Andrew and the Magic pill: a moral dilemna!

I, as many NYS teaching professionals, am outraged, insulted, and hurt. However rather than be as venomous as the Governor, I offer this scientific analogy…

A pill may cure 5% of a population’s ailment. It is untested and is known for severe side effects. Scientists have warned that for the other 95% it will cause paralysis, loss of vision and hearing, and in perhaps death. The authorities decide to use it anyway. The magic pill kills far more than it cures. Funeral parlors rejoice.

The governor thinks his one size fits all “pill” will “cure” the very different 728 public school districts, 4817 public schools, 2.7M public school students, and 209.5k public school teachers in the state. Does he honestly believe it will cure them whether or not they have a disease, or is this more about the vengeful death of the 106 NYSUT locals in NYS?

Governor Cuomo wants to use his magic education pill that may cure less than 5% of the problems in education in NYS, but expert after expert has told him of its horrible side effects to the other 95%. He uses it anyway. Corporate profiteers rejoice!

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New York: Is This the Plan to End Public Education?

It is time to no longer be cowardly lions or paper tigers. Choose your metaphor and fight.

Diane Ravitch's blog

This is a startling blog post that has been going viral. It was written by Michael Lambert of the Gloversville Teachers Association. It warns that Governor Andrew Cuomo and Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch are together planning changes that would destroy public education in New York and end the careers of many teachers who ran afoul of the state’s evaluation requirements. Those evaluation requirements are based on value-added-measures that expert Audrey Amrein Beardsley recently described as “idiotic.”

Eric DeCarlo, president of the Scotia-Glenville Teachers Association, adapted it from a letter written by Mike Mosal, president of the Burnt Hills Teachers Association; these teachers work in small districts in upstate New York. The letter has been spread widely among teachers, parents, and community members upstate. Ric and Mike see the handwriting on the wall, and they think it is menacing.

This is part of the letter. It is worth reading the letter…

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RESPECT, CODE SWITCHING, AND PUBLIC EDUCATION:

There is no doubt in my mind that the single most important factor in work, play, or life is respect. Marriage, working relationships, negotiations, sports, teaching, even basic conversation simply are always more successful by any measures if the players involved have a respect for one another.

This MLK weekend I was asked to speak to a group of concerned, teachers, parents, and “civilians” at the “Green Toad Bookstore” a wonderful bookstore in Oneonta NY and co-sponsored by “Oneonta Area For Public Education” and “Oneonta Teachers Association”.

What I realized just before I started my 10 minute talk was that it wasn’t a talk about public education per say, but that it was really about respect. What I realized after a two-hour discussion is that and how many of us know how this nation has lost its respect for teaching…. Not just teachers… but teaching!

The most important thing I walked away from this discussion learning is that we must do what Elijah Anderson tells us. Pro public education advocates, especially teachers, MUST understand what Elijah Anderson calls the “code of the street” in his 1999 book of the same name. However not only must they understand how it affects kids they must learn to use it for their own benefit. We must learn to survive on the mean streets of politics, media, and “philanthropy”.

What follows are excerpts from my talk and book as well as the conclusions drawn by those at the discussion. Some of my remarks come from previous posts as well as my book, so bear with me if you have seen some of this before.

Recently i was at a birthday party for one of my wife’s friends. All are psychologists. I wasn’t the only spouse at this party. The others were a retired physician, a semi-retired architect, and a psychiatrist. Also at the party was the birthday “girl’s” stepdaughter from St. Louis who happened to be a former industrial psychologist. Everyone knew me and that I was a teacher except for the stepdaughter.

What started as casual conversation turned to the predictable psychobabble. As usual, to break my boredom, i used humor to create a break and move the conversation in another direction. I am sure many of us have been in those kinds of situations.

At dinner the conversation turned more interesting and upbeat. It included economics, history, current affairs, and sociology and as a result i was right in the middle of it.

Then, while serving birthday cake, the stepdaughter decided she would compliment the groups dynamic conversation by saying, “this is such an incredible group of intellects. I wish we had some common people with ordinary intellect like,” she paused and said, “school teachers.       Yes    she    did.

The moment was filled with stunned silence as we all froze. The others looked at me waiting for the explosion. Or Taylor Mali.

She did not know that I was a “school teacher with common, ordinary intellect”, and at first I thought I would take it as a compliment. However we all knew it wasn’t meant as one.

I said, “excuse me, but I am a common, ordinary school teacher.” I didn’t want to embarrass my wife in front of her closest friends, so when this St. Louis interloper simply went on to say without any apology, “Oh? What do you teach?” I simply said, “Nothing anymore.” She said, “Oh retired?”

I was about to respond again when i heard a couple of the women say, “he teaches the public now.” I simply agreed and calmly said, “ Yes, that is true.”

I just let it pass, turned to my wife, and whispered, “common and ordinary intellect.” She took my hand and thanked me. My provocateur wasn’t worth it. She was an ordinary and common boor. However, she is all too common.”

I learned to respect others from my parents and from my teachers, especially one of them. After telling the story of how I felt disrespected as a first grader (although at the time I would not have said that exactly) I told an abbreviated tale of Miss Stafford, my 2^nd grade teacher in 1956-7. A professor at St. John’s University for nearly forty years, she became a world renown professor and authority on learning styles and the recipient of thirty-one professional research awards.

When she passed away in 2009, a third of my south Bronx, poor and working class second-grade class of 36 black, Puerto-Rican and white students were at her memorial service. Little did we know as seven-year-olds entering her class in the Bronx, that we were to become the happy guinea pigs for a life dedicated to helping children with all kinds of ‘personalities,’ as we called it then.

People marvel at what Rita did for us. Most of all they marvel about how we lived and learned about civil rights by writing letters to president Eisenhower offering him suggestions about what to do about little rock, Arkansas. (We even received a reply and were quoted in the New York Times. She taught us how to respect others.

