schools and teaches? Who are your sources? More importantly, how can the good be shared?

There are thousands of well-informed academics and educational leaders who cry out but simply are out spent by the misleaders. There are thousands of smart, caring, engaging, and inspiring teachers who must be heard. I am but one teacher trying to make a difference.  The public must be made more aware of what is the truth about American education today before it is too late.

PISSSED OFF.

Tags

Amanda Ripley, Elizabeth Green, Joe Nocera, Kris Neilson, Paul Tough

Anyone read Joe Nocera’s column today in the NYT?

Here is how it begins.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/opinion/joe-nocera-teaching-teaching.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A8%22%7D&_r=0

“I’m starting to wonder if we’ve entered some kind of golden age of books about education. First came Paul Tough’s book, ‘How Children Succeed,’ about the importance of developing non-cognitive skills in students. It was published in September 2012. Then came ‘The Smartest Kids in the World,’ by Amanda Ripley, which tackled the question of what other countries were getting right in the class room that America was getting wrong. Her book came out just about a year ago.”

And now comes Elizabeth Green’s ‘Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (and How to Teach It to Everyone)’, which will be published next week, and which was excerpted in The New York Times Magazine over the weekend. The first two books made the New York Times best-seller list. My guess is that Green’s book will, too. It certainly ought to.”

What the? So the only books written since 2012  worth reading about education are by Paul Tough, Amanda Ripley, and now Elizabeth Green? All journalists? Not Diane Ravitch?

Are teachers like Laurel Sturt (Davonte’s Inferno), Kris Neilson (Children of the Core), Janet Mayer (As Bad As They Say?) , Mercedes Schneider (A Chronicle of Echoes)and me  (Doing The Right Thing: A Teacher Speaks), for example, chopped liver? 

In his world the only worthy authors who write about how to educate kids or teach teachers aren’t teachers?

Really? Maybe we should write books about how to be a better journalist, or columnist for the NYT?

WHY EDITORS SHOULD NEVER PUT THE PHRASE COMMON CORE IN A TITLE:

I actually met the author of this NYT magazine piece met a few years ago when she was the key note speaker at a WISE (www.wiseservices.org) conference at the Queens HS for Teaching. How ironic.

My 1500 character comment lies below:

I almost didn’t read the article because you, or your editors, decided to add Common Core to the lede. There is far more to the common core discussion than how it relates to teaching math. Unfortunately the use of the term is a red flag. I wish your editors or you didn’t add it and am glad I read on.

I loved math until the moment math contained more letters than numbers. This, by the way is great for tipping 18% and calculating my gas mileage in my head. I have to thank my elementary teachers for that. I had one great math teacher at the Bx HS of Science who taught the required math class to those of us who were more into social studies and English. She did all of the things you refer to in the article.

I have noted for years how “I, Me, and We” has been a horror show in NYC middle and high schools. Not only was it bad in math, some geniuses (TFA among them) decided it should be the mandatory way to teach English and social studies as well. Truth be told, math teachers could have learned a lot from their social studies colleagues who since before the 1960s in NYC were using a method whereby students would have to solve a problem or answer an essential question about something in history.

Love to chat more but running out of characters. Read the book: Doing the Right Thing: A teacher speaks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/why-do-americans-stink-at-math.html?hpw&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHedThumbWell&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

 

But on my own blog I can go on.

The article actually talks much more about how innovative math teaching is NOT Common Core because it was created by teachers decades ago. It focuses on how difficult it is to teach teachers to use newer unfamiliar methods. This is often true, but I have seen it work under the right circumstances. Those circumstances are collaborative, cordial and teacher directed.

Top down has never worked.  Common Core is top down.

Ms. Green illustrates that with her thorough discussion of the Japanese use of collaborative “lesson study”. Teachers in the US and in some  University Schools of Education (Fordham for one) have used that and also “Critical Friends” groups for many years.

Why not mention that? Why make it seem as if we don’t or can’t?

A glossed over generalization is harmful for the public to read and for those the article is supposedly about. Many teachers will be insulted because they are more like the two positive examples Ms. Green uses (Magdalene Lambert and Akihiro Takahashi than anyone would know by reading this.

That isn’t fair to any of them, whether they teach math or any other subject.

Oddly the article Ms. Green writes criticizes Common core as well. It should be.

Good teachers get kids to investigate and decide on their perspective and don’t need CC to do it.

