NY1: UFT: It Appears that NYPD is Spying on Teachers

In an exclusive report by NY1, "NY1 Exclusive: Teachers Union Says NYPD Keeping Close Watch Following Support Of Protests," the United Federation of Teachers, New York City's teachers' union asserts that the New York Police Department might be spying on teachers, particularly in light of the UFT's support of the Occupy Wall Street protests at Zuccotti Park.
Here are opening excerpts from Lindsey Christ's October 21, 2011 report:

The United Federation of Teachers has vocally supported the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, and union representatives now say they believe the New York City Police Department may be spying on them as a result. NY1’s Lindsey Christ filed the following report.

Police cars are not usually parked outside the headquarters of the United Federation of Teachers, but union representatives say they've been there for the past few weeks.

Union leaders say they think they've been put under surveillance by the New York City Police Department ever since they began supporting “Occupy Wall Street.”

Click for full report: "NY1 Exclusive: Teachers Union Says NYPD Keeping Close Watch Following Support Of Protests."

AND
Alternet: Since 2002: NYPD: $0.8M on metal fences.

8 NYPD Officers Caught in Import Guns into Brooklyn Operation

Eight New York Police Department officers have been charged in a sting operation with involvement in a conspiracy to bring guns into the city.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, in a joint news conference with N.Y.C. FBI office head Diego Rodriguez and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly announced the results of the FBI's investigation.

New York Times' story on the gun transit into Brooklyn operation was accompanied by notes on how this news comes in the midst of several police corruption developments:

And the arrests come at a difficult time for a department, the largest municipal police force in the nation, already besieged by corruption accusations. In recent weeks, testimony at the trial of a narcotics detective has featured accusations that he and his colleagues in Brooklyn and Queens planted drugs or lied under oath to meet arrest quotas and earn overtime, leading to the arrests of eight officers, the dismissal of hundreds of drug cases because of their destroyed credibility and the payout of more than $1 million in taxpayer money to settle false arrest lawsuits.

Two other officers, in unrelated federal cases, have been charged in recent weeks with criminal civil-rights violations accusing them of trumping up charges against innocent victims. In one case, on Staten Island, a white officer is accused of falsely arresting a black man and then bragging about it using a racial slur. And in the coming days, 16 officers are expected to face charges in a ticket-fixing scandal in the Bronx.

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).

NEWS: On "Occupy the PEP"

Education activists, including allied parents and students, took over the Panel for Educational Policy. In the spirit of the Occupy Wall Street movement downtown, the protesters began the public's speech by saying "mic check."
The PEP meeting at the Seward Educational Complex (with five, count 'em, five schools), convened to discuss "Core Curriculum" standards, began at 6:00 and closed up at 6:10 PM and relocated to elsewhere in the building.

DOE PEP'S PROVOCATION
Any honest and complete presentation of tonight's events must recognize that the PEP set up a provocation tonight. In a break from previous policy, the PEP insisted in procedural rules announced days before the meeting that people with questions submit them in writing.
The PEP thus set the stage for high tension. What was the reason for denying open microphone opportunities? After all, at many PEP meetings in the last twelve months plenty of people had opportunities to speak. One might say that the time limits afforded many people the chance to speak.
Reminder, I am still speaking about PREVIOUS meetings. Varying opinions were expressed, con, mainly, and a handful endorsing the PEP's policy objective of the night.
Yes, the nights could be rowdy and noisy, but both sides could always be expressed and the PEP could always do its voting. Now if one objects that opponents (upset at a total lack of popular political --democracy, remember?-- participation) were louder than the PEP facilitators of the business of the night, one should recognize some basic things: save for Patrick Sullivan, the PEP members, almost to a person, did not care what the public thought anyway. If they (the PEP, not the public --b'sides, what business does the public have in interfering in public policy?) were peeved at the noise, they could always chat among themselves to pass the business of the evening.