*****

For kids, respect is as important as motivation, often more so. I am not talking about their respect for teachers. They respect those who respect them. They want structure and authority. The teachers they are most successful with are those who enforce the code of the school yet, at the same time, show respect for them.

They know that the best teachers understand what Elijah Anderson calls their “code of the street” in his 1999 book of the same name. Whether that street is urban, suburban, or rural, respect from their peers, who they have to live with outside of class and school, becomes critical. “Even small children test one another, pushing and shoving…ready to hit other children over matters not to their liking.” Why? To maintain respect.

It is no surprise that those districts with the best success rates have “codes of the street” most similar to the codes of the school.

In some schools, enough children have opted for an “oppositional” street code that it either effectively competes with, or entirely dominates, the school culture. In this setting, the best students must learn how to ‘code switch because… for many alienated young people, attending school and doing well becomes negative.” Alienated students take on the oppositional role so effectively that they often become role models for other kids,” thus gaining more respect.

In this environment, peer respect is necessary for survival. Even “good kids” gain points for “going bad.” A formerly good student may stop doing homework, disobey, argue, talk back, and become more of an adversary.

This process obviously has implications for teachers.” How do teachers change that behavior? How do they explain the value of the school culture? How do they inspire and motivate kids to go against the grain and maintain their place in their world, while learning the ropes of ours?

Good teachers code switch regardless of where the school is located. Here is a common, good, piece of advice to new teachers. “You have to be tough and fair. If you show fear, others will exploit it. If you are unfair you will not be trusted.

Too often, though, many teachers mistake being authoritarian for being tough and fairness goes out the window (as with obnoxious administrators). Thus they fail to “respect to be respected.” In that case, kids, even young ones, will take on an oppositional role, and you will have done nothing but add fuel to the fire.

I learned this from the time I started teaching in 1970 at Adlai Stevenson high school in the Bronx, the staff was encouraged not only to be tough and fair, but also to become part of the fabric of our kids’ lives by getting involved in extracurricular activities and coaching. We also helped students through panic attacks. We talked them through breakups and make-ups with girlfriends and boyfriends. We helped them navigate rough waters. We tried to thwart suicide. We became part of their lives and their community. Many of us still are. We meet for reunions, dinners, and parties. We are Facebook friends. You all know that is not unusual. So in return for all that, how does the state respect teachers and teaching?

We get APPR. The Annual Professional Performance Review 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 attempt to make their industrial factory workers more productive. Today, new robber barons pay the NYS Department of Education to turn college-educated teachers into low-level industrial employees that productively churn students out as if they were manufacturing Model T’s.

Here are 3 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. “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?”

3. “Ninth grade algebra teachers have higher reported student scores on their regents exams than do global studies teachers and thus have better APPR But does that mean they are better teachers? On the august 2011 integrated algebra “regents,” test results were weightedso 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?

We get EngageNY, NYS’s version of the common core. The state decided that the long time, top rated, and nationally renowned teacher developed k-12 syllabi were not good enough and so created EngageNY.

Who prepared this huge website filled with everything from policy to modules (curricula) and resources? The site says it is “in house”. Here is what I found:

NYS says:

“Engageny.org is developed and maintained by the New York State Education Department 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 three real writers: commoncore.org, http://www.elschools.org and coreknowledge.org

 NYS says: “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 reality: these 13 research fellows (none NYS teachers) are paid as much as $189,000 each, in private money; at least $4.5 million has been raised, including $1 million donated by dr. Tisch.” Other donors include bill gates, a leader of the charge to evaluate teachers, principals and schools using students’ test scores; the national association of charter school authorizers and the Robbins Foundation, which finance charter expansion; and the Tortora Sillcox Family Foundation 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 private public policy agendas.”

I respectively submit that they believe we teachers of “common and ordinary intellect” are no longer capable of curricula planning.

What has this lack of respect brought?

“Imagine being on the operating table when your heart surgeon discovers an unforeseen problem that, because of his experience, 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: teachers in NYS are afraid to do what researchers, students, parents, and administrators know is great teaching because the APPR and EngageNY have created the death of creativity and vision.

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 and EngageNY

NYS students are dying on the table because: APPR and EngageNY force 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.”

NYS students are dying on the table because: APPR and EngageNY are only two pieces of the anti teaching anti public education movement. High stakes Standardized Testing, the increased numbers of Charter Schools, and anti tenure laws all originate from the same sources: the campaign contributions, lobbyists, corporations, and theoretically philanthropic foundations of today’s corporate Robber Barons.

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”. Now include EdTPA as a means of telling thousands of potentially wonderful teachers, “Don’t do this.”

How can the public help regain respect for teaching and those who teach? They can get involved politically at all levels; local, state, and federal through voicing their opinions and voting for candidates that are pro teaching and teachers without getting caught up in red and blue debates. At the local school level they can push administrators to respect their concerns and to respect a collegial process with their teachers and unions. Finally, they can elect members of boards of education who do, or run themselves.

“Carlson’s law”, was coined by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to describe Curtis Carlson’s (who developed the HDTV and mouse) balance between autocracy and democracy in an organization:

“Innovation that happens from the bottom up tends to be chaotic but smart. Innovation that happens from the top down tends to be orderly but dumb.”

So why have President Obama, Arne Duncan, Governor Cuomo, Chancellor Tisch, The NYS Legislature, and too many local superintendents chosen to be orderly, but dumb?”

To fight these anti teaching leaders and their allies, we have to learn how to code switch. We must street fight for our kids as well as nurture, mentor, guide, and teach them. We are disrespected the same way the many of the poor students Anderson’s wrote about are in their schools. We know how they must code switch to survive in both the school and street cultures.

