In at Least One NYC School Jeans Banned ---For Teachers

In at least one New York City (P.S. or elementary) school supervisors have banned jeans ---on teachers!

“In an increasingly diverse nation where what you wear may be the ultimate self-expression, teachers are falling victim to the same dress code rules as their students.”
--USA Today, July 31, 2012
Huh?
Let's go to how clothes and electronics rules are defined and actually practiced in the NYC DOE:
First, these are strict and well-defined as to attire, just as they are to electronics.
But let's look at the hypocrisy. Students flout the rules. Administrators ignore them.
Guys, we'll perennially tolerate your way low saggin', the DOE is basically telling children. (See this Chaz post.) And everyone, you can operate any and every electronic amusement device you wish. (See this post by Life in Limbo on the lewd-mouthed student with the laptop.)
Again, this is your DOE of the 2000s and 2010s: no accountability standards for students; tough standards for teachers.
Here's USA Today's July 30, 2012 story on the getting tough on teacher adornments patterns:

When kids in one Kansas school district return to class this fall, they won't be seeing cutoff shorts, pajama pants or flip flops — on teachers.
Kindergarten teachers, who would meet new dress codes, at McAdory Middle School in Birmingham, Ala.
The Wichita School District is just one of a growing number in the nation cracking down on teacher apparel. Jeans are banned in at least one elementary school in New York City. A school district in Phoenix is requiring teachers to cover up tattoos and excessive piercings. And several Arizona schools are strictly defining business casual.
In an increasingly diverse nation where what you wear may be the ultimate self-expression, teachers are falling victim to the same dress code rules as their students.
In most cases, schools are taking the actions because they believe some teachers are dressing inappropriately. School board members received parental complaints about teacher dress at Arizona's Litchfield Elementary School District, Superintendent Julianne Lein says.
The move comes at a time when the number of public schools requiring uniforms has nearly doubled over the past decade to 19%, reports the National Center for Education Statistics. The center doesn't track teacher uniforms or dress codes. But it soon may have to, as schools have moved to:
•Ban tattoos and piercings. Teachers can't sport outlandish hairstyles or facial piercings, and tattoos have to be covered up at the Litchfield Elementary School District.
Fifth-grade teacher Tim Schooley, who says he's surprised it's taken so long to implement a dress code, isn't sure how school officials will enforce the tattoo rule. He has a tattoo on his calf, but keeps it covered . "Tattoos can be a symbol or something of extreme significance that you have," he says. "That, to me, is a little bit different."
•Outlaw jeans. At New York's P.S. 64 Robert Simon School, jeans are an absolute no-no.
•Nix skinny straps. Students shouldn't be seeing too much of their female teachers in Peoria and Litchfield school districts, as tank-top straps can't be less than 2 inches wide.
What happens to those who don't follow the new rules?
"Staff members will first be counseled by their supervisor to brainstorm options in ways to meet the code," Superintendent Lein says. "Further non-compliance will be dealt with through the normal disciplinary channels." But in this case, not detention.

Not Just Field Tests: Across U.S., Parents Mobilizing Against Test Mania

Ed Notes reports that Parents are mobilizing here in New York, on June 7, 11 A.M. in a Field Trip against the Field Tests, outside Pearson Headquarters, at 1330 6th Avenue. Parents are rebelling, across the U.S. against the deformers' tests; and they're making news. Round-up from FairTest, Huffington Post, New York Times SchoolBook:

From FairTest: "Testing Protests Expand Across the Nation" From Boston to Florida to Oakland:

Protests against high-stakes exams surged across the country this spring as grassroots groups in a dozen states staged events to voice their opposition to the increased use and misuse of standardized testing in public education. Ranging from small local gatherings to statewide rallies, the events were united by their denunciations of reliance on standardized test scores to determine whether students will be promoted to the next grade or receive a high-school diploma.
Parental resistance has grown steadily in response to high-stakes testing policies. More than 20 states now require students to pass an exit exam to receive a high school diploma. Several more will soon impose such requirements, though some other states are now retreating from such mandates (see story p.7). Organizers of at least a dozen events collaborated through the Assessment Reform Network (ARN), a project based at FairTest. ARN now supplies technical assistance and other resources to over 30 state and local organizations across the country that work to improve assessment and accountability practices.

 Rallies and Marches

• More than 1500 people, from both cities and suburbs, converged in a statewide demonstration in Albany, New York, on May 8 to oppose the state's use of the Regents exams to determine high school graduation and the growing power of state tests to undermine teaching and learning.

 • A May 5 rally in Los Angeles, California, drew 300 people. The Coalition for Education Justice, which organized the event, urged city and state educational officials to protect students from "racist and class-biased high-stakes testing."

 • Also on May 5, in Detroit, Michigan, the first rally sponsored by FREE, a coalition of parents, students, teachers and university professors, drew about 75 to call on the state legislature to "get rid of the MEAP," the Michigan Educational Assessment Program tests.

 • Rallies were held at opposite ends of Massachusetts. A hundred protesters attended a May 8 demonstration in Northampton, while 300 gathered on the Boston Common on May 15 at a rally initiated by the Students Coalition for Alternatives to the MCAS (SCAM) and sponsored by the Coalition for Authentic Reform in Education (CARE) and other organizations.

 • Arizona activists have been staging a series of smaller events, such as marches in Tempe in April carrying signs and letters addressed to state legislators, pickets at busy street intersections in Tucson, and leafleting at a Cinco de Mayo celebration in Phoenix. Arizona officials have already backed off from this year's graduation test requirements.

 • Other rallies were held in Austin, Texas; Olympia, Washington; and Columbus, Ohio.

 Test boycotts

• Schools in dozens of California communities had low test participation as students and parents refused to take annual Stanford-9 state tests. These included 600 students at two high schools in wealthy Marin County, and dozens in largely low-income Oakland. Opting out of the tests is legal and has become common across California. Press reports said up to 90% opted out at some schools

 • Close to 100 eighth and tenth grade students in Massachusetts protested the April test outside their schools, refused to answer the essay prompt on the test, or wrote their own essay on the exam explaining their opposition to the test. In May, when testing resumed, boycotts continued across the state. Though grade 10 students will have to pass the test to graduate (barring changes in policy), dozens of tenth graders boycotted. Hundreds of students in earlier grades in towns and cities across the state also refused to take the test.

 • Nearly 200 middle grade parents in the affluent New York suburb of Scarsdale kept their children home on test day. Unusually, this boycott had the open support of the school system. Students in Rochester and Ithaca also refused the exams.

 • In Washington state, about seventy high school families in the Vancouver area announced they would refuse to have the test administered to their children, using an "opt out" procedure allowed by state law. Students in other locales across the state also opted out.

 • Wearing white shirts, jeans and badges bearing student identification numbers, about half of the students at Boulder Colorado's New Vista High School protested the first day of the Colorado Students Assessment Program tests (CSAP) in February, chanting "standardized tests produce standardized students."

 • Across the nation, several teachers refused to administer standardized tests. Teach-ins • Ad-hoc parent and teacher groups organized teach-ins in Sacramento, California, and Portland, Maine, to raise awareness about the harms of high-stakes standardized testing.

 • In Virginia, parents conducted a variety of events in local neighborhoods across the state. At one local library, parents invited families to read and discuss children's books written about standardized tests.

 • At a student-organized citywide conference in Boston, Massachusetts, participants in the Teen Empowerment program used music, skits, poems and stories to voice their views on the MCAS while urging state leaders to listen to the experiences youth have with the tests.

 • A student-moderated forum at a high school in Panama City, Florida, screened a student-created TV advertisement and discussed the problems associated with use of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) to grade and rank schools.

 Next Steps

The visible rallies and boycotts are the tip of an "iceberg" of growing opposition to the misuse and overuse of flawed standardized tests. From small events in small towns to larger events in cities, the protesters represent the public face of many thousands of parents, students, teachers and others who are meeting, talking, petitioning and organizing to stop high-stakes testing. Many of the organizations which sponsored rallies, boycotts and other events will continue to share experiences, research and information through the ARN, which connects groups through a national web site, email discussion groups, conferences and other activities.