WHY ISN’T THIS INDOCTRINATION CRIMINAL?

Tags

@anthonycody, @dianeravitch, @Koch, @valeriestrauss, education

We all know who Libertarian Ron Paul was referring to in this quote, but who is it really true about?

 

Will this Huffington post report by Christina Wilkie  and Joy Resmovits report be tossed in the collective circular files of those in power or will it be attacked as more from the radical left?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/16/koch-brothers-education_n_5587577.html

I am not radical left. I am pragmatic left. But the more I  see what people like the Kochs are doing the more I move away from pragmatism and towards just plain angry!

Excerpts from the report and my comments follow:

“In some ways, the class looked like a typical high school business course, taught in a Highland Park classroom by a Highland Park teacher. But it was actually run by Youth Entrepreneurs, a nonprofit group created and funded primarily by Charles G. Koch, the billionaire chairman of Koch Industries.

 

The official mission of Youth Entrepreneurs is to provide kids with “business and entrepreneurial education and experiences that help them prosper and become contributing members of society.”

 

“The underlying goal of the program, however, is to impart Koch’s radical free-market ideology to teenagers. In the last school year, the class reached more than 1,000 students across Kansas and Missouri.

 

Lesson plans and class materials obtained by The Huffington Post make the course’s message clear: The minimum wage hurts workers and slows economic growth. Low taxes and less regulation allow people to prosper. Public assistance harms the poor. Government, in short, is the enemy of liberty.”

 So, instead of teaching through objective examination of theory and practice, skeptical questions, and the use of balanced information for kids to formulate their own ideas, we indoctrinate?

 

“During the 2012-2013 school year, YE’s credit-bearing class reached more than 1,000 students in 29 schools in Kansas and Missouri, according to the group’s annual report. Vernon Birmingham, YE’s director of curriculum and teacher support, told HuffPost that the course will be in 42 schools in the coming school year.

 

An offshoot in Atlanta, YE Georgia, reported being in 10 schools in the 2011-2012 school year. Since 2012, YE has also launched three major new initiatives: an online version of its course, an affiliate program to help rural schools access the class, and an after-school program, YE Academy, which served more than 500 students in its first year.”

 Kansas, Missouri, Georgia….The creeps are creeping!

 

“David Koch won the REPUBLICAN party’s nomination for vice president in 1980. That year, its platform proposed a drastic revision of the American education system: “We advocate the complete separation of education and state. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”

THREE YEARS LATER (UNDER REAGAN) “A NATION AT RISK” WAS PRODUCED! COINCIDENCE?

 

“Koch-funded think tanks provide many of YE’s course materials. Teachers are trained at Koch Industries headquarters and are required to read Charles Koch’s book The Science of Success.

The focus on high school students is a key part of the Kochs’ long-term effort to create a libertarian-minded society from the ground up. “We hope to develop students’ appreciation of liberty by improving free-market education,” the Koch associates wrote during the program’s initial planning stages. “Ultimately, we hope this will change the behavior of students who will apply these principles later on in life.”

 

“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.”

Guess whose quote that is? See the end of post for the answer!

“To find “liberty-minded” teachers who might be predisposed to help them, the team reached out to the network of libertarian groups that benefit from Koch family funding. Many of these groups, including the Institute for Humane Studies, the Bill of Rights Institute and the Market-Based Management Institute, host seminars and conferences specifically for teachers, and they were happy to help the team.”

 

Is this from Fahrenheit 451 or 1984?

 

“YE supplied Davis [a YE teacher from Kansas] with a syllabus, timeline and “all the handouts that you would need,” he told HuffPost. Before the school year started, he was given a thick binder of lesson plans, as well as flash drives containing quizzes and worksheets. There were also videos, PowerPoint presentations and scores of documents in Microsoft Word. Davis posted many of these resources online, offering the public a rare glimpse inside the highly structured curriculum.

YE’s course materials reflect some of the initial thinking by the Koch associates charged with designing the course. In late 2009, the Koch group made a list of “common economic fallacies” that they believed should be repudiated.

 

These included:

Corporatism v. Free-market Capitalism

Deregulation caused recession in 80s, Economic problems of today

Rich get richer at the expense of the poor

FDR/New Deal brought us out of the depression

Government wealth transfer programs help the poor

Private industry incapable of doing what public sector has

always done

Unions protect the employees

People with the same job title should be paid the same amount…

Minimum wage, “living wage,” laws are good for people/society

Capitalist societies provide an environment for greed

and materialism to flourish

Socialist countries do just fine, people have great lives there

 

They aimed to “inoculate” students against liberal ideas by assigning them to read passages from socialist and Marxist writers, whom they called “bad guys.” These readings would then be compared to works by the “good guys” — free-market economists like Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.”