To survive we MUST learn from these students. If we don’t learn to code switch and street fight when we must, we are doomed not only to continue to lose respect for this proud profession, but we have sent those kids…no… we have sent all public school kids to their doom as well.

THE RED AND BLUE CONUNDRUM

Each day I open links to articles about a growing movement to do away with Common Core, APPR, TFA, Standardized Testing and the privatizing of education. I know and have worked with so many of the groups and individuals pushing for the removal of top down corporate education reform, what I called Profit Led Fed Ed.

Diane Ravitch, Jonathan Kozol, Deborah Meier, Anthony Cody, Mark Naison are but some of the individuals. The Badass Teachers (BATS) and its affiliates, Save Our Schools (SOS) and its affiliates, New York Collective of Radical Educators (NyCORE), United Opt Out, and its affiliates, New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE) and so many other groups have joined together to fight NCLB, RTTT, and their outcomes. One thing they have in common…progressive child and community centered education. Without going out a limb, I would feel safe to say many are Democrats or progressives.

However when I read about the political leaders are in this endeavor I am usually stunned. Rand Paul and Scott Walker have now joined the anti Common Core fight. They now join the likes of conservatives like Lindsay Graham, Charles Grassley, and Mark Rubio. The Republican National Committee, Glen Beck, and even the Heritage Foundation are all in this fight. The states who have dropped or propose dropping out of Common Core and testing like Oklahoma, South and North Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana are all Republican and mostly conservative.

The state leading the Common Core APPR charge is New York; with its high profile Democratic Governor, Andrew Cuomo. The biggest “pusher” of the Common Core et al drugs is our federal Democratic DOE under the control of a “liberal” Democratic president.

When did this happen? When did progressive education become a reason to vote for a conservative Republican? What do progressive educators do when it is time to vote?

If they are one-issue voters do they vote for a Walker or Paul, or in NYS did they vote for conservative republican Astorino? Maybe they get lucky and have alternative candidates like Zephyr Teachout or Howie Hawkins and lose? If they have concerns about other progressive ideals like gun control and women’s rights do they turn their backs on education?

Obviously this is a very complex issue. I was determined to keep this comment short.

Free speech has become a corporate battle cry. States Rights now include education as well as anti voting rights procedures.

Red is Blue. Blue is Red. Have I gone down Wonderland’s Rabbit Hole? What a conundrum!

Mandates of and from Our Hearts

There is a huge difference between the latter “Mandates of our hearts” and the “Mandates from Heaven” we get from political and corporate bosses.

But it seems the bosses forgot the entire Mandate: The “Mandate of Heaven” is an ancient Chinese philosophical concept, which originated during the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BCE). The Mandate determines whether an emperor of China is sufficiently virtuous to rule; if he does not fulfill his obligations as emperor, then he loses the Mandate and thus the right to be emperor.

There are four principles to the Mandate:
1) Heaven grants the emperor the right to rule,
2) Since there is only one Heaven, there can only be one emperor at any given time,
3) The emperor’s virtue determines his right to rule, and,
4) No one dynasty has a permanent right to rule.

These Emperors lost their right tot rule several years ago!

Poetic Justice

We are being mandated to death. A mandate is an official order, a commission to do something, a law. I am tired of official orders and of commissions and of the law. I need the mandate paradigm to be shifted now.

I am sitting in front of a blank screen on this Sunday evening – almost Monday morning – just thinking about the mandates we educators are under. We have mandates from our school, our departments, our district, our state, and, yes, from the government. We have mandates to test our young children and mandates to write up goals on our own evaluations based on those tests. We have mandates to enter data every month, every week, every day, and every period of every day. We have mandates to meet in data teams to manipulate and further extrapolate more data from the data. We educators are being mandated to death.

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TO COMPARE OR NOT TO COMPARE? OR RATHER HOW TO COMPARE… THAT IS THE QUESTION.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2015/2015-state-report-cards-map.html

(Thanks to former SOS steering committee member Lee Barrios for this link.)

I am usually skeptical of any kind of educational ranking system, especially of states because within each state there is such a range of districts, according to these very same criteria, so understand that the “scores” are averages. Therefore within states you have districts that different widely, perhaps none more than Scarsdale and Rochester NY.

Scarsdale N.Y.

> Median household income: $238,000

> Pct. households earning $200,000+: 64.3%

> Pct. households earning less than $10,000: 0%

Rochester NY:

> Median household income: $30,553

> Pct. households earning $200,000+: 1.8%

> Pct. households earning less than $10,000: 18.1%

As a result we cannot just say we know everything in any state until we break see intra as well as intra state results.

 However, given that caveat emptor, we do need to look at these numbers to see how student success varies based on the important criteria selected in this study.

The scores and rankings visible on the chart on the link above are based on the following criteria. It is my conclusion that these data clearly show the relationship of each of these environmental factors to student success. Why those in power continue to refuse to use these data, blame teachers and parents, and continue to stress high stakes standardized tests and evaluations as the solution to improving public schooling in the USA is beyond me.

Please examine the following carefully as you draw your own conclusions about the link’s map graphic and rankings.

CHANCE FOR SUCCESS CRITERIA:

EARLY FOUNDATIONS

Family Income: Percent of dependent children (under 18 years of age) who live in above-low-income families. Low income is defined as 200 percent of the federal poverty level, which depends on the size and composition of the family.

Parent Education: Percent of dependent children with at least one parent who holds a two- or four-year postsecondary degree.

Parental Employment: Percent of dependent children with at least one parent who is steadily employed, defined as working full time (at least 35 hours per week) and year-round (at least 50 weeks during the previous year). Those not in the labor force are excluded from calculations.

Linguistic Integration: Percent of dependent children whose parents are fluent speakers of English. Fluency is defined as being a native speaker or speaking the language “very well.” All resident parents must be fluent in English for a family to be considered linguistically integrated.