Click on this link to see Gotham Schools report, to this minute, THE ONLY Internet news outlet, up to 9:45 PM, to have reported anything on the PEP occupation story.

So, why did the PEP decide to deny the public any chance to pose impromptu questions or statements? Maybe, we need to direct our speculations to the man that runs the PEP, the mayor, who picks the eight of of the panel's thirteen members. Maybe it's that he just does not want teachers gathering publicly. Note how his NYPD gendarmes this weekend told teachers that they must stop their "grade-in" at Occupy Wall Street: “No grading papers in public," according to Fred Klonsky's story, "NYPD tells teachers, 'No grading papers in public'."

Hey, why are these important stories only covered by the blogs, and not by the commercial news?

UPDATE:
News coverage:
Well-edited youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbmjMickJMA

NYTimes coverage in SchoolBook: http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2011/10/25/walcott-event-disrupted-by-protesters/

NY1 coverage: http://www.ny1.com/content/news_beats/education/149635/education-panel-meeting-disrupted-by--occupy--protesters

Epoch Times: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/united-states/teachers-and-parents-occupy-education-meeting-63296.html

Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/25/occupy-wall-street-department-of-education_n_1031812.html

GothamSchools: 1) http://gothamschools.org/2011/10/25/discussion-of-common-core-to-compete-with-human-mic-tonight/

2) http://gothamschools.org/2011/10/25/protest-derails-doe-meeting-on-curriculum-after-just-minutes/

3) http://gothamschools.org/2011/10/25/underneath-the-shouting-a-hum-about-curriculum-standards/

Occupy wall street livestream videos (though they are hard to sort through): http://www.livestream.com/occupynyc

Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/10/26/2011-10-26_school_boss_disrupted.html

Fox News: http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/protesters-shout-down-schools-chancellor-walcott-20111025

A NYPost editorial: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/the_thugs_win_again_sIavzdrhUBM3HxPHHY7IxH?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME=

Blogs---
http://ednotesonline.com/

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2011/10/last-night-at-pep-we-occupied-doe.html

http://raginghorse.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/occupy-the-department-of-education-walcott-takes-it-on-the-hop/

More Corporate Fronts Driving Education "Reform" Exposed: Now, the DeVos Family

Behind every education "reform" (actually, deform) group is a millionaire investor or donor. We've heard about the Broad and the Gates foundations manipulating public education policy. Here is more unsettling news of a 1%er family and right wing shadow groups manipulating policy in the same vein.

Behind Education Action Group is Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the DeVos family of multi-level marketer Amway fame. (Wikipedia describes the Mackinac Center as: The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is a free market think tank headquartered in Midland, Michigan. It is the USA’s largest state-based free market think tank.)
(And see Right Wing Watch about the Mackinac Center: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/mackinac-center-public-policy
From the madfloridian blog (in democraticunderground.com):

[As with the earlier Tempers Flaring in Memphis article, the following is from the madfloridian post, the indents are from the inset boxes throughout the article.]

Another "false front" education reform group? Keep eye out for their op eds in local papers.
Posted by madfloridian in General Discussion
Sun Oct 09th 2011, 12:55 PM
The Michigan Education Association writes about the Education Action Group and warns to watch out for their activities.

Behind the false front

Note the ties to the Mackinac Center and the DeVos family.

EAG isn’t really a group. It’s two very partisan men with ties to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and Dick DeVos of Amway Corp. fame. Olson’s brother is director of education policy at the Mackinac Center, another anti-union, pro-privatization group. The man who incorporated EAG, Eric Doster, is a Michigan Republican Party lawyer who has served on the board of the Great Lakes Education Project, a political action committee linked to DeVos. DeVos, of course, helped finance the failed 2000 vouchers initiative.

EAG bashes the collective bargaining process and school employees’ rights to inform the community and to work to elect leaders who value students and the employees who teach and help them at school.

Olson claims to be nonpartisan, but he is a partisan Republican Party activist and an officer in the state party.

Olson refuses to disclose his group’s funding sources, making it difficult to discern whose agenda EAG is pushing.