 Objective? NO! Has objectives? Yes!

 

“Today, to teach its most controversial lessons, YE often relies on videos provided by the Charles Koch-chaired Institute for Humane Studies, which operates out of George Mason University in Virginia. The videos are produced and marketed under an institute arm called Learn Liberty, which offers dozens of educational videos on libertarian and conservative topics.

 

One such video Davis showed his students defended price gouging. “Anti-gouging laws don’t do anything to address” shortages, the video’s narrator argues. Another video titled “Is There a Glass Ceiling?” asserts that the gender pay gap is a myth. Women earn around 75 cents for every dollar earned by men, it says, but not because of discrimination in the labor market. Rather, it’s because of “differences in the choices that men and women make.”

 

Other Institute for Humane Studies videos on the syllabus inform students that the cost of living isn’t actually rising, that minimum wage laws harm workers and that the poor aren’t “really getting poorer.”

 AND THEY SAY THEY ARE AGAINST PRESCRIPTED INDOCTRINATION IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS?

 

“The struggling Topeka school district agreed to let YE train one new teacher a year and provide classrooms. YE would pay the teachers a stipend above their regular salary, supply them with classroom materials, arrange guest speakers and field trips, and provide students with scholarship opportunities, all at no cost to the school district.

Such public-private partnerships are a growing trend in the American education system, as corporations and interest groups come up with ever more innovative ways to market their products and ideas to students in school buildings.”

THE BRIBING OF SCHOOL DISTRICTS WORKS!

 

“One of the fastest growing elements of YE is a program designed to keep students engaged in what is referred to across Koch-funded platforms as “the liberty movement” long after they finish the course. Launched in 2012, the YE Academy runs what it calls “economic ‘think tanks’ for high school students.” The academy relies on the same incentive that initially drew kids to YE: the chance to earn extra money.

 

“That’s right, the more involved you are, the more money you’ll earn to put toward your business or higher education!” reads the YE Academy homepage.”

 

THE BRIBING OF STUDENTS WORKS!

“Youth Entrepreneurs is just one piece of the Kochs’ slow creep into America’s schools. The larger Koch effort pushes forward with think tanks, university programs and teacher seminars as well.

 

But with YE, the Koch pipeline for creating a new generation of liberty advancers now starts early: A student can take the YE course in high school, participate in the YE Academy to earn scholarship money and then use that money to pay for a degree from a Koch-funded university. So it isn’t just a relatively small but growing high school program offered in Kansas and Missouri. It’s part of a larger mission.”

 

“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.” Adolf Hitler

WHY ISN’T THAT CRIMINAL?

NEW YORK MAGAZINE BIAS?

WAITING FOR SUPER-SCHISM: FOR DEMOCRATS EDUCATION MAY BE THE MOST DANGEROUS ISSUE

What a promising

NEW YORK MAGAZINE

headline and opener.

“The Obama administration’s education reforms have been almost completely absent from the national political debate because neither Party has an incentive to talk about them. Republicans don’t want to admit that Obama has carried out policies — more charter schools and teacher accountability — that they have spent years endorsing.”

 

BUT THE ONLINE EDITION HAS THIS HEADLINE:

TEACHERS UNIONS TURN AGAINST DEMOCRATS!

and several interesting RED baiting or RED flag (you decide) words and phrases.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/teachers-unions-turn-against-democrats.html

HUH? IT gets worse. How does a thoughtful, non-radical, progressive, moderate liberal deal with this change in tone?

“But the unions are growing increasingly obstinate in their opposition of the sorts of accountability and pressure that Obama has helped bring upon them.”

 

WHY USE A WORD LIKE OBSTINATE? LIKE A STUBBORN CHILD?

THEN GO BACK TO THIS.

“The main vehicle for Obama’s education agenda is Race to the Top, a portion of stimulus money it used as a lure to encourage states to overhaul their schools, and which produced sweeping changes. (That Race to the Top was tucked into a massive bill that passed very quickly, in the midst of an economic calamity, further obscured the scope of Obama’s agenda.) That revolution has continued to proceed, often carried out by a cadre of center-left education-policy reformers allied with the administration.”