SCHOOL YEARS

Preschool Enrollment: Percent of 3- and 4-year-olds who are attending preschool, based on a three-year average. Both public and private education programs are counted.

Kindergarten Enrollment: Percent of eligible children attending public or private kindergarten programs, based on a three-year average. The size of the entering kindergarten cohort is calculated based on the number of 5- and 6-year-olds in a state.

Elementary Reading Achievement: Percent of 4th graders in public schools who scored at or above the “proficient” level in reading on the 2013 State NAEP assessment.

Middle School Mathematics Achievement: Percent of 8th graders in public schools who scored at or above the “proficient” level in mathematics on the 2013 State NAEP assessment.

High School Graduation Rate: Percent of public high school students who graduated on time with a standard diploma for the 2011-12 school year. The graduation rate is calculated using the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR).

Young-Adult Education: Percent of young adults (ages 18 to 24) who either are currently enrolled in a postsecondary education program or have already earned a postsecondary credential. Those still enrolled in high school programs are excluded from the calculation.

ADULT OUTCOMES

Adult Educational Attainment: Percent of adults (ages 25 to 64) who have earned a postsecondary degree. Calculations include all individuals whose highest level of attained education is an associate, bachelor’s, graduate, or professional degree.

Annual Income: Percent of adults (ages 25 to 64) whose annual personal income reaches or exceeds the national median ($36,594 in July 2013 dollars). Only individuals in the labor force are included in calculations.

Steady Employment: Percent of adults (ages 25 to 64) who are steadily employed, defined as working full time (at least 35 hours per week) and year-round (at least 50 weeks during the previous year). Those not in the labor force are excluded from calculations. Active-duty military service is considered participation in the labor force.

SCHOOL FINANCE CRITERIA:

EQUITY

The Education Week Research Center conducted an original analysis to calculate four distinct indicators that capture the degree to which education funding is equitably distributed across the districts within a state. Calculations for each equity indicator take into account regional differences in educational costs and the concentrations of low-income students and those with disabilities, whose services are more expensive than average. Students in poverty receive a weight of 1.2; students with disabilities receive a weight of 1.9.

Wealth-Neutrality Score: This indicator captures the degree to which a school district’s revenue (state and local sources) is correlated with its property-based wealth.

Positive values indicate that wealthier districts have higher revenue levels.

McLoone Index: Indicator value is the ratio of the total amount spent on pupils below the median to the amount that would be needed to raise all students to the median per-pupil expenditure in the state. The index defines perfect equity as a situation in which every district spends at least as much as the district serving the median student in the state (ranked according to per-pupil expenditures).

Coefficient of Variation: This indicator measures the level of variability in funding across school districts in a state. The value is calculated by dividing the standard deviation of per-pupil expenditures (adjusted for regional cost differences and student needs) by the state’s average spending per pupil.

Restricted Range: The restricted range is the difference between spending levels for the districts serving students at the 5th and 95th percentiles of the per-pupil expenditure distribution.

SPENDING

Adjusted Per-Pupil Expenditures: Average statewide per-student spending, adjusted for variations in regional costs using the NCES Comparable Wage Index 2012, as updated by Lori Taylor of Texas A&M University.

Percent of Students in Districts with PPE at or Above U.S. Average: Expenditures are adjusted for regional differences in educational costs and the concentrations of low-income students and students with disabilities

Spending Index: Index gauges state spending according to the percent of students served by districts spending at or above the national average as well as the degree to which lower-spending districts fall short of that national benchmark.

Expenditures are adjusted for regional differences in educational costs and the concentrations of low-income students and students with disabilities.

Percent of Total Taxable Resources Spent on Education: Share of state resources spent on K-12 education.

EARLY CHILDHOOD CRITERIA:

Preschool Enrollment: Percent of 3- and 4-year-olds who are attending preschool, based on a three-year average. Both public and private education programs are counted.

Preschool Enrollment Gains: Change in the percent of 3- and 4-year-olds attending preschool between 2008 and 2013.

Preschool Poverty Gap: Percentage-point difference between 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in preschool in poor and non-poor families. Low income is defined as 200 percent of the federal poverty level, which depends on the size and composition of the family.

Preschool Poverty-Gap Change: Change in the size of the poverty gap between 2008 and 2013.

Full-Day Preschool: Percent of preschool students attending full-day programs. Both public and private education programs are counted.

Head Start Enrollment: Number of children enrolled in Head Start as a percent of 3- and 4-year-olds in families at or below 100 percent of the federal poverty level.

Kindergarten Enrollment: Percent of eligible children attending public or private kindergarten programs, based on a three-year average. The size of the entering kindergarten cohort is calculated based on the number of 5- and 6-year-olds in a state.

Full-Day Kindergarten: Percent of kindergarten students attending full-day programs. Both public and private education programs are counted.

The Chance-for-Success Index, Early Education Index, and school finance are scored using a best-in-class rubric. Under this approach, the leading state on a particular indicator receives 100 points, and other states earn points in proportion to the gaps between themselves and the leader.

Some of the indicators—such as those related to the equity of education spending—use complex scales for which minimum or maximum values are not clearly defined. For such indicators, we evaluate a particular state based on its performance relative to the minimum and maximum values on that indicator. Those indicators are scored on a 50-point base, meaning that all states start with 50 points rather than zero.

To compute a state’s score for a given category, we average points across the applicable set of indicators. On a best-in-class scale, a state’s overall score for a category can be gauged against an implicit standard where 100 points would correspond to a state that finished first in the nation on each and every measure.

MORE ON IT’S THE POVERTY STUPID!