This Michigan-based "reformer" group just had an opinion piece published in the Tampa Tribune. It is anti teachers unions.

Teachers' union seeks to nullify the public's will

The column refers to an effort by the teachers' union in Florida to fight the new anti-tenure law. They totally misrepresent what the situation is about, and then they go on to express support for Rick Scott's extreme education changes.

By filing this suit, union leaders are telling people that teachers should not be held accountable for the performance of their students. They want us to believe all teachers are equally intelligent and motivated. They're saying that all teachers should continue to have a guaranteed job for life under tenure and remain on a common pay scale, regardless of the outcome of their work.

More than anything, FEA leaders are blatantly displaying their disrespect for the democratic process. They have no interest in the outcome of the elections that put Scott and his legislative allies in office. They are willing to use the courts to overturn the will of the people.

So much for majority rule. Union leaders, with all their wealth and influence, can simply shop for a politically-friendly judge who will rule in their favor. The eventual ruling may have little to do with the constitutionality of the new law and more to do with judges who accept donations from the teachers' union and feel obliged to pay them back.

And they speak of Rick Scott:

Reform-minded leaders like Scott have stood up to the unions and demanded accountability in the classroom. If teachers are not going to be held responsible for student performance, who will be? Can you think of another profession where employees are not held accountable for the final product?

[Ed.: are doctors held entirely responsible for patients' health? Or are diet and exercise credited?? Are police held entirely responsible for crime rates? Or can poverty be pointed to??]


They simply are not telling the truth. I wonder how many op eds in how many newspapers?

One member of this group has been regularly hounding an education blogger these last few months. They demanded and got all his education emails. The blogger, Fred Klonsky, posted about it often at his blog.

The return of Velderman. Ask GOP tough questions and you get put on a watch list.
It was late last school year that the goof ball ideological terrorists at the Michigan-based Education Action Group demanded that my school district hand over to them all my work emails.

Which they did.

EAG gofer Ben Velderman signed the FOIA request. The reason for the FOIA was that this blog asks tough questions about education and public policy and is outspokenly pro-teacher and pro-union.

Nothing has changed about that. Certainly not a FOIA request from some punk from EAG.

Now Think Progress reports that this is becoming standard GOP practice. Ask a Republican elected official a challenging question and you get placed on a watch list.

There are many of these groups which are fronts for corporations. One of them that is doing great harm to public schools is called the Parents Revolution. It is no parents revolution, it is funded by billionaires, connected to Green Dot charter schools.

The MEA website says this EAG group has tactics that "include sending anti-union mail to residents, attending local school board meetings and using the news media to further its negative agenda."

They also recommend:

If EAG surfaces in your district, please inform your local MEA UniServ director. You also may want to share what you know about EAG with your school board members and administrators, so they can consider EAG’s motives.

Maybe I should let them know it is surfacing in Tampa, Florida.

Bennington VT teachers strike, first in SW Vt. in Decades

The teachers' strike in Bennington, Vermont is continuing.
Talks have suspended for the weekend:

From Neal R. Goswami, "Strike talks break for weekend," yesterday in the Bennington Banner:

BENNINGTON -- Teachers will continue their strike for a fourth school day on Monday, after union and board negotiators mutually agreed to break for the weekend Friday afternoon without a settlement.

Both sides said progress was made Friday and a framework appears to be in place to move closer to a settlement on Monday. There is "nothing imminent" to be signed, though, according to Darren Allen, spokesman for the Vermont chapter of the National Education Association.

The school boards -- Bennington, North Bennington, Shaftsbury, Pownal and Mount Anthony in the SVSU, and the Southwest Vermont Regional Technical School District -- presented a contract offer to the union around 10 p.m. Thursday. The union reviewed it overnight and met face-to-face with board negotiators Friday for the first time since the strike began on Wednesday.

Allen said negotiators for the Southwest Vermont Education Association, which represents about 270 teachers, were comfortable with Friday’s progress and agreed to break for the weekend.