 

REVOLUTION LED BY THE RICH? I DON’T SEE ANY MADISONS.

CENTER LEFT? NIXON WAS MORE CENTER LEFT THAN THIS.

THEN ANOTHER HUH?

“The reformers, citing evidence that good teachers can teach the same class of students dramatically more than a poor teacher can, have introduced new methods to bring talented recruits into the teaching profession and to weed out ineffective teachers. They have also encouraged the spread of public charter schools, which experiment with new pedagogical methods.”

DOES THAT MEAN THERE ARE NO GOOD TEACHERS IN “POOR” (economically) SCHOOLS.

AND ANOTHER…

“The leaders of the teachers unions have generally taken care to placate the demands of their most implacably anti-reform members without opening an irreparable breach with the administration.”

OH, WHEN DID A LACK OF WILLINGNESS TO GO ALONG WITH BAD POLICY BECOME A NEGATIVE?

“And the leaders recognize that the hard-line unionist position — tenure rules that make it impossible to fire even the worst-performing teachers — are nearly impossible to defend with the public.”

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU HEARD THAT KIND (hard-line unionist) OF PHRASING? THE MC CARTHY ERA?

IGNORANCE MUST BE BLISS. SPREADING FALSEHOODS?

IMPOSSIBLE TO FIRE AND IMPOSSIBLE TO DEFEND IN THE SAME SENTENCE?

AND THIS DESCRIPTION OF DIANE RAVITCH?

“Hard-liners have increasingly agitated for more direct confrontation. The leadership of this movement has fallen to Diane Ravitch, formerly a right-of-center education activist who has converted to the cause of teachers-union absolutism with an evangelical fervor, maintaining an almost superhuman schedule of public speaking and prolific blogging.”

 

REALLY JONATHAN? HAVE YOU SWALLOWED ALL OF THE KOOL AID? HARD LINERS? AGITATORS? THEY CALLED CIVIL RIGHTS WORKERS AND ANTI VIETNAM WAR FOLKS THOSE TOO.

“Ravitch has depicted education reform as a plot by corporate elites to privatize schools and destroy unions.”

SO NOW ANYONE WHO KNOWS HOW TO FOLLOW THE MONEY IS A CONSPIRACY THEORY WING-NUT?

“Having identified their enemies with the cause of pure evil, Ravitch and her fellow hard-liners have taken to defending not only the practice of paying teachers by length of service,”

 

REMEMBER THAT THOSE CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY EVERYONE LOVED 130 YEARS AGO (ROCKEFELLER, CARNEGIE, VANDERBILT, ETC) WERE EVENTUALLY FOUND TO BE ROBBER BARONS 100 YEARS AGO.

“But the structure and form of the school day … as a standard of perfection that must be defended absolutely.”

WHERE DO YOU GET THIS?   HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF TEACHERS WORK FAR LONGER HOURS THAN YOU MAKE IT SEEM, NOT ONLY IN SCHOOL, BUT BEFORE AND AFTER.

Then the article refers to the VERGARA CASE and includes this photo.

 With this tiny disclaimer:

I am not a party to this lawsuit. Photo: Peter “Hopper” Stone/ABC

THEN I GET CONFUSED AS CHAIT SAYS THIS:

 “Ravitch replied, sharply and not inaccurately, that Duncan is not a wavering ally but an enemy. (‘Duncan showed that he IS a leader,” she wrote, “a leader in the effort to strip teachers of due process and a leader in the well-funded campaign to erode public confidence in public schools.’)”

AND THIS, WHICH IS TRUE…

“The notion of an alliance between teachers unions and Republicans may sound preposterous, but it is Republicans who are leading the charge against Common Core teaching standards.”

AND ALSO THIS:

“The most focused and organized may well be the cause of the unions. “Supporters of public education must rally and stand together and elect a president in 2016 who supports public schools,” urges Ravitch.”

 

MR. CHAIT: I welcome you to a conversation about both the use of red flag language and education outside of the small circle of friends you cavort with.

 

 

 

 

 

WHY AREN’T AFT AND NEW YORK MORE ENRAGED ABOUT ENGAGENY?

New York students, teachers, and parents got taken while the private funders got what they paid for.

EVEN before the latest AFT fiasco regarding Common Core, I have been doing work trying to better understand how the new NYS Common Core based Standards affected high school seniors. Along the way I fell upon what elementary and middle-school teachers have been facing for months: ENGAGENY.