I grew up poor. I just didn’t know it. I was just a kid on the streets. I grew up in a neighborhood in what is now called the South Bronx. When I first arrived there in 1955, my neighborhood, between Southern Boulevard and the Bronx River and between Jennings Street and 174th Street was a patchwork of mini neighborhoods dominated by either Puerto Rican, Black, Italian, Irish, or Jewish families. By the time I moved out, in 1963, I was a “white shadow”, one of a small number of white kids in what had become a “minority” neighborhood. Many of you might know it as “Fort Apache, The Bronx”. Even Jimmy Carter came to visit. My grandmother once lived on that block (Minford Place and Charlotte St).

I moved “uptown” to the Grand Concourse and 171st street, which by 1963 was also a “changing” neighborhood, a far cry from the rising middle class neighborhood from the 1930’s to 1950’s. My nine years there followed the pattern of my former neighborhood. The building I lived in, once one of the most famous buildings in all of the city (The Roosevelt Gardens) was owned by  the Weinreb family, one of the biggest slumlords in the city who let it deteriorate until it was condemned and closed.  It became a symbol of the Bronx’s demise in the 1970’s. My mother was one of the last to leave.

I was a latch key kid with a divorced, poorly paid, working mom. I was told I was smart, but I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was play ball in the school yards of PS 66, 64, and Taft HS or and other street games on Longfellow Ave., Vyse Ave., and Wythe Pl. I had a disgustingly high IQ score but my first grade teacher wanted me tested for psychological issues. They had no ADHD questions back then. But because I wasn’t working, bored, and fidgety, I must have been ill. I identified with the lyrics from West Side Story…

Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It’s just our bringin’ up-ke
That gets us out of hand.

We’re disturbed, we’re disturbed, We’re the most disturbed, Like we’re psychologic’ly disturbed.

We are sick, we are sick, We are sick, sick, sick, Like we’re sociologically sick!

Truth be told, I don’t remember much of kindergarten and first grade, except nap time, blocks, being scolded for not wanting to nap, and having my first-grade teacher tell my mother that I needed “testing.” I was never sure what my first-grade teacher, Mrs. S. (the bunned witch), meant by that. I think she meant psychological. It was before attention deficit disorder (ADD) was the easy answer. I prefer to think that she meant gifted and talented. Turns out it was probably a bit of both.

It was there that I endured Mrs. S. in class 1-3. I have one class picture of me in a cowboy outfit. I was smiling. It must have been Halloween. Like I said, I don’t remember much of first grade. I do remember not liking her and school. My memories consist of being told to keep my hands folded on the desk and my legs under it. That was hard, because the desks were bolted to the floor, and I didn’t fit. So, I kept moving my feet and legs into the aisle, for which I was scolded time and time again. “David. Put your feet under your desk. You will trip someone.” I would usually respond, “But no one is allowed to get up and walk down the aisle.” At which point, she would tell me to be quiet and, “behave yourself.” So, I would be quiet and not pay much attention, rather than get yelled at, until the next time I had to move my oversized legs from under the undersized desk.

Actually, I don’t remember much of third, fourth, or sixth grades either. I skipped fifth grade. I guess I really was gifted. I only remember sixth grade because of two reasons. One was a guy named Murray, who did the dumbest things. He was hysterical. In fact, we created a new phrase, to “pull a Murray,” which meant doing something Murray-like. The second and most important reason turned out to be my most embarrassing moment in school. You know, the one when you want to hide, not only under the screwed-to-the-floor-desks, but under the floor they were screwed into. Mrs. F. was going over some spelling list I was not particularly interested in.

Anyway, Mrs. F. was giving each person in the room a word to spell and pronounce. “Oh no,” I thought. There were enough words to reach me in my seat in the last row; I figured out which word I was going to have to spell and pronounce. “Oh shit,” I thought. “I have no idea how to pronounce it: a.w.k.w.a.r.d. What kind of ‘fuckin’ word is that?” I had never seen it, heard it spoken, let alone knew its meaning. Pretty ironic, huh? “Hmm, is it owkword? Awwwkwaaard?” (As you can tell, I learned to curse early on in life. That was far more useful than knowing awwwkwerd.)

“Oh no. Does she see how panicked I am? I don’t have a clue,” and now she says, “David, please do word number twenty-six,” or whatever number it was. I fumbled for the right pronunciation, screwed it up, spelled it, then, as we all had to do back then, say it again… incorrectly, while listening to the belly laughs of my classmates and Mrs. Bitch telling me to try again. And again. And again. Remember when I said I had skipped fifth grade? Well, that made it even worse. Not only was I the youngest in my class by about one and a half years, but I was also in a class with very few cronies who knew how smart I really was. As a result, I never forgot this experience. It was a moment that probably led me to teaching, although I didn’t realize it back then.

That takes me back to second grade. Miss Stafford was our teacher. She must have been the ripe, old age of twenty-three. We had no idea. We were seven. In 1956 and 1957, she was ancient. She was also incredible. When she passed away in 2009, several of us from her second-grade class were at her memorial service. We had no idea that our Miss Stafford would become the world renown Dr. Rita Dunn. A professor at St. John’s University for nearly forty years, she had become an authority on learning styles, an internationally renowned professor of higher education, a prolific author of thirty-two textbooks and more than four hundred fifty manuscripts and research papers, and the recipient of thirty-one professional research awards. We had no idea who she was going to become. At the time, neither did she.

It was she who inspired me to teach. She proved to me that in any one year, any one teacher could make a difference to any one student. She was creative and autonomous. She was innovative and caring. Unfortunately, I didn’t have many other teachers who had a positive impact on my life. Most were and still are forgotten. Looking back I now understand how being a student totally influenced who I became as a teacher.

So I became a teacher. I student taught at Taft, while I, as that white shadow, was still playing ball in its school yard with potential students. (I was only 19). I went on to teach for 16 years at Adlai Stevenson H.S. on Lafayette Ave, near White Plains Road. It was a huge comprehensive high school with kids from neighboring apartment buildings, modest homes, and of course the projects. There were middle class and many poor kids. They were almost all minority.