Contact information from organizers of the events, sample flyers and press releases can be found under "What's New" or the ARN page at www.fairtest.org, along with information about the ARN and participating organizations.

From Huffington Post: Public School Standardized Testing: Enough Is Enough for New York State Kids Christine Wachtell offers a refreshing proposal: Let the private school students and teachers go through the same test mania non-sense. Let those students get an all prep education. Let those teachers get pulled from the classroom to score tests.

Here is a modest proposal. Let's have private school students take the same standardized tests that public school students now take each year. While we are at it, let's require private school teachers to be absent from their students' classrooms for the same number of days as public school teachers, who now must serve as conscripted graders for the standardized tests. For public school children, it has been a long spring, shaped far too much by mandated testing. And the testing is not over. The latest outrage is that public school children are now expected to serve as free product testers for Pearson, the test preparation company awarded a $32 million, five-year contract to develop New York State's 3-8 grade tests. [The wikipedia article on Pearson.]

 From June 5-8 "field tests" -- tests composed entirely of trial questions that do not count towards students' annual test scores -- are supposed to be administered to one full grade at each public elementary and middle school. In trolling the internet, I discovered the English Language Arts and Mathematics Field Tests School Administrator's Manual. My favorite lines in it read: "Do not permit students to obtain information from or give information to other students in any way during the field tests. If you suspect that such an attempt has occurred, warn the students that any further attempts will result in the termination of their field tests." Students caught cheating on a test that won't be scored get to finish early.

When did we cross into the realm of the absurd? Let's just review how much of the spring already has been given over to testing. In April my fifth grade son, along with his aggrieved seventh grade brother, spent six days being tested in English Language Arts (ELA) and Math. At ninety minutes per day, the tests were significantly longer than in past years. Then came May, when teachers at both my sons' New York City public schools were obliged to leave their classes in the hands of substitutes, while they graded other schools' standardized tests. My son's fifth grade teacher missed every Thursday for three weeks. Teachers at my older son's school missed even more days with their students. The principal of his middle school wrote to parents in late April: "Monday began a five-week period in which testing interferes with every aspect of the school program. During the six days of testing, three this past week and three days next week, every student will miss a minimum of 18 class periods. The six test days will be followed by three weeks, in which fourteen teachers ... will each be pulled out of school for five days, so they can assist in grading the tests ... This is what we are expected to do so the students can be tested!"

 A great deal of attention has focused on the flawed questions that appeared on this year's tests created by Pearson. Most notably, a nonsensical reading passage appeared on the 8th grade ELA test, concerning a race between a pineapple and a hare. The public outrage regarding that passage, quickly dubbed "Pinneapplegate," resulted in the invalidation of six questions. So too, my fifth grade son was asked on his math test to determine the perimeter of a trapezoid, even though it was later established that the particular trapezoid described does "not exist within the bounds of mathematics."

 How much testing is too much? Let's keep in mind that the SAT takes under four hours to measure college-bound students' verbal, mathematical, and writing skills. Should assessing my fifth grader's mastery of these same subjects take 9 hours? And does he really need to sit through more testing this school year to help Pearson make more money? At his elementary school, all 5th graders are supposed to take a math field test in early June. When private school students are enjoying their first days of summer break, do my son and his friends really need to be reckoning again with faulty trapezoids? Across the nation, there is a groundswell of protest rising against high stakes testing, and in New York State public school parents are calling for a boycott of the NYS June field tests. [Link to Parent Voices NY.]

Isn't it high time for private school students and their parents to share in the experience? I have often heard it suggested that, if America had instituted a universal draft, we never would have gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. High-powered parents never would have tolerated sending their sons and daughters to Kabul instead of to college. Similarly, if New York State drafted private school children into statewide standardized testing, their high-powered parents would not stand for it. Then New York's headlong race toward ever longer, ever more high-stakes, and ever more flawed testing, would end quicker than a hare can beat a pineapple to the finish line.

From the New York Times Schoolbook: From a May 23, 2012 story and a May 24 update: By Hiten Samtani, "More Parents Are Saying No to Pearson's Field Tests"

Last month’s mandated standardized tests drew widespread criticism from many parents, who complained the tests were now dominating the curriculum and that too much weight is being put on the results to evaluate their children and teachers. Yet, despite the complaints over “high-stakes testing,” only a small group of parents decided to opt their children out of them, as many parents said they worried about the ramifications to their child and their schools if they did so. But as city students have begun a new round of standardized tests — this time so-called “field tests,” which are experimental tests that the state-contracted test-maker, Pearson, is using to try out questions on city students for future use — more parents are talking about opting out.

And test resistance appears to becoming more widespread, with substantial numbers of parents at several city schools deciding their children would not participate. Resistance also appears to be growing more organized. Groups like Change the Stakes are helping to spread information about opt-out procedures and have created a spreadsheet to help parents navigate the field testing landscape. ParentVoicesNY has created a boycott form letter that parents can download, sign and then submit to their school. The group also has direct connections with more than 20 schools, according to Kevin Jacobs, a public school teacher who is one of its active members.

 City officials said they will not have the final figures on how many parents chose to have their children opt out last month of the federally mandated standardized math and English tests for third through eighth graders. Results from these tests play a major role in grade promotion, middle and high school applications, and placement into gifted and talented programs. Test scores are also used in teacher and school evaluations . . . .

 An official at the city’s Department of Education said that unlike with last month’s standardized tests, the city does not monitor and analyze data from the field tests. The field tests are handled directly by Pearson, the official said, and the city’s approach to them is hands-off. The field tests are being given to help Pearson, the company who received a $32 million contract to design New York’s state tests, align its questions with the new Common Core learning standards. But it is doing so in an increasingly critical atmosphere, after multiple problems with last month’s tests, including errors in the multiple choice answers and complaints about a farcical passage related to a race between a pineapple and a hare. About 488,000 students will be involved in this year’s field tests, a spokesman for the New York State Education Department said. But last month’s standardized tests also had embedded field questions that will be used by Pearson purely for research purposes. As a result, the tests were 30 percent longer, another source of frustration for children and their parents. So why the need for the standalone field tests? The state Education Department spokesman said the validity and reliability of the state exams requires brief standalone pilot testing of questions, typically during a single 40 minute session . . . .

 Ms. Foote said she had feared that keeping her son out of last month’s tests would harm his school. Under No Child Left Behind, schools must have a 95 percent participation rate to satisfy their Adequate Yearly Progress, she said. “We wouldn’t do anything to hurt our schools.” But with the field tests she had no such qualms. “There were no consequences,” Ms. Foote said. “They’ve had a good gig going with this data department.” Jane Hirschmann, co-founder of Time Out from Testing, said that there were no known ramifications of boycotting the field tests. “Since they have no grade, they can’t be used for promotion, teacher evaluations, principal bonuses or a school grade,” she said. She added that a borough assessment implementation director from Brooklyn had said that as long as intent was expressed in writing, parents would be allowed to opt their children out. . . .

Bloomberg Contempt for Special Education; State Legislators Oppose Mayoral Control, Without UFT Push

Anyone seriously noticing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's policies toward special education students gets the idea that he views them as a problem that won't go away. Just read United Federation of Teachers Vice President for Special Education Carmen Alvarez's letter on the mayor's practices.