I looked to see who prepared this huge website filled with everything from policy to modules (curricula) and resources. I wanted to find out where all of that came from and who designed it. The site says it is “in house”.

Being as skeptical as I am, I asked a few questions. “Is ENGAGENY really ‘in house’ as the NYSED says it is?” 
Where is the transparency? Who paid for all of this? Why is it so hard to “follow the money?” With whom does it partner? 
 Who has NYSED hired to write the modules on their site?

Here is where my journey to find the answers took me.

The old adage says that, “ You get what you pay for.” Those who paid for it did indeed.

Let’s start with the source.

From http://www.engageny.org

“EngageNY.org is developed and maintained by the New York State Education Department (NYSED) to support the implementation of key aspects of the New York State Board of Regents Reform Agenda. This is the official web site for current materials and resources related to the Regents Reform Agenda. The agenda includes the implementation of the New York State P-12 Common Core Learning Standards (CCLS), Teacher and Leader Effectiveness (TLE), and Data-Driven Instruction (DDI). EngageNY.org is dedicated to providing educators across New York State with real-time, professional learning tools and resources to support educators in reaching the State’s vision for a college and career ready education for all students.”

 

Meet three of the real writers:

http://commoncore.org/curriculum-tools: “Common Core offers a variety of curriculum tools (translation: prescripted modules) to help K–12 teachers. Our materials are based on the CCSS, but they are also used by educators who do not follow the new standards.”

Eureka Math “is a comprehensive curriculum and professional development platform. Born from an unparalleled collaboration of mathematicians, teachers, and CCSS-M experts, Eureka Math is peerless in its faithfulness to the new instructional shifts and mathematical progressions.”

The Wheatley Portfolio: “Our curriculum maps for English Language Arts are unrivaled for their quality, detail, and rigor. Initially released in 2010, we’ve expanded the content to showcase text studies that help you guide students through a close read of widely used literary and informational texts.”

The Alexandria Plan: “The informational text expectations of the CCSS-ELA compelled us to create a curriculum tool that helps you tap the excitement of history’s most compelling and significant stories. With 72 sets of text-dependent questions and performance assessments, you can build essential student background knowledge while reaching the CCSS-ELA with this new, K–5 curriculum tool.”

http://elschools.org: “Expeditionary Learning partners with schools, districts, charter management organizations, and states to build teacher capacity in service of a more ambitious vision of student achievement: one that joins academic challenge and scholarship to critical skills like perseverance, critical thinking, and an ethic of contribution to prepare students for success in college, career and citizenship.  Our offerings give teachers and leaders practical tools and strategies that they can put to use in their classrooms right away:” (translation…prescripted modules)

www.coreknowledge.org: The Core Knowledge Foundation is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded in 1986 by E. D. Hirsch, Jr. “By outlining the precise content that every child should learn in language arts and literature, history and geography, mathematics, science, music, and the visual arts, the Core Knowledge curriculum represents a first-of-its kind effort to identify the foundational knowledge every child needs to reach these goals–and to teach it, grade-by-grade, year-by-year, in a coherent, age-appropriate sequence.”

 

After gagging and gathering this information, I decided to go right to the sources:

I sent this email to The engageny.org site:

“Please provide a list of the collaborating organizations that provided you with funding, information, data, curricula, and any other materials on the site. True transparency will provide more trust, n’est pas?

Thank you.

David Greene

Author: Doing The Right Thing: A Teacher Speaks

Save Our Schools Treasurer”

I also checked common core.org. When you click on the link to find out which teachers wrote their ELA Wheatley Portfolio you get a 404… PAGE NOT FOUND.

My letter to them:

“To whom it may concern,

I am writing an article on ENGAGENY and its suppliers.

I am most curious about the lack of transparency regarding all the related organizations. Please tell me how you are related to them and what you supply to them.

Please report who funds you or send me a copy of your 990.

Send me a list of the teachers who wrote your Wheatley Portfolio. There is a 404 status when link to their bios is clicked.

 

Thank you

Dave Greene

Save Our Schools Treasurer

Author: Doing The Right Thing: A teacher Speaks”

 

I have received no answer as of yet.

 

Finally, several FB friends helped by finding other posted sources of information not offered by the NYSED. Enjoy your reading:

From Alan Singer:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/new-yorks-secret-educatio_b_4368282.html

Apparently one of these hired gun Regent Fellows, Kate Gerson, has gathered some “fame” and has appeared in EngageNY training videos: Here is a segment of an explanation on NPR of a “classroom experience”.