Here was this poor white kid from the streets of the Bronx teaching many poor Black and Hispanic kids from the same streets. I knew their conditions. I knew how poverty kicks you in the ass and “Down The Mean Streets” of Piri Thomas. I knew the factors that allowed some of those poor kids to succeed, but most to fail. I had seen both, but the failures all too often, some leading to murder and suicide.

I still understand these factors. Those sets of experiences never leave you. So when I read our public school detractors not correcting for poverty as the most pressing issue in public education I get furious.

But when I also read those who try to turn that poverty into bias, often racial, against these kids, I also get furious.

I hope you all do too.

WHO WILL TEACH?

“A new survey paints a troubling portrait of the American educator: Teacher job satisfaction has hit its lowest point in a quarter of a century, and 75 percent of principals believe their jobs have become too complex.

The findings are part of the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Challenges for School Leadership. Conducted annually since 1984, the survey polled representative sampling of 1,000 teachers and 500 principals in K-12 schools across the country.

 Only 39 percent of teachers described themselves as very satisfied with their jobs on the latest survey. That’s a 23-percentage point plummet since 2008, and a drop of five percentage points just over the past year. Factors contributing to lower job satisfaction included working in schools where the budgets, opportunities for professional development, and time for collaboration with colleagues have all been sent to the chopping block. Stress levels are also up, with half of all teachers describing themselves as under great stress several days per week, compared with a third of teachers in 1985.

Given those numbers, who wants to teach besides TFA corps members who know all they have to do is last two years then go on their way to their real vocations? Teaching must be more of a profession for our most creative and thoughtful 20-somethings. We must market the opportunities to become an autonomous, creative professional with room for growth. In addition, there needs to be obvious material incentives. To its credit, TFA has started to get more of our most creative and thoughtful to become teachers. But, how do we get them to stay?

Finance and law draw many potential great teachers away from the profession. The highest state average starting salary for a teacher is approximately $40,000. The highest state average salary for all teachers is approximately $65,000 which is the average, starting salary for a first-year lawyer.

A first-year analyst in investment banking averages double that, and a third-year associate with an MBA averages $350,000 in compensation (careers-in-finance.com). At the same time, the top 10 percent of teachers in the country have an average salary range from $75,190 to $80,970.

In NYS, where over 90% of teachers have a Masters degree, the highest median salaries were paid to teachers on Long Island, $101,692. The median in Central New York? $59,042. The NYS median of $69,514 (after 20 years and a Masters) includes Scarsdale’s median salary of @$130,000 (with a huge percentage of long time teachers receiving top salaries) , but that still doesn’t come close to the figures attracting the best and brightest to the private sector. Even Scarsdale is having trouble attracting as many candidates as they did in the past.

Apparently, our most motivated college grads seem to prefer the big bucks. Why are teachers paid so little in comparison? Not just the money but the prestige is in making the big bucks. Why work the same 60-80 hours per week earning a teacher’s salary and dealing with all the vile conditions and name calling? Good teachers often tell their students and their own children not to join the profession. The underlying problem is the politicization of the process. It has become too adversarial. Why bother?

Without big bucks, and no military draft to avoid (yes, that did bring a large number of very talented baby boomers to teaching in the late ‘60s), the number of good, talented teaching candidates will continue to decline. But unlike then when the vast majority stayed teachers, today’s college students are apt to go the quick temporary route via TFA. They cannot get good jobs anymore and use their brief experience to pad their resumes before they leave to go on their eventual career path. After their two-year stint, only about 20 percent of TFA Corps Members were still teaching in public schools in 2010.

A major problem is also the supply and demand of good replacement teachers. What are the chances of replacing retiring or a bad experienced teacher with a better, inexperienced one? A new study, according to Emily Johnson in her August 10, 2010 article in The Dartmouth, found that in their first two years, TFA-trained teachers do “significantly less well” in raising reading and math test scores than beginning teachers with traditional teaching certifications. Certainly, programs like Teach For America are helping recruit new, bright candidates for jobs in our worst schools. Yet, they come with caveats. First, although very bright, are Teach For Americans talented and tough enough to handle the kind of nonacademic rigor they will face? Some. Second, are they being properly trained? Only a few. Third, will they last? No. Only 20 percent last more than two years. Then, new ones have to be hired all over again. Is that what we are looking for?

It is also true that bad teachers in the system. However, the reasons for this are far more complex than the media and policy makers who have the media in their hands make it out to be. Teachers in the public schools are protected by union-obtained job security for good reason. Tenure was secured because in the old pre-union days, good teachers who fought against bad administrators were fired. Unfortunately, tenure is claimed to be the major reason bad teachers aren’t fired. Most good teachers will tell you it should be easier to get rid of those who stain the profession. Unions and districts can and do work together to work out these issues. State legislatures can update outmoded procedures and hire more hearing officers to speed the process along without losing due process.

Teachers who offer working solutions have been ignored because they have been lumped into being part of “The Union,” and therefore positioned by politicians and the media as the enemy opposed to education reform. What the policy makers refuse to see is that many teachers don’t care about choosing sides. They aren’t the ardent unionists that politicians and reporters make them out to be. They believe in the right to organize and have unions or associations fight for fair and efficient due process, good salaries, and the same medical coverage and pensions as congressmen. They are on the side of the kids and have successfully worked with them for years. In short, policy makers need to listen to teachers, and stop fighting with “The Union.”

A union, by definition, is a collective bargaining organization that protects its workers from abuses and attempts to gain the best salary and benefits for its members. It is also true, too, that unions, because of their collective nature, stifle individual members. However, that depends on the relationship between management and labor.