The Department of Education is rolling out its special education reform to all 1,700 city schools next year. The expectation is that nearly all incoming elementary, middle school and high school students with disabilities will attend the same school they would attend if they didn’t have Individualized Education Programs.
The stated goals of the reform for students with disabilities are to: 1. close the achievement gap; 2. increase access to and participation in the general education curriculum; and 3. build school-based support through greater curricular, instructional and scheduling flexibility. This week the DOE began to put meat on the bones of these lofty statements. It wasn’t pretty.
The real agenda is laid bare in the 50-page “Flexible Programming Guide” [UFT link to DOE document] developed for principals. We’ve been hearing about flexible programming for a couple of years now. The way that it has been explained by the DOE actually made some sense: It called on schools to mix and match special education services based on student needs in various content areas. But my antennae always go up when I hear the word “flexible” as it almost never means anything good. I am sorry to say that my instincts were right.
Reading between the lines, this is the message that the DOE is sending to principals through the examples in the guide:
· Unless the recommendation is for service provided in the general education class, assume the IEP team did not understand the child’s true needs in recommending services.
· Less service is better than more service and push-in service is better than pull-out.
· Schools shouldn’t open self-contained classes even if they have enough students with IEP recommendations to fill them.
· Students with significant behavioral challenges recommended for full-time self-contained classes can be adequately supported in general education classes with counseling during lunch or in class a couple of days a week.
· It is never appropriate to recommend that a student attend another school that can actually provide the services on the student’s IEP.
· Paraprofessional services should be used infrequently and when used, they should be part-time, provided in a group and time-limited.
Let me tell you what is wrong with this picture. Placement decisions, including decisions regarding location of services and intensity of services, are made by the child’s IEP team.
Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, it is impermissible to recommend services based on the availability of the program or personnel, space, budget or administrative convenience.
Yes, IEP teams must consider the least restrictive environment in which the child’s needs can be met and, where possible, students should be served in the schools and classrooms they would attend if they did not have a disability. But if the child’s needs require that the child attend a school other than the school he would attend if not disabled, or that the child receive related services in a therapy room, that is the least restrictive environment for that child.
We have combed the research study that the DOE cites in all of its public presentations and we cannot find support for the DOE’s sweeping conclusions about the academic benefit of serving students with disabilities in general education settings. The research tells us that students who perform several years below grade level require intensive and explicit instruction with ongoing progress monitoring, not a few periods of team teaching or Special Education Teacher Support Services.
Where did this come from? Deputy Chancellor Laura Rodriguez and Special Education Director Lauren Katzman have publicly stated that the purpose of this reform is to increase options for students with disabilities, not to dismantle programs and services recommended by IEP teams or to eliminate special education classes.
Where is the data from Phase I of this reform that shows that the IEP changes outlined in the guide improve student achievement and reduce challenging behavior?
The DOE previewed its plans at the Citywide Council on Special Education meeting in March. Nothing in that presentation suggested that the DOE would be asking schools to make changes in student IEPs of this magnitude.
Is this why they are hiding the guide in a link only available to principals? Why are they saying one thing and doing another? Where is the transparency and accountability?
We can hear their excuses now: “It wasn’t us, we just make policy. It was poorly implemented by the networks.”
Read the UFT's online guide, Special Education Reform. Let us know how this is playing out at your school. File a special education complaint immediately if your principal says self-contained classes have been eliminated, directs you to change IEPs to recommend a particular service, or tells you that you can recommend only services that are available in your building.
If you receive written directives, email them to me at calvarez@uft.org or fax them to my office at 1-212-254-5579. In the meantime, I will work with our partners in the parent and advocacy community as well as our elected officials to stop the doublespeak from the DOE and bring true research-based reform to special education in New York City.

To boot, one should also notice that special education students get last priority in charter school seats.

Is it any wonder that parents are pushing to end mayoral control?
Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (Brooklyn) when speaking yesterday on WWRL AM radio cited parents, not the union (UFT), as the factor that has pushed her to introduce a bill in the New York State legislature to eliminate mayoral control.
Carl Campanile's story in the New York Post, excerpted:

Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn) and Assemblyman Keith Wright (D-Harlem) claim that the 10-year experiment giving City Hall sole power over educational matters has been a failure.
And Montgomery has won the support of the ranking Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, Suzi Oppenheimer (D-Westchester), who has signed on as co-sponsor to the measure.

'There’s a lot of support for reversing mayoral control. This bill does that.’ — State Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, whose push to repeal mayoral oversight of city schools has the approval of prominent Democratic state Sen. Suzi Oppenheimer (above), a co-sponsor of the measure

The mayoral control law is not up renewal until June 30, 2015. But under their bills, the two legislators call for overhauling the law this year.
“There’s a lot of support for reversing mayoral control and creating a more independent board in terms of setting educational policy and hiring the chancellor. This bill does that,” Montgomery said.
. . .
But it’s precisely these changes that the lawmakers cite in fueling their bid to roll back mayoral control. Both Montgomery and Wright have opposed school closings and co-locating charter schools in facilities with traditional public schools.
“It’s been a very unpopular process having this top-down decision-making with no one able to weigh in. Having a singular authority with total power on all the decisions has not worked out for all of the children,” Montgomery said.
Montgomery’s bill would strip the mayor’s control over school policy by cutting his appointments to the 13-member citywide school board in half, from eight to four members. The City Council would appoint four members and the borough presidents one apiece.
And the board, rather than the mayor, would select the chancellor.

Read more at the Post.

NYC Charter Schools: Young Kindergarteners Need Not Apply

Yesterday from the New York Times:

Some Charters Impose Earlier Kindergarten Cutoff Dates
Feb. 14, 2012, 8:09 a.m.
By Mary Ann Giordano

The New York Post reports this Tuesday morning that some charter schools have moved up their cutoff entry dates for kindergarten to as early as Aug. 31, meaning parents of children who have birthdays after that date must wait out a year before applying or send them to kindergarten elsewhere.

The Post cites the examples of Amber Charter School of East Harlem and Voice Charter School of New York in Long Island City, Queens. Both set their cutoff date as Sept. 1. The Post writes:

The move leaves the youngest batch of 5-year-olds — who education experts say often struggle the most academically — to either sit out a year or attend traditional district schools, even though charter schools are fully taxpayer-funded.

The new policy at Voice Charter was tabled after parents complained, The Post writes. One parent, Valerie Lamour, a member of the District 30 Community Education Council in Queens, whose son’s birthday is in December, told The Post: “If the D.O.E. is going to offer kindergarten to all 5-year-olds who are residents, then charter schools that operate within our district also need to adhere to the same rule.”

DOE officials said they believe charter schools are allowed to determine their own admissions deadlines because they’re technically considered to be independent districts.

The Post also reports that the state on Monday approved its application to seek a waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Feds: NYS must investigate DOE's job of serving homeless children

NY1 reported Friday, October 21, 2011 that federal authorities want New York State authorities to investigate how good a job the New York City Department of Education is doing in educating New York City's over 50,000 homeless students.
Look at the numbers: there are notable gaps between the performance of the homeless students and that of the rest of the city's students.
Could it be that the attendant stresses of poverty, not only teacher performance, are major factors behind the performance of New York City's schoolchildren? The major and the policy deformers talk a lot of hot air about allowing all children the opportunity to excel. This is indeed a laudable goal, however, should not actions count more than words?

This is the city that is seeing dizzying rent and property increases, outpacing inflation in the rest of the economy, and certainly outpacing incomes. Could not the sickening housing costs and poor blue collar job opportunities be something that the mayor be held to account for, not just education (the Education Mayor)?

The key opening excerpt from NY1's website:

The federal government is ordering the state to monitor how the city is educating its more than 50,000 homeless public school students, and on Tuesday the City Council learned from the Department of Education just how bad things are for these vulnerable children. NY1's Education reporter Lindsey Christ filed the following report.

Of all the groups in the city’s public schools, homeless students are likely the most disadvantaged, with the worst chance of getting a good education. Last year, 53,500 city public school students were homeless.

On Tuesday, the Department of Education revealed just how badly those students are doing. The graduation rate is 41 percent, compared to a citywide rate of 61 percent.

In elementary and middle school, an average of only 38 percent of homeless students passed the math exam, compared to the citywide average of 57 percent.

Only 27 percent of homeless students passed the English exam, versus 44 percent citywide.

Several city agencies serve homeless children, but there has been little coordination. That became clear last January, when a student had to miss a Regents exam required for graduation so she could be with her family for a hearing to get into a shelter.