“First the teacher reads an excerpt of the story aloud. “There is an orientation aspect,” says Gerson. “We’re going to do this new thing”— understand vocabulary in context, cite textual evidence—“and we’re going to get smarter at it as the year goes on.” Then, students turn to individual close reading. They are told to reread sections and draw boxes around unfamiliar words. They write the definition of new words on Post-It notes. Forty percent of the class time—the biggest chunk of the lesson—is spent this way.”

Does this engage NY? Does it engage you? Does it engage teachers? Most importantly, does it ENGAGE KIDS? Wow. That makes me want to get into that story…

Who is Kate Gerson, Senior Regents Research Fellow, and why should we care? Alan Singer discusses and explains:

“On the EngageNY website and for the Regents Research Fund the chief salesperson for Common Core is Kate Gerson… who appears to have minimal teaching experience…. Gerson represents them at Common Core meetings across the state and is the featured Common Core cheerleader on EngageNY online videos.

“According to her LinkedIn site, Gerson has a B.A. in Women’s Studies from the University of Arizona and a M.A in Language Education from Indiana University. She began her career as a teacher in Indiana, but only worked in New York City for two years at a transfer school for over-aged-under-credited students before leaving for an organization called New Leaders for Schools where she worked from 2007 to 2010. Gerson is also associated with Frederick Hess, Resident Scholar and Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, which pushes free market pro-business solutions to educational and social issues.”

 

The Times Herald-Record, based in Middletown, New York, described Gerson’s performance at a staff development workshop for teachers in the Monticello school district this way:

“…. She used the word “text” over and over again.” Mostly she just repeated educational clichés – we were going to have a shift in focus, text-based instruction, rigorous standards, and students would think deeply and marshal evidence. Teaching these academic skills to real students in actual classrooms was almost a hopeful wish on her part.

I was also struck by Gerson’s lack of knowledge about the English Language Arts curriculum in New York State. According to Gerson, as part of the new rigor and higher standards, students would read To Kill a Mocking Bird in eighth grade rather than in ninth grade. But students always read To Kill a Mocking Bird in eight grade because that is when they learned about the Civil Rights movement in social studies. Students were also going to read Achebe’s book Things for Apart in 10th grade rather than in12th grade, but students always read Things Fall Apart in 10th grade because that is when they study the impact of European imperialism on traditional societies in Global History.”

 

WHO pays her and NYSED Research Fellows?

From NYSED 2010:

“The New York State Board of Regents announced the acceptance of an $892,500 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the University of the State of New York (SUNY) to support planning for the implementation of the Common Core Standards in New York – a key component of the Regents reform agenda.

The Regents Research Fellows Planning will undertake implementation of the Common Core Standards and other essential elements of the Regents Reform Agenda. The Regents Fellows program is being developed to provide research and analysis to inform policy and develop program recommendations for consideration by the Board of Regents.”

THE LIST:

Leona and Harry Helmsley Charity: $3.83 million

(The Trust’s Education Program aspires to advance American economic competitiveness as well as individual social mobility.)

GE Foundation: $3.5 million

(Addresses this education imperative by supporting high-impact initiatives that improve the equity and quality of public education to ensure that young Americans are prepared for careers in a global economy. Successful implementation of the Common Core State Standards for College and Career Readiness is the next step to achieve this end.)

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: $3.3 million

(The Common Core State Standards offer a roadmap of clear expectations for college readiness.)

Carnegie Corp: $1.2 million Did they fall for the hype?

(By supporting a push for common core standards and next generation assessments, we counter low expectations for schools and students.)

Tortora Silicox Family Foundation: $975,000

(Their mission statement included… advancing “Mayor Bloomberg’s school reform agenda.”)

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation: $900,000 Did they fall for the hype?

Grants to improve education by expanding the reach of openly available educational resources and by supporting “deeper learning”– a combination of the fundamental knowledge and practical basic skills all students will need to succeed.

Ford Foundation: $788,000 Did they fall for the hype?