I have worked in three school districts. Two did not respect the professionalism of their teachers, and one did. It was no surprise that in the latter district, the highest degree of innovative and inspirational teaching took place. It also was the district where the union and board worked most closely together to benefit kids. When districts value teachers, hire carefully, pay well, give good benefits, and treat them as valued members of their community, the district’s children reap the benefits.

Who do we want as teachers? What kind of energy will they bring to the classroom? How well will they motivate students to want to learn and learn how to learn? If those happen, then whatever the techniques, that teacher has become a great teacher. Not every college graduate is cut out to teach. Not every second-career teacher is cut out to teach, regardless of his or her innate intelligence, GPA, or previous career success. Only those with specific talents can become gifted teachers who, working with a variety of learned tools and techniques, will produce students, not simply on the path to college, but rather on the path to postgraduate worlds of work and study.

As Emeritus Columbia University Professor Frank Smith has observed, “the best kind of education” is about distinctive and impassioned teaching, the kind that will engage and excite students. Often, it is the least orthodox that are the greatest teachers. As one of my great teachers told a class of mine in high school, “Think about what outstanding really means… standing out from and being above the crowd.” What is an exceptional teacher? Exceptional has come to mean best or brightest, but doesn’t it really mean to be the exception? The one who stands out from the crowd? Those are the great teachers–the ones we remember. Teachers teach. Well-trained teachers teach better. Great teachers change lives.

Weren’t your best teachers those who had practical wisdom? Weren’t they the ones who had character, along with certain principles and virtues that you may have not appreciated at the time? Weren’t they the ones who obviously loved their work and you as a result? And weren’t they the ones who almost always seemed to do the right things for the right reasons, the right way? Scripts and rules and models strictly followed cannot replace what the best teachers have most…practical wisdom. There is no substitute for it.

It’s no secret why districts like Scarsdale attract and usually get the best teachers who stay, while urban districts like New York City schools don’t. It wasn’t always that way. In fact, when I started in 1970, the opposite may have been true. Many excellent teachers left New York City because they saw the writing on the wall. The pay scales became far better in the suburbs. Parental involvement is far more positive. Socioeconomic factors that improve student scores are clearly evident. The level of professional treatment, although varied by district, was better than in New York City. Yet, the same old bugaboo persists.

I recently had a conversation with someone who strongly believed and argued, “Lower student scores are produced by students with poor teachers, and higher student scores are produced by students with good teachers.” I simply asked her one question. “Did I become a better teacher when I changed jobs from a Bronx high school with poorer test results to Scarsdale High School?” She was clearly stumped, but refused to change her mind.

It’s the Poverty, Stupid!

The following comes from a story written by Gary Stern of Lo-Hud.

I have been working with YPIE to attempt to help them augment their program to make Yonkers high school seniors more ready for college and career. We are negotiating with them to include the opportunity for a WISE program of experiential learning for credit whereby these students can gain college and career skills out of a classroom setting on a project or internship of their choice.

“The “holy grail” for urban school systems has long been to increase their graduation rates. In other words, hand out those diplomas so students have a chance to make it.

But the people at Yonkers Partners In Education, a private group obsessed with helping Yonkers students thrive, began to see that mere graduation is not enough. They wanted to find the keys to preparing students for college success.

So Bernard “Bud” Kroll, a retired Wall Streeter from Scarsdale, rolled out a schools-based version of “Moneyball.”

The YPIE board member went searching for statistical links that could help explain why some students are college-ready and many are not. He found that one factor has an overwhelming, undeniable influence on educational success.

“Poverty,” he said. “Poverty has everything to do with student readiness. It is the one thing that explains so much.”

Many researchers have outlined connections between poverty at home and achievement in school. But Kroll, who worked for 27 years in financial markets and asset management, is making the case that educators and the public can’t accurately judge school districts or teachers without considering the impact of poverty.

And the time has come, he said, to figure out how to alleviate poverty’s strangling effects on students so they have a better shot at earning a college degree. This is what YPIE now seeks to do through a variety of programs.

Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano said he’ll wield Kroll’s study in Albany to call for a new commitment to New York’s urban school systems and more money for a range of programs.

“Everyone needs to hear about this,” he said.

Changing focus

YPIE had a clear, if difficult, mission when founded by business leaders in 2007: to help more Yonkers students graduate from high school and go to college.

The group had a fast impact by helping students focus on graduation requirements and college acceptance, subjects of daily conversation in neighboring suburban communities.

Last year, Yonkers students made almost 30,000 visits to college advisory centers run by YPIE in the city’s high schools. The value of college scholarships secured by Yonkers students soared from $23,000 in 2009-10 to more than $61,000 last year.

But too many Yonkers students were not making it in college. YPIE began to doubt the point of helping students graduate from high school if they weren’t ready for college work.

“If they are not prepared to be successful in college, are we doing them a service or disservice?” YPIE Executive Director Wendy Nadel said. “We don’t want to throw time and money at things that won’t make a real difference for students.”

Enter Kroll, an outsider to the world of institutional education who once served as head of U.S. equity quantitative research for J.P. Morgan Asset Management. Last year he turned his attention to defining college “readiness” and mapping the factors that lead to or away from this elusive goal.

A major problem, Kroll found, is that a high school diploma has been too easy to attain in New York. “The graduation bar is too low,” Kroll said. “A 65 on a Regents exam gets you nowhere.”

The game-changer

Kroll found that only one factor had a game-changing link to how students perform in a given school district: the percentage of students eligible for free- or reduced-price lunch because of low family income.

He found that this measure explained 63 percent of the variability across districts when it comes to student readiness for college.

What’s most important to Kroll is that his statistical framework can be used to compare the performance of school districts and schools, big and small, urban and suburban, while accounting for their levels of poverty. His graphs show whether a school district does better or worse than expected, given its percentage of students who come from poverty.