Click for full NY1 story.
A side note, it is often the case that homeless students are concentrated in certain schools. Of course, these students face challenges that we can only imagine a fraction of, and when their grades suffer, these schools are threatened with shut-down, and the excessed teachers enter the absent teacher reserve (ATR).

Flashback: Trade School Girls' "Report Cards" Pre-FDR

Contemporary New York writer uncovered file records of girls at trade high schools in New York, in the first three decades of the 20th C.

ATR Plight & Tribunal of Bloomberg's DOE Hits Huffington Post & GothamSchools Big Leagues: Educating for Democracy: The People's Trial ...

Joel Shatzky in Huffington Post, "Educating for Democracy: The People's Trial of Mayor Bloomberg" in Huffington Post, October 16, 2011 addressed the absent teacher reserve (ATR) fiasco and the demise in general of public education under the leadership of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (the Coalition for Public Education (CPE)).

Shortly after Mayor Michael Bloomberg assumed control of the New York City school system, he presented his programs as a national leader in "educational reform." But there has been evidence in the New York public schools in the recent past of cheating on standardized tests by teachers and supervisors.

Moreover, the much publicized "success" of the mayor's program has been in part based on inflated test scores and the "dumbing down" of the tests themselves. Yet under the mayor's "leadership" Bloomberg continues to close down "failing" schools and replace them with charter schools causing wide-spread disruption to students, parents and veteran teachers. As a result of these closings, some of the most valuable and experienced teachers lose their positions and end up in "ATR" (Absent Teacher Reserve) where they are misused as substitute teachers with no permanent position since the principals are reluctant to hire high-salary veterans and prefer to employ cheaper, inexperienced teachers to meet their "bottom line." This is the business model of education that the Bloomberg Administration has imposed.

At a "trial" held at DC 37 of AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees sponsored by the Coalition for Public Education forpubliced.org and hosted by Sam Anderson, a noted educational leader dedicated to wresting the school system out of mayoral control, testimony was given by dozens of parents, teachers and concerned educators describing the negative effect the mayor's "educational reform" has produced in what seems to be a part of a nationwide attempt to privatize the public schools, deskill teachers, strip them of their union rights, and firmly establish a two-tier educational system: one for the privileged and one for everyone else.

The all-day trial was adjudicated by such well-known legal authorities as Thomas Mariadson, of the Asian-American Legal Defense Fund, Esmeralda Simmons, of the Center for Law and Social Justice, Damon Hewitt of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and attended by City Councilman Charles Barron. Angel Gonzalez, a member of GEM (Grassroots Education Movement) described in detail the destructive effect of school closings in which a disproportionate number of Black and Latino students are pushed out of their neighborhood schools to accommodate charter schools. This process not only results in damage to the students but a disproportionate number of Black and Latino teachers end up as ATR's further diminishing the ethnic diversity of the system. Among other results of the co-location of charter schools in district schools is that they-the charters- cut back on needed programs in bi-lingual and special needs education.

Another aspect of the damage the Bloomberg administration has done to the NYC public schools was revealed by a teacher-parent whose daughter goes to Bronx Regional High School, the school attended by Nicole Suriel, the girl who was tragically drowned on a class beach visit last summer. The parent testified that he had repeatedly warned the school administration and Department of Education of neglect and indifference to student well-being at the school and blames the Administration for fostering this negligent attitude that resulted in the girl's death.

The teacher also reported the conditions at the GED Plus school where he teaches which is located at Bronx Regional High School. The school is intended to offer a chance for high school dropouts ages 17-21, to get their General Education diplomas. However, according to the teacher's testimony, the school has no library, no arts programs, no gym, no special literacy program, no ELL for students whose first language is not English, and 35 in a class.

There were many other charges of mismanagement of the public schools by the Bloomberg administration. These included the dismissal of a twelve-year special ed veteran when the DOE discovered she hadn't taken a foreign language course in college; the excessive number of summonses and arrests of students of color where not only security personnel but also regular police with firearms patrol the former Brandeis High School. It had once been one of the best high schools in the City but was closed down so that a charter school can be "co-located" at the facility on the Upper West Side where the workers and teachers will be non-unionized. The testimony throughout the time I attended presented a consistent pattern of inadequate attention to and neglect of schools that desperately need more support.

And while these schools are "failing," Councilman Barron reported that during the period of the Bloomberg administration's control of the schools the DOE budget has increased from $11 billion to $24 billion while only 23% of the students graduating from the public schools are prepared for college. With a great many of the services for the city schools now "contracted out," Barron wonders where so much of this money is going with so little effect on improving public education.

At the same time, as pointed out by Leonie Haimson, a nationally known parent-advocate and Executive Director of Class Size Matters, a clearinghouse for information on class size, the actual number of students in classrooms K-12 has increased under the Bloomberg administration, despite the fact that $650 million each year for the past three were specifically appropriated by the State legislature under the Contracts for Excellence law to reduce class size. Moreover, Haimson pointed out that several programs that have no research to support them are being vigorously expanded under the Mayor's watch: paying students for improving test scores and increasing the use of on-line (computer-based) instruction.

An alternative to such destructive practices was offered at the hearing in an ICOPE (Independent Commission on Public Education) video created by a group of high school students who actually asked other students what they felt would improve their schools. The video, based on a study called YRNES (Youth Researchers for a New Education System) www.ICOPE.org found that in addition to wanting to be treated with greater respect by teachers and other staff, about 80% of those students questioned expressed an interest in participating in leadership roles in their school. Perhaps if other school administrators, besides the Mayor, heeded the students' request, there might be some marked improvement in their performance in learning.

If the "Trial of Mayor Bloomberg" showed anything, it was that his programs were more expensive, more destructive, and more demoralizing with no significant improvement in learning outcome than prior to his administration. The sentence for what he's done is that he should be dismissed from his position as head school administrator so that more positive outcomes can be produced for our City's young learners: student, parent and teacher-based, not business-based education.

* * * *

Hollywood respected older teachers; DOE would put Miss Bishop into ATR status; UFT would dismiss her plea for an elected representative

Among points raised in a Gotham Schools article by Rachel Cromidas,
"At union meeting, jobless teachers decry ATR deal 'shell game'" there was attention to a raucous ATR meeting, SEE THE FULLER ARTICLE BEYOND THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS [SUBTITLES mine, Ed.]:

AMY ARUNDELL AND LEROY BARR DISMISSING UFT MEMBERS' CONCERNS

Amy Arundell, a UFT special representative, told the roughly 100 teachers at the meeting that the point of moving teachers weekly is to position them for jobs that could open up at the schools where they are temporarily assigned. The previous arrangement, in which members of the ATR pool often stayed at one school for an entire year, allowed principals to use them as free labor, she said, without necessarily incentivizing them to offer the ATR teachers permanent jobs.

CRAZY WEEK TO WEEK ROUTINE

Above frequent interruptions from the standing-room-only crowd, Arundell told teachers they must report to their new assignments next week, even if the principals at the schools they were assigned to for September tell them to stay put. She and several teachers in the room said some principals are asking ATRs to ignore their DOE placements and stay on, in violation of the agreement.

She encouraged the teachers to “be proactive” with the principals and press them to find money in their limited budgets to create permanent positions.
“Otherwise, you can’t stay,” she said. “Unless a principal tells you, ‘I hire you,’ Central DOE won’t know that a principal wants to keep you. You know that saying, ‘Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?’ That’s true here.”

That logic sounded hollow for a Manhattan-based teacher who said after the meeting that the normally “pro-teacher” union had agreed to a deal that does not put ATRs’ best interests first.

“This weekly assignment nonsense is meant to aggravate people so they get disgusted and leave,” she said.

UNION VS. DEMOCRACY OR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES

During the meeting, attendees called on the UFT to create a chapter just for ATRs and to file a discrimination lawsuit against the city on their behalf. But the union officials present, which included LeRoy Barr, the UFT staff director, rejected those requests, arguing that discrimination is difficult to prove and that chapter leaders at the schools where ATRs are temporarily assigned are equipped to advocate for them.