“Educational Opportunity and Scholarship:

Higher Education for Social Justice

More and Better Learning Time

Transforming Secondary Education“

Robin Hood Foundation: $600,000

(It’s hedge fund manger laden board speaks for itself.

http://www.robinhood.org/governance – section-1)

Tiger Foundation: $560,000

(Primary backer, hedge fund investor Julian Robertson)

Amy and Larry Robbins Foundation: $500,000

“…Was established in 2003 to support and create meaningful education programs in the United States and to respond to the urgent need to improve opportunities for children globally through new and innovative initiatives and partnerships. Notable programs include a partnership with KIPP, Achievement First and Uncommon Schools. AND:” We are proud to partner with Teach For America.”

James S. and Merryl H. Tisch Fund: $400,000 (of a potential $1million)

(No Brainer)

Sources: Foundations, State Department of Education, Merryl H. Tisch

 

Mike Winerip of the New York Times and James M. Odato of The Times Union describe what they discovered.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/nyregion/free-advisers-cost-ny-education-dept-critics-say.html?_r=1&

http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Wealth-backs-reform-team-5006670.php – page-1

 

“In December 2010, the chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, Merryl H. Tisch, announced a new program: 13 research fellows would be selected to advise the education commissioner and the 17-member board. The fellows would be paid as much as $189,000 each, in private money; to date, $4.5 million has been raised, including $1 million donated by Dr. Tisch, a member of one of New York’s wealthiest families.”

Those donors include Bill Gates ($892,000), who is leading the charge to evaluate teachers, principals and schools using students’ test scores; the National Association of Charter School Authorizers ($50,000) and the Robbins Foundation ($500,000), which finance charter expansion; and the Tortora Sillcox Family Foundation ($500,000), whose mission statement includes advancing “Mayor Bloomberg’s school reform agenda.” Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Gates are expert at using philanthropy in a way that pressures government to follow their public policy agendas.” (Winerip)

******

“What was envisioned as a short-term, relatively small augmentation to SED staff has grown exponentially. Fellows operate independently and communicate regularly with King and many interact regularly with state workers, but are not bound by Public Officer’s Law or ethics rules imposed on government officials.

The key group of senior fellows was assembled in November 2010. Matthew Gross, the first executive director of the fund, who had previously worked for an organization that gets business leaders to partner with schools, joined Kristen Huff, a former College Board research director who has been developing the student learning assessment program. She was the highest-paid fellow last year with total compensation of $192,909, which would have been second only to King’s salary of $212,500 if she was on SED’s payroll.

The Regents appear serious about expanding the group. Fellows who signed on for two-year stints have been extended, new research and policy analysts have been hired, and state officials cannot say if or when the experiment will end. Fellows say they don’t know when they’ll be done, but expect their assignments will run their course.”

“We created the fellowship program to reinvigorate the research arm of the department,” Tisch said in an interview, adding that she stays at arm’s-length from the researchers. “All I did was provide that first gift.”

Since that $1 million commitment, other philanthropists have opened their wallets. The Hewlett Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, Tiger Foundation, Robin Hood Foundation, the Helmsley Trust and General Electric are among 19 donors that have underwritten the program.” (Odato)

 

Winerip and Odato gathered reactions:

“Private people give money to support things they’re interested in,” said Roger B. Tilles, a lawyer and longtime education administrator who has been a Regent for six years.”

“Betty A. Rosa, who spent 23 years as a teacher and principal before becoming a New York City regional superintendent and a Regent, said it was “absolutely wrong” that the fellows had spent what she considered to be so little time working in schools. Six of the 11 have never taught. The five others have a total of 10 years in the classroom and one as a principal.”

“Saul B. Cohen, a former president of Queens College who retired in December 2010 after 18 years as a regent, is angry that the board was not consulted about selecting the fellows. “They’re supposed to be advising us, but we had no role.”

“Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, D-Queens, chairwoman of the chamber’s Education Committee (which appoints the Regents), said she can’t explain what the RRF does. “I don’t know anything about it,”

“Many administrators say the fellows don’t listen to comments from the field, and act as de facto representatives of the state agency. “It is unsettling to watch the dismantling of public education by inexperienced employees hired from a special fund,” said Katie Zahedi, a middle school principal in Red Hook. “The fellows have taken the work out of the hands of appropriately hired, official NYSED employees and are acting as policy entrepreneurs.’”

 

And as “policy entrepreneurs”, they will get exactly what they paid for at the expense of NY  students.

Why APPR in NYS has to go.

Some edits

DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing

Teachers in NYS are afraid to innovate or do what researchers, students, parents, and administrators know is great teaching because the Annual Professional Performance Review has created the death of creativity and vision.