The ultimate goal is to identify districts that outperform their poverty levels, analyze how they do it and share the results.

”We don’t want to provide an excuse, like, ‘Don’t judge us because we have poverty,’ ” he said. “But we need to filter out the effects of poverty so we can judge how districts and teachers are doing. Let’s find out why some (districts and schools) get better results in poor communities.”

The big picture

This is what YPIE aims to do in Yonkers. The group is now working with graduates who enroll at Westchester Community College to prepare them for college work. And YPIE has taken a major step by placing staff at WCC to continue assisting students on the path to an associate degree.

Last week, YPIE learned it will receive a $492,489 federal grant for several key programs, including new efforts to help high school juniors and seniors overcome their academic weaknesses so they are better prepared for college.

Kroll and his colleagues emphasized that there is more to a full K-12 education than being ready for college coursework. Students should take art, music and other electives, they said, that help produce well-rounded adults.

“When you take away other things from school, it detracts from the full educational experience,’ Nadel said. “We know that.”

Yonkers received other good news last week. The city’s schools will get $33 million in federal funds over four years to reinstate full-day prekindergarten. The goal is to lessen the effects of poverty on young children before they reach kindergarten.

“There is a culture of poverty that affects a child’s self-esteem, motivation, discipline and organizational skills,” Yonkers schools Superintendent Michael Yazurlo said. “Let’s talk about it. Let’s do something about it.””

THE REAL CRISIS IN NYS EDUCATION IS NEITHER TEACHING NOR STANDARDS, IT’S INEQUITY!

The real crisis in NYS education is equity.

I recently had a conversation with a few friends about why I disliked both TFA and Common Core. They had seen my interview on Al Jazeera America regarding TFA and had read some my posts reading Common Core.

I gave them the elevator speech about how TFA has done more harm than good to students and schools across the nation, then I explained how there is a difference between quality syllabi and standards created by teachers and curriculum developers   who work directly with kids and the CCSS created by college professors and David Coleman’s cronies. I told them about the high quality K-12 syllabi NYS had for decades that set the standard for standards for other states.

One of the people I was with responded by saying, “Well, wouldn’t it be a good idea to have Mississippi, with the lowest set of standards be brought up to NYS’s level?” I told him about how, with all good intentions that is how the national standards drive got started with people like our own Diane Ravitch and others supporting them. Then of course I had to tell him how that idealistic idea was “capitalized” upon by others and usurped by political and business agendas.

They were shocked. These are intelligent and knowledgable “liberals” with no understanding beyond what they read in the NY Times (for example).

But what has NYS now have in common with Mississippi? Not standards, but inequity!

So when the NY Times editorial page (1/5/15) says, “The Central Crisis in New York Education” is inequity, and NOT teacher evaluations, as Governor Cuomo and Chancellor Tisch argue, perhaps a large group of potential supporters for what really needs to change in education may surface.

These inequalities are compounded by the fact that New York State, which regards itself as a bastion of liberalism, has the most racially and economically segregated schools in the nation. A scathing 2014 study of this problem by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, charged that New York had essentially given up on this problem. It said, ‘The children who most depend on the public schools for any chance in life are concentrated in schools struggling with all the dimensions of family and neighborhood poverty and isolation.’

OOMMPH, There it is!

Now what will the NYS Governor and Legislature do about it? Will they finally do what the courts demanded they do 9 years ago?

These shameful inequities were fully brought to light in 2006, when the state’s highest court ruled in Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York that the state had not met its constitutional responsibility to ensure adequate school funding and in particular had shortchanged New York City.

Will they at least try to follow up?

A year later, the Legislature and Gov. Eliot Spitzer adopted a new formula that promised more help for poor districts and eventually $7 billion per year in added funding.

Will they respond to other lawsuits  and Union pressure that followed up on these inequities?

A lawsuit by a group called New Yorkers for Students’ Educational Rights estimates that, despite increases in recent years, the state is still about $5.6 billion a year short of its commitment under that formula.”

A second lawsuit was filed on behalf of students in several small cities in the state, including Jamestown, Port Jervis, Mount Vernon and Newburgh. It says that per pupil funding in the cities, which have an average 72 percent student poverty rate, is $2,500 to $6,300 less than called for in the 2007 formula, making it impossible to provide the instruction other services needed to meet the State Constitution’s definition of a “sound basic education.”

These communities and others like them are further disadvantaged by having low property values and by a statewide cap enacted in 2011 that limits what money they are able to raise through property taxes. And last year the New York State United Teachers union said that the cap had been particularly harmful to poorer districts.

Apparently even the NY Times now sees what educators, the courts, small city leaders, and the Unions have known for years concerning the real crisis in NYS education.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s forthcoming State of the State address is expected to focus on what can be done to improve public education across the state. If he is serious about the issue, he will have to move beyond peripheral concerns and political score-settling with the state teachers’ union, which did not support his re-election, and go to the heart of the matter. And that means confronting and proposing remedies for the racial and economic segregation that has gripped the state’s schools, as well as the inequality in school funding that prevents many poor districts from lifting their children up to state standards.

The Cuomo administration seemed not to acknowledge these issues in a letter last month to the chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents and the commissioner of education in which it promised “an aggressive legislative package” to improve education in the state. Among the dozen issues it said it wanted to address were strengthening the teacher evaluation system, improving the process for removing low-performing teachers and improving teacher training.

So, Here is my proposal to Governor Cuomo, Chancellor Tisch, and  the members of the NYS legislature. Let educators work on syllabi and evaluation. We know that best.

Hey, If you are curious read what many of us have written. I’ll toss in a free copy of my book, Doing The Right Thing: A Teacher Speaks. I gave one to all the other candidates for Governor.

Let us do our thing, and focus on yours. End the inequity!