Arundell urged teachers to contact their temporary chapter leaders with complaints about hostile principals or requests to teach subjects out of their license.

But several teachers complained during the meeting that they had reached out to the UFT and the DOE with complaints, and received no response.

“It may be news for some of you, but there is not union representation in every school,” one teacher called out from the audience. “I was at one school that had no chapter leader.”

Several teachers complained about being assigned by their new principals to lunch duty or clerical work, which Arundell said was not part of their contract. Others spoke of being asked to take on subjects they are not licensed to teach.

One Manhattan-based librarian, who came to the Brooklyn meeting because the Manhattan meeting is not until next week, said her current principal is using her as an assistant to two kindergarten teachers at an elementary school because the school’s library is closed.

“I take the kids to the bathroom every period. That’s about all I do. My principal said to me, ‘I don’t want you here. You’re not going to work anyway.’” She paused for emphasis and whispered, “I think it’s because of my gray hair.”

UNION AGAINST CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT, DOUBTING DISCRIMINATION

Teachers throughout the room clapped when one attendee called on the union to file a class-action lawsuit against the city. Union officials shot down the idea, saying that courts require a high burden of proof for discrimination suits that the union would be unlikely to meet.

“But it’s happening everywhere,” another teacher called out. “Stop the shell game that’s taking place.”

Several teachers in attendance said they would like the union to create an ATR teacher chapter to represent them — something the union officials said was not likely to happen.

As the 2.5-hour-long meeting wrapped up, Vincente DeSiano, an elementary school teacher in the ATR pool, collected names and contact information from the roughly 40 people still present, after union officials said they would not provide information about who had attended.

“We have power that we don’t realize,” DeSiano said. “I want us all to be able to share information with each other and see how we can help the situation.”

See the original large article at Gotham Schools.

Update:NYS Regents Ponders Sending Tests Away From Teachers' Own Schools/ NYT: Files: 14 Suspected Cheating

New York State Regents Considering Sending Regents Tests Away for Schools for Scoring
Cheating in New York City Schools: 14 Cases
UPDATE: 10/17 NY1 contribution on this topic --link at bottom of this post.

Regents to Vote on Change to Cut Risk of Teachers’ Test-Tampering
By SHARON OTTERMAN
Published: October 15, 2011

The New York State Board of Regents will decide Monday whether to bar teachers from grading their own students’ standardized tests, a longstanding practice that state officials say creates a temptation for educators to cheat in an era of high-stakes exams.
The ban, which would start in the 2012-13 school year, would require districts to score tests in other schools, on computers or in regional centers. The change would most likely cause Regents exams, now held just before graduation, to be held earlier in the spring and could lead to additional costs for districts.

The state is in the process of introducing a new evaluation system that judges teachers in part on how well their students do on standardized tests. These rising stakes are behind the state’s push for better test security, as is an acknowledgment by state officials that they have not done enough to detect or prevent cheating.

. . . Remainder of NYT article.

The best route would be to send the tests outside of New York City. If they were examined in the city there would still remain the taint of intimidation from superiors in the New York City Department of Education.

(Condon only substantiated a handful of the accused test-cheating cases in New York City schools: NY Times. Sharon Otterman, from the September 24, 2011 Times, "State Says It Analyzed Test Erasures for Cheating; 62 Schools Proved Suspect." --The page tab gets more to the point: "In Reversal, New York State Says It Used Erasure Analyses to Detect Cheating."

Published: October 15, 2011
Cheating in New York City Schools: 14 Cases
A collection of reports by the Special Commissioner of Investigation for the New York City school system describing substantiated cases of test tampering and grade changing by educators. Most of the documents were obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information request and were redacted to protect the identities of witnesses and minors.

Click to above link for the 14 cited cases.

NY1, 10/17/11: "State DOE To Consider Measures To Prevent Regents Cheating."

State education officials knew about scrubbing for years but did nothing: e-mail - NYPOST.com

State education officials knew about scrubbing for years but did nothing: e-mail - NYPOST.com
Duh!!!!

Curious that cheating is substantiated at a New York City school, yet the city feels compelled to study the matter more, yet, all claims against teacher mis-conduct are always substantiated.

Same problem appears in the powers-that-be being unmoved, unfazed over teacher allegations of New York State Regents and other state tests.

In this example from this summer, investigators dismiss the allegations that teachers make. See this story from this summer:

Sharon Otterman, "New York Times", "Under Bloomberg, a Sharp Rise in Accusations of Cheating by Educators", August 22, 2011.

REVERSAL: STUDY OF ERASURE ANALYSIS AND NY TEST CHEATING ALLEGATIONS

Sharon Otterman, "New York Times," "State Says It Analyzed Test Erasures for Cheating; 62 Schools Proved Suspect" September 23, 2011.

In New York State, however, education officials have said the spark that set off most of the investigations in those places, a procedure called erasure analysis of standardized tests, was something they could not afford and did not do.

Yet officials revealed this week that the State Education Department had quietly been conducting erasure analysis on some high school Regents exams for more than three years, a process that red-flagged 64 incidents of possible problems, including one that led to the ouster of an assistant principal in the Bronx.

And after an audit by the state comptroller raised concerns about cheating in 2010, the State Board of Regents voted, to little notice, to expand such analysis to six additional tests last school year, and to all Regents exams in 2011-12, though the necessary funds were never authorized.

Bank Street Conference on Helping Schools, Not Closing Them

This last weekend, Saturday, September 24, 2011:
Rachel Cromidas, "Event aims to teach city to help schools instead of closing them" Sept. 23, 2011 at GothamSchools.

The city official in charge of closing schools and the union chief who has sued to keep schools open are both set to speak at a conference tomorrow about what can be done to help schools without shuttering them.

The conference, “Effective Alternatives to School Closings: Transforming Struggling Schools in NYC,” was organized by the Coalition for Educational Justice, the Alliance for Quality Education, and the Urban Youth Collaborative, all advocacy organizations. The event is meant to send a message to city policymakers that there are ways to reform failing schools without shutting them down, according to Ronnette Summers, a parent and CEJ member who helped organize it.

The city Department of Education has closed 117 schools since 2002 and Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said this week that he plans to close additional schools, particularly middle schools, that do not meet the department’s standards.

“Every year there’s more and more schools on the closing list and that seems to be the only reform strategy that the Department of Education uses to improve schools,” Summers said. “People in places where they know [closure] is not working felt that it was important to bring it to New York City to let them see that there’s other ways to improve schools.”

Click to this link, to get full article, and six page Scribd document.

NY State Releases Persistently Dangerous Schools List, Many in Bronx, Brooklyn

Thanks to Channel 12 News, here is the site for New York State's list of "Persistently Dangerous Schools."

Bronx (3), Brooklyn (2) and Harlem (2) schools predominate in the city. Middle schools appear much more than high schools. Then, more frequent than high schools are schools that are K through 5 or 8 schools (e.g., PS 194 Countee Cullen (Harlem, Manhattan), PS 12 (Weeksville, Brooklyn) and PS 11 (Highbridge, Bronx))

Yet, upstate rural towns predominate for the rest of New York State. A suburban exception to this list is Greenburgh Eleven Elementary in Dobbs Ferry. And this list includes schools carried over from previous years' lists. Schools from the older list includes schools in some very rural areas, e.g., Little Flower School in Wading River on the Long Island Sound in northeastern Suffolk County.

New York Times Explains School Numbering System

Wondering about the numbering system in the naming of New York City public schools?
Anna Phillips in the New York Times wrote "Naming a Public School in New York? It Isn’t as Simple as 1, 2, 3" to explain it for you. (September 7, 2011.)

In the beginning, there was Public School 1. Then it got messy.
There are actually four P.S. 1’s in New York City: That first school, established in 1806 and later named for Alfred E. Smith (Manhattan); the Courtlandt School (the Bronx); the Bergen (Brooklyn); and the Tottenville (Staten Island). Plus, of course, the P.S. 1 in Long Island City, Queens, which now houses a contemporary-art museum. There are also three P.S. 2’s, three P.S. 3’s and four P.S. 4’s.