APPR is a return to the use of Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management of the early 20^th century. Then, corporate robber barons used Scientific Management to make their industrial factory workers more productive. Today, Robber Barons like Bill Gates pay the NYS department of Education to turn college-educated teachers into industrial employees that productively churn students out as if they were manufacturing Model T’s.


Here are 5 specific examples of the negative effects of APPRs based on predominantly flawed data from flawed tests with manufactured cut scores.

1. “A teacher of the year, I inherited a gifted class whose collective score was 3.2 out of 4.0. For me to be graded as a competent teacher my following…

View original post 614 more words

Why APPR in NYS has to go.

Teachers in NYS are afraid to innovate or do what researchers, students, parents, and administrators know is great teaching because the Annual Professional Performance Review has created the death of creativity and vision.

APPR is a return to the use of Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management of the early 20^th century. Then, corporate robber barons used Scientific Management to make their industrial factory workers more productive. Today, Robber Barons like Bill Gates pay the NYS department of Education to turn college-educated teachers into industrial employees that productively churn students out as if they were manufacturing Model T’s.


Here are 5 specific examples of the negative effects of APPRs based on predominantly flawed data from flawed tests with manufactured cut scores.

1. “A teacher of the year, I inherited a gifted class whose collective score was 3.2 out of 4.0. For me to be graded as a competent teacher my following year’s class, had to average 3.7. However, my new gifted students only averaged 3.5…so even though the scores improved I ‘needed improvement’.”

2. “I received an email from my principal telling me I was missing a photo of an assessment recording sheet that I had failed to post. If I could post it by 9 am the next morning I would receive an “exemplary teacher” status. If not, I would be labeled” needs improvement”.

3. “To be effective you have to get 75 points on the APPR. I teach self-contained classes. Last year I got 58/60 on my observations. That means that I needed 17 points out of the remaining 40 (20 from local and 20 from state test scores) to be effective. I received 17/20 on local student assessments but only 3/20 from the state. As a result, I was ‘barely effective’.

 

This year I taught students who have IQs from 56-105. One third of my students were non-readers. What are my chances of being “effective”? More importantly, who is going to want to teach these students under those conditions?

 

4. “Ninth grade Algebra teachers have higher reported student scores on their Regents exams than do Global Studies teachers and thus have better APPR results.

BUT DOES THAT MEAN THEY ARE BETTER TEACHERS?

On the August 2011 Integrated Algebra “Regents,” test results were WEIGHTED so that a student only needed to get 34% of the questions correct to pass with a 65%. On the UNWEIGHTED August 2011, Global History Regents a student needed to get  72% of the multiple-choice questions correct PLUS at least 50% on the short answer and essay questions to get THE SAME 65% PASSING GRADE.” How is that equitable?

5. Finally, NYS high schools are afraid to implement highly successful and innovative programs like the WISE program… where virtually checked out high school seniors get English, Social Studies, and/or CTE credit during the second semester of their senior year by doing a guided, structured, experiential project for which they are intrinsically motivated to highly achieve.

*************

“Imagine being on the operating table when your heart surgeon discovers an unforeseen problem that, because of his experience and practical wisdom, calls for a spontaneous change of plan, yet he doesn’t. He is afraid that deviation from the tested norm will make him lose his position.”  You die on the table.

NYS students are dying on the table because our best and brightest teachers are afraid to innovate or rely on tried and true methodologies as a result of APPR phobia.

APPR  forces good teachers to leave in droves, replaced by new, cheaper workers willing to follow “fool-proof”, prescribed lesson plans designed (but failing) to achieve higher test scores, not to achieve better understanding and better “learning how to learn skills.”

Who will teach in this “brave new world” where the result is fear and uniformity that sucks the life out of teaching? Not experienced people like me, or thousands of new idealistic, creative, and visionary “20 something’s”.

The use of APPR, with its basis in flawed testing, and the resulting consequences is not how you attract the best and brightest teachers our children deserve.

Let us not forget APPR is only one small piece of the anti teacher, anti public education movement.

 

High stakes standardized testing, increased charter schools, anti tenure laws, and common core all originate from the same source: the campaign contributions, lobbyists, and theoretically philanthropic foundations of todays corporate robber barons.

As Sun Tzu’s wrote:

o   “when the officers are too strong and the common soldiers too weak, the result is collapse.”

It is time for elected officers and the NYSED to listen to their soldiers and not the likes of Bill Gates and the Koch brothers.