"Sometimes when you’re at the table for that long it really is productive to take a break," Allen said.
. . . .
Teachers are now in their second year without a negotiated contract and working under conditions set by the boards in June -- one day after the previous school year ended. The union is seeking a successor agreement to replace the imposed conditions.

The union voted overwhelmingly on Oct. 12 -- 209 to 12 -- to authorize a strike if a deal with the boards was not reached by earlier this week.

Steven Stitzel, an attorney representing the boards, said he plans to meet with a union representative Monday to develop a "very clear list" of issues that must still be addressed.

Meanwhile, all of the boards will meet together Monday afternoon to discuss progress. Much of the meeting is likely to take place in executive session, according to officials.

Teachers are continuing to walk picket lines at their respective schools. On Friday, teachers also picketed in front of the SVSU central office where negotiations were taking place.

Union members are "really staying organized and together," according to one teacher. But there is growing "frustration" that union officials have not shared more specific details of proposals.

"They don’t understand the details of the proposals," the teacher said. "They’re staying organized but they wish they really knew what was going on with the proposals."

Despite increasing optimism that a deal will be reached next week, both sides acknowledged Friday that a significant amount of work remains.

The two sides have disagreed on three main issues -- the amount of health care premiums the districts will pay, how much of the school day is under the control of administrators, and salaries.

Those issues remain a central part of negotiations, according to both sides.
. . . .

Read the full article at the Bennington Banner.

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.

NY Times: Charter School Driving Droves of Teachers Away

Anna Phillips, "High Teacher Turnover at a Success Network School," October 19, 2011.


More than a third of the staff members at a Harlem charter school run by the Success Charter Network have left the school within the last several months, challenging an organization that prides itself on the training and support it offers its teachers.

The unusually high turnover at Harlem Success Academy 3 and the network-wide issue of teachers quitting mid-year led the founder and chief executive of the Success Charter Network, Eva S. Moskowitz, to express concern in an October newsletter.

“This is not a ‘gig’ ” she wrote, informing staff members that by breaking their commitment to the schools and families midyear, they were acting unethically.

At Harlem Success Academy 3, 22 of the school’s 59 administrators, teachers and classroom aides left between the end of the last school year and the beginning of this one, according to the school’s records. Some took jobs at other schools, some moved to new cities and some said they quit out of frustration with the school’s tightly regulated environment.
. . . .
Few of the teachers who left Harlem Success Academy 3 would speak about why they quit, and those who did refused to be named, citing fear of retribution or concern that they could lose their new teaching positions.
. . . .
One former Harlem Success Academy 3 teacher who quit at the end of last school year said she had left because she felt “micromanaged.”

“You couldn’t teach in the way you wanted to teach,” she said. “If your kids weren’t sitting perfectly, looking straight at the teacher, not saying a single word, then you weren’t doing your job.”
. . . .
Read more of the article as originally posted at the New York Times website.

Undercover Operation Angers Brooklyn College Students

The NYPD thinks this college sophomore is a threat?

From "The Brooklyn Ink" blog.

By Omar Akthar, "Undercover Operation Angers Brooklyn College Students," Tue, Oct 11, 2011

Students at Brooklyn College reacted, at turns, with both outrage and acceptance over a report that the New York Police Department used undercover officers to infiltrate Muslim student groups on campus.
According to a CBS news report this morning, The Associated Press obtained documents that show that the NYPD has been sending undercover officers to schools and colleges like Brooklyn College to infiltrate Muslim student groups and monitor their activities.
“It’s definitely scary, it makes me think twice about what I say when I’m speaking to someone on the phone when I’m on campus,” said sophomore Faria Imtiaz, a member of the Muslim Students Association. “It shows that if it could happen to us, it could happen to anyone.”