In a system of 1,700 schools, the numbering can be dizzying. For children starting at Public School 8 this week, they might be traveling to Washington Heights — or Brooklyn Heights, or two other places. And if teachers are assigned to work at Public School 75 on the Upper West Side, they should not necessarily assume that it opened before Public School 76, about a mile north, or that it bears any relationship to the P.S. 75 that was on the Lower East Side many years earlier.

The fact that the numbers are repeated across boroughs is, in part, because the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island originally had their own school systems. But over the decades, as the city has closed, moved and razed school buildings — and, recently, opened lots of new ones — the sequential numbering of schools has disappeared.

“You start out with a deck of cards with all of the suits in order, and over the course of a century the deck has been shuffled so many times that it doesn’t have meaning anymore,” said Stephan F. Brumberg, a historian of education at Brooklyn College.

Today, the Education Department uses an allocation code management system to do the work. When a new school is created, a computer assigns it a number, careful not to repeat within a borough; that code is sent to the state for approval.

Except when it is not. Shimon Waronker, the Orthodox Jew who founded the New American Academy in Crown Heights last year, was given No. 748. He had previously run Middle School 22. He pointed out to the chancellor that 748 plus 22 is 770, the address (and nickname) of world Lubavitcher headquarters, and they decided New American would be Public School 770 instead.

Other cities seem not to have this problem. Atlanta and Washington use names, not numbers. Schools in Baltimore are numbered, but people generally say their children attend Westside Elementary, not P.S. 24. And the only numbered schools in Los Angeles are the ones labeled for the streets they are on, like the 28th Street School — something that helps alleviate confusion.

Back when the first public schools began in New York, the numbers really meant something. Those who like order will appreciate that Manhattan’s P.S. 1 is truly the first public school on the island, though it has moved buildings.

The school opened 205 years ago in a “small apartment,” then moved into a schoolhouse on Henry Street on the Lower East Side, according to a history of the New York public schools, written in 1905 by Archie Emerson Palmer, secretary of the Board of Education. Created by a private charity, it was known as “New York Free School No. 1.”

Click here to read the rest of the article at the Times website.

Only 34% of NYers Approve of Bloomberg Education Performance

Recent news, to be published in Wednesday, September 7, 2011 New York Times,
in a CBS News/ New York Times poll of 1,027 New York City residents, only 34 percent approve of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's performance in shaping New York City schools. The 34 percent figure represents a historic low for the mayor, since a peak of 67 percent approval in October 2005 and June 2006 CBS/ New York Times polls.

Sharon Otterman and Alisson Kopicki report in "New Yorkers Say Mayor Has Not Improved Schools" that most of the polled New Yorkers say that the Department of Education schools have declined or stagnated since Mayor Bloomberg took control of the school system nine years ago.

One of the mayor's trademark trends has been breaking apart schools and housing multiple schools in one building. When questioned about the latter trend, 48 percent said that housing multiple schools in one building was a bad idea, and 39 percent said that the practice was a good idea.

The leading concerns of polled residents were in this order: funding, easing overcrowding and teacher quality.

Ironically, when the subset of parents of schoolchildren were polled about their satisfaction with the choice of their child's school, 67 percent said that they were satisfied.

Here is the online link for the New York Times survey of New Yorkers' opinions about the New York City school system.

Big Stories on Test Cheating in NY Times and Daily News -in Middle of Summer when Fewer are Noticing; Similar Cheating Concerns Across Nation

(SCROLL DOWN FOR STATE SURVEY OF TEACHERS ON CHEATING)
Convenient for administrators, and city executives, embarrassing stories about schools and test cheating encouraged by administrators are hitting the news, when more people are at summer get-aways.

Sharon Otterman, Review Aims to Avert Cheating on State Tests

New York State education officials announced Monday that they had begun to review the way they detect and prevent cheating on standardized tests, taking a step to avoid the cheating scandals that have engulfed school systems in other states.

New York does not conduct statistical analyses of its high-stakes third- through eighth-grade tests to scour for suspicious results that could signal cheating, like unusual spikes in a school’s scores or predictable erasures on multiple-choice questions, officials said.

Analyses in Atlanta and Philadelphia, among other cities, have produced evidence of tampering on a scale that calls into question those cities’ educational achievements.

The State Education Department released a brief statement on Monday saying that the education commissioner, John B. King Jr., had convened a high-level working group in mid-July to begin an immediate review of “all aspects of the state’s testing system.” Officials said details would be available soon.

All aspects? I'm not holding my breath.

New York state should send a Michigan-type survey of teachers on cheating pressures. See "About the school cheating survey" (Detroit Free Press, July 27, 2011) on the Michigan Educator Survey. Nearly 30% of the surveyed teachers reported pressure to cheat.


And another quite interesting tidbit, broadcasted about nine years too late: Prince Michael I (Mr. Bloomberg) cut the funds for investigations of test cheating in 2002, immediately after assuming mayor control of the schools:

Rachel Monahan, yesterday in the New York Daily News: "NYC drops controls to ferret out cheating on high-stakes standardized tests."

34 NJ Schools Investigated For Possible Cheating:
Officials: Some Schools Showed Especially High Deviations Of Corrected Answers

In Michigan, teachers feel compelled to cheat

Alas, in many western and southern states the school year is starting in a week or two. In these states the scandals or "probes" are getting attention at an inconvenient time for policy bigs.
Pa. Joins States Facing a School Cheating Scandal Actually, this covers the Georgia scandal as well.

And Education Week gives us a thumbnail of cheating scandals in the era of No Child Left Behind (NCLB): "Cheating Scandals Intensify Focus on Test Pressures"

Consider that the policy maker/ media pundit beating up of teachers does not consider the role of administrators. A common thread of these stories is that administrators, not teachers, are the source of the pressure to cheat.

Will all of these scandals prompt education "reformers", media pundits and politicians to rethink their mania for tests and data emphasis? Let's hope so.

The LIFO myth / Walcott couldn't get hired at new schools

Bravo, Cathie "ohhhhhhhhhh" Black is gone!!!

Alas, former deputy mayor Dennis Walcott will need a waiver (yet again!) from NYS Education Commissioner David Steiner or his successor, because Walcott lacks any education supervisor training.

THE LIFO MYTH AND THE LIOI REALITY
(Last In Only In, the real issue, blocked out by attention to Last In First Out)
Yet, equally disturbing is the fact that Dennis Walcott would face 1,000 to 1 (or so) odds against getting hired at the new schools that will replace the closed-down schools.
The hard, cold truth is that the hiring at the new schools is that THE LAST IN ARE THE ONLY IN. Just remember that at school after school, the hiring freeze is a myth. ATRs are passed over for new teachers, who often lack experience as full-time, permanently assigned teachers or for teachers with inadequate licensing.
Cathie Black's appointment was a slap in the face of teachers that had to earn master's degrees or pass numerous exams.
The hiring of inexperienced teachers is a slap in the face of unassigned (tenured and experienced, I may remind you) ATRs in a period in which the public (and gullible teachers) are led to believe that there is a hiring freeze, with hiring limited to ATRs.
SHAME ON COMPTROLLER JOHN LIU'S FAILURE TO AUDIT THE DOE'S HIRING PATTERNS!
SHAME ON THE UFT FOR FAILING TO PROTEST THIS!

If you have ever set foot in one of these schools or have gone to parent-teacher nights, you will notice that:
(1) 50 to 90 percent of the teaching staff are 33 or under and have less then 6 years in the system. (These numbers are at the less stark range when a high school has been split into four: fifty percent get to stay on; the youngsters take all the other slots. But take note of the new schools in new locations or new schools imposed in odd places (like elementary or middle schools): these are more in the 90-95 percent newbie/young teacher range.)
(2) in the traditional schools (established schools as opposed to the new ones) ethnic diversity is to be found in the teaching staff. Yet in the new schools the minority percentage is teeny: about 10 to 15 percent.
So, Norm of Ed Notes, YES, the attack on LIFO is without question a form of racism.

Take a look at the great piece in "Ed in the Apple", "Is the Assault on Seniority an Assault on Teachers of Color? Will School Closings Lead to College or Incarceration?."

The Bloomberg-Klein-Black mindset is totally blind to the issues of race and class. Lisa Delpit, in Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom points to the questions of race and power,

Delpit has identified a “culture of power” that operates in schools and supports dominant U.S. society. In classrooms where White and middle-class teachers regard minority and low-income students as “other people’s children,” Delpit argues that these teachers repeatedly fail to reveal the rules of the culture of power to students since they are “frequently least aware of — or least willing to acknowledge” the cultural power they hold.

Bree Picower, in her research, “The Unexamined Whiteness of Teaching: How White Teachers Maintain and Enact Dominant Racial Ideologies,” explores the pre-conceptions of white teachers and how they approach children of color.

One has got to ask, how are children of color viewing race, intellectualism, professions and the world when they see nearly every one of their teachers being white?
What kind of message are we sending to the youth of the city by erasing the teachers of color (or teachers of age, for that matter) from classrooms?

Another excellent piece, by Sam E. Anderson, from 2006, that systematically addresses the myriad thematic and hiring biases under Bloomberg/Klein, in "Black Educator,"
"A Black Education State of Emergency
Engulfs New York City."

And read, from 2008, at "Education for Liberation," "Vanishing Black Educators: Fewer Blacks, More Whites Are Hired as City Teachers" and further down the page, "Stop and Reverse the Disappearing of Black and Latino Teachers/vanisingblackteachers.htm"

BACK TO WALCOTT, UPHOLDING A SYSTEM THAT WOULD NOT HIRE HIM
Aside from Dennis Walcott's bad Kapo politics of blind loyalty to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, of upholding the closings and ridiculous bundling three or four schools in one building (to share a gym and cafeteria), we cannot ignore that given his age and race, he would face very, very slim chances of being hired in the very schools that he is aligned with creating.

School closing argument undercut: Shuttered NYC HS schools met their graduation targets

One the same page, Yoav Gonen in the New York Post reported Wednesday February 9 in "Shuttered Schools Met Grad-Rate Predictions" that several high schools shuttered in the last few years actually met or came one or two points short of graduation percentage targets.

Here are the crucial excerpts from the article:

Internal Department of Education predictions of graduation rates at more than 200 public high schools show that a number of schools have been closed even though they met or came close to meeting their expected results, data obtained by The Post shows.

Among them were Franklin K. Lane HS in Brooklyn and Far Rockaway HS in Queens — which both began phasing out in 2008 — and Columbus HS in The Bronx, which last week was approved for closure.

Critics liken those closures — under which most teachers and administrators are bounced and forced to find positions at other schools — to shuttering a police precinct for its crime stats even though it’s known to be in a high-crime neighborhood.

The predictions are based on a number of factors — particularly the performance of incoming 9th graders on annual math and reading tests — so that schools with greater challenges are expected to produce fewer graduates.

A number of schools approved for closure in recent years had predicted graduation rates below 45 percent — far below the current citywide graduation rate of 60 percent.

But several of them came within 1 or 2 percentage points of meeting their expectations in 2007, the most recent year for which the predictions were calculated.

In fact, Far Rockaway HS beat its prediction by 0.6 percentage points just months before officials decided it should close.

"This data shows that the administration’s stated rationale for school closings, that teachers were underperforming, is false," said Patrick Sullivan, a Manhattan rep to the Panel for Educational Policy. "They must stop closing schools until a new policy based on transparency and community engagement can be put into place."

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/shuttered_schools_met_grad_rate_Y06a3wPl3zswU0YrLFkBzI#ixzz1DdO9csL2

(GO TO THE MIDDLE OF THE ARTICLE FOR A LINK TO AN EXCEL FILE ON "PREDICTED GRADUATION RATES.")

It is such a paradox. The paper bashes teachers, is distributed in schools, occasionally gives news exposing systemic ills.

Classroom disruption accommodation, and DoE's unprofessional role

800-pound weight in the New York City classrooms is the problem of "classroom management." The NYC Department of Education's accommodation of classroom disruption has wide-ranging deleterious ramifications.
First-most, the student disruptions have a profoundly negative impact on the classroom. The disruptions make teaching difficult. They make it difficult for children to learn. The ability of children to disrupt without consequences establishes a destructive precedent for the disruptors' peer students. The paucity of consequences makes the arena of the classroom is the disruptive student's true nirvana.
So, do administrators go after the disruptive, oppositional students? Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the answer is: hardly.
THE DUE PROCESS RIGHT-TO-DISRUPT
Are you say ... over 35 years of age or from outside "the city"? When you misbehaved terribly your principal probably called your home. This of course, probably turned over a whole mess at home. You saw immediate consequences to your non-sense.
These days, something has to happen pretty extreme, such as putting another student into an unconscious or making blood spill, to get a call home from the principal. No, there is a terrific shield that gives the disruptive student a tremendous cushion against any immediate consequences. That shield, "the ladder of referral." Essentially, if Johnny bullies or sexually harasses or non-sexually harasses or loudly and continuous disrupts a lesson or engages in dangerous rough-housing, weeks will pass before Johnny sees repercussions between his actions and any kind of punishment. Click here for the multi-page booklet, "Discipline Code," in a range of available languages.

No call from the principal or suspension; no, if you've done something egregious, no, the victims of the harassment or disruption will have to put up with things." The undergirding philosophy of what the discipline code calls "interventions" is that there is no urgency to stopping disruption, harassment or violence, and secondly, that the teacher needs to contact a bunch of people before the principal is contacted, and then maybe the student might get suspended. The teacher needs to do a plethora of things, use psychology to a pointless exercise of making like Mr. Rogers, "Now, if Yesenia says that she doesn't want you to touch her and she pushes you away, she probably won't be your friend anytime soon." And then you have to appeal to the parent a few times, and then, inform the guidance counselor or dean, and then the assistant principal and then the principal. Schools' formal "classroom removal process" of menacing or disruptive students includes following this kind of process.

The code has a bunch of letter and number code combinations which sound empowering to the teacher seeking peace and respect in the classroom." The various aforementioned offenses are grounds for some serious punishments.
The problem is that administrators at best frown upon reporting of incidents, and at worst, will go after the reporting staff member with a ferocious vengeance. For, the ultimate problem is that schools get negative ratings or reviews if incidents are reported. This is the crux of the problem. This aspect should be removed and principals might become more of partners in disciplining students. The absence of immediate consequences for disruption creates the self-fulfilling prophesy, "You can't control your classes."

SOURCE OF THIS ACCOMMODATION OF DISRUPTION
In recent decades court cases have resulted in advances for the cause of the disruptive student. In the interest of not depriving the disruptive student his due education and his fair treatment, state governments placed restrictions on the disciplining of students. This has particularly been true in New York State. Perhaps this enabling of disruption and dysfunction has contributed to New York's position of lagging performance behind other states such as North Carolina or Georgia. (Albeit, there has been a national underpinning of protections, understandably, for accused students' right to an uninterrupted education. See Goss v. Lopez (419 U.S. 565) (1975).)
This present post has been occasioned by the editorial today in the New York Post, "Rx for Classroom Chaos."
TREMENDOUS ADMISSION IN THE POST
The New York Post published the following:

classes can't be run without discipline. Denying them [school administrators] the right to run their own schools then becomes an act of collective punishment.

No one knows better than teachers and principals just what their students need -- and what an orderly class demands.

EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES
I would contend that significant educational gains could be accomplished if the disruption accommodation pattern were turned on its head.
Years past, teachers set the bar of their expectations, both in terms of classroom material and behavior.
Now, administrators fall into the classroom management philosophy that legitimizes student disruption, and more frequently so under Bloomberg's vindictive Leadership Academy principals and assistant principals. The most cynical administrators take the posture that teachers have the disruption coming to them because the classes are boring. This posture has intensified with the elimination at the secondary school level of assistant principals that have authority over specific subjects. Now, we have administrators with little familiarity in subjects that teachers under their authority teach. Again, the more cynical and less intellectually curious of these administrators want entertainment and educational superficiality and trivialization over substance.
(An eyewitness of a NYS Education Commissioner David Steiner lecture last year heard him observe that in other countries surveyed teachers say that they are in education because of a love of the content of their topic, and in the United States they report that they are in teaching because they love teaching. Given the anti-intellectualism of too many principals and assistant principals, is it any wonder that the latter orientation prevails.) Too bad he is not saying this in public, away from college campuses.)
Now, the teacher is not in control of the classroom. The student is.
State laws, school system codes of discipline and administrator policies and policies need to change, to reflect a respect for education and learning, rather than edutainment and disruption.
The compulsion to blame the teacher provides an indispensible tool by which to eliminate teachers (particularly experienced [read, higher salary] or politically undesirable teachers). Shamefully, the United Federation of Teachers plays along with this. They will not challenge the use of "classroom management" as a tool by which to pursue the biased and highly selective U rating of teachers.

DOE school staff & potential PCB class action lawsuit

Staff of New York City schools afflicted with cancer and their survivors have potential grounds for a class action lawsuit against the New York City Department of Education school system for its lingering inaction on PCB dangers in the schools.
For a couple of years the outer borough newspapers addressed this story, while broadcast media and major newspapers ignored the story.
"The New York Times" in the Saturday, February 5, 2011 edition runs a front page article on the lingering PCBs in NYC schools..

Of concern to staff is this note in the times over prolonged exposure to the PSB:

There is no immediate health risk from PCBs lingering in schools, all are told, yet with one important caveat:
the longer the exposure, the higher the risk.

(Line break in this quote is mine.)

People cannot sit sanguine on this issue. After all, this is the same mayor Mochael Bloomberg that resisted the city's cooperation with providing help to the overcome the onerous effects of longtime exposure to Grand Zero contaniments.

UFT and parents walk-out of sham PEP meeting

THE UFT SHOWS SOME SPINE

After calling the city's bluff (???) and assuming that this will get the city to play nice,
the United Federation of Teachers tonight at 7:15 PM walked out of the Panel for Education Policy meeting for voting on the proposed closure of some two dozen schools in the auditorium of Brooklyn Technical High School, one of the city's top selective public high schools.

At 7:00 PM UFT President Michael Mulgrew called the panel for what it is: a sham of a democracy. He noted that the city Department of Education sets up schools for failure. He made reference to a recently publicized internal DOE report (ironically, in "The New York Post") that the DOE starves schools for resources and sets them up for failure (clusters them with weaker students).
His speech was followed up by a parent that echoed his comments. Then, at 7:15 PM, parents in the front of the hall entered the aisles to leave, and union leaders, seated in the back of the hall, joined the crowd.

GOTHAM SCHOOLS GETS IT WRONG; ATTEMPTS TO RE-WRITE CURRENT HISTORY-MAKING
The Gotham Schools blog inaccurately reported that one-quarter of the crowd in the Brooklyn Tech auditorium left. The proportion was more like at least one-half. The reporting blogger cynically referred to the crowd walking out as "the Gompers crowd." In truth, parents and students were heavily represented in the crowd walking out of the meeting.

Parents and elected representatives, such as City Councilor Charles Barron, in a stirring speech, earlier in the night noted that the schools targeted for closure are saddled with special education and English Language Learner (English as a Second Language) students. The union has had to pursue a public campaign in recent years to get the city to properly staff schools with special education and resource room teachers, so as to meet the Individual Education Program needs of special education students.

CLOSINGS A CRUCIAL ISSUE FOR ALL TEACHERS
The closings and co-locating of competing schools in buildings with existing schools will lead to the displacement of veteran teachers. Every experienced teacher is in great danger of becoming next year's ATR (absent teacher reserve) teacher. This suits the perennially budget minded mayor exquisitely. Expensive veteran teachers will be replaced by cheaper, novice, untenured and timid teachers.

BLACK'S JEERING TO PARENTS, "OHHHHH"
Others chided embattled schools chancellor Cathie Black's contempuous talking back to parents, Tuesday, February 1, 2011, evening.
(She said, "I can't speak if you're shouting." Members of the crowd said, "Ohhhh." Black mocked back, "Ohhhh." Click to this NY1 clip, "Chancellor Black Criticized For Talking Back To Crowd During PEP meeting."
(NY1 was the only commercial outlet with cameras rolling during Black's jeering retort to upset parents.)

This walk-out, we hope, will foreshadow, a new, stronger turn for the teachers' union and parents, in a bid to challenge the fait accompli plan of closure that the city has for a quota of the lowest performing schools. As Mulgrew and others speak said Tuesday and Thursday, the panel is mostly hand-picked by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and is seen as a rubber stamp for the mayor's wishes.
Parents, students, teachers and elected officials walked out because speakers can speak, but the decision is always pre-determined. Whatever the people say, the panel members will only vote according to the pre-ordained program for X number of schools each year.

As speakers cited the stirrings for democracy in Egypt, we hope that this evening's stirrings and walkout will lead to the replacement of the autocratic rubber stamp PEP with a democratic board of education.

LIVE BLOGGING UPDATE
NY1 stuck around after the walkout. The reporter, Lindsey Christ, reporting live at 9:00 PM, said that only 200 to 300 audience members remained and that they were mainly charter school supporters. In contrast to Gotham Schools, Christ said that the majority of the attendees walked out.

Snow emergency, but schools will be open: staff are emergency personnel

ALERT! SCHOOLS ARE ACTUALLY CLOSED.
NY1 reported that this is only the sixth time that schools have closed since 1970.
But be sure to protest the permanent school closings at City Hall today at 4:30 PM.
Bloomberg's hands were tied with this one. He ordered all cars off the street. It would be hard to insist that school staff try to drive in, while every other driver was told to stay off the roads. Furthermore, these lines at the least have been partially or entirely suspended: D, J and 6 lines are on this list. All buses are suspended.
Notice!: 5:00 PM today, 311 says that the mayor has declared a weather emergency. He has advised against all travel. And owners cars parked on certain thoroughfares will face penalties.
The mayor is urging people to stay off roads tonight and in the morning. As NY 1 announced, "the mayojavascript:void(0)r hopes to have schools open" tomorrow.

The Bronx and the northern suburbs will get hit the heaviest. But have no fear, Queens and Nassau will be grazed, by comparison.

Click here for an authoritative satellite map.

***

A very thoughtful commenter to one of my last blog posts offered the suggestion that the New York City schools and the teachers are a day care service. Is this out of concern for the parents? Not entirely. For, if we were to expect the city to care for its parents, it would push for social services to alleviate the crushing poverty that a huge percentage of families experience; it would push for more services in the schools: more special education placement of students that are special ed, instead of pushing them into regular ed classes --and the same for English Language Learner. And the city would overturn its apparent no-textbooks-at-homes policy apparently in place in schools across the city. The city would shelve its counterproductive constructivist math that leaves our students unprepared for CUNY classes. The city would have junked all consultants and would have made a top priority of capping classes at 34 students.
No, the city does not care about the education of the city's youth. The calling of a snow day would inconvenience many working parents who might feel compelled to stay at home. The city's worry? -it would be like a strike among the working parents, fewer nannies, fewer doormen, fewer corporate support staff, fewer other help whose services the city's wealthy would dearly miss.
Like hospital staff and police and fire fighters, public school staff are not merely teachers and associated staff, but are essential emergency workers.

Alas, the mayor, who cherishes cost-efficiency, will be blind to another wasted school day tomorrow.
Get up early, drivers, and shovel early. Transit users, start off QUITE early.

PS, don't forget to log in tomorrow night with the percentage of your students that attended school on Thursday, the 27th, on the poll at the right.