This wasn’t her first brush with police surveillance. “The NYPD released a list of institutions that were under surveillance for potential Islamic fundamentalism, one of them turned out to be my high school,” she said. Still, she added, maybe actions like this are necessary in the times we live in.
Konstantinos Marinakis, a senior, supported the department’s actions.
Konstantinos Marinakis, Brooklyn College Student by Omar Bilal Akhtar
He said that while there should be surveillance, it shouldn’t be specific for only certain groups. “I don’t agree it should be specific groups, “ he said. “The NYPD should go undercover in schools to infiltrate all groups ”

But sophomore Elizabeth Allan called the operation racist, a violation of privacy, and an example of racial profiling.

The operation may, in fact, violate U.S. privacy laws—and may also jeopardize federal funding for the universities if the department were to hand over student records without their consent to the police, law professor Ramzi Kassen told the AP.
The City University of New York has had an understanding with the NYPD since 1992 that states that in non-emergency situations, police officers may enter CUNY premises only upon the request or approval of a CUNY official.
Jeremy Thompson, the Senior Director of Communications and Marketing at Brooklyn College said, “If these allegations prove correct, it is certainly something that has happened without our knowledge.”

According to documents obtained by the AP, the NYPD may have gained access to student records through working with campus security, under the pretense of working on gang or narcotics cases. This would be a violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), a federal statute, according to Richard Rainsberger, a consultant on college privacy laws told the AP. If the college is found to be violating this statute, it could lose all its federal funding.
Thompson said that it was not unusual for the college to cooperate with the NYPD. “I don’t know if there is any veracity to that claim or not, but I can tell you we have a very good relationship with the NYPD. Our public safety officers are in regular communication with the 70th precinct here,” he said. “But we are certainly bound by the FERPA, and so anything that would have been done as far as the release of student records or documents would have been under those guidelines.”
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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."

NYPD fabricated drug charges vs. innocent people to meet arrest quotas, former detective testifies

AND,New York Times, Jim Dwyer, "The Drugs? They Came From the Police"

Jim Marzulli, New York Daily News, October 13, 2011, "We fabricated drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas, former detective testifies"

A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas. [Photo]

The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup.

Anderson, testifying under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, was busted for planting cocaine, a practice known as "flaking," on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out fellow cop Henry Tavarez, whose buy-and-bust activity had been low.

"Tavarez was ... was worried about getting sent back [to patrol] and, you know, the supervisors getting on his case," he recounted at the corruption trial of Brooklyn South narcotics Detective Jason Arbeeny.

"I had decided to give him [Tavarez] the drugs to help him out so that he could say he had a buy," Anderson testified last week in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

He made clear he wasn't about to pass off the two legit arrests he had made in the bar to Tavarez.

"As a detective, you still have a number to reach while you are in the narcotics division," he said.

NYPD officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Anderson worked in the Queens and Brooklyn South narcotics squads and was called to the stand at Arbeeny's bench trial to show the illegal conduct wasn't limited to a single squad.

"Did you observe with some frequency this ... practice which is taking someone who was seemingly not guilty of a crime and laying the drugs on them?" Justice Gustin Reichbach asked Anderson.

"Yes, multiple times," he replied.

The judge pressed Anderson on whether he ever gave a thought to the damage he was inflicting on the innocent.

"It was something I was seeing a lot of, whether it was from supervisors or undercovers and even investigators," he said.

"It's almost like you have no emotion with it, that they attach the bodies to it, they're going to be out of jail tomorrow anyway; nothing is going to happen to them anyway."

The city paid $300,000 to settle a false arrest suit by Jose Colon and his brother Maximo, who were falsely arrested by Anderson and Tavarez. A surveillance tape inside the bar showed they had been framed.

A federal judge presiding over the suit said the NYPD's plagued by "widespread falsification" by arresting officers.

Click for original NY Daily News article with photo and comments.

AND,New York Times, Jim Dwyer, "The Drugs? They Came From the Police"

Is it time for another commission to investigate police corruption? All the venom against teachers, never shall patterns in the New York Police Department be questioned.